In this paper the question of note-taking is addressed in reference to a specific educational approach, that of the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI) in the tradition of Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp’s Philosophy for Children (P4C). After emphasizing the pivotal role that this activity plays within a typical session of P4C, its specific status (in comparison with what happens in a classic lecture) is explored, insofar as it could be interpreted as a gesture distributed among and between (...) the teacher and the students. The argumentation is animated and sustained by three intimately interwoven questions: first, how can we construe note-taking in reference to the two philosophical-educational matrices (the Socratic-Platonic and the pragmatist) presiding over CPI? Secondly, who actually takes notes in a P4C session? Could we venture to say that it is CPI as an “intersubject”? And, thirdly, what is the status of the notes taken and written on the flip-chart as a text? Through the analyses developed, note-taking is interpreted as the ‘inscription’ of the co-philosophizing and a kind of self-writing and its significance for the emergence of CPI as such is shown. (shrink)

The history of note?taking has only begun to be written. On the one hand, the basic functions of selecting, summarizing, storing and sorting information garnered from reading, listening, observing and thinking can be identified in most literate contexts in some form or other. On the other hand, Renaissance humanists emphasized with unprecedented success the virtues of stockpiling notes on large scales and for the long term, thanks to the availability of paper and a new abundance of books, but (...) also to their ability to transmit their own keen motivation to avoid any future loss of learning. We continue to share many early modern ideals for insuring the collection and retrievability of information and have built on early modern practices that facilitate the accumulation and the organization of information, including collaborative work and the use of rearrangeable slips. (shrink)

Note?takers in early modern Europe mixed a number of scribal practices. Not only did they write down extracts of texts, they also collected data from observation or from accounting. Practices such as commonplacing were part of sometimes communal, rather informal personal practices that laid the foundations for personal diaries. Other note?taking was prescriptive, fact?establishing technical data entry. Yet both the personal, sentimental and technical forms of note?taking were interrelated. It was during this period that merchants, (...) administrators, scholars and scientists sought methods to transform raw information such as notes into formalized knowledge for practical use. Notes had formed a part of larger writing and archival projects since the dawn of writing and literacy, but during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, figures such as Bacon, Boyle and Pepys not only mixed note?taking practices from both scholarly and mercantile traditions; they also thought about the very act of note?taking and how to transform it into a tool for the management of large?scale government, industry and research. Most of all, in the seventeenth century, scholars, merchants and naturalists began thinking in formal terms about how to use notes as part of larger information systems which they called collections, compilations and even archives. (shrink)

The massive expansion of information from the seventeenth century placed considerable demands on mental capacity, and individual scholars responded with strategies of memory training and note?taking that prompted, relieved or replaced memory. It has been acknowledged how cowpox inoculation (vaccination) and smallpox inoculation (variolation) stimulated new forms of record keeping and the standardization and tabulation of medical data for scientific analysis and to inform public policy. Yet the key figure in these developments, Edward Jenner, while a careful observer (...) who thought hard about the patterns he discerned, did not take good notes either from his reading or of his observations. He depended a great deal on his memory, especially a remarkable visual memory, consolidating his recollections and refining his thinking more through conversation and familiar letters than careful note?taking and writing. It was rather in the work of the practitioners who took up Jenners? writings, including some laymen and women, that we find the keeping of records of their vaccinations, in order to provide patient records and to report the results to friends, colleagues and a wider public. (shrink)

Written memoranda of conversations, or memcons, provide a near‐contemporaneous record of what was said in conversation, and offer important insights into the activities of high‐profile individuals. We assess the impact of writing a memcon on memory for conversation. Pairs of participants engaged in conversation and were asked to recall the contents of that conversation 1 week later. One participant in each pair memorialized the content of the interaction in a memcon shortly after the conversation. Participants who generated memcons recalled more (...) details of the conversations than participants who did not, but the content of recall was equally and largely accurate for both participants. Remarkably, only 4.7% of the details of the conversation were recalled by both of the partners after a week delay. Contemporaneous note‐taking appears to enhance memory for conversation by increasing the amount of information remembered but not the accuracy of that information. These findings have implications for evaluating the testimony of participants on conversations with major political or legal ramifications. (shrink)

The effectiveness of case-based learning in ethics education varies widely regarding how cases are presented. Case process instruction may impact case-based ethics education to promote sensemaking processes, ethical sensemaking strategy use, and ethical decision making (EDM) quality. This study examined two teaching techniques, notes and review, and participants completed note-taking and review activities examining a case-based scenario during an ethics education course. Results suggest that providing case notes in outline form improves sensemaking processes, strategy use, and EDM quality. (...) In addition, combining processes of provided notes and passive review results in incremental, additive performance via certain ethical sensemaking strategies and EDM quality. (shrink)

