The book considers Thomas More's early life-choices. An early letter is cited by biographers but most miss More's reference to the market place. More's great-grandson, Cresacre, a Londoner, understood it correctly, and that gives reason to trust him on other aspects of More's youth. This study is based on early testimonies, those of Erasmus, Roper, Harpsfield, Stapleton and Cresacre More, as well as More's early writings, the Pageant Verses, and his additions / omissions to the Life of Pico; evidence (...) drawn from authors he recommended, like Hilton and Gerson; and finally, his epitaph. Attention is given to his lectures on St Augustine's City of God, and to St John Chrysostom. It is argued More studied Chrysostom's Homilies on the Gospel of St Matthew from a Greek manuscript. Chrysostom, in the introductory homily, spoke of the city and the market place, as the setting in which Christians practice the teaching of Christ. More practiced law and taught it. He was attracted to becoming a Christian humanist alongside Grocyn, Colet, Linacre, and Lily. With them he studied Greek, the classics and Fathers of the Church. Helped by them he became a man of prayer, aware of the need to seek holiness in the midst of the world as a layman. Faced with the dilemma of the humanist in choosing between the contemplative life of the philosopher and an active life of engagement with the world, he deliberately chose the active life in service to society, and the contemplative life of the Christian as a married man. This awareness and choice is what is called vocation, implying determination to persevere throughout life: More saw his life as a pilgrimage towards heaven as described in the last chapter focusing on More's last work, De tristitia, tedio, pavore, et oratione christi ante captionem eius. (shrink)

I defend a view of the structure of visual property-awareness by considering the phenomenon of perceptual constancy. I argue that visual property-awareness is a three-place relation between a subject, a property, and a manner of presentation. Manners of presentation mediate our visual awareness of properties without being objects of visual awareness themselves. I provide criteria of identity for manners ofpresentation, and I argue that our ignorance of their intrinsic nature does not compromise the viability of a theory that employs them. (...) In closing, I argue that the proposed manners of presentation are consistent with key direct-realist claims about the structure of visual awareness. (shrink)

The aim of this volume is to critically assess the philosophical importance of phenomenology as a method for studying the normativity of meaning and its transcendental conditions. Using the pioneering work of Steven Crowell as a springboard, phenomenologists from all over the world examine the promise of phenomenology for illuminating long-standing problems in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, action theory, the philosophy of religion, and moral psychology. The essays are unique in that they engage with the phenomenological tradition not as (...) a collection of authorities to whom we must defer, or a set of historical artifacts we must preserve, but rather as a community of interlocutors with views that bear on important issues in contemporary philosophy. The book is divided into three thematic sections, each examining different clusters of issues aimed at moving the phenomenological project forward. The first section explores the connection between normativity and meaning, and asks us to rethink the relation between the factual realm and the categories of validity in terms of which things can show up as what they are. The second section examines the nature of the self that is capable of experiencing meaning. It includes essays on intentionality, agency, consciousness, naturalism, and moral normativity. The third section addresses questions of philosophical methodology, examining if and why phenomenology should have priority in the analysis of meaning. Finally, the book concludes with an afterword written by Steven Crowell. Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in the phenomenological tradition, the transcendental tradition from Kant to Davidson, and existentialism. Additionally, its forward-looking focus yields crucial insights into pressing philosophical problems that will appeal to scholars working across all areas of the discipline. ks us to rethink the relation between the factual realm and the categories of validity in terms of which things can show up as what they are. The second section examines the nature of the self that is capable of experiencing meaning. It includes essays on intentionality, agency, consciousness, naturalism, and moral normativity. The third section addresses questions of philosophical methodology, examining if and why phenomenology should have priority in the analysis of meaning. Finally, the book concludes with an afterword written by Steven Crowell. Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in the phenomenological tradition, the transcendental tradition from Kant to Davidson, and existentialism. Additionally, its forward-looking focus yields crucial insights into pressing philosophical problems that will appeal to scholars working across all areas of the discipline. (shrink)

This book examines the origins and subsequent evolution of multicellularity. The transition from unicellular to multicellular life was one of a few major events in the history of life that created new opportunities for more complex biological systems to evolve.

