This essay explores the question Is Nel Noddings a visionary who sees past the constraints of contemporary education or is she, like Don Quixote, madly tilting at windmills in her description and defense of happiness as an educational aim?Viewing the educational aim of happiness as an ideal raises substantial challenges for the practicality of Noddings’s ideas.

In the inaugural issue of this journal, David Tyfield used some recent discussions about "meaning finitism" to conclude that the sociology of scientific knowledge is an intellectually hopeless basis on which to erect an intelligible study of science. In contrast, the authors show that Tyfield's argument rests on some profound misunderstandings of the SSK. They show that his mischaracterization of SSK is in fact systematic and is based on lines of argument that are at best incoherent.

Molinism, which says that God has middle knowledge, offers one of the most impressive and popular ways of combining libertarian creaturely freedom with full providential control by God. The aim of this paper is to explain, motivate, and defend a heretofore overlooked version of Molinism that I call ‘Modest Molinism’. In Section 1, I explain Modest Molinism and make an initial case for it. Then, in Sections 2 and 3, I defend Modest Molinism against Dean (...) Zimmerman’s anti-Molinist argument, which is directed at all versions of Molinism, including Modest Molinism. Zimmerman’s anti-Molinist argument combines two distinct and separable challenges to Molinism that I call the ‘Irrelevance Objection’ and the ‘Extreme Manipulation Objection’. Despite the fact that Zimmerman intertwines these two objections, they require separate treatment. Thus, Section 2 will raise concerns about Zimmerman’s Irrelevance Objection and Section 3 will focus on concerns about Zimmerman’s Extreme Manipulation Objection. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the possibility of a Quantum Molinism : such a view applies an analogue of the Molinistic account of free will‘s compatibility with God’s foreknowledge to God’s knowledge of (supposedly) indeterministic events at a quantum level. W e ask how (and why) a providential God could care for and know about a world with this kind of indeterminacy. We consider various formulations of such a Quantum Molinism, and after rejecting a number of options arrive (...) at one seemingly coherent formulation. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer has argued that Molinism does not constitute a response to the argument that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom. I argue that T. Ryan Byerly’s recent work on the mechanics of foreknowledge sheds light on this issue. It shows that Fischer’s claim is ambiguous, and that it may turn out to be false on at least one reading, but only if the Molinist can explain how God knows true counterfactuals of freedom.

Philosopher Greg Welty contributed a chapter entitled ‘Molinist Gunslingers: God and the Authorship of Sin’, to a book devoted to answering the charge that Calvinism makes God the author of sin. Welty argues that Molinism has the same problems as Calvinism concerning God’s relationship to sin, regardless of what view of human freedom Molinism may affirm. The Molinist believes that God generally uses his knowledge of the possible choices of libertarianly free creatures in order to accomplish his will. (...) But affirming libertarian freedom for humans, he argues, does not help in dealing with the question of God’s relationship to evil. Therefore, Molinism is no better than Calvinism, at least concerning this issue. In response to Welty, I agree with him that Molinism does not have a moral advantage over what he calls ‘mysterian, apophatic’ Calvinism, but Molinists don’t claim that it does, and I argue that, contra Welty, Molinism indeed does have a moral advantage over the Calvinist versions that do employ causal determinism. Welty does not take ‘intentions’ into consideration in his argument, and this is a serious flaw. In the libertarian model of Molinism, intent originates in the doer of evil. However, in the compatibilist model of causal determinism, ultimately God implants intent. Thus, adherents of causal determinism have difficulty not laying responsibility at the feet of God. (shrink)

Several philosophers and theologians have attempted to formulate monergistic, soft libertarian accounts of salvation. These accounts hold that the sinner has the ability to either resist or to do nothing at all with God’s universally given saving grace, in which latter case God will save her. However, I wonder with Cyr and Flummer whether these accounts go far enough because the nonresistant sinner voluntarily remains quiescent and is therefore arguably praiseworthy. I aim to remedy this alleged weakness by formulating a (...) possible account on which it never crosses the nonresistant sinner’s mind to resist, making her quiescence an involuntary omission. For all sinners whose minds it crosses to resist, they, on the proposed account, freely choose to resist. Combining Molinism with the scriptural notion of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, I proceed to explain why it may cross the mind of some sinners and not others to resist. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers John Martin Fischer argues that the Molinist solution to the problem of reconciling divine omniscience with human freedom does not offer such a solution at all. Instead, he maintains, Molina simply presupposes theological compatibilism. However, Fischer construes the problem in terms of sempiternalist omniscience, whereas classical Molinism adopts atemporalism. I argue that, moreover, an atemporalist reformulation of Fischer’s argument designed to show that Molinism is not even consistent is unsuccessful as well, since (...) it employs a transfer principle about causal inaccessibility that Molina rightfully rejects. (shrink)

According to Molinism, logically prior to his creative decree, God knows via middle knowledge the truth value of the counterfactuals or conditionals of creaturely freedom (CFs) and thus what any possible person would do in any given circumstance. Critics of Molinism have pointed out that the Molinist God gets lucky that the CFs allow him to actualize either a world of his liking or even a good-enough world at all. In this paper, I advance and strengthen the popular (...) critique in two ways. First, I specify the kind of luck to which God is subject, which is circumstantial moral luck. Second, and more importantly, I argue that exposure to this luck is problematic because something external to God and beyond his control determines the degree of praiseworthiness he deserves in relevant possible worlds. My main contention is that divine subjection to circumstantial moral luck raises the theoretical costs of Molinism. (shrink)

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)

