"The essays, both philosophical and historical, demonstrate the continuing significance of a neglected aspect of Kant’s thought."—Religious Studies Review Challenging the traditional view that Kant's account of religion was peripheral to his thinking, these essays demonstrate the centrality of religion to Kant's critical philosophy. Contributors are Sharon Anderson-Gold, Leslie A. Mulholland, Anthony N. Perovich, Jr., Philip J. Rossi, Joseph Runzo, Denis Savage, Walter Sparn, Burkhard Tuschling, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, and Allen W. Wood.

With his clear and accessible prose, impeccable scholarship, and balanced Judgment, Roland Teske, SJ, has been an influential and important voice in Medieval philosophy for more than thirty years. This volume, in his honour, brings together more than a dozen essays on central metaphysical and theological themes in Augustine and other medieval thinkers. The authors, listed below, are noted scholars who draw upon Teskes work, reflect on it, go beyond it, and at times even disagree with it, but always in (...) a spirit of respectful co-operation, and always with the aim of getting at the truth. Essays on Augustine contributed by Gerald Bonner, Charles Brittain, Joseph Koterski, SJ, Joseph T. Lienhard, SJ, David Vincent Meconi, SJ, Ann A. Pang-White, Frederick Van Fleteren, Dorothea Weber, and James Wetzel. Essays on Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Auvergne, and other medieval themes contributed by John P. Doyle, William Harmless, SJ, John A. Laumakis, Edward P. Mahoney, and Philipp W. Rosemann. (shrink)

With his clear and accessible prose, impeccable scholarship, and balanced Judgment, Roland Teske, SJ, has been an influential and important voice in Medieval philosophy for more than thirty years. This volume, in his honour, brings together more than a dozen essays on central metaphysical and theological themes in Augustine and other medieval thinkers. The authors, listed below, are noted scholars who draw upon Teskes work, reflect on it, go beyond it, and at times even disagree with it, but always in (...) a spirit of respectful co-operation, and always with the aim of getting at the truth. Essays on Augustine contributed by Gerald Bonner, Charles Brittain, Joseph Koterski, SJ, Joseph T. Lienhard, SJ, David Vincent Meconi, SJ, Ann A. Pang-White, Frederick Van Fleteren, Dorothea Weber, and James Wetzel. Essays on Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Auvergne, and other medieval themes contributed by John P. Doyle, William Harmless, SJ, John A. Laumakis, Edward P. Mahoney, and Philipp W. Rosemann. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘Not in Heaven’: Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative. Edited by J. P. Rosenblatt and J. C. Sitterson Jr.Towards a Grammar of Biblical Poetics: Tales of the Prophets. By Herbert Chanan Brichto.The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. By John Dominic Crossan.Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition. Edited by Henry Wansbrough.The Rhetoric of Righteousness in Romans 3.21‐26. By Douglas A. Campbell.Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of rhe Language and Composition of I Corinthians. By (...) Margaret M. Mitchell.Divine Disclosure: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic. By D. S. Russell.Judaism. By Hans Küng.Jewish History and Thought: An Introduction. By Menahem Mansoor.Studies in the Jewish Background to Christianity. By Daniel R. Schwartz.Der verborgene und offenbare Gott: Hauptthemen der ffühen jüdischen Mystik. By Peter Schäfer.The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century. By Bernard McGinn.The Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari. By A. Gelston.Thomas Becket in the Medieval Latin Preaching Tradition: An Inventory of Sermons about St Thomas Becket c.1170‐c.1400. By Phyllis B. Roberts.Einsiclit und Bekehrung: Ausgangspunkt der Fundamental theologie bei Bernard Lunergan. By Grzegorz Dobroczynski.The Liberation of Consciousness: Bemurd Lonergan's Theological Foundations in Dialogue with the Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar. By Hilary A. Mooney.Systematic Theology, Volume I. By Wolfhart Pannenberg.Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy. By Richard Swinburne.Sociology and Liturgy: Re‐presentations of the Holy. By Kieran Flanagan.Communication Theory for Christian Witness. By Charles H. Kraft.Contemporary Literary Theory: A Christian Appraisal. Edited by Clarence Walhout and Leland Ryken.Eucharistic Poetry: The Search for Presence in the Writings of John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dylan Thomas and Geoffrey Hill. By Eleanor J. McNees.La Vie religieuse: Un chemin d'humanitk. By Paul Lebeau.Venantius Fortunatus: A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul. By Judith George.The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe. By Valerie I. J. Flint.The Later Crusades: From Lyons to Alcazar, 1274‐1580. By Norman Housley.Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth‐Century Paris. By Barbara B. Diefendorf.Gentlemen and Jesuits: Quests for Glory and Adventure in the Early Days of New France. By Elizabeth Jones.Education in New France. By Roger Magnuson.Early American Methodism. By Russell E. Richey.Cheap Bibles: Nineteenth‐Century Publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society. By Leslie Howsam.Hopkins: A Literary Biography. By Norman White.The Old Palace: A History of the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy. By Walter Drumm.Peace Movements: International Protest and World Politics since 1945. By April Carter.The Christian Church in the Cold War. By Owen Chadwick.Spirit of Africa: The Healing Ministry of Archbishop Milingo of Zambia. By Gerrie Ter Haar.Aristotle's ‘Physics’: A Collection of Essays. Edited by Lindsay Judson.Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy: Supplementary Volume, 1991. Edited by Henry Blumenthal and Howard Robinson.Substance and Predication in Aristotle. By Frank A. Lewis.The Perfection of the Universe according to Aquinas: A Theological Cosmology. By Oliva Blanchette.The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. By Brian Davies.Kant's Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered. Edited by Philip J. Rossi and Michael Wreen.Marx's Theory of History: The Contemporary Debate. Edited by Paul Wetherly.The Cambridge Companion to Marx. Edited by R. Terrell Carver.Essentialism: A Wittgensteinian Critique. By Garth L. Hallett.The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy and the Mind. By Cora Diamond.From Existence to God: A Contemporary Philosophical Argument. By Barry Miller.Will and World: A Study in Metaphysics. By N. M. L. Nathan.Being A Philosopher: The History of a Practice. By David Hamlyn. (shrink)

