In his encyclical 'Aeterni Patris' (1879), Pope Leo XIII expressed the conviction that the renewed study of the philosophical legacy of Saint Thomas Aquinas would help Catholics to engage in a dialogue with secular modernity while maintaining respect for Church doctrine and tradition. As a result, the neo-scholastic framework dominated Catholic intellectual production for nearly a century thereafter. This volume assesses the societal impact of the Thomist revival movement, with particular attention to the juridical dimension of this epistemic community. Contributions (...) from different disciplinary backgrounds offer a multifaceted and in-depth analysis of many different networks and protagonists of the neo-scholastic movement, its institutions and periodicals, and its conceptual frameworks. Although special attention is paid to the Leuven Institute of Philosophy and Faculty of Law, the volume also discloses the neo-Thomist revival in other national and transnational contexts. By highlighting diverse aspects of its societal and legal impact, 'Neo-Thomism in Action' argues that neo-scholasticism was neither a sterile intellectual exercise nor a monolithic movement. The book expands our understanding of how Catholic intellectual discourse communities were constructed and how they pervaded law and society during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. (shrink)

Nowadays there are many spaces of fascination in visual art. Of course, installative space and contextual space have been on the art scene for awhile. However, they are now accompanied by other spaces such as urban space, architectural space, cyberspace, hyperspace, and screen-based space. In this volume, architects, artists, theorists, three symposia and four exhibitions attempt to find answers to questions such as: Could the architectonic study and/or deconstruction of space play a decisive role in the shift of attention to (...) space? Which theoretical factors structure the current experience and meaning of space? What is the role of the aesthetization of the environment on our concept of space? Smooth Space - VCC de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam - is a project at the heart of this publication. Spatial interests range from how the concept of space is redefined and exploited in our current visual culture to how the digital world influences our spatial concepts. Participants in this issue are: Jean Attali, Annette W. Balkema, Andrew Benjamin, Ole Bouman, Bernard Cache, Paul Crowther, Christoph Fink, Hugo Heyrman, Hou Hanru, Rem Koolhaas, Geert Lovink, Karlheinz Lüdeking, Bartomeu Mari, Kas Oosterhuis, Jan van de Pavert, Keiko Sato, Eran Schaerf, Lara Schnitger, Roger Scruton, Martin Seel, Nasrine Seraji, Henk Slager, Sjoerd Soeters, Lars Spuybroek, Ann Van Sevenant, Peter Weibel and Mark Wigley. (shrink)

Diagnosis of dementia in primary care is both difficult and important. The recommendations by several authors to improve the diagnosis of dementia by general practitioners are important, but insufficient. It is argued that perhaps the disease concept in itself is a cause of confusion for clinicians. Primary care physicians need an adapted procedure, gradually leading to the final diagnosis of dementia. It has to be a stepwise labelling strategy, using global descriptions and non-disease specific labels in the beginning, ending up (...) with well-defined disease criteria. In this process, there is circularity: previous diagnoses have to be kept in mind because symptoms and signs may gradually change during the progression of the disease, leading to reconsideration of previous deleted options. To frame this properly, the primary care physician needs to adopt a broad frail elderly geriatric concept. Implementation of this concept not only helps the diagnostic process, but also stimulates the care for dementing patients and their caregivers. Relevant arguments for early diagnostic involvement of primary care physicians can be put forward on condition that a new concept, adapted procedures and adapted instruments are used. (shrink)

Perceptual constancies have been studied by psychologists for decades, but in recent years, they have also become a major topic in the philosophy of mind. One reason for this surge of interest is Tyler Burge’s (2010) influential claim that constancy mechanisms mark the difference between perception and mere sensitivity, and thereby also the difference between organisms with genuine representational capacities and ‘mindless’ beings. Burge’s claim has been the subject of intense debate. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that we cannot (...) hope to settle this debate (as well as related debates in the philosophy of mind) without a clear and substantive theoretical account of what perceptual constancies are. In the first part of this paper, I argue that the standard definitions in the literature fall short of providing such an account. Still, as I aim to show in the second part of the paper, by taking a closer look at some of the paradigm examples, it is possible to construct a plausible general account of perceptual constancies that is both clear and substantive, and that can serve as a firm foundation for settling debates like the dispute about Burge’s ‘constancy mechanism criterion’ for perception. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

This paper argues that the influential French thinker, Simone Weil, has something distinctive and important to offer educational and ethical inquiry. Weil’s ethical theory is considered against the backdrop of her life and work, and in relation to her broader ontological, epistemological and political position. Pivotal concepts in Weil’s philosophy – gravity, decreation and grace – are discussed, and the educational implications of her ideas are explored. The significance of Weil’s thought for educationists lies in the unique emphasis she places (...) on the development of attention, a notion elaborated here via the key themes of truth, beauty and love. (shrink)

Uses Buddhist philosophy to discuss diversity as a value, one that can contribute to equity in a globalizing world.