In this paper, I develop and discuss an argument intended to demonstrate that the Molinist notion of middle knowledge, and in particular the concept of counterfactuals of freedom, is incompatible with the notion of personal responsibility (for created creatures). In Sect. 1, I discuss the Molinist concepts of middle knowledge and counterfactuals of freedom. In Sect. 2, I develop an argument (henceforth, the Transfer of Negative Responsibility Argument, or TNRA) to the effect that, due to their construal of the concepts (...) of middle knowledge and counterfactuals of freedom, Molinists are not entitled to the notion that individuals are personally responsible—even for those actions that they freely perform. I then discuss the only two promising strategies for rejecting the argument in Sects. 3 and 4. Finally, in Sect. 5, I contend that, although TNRA may be unsuccessful as an internal argument against the Molinist, either of the possible strategies for rejecting TNRA poses a difficulty for the Molinist. Both response strategies force the Molinist into adopting a popular compatibilist strategy for rejecting a common negative argument against compatibilism. Thus, if Molinism represents a libertarian—i.e., incompatibilist—account of human freedom (as, e.g., Flint claims in his recent Divine Providence: The Molinist Account , noting that libertarianism is one of the “twin bases of Molinism”), then the discussion of TNRA poses, if not a dilemma , at the very least a serious challenge for the Molinist. (shrink)

Molinists generally see Calvinism as possessing certain liabilities from which Molinism is immune. For example, Molinists have traditionally rejected Calvinism, in part, because it allegedly makes God the author of sin. According to Molina, we ‘should not infer that He is in any way a cause of sin’. However, Greg Welty has recently argued by way of his Gunslingers Argument that, when it comes to God’s relationship to evil, Molinism is susceptible to the same liabilities as Calvinism. If (...) his argument is successful, he has undercut, at least partially, justification for believing in Molinism. While I concede that Welty’s argument is successful in that it does undercut some justification for believing in Molinism, this concession does not entail that, as it relates to the problem of evil, the Calvinist and the Molinist are in the same epistemic position. In this article, I argue that, when it comes to God’s relationship to evil, the Molinist is in a superior epistemic situation to the Calvinist. I do this in two steps. First, I argue for what I call the Robust Felix Culpa Theodicy. Second, I argue that the Robust Felix Culpa Theodicy is incompatible with Calvinism. (shrink)

This paper is a review of Gerald Gaus's The Order of Public Reason. Its initial purpose is to explain how the overall argument of the book is meant to hang together. It also identifies four points at which the argument might be challenged, particularly as it relates to justificatory liberalism’s ‘classical tilt’.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The De Auxiliis Controversy, Molinism, and Physical Premotion:The Christological Implications*Pachomius Walker O.P.From 1582 until 1607, the de Auxiliis controversy consumed much of the attention of Dominicans, Jesuits, and the Papacy.1 The controversy began in 1582 at Salamanca when a Scholastic debate entertained the question of [End Page 607] how Christ's sacrifice was both free and meritorious.2 The Jesuit, Prudencio de Montemayor, claimed that if Christ had been commanded (...) to lay down his life and be crucified, then his action was not free and, therefore, not meritorious.3 The Dominicans, on the other hand, resolved the question of Christ's merit and freedom using what would later come to be known as physical premotion.4 In a word, the de Auxiliis controversy has Christological roots. Even though the controversy quickly engaged other, related questions, a successful adjudication of these conflicting positions must have reference to the Christological truths implicated in the controversy.5 [End Page 608] The goal of this present study, therefore, is to exposit the Christological implications of the de Auxiliis controversy in an effort to reexamine the conflicting proposals about grace.Historically, in order to resolve the confusion about the God-man, the partisans of the debate needed to clarify their differing principles regarding God and man generally. As was soon apparent, however, the parties of the debate had contradictory understandings of basic philosophical principles.6 The participants in the controversy engaged other topics such as man's freedom, God's foreknowledge of future contingents, and predestination.7 It is understandable, therefore, that when Domingo Báñez († 1604), one of Montemayor's principal interlocutors, submitted his list of theses that summarized Montemayor's position, many of them dealt with questions other than those of Christ's merit.8Eventually, the controversy centered upon Luis de Molina's Concordia after its publication in 1588.9 The Concordia became the focus and [End Page 609] touch-point for the debate, since various parties aligned themselves based on their support for or condemnation of the work. The papal Congregation de Auxiliis (1594–1607), initially convoked by Pope Clement VIII, analyzed Molina's work and the positions contained therein. This, again, helped specify the debate. To keep the relevant parties focused and to make clear the lineaments of the controversy, it was helpful to have a standard text to which all parties had reference. Questions about God's grace and man's freedom were concretized through specific questions about Molina's approach to grace, God's knowledge, and predestination and whether his positions agreed with Thomas, Augustine, the Fathers of the Church, and Church councils. Hence, the Controversy de Auxiliis, which began by dealing with questions of Christology, resulted in a debate about the Molinist position as described in the Concordia.The subsequent years of the controversy have retained much of the same breadth: grace, freedom, God's foreknowledge, and predestination.10 The original impetus for the debate—Christology—can many times be overlooked or seen as a historical curiosity11 On one level, passing over the [End Page 610] Christological issues is reasonable: Molina's Concordia was first published after the lines of the debate had already been formed, and thus it is not a work of Christology. In fact, it was only in response to certain objections from Francisco Zumel that Molina included a more explicit treatment of Christ in his second edition.12 While those involved in the debate understood the details of Christ's merit to be a related and important issue, Molina's theological position was no longer seen primarily in terms of Christology.13 Even so, since the action of God in the human soul is nowhere clearer and nowhere more powerful than in the soul of Christ, any attempt to resolve these questions must take the original arena of Christology into account.14 [End Page 611]What follows is an attempt to reexamine the two proposals on grace—that of Molina and that of the Thomists on physical premotion—in Christological terms.15 The main Christological tenets at play are: (1) the fact that the hypostatic union is not of persons, but in the person; (2) that Christ... (shrink)

