It is well known that working memory performance changes with age. Two recent computational models of working memory, TBRS* and SOB-CS, developed from young adults WM performances are opposed regarding the postulated causes of forgetting, namely time-based decay and interference for TBRS* and SOB-CS, respectively. In the present study, these models are applied on a set of complex span data produced by young and older adults. As expected, these models are unable to account for the older adult data. An investigation (...) on the effect of the main parameters of these models showed that the poorer performance of older adults does not come from a weaker encoding of item but rather from difficulties during the free time that immediately follows each distractor, as well as from a higher level of confusion between items. These results are discussed with respect to the current theories of working memory and aging. (shrink)

A summary is presented of the subquantum kinetics ether methodology, a type of unified field theory that successfully predicts a large number of physical phenomena. This utilizes a new approach to theory development that emphasizes the use of system theory and places theory development as primary and observation as secondary. The rationale is given for adopting an open system, process-based view of the physical universe and for choosing the Model G reaction system as a prospective “genetic code” for the physical (...) universe. Model G is shown to provide a viable model for the creation of subatomic particles from zero-point energy fluctuations. (shrink)

Yet we must stick with our original judgment; this is a study of quite extraordinary merits. In order to appreciate them properly, it is necessary to know something of the difficulties which confront the researcher in this field. I shall mention some of these, in order to provide the background against which Gilson's contribution should be evaluated. A discussion of this contribution will follow, after which I shall raise some questions regarding Gilson's historical methodology, and conclude with some suggestions about (...) the kind of book about Duns Scotus which needs to be written next. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RESPONSE TO BRUCE MARSHALL GEORGE LINDBECK There is an abundance of il'iches in Bruce Marshalrs essay. He makes me understand hoth myse1f and Aquinas hetter than I biaid done hefore; and, interestingly, it is chiefly hy his exegesis of St. Thomas that he does :bhis. If I had referred more to the Thomistic ideas he elucidates when I wirus writing Natrure of Dootrine1 it would have!been a better (...) hook. What he calls the " somewhat notorious " example of the crusadeT"s Christus est Dominus is a good oase in point. It would ihave helped if I had made dear that I was thinking in medieval [ashion of a an individual rutterance, the product of a pa•riticular :second 1aJct of the intellect, the ·acl of composing and dividing, of judging ·such and such rto ibe rthe ca,se. In Aquinas' intellectual setting, judgments, not sentences in ·abstraiction from 1 acls of affirmation, were propositions capruble of being true or f.a1se. Many of my ·reruders had a more modern or "Platonic " understanding of rpropositions, and therefore missed the force of the e:xJam:ple ·as Marshall so carefully and rightly explains it. Among his contributions, the major one, however, is system- •a1tically to introduce into the disCUJssion the distinction between the " truth " and " justification " of beliefs or pI'oposi- "'" tionS.- Once the point is made, it is evident that " alethiology" and " epistemology " (to mention a cognate, though not ~den­ tical distinction) ·are, 1 at least in some contexts, partially independent variables. There is no one-to-one relation between different meanings or theories of truth and the v:arious views as to how we know such ·and such is true. It was my failure to make this point explicit which confosed Fr. Colman O'Neill, of blessed memory, ias well as a good many other readers (1as Bruce Marshall quite rightly notes, though, with excessive 408 404 GEORGEl LINDBECK kindness to me, he!blames the,readers rather than the 'author for the misunderstanding). Once iclarfiied, as it has lbeen done hy Mr. Marshall, the issue turns on ·whether,a classical " correspondence " theory of truth can be ioombined,with, to empfoy O'Neill's terminology, the use of "coherentist" and " pragmatist " epistemological criteria in justifying rbelieis. I ·am not sure ·that this is possible for those who e:xdude any reference to an idea.I observer or knower (whether real or hypothetical) when defining truth, hut for any theist r.for whom God is prima veritas, as he was for Aquinas, the answer is dearly in the affirmative. In God, and only in God, are knowledge and reality, not only in correspondence, hut directly known to correspond. Only in him do truth·and knowledge of truth, 1 aleth:iofogy and epistemology, ooindde. In 1human knowledge in via, in contrast, there is always a gap. Our ibe1ieTs may correspond to reality, hut we are justified in holding that they do so, not by directly seeing the correspondence, 1but by some other means. That those other means might in part or w:hole be coherentist or pragmatist cannot :be e:xduded a priori. It is true that in the caise of an Aristotelian 1such 1as Aquinas, coherence •and rpmctise 1are not explicitly accorded major roles in the epistemological justification of natural kno·wledge or scientia, yet even here they are not e:xduded. Nothing can quali[y ais 1an item of knowledge unless it coheres with all other scientia, and right pra.ctice (i.e., training in virtue) is indispensible :llor ethical kno,wledge. Nor need one cease fo be an Aris,totelian, 1as far ·as I can see, if one accepts the contempOO 'ary oommonpJaice that sense experience itself is heavily dependent on linguistic and non-linguistic pmctices which are in part ·acquired rthrough variaible forim:s of aicculturation and not simply through the actualization of 1genetically encoded propensities. One could still, despite this increased emphasis on prwctiice.and on coherence 1 with webs of 1belief, ibe 'able to affum in good Aristotelian,fashion tha;t the knowledge naturally accessible to ra:t]onal animals such,as we a.re is primarily justified RESPONCE TO BRUCE MARSHALL 405 iby reference to... (shrink)

