I offer examples of what Catholic liturgical law regards as liturgical abuses. I provide examples of practices that are not formal abuses but raise questions of clericalism, noting that clericalism has contributed to the Catholic sex abuse crisis. I discuss (a) recourse to the tabernacle for distribution of Communion at Mass; (b) reserving one chalice at Mass for the exclusive use of the presider; (c) the installation Mass of Archbishop Nelson Pérez of Philadelphia; and (d) a Mass in Buffalo in (...) the wake of the resignation of then-Bishop Richard Malone. The paper concludes with reflections on what it means to offer worship to God that is necessarily imperfect. (shrink)

Wijdicks and colleagues1 recently presented the Full Outline of UnResponsiveness (FOUR) scale as an alternative to the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS)2 in the evaluation of consciousness in severely brain-damaged patients. They studied 120 patients in an intensive care setting (mainly neuro-intensive care) and claimed that “the FOUR score detects a locked-in syndrome, as well as the presence of a vegetative state.”1 We fully agree that the FOUR is advantageous in identifying locked-in patients given that it specifically tests for eye movements (...) or blinking on command. This is welcomed given that misdiagnosis of the locked-in syndrome has been shown to occur in more than half of the cases (see Laureys and colleagues3 for review). As for the diagnosis of the vegetative state, the scale explicitly tests for visual pursuit, and hence can disentangle the vegetative state from the minimally conscious state (MCS). The diagnostic criteria for MCS have been proposed4 only recently, but Wijdicks and colleagues1 do not mention the existence of this clinical entity in their article. As for the vegetative state, MCS can be encountered in the acute or subacute setting as a transitional state on the way to further recovery, or it can be a more chronic or even permanent condition. The MCS refers to patients showing inconsistent, albeit clearly discernible, minimal behavioral evidence of consciousness (eg, localization of noxious stimuli, eye fixation or tracking, reproducible movement to command, or nonfunctional verbalization).4 The FOUR scale does not test for all of the behavioral criteria required to diagnose MCS.4 It is known from the literature (see Majerus and colleagues5 for review) that about a third of patients diagnosed with vegetative state are actually in MCS, and this misdiagnosis can lead to major clinical, therapeutic, and ethical consequences. We tested the ability of the newly proposed FOUR scale to correctly diagnose the vegetative state in an acute (intensive care and neurology ward) and chronic (neurorehabilitation) setting.. (shrink)

The collection of essays in this volume critically explore various aspects of the modern development of the religion-secular dichotomy and its ideological function in the assertion of colonial power since the 16th century. The authors hope to illuminate the role and formation of the modern category of religion, and of the academic study of religion, as colonial instruments in the more general subjection of indigenous concepts of order to the classificatory needs of Euro-America. The methodology tends to overflow traditional disciplinary (...) boundaries and offers analyses that are historiographical, literary and ethnographical. However, rather than seeking comprehensiveness in such a vast field, the authors here concentrate on specific aspects of the colonial relationship either from the point of view of a particular colonized culture, for example Mexico, Guatemala, Vietnam, India, Japan, South Africa, Canada; or from the point of view of the colonizing powers, in this case England, Germany and the United States. The authors hope to encourage further studies by specialists in different cultures and languages in the problems of imposition, translation, and reception of the separation of 'religion' from other domains such as 'politics', 'economics' and the 'non-religious' civil domain. (shrink)

First, a number of previous theories of intrinsic motivation are reviewed. Then, several studies of highly motivating computer games are described. These studies focus on what makes the games fun, not on what makes them educational. Finally, with this background, a rudimentary theory of intrinsically motivating instruction is developed, based on three categories: challenge, fantasy, and curiosity.Challenge is hypothesized to depend on goals with uncertain outcomes. Several ways of making outcomes uncertain are discussed, including variable difficulty level, multiple level goals, (...) hidden information, and randomness. Fantasy is claimed to have both cognitive and emotional advantages in designing instructional environments. A distinction is made between extrinsic fantasies that depend only weakly on the skill used in a game, and intrinsic fantasies that are intimately related to the use of the skill. Curiosity is separated into sensory and cognitive components, and it is suggested that cognitive curiosity can be aroused by making learners believe their knowledge structures are incomplete, inconsistent, or unparsimonious. (shrink)

