In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism by Brenda AbbottRobert J. Karris, OFMBrenda Abbott, Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism. Durham, UK: Franciscan Publishing, 2021. Pp. vii + 388. 16 photos. £15.00. ISBN: 9781915198013.Father Eric Doyle, OFM, a member of the Province of the Immaculate Conception, UK, was born in 1938 and died in 1984. He was (...) highly talented and educated, steeped in the Franciscan tradition, a superb and humorous communicator. He was just right for his time, he was ahead of his time, and he may be just what Franciscans need today in their time as they continue to renew themselves in the spirit of St. Francis and in Franciscan Christology and spirituality.Abbott sets down her goal: "My purpose and goal in publishing this book is that something of the man and his vision will be communicated here, and that a new generation of Franciscan friars and scholars, as well as believers and unbelievers more widely, may be inspired by this vision and become aware of Doyle's enduring and precious legacy" (ii). She accomplishes her goal through an introduction, fifteen chapters which mainly delve into Doyle's Franciscan Christology and spirituality, and a conclusion. Endnotes follow each chapter. The book, which is very well-researched and written, ends with two appendices and a bibliography. Abbot has marvelously achieved her goal.The introduction is followed by: chapter 1, "Early Life: 1938–1970"; chapter 2, "The Friar"; chapter 3, "The Teacher"; chapter 4, "The Shepherd and Evangeliser"; chapter 5, "The Scholar"; chapter 6, "The Mystic"; chapter 7, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 1)"; chapter 8, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 2)"; chapter 9, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 3)"; chapter 10, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 4)"; chapter 11, "The Ecologist: Our Sister Mother Earth"; chapter 12, "The Ecumenist: Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ"; chapter 13, "The Post–Vatican II Theologian"; chapter 14, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 1)"; and chapter 15, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 2)."In the space allotted me, I provide three snapshots of Eric Doyle. First is the assessment of Doyle from an outside source, Bishop Thomas McMahon, who in his eulogy said: "He put profound truths in a very [End Page 249] simple way and conveyed always a sense of the numinous. … [He was] vivid, articulate, deeply learned, intensely human, hugely alive, full of mischief, unsparing of self … a contemporary Francis. His Franciscan spirituality permeated his total thinking" (174). I underscore Bishop Mc-Mahon's emphasis on St. Francis and his spirituality. I see implied here Doyle's teaching about the Absolute Primacy of Christ—that Christ is head of all creation and conqueror of sin and death, and that the reason for Christ's incarnation is not sin but love—demonstrating Doyle's retrieval of the best from the Franciscan tradition.The second snapshot points to two areas where Doyle was ahead of his time. First, he was a TV personality. Abbott dedicates pages 117–23 to Doyle as a wonderful TV presence. From 1971 to 1984 he was on four hundred programs of The Big Question. One reviewer noted: "The length, breadth and width of his discourse … is colossal … This man is an original, a non-pareil; before they made him, they broke the mould" (121). Second, in his book on Francis's Canticle of Brother Sun, first published in 1980, Doyle anticipated many of Pope Francis' teachings in Laudato Si'. As Abbott says: "Foreshadowing much of Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si', Doyle demonstrates how belief in the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of creation can help us create a better world" (270).The third snapshot is an indication of how Doyle's legacy continues in print. Doyle's St Francis and the Song of Brotherhood has been reprinted a number of times, most recently in 1997 by Franciscan Institute Publications as St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood and Sisterhood. It has been translated into five languages: Italian, German, Portuguese, Korean, and Japanese. Under the imprint of Tau Publications is My Heart's Quest: Collected Writings of Eric Doyle, Friar Minor, Theologian, edited by Josef Raischl... (shrink)

In 1991, Jones developed an issue-contingent model of ethical decision making in which moral intensity is posited to affect the four stages of Rest's 1986 model. Jones claimed that moral intensity, which is "the extent of issue-related moral imperative in a situation", consists of six characteristics: magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity, and concentration of effect. This article reports the findings of two studies that analyzed the factor structure of moral intensity, operationalized by a 12-item (...) Perceived Moral Intensity Scale adapted from the work of Sing-hapakdi et al. [1996, Journal of Business Research, 36, 245-255] and Frey [2000, Journal of Business Ethics, 26, 181-195]. The two items that were purported to measure CE were dropped due to their inability to effectively tap into the characteristic proposed by Jones. Factor analyses of the remaining 10 items supported a 3-factor structure, with the MC, PE, and TI items loading on the first factor, the PX items loading on the second factor, and the SC items loading on the third factor. These factors were labeled: Probable Magnitude of Consequences, Proximity, and Social Consensus. The authors conclude that moral intensity consists of three characteristics, rather than the six posited by Jones. (shrink)