The biographies of animal celebrities published by the historians John Simons and Eric Baratay aim to place animals in and of themselves at the center of academic narratives. Both excavate the lived experiences concealed behind official discourses and collective representations, notably by relying on cross-fertilization with ethological research. They unveil the ways in which information was reshaped in order to portray animal celebrities as benevolent members of human-animal communities, and thereby shed light on the mechanics of animal commodification. The close (...) examination of a few individual animal trajectories enlightens the condition of many historical animals living under human tutelage in the 19th and early 20th century and highlights long-term historical evolutions, such as the succession of animal cultures and generations largely determined by human actions. (shrink)

This article elaborates a local history of zoo feeding practices in order to shed light on the construction of knowledge at the zoo, its intersection with laboratory developments in life sciences, and the nature of zoo sciences. It relies on the case studies of two of the oldest zoological gardens in the world-the Jardin des Plantes Ménagerie in Paris (1793) and the London Zoological Gardens (1828)-both of which formed parts of major scientific institutions, thereby facilitating research on the dialogue between (...) zoo knowledge and life sciences. The article argues that zoos developed around an experimental paradigm that consisted of testing on animals the (nutritional) variables of their survival within a highly constrained institutional framework. From the interwar period, the empirical nature of the zoo feeding economy was marked by slow and uneven changes, associated with the development of nutritional sciences as well as internal hygiene, pathology, and veterinary programmes. Despite transfers and networks of people, methods, experiments, concepts, and animals between zoos and life sciences laboratories, the former remained too impure as a research site to act as an extension of the latter. Zoos, however, needed external laboratories to support themselves with the scientific legitimacy that their “biopolitical modernisation” (Chrulew) required. In addressing programmatic changes as well as their impact upon the animals, this paper argues that trial-and-error experiments are constitutive of the zoo, contributing towards the definition of the nature of both zoo management and zoo sciences. (shrink)

It will be recalled that Aristotle cites two examples of relations of this type: relations of knowledge and of vision, both of which are internal to the knower and seer, but external to the objects seen and known. However, neither of these relations can be the ones which exist between God and world for they are in a sense cul-de-sacs. Action is involved in their establishment, but they do not necessarily lead to further action, and so they cannot account for (...) the eternal movement of the universe. Only when their objects become desiderata do they result in additional activity. (shrink)