Whereas his contemporaries were explicitly aware that the limits of memory called for scrupulous arrangement of one?s papers, Boyle?s papers remained chaotic throughout his life, necessitating a habitual recourse to memory. This invites consideration of Boyle?s views on the use of memory and notes, taking account of the precepts and options of his day. Like many other early modern virtuosi, Boyle made copious notes comprising both textual extracts and empirical information, but he did not maintain large commonplace books of (...) the kind recommended by Renaissance humanists; nor did he publicize an account of his note?taking methods, as John Locke did. However, through his early contacts with Samuel Hartlib, Boyle was exposed to the ways in which diverse information could be noted, stored and used. Furthermore, his practice exemplified the well?known dual function of notes as both prompting memory and relieving it. Boyle did not pause to write a sustained essay on these issues; nevertheless, scattered throughout his prefaces, advertisements, works, notebooks and manuscripts there are significant comments on his practice of making what he called ?loose notes?. Boyle was aware of the kinds of notes he kept and his reliance on both memory and notes as prompts to reflection and thought. (shrink)

The notion of Socratic Note Taking is introduced to enhance students’ learning from assigned readings. SNT features students asking questions and answering their own questions while doing the readings. To test the effectiveness of SNT, half the students from two sections of a philosophy course were assigned SNT on alternating weeks. Quizzes each week alternated between the two classes as either high or low stakes in a counterbalanced format. The design was a 2 x 2 x 2 within-participants (...) factorial. On ten-point quizzes, SNT made an average difference of 1.22 points. Furthermore, the results indicate that SNT is particularly effective with weaker students, e.g., we found a nearly three-point increase on ten-point quizzes for the weakest students. (shrink)

How can we portray the history of Renaissance knowledge production through the eyes of the students? Their university notebooks contained a variety of works, fragments of them, sentences, or simple words. To date, studies on these materials have only concentrated on a few individual works within the collections, neglecting the strategy by which texts and textual fragments were selected and the logic through which the notebooks were organized. The eight chapters that make up this volume explore students' note-taking (...) practices behind the creation of their notebooks from three different angles. The first considers annotation activities in relation to their study area to answer the question of how university disciplines were able to influence both the content and structure of their notebooks. The volume's second area of research focuses on the student's curiosity and choices by considering them expressions of a self-learning practice not necessarily linked to a discipline of study or instructions from teaching. The last part of the volume moves away from the student's desk to consider instructions on note-taking methods that students could receive from manuals of various kinds. (shrink)

The practice of taking hand-written notes in lectures has been rediscovered recently because of several studies on its learning efficacy in the mainstream media. Students are enjoined to ditch their laptops and return to pen and paper. Such arguments presuppose that notes are taken in order to be revisited after the lecture. Learning is seen to happen only after the event. We argue instead that student’s note-taking is an educational practice worthy in itself as a way to (...) relate to the live event of the lecture. We adopt a phenomenological approach inspired by Vilém Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures, which assumes that a gesture like note-taking is always an event of thinking with media in which a certain freedom is expressed. But Flusser’s description of note-taking focusses on the individual note-taker. What about students’ note-taking in a lecture hall as a collective gesture? Nietzsche considered note-taking ‘mechanical,’ as if students were automatons who mindlessly transcribed a verbal flow, while Benjamin considered it an inaesthetic gesture: at best, boring; at worst, ‘painful to watch.’ In contrast, we argue that the educational potentiality of note-taking—or better, note-making—can be grasped only if we account for its mediaticity (as writing that displaces the voice), together with but distinct from its political potentiality as a collective mediality (as a ‘means without end’). Note-taking enables us to see how collective thinking emerges in the lecture, a kind of thinking that belongs neither to the lecturer nor the student, but emerges in the relation of attention established between the lecturer, students and their object of thought. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the note-taking experiences of university students using paper-based and paperless resources. By means of a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the note-taking experiences of 18 students from an international program at a university in Belgium were examined throughout a semester. In order to document these students’ practices with paper-based and paperless resources, four data collection methods were used: in-depth interviews observations focus group discussions and document analysis of students’ lecture notes. (...) The results showed that students experience note-taking as a complex phenomenon in which lived body, lived human relations, lived space and lived time come into play, and in which they try to find a balance between multiple engagements, between autonomy and authority, between attention and distraction, and between being original and mirroring others. This struggle for balance occurs irrespective of which medium they choose to use. These results provide an in-depth view of the phenomenon, and also highlight the complexity of the note-taking experience. (shrink)