Post-millennial scholarship in Buddhist studies reflects increasing interest from Anglophone philosophers working within the analytic tradition.1 Within this emerging body of work the aim has been not merely to bring the conceptual toolkit of analytic philosophers to bear on topics traditionally of interest to Buddhist philosophers but also to enlist the theories that analytic philosophers have developed on core topics within epistemology and metaphysics as frameworks within which to interpret the work of major Buddhist philosophers. Two recent notable examples of (...) this interpretative enterprise are seen in the work of Siderits and Hayashi. These Anglophone commentators utilize theories... (shrink)

Thomas Ricketts has developed a powerful interpretation of Frege on judgment, truth and logic. Recently, Ricketts has modified his reading, holding that judgment is an act of knowledge-acquisition; this rules out incorrect judgment. I argue that Ricketts goes too far here. I criticize the textual basis for Ricketts's new view, and show that the interpretive problems which led him to this change can be met without such extreme measures. Thus, I defend Ricketts' earlier view against his own later modification. Along (...) the way I discuss Kant and Brentano on judgment, and I explore Fregean argument concerning the objectivity of truth. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Effective communication relies on the use of rhetorical devices and strategies to make ideas present in the minds of an audience. By employing the concept of cognitive environments, we can use the visual analogy of making an idea “present” to its fullest effect, empowering our rhetorical skills and helping influence audience reception. In this article, the author argues that while cognitive environments do indeed provide a significant and important conceptual tool for understanding and anticipating an audience’s experiences, beliefs, and (...) knowledge, a more robust sense of agreement is necessary. The article proposes the concept of a topos that serves as a shared meeting place within cognitive environments within which both author and audience contribute their background assumptions to find common ground and commonalities in interpretations. It is in figuring the topos effectively that cognitive environments can be more accurately and effectively mapped onto each other, and breaches between such environments can be productively bridged. (shrink)

