Old Havana: Spirit of the Living City artistically captures the architecture, people, and daily life of La Habana Vieja through the lenses of two visionary photographers and colleagues, one American and the other Cuban. Chip Cooper and Néstor Martí began collaborating in 2008, documenting the picturesque features of the oldest and most historically rich quarter in Cuba's capital city at the behest of Eusebio Leal Spengler, the historian of the city of Havana and the director of the Habana Vieja restoration (...) project. Cooper's and Martí's images highlight the spirit of change and renewal underlying the restoration of this international treasure and its revival as a vibrant business and residential area. Inspired by the work of twentieth century American photographer Walker Evans, Cooper and Martí, through perspectives both unique and deeply entwined, capture the humanity of the city, in a language at once universal and transcendent. (shrink)

Job: the soul's pathfinder.--Plato: intimations of immortality.--Kant: a protest against materialism.--Hegel: theistic evolution.--Persistence of ideas: the spirit in the trend of thought.--Robert Browning: the subtle assertor of the soul.

It is beliefs of this sort--de linguabeliefs--that Robert Fiengo and Robert May explore in this book.

The idea that nous comes from without, deriving from Aristotle’s Generation of Animals II.3, became a key element in late ancient and Medieval accounts of human rationality drawing on Aristotle’s De Anima. But two very different understandings of the concept were around (often occurring next to each other): either it was taken to refer to the human capacity for thought and its origin outside the natural ontogenetic process; or it was taken to stand for the most perfect act of thought, (...) existing separately as the supreme divinity, and becoming, hopefully, ours at the very climax of human development. This paper shows how these two influential conceptions derive from the work of the two greatest scholars of Aristotle’s school, Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias, respectively. More to the point: it shows that (i) there is an intriguing philosophical story to be told of how the notion developed from one understanding to the other, this being the core of a larger story of nous from without in Western thought; and that (ii) this story sheds new light on what was at stake in the early – genuinely Peripatetic – reception of Aristotle’s account of nous (as contrasted with later, heavily Platonized, interpretations). (shrink)

Divine Motivation theory is a major contribution both to the philosophy of religion, particularly the philosophy of religious ethics, and to general ethical theory. It is demanding reading, because it is long and complex and about difficult issues. It is also rewarding, because it is suggestive and highly original, written and argued with philosophical intelligence and disciplined care, and rich in systematic connections and explanations of them.

This book diagnoses a crisis facing philosophy – and the humanities more broadly – and sketches a path toward institutionalizing socially engaged approaches to philosophical research.

How are dependent (or linked) premises to be distinguished from independent (or convergent) premises? Deductive validity, sometimes proposed as a necessary condition for depende'nce, cannot be, for the premises of both inductive and deductive but invalid arguments can be dependent. The question is really this: When do multiple premises for a certain conclusion fonn one argument for that conclusion and when do they form multiple arguments? Answer: Premises are dependent when the evidence they offer for their conclusion is more than (...) the ordinary sum of their probabilities. Ordinary sums are defined in the paper. (shrink)

The place of self-concern in Christian love is studied, beginning with Fénelon's extreme claim that in perfect love for God one would desire nothing for its own sake except that God's will be done. This view is criticized. A distinction is made between self-interest (desire for one's own good for its own sake) and other sorts of self-concern; and it is argued that self-concern has an important role in the Christian virtues, but that self-interest has a less important role than (...) other sorts of self-concern. Finally, it is argued that Eros and Agape are not opposites, but Agape includes a certain sort of Eros. (shrink)

This paper is about two kinds of mental content and how they are related. We are going to call them representation and indication. We will begin with a rough characterization of each. The differences, and why they matter, will, hopefully, become clearer as the paper proceeds.

Because of their vastness and rather fragmentary character, the writings of Leibniz leave the student unusually dependent on secondary literature for guidance. That the literature on Leibniz is exceptionally good is all the more reason to welcome the kind of orientation to the riches of both primary and secondary sources that this Companion aims to provide. Announcing itself as “the most accessible and comprehensive guide to Leibniz currently available” for nonspecialists and “a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of (...) Leibniz” for specialists, it lives up to both aspirations remarkably well. (shrink)

Numerous labor-management issues possess ethical dimensions and pose ethical questions. In this article, the authors discuss four labor-management issues that present important contemporary problems: union organizing, labor-management negotiations, employee involvement programs, and union obligations of fair representation. In the authors view, labor and management too often view their ethical obligations as beginning and ending at the law''s boundaries. Contemporary business realities suggest that cooperative and enlightened modes of interaction between labor and management seem appropriate.