I analyse Drenthen's article ‘Ecological restoration and place attachment: emplacing non-places?’ ( Environmental Values 18(3): 285-312), focusing in particular on his use of the notions of ‘appropriation’ and ‘estrangement’ from the perspective of meaningfulness. I show that, for deeper meaningfulness as place attachment, within the appropriable there is always a tension with the non-appropriable; there is a successful connection between both. Estrangement and loss of meaning occur the moment the non-appropriable resides outside the familiar. Drenthen unintentionally causes confusion by failing (...) to take this subtlety into account systematically. (shrink)

For disciplines depending upon precise definitions and distinctions, students’ notes provide an avenue for student engagement with skill and content. Activities enliven the classroom, and those discussed here can also help students develop and exercise critical thinking skills through note-taking. Lecturing and experiential learning happen hand-in-hand when the instructor uses teaching about notes and note-taking as a method for critical engagement with class content. In this paper, I integrate research on the cognitive function of student (...) class='Hi'>note-taking with research on student engagement—particularly, motivating student learning, engaging students with texts, lecture, or discussion, and promoting metacognition about learning practices—by arguing that the instructor who teaches and emphasizes student note-taking elevates note-taking to a method of student engagement and daily critical thinking practice; I discuss particular methods for supporting teaching note-taking, methods that promote active learning, student engagement, and student understanding (and could be utilized in a variety of classes). (shrink)

This article offers a brief overview of recent studies on note taking and paperwork in histories of early modern science. Showcasing the wide variety of note-taking practices performed by a range of historical actors across diverse sites and knowledge practices, it argues that a focus on note taking and “paper technologies” enables us to put in conversation a number of linked epistemic practices from reading and writing to making and doing to observing and surveying (...) to classifying and categorizing. By viewing these practices as a continuum rather than as distinct parts, we are able to further understand early modern knowledge production. (shrink)

In this paper, I will explore the experience of noticing/becoming attentive to something in education. What does it mean to take notice of something in an educational way, and how does some...

Because reading was and remains a central aspect of doing science, reading practices may provide insights into cognitive practices—such as observation, economies of attention, arts of memory, and the solidification and erosion of belief—in the context of science. Reading has since ancient times been the model for all forms of understanding and possibly also the template upon which other ways of making the world intelligible were formed. Reading practices may also provide keys to the formation of the specifically scientific self, (...) as they have more generally for that of the learned habitus. Finally, collectivities of readers served as the prototype of all such virtual communities of savants, including the scientific community. (shrink)

It is argued that Ross's Paradox in deontic logic is a problem which should be taken seriously, and which can be given a solution which also solves some other wellknown paradoxes and the traditional problems with conditional obligation.

This article questions the traditional accounts that see nationalism and imperialism as being mutually opposed phenomena. The author engages critically with the influential theories of Ernest Gellner and Andreas Wimmer and argues that the rise of nation-states owes more to the political actions of imperial rulers and less to the behavior of nationalist movements. The essay specifies three mechanisms inside nationalizing empires that matter for nationalism: elite actions, the politicization of minorities and the feelings of those who are politically excluded. (...) In so doing it expands the category of those considered to be nationalist actors. The general idea is that nationalism has a great deal to do with the way empires behave. (shrink)

This special issue aims to explore what is educational in the seemingly humble gesture of making notes: not only how and why the practice of note-taking is educative in and of itself, but also what it says about education as such. The contributions to the issue each highlight different aspects of note-making and approach it differently, but all assume that note-making is an educational practice that merits philosophical study. Interestingly, they mostly focus on note-making as (...) a non-digital practice (putting aside the use of laptops for note-making in class), perhaps because most were written prior to the great digitisation ushered in by educational institutions’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Let us first address how we see the different aspects of note-making highlighted by the contributions to the issue. (shrink)