Academic integrity is becoming increasingly important to managing academic institutions. Accordingly there are efforts to uniformly assess campus attitudes to such issues as cheating in assessments along with the policies and procedures in place to address them. This paper seeks to summarize and understand the attitude of the students and academic staff at an Australian university towards academic integrity, as reflected in the results of a campus-wide survey, using both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The main finding of the quantitative results (...) was the disconnect between academic staff and students belief’s about academic honesty and the reactions of students and academics to dishonest behaviour. Four key themes of academic honesty were identified through qualitative analysis, being those of cheating, student, solutions to cheating and general concerns. (shrink)

This chapter employs Buddhist conceptions of karma and nonduality to generate movement oblique to the ontologically freighted opposition of sameness and difference – opening a “middle way” beyond the contrariety of modern valorizations of global unification and postmodern valorizations of free variation. In doing so, the author's aim is both conceptual clarification and critical integration. If modern and postmodern valorizations of autonomy have been crucial to empowering distinctive responses to social, economic, political, and cultural coercion, a non‐dualistic conception of diversity (...) has potential for strengthening and more equitably orienting the interdependence of these spheres – a value for relational transformation from the personal sphere to the environmental. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham, protesting against the cruelty of inflicting the death penalty on mothers who kill their newborn infants, described infanticide as the killing of a being ‘who has ceased to be, before knowing what existence is.’ He also pointed out that is an offence ‘of a nature not to give the slightest inquietude to the most timid imagination,’ for all those who come to learn of the offence are themselves too old to be threatened by it.1 These points still hold (...) true, and also apply to abortion. They do not, of course, enable one to conclude that there is nothing wrong with either abortion or infanticide, but they do suggest a plausible ground for thinking that these acts should not be thought of as morally equivalent to the murder of beings who are capable of ‘knowing what existence is’ and of learning that beings like them can be, and sometimes are, killed. (shrink)

Effective conditioning requires a correlation between the experimenter's definition of a response and an organism's, but an animal's perception of its behavior differs from ours. These experiments explore various definitions of the response, using the slopes of learning curves to infer which comes closest to the organism's definition. The resulting exponentially weighted moving average provides a model of memory that is used to ground a quantitative theory of reinforcement. The theory assumes that: incentives excite behavior and focus the excitement on (...) responses that are contemporaneous in memory. The correlation between the organism's memory and the behavior measured by the experimenter is given by coupling coefficients, which are derived for various schedules of reinforcement. The coupling coefficients for simple schedules may be concatenated to predict the effects of complex schedules. The coefficients are inserted into a generic model of arousal and temporal constraint to predict response rates under any scheduling arrangement. The theory posits a response-indexed decay of memory, not a time-indexed one. It requires that incentives displace memory for the responses that occur before them, and may truncate the representation of the response that brings them about. As a contiguity-weighted correlation model, it bridges opposing views of the reinforcement process. By placing the short-term memory of behavior in so central a role, it provides a behavioral account of a key cognitive process. (shrink)

Spirituality and spiritual well-being are connected with many areas of human life. Thus, especially in secular countries, there is a need for reliable validated instruments for measuring spirituality. The Spiritual Well-Being Scale is among the world’s most often used tools; therefore, the aim of this study was its psychometrical evaluation in the secular environment of the Czech Republic on a nationally representative sample (n = 1797, mean age: 45.9 ± 17.67; 48.6% men). A non-parametric comparison of different sociodemographic groups showed (...) a higher disposition for experiencing spirituality among women, older people, and divorced persons. Based on confirmatory factor analysis, negatively worded items were excluded using a polychoric correlation matrix. The new version of the scale consisting of 11 items had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.85; McDonald’s ωt = 0.91). The two-factor model of this shortened version, with factors corresponding to the Religious and the Existential subscales of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale, shows a satisfactory fit with the data, where the loadings of all items ranged from medium to high. Thus, this study offered a new version of the tool, convenient for measuring spiritual well-being in secular conditions. (shrink)