This dissertation aims at forging an archetectonic link between Kant's first and third Critiques within a cognitive-semantic framework. My aim is to show how the major conceptual innovations of Kant’s third Critique can be plausibly understood in terms of the theoretical aims of the first, (Critique of Pure Reason). However, unlike other cognition-oriented approaches to Kant's third Critique, which take the point of contact between the first and third Critique's to be the first Critique's Transcendental Analytic, I link these two (...) works via the first Critique's Transcendental Dialectic, specifically its discussions of the "ideas of pure reason." -/- According to Kant, the “ideas of pure reason” (IPRs) — viz., the notions of self, world-whole, and God — are innate content-bearing entities representing three types of transempirical object, none of which are possible objects of cognition. However, although Kant denies that these rather unique content-bearers can be used for purposes of “speculative cognition,” he does think that they have an internal functional value for human cognitive systems. Although under my analysis of their functional value the IPRs subserve a highest-order aim which derives from theoretical reason — namely, to ground and optimize cognitive systematicity — their directive content in fact renders their implementation(thus their form of intentionality) more characteristic of practical reason. Kant’s positive account of reason’s “interest” in and use of the IPRs exhibits a kind of cognitive pragmatism. -/- Of utmost concern to the cognitive-semantic enterprise, as I conceive it, is the development of (what might be called) a metaphysics of intentionality. A `metaphysics of intentionality', as I use the term, refers to a coherent set of postulative propositional cognitions (or, at any rate, content-bearing entities) implemented, first, for the sake of rationally explaining the phenomenological unity and object-directed character of our perceptual states and, second, to explain why the objects represented in such states are, or must be, law-governed and thus necessarily amenable to scientific investigation. On my view, the discussions in Kant’s third Critique nontrivially contribute to the development of a metaphysics of intentionality and thus to the larger cognitive-semantic enterprise of Kant's first Critique, and it is this link that lends Kant's third Critique a cognitive significance. -/- . (shrink)

The moral complexity surrounding intervention is influenced by a broad spectrum of both ethical and practical assumptions and considerations.

This book examines spectral haunting through the philosophies of Levinas and Derrida. Arguing that moral obligation can appear terrifying to the complacent self, the text interrogates ethical responsibility in contemporary horror genres.

In this paper, I argue that, on a reductionist reading of Buddhist no-self ontology, Buddhists could not have sincere ethical intentions toward persons. And if Buddhists cannot have sincere intentions toward persons, they cannot have second-personal moral reasons for acting. From this I conclude that Buddhists fail to qualify as genuine members of the moral community if, as some contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophers argue, such membership depends on an individual agent’s having the capacity to be motivated by second-personal moral reasons.

This essay places Paulo Freire in dialogue with a Black Radical Tradition (BRT) in three distinct yet interrelated ways. First, the paper situates the significance of Cedric’s Robinson’s articulation of a BRT while exploring how contemporary scholars are troubling his disputatious relationship with Marxist social thought. Second, the paper foregrounds Freire’s modest contributions to a BRT in his anticolonial literacy campaigns in Guinea Bissau, Africa. Extending the principles of ‘dialogical cultural action’ in the context of African struggle that Freire documented (...) in the letters compiled in Pedagogy in Process, a robust theorization of solidarity comes into sharper view. Third, the paper calls for further reinvention of Freire pointing to the ways his cogent analysis can be augmented by other racialized groups and radical traditions in solidarity with Black struggle to more explicitly confront the inherent racism and anti-Blackness fundamental to global capitalism. (shrink)

This paper offers the first philosophical analysis of a form of artificial intelligence (AI) which the author calls facial profiling technology (FPT). FPT is a type of facial analysis technology designed to predict criminal behavior based solely on facial structure. Marketed for use by law enforcement, face classifiers generated by the program can supposedly identify murderers, thieves, pedophiles, and terrorists prior to the commission of crimes. At the time of this writing, an FPT company has a contract with the United (...) States federal government. After recounting how FPT resurrects the same moral problems associated with the pseudoscience of physiognomy, the author of this manuscript develops and defends the ‘Liberal Argument Against Facial Discrimination’ (LAAFD), which concludes that government use of FPT poses a significant risk of violating the classical liberal value of equality before the law by committing unjust discrimination against groups of people whose faces happen to match FPT classifiers. A key move in the argument suggests how a future scenario that results in widespread discrimination based solely on facial structure could be as unjustified and harmful, mutatis mutandis, as similar discrimination based solely on racial background. In the final section, the author of this paper develops prima facie policy proposals designed to protect classical liberal values if FPT is to be utilized by governments in liberal democratic societies. (shrink)

This little book which is a sequel to "Cartesianism" is not written for professional philosophers. Its less ambitious purpose is to initiate undergraduate students of Catholic Universities and Colleges, who are engaged in the study of scholastic philosophy, into a knowledge of the fundamental principles of those numerous systems that have contributed to the chaos of modern thought from the time of Descartes to the present day.