This paper concerns virtue-based ethical principles that bear upon agricultural uses of technologies, such as GM crops and CRISPR crops. It does three things. First, it argues for a new type of virtue ethics approach to such cases. Typical virtue ethics principles are vague and unspecific. These are sometimes useful, but we show how to supplement them with more specific virtue ethics principles that are useful to people working in specific applied domains, where morally relevant domain-specific conditions recur. We do (...) this while still fulfilling the need for principles and associated practical reasoning to flexibly respect variation between cases. Second, with our more detailed approach we criticize and improve upon a commonly discussed principle about ecosystemic external goods that are crucial for human flourishing. We show this principle is far more conservative than appreciated, as it would prohibit many technology uses that are uncontroversially acceptable. We then replace this principle with two more specific ones. One identifies specific conditions in which ecosystem considerations are against a technology use, the other identifies favorable conditions. Third, we uncover a humility-based principle that operates within an influential “hubris argument” against uses of several biotechnologies in agriculture. These arguments lack a substantive theory of the nature of humility. We clarify such a theory, and then use it to replace the uncovered humility-based principle with our own more specific one that shifts focus from past moral failings, to current epistemic limits when deciding whether to support new technologies. (shrink)

When Saint Thomas Aquinas makes claims such as “that which is not just seems to be no law at all” it is a bit difficult to discern what he means. Some think that Aquinas is defending what is now called the Strong Natural Law Thesis: for all X, X is a law only if X is just. Others think that Aquinas is defending what is now called the Weak Natural Law Thesis: for all X, X is a non-defective law only (...) if X is just. In this paper, focusing on Aquinas’s metaphysics, I argue that both of these interpretations are mistaken. Aquinas is primarily defending what we can call The Metaphysical Natural Law Thesis: since being and goodness are convertible, legal validity comes in degrees—and this entails that the justice of a law literally increases the amount of being a law possesses, while the injustice of a law literally decreases the amount of being a law possesses. On this interpretation, then, the injustice of a law entails an ontological attenuation of the law without entailing an ontological annihilation of the law. (shrink)

Neural correlates of consciousness (for brevity NCC) are foundational to the scientific study of consciousness. Chalmers (2000) has provided the most informative and influential definition of NCC, according to which neural correlates are minimally sufficient for consciousness. However, the sense of sufficiency needs further clarification since there are several relevant senses with different entailments. In section one of this article, we give an overview of the desiderata for a good definition of NCC and Chalmers’s definition. The second section analyses the (...) merit of understanding the sufficiency of neural correlates for corresponding consciousness according to three relevant types of sufficiency: logical, metaphysical, and physical. In section three, a theoretical approach to consciousness studies is suggested in light of the sense in which NCC are sufficient for consciousness. Section four addresses a concern some might have about this approach. By the end, it will become apparent that our conception of NCC has important implications for research methodology, neuroethics, and the vitality of the search for NCC. (shrink)

It often seems that what one ought to do depends on what contingent ends one has adopted and the means to pursuing them. Imagine, for example, that you are applying for jobs, and a particularly attractive one comes your way. It offers excellent colleagues in a desirable location, the pay is good, and acquiring a job like this is one of your ends. If practicing your job talk is a means to getting the job, the following seems true: (1) If (...) you want1 to get the job, then you ought to practice your job talk. Let us call conditional ought sentences that purport to express an end in the antecedent and a means to the end in the consequent end-given oughts. Some end-given oughts run into the problem of detachment; i.e., some end-given oughts seem true, and yet we do not think the consequent by itself, detached from the conditional, is true even if the antecedent is true. Consider a case where you want revenge on Bill for some slight offense. You happen to have the opportunity to poison Bill’s drink while he is away, which is the only thing that would lead to his demise. What of: (2) If you want to kill Bill, then you ought to poison his drink. (2) runs up against the problem of detachment because of the following modus ponens argument: • If you want to kill Bill, then you ought to poison his drink. • You want to kill Bill. • Therefore, you ought to poison his drink. In fact, you ought not poison Bill’s drink. You ought to avoid him and seek counseling. (shrink)