Nos proponemos pensar una teoría de la acción implícita en la filosofía deleuziana del espacio. El concepto de profundidad, en el que se despliega el carácter de la intensidad como afirmación de la diferencia, funciona como presupuesto de esta teoría. A partir de dos textos de Ruyer y Simondon mencionados por Deleuze, los afectos aparecen como expresión de aquella dimensión espacial en el sujeto. La profundidad se articula a su vez con las síntesis temporales en un recorrido que encuentra en (...) la noción de pliegue el concepto adecuado para pensar un sujeto de la acción alternativo al yo sustancial. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo propone una lectura del concepto de lo Natal desde la perspectiva de la ontología de Diferencia y repetición. El estudio de los rasgos ontológicos que esa noción ofrece, en especial en Mil mesetas, arroja una nueva luz sobre el aspecto intensivo de la teoría deleuziana del fundamento. En este sentido, el concepto de lo Natal se vincula especialmente con los conceptos de profundidad y campo de individuación. La consideración conjunta de estas nociones permite postular la novedad de (...) la teoría deleuziana del fundamento en relación con la tradición de la metafísica occidental, que se expresa en el hecho de que el fundamento se presenta como ámbito de la individuación, el devenir y la multiplicidad. En última instancia, el fundamento se ve superado hacia un sin-fondo.This article proposes a reading of the concept of The Natal in the light of the ontology of Difference and repetition. The study of the ontological aspects of this notion in A thousand plateaus brings a new light to the intensive aspect of Deleuze's theory of ground. In this sense, the concept of The Natal is linked with the concepts of depth and field of individuation. The bond between these concepts puts forth the novelty of Deleuze's theory of ground in relation to the tradition of Western metaphysics, expressed in the fact that the ground is presented as a realm of individuation, becoming and multiplicity. The ground is ultimately overcome by an ungrounding. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay will explore the constitution of a transcendental theory of space through an examination of the notion of spatial synthesis in the works of Husserl, Paliard, and Deleuze. First, we shall explore the constitution of the sensorial fields in Husserl’s phenomenology. In Husserlian terms, space is not originally an empty form that can eventually be filled with a certain empirical content. Accordingly, the philosopher claims that spatiality is a consequence of the immanent synthesis of sensations. Then, we will (...) move on to Jacques Paliard’s psychology of perception, where we will find both aesthetic and noetic synthesis as transcendental conditions for the perception of space. Lastly, we will explore Deleuze’s theory of intensive space, specifically the concept of depth developed in a dialogue with Paliard. This comparative analysis shows that purely intensive fields of individuation are a transcendental a priori for the perception of an extensive space. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ON BEING OR NOT BEING A THOMIST ROBERT E. LAti'DER St. John's University Jamaica, New York Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method. Gerald A. McCool, S.J. New York: Fordham University Press, 1989. 301 pages (paper). From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism. Gerald A. McCool, S.J. New York: Fordham University Press, 1989. 