A natural language is a unified and integrated system, and the serious study of one part of the system inevitably involves one in the study of many other parts, if not the system as a whole. For this reason, the study of small, isolated fragments of a language—however necessary, valuable, and difficult this may be—will often make us think that we understand more than we really do. The fact is that you can’t really study one phenomenon adequately without studying a (...) great many other related phenomena, and the way they fit together in terms of the linguistic system as a whole. This is the sort of thing a linguist learns very early in his career. Experience in descriptive linguistics, even at an elementary level will force a linguist to come to grips with a wide range of complex data in some language, perhaps even English, and the truism soon emerges. But, due to the vagaries of our educational institutions, few philosophers or logicians receive training in linguistic description. Consequently much of the discussion of natural language in the philosophical and logical literature is based on a very small sampling of data which is skewed in nontrivial ways. True, one has to start somewhere, and a great deal has been learned by ordinary language philosophers who have looked at only a handful of relatively simple examples and by logicians who have studied what by natural language standards are only miniscule fragments. But now that philosophers and logicians are turning to more detailed studies of natural language phenomena, it is perhaps the right time to suggest that philosophical and logical training be expanded to include the study of natural languages as entire systems. I don’t mean to suggest, for example, that logicians should stop their systematic study of small fragments, but rather that a knowledge of the kinds of phenomena outside of those fragments can enrich the study of fragments and give one a more realistic picture of what one does and does not know about natural language. (shrink)

The article focuses on motivation, proposing the equation in its title and opposing the contrary view, that what moves people to action is the rational calculation of their material interests. The latter view is most familiar in economics, where it was for generations seen as the best (meaning, most ‘scientific’) mode of explanation. It had a great deal of influence on historiography and found a great deal of support among psychologists also. From these three areas of research it is being (...) challenged, however, even to some extent displaced, in recent decades. The importance of emotions or feelings in explaining behavior is increasingly acknowledged, and the validity of conclusions reached about feelings in historical contexts through the operation of empathy. Illustrations of how this works can be easily supplied. (shrink)

This book examines the role of note-taking in ancient education as a pedagogical method, by taking readers on a stimulating analysis of lectures by ancient philosophers that were recorded by their students.

Nazariyat, Journal for the History of Islamic Philosophy and Sciences, issued twice a year in English and Turkish (Nazariyat İslam Felsefe ve Bilim Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi), is a refereed international journal. It publishes original studies, critical editions of classical texts and book reviews on Islamic philosophy, kalām, theoretical aspects of Sufism and the history of sciences. The goal of Nazariyat is to contribute to the discovery, examination and reinterpretation of the theoretical traditions in the history of Islamic thought, by giving (...) special attention to the post-classical period of it. **ISSN: 2148-8088 E-ISBN: 2547-9415**. (shrink)

More often than not, notes are conceptualized as a technology for helping students stay focused on and attentive to subject matter deemed educationally valuable. This article concerns itself, however, with how notes may interrupt and render inoperative this learning function. To probe the question of attention and distraction, the authors devised an experiment in note taking. Our question is whether or not these forms of rendering the learning function of notes inoperative have any educational value. In conclusion, we (...) suggest that such activities, while divorced from official, outcomes-based learning, do indeed have educational meaning: they make present the potentiality for thinking and acting without forcing such potentiality into measurable forms. What remains is the notes themselves, and the notational effects they in turn generated and continue to generate. (shrink)

In “Taking Taniwha seriously,” Justine Kingsbury proposes a way for taniwha pūrākau—traditional narratives about taniwha—to be taken seriously by non-Māori, which is one step towards respecting te ao Māori—the Māori world view. Taniwha are powerful water creatures who act deliberately to protect and sometimes punish humans. So characterised, there is an obvious obstacle to those who wish to respect te ao Māori but who are sceptical about the existence of supernatural entities. Kingsbury proposes a way to take taniwha discourse (...) seriously, but not literally. I agree that her view is realist, and that it overcomes the obstacle noted above. I argue in this paper that her approach ought to be considered an instance of what I call neutral realism, and that when we characterise it this way, we can see precisely how it enables the sort of intercultural respect that she seeks. (shrink)