This article retrieves the theme of “otherization” as it appears in the watershed postcolonial text Orientalism, by Edward Said, and applies it to another historically influential text on otherization, The Clash of Civilizations, by Samuel Huntington. A close comparative reading of Said’s and Huntington’s arguments reveals deep logical and moral flaws in both the postcolonial and civilizational-clash paradigms that each, respectively, represents. Pope Francis’s “mysticism of encounter” provides an alternative that overcomes these flaws. Francis’s framing of how to understand and (...) approach difference, the article concludes, is superior precisely because of its theological content: In grounding the discourse about the other in God, Francis demonstrates how it is possible to cogently define the other as other without creating oppressive power hierarchies—an insight that provides greater promise for establishing solidarity among diverse peoples. (shrink)

This thesis argues that the strongest account of moral rights entails that animals and other marginal cases hold rights. The thesis contends that mutual advantage social contract theories offer the strongest account of rights from a security perspective, and that such theories entail rights for animals and marginal cases. Both of these claims are widely contested. Chapter 1 examines the fundamental elements of a social contract theory as developed by Hobbes and Hume. Chapter 2 revises the fundamental elements of contract (...) theory to make them more persuasive, and derives from them an account of rights for animals and marginal cases. Chapter 3 examines the most plausible competing accounts of rights for animals and marginal cases: utilitarianism, neo-Kantianism, and capability theory. Chapter 4 argues that the mutual advantage account of rights is better than the leading competitors from a security perspective. (shrink)

Evolution is not like an exam in which pre-set problems need to be solved. Failing to recognise this point, Clark & Thornton misconstrue the type of explanation called for in species learning although, clearly, species that can trade spaces have more chances to discover novel beneficial behaviours. On the other hand, the trading spaces strategy might help to explain lifetime learning successes.

A personal leadership fable on applying principles of Zen to work and life choices The Shibumi Strategy is a little book about a big breakthrough. It tells the story of a hardworking family man who finds himself in crisis when his company closes. Through his struggle, and guidance from unlikely sources, he learns subtle lessons in the form of "personal zen" principles, coming to understand that it is often the involuntary challenge, the setbacks, that harbor the power to transform. When (...) approached as an opportunity - no easy task-unforeseen trials can sometimes result in an altogether new lease on life. Shows how "personal leadership" can lead to real (and not always easy) breakthroughs Includes key lessons on commitment, preparation, struggle, breakthrough, and transformation Is based on Shibumi, a Japanese word without literal definition the describes the height of personal excellence, elegant performance, and effortless effectiveness For those struggling with personal breakthroughs, The Shubimi Strategy offers a new way to face work and life challenges for balanced solutions. (shrink)

Introduction -- The syntax of English clefts -- Clefts and the licensing of relative clauses -- Clefts in Slavonic languages -- The syntax of specificational sentences -- Conclusion.

This paper examines the puruṣa concept in the Caraka Saṃhitā, an early text of Ayurveda, and its relation to Indic thinking about phenomenal worldhood. It argues that, contrary to the usual interpretation, early Ayurveda does not consider the person to be a microcosmic replication of the macrocosmos. Instead, early Ayurveda asserts that personhood is worldhood, and thus the person is non-different from the phenomenal totality of his existence. This is confirmed by the CS’s several definitions of puruṣa, which are alternately (...) posed in terms familiar to Vaiśeṣika, early Sāṃkhya, early Buddhism, and Upaniṣadic monism. It is likewise confirmed by the Ayurvedic logic of sāmānya, which governs the meaning of the list of person-to-world correspondences in CS 4.5 and its often misinterpreted claim, puruṣo’yam lokasaṃmitaḥ. Finally it is confirmed in the program of Ayurvedic therapeutics, which aims at establishing various kinds of “appropriateness” for the sake of effecting samayoga—the “harmonious joining” of person and world. (shrink)

Abstract:The island of Grosse Île lies 30 miles downstream of Quebec City in the St. Lawrence River. Once a quarantine station for ships bringing immigrants to the Canadas from Europe, mid-nineteenth-century outbreaks of cholera and typhus led to several thousand Irish deaths aboard ships in quarantine and on Grosse Île itself. This trauma has lived on in the Irish diaspora's memorialization of the island as a place of anguish and death that ultimately symbolized the Irish diaspora's flight to North America. (...) As a liminal space between the Old World and New, life and death, and hope and despair, Grosse Île has also been a contested site between the memory of Irish diaspora and the Canadian state. As such, it may be newly conceived as an “emotional borderland” by scholars of transnational space and immigration. (shrink)

