The papers which constitute this volume, and which were first presented at a Conference in 1978 at the Catholic University of America, are arranged chronologically according to the five periods in which Neoplatonism confronted Christianity: Patristic, Later Greek and Byzantine, Medieval Latin, Renaissance, and Modern. Its editor suggests, in his valuable "Introduction", that the papers fall also into three groups in line with their contents. The first group concerns Christian thinkers who knew and used specific Neoplatonic texts and includes the (...) following: H. D. Saffrey, "New Objective Links Between the Pseudo-Dionysius and Proclus"; J. Dillon, "Origen's Doctrine of the Trinity and Some Later Neoplatonic Theories"; J. Pépin, "The Platonic and Christian Ulysses"; M. T. Clark, "A Neoplatonic Commentary on the Christian Trinity: Marius Victorinus"; J. O'Meara, "The Neoplatonism of Saint Augustine"; G. H. Allard, "The Primacy of Existence in the Thought of Eriugena"; C. Fabro, "The Overcoming of the Neoplatonic Triad of Being, Life and Intellect by Thomas Aquinas"; B. McGinn, "Meister Echkart on God as Absolute Unity"; E. Bieman, "Triads and Trinity in the Poetry of Robert Browning"; M. Rose, "The Christian Platonism of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams.". (shrink)

Unconscious processing of stimuli with emotional content can bias affective judgments. Is this subliminal affective priming merely a transient phenomenon manifested in fleeting perceptual changes, or are long-lasting effects also induced? To address this question, we investigated memory for surprise faces 24 h after they had been shown with 30-ms fearful, happy, or neutral faces. Surprise faces subliminally primed by happy faces were initially rated as more positive, and were later remembered better, than those primed by fearful or neutral faces. (...) Participants likely to have processed primes supraliminally did not respond differentially as a function of expression. These results converge with findings showing memory advantages with happy expressions, though here the expressions were displayed on the face of a different person, perceived subliminally, and not present at test. We conclude that behavioral biases induced by masked emotional expressions are not ephemeral, but rather can last at least 24 h. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Witness of the Body: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Martyrdom ed. by Michael L. Budde and Karen ScottElizabeth Sweeny BlockWitness of the Body: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Martyrdom Edited by Michael L. Budde and Karen Scott Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 238 pp. $22.00In Michael L. Budde’s introduction to this volume, he asserts its twofold purpose: to identify criteria for distinguishing authentic (...) Christian martyrdom from inauthentic and to return martyrdom to a more central place in Christian life. This collection of essays—some of which were presented as part of a lecture series at DePaul University during the 2006–7 academic year—aspires to reconsider and redefine martyrdom in order to remove both the “freak-show element” and the “heroic exceptionality” associated with martyrdom in modern culture (viii). The goal of the volume, which is part of the Eerdmans Ekklesia Series, is to resituate martyrdom within the everyday life of the church, and the majority of the essays argue for the ongoing significance of a revised martyrdom for this distinctive community. These eleven essays are as much about martyrs themselves as they are about how martyrdom is perceived, received, and remembered. The interdisciplinary volume [End Page 211] is successful in encouraging a broader understanding of martyrdom, one that may not necessarily include death, and in drawing attention to the ongoing need for memorializing Christian martyrs to inspire commitment and transformation.The volume is divided into four parts representing both chronological and substantive distinctions. Part 1, “Martyrdom as the Church’s Witness,” introduces the problem of isolating the requirements of martyrdom and defining who fits into this category, a challenge addressed throughout the volume. Part 2, “Martyrdom Builds the Church,” discusses positive elements of martyrdom, especially with respect to the value of women’s bodies, drawing on both the early female martyrs in general and Joan of Arc in particular. Part 3, “Martyrdom Destroys the Church,” recounts some of the most difficult aspects of modern martyrdom, calling for a more accurate history and recognition of the emergence of a new kind of martyrdom in which one’s loyalty is to country, not faith. Part 4, “Martyrdom and the Future Church,” calls attention to the need to continue celebrating the memory of martyrs and describes the contemporary Christian martyr as a peacemaker not seeking martyrdom in the traditional sense of the word.What stands out as a theme across a number of the essays, and what I judge to be a valuable contribution to Christian ethics, is an emphasis on the way martyrs live(d), suggesting that what can and should be emulated by Christians today is a commitment to action on behalf of conversion and transformation. Tripp York’s essay rightly argues that martyrdom need not be viewed as merely reactionary, as a way of life in opposition to something, but as transformative and “for the sake of the world” (37). Michael Budde makes a similar assertion that martyrdom is better defined as deep loyalty than as treason, thereby suggesting that this kind of loyalty to Christ ought not to be limited to the special calling of a few but seen as the commitment of all Christians. Stephen Fowl’s essay conveys the meaning of the title of this volume, identifying martyrdom as part of the larger practice of “believers’ witness of the body to God’s drama of salvation” (44). He argues that in life or death, one can magnify Christ, and one’s bodily actions and responses can reflect one’s character and commitments. Emmanuel Katongole provides powerful recognition of the ways in which Christian martyrs “keep the church from sleeping” (193) and “embody the mundane gestures and practice of peaceableness in their everyday living” (199). This volume succeeds in shifting the focus from martyrdom in the traditional sense—being put to death because of one’s faith—to the ways Christians today remember, respond to, and emulate the lives and actions of martyrs. [End Page 212]Elizabeth Sweeny BlockUniversity of ChicagoCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This paper considers the problems that unconscious racial bias and social sin more broadly pose for moral theology’s concepts of the erroneous conscience and ignorance. It argues that systemic racism prompts us to reimagine the erroneous conscience and individual culpability for ignorance. I argue that the erroneous conscience is useful in protecting human dignity in the face of error and in acknowledging the many ways we err but also problematic because it equates error with concrete action and conscious decisions and (...) does not account for responsibility for social sin. This paper asserts that people of privilege and white persons cannot be morally innocent, but the erroneous conscience as it has been understood in the theological tradition often implies that innocence is the goal of the moral life and only holds us accountable for conscious moral actions. (shrink)