Contemporary research has showcased many benefits of nostalgia, but its bittersweet character and historical reputation as unhealthy raise the possibility of less favorable impacts. In recent studies, daily diary data highlighted nostalgia’s mixed valence and suggested that nostalgia is more strongly associated with negative feelings. Variables that influence the adaptive or maladaptive dimensions of nostalgia have not yet been fully explored. Recently, a focus on when nostalgia is experienced relative to past and future was introduced in the construct of anticipatory (...) nostalgia, missing the present prematurely before it has become past. Distinct from personal nostalgia, anticipatory nostalgia was found to be characterized by difficulty enjoying the present and a tendency toward sadness and worry. The present study examines the distinctive dynamics at play in anticipatory and personal nostalgia by exploring the relationship between each type of dispositional nostalgia and reported experience with happy and sad stories. The Nostalgia Inventory, the Survey of Anticipatory Nostalgia, and a brief form of the PANAS were completed by 144 undergraduates (110 women), who rated their exposure and reactions to happy and sad stories. Reported frequency of exposure to happy and sad stories was related to dispositional happiness and sadness. Personal and anticipatory nostalgia did not differ in frequency of exposure to happy and sad stories, but they did differ in reactivity to and learning from sad stories. Findings highlight the importance of the timing of nostalgia, consistent with the distinction between nostalgia for the past and nostalgia for what is still present. (shrink)

Public Art has represented a rising artistic genre for the last few decades. Art abandoned museums and galleries to conquer the public space, a fact which gave birth to passionate controversies that cannot be approached only in terms of paradigms of art history. Taking Richard Serra’s controversial sculpture, Tilted Arc, as an example, this article aims at tracing, by means of an interdisciplinary approach, the challenges that public art has been confronted with in the contemporary city.

Hereditary breast and ovarian cancers are frequently attributed to germline mutations in the tumor suppressor genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. BRCA1/2 act to repair double‐strand breaks (DSBs) and suppress the demise of unstable replication forks. Our work elucidated a dynamic interplay between BRCA2 and the WRN DNA helicase/exonuclease defective in the premature aging disorder Werner syndrome. WRN and BRCA2 participate in complementary pathways to stabilize replication forks in cancer cells, allowing them to proliferate. Whether the functional overlap of WRN and BRCA2 (...) is relevant to replication at gaps between newly synthesized DNA fragments, protection of telomeres, and/or metabolism of secondary DNA structures remain to be determined. Advances in understanding the mechanisms elicited during replication stress have prompted the community to reconsider avenues for cancer therapy. Insights from studies of PARP or topoisomerase inhibitors provide working models for the investigation of WRN's mechanism of action. We discuss these topics, focusing on the implications of the WRN‐BRCA2 genetic interaction under conditions of replication stress. (shrink)

Introduction It is a goal in nursing education to promote students’ dignity and facilitate this core value. Students’ experience of dignity is shaped by the student–supervisor relationship. Literature shows limited knowledge about how nursing students experience their own dignity during education. Research aim The aim of the study is to develop an understanding of how nursing students experience their own dignity in relation to supervisors, and what significance these experiences have in education. Research design Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics was chosen as (...) the approach, and narratives and qualitative interviews were conducted. The interpretation process was inspired by Fleming, Gaidys and Robbs. Participants and research context Nineteen nursing students in the final year of their education were included in the study. They represented six different campuses at three different educational institutions. The qualitative interviews took place at the educational institutions. Ethical considerations The research recommendations of the Declaration of Helsinki were followed. Access to the students was given by the educational institutions. All interested students signed a continuous informed consent. Findings Students’ dignity was at stake in encounters with supervisors during education. Decisive for experience of dignity was the supervisor’s ability to confirm the student through acknowledgment, reassurance and seeing them as individuals. Experienced dignity had a crucial impact on students’ life courage and their ability to be present. Discussion The discussion emphasizes the vulnerable dignity of students, the importance of confirmation and the significance perceived dignity has. Conclusion Students’ experiences tilted between perceived dignity and offense, and placed students’ dignity in a vulnerable position. Crucial for perceived dignity was the confirmation the students received from their supervisors. Perceived dignity gave the students courage and increased their ability to be present, which provided better opportunities for learning and development. (shrink)

He shows us that Kierkegaard's expressed intent is to provide readers with the opportunity to choose or reject Christ. He explores the question of who Kierkegaard understands Jesus to be and why he believes that faith or history alone cannot answer this question, claiming that history is meaningful only when it is understood from the perspective of "sacred history." Kierkegaard's Livingroom explores what "sacred history" is, why it is so important to us, and why it depends on an incarnate God. (...) Mercer argues that Kierkegaard is not tilting at windmills but responding to Hegel's view of history and Kant's view of faith, showing that Kierkegaard has much to contribute to the debates on liberalism and post-modernism. (shrink)

Molinism, formerly an invective, is nowadays a topic of philosophy. This book, however, does not deal with the modern renaissance of Middle Knowledge, rather, it explores its proliferation during the 17th and 18th centuries. The focus shifts from reviewing current trends in Church History to rehearsing the metaphysics that backed up Middle Knowledge. Fact, in Molinism, is threefold: It could have been otherwise, it belongs to some possible world, it is necessarily known by the Omniscient. Whereas the classical (...) account of God's foreknowledge rests on its being postvolitional, the Molinist qualification of this account denies that it applies to the counterfactuals. On what else then does it prevolitionally depend that God knows for sure something to happen rather than not to happen? The Salmantine Treatise on God's foreknowledge edited here provides some additional piece of evidence of a deep Molinist disagreement. Though the manuscript was ready for print in 1653, this business failed and the manuscript fell into oblivion along with its author. The Jesuit Luke Wadding (1593-1651) belongs to a number of men from Waterford who at a time, when intolerance forced Catholics into large scale emigration, hopefully turned towards Spain. He must not be confounded with his famous namesake, the Franciscan friar, who was his cousin. (shrink)