Executive speechwriting is a common practice in most large organizations. This activity, however, raises a number of ethical questions about responsibility and about audience deception. This essay explores the ethics of speechwriting from three perspectives and offers some general guidelines for maintaining ethical standards when using speechwriters.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders? And even if one were to suddenly take me to its heart, I would vanish into its stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear, and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains to destroy us...."So what are you telling me, there's no God, but there's you?"Peter Weir's film Fearless appeared in 1993 to critical acclaim and middling (...) box office fortune. The film draws on all of Weir's considerable art, a stunning sound track, and powerful performances by Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez, and Isabella Rossellini. Based on the... (shrink)

The scientific challenges and ethical controversies facing human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research continue to command attention. The issues posed by patenting hESC technologies have, however, largely failed to penetrate the discourse, much less result in political action. This paper examines U.S. and European patent systems, illustrating discrepancies in the patentability of hESC technologies and identifying potential negative consequences associated with efforts to make available hESC research tools for basic research purposes while at same time strengthening the position of certain (...) patent-holders' rights. Differences between the U.S. and the European contexts may in part explain why the course of hESC research in those jurisdictions ultimately diverges. Nevertheless, questions about whether and how patenting, related agreements, and licensing practices progress and shape the field of hESC research in both the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere must no longer be marginalised. These questions are fundamentally important in determining what benefits are likely to result from hESC research. Assuring these benefits is the moral issue with which patent systems are most intrinsically concerned, and that governments must begin to directly address rather than assume or ignore. (shrink)

Can a scientific naturalist be a mathematical realist? I review some arguments, derived largely from the writings of Penelope Maddy, for a negative answer. The rejoinder from the realist side is that the irrealist cannot explain, as well as the realist can, why a naturalist should grant the mathematician the degree of methodological autonomy that the irrealist's own arguments require. Thus a naturalist, as such, has at least as much reason to embrace mathematical realism as to embrace irrealism.

This article argues that considering cross-sector collaborations through the lens of indigenous-corporate engagements yields a more comprehensive understanding of the range of cross-sector engagement types, emphasizes the importance of cross-cultural bridge building which has received little attention in the literature :849–873, 2005), and highlights the potential for innovation via collaborations with fringe stakeholders. The study offers a more overarching typology of cross-sector collaborations and, building on an ethical approach to sustainable development with indigenous peoples, proposes a theoretical framework for cross-cultural (...) bridge building between businesses and fringe stakeholders. By incorporating this framework into the literature on value creation in cross-sector collaborations, we suggest a model for value creation in cross-sector collaborations with fringe stakeholders. Finally, using case studies to illustrate the article’s theoretical arguments, we demonstrate the model’s usefulness for the analysis and development of indigenous-corporate collaborations. (shrink)

Here, I consider Derek Parfit’s Normativity Objection to naturalist realism, according to which normative-natural property or fact reductions are “conceptually excluded”. While a lot of philosophers inclined toward non-naturalism share this view or something close to it, plenty of philosophers remain unconvinced, and the literature offers little guidance to the perplexed. I suggest a way to improve the argument – indeed, I think it is the best and perhaps only plausible way to make good on the claim of conceptual exclusion. (...) But the improved argument relies on the highly controversial claim that normative cognition is transparentin the following sense: normative concepts reveal the nature of the properties they aim to ascribe. This nature, the argument continues, is inconsistent with naturalist strictures. (shrink)

The rise of populism and nationalism in the West have raised concerns about the fragility of liberal political values, chief among them tolerance. But what alternative social resources exist for cultivating the interpersonal relationships and mutual goodwill necessary for sustainable peace? And how might the lived practices of religious communities carry potential to reinterpret or re-circuit these interpersonal tensions and transform the relationship with the cultural "other" (Fremde) from "foe" (Feind) to "friend" (Freund)? This volume contributes a unique analysis of (...) this shifting discourse by viewing the contemporary socio-political upheaval through the lens of Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology, with a focus on the themes of friendship, interpersonal subjectivity, and sociability as a path beyond mere tolerance. Each of the essays of the volume is written by an internationally recognized scholar in the field, and the volume examines Schleiermacher's novel reflections across multiple social contexts, including North America, Great Britain, western Europe, and South Africa. As these essays demonstrate, the implications of this conversation continue to resound in contemporary religious communities and political discourse. (shrink)