In this brief comment, we bring together two articles that appear in this special section. Jamieson et al. provide an overview of the biopsychosocial model of threat and challenge and suggest that stress-related arousal can be reappraised as a coping resource to facilitate challenge appraisals. Hernandez et al. review evidence for the link between well-being and health. We see a connection between these seemingly unrelated reviews: Well-being may improve health in part by shaping appraisals of stressors’ demands and appraisals of (...) coping resources. (shrink)

This essay considers whether the model of conscience operative in Christian ethics, what I call the “reflexive conscience,” is adequate to meet the global moral challenges we face today, problems such as gun violence, climate change, and the Zika virus. Drawing primarily on the work of Willis Jenkins, I argue that conscience has not yet caught up to the scale and interconnectedness of our global moral challenges. A truly “engaged conscience” must be focused not primarily on the self but on (...) the other, and must be active. I conclude by turning to Elisabeth Vasko’s criticisms of the victim/perpetrator binary to suggest that conscience must call us to greater responsibility for the systemic injustices in which particular moral challenges are embedded. (shrink)

The “default system” of the brain has been described as a set of regions which are ‘activated’ during rest and ‘deactivated’ during cognitively effortful tasks. To investigate the reliability of task-related deactivations, we performed a meta-analysis across 12 fMRI studies. Our results replicate previous findings by implicating medial frontal and parietal brain regions as part of the “default system”.However, the cognitive correlates of these deactivations remain unclear. In light of the importance of social cognitive abilities for human beings and their (...) propensity to engage in such activities, we relate our results to findings from neuroimaging studies of social cognition. This demonstrates a remarkable overlap between the brain regions typically involved in social cognitive processes and the “default system”.We, henceforth, suggest that the physiological ‘baseline’ of the brain is intimately linked to a psychological ‘baseline’: human beings have a predisposition for social cognition as the default mode of cognizing which is implemented in the robust pattern of intrinsic brain activity known as the “default system”. (shrink)

This essay considers whether the model of conscience operative in Christian ethics, what I call the “reflexive conscience,” is adequate to meet the global moral challenges we face today, problems such as gun violence, climate change, and the Zika virus. Drawing primarily on the work of Willis Jenkins, I argue that conscience has not yet caught up to the scale and interconnectedness of our global moral challenges. A truly “engaged conscience” must be focused not primarily on the self but on (...) the other, and must be active. I conclude by turning to Elisabeth Vasko’s criticisms of the victim/perpetrator binary to suggest that conscience must call us to greater responsibility for the systemic injustices in which particular moral challenges are embedded. (shrink)