Let us begin with the simple observation that applied mathematics can be very tough! It is a common occurrence that basic physical principle instructs us to construct some syntactically simple set of differential equations, but it then proves almost impossible to extract salient information from them. As Charles Peirce once remarked, you can’t get a set of such equations to divulge their secrets by simply tilting at them like Don Quixote. As a consequence, applied mathematicians are often forced to (...) pursue roundabout and shakily rationalized expedients if any useful progress is to be made. Often these provisional and quasi-empirical procedures within applied mathematics loom large in motivating the “anti-realist” or “anti-unificationist” conclusions of Nancy Cartwright and allied authors. (shrink)

In the TV series, Joe Miller is the stop‐cap which keeps James Holden occupied so he does not have time to send constant broadcasts out to the world. When we think about Holden helping others, why he's always in the midst of things, it's helpful to think about what distinguishes Holden from other characters in the series and what makes him unique—that he grew up on a farm. Holden is the exact opposite of Dresden, Strickland, Mao, and Marco. And that's (...) what Naomi loves about him. The Expanse is dark science fiction whose references are to a war of all against all (Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan), to the massacre of American Indians, and to a dark intelligence that maybe intended the ultimate domination of nature. And one of their protagonists is a guy who thinks he's a knight tilting at windmills. (shrink)

Here is an old philosophical puzzle. Take out a coin and look at it. It is a flat disk. Now tilt it so that you look at it on an angle. From an angle, there is some sense in which the tilted coin appears elliptical. But there is also a strong sense in which the tilted coin looks circular, like a flat disk. How can one object look both elliptical and circular at the same time? Thus, the puzzle of the (...) tilted coin. (shrink)

The experience of looking at a tilted penny involves a “phenomenological doubleness” in that it simultaneously seems to be of something circular and of something elliptical. In this paper, I investigate the phenomenological doubleness of this experience by comparing it to another case of phenomenological doubleness––the phenomenological doubleness of seeing an object in a painting. I begin by pointing out some striking similarities between the phenomenological characters of these two experiences. I then argue that these phenomenological characters have a common (...) explanation. More specifically, I argue that the psychological mechanism that explains the phenomenological doubleness of the experience of seeing an object in a painting can be extended to also explain the phenomenological doubleness of the experience of seeing a tilted penny. (shrink)

On a Molinist account of creation and providence, not only is there is a complete set of truths about what every possible person would freely do in any possible set of circumstances, but these conditional truths are part of the very explanation of our existence. Robert Adams has recently argued that the explanatory priority of these conditionals undermines libertarian freedom. In the present essay, I take at close look at Adams’ argument and at the Molinist response of Thomas Flint. After (...) showing that Flint’s response is inadequate, I develop what I believe to be a more successful Molinist response to Adams’ argument. Along the way, I seek to provide some insight into the nature of libertarian freedom and the proper interpretation of the much discussed “principle of alternate possibilities.”. (shrink)

In Miletus, about 550 B.C., together with our world-picture cosmology was born. This book tells the story. In Part One the reader is introduced in the archaic world-picture of a flat earth with the cupola of the celestial vault onto which the celestial bodies are attached. One of the subjects treated in that context is the riddle of the tilted celestial axis. This part also contains an extensive chapter on archaic astronomical instruments. Part Two shows how Anaximander (610-547 B.C.) blew (...) up this archaic world-picture and replaced it by a new one that is essentially still ours. He taught that the celestial bodies orbit at different distances and that the earth floats unsupported in space. This makes him the founding father of cosmology. Part Three discusses topics that completed the new picture described by Anaximander. Special attention is paid to the confrontation between Anaxagoras and Aristotle on the question whether the earth is flat or spherical, and on the battle between Aristotle and Heraclides Ponticus on the question whether the universe is finite or infinite. (shrink)

Cognitive semantic studies have shown that our conceptualization of morality is at least partially metaphorical and that our moral cognition is grounded in some fundamental contrastive categories of our embodied experience in the physical environment. It is argued that our moral cognition is built on a moral metaphor system. Within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory, this study aims to examine the spatial subsystem of moral metaphors in English. We set out with five pairs of moral metaphors that involve the (...) following spatial source concepts: HIGH and LOW, UPRIGHT and TILTED, LEVEL and UNLEVEL, STRAIGHT and CROOKED, and BIG and SMALL. These metaphors were found to constitute the spatial subsystem of moral metaphors in Chinese. Our primary goal is to find out if the five pairs of moral–spatial metaphors are manifested in English as well. To that end we collected linguistic data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and searched Google Images for multimodal evidence. Our finding is that the five pairs of moral–spatial metaphors are applicable in English as they are in Chinese. We also discuss issues related to conceptual metaphor theory. (shrink)

Aristotelianism remained the dominant influence on the course of natural philosophy taught at the University of Paris until the 1690s, when it was swiftly replaced by Cartesianism. The change was not one wanted by church or state and it can only be understood by developments within the wider University. On the one hand, the opening of a new college, the Collège de Mazarin, provided an environment in which the mechanical philosophy could flourish. On the other, divisions within the French Catholic (...) Church between Austinians and Molinists led to Cartesianism finding support within an important section of the faculty of theology, which was the traditional guardian of philosophical orthodoxy. The conversion of the University of Paris to Cartesianism had important consequences. It encouraged similar changes to the natural philosophical curriculum throughout France and affected the structure and raison d'être of the Académie des Sciences. (shrink)

It is frequently alleged that a round plate viewed from an oblique angle looks elliptical, and that when one tree is in front of another that is the same intrinsic size, the front one looks larger than the rear one. And yet there is also a clear sense in which the plate viewed from an angle looks round, and a clear sense in which the two trees look to be the same size. According to the Dual Content Theory (DCT), what (...) explains these and other similar phenomena is that perceptual experiences present us with two different sorts of spatial properties: intrinsic and perspectival spatial properties. I will argue that the Dual Content Theory is false because it rests on flawed phenomenological descriptions of the experience of spatial properties. The only conditions under which a plate tilted away and an ellipse look alike, or two objects which are different in size look the same size, is when at least one of the objects being compared is misperceived. I will consider several responses to the arguments I present, and conclude by suggesting that abandoning DCT would constitute an improvement upon Noë’s enactive theory of perception. (shrink)