"Notes toward a metaphysic of wonder" is the outcome of a "Reciprocal Inquiry" in which Leoni Henning and I participated. In our correspondence, we moved very fast: I thought each of us surprised the other. As a result, I found myself writing about astonishment more elaborately than I'd intended to. Before long I was involved not only with wondering but with awe and bewilderment and amazement, and eager to connect it all with philosophy in Latin America. So these "Notes..." are (...) just a foretaste of what I hope will someday be a more extensive article, but which is only hinted at in the present version. Leoni Maria Padillha Henning’s thoughtful and informative paper, “Pragmatism in Matthew Lipman and its influence in Latin America” is singularly helpful in showing the relevance of Philosophy for Children to Latin-American education. Indeed, the intellectual momentum it generates is a powerful invitation to other educators and scholars to take up the issues where she leaves off. I’d like to take up just one of these issues, one that, on the surface at least, seems to be particularly unpromising. I’m referring to the near-unanimity that exists among scholars with regard to the tradition, descended from Aristotle, that philosophy begins in wonder. My intention is not to attempt to refute this claim, but to show its complicity in defending the traditional non-reflective paradigm of education, which has sturdily resisted the introduction of philosophy into the schools, just as it resists the conversion of the classroom into a community of inquiry. With the proper pedagogy, philosophy can readily be taught to children, and the teaching of philosophy for children can readily be taught to teachers. It is not essential that wonder precede philosophy: it can just as well follow it. (shrink)

Taking his cue from Emerson and the eighteenth-century naturalist Gilbert White, Richard Quinney examines the beauty of the world and ponders our place in it in Field Notes. As much as we might look to the heavens, this earth is the only world in which we move and have our being, where we may see into the nature of all things. For many naturalists, writers, and poets, the boundaries between the animate and inanimate, the living and the dead, are (...) ambiguous and arbitrary. In the moments when we grasp the essence and wonder of nature, we know that all things are in its domain, that we too are nature. Yet nature is not necessarily benevolent to our human interests. We are subject to the same forces that work in all of nature. Nature is the source of life as well as its destruction as new life is being created. With pen and camera in hand, between town and country, notes are made and a life is lived. One world at a time, here on earth. Finalist, MIPA Midwest Book Awards, Midwest Independent Publishers Association Second Place Hardcover Fiction Book, 2008 New York Book Show, Bookbinders' Guild of New York. (shrink)

With more countries implementing Open Notes, the practice of providing patients with unhindered access to their clinical visit notes, research on this practice is finally increasing. Many studies report positive findings, especially around self-reported outcomes, such as feeling more in control of one’s care, increased medication adherence and a strengthened patient–doctor relationship. 1 However, comparatively less research has been done on the potential ramifications that may also arise from Open Notes. Blease’s recent article underscores this and demonstrates why Open Notes (...) must also be considered in terms of nocebo effects, negative side effects that arise from negative expectations. 2 The article presents a compelling and well-thought-out argument for how nocebo effects may vary across different populations by linking patient–clinician communication inequalities with and by presenting preliminary evidence of nocebo effects. Blease’s argument does not detract from Open Notes, but rather takes a balanced approach by imploring us... (shrink)

In these notes a brief description of the most recent developments of regions is given, taking into account the impact of global business on regional processes. The example which is the basis for this discussion is the region of Bologna, Italy. To analyse these developments, several theoretical concepts are used which reflect the widespread commitment of different authors to this common cause of concern.

This research note examines the relationship between public attitudes toward universal basic income and country-level socio-economic conditions in 21 European Countries. Despite abundant theoretical and empirical research on UBI, a comparative analysis of public appetite for UBI has been unavailable due to data limitations. This research note takes advantage of the 2016 European Social Survey to explore the connection between public support for UBI and levels of social protection and economic insecurity.

In a time when worlds, communities and subjects are increasingly presented as ‘vulnerable’, much remains to be said about the distinctly feminine shapes of ‘vulnerability’; weakness, softness, permeability, a sense of being affected, imprinted upon, or entered and shattered. While this presumed vulnerability of the feminine body has often been the basis of feminist sexual politics, feminist goals of autonomy often presume an internal and external undoing of vulnerability as such. Drawing on ethnographic research with queer femmes and building on (...) Sara Ahmed’s (2004a) idea that vulnerability is a ‘particular kind of bodily relation to the world’, this experimental article challenges the popularised idea that to queer femininity requires action, intention, agency and strength. Extending the work of femme authors Dorothy Allison and Ann Cvetkovich, the article considers the cracks in such femme politics, and focuses on how femme feelings of vulnerability take shape and figure in movements, and become what sticks between femme bodies of flesh and knowledge. Attending to the sensuous canvas of skin, to high-heeled movement and desire for both sex and sisterhood, these are notes on the work of affect in what is here called femmebodiment towards a somatechnical understanding of femininity. (shrink)