9248 pages (hardcover). BEFORE I READ Gerald A. McCool's two volumes examining (...) nineteenth and twentieth centrury scholast :i:cism and Thomism, if someone had asked my philosophica ;l o:rientation, I would have replied "I am a Thomist." Having rerud McCool's two books, I still and with a strong sense of gratitude articulate my philosophical self-des,ignation as Thomisit, but what I mean by Thomist has become considerably more nuanced. Not only those who identify themselvies with the thought of St. Thomas but a, wider philosophical and theologiea1l community shou1d be grateful to Father McCool for- his eXiceHent scholarly contribution to the understanding of sicholasticism and Thomism. His two volumes show many of us who call ourselves Thomists where we have been an:d wheve we rare and, by illuminating our past,and present, clarify for us our options for the future. Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism was first published under,the title Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century by The Seabury Press in 1977, but it has been re-issued hy Fordham University to ruocompany the appearance of his second volume. In this earlier work McCool ohal'ts in detail the growth and 301 30~ ROBERT E. LAUDER d.wection of scholasticism, especially in relation to two influential Chmich documents: the Apostolic Consititu.tion on Faith Dei Filius, solemnly app:rovced in 1870 by the fathers of the First Vatican Council, and Leo XIII's 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris. The,earlier,document defined and darified the Church's teaching on the supernatural and free charac1te:r of faith and on the relation between supe:matural faith and natural reason; the encydical was a disciplinary document concerning the method of philosophicaJ instruction for priests. McCool \Stresses that the linking of the two documents in the minds of Roman authorities and theologians gave the documents enormous weight and influence during the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, but now, more than a hundred years fater, their influence is being and r'easses:sed. Though the present situation in Catholic philosophical and theological circles is not a case history reversing itself, it is an extra011dina :ry example of history leruding to the l'eopening of questions ithat,seemed definitivdy dosed. McCool suggests that there are at ~east two factors affecting contemporary Catholic theology which indicate that ·current historical research into nineteenth-century Catholic theology may point to a genuine option between a deveJoped Thomism and a restored pre-Thomistic nineteenth century system: The first of these is the freedom given to Catholic theologians by the Second Vatican Council to experiment with non-Thomistic theological systems. Aetelf'ni Patris no longer enjoys the status of an irrevocable theological option, based on immutable dogmatic and metaphysical principles. Its theological signification has been relativized. Aeterni Patris must now be considered an historical moment in the dialectical progress of theological development. The second distinctive characteristic of contemporary theology is the current ferment over theological method. This means that the nineteenth-century debate, which the official option of Aetelf'ni Patris seemed to have closed definitively, has been reopened. The disciples of SL Thomas and the partisans of the ' new ' theologies are free once more to submit their diverse theological methods to the judgment of their fellow theologians. (p. 6) GERALD MC COOL AND THOMISM 303 McCool views Joseph Kleutgen as the outstanding representativ ;e of the noo-Thomisit.ic movement in the nineteenth century. Kleutgen was trying to strike a balance between the extremes of fideisim and rationalism. He felt strongly thrut if one says positive and speculative theology are nort intrinsically difforent in their intellootua;} questions from a philosophy of·l'leve!Imtion then either natural veason's proper autonomy has to be compromised by a tmditional :fideism or the distinctiveness and gra.tuity of supernatuml knowledge has to be blurred by... (shrink)