However, from another point of view, these books contradict each other, for Wolfson's work gives not the slightest sign that he recognizes anything in even the first phase of Christian history which resembles the "new understanding of human existence" which Bultmann considers its essence. Anyone whose understanding of the New Testament has room for the aspects Bultmann emphasizes will doubt that these vanished as swiftly and completely as Wolfson's silence suggests. He will therefore wonder whether the treatment of the Church (...) Fathers does not omit so many factors that it seriously misrepresents even those features of the doctrines of faith, Scripture, Trinity and Incarnation which are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOWGIAN BRUCE D. MARSHALL St. Olaf Oollege Northfield, Minnesota, 1JHE PURPOSE of this essay is to discuss the relation between Thomas Aquinas' account of religious and heological truth and a " posrtliberal " one sruch rus that sketched in George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine. Most reviewers assume that Lindbeck's.app:voach is on this point incompatible with the mainstream of the tmdition, and Colman O'Neill, (...) writing :in The Thomist symposium on Lindbeck's book, thinks it oontradicts Aquinas in particular. This paper presents the case to the contr:ary. Afte'I." outlining O'Neill's problem, it argues thart he mis11eads Lindbeck 'and,.at greater length, that Aquinas''S views on t:ruth :are, as Lindbeck affirms, compatible with postliberal emphases. I O'Neill's basic problem with Lindbeck's: "cultural linguistic " understanding of truth is thwt Lindbeck " would clearly have us puTify [Christi.an] language by ridding it of extra-linguistic accretions-in particular the intrusion of reference to objective reality. In the end the only thing that matters is scriptural discourse verified by action." 1 Lindbeck may not intend this " purification," 2 but whatever the intention, his 1 Colman E. O'Neill, "The Rule Theory of Doctrine and Propositional Truth," The Thomist 49 (1985), p. 422. 2 So Lindbeck writes: "The great strength of a cognitive-propositional theory of religion is that •.. it admits the possibility of [ontological] truth claims, and a crucial theological challenge to a cultural-linguistic approach is whether it also can do so." The Nature of Doctrine: Religion a,nd Theology in a, Postlibera,l Age (hereafter ND), (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 63-4. 353 854 BRUCE D. MARSHALL view of •religious truth entails a raidical rejection of 1any claim that Christian beliefs!are onto1ogioally true, in other words, tha;t they rre£er or correspond •to reality. The reruson rllor this putative entailment lies in Lindbeck's manifest oontention (to be explained below) that truth claims in any l'eligion, including Christianity, are subject to 1a twofold criterion of coherence: they must fit wirth the wider linguistic (especially scriptural) paradigms of the 11eligion, and also with a range of practices appropriate to the belief the truth of which is being claimed. But, says O'Neill, Christian beliefs are not true because they cohere with anything, they are true (like all true propositions) "because of their reference to the real." a By introducing ;an irreducible element of coherence into his interpl'etation of Christian truth claims, Lindbeck inevitably " attaches to the ·term ' propositional truth '.a purely pra.gmatic signification," so that " a quite precise philosophical option has: been ma.de in faV'or of the moral or pragmatic definition of truth." 4 O'NeiiH'is point is that " ontological " or " propositional " truth has here been equa,ted with nothing more than the con£ormity of one's life to the patterns narrated in the!biblical story (O'Nei1l's "·scriptural dis-·oourse verified by 1action "), •such tha;t " no claims to objective truth" need be made for the story or any a.ssociated beliefs.5 Tihis, O'Neill alleges, is ·a " novel definition of ontological truth." 6 We ought to!'eject this novelty in favor of the under- •standing of Christian beliefs and their truth articulated by 'Ihomas Aquinas, whel"e it is firmly maintained against " the moral or pmgmatic definition of truth " that " propositions are true because of their I"eference ·to.the real." In order to undevstand the issues ·raised by O'Neill's criticism, it is important to bear in mind the distinction-often made but often overlooked ais well-between truth :and justis O'Neill, "Propositional Truth," p. 430. 4 O'Neill, "Propositional Truth," p. 429. 5 O'Neill," Propositional Truth," p. 420. 6 O'Neill, "Propositional Truth," p. 431. AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 355 fica.tion. The very isisue of what it means to say that propositions 1 are true can be distinguished from the issue of ho,w one justifies, warrants, or tests the truth of propositions. So, for example, one might maintain that in regard to propositions, "true" should be defined as "oorresponds to reality," or perhaps "fitly expresses experience," or perhaps "is... (shrink)