Our understanding of the sense of taste is largely based on research designed and interpreted in terms of the traditional four tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, and now a few more. This concept of basic tastes has no rational definition to test, and thus it has not been tested. As a demonstration, a preliminary attempt to test one common but arbitrary psychophysical definition of basic tastes is included in this article; that the basic tastes are unique in being able (...) to account for other tastes. This definition was falsified in that other stimuli do about as well as the basic words and stimuli. To the extent that this finding might show analogies with other studies of receptor, neural, and psychophysical phenomena, the validity of the century-long literature of the science of taste based on a few is called into question. The possible origins, meaning, and influence of this concept are discussed. Tests of the model with control studies are suggested in all areas of taste related to basic tastes. As a stronger alternative to the basic tradition, the advantages of the across-fiber pattern model are discussed; it is based on a rational data-based hypothesis, and has survived attempts at falsification. Such has found broad acceptance in many neural systems. (shrink)

Religion in Late Modernity runs against the grain of common suppositions of contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. Against the common supposition that basic religious terms have no real reference but are mere functions of human need, the book presents a pragmatic theory of religious symbolism in terms of which the cognitive engagement of the Ultimate is of a piece with the cognitive engagement of nature and persons. Throughout this discussion, Neville develops a late-modern conception of God that is defensible (...) in a global theological public. Against the common supposition that religion is on the retreat in late modernity except in fundamentalist forms, the author argues that religion in our time is a stimulus to religiously oriented scholarship, a civilizing force among world societies, a foundation for obligation in politics, a source for healthy social experimentation, and the most important mover of soul. (shrink)

The Renaissance development of science fulfilled the ancient ideal of integrating quantitative and qualitative thinking, but failed to recognize valuational thinking and thus deprived moral, aesthetic, and political thought of cognitive status. The task of this book is to reconstruct the concept of thinking in order to exhibit valuation, not reason, as the foundation for thinking and to integrate valuational with quantitative and qualitative modes. Part I explains the broad thesis, interpreting the problem of the foundations for thinking and providing (...) a general theory of value. Part II explains the role of valuation at the imaginative level of thinking with discussions of synthesis, perception, form, and art. The method of reconstruction requires a cosmology that is generated in successive waves. (shrink)

Conflicts between science and religion revolve about fundamental assumptions more often than they do facts or theories. The key postulates that have guided science since the Enlightenment appear to be wholly inadequate to describe properly the development of ecosystems. An emended set of tenets adequate to the ecological narrative also significantly ameliorates the adversarial nature of the dialogue between scientists and theists.

The central idea of T. M. Scanlon’s “contractualism” has been well known to ethical theorists since Scanlon 1982. In What We Owe to Each Other it has grown into a comprehensive and impressively developed theory of the nature of right and wrong—or at least of what Scanlon regards as the most important of the “normative kinds” that go under the names of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Rejecting aggregative consequentialism, Scanlon aims to articulate principles of right and wrong for individual action in (...) such a way that the interests of each affected person are taken fairly into account. (shrink)

This paper criticises John Harris's attempts to defend an account of a ‘harmed condition’ that can stand independently of intuitions about what is ‘normal’. I argue that because Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, determining whether a particular individual is in a harmed condition or not will sometimes require making reference to the normal capacities of their sex. Consequently, Harris's account is unable to play the role he intends for it in debates about the ethics of human enhancement.

Through close textual analysis, Ackermann (philosophy, U. of Massachusetts, Amherst) exposes the underlying unity and consistency in Nietzsche's thought. He challenges the common view that Nietzsche's work can best be understood as a collection of isolated insights and that each of several discrete periods of thought are based on a different set of values. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

One tradition of solving the surprise exam paradox, started by Robert Binkley and continued by Doris Olin, Roy Sorensen and Jelle Gerbrandy, construes surpriseepistemically and relies upon the oddity of propositions akin to G. E. Moore’s paradoxical ‘p and I don’t believe that p.’ Here I argue for an analysis that evolves from Olin’s. My analysis is different from hers or indeed any of those in the tradition because it explicitly recognizes that there are two distinct reductios (...) at work in the student’s paradoxical argument against the teacher. The weak reductio is easy to fault. Its invalidity determines the structure of the strong reductio, so-calledbecause it is more difficult to refute, but ultimately unsound because of reasons associated with Moore-paradoxicality. Previous commentators have not always appreciated this difference, with the result that the strong reductio is not addressed, or the response to the weak reductio is superfl uous. This is one reason why other analyses in the tradition are vulnerable to objections to which mine is not. (shrink)