The three books reviewed in this essay, Morality Among Nations: An Evolutionary View , Righteous Realists: Political Realism, Responsible Power, and American Culture in the Nuclear Age , and Securing Europe , in some sense represent a reaction to Reagan's ideological policies.

Smith provides a summary of Walzer's work, with particular emphasis on his method of moral argument. Walzer's argument emphasizes the importance of moral judgment based on the principle of human rights rather than on utilitarian calculation.

A number of thinkers in recent decades have argued that, in light of the Trinity, we can see that God's being is communion. Particularly effective was John D. Zizioulas, whose Trinitarian ontology centered on communion. Some skeptical of this claim have invoked Aquinas as a source for countering an ontology of communion. I argue that, while Thomas never explicitly affirms that the divine being is communion, he can give us deep resources for reaching this conclusion. Indeed, he can ultimately lead (...) us towards a divine being which is more thoroughly a matter of communion—and towards an ontology which is more radically Trinitarian—than anything we find in Zizioulas. (shrink)

The first chapter explores the theory developed in Kripke's "Outline of a Theory of Truth." A tension in Kripke's account of the concept of truth is revealed--a conflict between two intuitions. The first intuition, called the "fixed point conception of truth," is that the whole meaning of the truth predicate is given by the formula "we may assert of a sentence that it is true iff we may assert that sentence." The second intuition, called the "thesis of the supervenience of (...) semantics," is that the interpretation of the truth predicate is determined by the interpretations of all the other non-logical constants of the language. I show that these two intuitions cannot be reconciled within the context of Kripke's theory, and I argue for the choice of the fixed point conception of truth over the principle of the supervenience of semantics. Chief among the considerations that I advance is the fact that the fixed point conception of truth yields a natural logic of truth. In the second chapter I present that logic of truth in the form of a cut-free sequent calculus. I then turn, in chapter three, to a discussion of the significance of such cut-free sequent calculi. I argue that we may view the sequent calculus introduction rules for a logical constant as giving the meaning of that constant, under certain conditions. In particular, we can see our logic of truth as providing an explication of our intuitive concept of truth which complements Kripke's original model-theoretic explication. The fourth chapter takes up some criticisms of Kripke's theory which center on the logic of truth. In addition, the general ideas developed in the first three chapters are applied in a discussion of the various schemes of three-valued logic which can be used in the development of Kripke's approach. Finally, in the last chapter, it is shown that Kripke's technical concepts, and the logical ideas developed in the second and third chapters, can be used to provide a unified account of many contexts in which paradox arises. (shrink)

The essay first makes some observations on the general interrelationship between the logical writings of Albert and Buridan. Second, it gives an account of a ‘semantic logical model’ for analyzing complex subject terms in some basic categorical propositions which is defended by Albert of Saxony, and briefly recounts Buridan's criticisms of that model. Finally, the essay maintains that the Albertian model is typically compatible with, and a further development of, what is called by a late-fourteenth century anonymous scholar ‘the English-Rule’ (...) but the ‘determinable/determinate’ grammatical model defended by Buridan is not. (shrink)

Jorge Luis Borges introduces the mythical ouroboros as follows: “A third-century Greek amulet, to be found today in the British Museum, gives us an image that can better illustrate that infinitude:...