During the last decade, one source of debate in argumentation theory has been the notion that there are different modes of arguing that need to be distinguished when analyzing and evaluating arguments. Visual argument is often cited as a paradigm example. This paper discusses the ways in which it and modes of arguing that invoke non-verbal sounds, smells, tactile sensations, music and other non-verbal entities may be defined and conceptualized. Though some attempts to construct a ‘multimodal’ theory of argument are (...) criticized, it advocates for an argumentation theory that makes room for visual arguing and for other non-verbal modes that have not been explored in depth. In the process, the paper provides a method for identifying the structure of multimodal arguments and argues that adding modes to our theoretical tool box is an important step toward a comprehensive account of argument. (shrink)

This uniquely fascinating volume is not merely a learned treatise in historical semantics; it is itself a stupendous display of world harmony as a creed-a vivid demonstration that "all is all.".

Informal logic is an attempt to develop a logic that can assess and analyze the arguments that occur in natural language discourse. Discussions in the field may address instances of scientific, legal, and other technical forms of reasoning, but the overriding aim has been a comprehensive account of argument that can explain and evaluate the arguments found in discussion, debate and disagreement as they manifest themselves in daily life — in social and political commentary; in news reports and editorials in (...) the mass media ; in advertising and corporate and governmental communications; and in personal exchange. (shrink)

With a view to the theme of church renewal, this article explores the role of a well-known and popular phrase in the Reformed tradition within Protestantism, that is, ecclesia reformata semper reformanda [‘the reformed church should always be reformed’]. Is this a helpful slogan when considering the possibilities and the limitations of church renewal? Firstly, the historical background of this phrase is described: it is rooted in the Dutch Reformed tradition, and only in the 20th century it was widely recognised (...) in Reformed circles. Against this background the hermeneutical problem, linked with the principle of sola Scriptura, is presented, and put into an ecumenical ecclesiological perspective: the church is grounded in the gospel. Finally, the article focuses on church polity as an important field of renewal, taking into account Karl Barth’s interpretation of this phrase. From this perspective, a balanced and ecumenical approach of church renewal is possible. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, Indigenous communities have successfully campaigned for greater inclusion in decision-making processes that directly affect their lands and livelihoods. As a result, two important participatory rights for Indigenous peoples have now been widely recognized: the right to consultation and the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). Although these participatory rights are meant to empower the speech of these communities—to give them a proper say in the decisions that most affect them—we argue that the way (...) these rights have been implemented and interpreted sometimes has the opposite effect, of denying them a say or ‘silencing’ them. In support of this conclusion we draw on feminist speech act theory to identify practices of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary group silencing that arise in the context of consultation with Indigenous communities. (shrink)

This profound analysis of the nature of art is the culmination of a series of essays and polemics on issues of morality, social justice, and religion. Considering and rejecting the idea that art reveals and reinvents through beauty, Tolstoy perceives the question of the nature of art to be a religious one. Ultimately, he concludes, art must be a force for good, for the progress and improvement of mankind. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of (...) classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. (shrink)

In the pioneering article and two papers, written jointly with McKinsey, Tarski developed the so-called algebraic and topological frameworks for the Intuitionistic Logic and the Lewis modal system. In this paper, we present an outline of modern systems with a topological tinge. We consider topological interpretation of basic systems GL and G of the provability logic in terms of the Cantor derivative and the Hausdorff residue.