This article aims to comprehend Kierkegaard’s theory of the movement of faith through Deleuze’s theory of becoming. At the same time, it aims to understand Deleuze’s theory of becoming in the light of Kierkegaard’s thought, mainly through his reflections on Abraham and the concept of anxiety. It will show the way in which the conceptual character of the knight of faith works as a possible variation of one of the most original concepts of Deleuze’s work: the becoming-imperceptible. This crossing of (...) concepts allows us to shed light on the problem of thinking a theory of the subject that takes into account the intensive movements that escape the logic of representation; and also the deleuzian search for a renewal of philosophical ways of expression. (shrink)

Resumen: El artículo propone una lectura de la meseta “10000 AC. La geología de la moral ” desde el punto de vista de una ontología del espacio. Nos concentraremos específicamente en el concepto de estrato. En los primeros dos apartados se mostrará que todo estrato supone aspectos materiales y semióticos. Para ello se explicitarán algunos conceptos de la geología y de la lingüística utilizados por Deleuze y Guattari. Los apartados 3, 4 y 5 se ocuparán, sucesivamente, de los conceptos de (...) substrato, epistrato y paraestrato. En la articulación de estos conceptos se juegan tres aspectos fundamentales para pensar la configuración de todo espacio actual: la territorialización, la desterritorialización relativa y la codificación/descodificación. Esta tipología de estratos da cuenta de lo diverso espacial y será estudiada a partir de algunas de las fuentes utilizadas por los autores. Se hará un énfasis especial en la obra de Pia Laviosa Zambotti, fuente crucial para comprender la tipología de estratos, como así también en ciertos aspectos del pensamiento de Jacques Monod y Jakob Von Uexküll, claves para pensar el concepto de mundo circundante en la determinación de la noción de paraestrato. Palabras clave: Estrato; Geología de la moral; Codificación; Territorialización; Espacio: The article proposes a reading of the chapter “10000 BC. The Geology of Morals ” from the perspective of an ontology of space. We will deal specifically with the concept of stratum. In the first and second paragraphs we will show that every strate is composed of both material and semiotic aspects. In order to do so we will develop some notions of geology and lingüistics used by the authors. Then, paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 will deal, succesivelly, with the concepts of substratum, epistratum and paraestratum. Three fundamental aspects of actual space are configured in the articulation of these three concepts: territorialization, relative deterritorialization and codification/decodification. This tipology of strates gives an account of spatial diversity and it will be studied through some of the sources utilized by Deleuze and Guattari. The thought of Pia Laviosa Zambotti will receive special attention since her work is an essential source of the tipology of strates. Some aspects of the thoughts of Jacques Monod and Jakob Von Uexküll will also be taken into account, especially those concerning the concept of umwelt and paraestratum. Key Words: Stratum; Geology of morals; Codification; Territorialization; Space. (shrink)

In Différence et répétition, the transcendental field is presented through the concepts of Idea and intensity. A lot has been said about these concepts, but the relation between them is still a subject of dispute. In this article we aim to shed light upon this knot. First, we will show that intensity is actual, and not virtual nor intermediate like some interpretations suggest. In this point, our reading of the book from 1968 is complemented with Le pli. Leibniz et le (...) Baroque, to show that the actual status of intensity remains the same in the late works of Deleuze. Then, we will explore the relation between intensity and the three characters of the Idea and with the dramatization commanding actualization. After that, the bond between Idea and intensity will be thought through the problem of expression. This results, at last, in a complex articulation between these two planes from the point of view of their order of constitution. In this point, it will be key to put together concepts from both Différence et répétition and Logique du sens. (shrink)

It is conventional wisdom that appreciating the role of luck in our moral lives should make us more sparing with blame. But views of moral responsibility that allow luck to augment a person’s blameworthiness are in tension with this wisdom. I resolve this tension: our common moral luck partially generates a duty to forgo retributively blaming the blameworthy person at least sometimes. So, although luck can amplify the blame that a person deserves, luck also partially generates a duty not to (...) give the blameworthy person the retributive blame that he deserves at least sometimes. (shrink)

The received view is that Kant denies all moral luck. But I show how Kant affirms constitutive moral luck in passages concerning radical evil from Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. First, I explicate Kant’s claims about radical evil. It is a morally evil disposition that all human beings have necessarily, at least for the first part of their lives, and for which they are blameworthy. Second, since these properties about radical evil appear to contradict Kant’s even more famous (...) claims about imputation, ‘ought implies can’, and free will, I unpack Henry Allison’s proof of radical evil and show how it is consistent with interpretations of Kant’s broader views about morality. Third, I define and illustrate the category of constitutive moral luck and argue that Kant embraces the existence of constitutive moral luck given Allison-style interpretations of radical evil. This provides a reason for philosophers to reject the received view, and it creates an occasion for Kantians and Kant scholars to check their reasons if they deny moral luck. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Martin Luther affirms his theological position by saying “Here I stand. I can do no other.” Supposing that Luther’s claim is true, he lacks alternative possibilities at the moment of choice. Even so, many libertarians have the intuition that he is morally responsible for his action. One way to make sense of this intuition is to assert that Luther’s action is indirectly free, because his action inherits its freedom and moral responsibility from earlier actions when he had alternative possibilities and (...) those earlier directly free actions formed him into the kind of person who must refrain from recanting. Surprisingly, libertarians have not developed a full account of indirectly free actions. I provide a more developed account. First, I explain the metaphysical nature of indirectly free actions such as Luther’s. Second, I examine the kind of metaphysical and epistemic connections that must occur between past directly free actions and the indirectly free action. Third, I argue that an attractive way to understand the kind of derivative moral responsibility at issue involves affirming the existence of resultant moral luck. (shrink)