Rakover has thought about the nature of explanation for a long time and he has written some insightful pieces on the possibility of incorporating mentalistic language into serious explanations of our activities. Here he takes an extreme tack and grounds his arguments on the oldest of all chestnuts, the mind/body problem. Ironically, as an undergraduate he may have misinterpreted the words of his favorite professor so as to lead him to agonize for decades over the proper interpretation of private experience (...) [for him it’s “mentalistic”]. This has ultimately led to this article, proposing a Multi-Explanation Framework that mixes what he calls “mentalistic” and “mechanistic” elements in behavioral sequences, incorporating a Mentalistic Purposive Explanation Scheme that has the virtue, in his eyes, of adding what “radical behaviorism” lacks. The reader is left with the impression that the explanations produced using this framework would seem more satisfying only because the vocabulary involved is the one we learned as children, and that their usefulness would be no more than that of the folk psychology that has always prevailed. Rakover and many others confuse radical behaviorism with behavior analysis, which leads to tiresome and pointless critiques of the former. (shrink)

Operational epistemology is, to a first approximation, the attempt to provide cognitive rules such that one is in principle always in a position to know whether one is complying with them. In Knowledge and its Limits, I argue that the only such rules are trivial ones. In this paper, I generalize the argument in several ways to more thoroughly probabilistic settings, in order to show that it does not merely demonstrate some oddity of the folk epistemological conception of knowledge. Some (...) of the generalizations involve a formal semantic framework for treating epistemic probabilities of epistemic probabilities and expectations of expectations. The upshot is that operational epistemology cannot work, and that knowledge-based epistemology has the right characteristics to avoid its problems. (shrink)

Things in common: an introduction -- Life -- Specters -- Subscendence -- Species -- Kindness.

Edward O. Wilson's sociobiology, as advocated in On Human Nature, is often criticized for its sensationalism and its anthropomorphisms. Critics have not recognized, however, that the so?called anthropomorphisms are essential to sociobiology, in so far as it seeks to address the humanities, and that the sensationalism derives from them. They are not just the sloppiness usually found in popularizations. Section I reviews the grounds for these criticisms and then ends by demonstrating that it is no less a confusion to label (...) these misuses of language ?anthropomorphisms?. Section II analyzes the style of reasoning, characteristic of scientism in general and sociobiology in particular, that sanctions misuses of language such as Wilson's. The flaw in this reasoning is that it depends upon the very language it sets out to debunk, in a way that renders its own arguments unintelligible. (shrink)

It has been over two decades since Miranda Fricker labeled epistemic injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their capacity as a knower. The philosophical literature has proliferated with variants and related concepts. By considering cases in popular music, we argue that it is worth distinguishing a parallel phenomenon of art-interpretive injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their creative capacity as a possible artist. In section 1, we consider the prosecutorial use of rap lyrics in court as (...) a central case of this injustice. In section 2, we distinguish art-interpretive injustice from other categories already discussed in recent literature. In section 3, we discuss the relationship between genre discourse and identity prejudice. The case for recognizing the category of art-interpretive injustice is that it allows one to recognize a class of harms as being importantly related in ways that one would otherwise overlook. (shrink)

Few concepts are more central to ethics than love, but none is more subject to false consolation. This 1999 book explores several theological, philosophical and literary accounts of love, focusing on how it relates to matters such as self-interest and self-sacrifice, and invulnerability and immortality. Timothy Jackson first considers key aspects of what the Bible says about love, then he further examines the meaning of love and sacrifice through a close reading of novels by Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Lastly, he (...) evaluates how love constrains, and is constrained by, other traditional moral concepts. Throughout, Jackson defends the moral priority of what the Christian tradition calls 'agape'. He argues that a proper understanding of agapic love rejects both moral relativism and the comfort of believing that good people cannot be harmed, or that God causally necessitates every historical action and event. When love is thus disconsoled, it neither fears death nor despises life. (shrink)

Human evolution explains how we have found ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Issues of modern living; depression, obesity, and environmental destruction, can be understood in relation to our evolutionary past. This book shows how an awareness of this past and its relation to the present can help limit their impact on the future.