Galen of Pergamum developed a new notion of the vegetative soul as seated in the liver, in a synthetic appropriation of Platonic tripartition, Aristotelian hylomorphism, Hippocratic elemental theory and Hellenistic science. The traditional analogy between plant and human being receives a firmer grounding in Galen, making the model of the plant more prominent than ever in the discussion of the vegetative soul. While most of the particular functions of the vegetative soul in human beings are well-defined by Galen, its generative (...) and formative powers remain unexplained, since the stuff to which we attribute these powers seems to lack intelligence. (shrink)

In this paper a few facts about Feynman diagrams and the perturbation expansion of the S-matrix are reviewed and discussed in connection with the question of the ontological status of virtual particles.

This essay assesses the rationale for regulating research administrators as carefully as they regulate researchers. The reasons for such regulation are identical: protecting scientific integrity, ensuring responsible use of public funds, addressing the lack of effective recourse for victims, creating negative consequences for misbehaving actors, and addressing high incentives for misconduct. Whereas the reasons compelling us to regulate research administrators are obvious, counterarguments to administrative oversight are based on suggestions that the incidence and prevalence of cases of administrative misconduct are (...) too low to warrant formal regulation. I briefly describe examples of the phenomenon drawn from publicly available records. My analysis suggests that the misconduct of research administrators is both serious and worthy of better oversight. Improved oversight of research administration will help steward tax dollars appropriately and enhance the overall integrity of the scientific record and of the free pursuit of knowledge more generally. (shrink)

Restricting a person’s liberty presents society with many inherent ethical challenges. The historical purposes of confinement have included punishment, penitence, containment, rehabilitation, and habilitation. While the purposes are indeed complex, multifaceted, and at times ambiguous or contradictory, the fact of incarceration intrinsically creates many ethical challenges for psychiatrists working in correctional settings. Role definition of a psychiatrist may be ambiguous, with potential tensions between forensic and therapeutic demands. Privacy may be limited or absent and confidentiality may be compromised. Patient autonomy (...) may be threatened to address real or perceived security concerns. Care delivery may actually have harmful consequences in court cases for pretrial detainees or lethal consequences for those under a death sentence. An absence of data and targeted research hampers the development of evidence-based care delivery for the disenfranchised, understudied, and disproportionately ill prisoner population. In this review paper, I discuss a few of the challenges and dilemmas routinely faced and present a series of questions. Where feasible, proposed resolutions are offered. (shrink)

Rule violations have usually been studied from a third-person perspective, identifying situational factors that render violations more or less likely. A first-person perspective of the agent that actively violates the rules, on the other hand, is only just beginning to emerge. Here we show that committing a rule violation sensitises towards subsequent negative stimuli as well as subsequent authority-related stimuli. In a Prime-Probe design, we used an instructed rule-violation task as the Prime and a word categorisation task as the Probe. (...) Also, we employed a control condition that used a rule inversion task as the Prime. Probe targets were categorised faster after a violation relative to after a rule-based response if they related to either, negative valence or authority. Inversions, however, primed only negative stimuli and did not accelerate the categorisation of authority-related stimuli. A heightened sensitivity towards authority-related targets thus seems to be specific to rule violations. A control experiment showed that these effects cannot be explained in terms of semantic priming. Therefore, we propose that rule violations necessarily activate authority-related representations that make rule violations qualitatively different from simple rule inversions. (shrink)

Richard Boyd’s “Finite Beings, Finite Goods” is exactly the sort of response a philosopher hopes to evoke. It is perceptive and fair-minded in its reading and criticism of my work, illuminating the agreements and disagreements and the motivations on both sides, and showing points at which my position stands in need of more adequate development. At the same time it is much more than a response, offering a fuller and richer development, on several points, of what was already, in my (...) opinion, the most plausible and promising version of naturalist moral realism. Here I will try to respond in a similar spirit, though on a smaller scale, taking up first issues about consequentialism, and helplessness, and then more metaethical issues, involving what I have called “the critical stance.”. (shrink)