While the French Jesuits were scandalized at God's moral necessity to elect the best, Des Bosses was right in defending the Théodicée drawing the attention to the contemporary Spanish theology. In fact, Optimism is not the invention of Leibniz', but of the two Sevillan Jesuits' Diego Ruiz de Montoya and Diego Granado . It will be argued that Optimism has two roots, both of them closely connected with the Posttridentinian Theology: 1) the moralization of modal categories, 2) a universe integrating (...) Nature, Grace and Incarnation. In the latter regard, Optimism is a legitimate child of Molinism, viz. in respect to the ,scientia media‘ being the basis of its concept of World, to the ,total decree‘ as a certain mode of this world being realized. As a result, the Théodicée depends on Jesuit theology to an extent which still has to be acknowledged. (shrink)

During a transverse acceleration of a light clock from rest, the mirrors must be tilted so as to retain the light pulse. The mirrors therefore have a normal velocity which increases the frequency of the pulse at each reflection. If a mirror is annihilated, the frequency of the escaping pulse, as a result of many reflections, is that of the relativistic Doppler effect. This holds for any acceleration, if the Fitzgerald contraction is assumed, thereby furnishing a new mechanism for such (...) frequencies. The traditional mechanism, in which the source (subject to the time dilation) generates a pulse modulated by the source motion, is therefore not a unique explanation of the Doppler effect. The new mechanism permits the speculation that radiation preexists in atomic sources, rather than being generated at the instant of release. (shrink)

We should now be able to come to some general conclusions about the main lines of Cuvier's development as a naturalist after his departure from Normandy. We have seen that Cuvier arrived in Paris aware of the importance of physiology in classification, yet without a fully worked out idea of how such an approach could organize a whole natural order. He was freshly receptive to the ideas of the new physiology developed by Xavier Bichat.Cuvier arrived in a Paris also torn (...) by many overlapping debates on the nature of classification, and in particular that between the natural and artificial systems. The very validity of the enterprise of classification was questioned in many quarters. Cuvier's achievement on his entry into the Parisian world of science was not simply to establish himself as a highly competent anatomist: far more important, he also began to use ideas from many different specialties to change completely the notion of what was involved in natural history.124 At the same time that he himself swung away from the guiding image of the field naturalist as the ideal of the specialty, he took ideas from the new physiology to answer questions about the order of the animal world, and from comparative anatomy to resurrect extinct creation — and to come to conclusions from that creation about the history of the forms of life and the manner of their succession. He showed himself able to alter the relationships between natural history and many other fields of study in a way that implied, rightly or wrongly, his own complete mastery over such a movement. Partly he was able to do this because the ideas he borrowed were not themselves logically articulated and thus could be easily adapted and refocused for many different specific purposes. The value of the heuristic possibilities inherent in the idea of life, for example, far outweighed its inability to generate full systems of classification. Cuvier also consistently refused to consider in science matters relating to the first causes of events. Freed from the consideration of first-order phenomena, he was able to use second-order explanations across a far wider field of applicability. Personal doubts about the validity of a theology that had used science in order to bolster its own claims were combined here with the strong influence of the Kantian critique of the limits of human reason.125Cuvier's characteristic mode of procedure was that of intellectual appropriation and a bold capacity for altering the relationships between different fields of knowledge, rather than, with the exception of taxonomy, the technique of expanding their subject matter. His claims to originality came, first, from this reappropriation and reorientation and, second, from the sheer scope of his work, which aimed at nothing less than the cataloging and classification of all animate objects.126 They rested also on his acute use of his assertion of a certain relationship with the past of his subject. Very often he would present this history in such a way as to obscure his own intellectual genealogy, and often too he would give differing accounts of the priority of use of an idea in order to distract attention from the questionable exactitude of his own claims to originality. Cuvier came to Paris at precisely the time when society and institutions were most profitably malleable for a newcomer; it was also a time when many scientific disciplines had reached a stage advanced in terms of their factual content, yet relatively inadequate in conceptual organization. They were ripe for takeover by large-scale organizing ideas such as the animal economy and the subordination of characteristics. Paleontology is a particularly good example of a specialty in this particular form of underdevelopment in 1795.Cuvier paid a high price for his initial success. His electic applications of large-scale organizing ideas tended to mean that little of his own work had complete coherence at all levels. Ideas, as we have seen, that proved capable of providing a complete reform of the larger groups of the animal kingdom were incapable of producing its detailed working-out in the taxonomy of smaller groups, which had to be supplied from observed analogical correlations. Further, his physiological approach to classification involved the breakdown of strict correspondence between organs and functions, which left the way open for workers such as Geoffroy St. Hilaire gradually to tilt the balance away from the study of the correlations of hierarchies of functions, and toward morphology as the basis of the order of nature. Cuvier's brilliant appropriations from physiology from the beginning, therefore, contained the seeds of conflict with Geoffroy.Cuvier's eclectic approach made it very nearly impossible for him to present a clear idea of the ways in which the life sciences could be said to be lawful. In spite of his efforts to assimilate them to the position of the physical sciences in this respect, he was forced in the end to accord only an ambiguous status as “laws” to observational correlations. From this area of failure came much of the attempt to give his own two laws — the correlation of parts and the subordination of characteristics — predictive qualities, particularly in relation to paleontological research.It is not surprising that Cuvier's title as the “legislator” of natural history should represent more a claim than a reality. How, then, was he able to emerge as the leading French naturalist of his day? First of all must be adduced the sheer scale of his undertakings. Then comes his expertise as a practical anatomist, and the range of different topics toward which he turned his interest. His collaborators cannot be given credit for his output nor, as we have seen, for slavish adherence to his ideas. Cuvier was able to successfully claim to have dominated the underdeveloped specialties, such as paleontology, and turned them into a major heuristic input into both geology and comparative anatomy; but in other fields, such as physiology, he appropriated concepts and encouraged research but made little impact on the field himself. His attempts in 1812 to head off, or neutralize and absorb the growth of morphological studies landed him in a dangerously rigid position, which despite his encouragement of the new physiological research under the Restoration made further elaboration of his own conceptual underpinnings almost impossible.Cuvier's authority in the scientific world would in any case have been great because of his substantive achievement in taxonomy, but the rest of his work had enough ambiguities and dislocations for it to need the support of his political and social power. Cuvier's detractors seized on a vital fragment of the truth when they accused him of finding the political dimension all-important: it obscured the disjunctions in his theories and at the same time gave him the authority to make new claims for the status of the observational sciences - and for their relations of power with their surrounding specialties. Cuvier's science both thrived on and was halted by the power games of intellectual appropriation, manipulation of the past to confirm the present, and continual claims for hegemony. (shrink)