Philosophers often consider problems of free will and moral luck in isolation from one another, but both are about control and moral responsibility. One problem of free will concerns the difficult task of specifying the kind of control over our actions that is necessary and sufficient to act freely. One problem of moral luck refers to the puzzling task of explaining whether and how people can be morally responsible for actions permeated by factors beyond their control. This chapter explicates and (...) assesses skeptical, compatibilist, and libertarian approaches to moral luck. First, I argue that what makes the above problems of free will and moral luck distinct is largely their emphasis on different kinds of luck. Second, I describe and evaluate skeptical arguments from constitutive and circumstantial luck that it is impossible to act freely. Third, I explicate and assess various support and implication relationships between various kinds of compatibilism and libertarianism, on the one hand, and causal, constitutive, circumstantial, and resultant moral luck, on the other. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between the proportion of women serving on firms' boards of directors and the extent to which these same firms engaged in charitable giving activities. Using a sample of 185 Fortune 500 firms for the 1991-1994 time period, the results provide strong support for the notion that firms having a higher proportion of women serving on their boards do engage in charitable giving to a greater extent than firms having a lower proportion of women serving on (...) their boards. Further, the results suggest a link between the percentage of women on boards and firm philanthropy in the areas of community service and the arts, but found no link between women boardmembers and firm giving to support education or public policy issues. The implications of the findings and some areas for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This article is a synopsis of a triarchic theory of human intelligence. The theory comprises three subtheories: a contextual subtheory, which relates intelligence to the external world of the individual; a componential subtheory, which relates intelligence to the individual's internal world; and a two-facet subtheory, which relates intelligence to both the external and internal worlds. The contextual subtheory defines intelligent behavior in terms of purposive adaptation to, shaping of, and selection of real-world environments relevant to one's life. The normal course (...) of intelligent functioning in the everyday world entails adaptation to the environment; when the environment does not fit one's values, aptitudes, or interests, one may attempt to shape the environment so as to achieve a better person-environment fit; when shaping fails, an attempt may be made to select a new environment that provides a better fit. The two-facet subtheory further constrains this definition by regarding as most relevant to the demonstration of intelligence contextually intelligent behavior that involves either adaptation to novelty, automatization of information processing, or both. Efficacious automatization of processing allows allocation of additional resources to the processing of novelty in the environment; conversely, efficacious adaptation to novelty allows automatization to occur earlier in one's experience with new tasks and situations. The componential subtheory specifies the mental mechanisms responsible for the learning, planning, execution, and evaluation of intelligent behavior. Metacomponents of intelligence control one's information processing and enable one to monitor and later evaluate it; performance components execute the plans constructed by the metacomponents; knowledge-acquisition components selectively encode and combine new information and selectively compare new information to old so as to allow new information to be learned. (shrink)

According to the Free Will Explanation of a traditional view of hell, human freedom explains why some people are in hell. It also explains hell’s punishment and finality: persons in hell have freely developed moral vices that are their own punishment and that make repentance psychologically impossible. So, even though God continues to desire reconciliation with persons in hell, damned persons do not want reconciliation with God. But this moral vice explanation of hell’s finality is implausible. I argue that God (...) can and would make direct or indirect alterations in their character to give them new motivational reasons that re-enable their freedom to repent. Subsequently, I argue that it is probable that each damned person will be saved eventually, because there is a potential infinity of opportunities for free repentance. Thus, if the Free Will Explanation’s descriptions of hell and divine love are correct, it is highly probable that each person in hell escapes to heaven. (shrink)

First Published in 1980. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The problem of moral luck is that a general fact about luck and an intuitive moral principle jointly imply the following skeptical conclusion: human beings are morally responsible for at most a tiny fraction of each action. This skeptical conclusion threatens to undermine the claim that human beings deserve their respective eternal reward and punishment. But even if this restriction on moral responsibility is compatible with the doctrine of the final judgment, the quality of one’s afterlife within heaven or hell (...) still appears to be lucky. Utilizing recent responses to the problem of moral luck, I explore several Molinist accounts of the final judgment that resolve both theological problems of moral luck. Some of these accounts entirely eliminate moral luck while others ensure that the moral luck involved in the judgment is overall good luck. (DOWNLOAD the published version at the external link below.). (shrink)