If asked to define ‘omnipotence,’ the man on the street would probably say that it’s the ability to do anything. That’s about it, he’d think; nothing more needs be said. Philosophers are never so easily satisfied. They take it as matter of professional duty to find serious problems in important concepts, and to suggest that the concept be rejected or that solutions are at hand. This paper falls into the latter camp. Beginning with a relatively simple definition of ‘omnipotence,’ increasingly (...) complex definitions are proposed, problems are found with them, and newer, refined definitions are offered. In all, seven unsatisfactory definitions are examined before an adequate one is arrived at. Both traditional and new problems are addressed, and novel solutions are advanced. The definition argued to be adequate is itself novel, but also very much in keeping with our pre-reflective understanding of omnipotence. On the basis of the definition it’s concluded not only that an adequate definition of ‘omnipotence’ is possible, but that various problems alleged to attend attributing the notion to God can also be solved. (shrink)

On relativism, it has been argued, certain comparative moral judgments are impossible. Judgments which compare two moral codes, judgments which compare one’s own moral code with another, judgments which, on the basis of a comparison with one’s own code, condemn specific moral practices permitted or required by other codes, judgments which speak of moral progress or reform—all are nonsensical or impossible, the argument alleges. Although commonly conflated, arguments for these distinct but related theses are first distinguished, then exposed, and last (...) subjected to critical scrutiny. While seemingly powerful, all are found wanting. (shrink)

One of Berkeley's best-known arguments for the view that there are no material objects is the so-called Master Argument. There are several good critical discussions of it. That invites the question: is there anything new to say? Well, it will be argued, there are a few things to say. First, although refutations by logical analogy have been advanced against the Master Argument, the strongest such refutation, one which demonstrates its incoherence, has not been. It is here. Second, there are few (...) formal reconstructions of the Master Argument – the great majority of discussions treat it discursively – but a formal reconstruction, and one not found elsewhere, is offered here. Third, the formal reconstruction makes possible identification of the essential mistake of the argument. That mistake is equivocation. The common complaint that Berkeley illicitly introduces the act of conceiving into the content of the concept conceived is not quite correct; but to the extent that it is correct, it's explicable in terms of an underlying equivocation. Fourth, the article presupposes no acquaintance with Berkeley's work and is written in a conversational, easy-to-read style. Given that Berkeley himself wrote in a similar style, he could at least agree that the fourth point is a merit of the article. (shrink)

The most frequent charges brought against moral relativism are probably that it is inconsistent, that it has morally repugnant implications, and that it leads to amoralism, or the breakdown of morality altogether. A less frequent but still common objection is more conceptual in nature: relativism cannot make any sense of a certain species of comparative moral judgment, namely those that morally compare two moral codes. The general form of this kind of judgment is: ‘Moral code A is morally superior to (...) moral code B.’ Stace lodges this objection, and others have as well. Is it cogent? Using Stace as a springboard for discussion, I critically examine three related arguments against relativism that claim that comparative judgments of the sort in question are impossible on relativism. (shrink)

One form of argument from analogy is identified and Stephen Barker's remarks about a second kind of argument from analogy, non-inductive (and non-deductive) argument from analogy, are used as a springboard to identify a second form. That form is then refined, explained, exemplified, and related to the first form. It is argued that there is a spectrum of different forms of argument from analogy, with the two forms identified being end points on the spectrum. Except in terms of form, however, (...) there is no reason to speak of two different kinds of argument from analogy. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of the view that existence is a perfection. Anselm’s First Ontological Argument is referred to throughout. Two major objections are advanced: the ‘perfect island’ objection and the ‘perfect devil’ objection. A rebuttal of both, based on Anselm’s reply to Gaunilo, is tendered, but itself faces a major objection. Two lines of defense against this objection are possible. The first is sympathetically explained but it is argued that it ultimately fails. The second, which focuses on the (...) idea of a perfection and a perfect being, is elaborated and defended against a seemingly powerful objection. It is concluded that there is a reasonable interpretation of the claim that existence is a perfection. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the pragma-dialectical conception of a fallacy, according to which a fallacy is an argumentative speech act which violates one or more of the rules of 'rational discussion'. That conception is found to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for committing a fallacy. It is also found wanting in several other respects.

One well-known argument for the view that a person isn’t identical with his body is commonly attributed to Descartes. In brief, the argument is: ‘I can doubt that my body exists; I can’t doubt that I exist; so I am not my body.’ No one thinks that the argument is sound --- not even Descartes after he closely examined it. In this paper, I reconstruct the argument, explain and criticize various objections to it , and identify and defend what I (...) take to be the real problem with it. Contrary to popular opinion, the real problem has nothing to do with Leibniz’s Law. (shrink)