According to its supporters open source software is more secure and reliable than proprietary code, and even tends to foster more innovation. Its technical superiority can be linked to the ongoing peer review process which typifies the open source model. In addition, programs such as Linux offer a potential challenge to the hegemony of Microsoft. Open source holds out the possibility of restraining platform leaders such as Microsoft from acting opportunistically. Some even argue that the open source code model is (...) ethically superior to the proprietary model because of its transparency. Given these economic and social benefits, should government policy makers intervene, by tilting the playing field to open source programs? Would such government intervention truly be welfare‐enhancing? Before answering that question we note that some of the presumed technical and economic benefits of open source software are open to question. At the same time, the claims of moral superiority or social desirability are inflated and discount incentives necessary for software development. But even if this software were technically and morally superior, there is still no basis for government intervention. Our position is simple: the invisible hand of the market and not the visible hand of government should decide the fate of open source code. There is no identifiable market failure for the government to fix nor is there any plausible policy justification for giving open source software preferential treatment. (shrink)

In defending his rejection of Maverick Molinism (Faith and Philosophy 20.1, (January 2003), pp. 91-100) from my criticisms (Faith and Philosophy 19 (2002), pp. 348-357), Tom Flint attributes three central claims to my argument, and disagrees with two of them. He also notes my request for a defense of the Law of Conditional Excluded Middle, which his argument employs. He portrays that discussion as taking “potshots” at his argument, in part because I denied that concerns about the Law are (...) compelling, but it is a mistake to think that controversial premises need no defense simply because the case against them is not compelling. Regarding the points where Flint is more forthcoming, one of his points places further demands on his rejection of this version of Molinism. The other point involves a serious misrepresentation of my argument. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:484 BOOK REVIEWS faith. Yet faith-knowledge alone is insufficient to account for Jesus' extraordinary gifts as a teacher: for this we must appeal to a special charism along the lines of an infused knowledge. According to Torrell this knowledge is best understood by reference to Aquinas's mature teaching on prophecy: God equipped the prophets with an infused light (but not infused ideas) enabling them to communicate divine truths to (...) others. Likewise, God conferred on Jesus an infused light akin to that of the prophets, but with this qualitative difference: in him the lumen is a permanent feature of his cognitive life (a habitus), while it is given to the prophets only intermittently (per modum actus). The foregoing i;ummary will have served its purpose if it has conveyed to the reader some sense of the very rich historical, philosophical, and theological reflections that comprise this volume. The editorial team of the Revue thomiste is to be commended for the high caliber of this and the other special publications it has produced in recent years: the 1992 commemorative volume on the theological achievement of M.-M. Labourdette; th~ 1993 centenary index ("tables generales 1893-1992"); the Gilson issue of 1994; and most recently an issue devoted to Thomas Aquinas and the onto-theo-logy debate (1995). This reviewer eagerly waits for more. Fordham University Bronx, New York GREGORY M. REICHBERG The Divine Initiative: Grace, World-Order, and Human Freedom in the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan. By J. MICHAEL STEBBINS. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Pp. xxii + 399. $65.00 (cloth). Aquinas insists that the creator's primary intent is the "order of the universe," and Bernard Lonergan's dissertation on "operating grace" in Aquinas's writings managed to move beyond the stalemated discussion of "sufficient" and "efficacious" grace precisely because he displayed how any discourse about grace had to be connected with larger theorems of the creator's operation in creation. What speaking of the divine action called "grace" requires is a set of metaphysical skills adequate to speaking of the "order of the universe" as created. A tall order, whose scope the published edition of his dissertation-Grace and Freedom-so understated that its implications have been missed by many philosophers and theologians fascinated with such questions. Stebbins's careful reconstruction of that text reminds us of its daunting scope. And part of the reason it can do so is that he illustrates both the method and conclusions of Grace and Freedom through a later text which Lonergan had composed (in Latin) for a course on grace offered from 1947 to 1960: De ente supernaturali (which will appear in volume 16 [Early Latin Theology] of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, published by BOOK REVIEWS 485 University of Toronto Press). The significance of this collateral source is that it can profit from and respond to Henri de Lubac's epochal Surnaturel (1946). For those not familiar with Grace and Freedom, as well as some who thought they were, a list of Stebbins's chapters manages to convey the scope of Lonergan's achievement: 1. The Role of Understanding in Theological Speculation; 2. The Principal Instance of Supernatural Being: The Created Communication of the Divine Nature; 3. Thirteenth-Century Breakthrough (The "Theorem" of the Supernatural); 4. Supernatural Transformation of Human Activity; 5. Obediential Potency and the Natural Desire to See God; 6. Molinist and Bannezian Systems; 7. Theoretical Perspective on Divine Concourse; 8. Contingence, Sin and Divine Efficacy. As always, Lonergan must actively reflect on method while executing a theological inquiry, so Stebbins rightly begins with his insistence that such inquiry must be more than "just a networks of concepts; it is primarily an act of understanding" (xix)-Chapter 1. Then, following the expository order of De ente supematurali, he shows how Lonergan roots the supernatural in the theorems developed to speak of the natural: of creation itself. ("Theorem," as we shall see, is a favorite word of Lonergan's, intimating what it takes to move beyond our imaginations to a set of propositions able to articulate the metaphysical issues at stake.) Following the analogy of nature, we can see how the "two operations by which creatures... (shrink)