Human persons can act with libertarian freedom in heaven according to one prominent view, because they have freely acquired perfect virtue in their pre-heavenly lives such that acting rightly in heaven is volitionally necessary. But since the character of human persons is not perfect at death, how is their character perfected? On the unilateral model, God alone completes the perfection of their character, and, on the cooperative model, God continues to work with them in purgatory to perfect their own character. (...) I argue that although both models can make sense of all human persons enjoying free will in heaven on various assumptions, the cooperative model allows all human persons in heaven to enjoy a greater degree of freedom. This consideration about the degree of heavenly freedom provides a reason for God to implement the cooperative model. (shrink)

A purely metaphysical formulation of physicalism is surprisingly elusive. One popular slogan is, 'There is nothing over and above the physical'. Problems with this arise on two fronts. First, it is difficult to explain what makes a property 'physical' without appealing to the methodology of physics or to particular ways in which properties are known. This obviously introduces epistemic features into the core of a metaphysical issue. Second, it is difficult to cash out 'over-and-aboveness' in a way that is rigorous, (...) metaphysically pure and extensionally apt for the purposes of the debate. In this paper I will touch on the first problem, but I wish to focus on the second. In particular, I will focus on the claim that supervenience theses cannot define physicalism because they allow classical emergentist dualism through the physicalist door [Horgan 1993; Kim 1998; Wilson 2005]. I will argue that when the relevant supervenience thesis is metaphysical, emergentism is excluded. Against recent arguments to the contrary, I maintain that this is the case even given necessitarianism about natural laws [Wilson 2005]. I will argue that a necessitarian with emergentist sympathies will be forced either into a type of quasi-panpsychism, where our basic physical properties contain the illicit seeds of mentality at their core, or she will be forced to admit that emergence laws are not necessary after all. Either way, the combination of necessitarianism and emergentism does not provide a counterexample to supervenience physicalism. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive review of the psychological literature on wisdom by leading experts in the field. It covers the philosophical and sociocultural foundations of wisdom, and showcases the measurement and teaching of wisdom. The connection of wisdom to intelligence and personality is explained alongside its relationship with morality and ethics. It also explores the neurobiology of wisdom, its significance in medical decision-making, and wise leadership. How to develop wisdom is discussed and practical information is given about how to instil (...) it in others. The book is accessible to a wide readership and includes virtually all of the major theories of wisdom, as well as the full range of research on wisdom as it is understood today. It takes both a basic-science and applied focus, making it useful to those seeking to understand wisdom scientifically, and to those who wish to apply their understanding of wisdom to their own work. (shrink)

Putnam and Searle famously argue against computational theories of mind on the skeptical ground that there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function a physical system is computing: both conclude (albeit for somewhat different reasons) that virtually any physical object computes every computable function, implements every program or automaton. There has been considerable discussion of Putnam's and Searle's arguments, though as yet there is little consensus as to what, if anything, is wrong with these arguments. In (...) the present paper we show that an analogous line of reasoning can be raised against the numerical measurement (i.e., numerical representation) of physical magnitudes, and we argue that this result is a reductio ad absurdum of the challenge to computational skepticism. We then use this reductio to get clearer about both (i) what's wrong with Putnam's and Searle's arguments against computationalism, and (ii) what can be learned about both computational implementation and numerical measurement from the shortcomings of both sorts of skeptical argument. (shrink)

Looking back at the reception of Kant's philosophy in the twentieth century, it is striking to see how many philosophers tried to enlist Kant in their campaigns to "overcome" and "eliminate" metaphysics. Twentieth-century Kant scholars often shared their contemporaries' hostility to metaphysics, especially the "dogmatic" rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff. These attitudes can still be found within the discipline and among Kant scholars, but much has changed in the last thirty years. Metaphysics has been revived as a central part of (...) both analytic and continental philosophy. And historical, contextualist Kant scholarship has established that there are important continuities between Kant and his rationalist... (shrink)