How do Christians reconcile their belief in one God with the concept of three divine 'persons'? This Companion provides an overview of how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity has been understood and articulated in the last two thousand years. The Trinitarian theologies of key theologians, from the New Testament to the twentieth century, are carefully examined and the doctrine of the Trinity is brought into dialogue with non-Christian religions as well as with other Christian beliefs. Authors from a range (...) of denominational backgrounds explore the importance of Trinitarian thought, locating the Trinity within the wider context of systematic theology. Contemporary theology has seen a widespread revival of the doctrine of the Trinity and this book incorporates the most recent developments in the scholarship. (shrink)

This article concerns challenges arising from the development of economic globalization as the so-called “creator of a new world order“ and its tendency to deteriorate the foundation of a global order in terms of social justice, solidarity, and human dignity. As main point of referral functions, the report of the “Commission Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi cs“ on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress that refers to the European Commission's strategy of development, acknowledges the need for these values. On (...) behalf of this reflection, this article is based on the recent outcomes of the exploration of these social quality issues in a recent published book by the Foundation on Social Quality. The article argues that indicators are needed in order to understand the effects of societal changes in response to the current economic globalization, which increases inequality and the fragmentation of the labor market. (shrink)

Although ietsism, which comes from a Dutch term referring to “somethingism,” came on the religious scene a couple of decades ago, Anglophone publications springing from serious reflections on this term have only just recently appeared. This paper constitutes an attempt at addressing a couple of questions pertaining to this rather novel term. Two of these main questions concern the characteristics of ietsism that set it apart from other faith orientations, and the means by which ietsism is able to stand up (...) to the test of its practical worth in terms of promising to fulfil a profound need in human life. (shrink)

Volume 12, Issue 1, January 2012, Page 1-3.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 361 ing should gravitate, it is no wonder that many say: " There are no clear answers." Finally, I wonder if casuistry can even deal with the most significant ethical issue facing medicine in the immediate future: The construction of a system in the United States which will provide adequate health care for all citizens. Director, Center for Health Care Ethics Saint Louis University Medical Center KEVIN (...) O'ROURKE, O.P. Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions. Edited By GAVIN D'CosTA. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1990. Pp. xii + 218. $16.95 (paper). There are two ways of reading ·this remarkably stimulating collection of essays. At one level it is a vigorous rebuttal of an earlier book in the "Faith Meets Faith Series" entitled The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, edited by John Hick and Paul Knitter; D'Costa's sub-title, "The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions," is a conscious polemical riposte. On the second level it purports to propose an alternative theology of religions which would on the one hand retain the claim of Christian uniqueness but on the other be not exclusivistic but genuinely pluralistic and, therefore, fruitful for interreligious dialogue. In my judgment, the book achieves its first objective well, furnishing an impressive array of counter-arguments to the pluralistic thesis. Indeed, like a swarm of tacklers ganging up on the hapless quarterback, so many contributors attack the same points of the pluralistic proposal that readers must have the impression of witnessing an overkill. On the other hand, the book's positive construction of a theology of religions suffers from vagueness and even internal contradictions. It is a classical case of people banding together because they know what they are against (in this case, the proposal to regard all religions as equally valid ways of salvation, with none allowed to claim superiority and exclusiveness) but not yet able to determine what they are for (except to retain the claim of Christian uniqueness). The volume contains 14 essays divided into three groups. The first three discuss the implications of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity for interreligious dialogue (Rowan Williams, Gavin D'Costa, and Christoph Schwobel); the next five explore the relevance of christology in the context of religious pluralism (M. M. Thomas, Francis X. Clooney, John B. Cobb, Jr., Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Monika Hell- 362 BOOK REVIEWS wig) ; the last six examine the epistemological and hermeneutical issues of religious pluralism (J. A. DiNoia, Lesslie Newbigin, Jurgen Moltmann, Paul J. Griffith, John Milbank, and Kenneth Surin). The editor has done an excellent job of summarizing the main points of each essay; it is therefore unnecessary to replicate his effort. My intention in this review is not to examine each essay individually; space would not permit such an undertaking. Rather I shall list the major criticisms made by the contributors against the pluralistic thesis and then examine their rather diverse positive proposals. Before doing so, however, it would be useful to describe briefly the essential thesis of The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, which is under attack. Its contributors argue that due to the rise of historical consciousness, the nature of God as Absolute Mystery, and the obligation to promote peace and justice, the Christian claim to uniqueness and superiority as a way to salvation should be abandoned. Instead of the exclusivist and inclusivist theologies of religions, they propose the pluralist position that Christianity is one among the many religions, equally valid and mutually complementary. What do the contributors to Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered find wrong with this pluralist thesis? A complete list of their objections cannot be furnished here, but these are some of the more important ones. First, the pluralists are as imperialistic as the exclusivists and inclusivists they denounce because they impose their (Western) notions of religion, dialogue, social justice, and so on, on other religionists (D'Costa, Newbigin, Griffiths). Hence the pluralist thesis is logically incoherent. Secondly, the pluralists wrongly presume that there is such a thing as a common core of religious experience which functions as a genus of the different species of religions (Newbigin, Milbank, Cobb). Thirdly, pluralists neglect the... (shrink)