In the small but growing literature on the philosophy of country music, the question of how we ought to understand the genre’s notion of authenticity has emerged as one of the central questions. Many country music scholars argue that authenticity claims track attributions of cultural standing or artistic self-expression. However, careful attention to the history of the genre reveals that these claims are simply factually wrong. On the basis of this, we have grounds for dismissing these attributions. Here, I argue (...) for an alternative model of authenticity in which we take claims about the relative authenticity of country music to be evidence of ‘country’ being a dual character concept in the same way that it has been suggested of punk rock and hip-hop. Authentic country music is country music that embodies the core value commitments of the genre. These values form the basis of country artists’ and audiences’ practical identities. Part of country music’s aesthetic practice is that audiences reconnect with, reify, and revise this common practical identity through identification with artists and works that manifest these values. We should then think of authenticity discourse within country music as a kind of game within the genre’s practice of shaping and maintaining this practical identity. (shrink)

The complexities of professional ethics are best understood and interpreted within their sociohistorical context. This paper focuses on the experience of 20 rural psychologists from across Canada, a context rife with demographic and practice characteristics that may instigate ethical issues. Employing hermeneutic phenomenology, these qualitative research results are indicative of professional struggles that impacted the participants’ experience of professional ethics and raised key questions about policy and practise. Concerns regarding competition highlight potential professional vulnerability, beget the idea of fostering general (...) psychological practice, and question the role of professional bodies in addressing rural shortages. Dependency on government funding models and decisions highlights the benefits and medical cost-offset effect of psychological services’ role in funded medical care. The controversial prescriptive authority debate for psychologists raises myriad concerns that are particularly salient to rural practitioners. These include changes to training and practice, with risks of psychopharmacology gaining prominence over behavioural health interventions. National inconsistencies in level of registration add to the growing shortage of practitioners. Finally, the results illuminate the need for advocacy to move beyond the literature and into public policy to increase public awareness, decrease the stigma of mental illness, and develop rural Canadian psychology. Although limited to this study, these results allowed for a fuller and more robust understanding of rural practice in consideration of professional ethics, which may inform policy, science, or ethical clinical practice. (shrink)

The axiological tenet of scientific realism, “science seeks true theories,” is generally taken to rest on a corollary epistemological tenet, “we can justifiably believe that our successful theories achieve (or approximate) that aim.” While important debates have centered on, and have led to the refinement of, the epistemological tenet, the axiological tenet has suffered from neglect. I offer what I consider to be needed refinements to the axiological postulate. After showing an intimate relation between the refined postulate and ten theoretical (...) desiderata, I argue that the axiological postulate does not depend on its epistemological counterpart; epistemic humility can accompany us in the quest for truth. Upon contrasting my axiological postulate against the two dominant non-realist alternatives and the standard realist postulate, I contend that its explanatory and justificatory virtues render it, among the axiologies considered, the richest account of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

Genres inform our appreciative practices. What it takes for a work to be a good work of comedy is different than what it takes for a work to be a good work of horror, and a failure to recognize this will lead to a failure to appreciate comedies or works of horror particularly well. Likewise, it is not uncommon to hear people say that a film or novel is a good work, but not a good work of x (where x (...) is the genre of that work). A work can be good all things considered, but genre membership provides us with an additional set of evaluative criteria over and above those of the medium, which colors how we interpret and appreciate the work. Given this importance, it is not surprising that philosophers of art have been interested in providing an account of what, exactly, a genre is. Despite this interest, there is not widespread agreement about what it takes for something to be a genre, nor what kinds of considerations are relevant in determining whether a work is a member of that genre. Beyond this, we might also want to know to what degree we ought to consider genre in evaluating a work of art and why it should matter at all. Here, I explore the variety of recent theories that philosophers have taken up on the topic of genre and why we should ultimately think of genres as artistic practices rather than the alternatives. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson gives an original and provocative treatment of deep metaphysical questions about existence, contingency, and change, using the latest resources of quantified modal logic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that logic and metaphysics are disjoint, he argues that modal logic provides a structural core for metaphysics.

Even to disagree, we need to understand each other. If I reject what you say without understanding you, we will only have the illusion of a disagreement. You will be asserting one thing and I will be denying another. Even to disagree, we need some agreement.