An electrifying introduction to complexity theory, the science of how complex systems behave--from cells to human beings, ecosystems, the known universe, and beyond--that profoundly reframes our understanding and illuminates our interconnectedness. Nothing in the universe is more complex than life. Throughout the skies, in oceans, and across lands, life is endlessly on the move. In its myriad forms--from cells to human beings, social structures, and ecosystems--life is open-ended, evolving, unpredictable, yet adaptive and self-sustaining. Complexity theory addresses the mysteries that animate (...) science, philosophy, and metaphysics: how this teeming array of existence, from the infinitesimal to the infinite, is in fact a seamless living whole and what our place, as conscious beings, is within it. Physician, scientist, and philosopher Neil Theise makes accessible this "theory of being," one of the pillars of modern science, and its holistic view of human existence. He notes the surprising underlying connections within a universe that is itself one vast complex system--between ant colonies and the growth of forests, cancer and economic bubbles, murmurations of starlings and crowds walking down the street. The implications of complexity theory are profound, providing insight into everything from the permeable boundaries of our bodies to the nature of consciousness. Notes on Complexity is an invitation to trade our limited, individualistic view for the expansive perspective of a universe that is dynamic, cohesive, and alive--a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Theise takes us to the exhilarating frontiers of human knowledge and in the process restores wonder and meaning to our experience of the everyday"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

The study of a middle school social studies and literacy project this paper addresses occurred in the national capital region of the United States, where perceptions of “patriotism” and immigration policies were the subjects of frequent media reports. With this examination the authors considered one overarching research question: how do middle school students describe and illustrate citizenship when given access to multimodal texts and media (e.g., digital photography and slam poetry)? The authors called on young adolescents to create slam poems (...) with incorporated images to address the question “What does it mean to be a ‘citizen’?”. The authors examined products of this project, which included surveys and slam poems, to address this research question, identifying findings that might inform social studies educators’ practices and curricula. Employing alternative and multimodal texts motivated students to engage with this project and to more candidly share expansive perspectives about what they believe makes a “citizen”. (shrink)

I note the ambivalence of contemporary attitudes towards pessimism, then offer a way of thinking about philosophical forms of pessimism, intended to encourage us to take pessimism seriously as a stance on the human condition.

In Love Notes, a collection of articles, essays, and presentations, Philip McKibbin introduces the Politics of Love and explores the possibilities of this emerging theory. The Politics of Love affirms the importance of love and reimagines our relationships: to ourselves, each other, non-human animals, and the natural environment. This love is inclusive, critical, generous, and constructive. Instead of a politics of fear and distrust, of separation and narrow-mindedness, the Politics of Love presents a new vision that extends beyond individuals, families, (...) the nation state, and even human beings: it is love that will bring about justice for other species, and it may also enable us to address climate change. This book presents an intellectual journey; it charts a course for the future, and invites you to help take the Politics of Love forward. (shrink)