In response to Susan James’s ‘Spinoza and the poetic imagination,’ this essay illustrates how Spinoza and his interlocutors in the artistic society Nil Volentibus Arduum developed approaches to art and its social and political utility in conversation with Aristotle’s Poetics, as well as with its early modern translations, redactions, and applications. They, in turn, developed a poetry and a poetics grounded in the philosophical apprehension of nature, emphasizing vraisemblance or probability and necessity; foregrounding the careers of the affects; and affording (...) critics the ability to mobilize pleasure to their advantage and to shape audiences—a classicist project. (shrink)

Why do many societies moralize apparently harmless pleasures, such as lust, gluttony, alcohol, drugs, and even music and dance? Why do they erect temperance, asceticism, sobriety, modesty, and piety as cardinal moral virtues? According to existing theories, this puritanical morality cannot be reduced to concerns for harm and fairness: It must emerge from cognitive systems that did not evolve for cooperation (e.g., disgust-based “purity” concerns). Here, we argue that, despite appearances, puritanical morality is no exception to the cooperative function of (...) moral cognition. It emerges in response to a key feature of cooperation, namely that cooperation is (ultimately) a long-term strategy, requiring (proximately) the self-control of appetites for immediate gratification. Puritanical moralizations condemn behaviors which, although inherently harmless, are perceived as indirectly facilitating uncooperative behaviors, by impairing the self-control required to refrain from cheating. Drinking, drugs, immodest clothing, and unruly music and dance are condemned as stimulating short-term impulses, thus facilitating uncooperative behaviors (e.g., violence, adultery, free-riding). Overindulgence in harmless bodily pleasures (e.g., masturbation, gluttony) is perceived as making people slave to their urges, thus altering abilities to resist future antisocial temptations. Daily self-discipline, ascetic temperance, and pious ritual observance are perceived as cultivating the self-control required to honor prosocial obligations. We review psychological, historical, and ethnographic evidence supporting this account. We use this theory to explain the fall of puritanism in western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies, and discuss the cultural evolution of puritanical norms. Explaining puritanical norms does not require adding mechanisms unrelated to cooperation in our models of the moral mind. (shrink)

Recent feminist philosophy of language has highlighted the ways that the speech of women can be unjustly impeded, because of the way their gender affects the uptake their speech receives. In this chapter, I explore how similar processes can undermine the speech of a different sort of speaker: Indigenous communities. This involves focusing on Indigeneity rather than gender as the salient social identity, and looking at the ways that group speech, rather than only individual speech, can be unjustly impeded. To (...) do this, I make use of the notion of ‘discursive injustice’ that has been developed by Quill Kukla, and, with reference to three case studies, show how discursive injustice can effectively derail the speech of Indigenous communities. (shrink)

The idea that Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato is simplistic and inaccurate. Much of modern and contemporary epistemology owes a debt not so much to Platonism or Aristotelianism as to their antithesis: scepticism. Recent discussions in the history of philosophy have sparked a great deal of interest in the ancient sceptics, but until now they have been misunderstood and the significance of their philosophy not fully appreciated.

Natural right and the historical approach -- Natural right and the distinction between facts and values -- The origin of the idea of natural right -- Classic natural right -- Modern natural right : Hobbes ; Locke -- The crisis of modern natural right : Rousseau ; Burke.

Sometimes an individual gets taken as speaking for a wider group without laying claim to any such authority – they are thrust unwillingly, and sometimes even unknowingly, into the role of that grou...

Combating and overcoming corruption in business and in political affairs is one of the most important issues facing business and professional ethics in the 21st century. That corruption exists is a fact. That corruption is widespread and spreading is a commonperception. Many believe that corruption is culturally induced. Some believe corruption to be so much a part of the fabric of some societies as to be unquestioned and unassailable. Or, is it simply a myth that corruption is a matter of (...) culture? (shrink)

This article discusses “auditory” arguments: arguments in which non-verbal sounds play a central role. It provides examples and explores the use of sounds in argument and argumentation. It argues that auditory arguments are not reducible to verbal arguments but have a similar structure and can be evaluated by extending standard informal logic accounts of good argument. I conclude that an understanding of auditory elements of argument can usefully expand the scope of informal logic and argumentation theory.

Derek Parfit has recently defended the view that no one can ever deserve to suffer. Were this view correct, its implications for the thorny problem of the justification of punishment would be extraordinary: age-old debates between consequentialists and retributivists would simply vanish, as punishment would only—and simply—be justifiable along Benthamite utilitarian lines. I here suggest that Parfit’s view is linked to uncharacteristically weak arguments, and that it ought to be rejected.