The restricted semantic ellipsis hypothesis, we have argued, is committed to an enormous number of multiply ambiguous expressions, the introduction of which gains us no extra explanatory power. We should, therefore, reject it. We should also spurn the original version since: (a) it entails the restricted version and (b) it incorrectly declares that, whenever a speaker makes an assertion by uttering an unembedded word or phrase, the expression uttered has illocutionary force.Once rejected, the semantic ellipsis hypothesis cannot account for the (...) many exceptions to the syntactic ellipsis hypothesis. So, we can safely infer that the Claim is true.(1)The Claim: Speakers can make assertions by uttering ordinary, unembedded, words and phrases.To the degree that the Claim reallyis in tension with the primacy of sentences (i.e., the view that (a) only sentences can be used to make assertions and (b) only sentences are meaningful in isolation) this doctrine must also be rejected. (shrink)

We focus on Folieism, Rey's brand of Eliminativism about languages, according to which words, sentences, phonemes, and such, and consequently languages, do not exist; they are intentional inexistents, on a par with unicorns that speakers, under an ineluctable illusion, mistake as real. We present a simplified reconstruction of his argument, challenge what we take to be its presuppositions, and argue that its conclusion has unwanted social/ethical consequences and construes linguistics writ large in a strange light, as a kind of pretense, (...) leading us to reject Folieism. (shrink)

Someone owes gratitude to God for something only if God benefits her and is morally responsible for doing so. These requirements concerning benefit and moral responsibility generate reasons to doubt that human beings owe gratitude to God for their own moral goodness. First, moral character must be generated by its possessor’s own free choices, and so God cannot benefit moral character in human beings. Second, owed gratitude requires being morally responsible for providing a benefit, which rules out owed gratitude to (...) God because God must do what is best. Both reasons are unpersuasive. I argue that God can benefit morally good character in human beings with and without their free choices. Subsequently, I argue against views of moral responsibility that preclude divine moral responsibility and argue that influential accounts of moral responsibility preserve it. Thus, these two requirements generate no problem for owed gratitude to God. (shrink)

This book is a small handbook designed to give Institutional Review Board (IRB) members the information they need to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects in a way that is both effective and efficient. The chapters of this book are short and to the point. Topic-specific chapters list the criteria IRB members should use to determine how to vote on specific kinds of studies and offer practical advice on what IRB members should do before and during full-committee meetings.

Several scholars and many religiously conservative thinkers have recently charged that Hitler’s ideas about race and racial struggle derived from the theories of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), either directly or through intermediate sources. So, for example, the historian Richard Weikart, in his book From Darwin to Hitler , maintains: “No matter how crooked the road was from Darwin to Hitler, clearly Darwinism and eugenics smoothed the path for Nazi ideology, especially for the Nazi stress on expansion, war, racial struggle, and racial (...) extermination.” In a subsequent book, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress, Weikart argues that Darwin’s “evolutionary ethics drove him [Hitler] to engage in behavior that the rest of us consider abominable.” Other critics have also attempted to forge a strong link between Darwin’s theory and Hitler’s biological notions. In the 2008 film “Expelled,” a documentary defense of Intelligent Design, the Princeton trained philosopher David Berlinski, in conversation with Weikart, confidently asserts: “If you open Mein Kampf and read it, especially if you can read it in German, the correspondence between Darwinian ideas and Nazi ideas just leaps from the page.” John Gray, former professor at the London School of Economics, does allow that Hitler’s Darwinism was “vulgar.” Hannah Arendt also appears to have endorsed the connection when she declared: “Underlying the Nazis’ belief in race laws as the expression of the law of nature in man, is Darwin’s idea of man as the product of a natural development which does not necessarily stop with the present species of human being.” Put “Darwin” and “Hitler” in a search engine and several million hits will be returned, most from religiously and politically conservative websites, articles, and books. (shrink)

In a series of articles and in a recent book, What Darwin Got Wrong, Jerry Fodor has objected to Darwin’s principle of natural selection on the grounds that it assumes nature has intentions.1 Despite the near universal rejection of Fodor’s argument by biologists and philosophers of biology (myself included),2 I now believe he was almost right. I will show this through a historical examination of a principle that Darwin thought as important as natural selection, his principle of divergence. The principle (...) was designed to explain a phenomenon obvious to any observer of nature, namely, that animals and plants form a hierarchy of clusters. Theodosius Dobzhansky made this the motivating observation of his great synthesizing work, Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937): “the living world is not a single array of individuals in which any two variants are connected by a series of intergrades, but an array of more or less distinctly separate arrays, intermediates between which are absent or at least rare. . . Small.. (shrink)