Drawing on Marxist and psychoanalytic frameworks, I collect notes and reflections about the experience of contingent work in the Writing Center at Amherst College, a private liberal arts college in the United States. Taking the tradition of workers' inquiry as a source of inspiration and point of departure, I chart the material relations of the job alongside its social and affective dimensions. Connecting the form that writing takes (in classrooms and scholarly publishing) to the political economic relations of higher (...) education, I reframe writing as a means to make sense of experience rather than as a mode of professionalized conversation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A NOTE ON THE RELATION OF PACIFISM AND JUST-WAR THEORY: IS THERE A THOMISTIC CONVERGENCE? 1 GABRIEL PALMER-FERNANDEZ Youngstown State University Youngstown, Ohio FOR CENTURIES, the moral analysis of war began with a consideration of a set of principles which together form the doctrine of the just-war and with a rejection of pacifism. However, several recent studies by Catholic moralists argue that pacifism and just-war theory have much (...) in common and converge in at least one morally important way-namely, they share a presumption against violence. In this note I want to consider whether or not classical just-war theory gives us reason to accept this claim. I will give evidence against it, and suggest that the "original just-war question," as James Turner Johnson calls it, does not begin with aprohibitive presumption or some equivalent constraint on action. If we are to speak of a presumption in classical just-war theory, it is that justice be done for the sake of the common good. Up to very recent times, those Christian denominations which Ernst Troeltsch called the "church-type" (Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist, and Roman Catholic) upheld a " two-tiered " or "double" morality. A "vocational" pacifism was required of clerical ranks, and the individual Christian was obligated to take up arms for the sake of the common good. For example, prior to the Second Vatican Council, Roman Catholic teaching on war rejected conscientious objection to all war (i.e., pacifism) as an option for Catholics. Manuals of moral theology prior to Vatican 1 I wish to acknowledge the very helpful and detailed comments provided by Richard B. Miller to an earlier version of this paper. 247 248 GABRIEL PALMER-FERNANDEZ II did prohibit the soldier from fighting in an unjust war and made room for subjective doubt about the justice of a particular war. But the consensus among Catholic theologians was both wide and deep. Pacifism for individual Christians did not have any moral-theological justification. It was, in fact, a grave moral error. In spite of this, Vatican II called for a " completely fresh reappraisal of war." 2 The policy of obliterating whole cities enacted during World War II, coupled with the development of nuclear and other indiscriminate weapons of destruction (e.g., incapacitating gases, biological weapons, etc.) and the instability of superpower relations, created an unprecedented condition for which traditional teachings on war seemed woefully inadequate, if not morally dangerous. A new, more far-reaching perspective was needed. And this was to allow for individuals the pacifist option as a second and complementary moral doctrine alongside traditional teaching on war.3 As the American Catholic bishops said in their pastoral letter on war and peace : 2 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, in A. Flannery, 0.P., ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Collegeville, Minn. : Liturgical Press, 1975), par. 80. 3 This development in contemporary Roman Catholic teaching on war and peace has been challenged with considerable force by George Weigel in what has become one of the most controversial studies on the subject. In Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), Weigel advances several arguments which are meant to correct what he insists is a failure among Catholic ethicists in the U.S. to develop their tradition, and, indeed, an abandonment of their heritage. " At the level of moral theory," Weigel maintains, "the two classic positions [just-war theory and pacifism] are not reconcilable. The attempt to merge them... tends to corrupt both traditions. Pacifists end up making judgments on military strategy and tactics, and just-war theorists are held accountable to arguments they previously declined to accept.... The net result is to bifurcate morality and politics, and to abandon attempts to apply the tradition of reason to the limit case of the use of armed force in the defense of values-which is precisely the result Murray most feared in his strictures against moralism" (251). For David Hollenbach's rebuttal, see his review essay, "War and Peace in American Catholic Thought: A Heritage Abandoned? " Theological Studies 48 (1987) : 711-727... (shrink)