An overview of the key debates in biomedical researchethics, presented through a wide-ranging selection of casestudies.

The doctrine of inerrant divine “middle knowledge” of future contingent events, first developed by the sixteenth century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, has resurfaced as a prominent position within contemporary debates over divine foreknowledge, creaturely freedom, and the ontological status of possibilities. As yet, the only substantive response to the new Molinism from a process perspective has come in a brief section on “Hartshorne and the Challenge of Molinism,” in an essay on Hartshorne’s view of “The Logic of Future Contingents” (...) by George W. Shields and Donald W. Viney, in Shields’ edited anthology Process and Analysis.Shields and Viney offer an insightful critique of Molinism. However, their use of Hartshorne’s understanding of possibility presents problems for those, like me, who prefer Whitehead’s more robustly realist notion of eternal objects. Here, I defend Whitehead’s Platonism from the main lines of criticism leveled against itby Hartshorne, while demonstrating that a “thick” conception of the objective content of the possible within the context of the divine understanding need not crossover into a deterministic conception of God’s foreknowledge, à la Molina. (shrink)

Timothy Bellamah explores the exegesis of William of Alton, a Dominican regent master at Paris during the thirteenth-century. A near contemporary of Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, William was an important representative of university exegesis at a time of rapidly changing methods and remarkable intellectual development.

Groove, as a musical quality, is an important part of jazz and pop music appreciative practices. Groove talk is widespread among musicians and audiences, and considerable importance is placed on generating and appreciating grooves in music. However, musicians, musicologists, and audiences use groove attributions in a variety of ways that do not track one consistent underlying concept. I argue that that there are at least two distinct concepts of groove. On one account, groove is ‘the feel of the music’ and, (...) on the other, groove is the psychological feeling (induced by music) of wanting to move one’s body. Further, I argue that recent work in music psychology shows that these two concepts do not converge on a unified set of musical features. Finally, I also argue that these two concepts play different functional roles in the appreciative practices of jazz and popular music. This should cause us to further consider the mediating role genre plays for aesthetic concepts and provides us with reason for adopting a more communitarian approach to aesthetics which is attentive to the ways in which aesthetic discourse serves the practices of different audiences. (shrink)

This essay extends the recent trend toward greater emphasis on writing-related pedagogical practices in introductory philosophy courses to upper-division courses, providing a holistic model for course design that centers on certain techniques and practices that have been developed in the context of the new wave of multidisciplinary writing programs in the United States. I argue that instructors can more effectively teach philosophy and encourage philosophical thinking by incorporating the methods of writing instruction into their courses in systematic ways and offer (...) practical guidance on how to do so. (shrink)

In this open access book, Timothy Aylsworth and Clinton Castro draw on the deep well of Kantian ethics to argue that we have moral duties, both to ourselves and to others, to protect our autonomy from the threat posed by the problematic use of technology. The problematic use of technologies like smartphones threatens our autonomy in a variety of ways, and critics have only begun to appreciate the vast scope of this problem. In the last decade, we have seen (...) a flurry of books making “self-help” arguments about how we could live happier, more fulfilling lives if we were less addicted to our phones. But none of these authors see this issue as one involving a moral duty to protect our autonomy. (shrink)

The claim that a miracle is a violation of a law of nature has sometimes been used as part of an a priori argument against the possibility of miracle, on the grounds that a violation is conceptually impossible. I criticize these accounts but also suggest that alternative accounts, when phrased in terms of laws of nature, fail to provide adequate conceptual space for miracles. It is not clear what a ???violation??? of a law of nature might be, but this is (...) not relevant to the question of miracles. In practice, accounts of miracle tend to be phrased in terms of God's act not in terms of laws of nature. Finally, I suggest that the a priori argument reflects an intellectual commitment that is widely held, though wrongly built into the argument itself. (shrink)