This book is a collection of materials concerned not only with the law of evidence, but also with the logical and rhetorical aspects of proof; the epistemology of evidence as a basis for the proof of disputed facts; and scientific aspects of the subject. The editor also raises issues such as the philosophical basis for the use of evidence.

Abstractabstract:What lessons can Catholic theology learn from Shinran (1173–1263), one of the leading Japanese proponents of Pure Land Buddhism, in matters regarding the universality and particularity of religions? How can Catholic theology move from Christological and ecclesiological exclusivism to a position that acknowledges religious pluralism? This essay attempts an answer to these questions by comparing the shift in Catholic pre-Vatican II theology of religion from exclusivism to pluralistic inclusivism to Shinran's abandonment of his monastic life and its practices at the (...) Tendai monastery of Enryakuji on Mount Hiei in 1201 at the age of twenty-nine and adoption of the teaching of Hōnen (1133–1212) on the recitation of the Nembutsu is all that is required for rebirth in the Pure Land.Part I of the essay gives an exposition of the Catholic theology of Christ as the unique and universal Savior, the church as the necessary and universal sign and instrument of salvation, the reversal of ecclesiological exclusivism by Vatican II's affirmation of the possibility of salvation for non-Christians, and the theological developments in Catholic theology that lead to Vatican II's inclusivist theology of religion.Part II begins with a narrative of Shinran's journey toward religious pluralism starting from his rejection of the monastic tradition and its practices to gain rebirth in the Pure Land and his six-year discipleship of Hōnan from whom he learned that salvation cannot be earned by one's effort and that salvation is available to all. Next follows an exposition of Shinran's teaching under four expressions: kyō, gyō, shin, and shō. Central to Shinran's teaching and three-stage conversion is the Amida Buddha's Primal Vow or Eighteenth Vow to save all sentient beings, which is the "other-power" and not the "self-power" that saves. Finally, attention is drawn to the kind of people that followed Shinran's teaching.Part III studies the areas where Catholic theology can learn from Shinran and Shin Buddhism by drawing the parallels between Shinran's context and that of Catholic theologians that require a new interpretation of traditional teachings on Christ and the church, between the Primal Vow and the Holy Spirit, and between Shinran's targeted audience and the "poor" for whom God has a preferential love. (shrink)