This essay is basically exegetical in nature, and its purpose is fourfold. First, I argue against the prevailing view that the dao 道 of the Daodejing 道德經 is metaphysically either a non-being or something transcending all senses by showing that it is a nonempty transforming unsummed totality.1 Dao is still metaphysical, but only as something that defies our ability to experience it as a totality or as any of its aspectual totalities.Second, I argue that in the Daodejing Laozi 老子 adopts (...) the condition of naming that a sign becomes a name only if it can be used to describe what it signifies.2 Because none of the aspectual totalities of dao can be described, the naming condition is contravened, and thus dao and its... (shrink)

This paper responds to two aspects of Ralph Johnson's Manifest Rationality (2000). The first is his critique of deductivism. The second is his failure to make room for some species of argument (e.g., visual and kisceral arguments) proposed by recent commentators. In the first case, Johnson holds that argumentation theorists have adopted a notion of argument which is too narrow. In the second, that they have adopted one which is too broad. I discuss the case Johnson makes for both claims, (...) and possible objections to his analysis. (shrink)

How common are corporate codes of ethics in the UK and especially among Britain's most admired companies? The author is Wicklander Professor of Professional Ethics at DePaul University, Chicago, and current President of the American Society for Business Ethics.

In “Image, Evidence, Argument,” Ian Dove defends an intriguing ‘middle ground’ between those who argue that there are “visual arguments” and skeptics who argue that there are not. I discuss one of Dove’s key examples, proposing a different analysis of it, arguing that there are problems with the “verbal repackaging” of the argument he suggests.

A new logic is presented without predicates—except equality. Yet its expressive power is the same as that of predicate logic, and relations can faithfully be represented in it. In this logic we also develop an alternative for set theory. There is a need for such a new approach, since we do not live in a world of sets and predicates, but rather in a world of things with relations between them.

The eukaryotic genome is a mosaic of eubacterial and archaeal genes in addition to those unique to itself. The mosaic may have arisen as the result of two prokaryotes merging their genomes, or from genes acquired from an endosymbiont of eubacterial origin. A third possibility is that the eukaryotic genome arose from successive events of lateral gene transfer over long periods of time. This theory does not exclude the endosymbiont, but questions whether it is necessary to explain the peculiar set (...) of eukaryotic genes. We use phylogenetic studies and reconstructions of ancestral first appearances of genes on the prokaryotic phylogeny to assess evidence for the lateral gene transfer scenario. We find that phylogenies advanced to support fusion can also arise from a succession of lateral gene transfer events. Our reconstructions of ancestral first appearances of genes reveal that the various genes that make up the eukaryotic mosaic arose at different times and in diverse lineages on the prokaryotic tree, and were not available in a single lineage. Successive events of lateral gene transfer can explain the unusual mosaic structure of the eukaryotic genome, with its content linked to the immediate adaptive value of the genes its acquired. Progress in understanding eukaryotes may come from identifying ancestral features such as the eukaryotic splicesome that could explain why this lineage invaded, or created, the eukaryotic niche. BioEssays 28:57–64, 2006. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Over the last decades we have seen an increased interest in forensic rhetoric in Plato's dialogues, notably in relation to hisApology. However, little interest has been paid to this strain of rhetoric in relation to theGorgias. In this article I focus on one notion, βοήθεια, as it was discussed in Plato'sGorgias. This notion had a wide currency in forensic rhetoric in classical Athens.

We present some results on algebraic and modal analysis of polynomial distortions of the standard provability predicate in Peano Arithmetic PA, and investigate three provability-like modal systems related to the Gödel–Löb modal system GL. We also present a short review of relational and topological semantics for these systems, and describe the dual category of algebraic models of our main modal system.

The appeal of the moral principle according to which we should treat like cases alike is so great that it verges on the axiomatic, or on the platitudinous. Recently, however, the principle has been challenged in deeply interesting ways. These ways are interesting because they do not invite skepticism about morality at large, but about the specific claim that what is good (or bad) for an agent in a given situation must be good (or bad) for any other similarly situated (...) agent. I here assess the post-challenge viability of the principle. In a sense, the principle survives, but this is neither an unqualified victory nor an inspiring result. The examination of these matters contains an important (and under-investigated) lesson about the nature of moral experience. (shrink)