In 1996 the Pope John Center (now the National Catholic Bioethics Center) offered a workshop for bishops to examine Pope John Paul II's landmark encyclical Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life). This collection of essays represents the proceedings of that workshop for scholars and students.

We investigated how people design interventions to affect the outcomes of causal systems. We propose that the abstract structural properties of a causal system, in addition to people's content and mechanism knowledge, influence decisions about how to intervene. In Experiment 1, participants preferred to intervene at specific locations in a causal chain regardless of which content variables occupied those positions. In Experiment 2, participants were more likely to intervene on root causes versus immediate causes when they were presented with a (...) long-term goal versus a short-term goal. These results show that the structural properties of a causal system can guide the design of interventions. (shrink)

COMPARING LAW COMPARING RELIGION -- THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION AND ITS CULTURED DESPISERS -- INTRODUCING RELIGION -- Index of Authors.

Bertrand Russell sat in the House of Lords as the third Earl Russell from 1931 to 1970. In these nearly 40 years as a Labour peer, Russell proved to be a fitful attender and infrequent participant in the upper house—speaking only six times. This paper examines each of these interventions—studying not just the speeches themselves but also their genesis and impact within Parliament and without. Of all the controversial and important foreign and domestic issues faced by Parliament (...) over these four decades, it was matters of peace and war which prompted Russell to take advantage of his hereditary position and, more importantly, of the national forum which the Lords' chamber provided him. (shrink)

Abstract:Russell’s receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950 is one of the best known facts about him. What is less appreciated in the political and intellectual context of that award. This essay examines that context and the evolution of Russell’s public and intellectual reputation in the immediate post-war period.

Even in a life full of unusual achievement and distinction, Bertrand Russell managed the remarkable feat of dying twice—first, in China in 1921, and then, in Wales in 1970. He prompted, therefore, two distinct sets of obituaries, written five decades and much controversy apart. This paper examines both clutches of obituary notices, traces Russell’s evolving public renown over the twentieth century, and makes plain how he himself set the contours of much of this memorializing thanks to his own (...) many autobiographical writings. (shrink)

BackgroundThere is a growing interest in using cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) with people who have Asperger syndrome and comorbid mental health problems.AimsTo examine whether modified group CBT for clinically significant anxiety in an Asperger syndrome population is feasible and likely to be efficacious.MethodUsing a randomised assessor-blind trial, 52 individuals with Asperger syndrome were randomised into a treatment arm or a waiting-list control arm. After 24 weeks, those in the waiting-list control arm received treatment, while those initially randomised to treatment were followed (...) up for 24 weeks.ResultsThe conversion rate for this trial was high (1.6:1), while attrition was 13%. After 24 weeks, there was no significant difference between those randomised to the treatment arm compared with those randomised to the waiting-list control arm on the primary outcome measure, the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety.ConclusionsTrials of psychological therapies with this population are feasible. Larger definitive trials are now needed. (shrink)

Buddhist Scriptures: A Bibliography. Compiled by Edward Conze, edited and revised by Lewis Lancaster. Garland Publishing, Inc., New York 1982. xvi + 161pp. $25.00.

The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.

Russell Goodman tells the story of the development of philosophy in America from the mid-18th century to the late 19th century. The key figures in this story, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the writers of The Federalist, and the romantics Emerson and Thoreau, were not professors but men of the world, whose deep formative influence on American thought brought philosophy together with religion, politics, and literature.

This paper attempts a critical examination of the thesis that an apprenticeship to a Lancaster druggist was, for Edward Frankland, a wholly inappropriate preparation for a career in chemistry. This view, which stems directly from Frankland himself, is defective in several ways. It fails to take into account certain benefits which he accepted as valuable; it implies an exceptional degree of ‘negligence’ which was in fact quite typical; it ignores certain positive indicators of the value of such experience; and (...) it involves questionable value-judgments on the behaviour of one individual, the druggist Stephen Ross. Although Frankland's perspective may be no longer acceptable, the reasons for its inadequacy are perhaps the most important aspect of the whole affair. Their identification raises questions of historiography of wider significance, while the whole episode underlines certain issues in scientific training that were to become crucial in the growth of Victorian chemistry in Britain. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein and certain of his friends and followers have offered an interesting answer to the question of the relation “one fact [must] have to another in order to be capable of being a symbol for that other”. The answer in brief, as Russell puts it, is that, “in order that a certain sentence should assert a certain fact there must … be something in common between the structure of the sentence and the structure of the fact”. Wittgenstein himself (...) in the Tractatus usually denominates this common element as logical structure. The sentence is said to picture its fact; it reflects, mirrors, shows or exhibits by means of its own structure the structure of the fact it is about. Critics and interpreters generally agree with Russell's broad characterization of the theory but disagree greatly as to the exact nature of this postulated common structure. Consequently, the evaluation of the theory which this paper proposes to make must include an examination of its several alternative interpretations. (shrink)

I present an answer to the title question which relates Russell’s writings to a remark by C.D. Broad. Russell shared the same concerns as Broad about the new postgraduate students at the University of Cambridge but instead of voicing them, his writings left a problem.