abstract: Taking a cue from Carilyn Chen's book about the Americanization of Taiwanese immigrant Buddhists, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience (2009), this essay narrates the process by which Vietnamese Catholics are "Americanized." Compared with the Taiwanese Buddhists, Vietnamese Catholics had the advantage of being members of a global Church, were from the beginning incorporated into the American Catholic Church, thereby enjoying the many benefits that this institutional incorporation brought with it, and were cared for pastorally by (...) their own clergy. On the other hand, because of their obligation to strict adherence to the legal structures of the Catholic Church, Vietnamese American Catholics were not free to innovate institutionally as they saw fit, as were their Buddhist counterparts. The essay ends with observations on the Americanization of Vietnamese American Buddhists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 695 Salvation Outside the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response. By FRANCIS A. SULLIVAN. New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1992. Pp. i + 224. $12.95 (paper). The subtitle of the volume describes well its purpose and content. The author surveys in chronological order, beginning with the earliest ecclesiastical writers and ending with John Paul II, the various interpretations of the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus. What (...) prompted Sullivan to undertake a historical rather than systematic approach in his volume is the conviction that without taking into account the historical and cultural factors that conditioned the formulation of this axiom it is impossible to make sense of the shift from the exclusivism of the pre-Vatican II Church to the inclusiveness of Vatican II and post-Vatican II theology with regard to the salvation of those who are not members of,the Roman Catholic Church. The principle that guides Sullivan's attempt to disclose the meaning embodied in the manifold formulations of the axiom " there is no salvation outside the Church" is Pope John XXHI's distinction between " the substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith " and " the way in which it is presented," and the more recent emphasis of the Declaration Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973) on the historical condition affecting the expression of divine revelation. As a historical study, Salvation Outside the Church? is an excellent continuation of Louis Caperan's two-volume work Le probleme du salut des infideles, which is still unavailable in English. Obviously an over· view of almost two thousand years of theological discussion of this problem has to be highly selective if one is not to miss the forest for the trees, and Sullivan's choice of authors as well as of historical periods for discussion is judiciously made. If a complaint is to be made in this regard, it is that he has focused too much attention on magisterial documents, and Roman documents at that, and not enough on contemporary theology. True, he devotes a chapter to the theory of " anonymous Christians," espoused mainly by Karl Rahner (chapter 10), and defends it against criticisms by Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Hans Kiing, and Max Seckler. He is well aware that Rahner's theory has become the position of mainstream Catholic theology and cites authors who support it in one way or another (p. 181). However, a book that claims to present " the Catholic response " to the problem posed by the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus should, one would expect, have discussed in greater detail the various positions of contemporary Catholic theologians on this issue. It is to be fervently hoped that Sullivan will take up this task in his next book. 696 BOOK REVIEWS Sullivan's basic thesis is that the substance underlying the various negative formulations of the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus is the positive belief ithat " God has assigned to the church a necessary role in the accomplishment of his plan for the salvation of humanity " (p. 12). Such a thesis is, of course, neither new nor startling. Hans Kling had already said that much in his 1967 Die Kirche (English translation, p. 318). What is helpful in Sullivan's account is his explanation of both the intent of those who affirmed this axiom with its apparent exclusiveness and the limitations that prevented them from perceiving the universality of God's saving grace. With regard to intent, Sullivan shows con· vincingly that the patristic usage of the axiom is intended as a warning for those Christians who had separated themselves from the catholica either by schism or by heresy that they must remain within it in order to be saved, whereas ithe medieval usage is intended to warn pagans and Jews that they should accept the message of the Gospel now that it had been announced to them. With regard to limitations, Sullivan singles out two: the geographical and the psychological. On the one hand, there was before the discovery of America the conviction that the world was identical with Christian Europe. This belief led theologians to postulate that the Gospel had been spread throughout the world. On the other hand, their ignorance... (shrink)

What precisely resides in â oesexualityâ which warrants the popular discourse on sexuality as â oepart of our world freedom, â or something as an inspiring source for â oeour own creationâ of â oenew forms of relationshipsâ or â oenew forms of loveâ never before possible in human history? This popular treatment of sexual freedom has become so politically correct, in this day and age of ours, that it fast degenerates into a seductive ideology which has impoverished our understanding (...) of sexuality by blinding us from its dark sides. Contrary to this intoxicating conventional wisdom, the dark sides of this seductive ideology have yet to be systematically understood and that its very creative freedom is neither possible nor desirable to the extent that its advocates would like us to believe. Of course, this is not to suggest that sexuality should not be about freedom nor creativity, or that the literature in sexual studies (and other related fields like gender studies, queer studies, and cultural studies, for example) should be ignored because of their scholarly nonsense. Needless to say, neither of these two extreme views is reasonable either. Instead, the purpose of this book is to provide an alternative (better) way to understand the nature of sexuality, in special relation to the sexual body and spirit, in conjunction with the mindâ "while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). This seminal project, if successful, will fundamentally change the way that we think about the nature of sexuality, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its â oepost-humanâ fate. (shrink)

Offers an understanding of the future of history, in the dialectic context of universality and relativity - while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them or integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other.

We investigate systems of ordinary differential equations with a parameter. We show that under suitable assumptions on the systems the solutions are computable in the sense of recursive analysis. As an application we give a complete characterization of the recursively enumerable sets using Fourier coefficients of recursive analytic functions that are generated by differential equations and elementary operations.