Interreligious dialogue and conversion are two contentious foci for understanding how religion operates. An interpretation of George Lindbeck serves as a starting point for discussion in this paper. The dominant reading is that Lindbeck claims that traditions absorb the world. Religious traditions are isolated, and the one with a greater capacity to assimilate others’ concerns emerges the strongest – implying what is called exclusivism. My proposal is that a different reading of Lindbeck is possible; I am not (...) so much questioning Lindbeck as highlighting another aspect of his oeuvre. If grammar, framework and structure – and not propositional first-order ontological contents – are given first place, dialogue and conversion appear differently. Questions must be raised, however; isn't it true that there is always some content and substance – even if hidden or disguised? (shrink)

Résumé Cet article propose de dégager les techniques d’embaumement littéraire à l’œuvre dans la pratique du portrait chez Violette Leduc, c’est-à-dire les stratégies d’écriture servant à garder vivant le souvenir des personnes aimées. La métaphore de l’embaumement vient de Simone de Beauvoir, dans sa préface de La Bâtarde. L’analyse montre que la mémoire chez Leduc est décrite comme aussi tangible que la vision. L’inexorable mouvement du temps est caricaturalement grossi comme sous l’effet d’une loupe, ce qui permet de le (...) saisir et de le contrôler pour inverser son cours. (shrink)

Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini est professeure d’histoire contemporaine à l’université Paris 3 et avait consacré sa thèse au criminel Lacenaire ; elle y décortiquait la construction d’un monstre polymorphe et surtout l’utilisait pour interroger l’imaginaire social de la monarchie de Juillet. Avec ce nouvel ouvrage, centré sur la parricide Violette Nozière, elle réussit de nouveau à déployer tout l’imaginaire social des années 1930 et propose in fine « une manière de faire de l’histoire avec une af...

« Un désert qui monologue », ainsi se définissait Violette Leduc, cette femme que trop ont refusé d'écouter, cet auteur que trop peu de ses contemporains ont comprise. Vingt-sept ans après son décès, Carlo Jansiti lui rend, avec la biographie qu'il vient de publier, un hommage posthume, sobre mais poignant. Il redonne du relief à une forte personnalité et à une figure attachante, qui scandalisa ses contemporains par sa marginalité et son originalité, et fut souvent mal jugée par eux. (...) L... (shrink)

Résumé L’étude comparée de L’Invitée de Simone de Beauvoir, publié en 1943, et de Ravages de Violette Leduc, publié en 1955, met en lumière une divergence de conception de la création romanesque entre les deux écrivaines. La place prépondérante du dialogue dans les deux œuvres érige ce dernier en concurrent d’une narration à la première personne, ce qui introduit dans les romans un double plan discursif, interrogeant par là-même le mode d’écriture des deux projets romanesques. L’article souligne en particulier (...) le statut inconscient d’une structure discursive genrée faisant apparaître une « parole féminine » fragile ou, au contraire, puissante. (shrink)

This article argues that the power of religion to shape experience presupposes the mobilization of religious identity through social opposition. This thesis is developed through a critique of George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine. The article first examines Lindbeck's thesis that religion shapes experience in light of Talal Asad's critique of Geertz's concept of religion. It argues that in order to understand how ‘religion’ shapes experience we must look outside the immanent sphere of cultural‐religious meaning that Lindbeck, (...) following Geertz, identifies with ‘religion’. Religious authority ultimately derives from the recognition of a social group. Next, looking at the nature of doctrine in light of Kathryn Tanner's thesis that Christian identity is essentially relational, it argues that church doctrines function to mobilize group identity through social opposition. In this respect they resemble the mobilizing slogans of political discourse more than, as Lindbeck's theory proposes, the grammatical rules governing Wittgensteinian language games. (shrink)