Quantum theory predicts that, e.g., in a Stern-Gerlach experiment with electrons the measured spin component $S_Z = \pm \frac{1}{2}$ does not come about by an adjustment at the last moment, a forced “flipping” or “tilting” of the spin (vector), which would imply z-angular momentum exchange between particle and instrument, but will afterward appear to have had the value $\frac{1}{2} or - \frac{1}{2}$ already before the measurement. Because an electron spin cannot have components $ \pm \frac{1}{2}$ in all directions at (...) the same time, the measuring direction has a “privileged” status before the measurement, however we choose that direction, which implies a retroactive effect. A second proof of retroactivity is derived from a special case of the paradox of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. It is strongly suggested by our result that, in essential respects, both Bohr and Einstein were right in their famous controversy about determinism and considering microprocesses “as a whole.”. (shrink)

This research addresses the challenges related to the collection and transmission of measurement data during the monitoring of military and other strategically significant objects. The solution involved creating a proprietary distributed system that operates on Wi-Fi technology and leverages the national military radio communication system for long-distance data transfer. Measurements were gathered for several key parameters, including the distance between cracks and joints, magnetometer readings, and the position and potential tilt of objects across three axes based on accelerometer and gyroscope (...) data. A significant aspect of the study was the server setup, which allowed for the creation of new data reception channels. These channels were essential for the further processing and analysis of measurement results. This system is capable of addressing complex issues such as predicting the technical condition of strategically important objects. The thoroughness of the analysis enables the identification and diagnosis of potential errors, as well as the detection of delays within the communication system. Additionally, optimizing energy consumption parameters extended the duration of research activities at remote locations, which ultimately prolongs the lifespan and maintenance intervals of the control system. The flexibility in programming the module boards and compatibility with various electronic measuring sensors make it possible to adjust the system for a wide range of applications. This adaptability significantly broadens the scope of research, expanding it to diverse fields such as agriculture, ecology, energy, healthcare, meteorology, and more. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Indifference is a term often used to describe the sort of freedom had by the will according to the libertarian, or Molinist account. It is thought to be a univocal term. In fact, however, it is used in at least seven different ways, in a variety of domains during the early modern period. All of them have plausible roots in Descartes, but he himself uses the term in only one sense, and failure to notice this consistent use by him (...) has bedeviled interpretations of his account of the will. (shrink)

Sex selection of children by pre-conception and post-conception techniques remains morally controversial and even illegal in some jurisdictions. Among other things, some critics fear that sex selection will distort the sex ratio, making opposite-sex relationships more difficult to secure, while other critics worry that sex selection will tilt some nations toward military aggression. The human sex ratio varies depending on how one estimates it; there is certainly no one-to-one correspondence between males and females either at birth or across the human (...) lifespan. Complications about who qualifies as ‘male’ and ‘female’ complicate judgments about the ratio even further. Even a judiciously estimated sex ratio does not have, however, the kind of normative status that requires society to refrain from antenatal sex selection. Some societies exhibit lopsided sex ratios as a consequence of social policies and practices, and pragmatic estimates of social needs are a better guide to what the sex ratio should be, as against looking to ‘nature’. The natural sex ratio cannot be a sound moral basis for prohibiting parents from selecting the sex of their children, since it ultimately lacks any normative meaning for social choices. (shrink)

Chapter Four of Richard Gale’s On the Nature and Existence of God constitutes an ambitious 80-page monograph on the “free will defense” (FWD). Much of Gale’s argument is aimed at Plantinga’s FWD, but the scope of his criticism extends, finally, to all versions. Gale’s main contentions are that: (i) no version of the FWD can get off the ground without the substantive, true conditionals often called “counterfactuals of human freedom” by contemporary Molinists; (ii) the best theory of these conditionals (Gale’s (...) “minimalism”) implies that the Molinists’ conditionals are true (so traditional omniscience requires that God know them, as the Molinists allege that he does); (iii) but Molinism would make God a puppet-master, and incapable of creating free persons after all. Gale concludes that proponents of the FWD must accept that there are contingent truths God does not know. I argue that Gale’s objections to non-Molinist versions of FWD are easily rebutted; but that his criticisms of Molinism have considerably more bite. (shrink)

The paper examines the role of poetry in decoding of archetypes of the collective unconscious, aiming to study the purpose of poetry in development of philosophy of national idea of peoples appearing on the current historical arena. The author draws a conclusion that firstly, poets are no myth-makers. They merely convey the meaning of historical imperatives to people through a myth. That is why the myth contents are of invariant nature. The myths which came from Poet's sacral pen are truly (...) eternal - at least until there exist communities which spiritual analogs they are. Likewise, these myths are never abandoned and denied, demythified, verified and falsified by any peripetia of social processes and intellectual progress: they get reactualized rather. Secondly, each people can get a national idea as a program for their being in history only through comprehension of a poetic myth under the notions of historiosophy, philosophy of history and philosophy of culture. With no systematic philosophical synthesis, the poetic Myth mostly becomes a tilting-yard of primitive politicking and intellectual fraud. Today Ukraine has found no adequate solution to this topical issue though there are persons to rely on, specifically the historiosophic heritage of V. Lypynskyi, D. Dontsov, I. Boichenko, S. Krymskyi and M. Popovych. (shrink)