The Human Genome Project is an expensive, ambitious, and controversial attempt to locate and map every one of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body. If it works, and we are able, for instance, to identify markers for genetic diseases long before they develop, who will have the right to obtain such information? What will be the consequences for health care, health insurance, employability, and research priorities? And, more broadly, how will attitudes toward human differences be affected, morally and (...) socially, by the setting of a genetic “standard”? The compatibility of individual rights and genetic fairness is challenged by the technological possibilities of the future, making it difficult to create an agenda for a “just genetics.” Beginning with an account of the utopian dreams and authoritarian tendencies of historical eugenics movements, this book’s nine essays probe the potential social uses and abuses of detailed genetic information. Lucid and wide-ranging, these contributions will interest bioethicists, legal scholars, and policy makers. Essays: “The Genome Project and the Meaning of Difference,” Timothy F. Murphy “Eugenics and the Human Genome Project: Is the Past Prologue?,” Daniel J. Kevles “Handle with Care: Race, Class, and Genetics,” Arthur L. Caplan “Public Choices and Private Choices: Legal Regulation of Genetic Testing,” Lori B. Andrews “Rules for Gene Banks: Protecting Privacy in the Genetics Age,” George J. Annas “Use of Genetic Information by Private Insurers,” Robert J. Pokorski “The Genome Project, Individual Differences, and Just Health Care,” Norman Daniels “Just Genetics: A Problem Agenda,” Leonard M. Fleck “Justice and the Limitations of Genetic Knowledge,” Marc A. Lappé. (shrink)

At any given time, a subject has a multiplicity of conscious experiences. A subject might simultaneously have visual experiences of a red book and a green tree, auditory experiences of birds singing, bodily sensations of a faint hunger and a sharp pain in the shoulder, the emotional experience of a certain melancholy, while having a stream of conscious thoughts about the nature of reality. These experiences are distinct from each other: a subject could experience the red book without the singing (...) birds, and could experience the singing birds without the red book. But at the same time, the experiences seem to be tied together in a deep way. They seem to be unified, by being aspects of a single encompassing state of consciousness. (shrink)

It has been argued that an adequate feminist response to sexist pornography demands not just efforts to eradicate sexist beliefs, but also aesthetic counter-intervention at the level of taste. This view motivates support for feminist pornography. This paper takes the feminist pornography suggestion seriously by unpacking difficulties for the project. I begin by spelling out two views about what makes feminist pornography feminist: the ‘content view,’ and the ‘context view,’ and discuss what I take to be existing arguments for the (...) latter. I then present two objections to the context view: the first focuses on how we characteristically interact with pornography (as a masturbatory aid), the second challenges the value of authenticity upon which much feminist pornography rests. If these arguments are correct, then there are serious flaws with feminist pornography as it is commonly conceived. I close with a brief suggestion of an alternative approach rooted in feminist solidarity. (shrink)

Country music critics and scholars have noticed an apparent contradiction between the practical identity of country music and the image of the male country singer as the 'rhinestone cowboy'. In this case, the problem is one of how we can make sense of the rural, working-class, ruggedly masculinity persona common to the genre with its elaborately embroidered, brightly colored, and highly embellished male fashion. The intractability of this problem has led some to argue that the simplest solution is to just (...) deny the legitimacy of country music authenticity discourse altogether. That is, all the genre’s talk of the rural working class is inauthentic and should be discarded. Here, I argue that by accounting for country music authenticity in terms of the genre being a dual character concept, we can fully address the skeptic's worries. Beyond merely being compatible with the Nudie suit however, this notion of authenticity is also our best way of understanding the aesthetic value of the rhinestone cowboy image at all. The resulting picture, in which the suit primarily serves as an epistemic signifier of one’s standing in the country music community, allows for the Nudie suit to function as a class, and sometimes queer, commentary on mainstream culture. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

This 1994 book develops a way of representing the meanings of linguistic expressions which is independent of any particular language, allowing the expressions to be manipulated in accordance with rules related to their meanings which could be implemented on a computer. It begins with a survey of the contributions of linguistics, logic and computer science to the problem of representation, linking each with a particular type of formal grammar. A system of graphs is then presented, organized by scope relations in (...) which linguistic constituents are sub-graphs whose configuration is determined by their categories. In developing this system, the author extends the notion of scope and argues that anaphoric and relative pronouns are structural signs not linguistic constituents. Certain count nouns are made the basis of this system and an account of proper names relating the count nouns, is given. (shrink)