In this essay I analyse and criticize George Lindbeck's treatment of truth and meaning in his book "The Nature of Doctrine." On truth, his theory is riddled with conceptual problems, fails as an adequate theoretical description of our pretheoretic intuition of truth, and is finally parasitic on this intuition. On meaning, his reduction of meaning (and sometimes truth) to use or usefulness leads him to an incorrect categorization of doctrines as (essentially) performative utterances and second-order, non-assertive discourse, rather than (...) as propositional attitude statements. Finally, I suggest the inadequacy of his treatment of truth and meaning redounds to the failure of his theory of religion and doctrine as a whole. (shrink)

Was kann eine Rezeption Wittgensteinscher Philosophie für die Theologie leisten? Dieser Frage geht die Autorin anhand zweier prominenter Beispiele nach: des walisischen Religionsphilosophen D. Z. Phillips und des amerikanischen Theologen George A. Lindbeck. Dadurch werden zwei bedeutende Beiträge anglo-amerikanischer Wittgensteinrezeption für den deutschsprachigen Raum zugänglich gemacht. Als Ansatzpunkt einer «Theologie nach Wittgenstein» steht der Grammatikbegriff Wittgensteins im zweiten Teil der Arbeit im Zentrum. Vor dem Hintergrund des Wittgensteinschen Theologieverständnisses (unter Einbeziehung der Versuche Phillips' und Lindbecks) beschreibt die Autorin, wie (...) eine «Theologie als Grammatik» von Wittgenstein her gedacht werden kann. (shrink)

The philosopher Michael Dummett has argued that a commitment to realism in a given domain must display the following marks: a conception of reality as determinate and mind-independent, the correspondence theory of truth, and a truth conditions theory of meaning. In his own and others' philosophy we see a series of arguments at work in the theory of meaning, in epistemology and in the philosophy of science which converge upon a common rejection of such realism. It is not surprising that (...) in such an intellectual climate we see a rise in non-realist theories of religion. Religious realities are here recognised as projected; theological truth is fixed by pragmatic criteria; and meaning is handled in terms of assertibility conditions. This rise of regulative religion has met with a variety of reactions ranging from a horror of being imprisoned by an alien philosophy to a delight that the true nature of religion has at last been brought into sharper focus. (shrink)

The problem of speaking about God arises from the presumed notion that God is utterly transcendent and is "wholly other" from human existence. Moreover, a profound sense of mystery is held to surround God's being. Even so, Not Beyond Language maintains that it is still possible for human beings to express and describe God in words--that language can bring genuine disclosure and understanding of the divine. However, given that religious language is problematic because inadequate, those who engage in speaking about (...) God must accept that the words they use cannot be pressed to yield precise definitions or complete explanations of the divine. The author proposes a nuanced approach to the use of religious language which revolves more around meaning and relevance of the discourse about divine reality, than objective claims about who or what God is. (shrink)

Lindbeck's difficulties with Lonergan's account of religion stem from his radical methodological option in which he draws on Wittgenstein. I revisit ‘the dialectic of methods,’ by examining children's mistakes. I use Lonergan's distinction between ordinary and originary meaningfulness to argue that in Wittgenstein's account of rule-following such mistakes highlight the publicity of norms in ordinary meaningfulness, but I show how alternatives can be cited in which originary meaningfulness is not obscured. I explain the core of Lonergan's foundational methodology and (...) show how for Lonergan the desire to understand is an exigence which, as retorsion indicates, is difficult to deny. I conclude that in his account of religion Lonergan has an answer to a question posed by Wittgenstein on the purpose of thinking. (shrink)