Much critical attention has been given to Isabella’s non-answer to Duke Vincentio’s marriage proposal at the conclusion of Measure for Measure. What critics have failed to notice is that Isabella’s non-answer is not a unique or singular moment in the play. In fact, this paper will apply the theories of Slavoj Žižek to argue that the logic of subtraction, the negative gesture of non-compliance to which Isabella gives especially pronounced form, is fundamental to the structure of the play in its (...) entirety. Two characters in particular, Isabella and Barnardine, demonstrate the possibility of occupying a subjective orientation that is at once under the sway of the law and aware of the law’s incomplete hold on the subject. Ultimately, I will show that the logic of subtraction and refusal has important implications for how the play understands the potential political power of various forms of labor, especially sexual labor. (shrink)

This chapter follows Conee and Feldman in assuming the traditional conception of the mental. Thus, the author takes it that mentalistic evidentialism is inconsistent with process reliabilism. It examines Goldman's critique of evidentialism's account of the justification of memory beliefs and discusses a problem for Goldman's own reliabilist account of memory beliefs. The chapter distinguishes two sorts of epistemic status at issue and not usually clearly separated in these debates, historical justification vs. justification to retain a belief. It raises doubts (...) about the resources of reliabilism for explaining justification to retain beliefs; and makes a plea for a less ambitious account of justification to retain beliefs, a restricted form of epistemic conservatism. The chapter argues that the conservative account that the author recommend represents a kind of neutral baseline, insofar as there are both reliabilist‐friendly as well as evidentialist‐friendly arguments for it. (shrink)

To corroborate the music and social bonding hypothesis, we propose that future investigations isolate specific components of social bonding and consider the influence of context. We deconstruct and operationalize social bonding through the lens of social psychology and provide examples of specific measures that can be used to assess how the link between music and sociality varies by context.

This volume brings together for the first time a collection of studies that investigates how multilingual speakers construct emotions in their talk as a joint discursive practice. The contributions draw on the well established, converging traditions of conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and membership categorization analysis together with recent work on interactional storytelling, stylization, and multimodal analysis. By adopting a discursive approach to emotion in multilingual talk, the volume breaks with the dominant view of emotions as cognitive and intra-psychological phenomena and (...) their study through self-report. Through detailed analyses of original recorded data, the chapters examine how participants produce emotion-implicative actions, identities, stances, and morality through their interactional work in ordinary face-to-face conversation, computer-mediated interaction, institutional talk in medical, educational, and broadcast media settings, and in research interviews. The volume addresses itself to students and researchers interested in language and emotion, multilingual speakers and settings, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. (shrink)

This article revisits John Wilson’s “first steps” in moral education—a conceptual analysis of morality—and what he calls an education in morality. Education in morality focuses on morality as a form of life with a specific domain in which it aims to initiate students, and on education as a growth-oriented, progressive activity. Arendt’s conception of natality in education is then used to show how it provides a catalyst for growth, discovery, and tradition-trumping newness, and acts as a stepping-stone to public action (...) as morality and recognition of the plurality of human life. It becomes clear that the inherent sociability of morality forces the consideration of it as a public and social act. Education in morality must preserve the potential for the capacity to contribute to the development of morality and concurrently develop that capacity through the production of plurality that follows and the negotiations necessary for its preservation. Morality, then, must not be taught as a static set of immutable principles, but rather as an inclusive, adaptive process by and through which groups govern their associations. (shrink)

In this article, I examine Soren Kierkegaard’s existential critique for truth-speaking. My contention is that this is more than a mere quest for sincerity in religious profession. Kierkegaard, rather, is concerned with the existential position that is inherent in the way a person confesses the doctrines of the Christian faith. I show how Kierkegaard uses his pseudonyms to problematise the issue of making religious truth claims and then I explain how Kierkegaard’s notion of truth-speaking operates within his definition of the (...) self as a process of relating. To speak the truth one must inhabit a particular existential situation and one’s speaking must become part of an authentic process of becoming that is itself truth. (shrink)

If alleles that predispose to schizophrenia have reduced Darwinian fitness, their persistence in modern times is puzzling. Burns identifies the evolutionary genetics of schizophrenia as a central issue, but his treatment of it is not clear. Recent advances in evolutionary genetics can help explain the persistence of alleles that predispose to debilitating disorders such as schizophrenia, and can buttress Burns' core argument.