Abstract A Note to Cogito Les Jones Blackburn College Previous submissions include -Intention, interpretation and literary theory, a first lookWittgenstein and St Augustine A DiscussionAreas of Interest – History of Western Philosophy, Miscellaneous Philosophy, European A Note on Cogito Descartes' brilliance in driving out doubt, and proving the existence of himself as a thinking entity, is well documented. Sartre's critique (or maybe extension) is both apposite and grounded and takes these enquiries on to another level. Let's take a (...) look. 'I think' somehow, for all its power, lacks something. What? Consider what one does when thinking (difficult, but we can try). Implicit in the word 'think', in fact the very essence of the word 'think', is that activity is going on, and if such activity is going on then it must be going on about something, an object, an emotion, a problem,or maybe some dreamlike state, but common to all these is that something is going on. Is that really so? Well, if that wasn't so we would be able to think in a pure state, wouldn't we? But what does a pure state of 'thinking' mean? It can't mean that there isnothing there, because if there were nothing there then no thinking would be taking place. Can it mean that we are thinking of nothing? Well no, because if we are thinking of nothing then we are thinking of something, we are contemplating the notion, or the nature, of nothing. In fact, one can argue that if we talk of something, inthis case nothing or nothingness, then in our head we have some notion of what that is, i.e. something exists in the mind for it to come out of our mouths. Thinking is a recognition of something outside the individual, for the very act of direction, which isan indispensable part of thinking, recognises, must recognise, that there are things to address outside the individual. Something else to bear in mind. According to Sartre human beings are condemned to freedom. Why condemned? Human beings did not choose to be born, but the act ofbeing born also imparts the freedom of which Sartre speaks. Freedom is something which we parrot off as being a sine qua non for the human condition. I believe that's true, but freedom in this sense isn't without its consequences for the individual humanbeing, for individual human beings handle freedom differently. To some it enables them to fly, to others it imparts immense pressures, anguish, heartbreak, unhappiness can all be associated with such freedom. Each individual is responsible for his destiny, for his direction. If someone says that God impelled him, that individual chose his or her God, and chose to obey his or her God. This believer has to sift through the multitude of things that his or her God desire of him or her. All this is fine, so long as we acknowledge what is going on here. Belief in God is, by definition, a belief. Belief, following Wittgenstein, is a language game with its rules and its boundaries. The essential feature of religion as language game are its boundaries, which can be summed up in the word belief. OK, belief has its practises which are its constituent parts, but belief is the boundary between religion and other language games, as the proof constituents are different. Our world is determined by the language used to describe everything that goes on within it. The boundaries of our world are set by the language we use. This might be better put as language gives access to ever expending boundaries. Ever expanding boundaries are only possible by ever expanding thought, and ever expanding thought is only possible by ever expanding directions to our thought brought about through language. It is a fact taken that to be conscious is to think. How could this be otherwise? Consciousness without thought just does not make sense. Imagine a state of consciousness without directional thought. What would it be like? It would be something never experienced, completely out of our understanding. Why? Because understanding itself is a directional thought process. If we say we are going outside our understanding then that is a world of void, and a world of void does not exist. Can such a world be contemplated in our thinking? Well, yes, but then it requires thinking, and thinking requires direction, and such direction requires language. Why does direction require language? Because there is no other way for human beings to articulate a directional thought. Could one point at an image without language? Well, one could have an image in mind, but the essence of saying something about it, of descriptive power, brings us back to the essence, to the power of language to direct. So what of this language of which we speak? Wittgenstein's private language argument points us towards the notion that language itself constantly develops and redevelops through human interaction. Descarte's cogito implies that thinking rules out doubt of one's own existence. But such thinking, to be valid, to make sense, to direct, must develop in a language that has developed, has been verified, by a plurality, by a plurality whose essence is social. Correct use of language symbols, i.e. words, requires that we verify and reverify the accuracy of such symbols. How do we do that? We do that in constant usage, in constant interaction, with other human beings. An individual using a private language could not be understood by others, his symbol system has not been verified by others, his meanings may not be your meanings. It follows from what we have said above that language is constructed, and is continually constructed, in a social context. Given our previous thoughts regarding verification this could not be otherwise. Language has a normative form. All language users are required, by their very use of the language, to verify the use of terms, grammar etc etc. As Wittgenstein cites (appropriately) games as a model, let us take a look. If I play e.g. Ludo, I am governed by the rules. It is not just that I may play dishonestly, for if I were to play at all that very dishonesty, to count as Ludo, would have to be rule governed. The rules of Ludo are Ludo, they are the essence and the constitution of it. Wittgenstein, particularly in his later writings, interweaves many concepts, and connects them in different and sometimes rather elusive ways. Wittgenstein sees concepts like emotions, sentiments and experiences in these interweaving maps. Of course these can be regarded as psychological concepts ** Language can be considered in another but related way, as embodying the elements of a cultural heritage. Language was seen as embodying the notion of higher culture in the arts, architecture etc. Over recent decades this has tended to shift to consider less tangible benefits, such things as oral traditions, cultural values and cultural identity. So language enables us to explore, through the achievements of past generations, cultural mores that may have laid unchallenged for many years. Many of these values and mores may be seen as independent of the language by which they are transmitted, but still this monumental accomplishment of mankind i.e. language, enables man to explore, to modify, to codify, to extend the boundaries of human experience. There are therefore massive implications for our Note on Cogito of Wittgenstein's work. Following Wittgenstein emotions and other psychological concepts can be termed depth grammar, and are distinguished by the fact that the third person of the present is recognised by observation, the first person is not. Taking Wittgenstein's well known pain example the sentence 'He is in pain' is a third person statement of an observational nature. The sentence 'I am in pain' is not derived from observation but from experience, it is an expression of that experience, it's essence is the experience. The asymmetry consists in the fact that predicting psychological attributes of others is warranted by what they do and say. By contrast, the use of such statements in the first person present tense does not rest on one's observation of one's own behaviour. (Hacker 2010:287) p 9 According to Wittgenstein 'I am in pain' is more like a cry of pain, an expression of pain, than a report of some pain. Of course this appertains for other similar statements. 'I feel good' etc. (shrink)

It is an unusual property for a logic to prove a formula and its negation without ending up in triviality. Some systems have nonetheless been observed to satisfy this property: one group of such non-trivial negation inconsistent logics has its archetype in H. Wansing’s constructive connexive logic, whose negation-implication fragment already proves contradictions. N. Francez and Y. Weiss subsequently investigated relevant subsystems of this fragment, and Weiss in particular showed that they remain negation inconsistent. In this note, we take (...) a closer look at this phenomenon in the systems of Francez and Weiss, and point out two types of necessary conditions, one proof-theoretic and one relevant, which any contradictory formula must satisfy. As a consequence, we propose a nine-fold classification of provable contradictions for the logics. (shrink)