Galvanic vestibular stimulation is a non-invasive method of electrically stimulating the vestibular system. We investigated whether the application of GVS can alter the learning of new functional mobility and manual control tasks and whether learning can be retained following GVS application. In a between-subjects experiment design, 36 healthy subjects performed repeated trials, capturing the learning of either a functional mobility task, navigating an obstacle course on a compliant surface with degraded visual cues or a manual control task, using a joystick (...) to null self-roll tilt against a pseudo-random disturbance while seated in the dark. In the “learning” phase of trials, bilateral, bipolar GVS was applied continuously. The GVS waveform also differed between subjects in each task group: white noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation at 0.3 mA high-level random GVS at 0.7 mA, or with the absence of stimulation. Following the “learning” trials, all subjects were blindly transitioned to sham GVS, upon which they immediately completed another series of trials to assess any aftereffects. In the functional mobility task, we found nGVS significantly improved task learning. Further, improvements in learning the functional mobility task with nGVS were retained, even once the GVS application was stopped. The benefits in learning with nGVS were not observed in the manual control task. High level GVS tended to inhibit learning in both tasks, but not significantly so. Even once the high-level stimulation was stopped, the impaired performance remained. Improvements in learning with nGVS may be due to increased information throughput resulting from stochastic resonance. The benefit of nGVS for functional mobility, but not manual control nulling, may be due to the multisensory, strategic, motor coordination, or spatial awareness aspects of the former task. Learning improvements with nGVS have the potential to benefit individuals who perform functional mobility tasks, such as astronauts, firefighters, high performance athletes, and soldiers. (shrink)

R. T. Mullins’s “Flint’s Molinism and the Incarnation is too Radical,” published by this journal in 2015, attempts to summarize some speculations I have offered regarding Christology and eschatology, to show that these speculations are independently implausible, and to demonstrate that they are at odds with the pronouncements of the Fifth Ecumenical Council and hence incompatible with orthodox Christianity. In this reply, I argue that Mullins’s essay fails in all three of these endeavors: its summaries are inaccurate, its arguments (...) for implausibility are unconvincing, and its ascriptions of heresy are baseless. (shrink)

Plantinga’s Free Will Defense is an argument that, possibly, God cannot actualize a world containing significant creaturely free will and no wrongdoings. I will argue that if standard Molinism is true, there is a pair of worlds w1 and w2 each of which contains a significantly free creature who never chooses wrongly, and that are such that, necessarily, at least one of these worlds is a world that God can actualize.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kafka’s China and the Parable of ParablesMichael WoodI should like to begin and end this essay with a parable; one that is both dizzying and familiar; all the more dizzying perhaps for being so familiar. What happens in between my beginning and my end will be not so much an interpretation of the parable or a commentary on it as an unravelling of it, an exploration of one of (...) the spaces the parable opens up. We could see the parable, even with all the vertigo it offers, as a seamark, or known face, a remembered gesture: we look at it, we go away, we travel (to China), we come back. It has not changed, but perhaps we have. The parable is about parables, but then, as has been shrewdly said, all parables are. 1 It is by Franz Kakfa, probably written in 1922–1929, first published in 1931.Many complain [the parable says] that the words of the wise are again and again only parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says, “Go over,” he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could just about do if the result was worth the journey; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something he too cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say only that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.Thereupon a man said: Why are you so reluctant? If you followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that free of all your daily cares.Another said: I bet that is also a parable.The first said: You have won.The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost. 2 [End Page 325]We might call the space this parable opens up—one of the spaces, the space I want to explore—the space of reading. Reading as a habit, an addiction to understanding and bewilderment; and if we did our topic would then be, in Geoffrey Hartman’s phrase, the fate of reading. There is of course an interesting double meaning in this haunting phrase. It is not only that reading has a fate, that things happen to it, that it occurs in history; it is also that reading is a fate, one lives it as an adventure, a form of happiness or a form of risk, even a form of damage. It is not something other than life, it is life, or a piece of it. No one has understood this better than Hartman: “It is almost a mode of life, something you cannot shake off, something that follows and pursues you. Reading is fate: we are like characters in a certain kind of mystery story, who are drawn unwillingly into a plot that we alone, rather than the official investigator, can unriddle.” 3 My essay attempts to build on this understanding, particularly on Hartman’s paradoxical sense that the habit of reading leads to an interest in unreadability—where the unreadable is quite different from the unread, or the brutally misread, or the incomprehensible.First, a few remarks on the narrative form and tilt of the parable—in the spirit of Hartman’s principle that an attention to form is not the worst way of getting beyond formalism. 4 The parable is a fully dramatized piece of work: there are speakers but no detachable authorial voice beyond those of the speakers: there are the many, then a one [einer], then another [ein anderer]. There are three positions here—at least three—but no position outside them, no position that is not caught up in the play of meanings in front of us. Or rather, there is a position outside them, but it seems to me blinder than any position needs to be or ought to be. Attending to the play of meanings, as we are about to do, is of course... (shrink)

In this paper, I reframe the long-standing controversy between ‘psychological egoism’, which argues that human beings never perform altruistic actions, and the opposing thesis of ‘psychological altruism’, which claims that human beings are, at least sometimes, capable of acting in an altruistic fashion. After a brief sketch of the controversy, I begin by presenting some representative arguments in favour of psychological altruism before showing that they can all be called into question by appealing to the idea of an unconscious self-directed (...) motive. I will then point out that this argumentative strategy not only debunks the reasons for favouring psychological altruism, but also those for favouring psychological egoism; hence it is no use in settling the dispute between the two views. In the second part of the paper, I will try to break this deadlock by reframing the whole controversy, shifting it away from the concept of motive, towards the broader notion of motivation. As it turns out, this shift enables the debate to centre on altruistic emotions and their motivational power, thereby allowing evolutionary arguments to enter the debate and tilt the balance in favour of psychological altruism. (shrink)