This study contends that an adequate theory of personal growth should be based upon a human striving for authenticity, a striving revealed as a dynamic process of self-transcendence operating on three different levels: intellectual, moral, and religious. Just as the act of questioning propels man toward ever newer horizons of wisdom, so also does human and divine love explain the fullness of authentic moral and religious development. Bernard Lonergan's insights into personal development are used to critically evaluate specific aspects of (...) the psychologies of personality developed by Freud, Adler, and Maslow. (shrink)

Many drugs have therapeutic off-label uses for which they were not originally designed. Some drugs designed to treat neuropsychiatric and other disorders may enhance certain normal cognitive and affective functions. Because the long-term effects of cognitive and affective enhancement are not known and may be harmful, a precautionary principle limiting its use seems warranted. As an expression of autonomy, though, competent individuals should be permitted to take cognition- and mood-enhancing agents. But they need to be aware of the risks in (...) chronic use of these agents and to take responsibility for their effects. A reasonable middle ground between these positions is to warn those who choose to enhance that doing so entails risks. (shrink)

Many neuroscientists have claimed that our minds are just a function of and thus reducible to our brains. I challenge neuroreductionism by arguing that the mind emerges from and is shaped by interaction among the brain, body, and environment. The mind is not located in the brain but is distributed among these three entities. I then explore the implications of the distributed mind for neuroethics.

The prepositional calculiC n , 1 n introduced by N.C.A. da Costa constitute special kinds of paraconsistent logics. A question which remained open for some time concerned whether it was possible to obtain a Lindenbaum''s algebra forC n . C. Mortensen settled the problem, proving that no equivalence relation forC n . determines a non-trivial quotient algebra.The concept of da Costa algebra, which reflects most of the logical properties ofC n , as well as the concept of paraconsistent closure system, (...) are introduced in this paper. (shrink)

Neuroimaging, psychosurgery, deep-brain stimulation, and psychopharmacology hold considerable promise for more accurate prediction and diagnosis and more effective treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Some forms of psychopharmacology may even be able to enhance normal cognitive and affective capacities. But the brain remains the most complex and least understood of all the organs in the human body. Mapping the neural correlates of the mind through brain scans, and altering these correlates through surgery, stimulation, or pharmacological interventions can affect us in (...) both positive and negative ways. We need to carefully weigh the potential benefit against the potential harm of such techniques. This paper examines some of these techniques and explores the emerging ethical issues in clinical neuroscience. (shrink)

his paper presents a unified treatment of the propositional and first-order many-valued logics through the method of tableaux. It is shown that several important results on the proof theory and model theory of those logics can be obtained in a general way. We obtain, in this direction, abstract versions of the completeness theorem, model existence theorem (using a generalization of the classical analytic consistency properties), compactness theorem and Lowenheim-Skolem theorem. The paper is completely self-contained and includes examples of application to (...) particular many-valued formal systems. (shrink)

In this paper, the conception of Anthony J. Cesario about the philosophy of animal rights is critically reviewed. His approach is a valiant effort to defend the philosophy of animal rights. He is a moderate on this matter, offering all sorts of compromises. He applies an unusual insight to this matter with using the libertarian doctrine of evictionism.

Psychopathy involves impaired capacity for prudential and moral reasoning due to impaired capacity for empathy, remorse, and sensitivity to fear-inducing stimuli. Brain abnormalities and genetic polymorphisms associated with these traits appear to justify the claim that psychopaths cannot be morally responsible for their behavior. Yet psychopaths are capable of instrumental reasoning in achieving their goals, which suggests that they have some capacity to respond to moral reasons against performing harmful acts and refrain from performing them. The cognitive and affective impairment (...) of the psychopath justifies mitigated responsibility, but not excuse. (shrink)

A quarter of a century has elapsed since quantum mechanics was discovered. Perhaps it is not too much to say, in retrospect, that the time was ripe for this particular development. This is attested, not only by the speed with which the edifice of the theory was completed immediately following the basic discoveries of Heisenberg and Schrödinger, but also by the rapidity, well-nigh unprecedented in the history of science with which the new results were applied to almost every branch of (...) physics and chemistry. A mental readiness on the part of the scientists involved might have had much more to do with this than the facilities of modern communication systems. (shrink)

I argue that the lived experience we, the human species, are going through in 2020 is no longer an epoch of changes but a change of epoch. Post-pandemic is becoming meaningless in a change of epoch. My argument is based on the history of the colonial matrix of power rather than in particular thematic histories which, in this case, will be the history of pandemics and the history of the economy. Both are working together, globally now, and entangled in the (...) colonial matrix of power, which can not be found in the origin of the universe, in Babylon or in Greece. It did not exist until the 16th century in the Atlantic, the Black and the White, the North and the South. The logic of coloniality is the logic of the invisible and it is by understanding its historical foundation, its unfolding and the radical transformations in the past two decades, that the signs of the change of epoch can be perceived and understood. (shrink)

Disputationes in universam logicam Aristotelis.,. BNMX: xiii, 8, (NI, 297; VTA 429; VTB). 2. Philosophia Naturalis. Disputationes in octo libros Physicorum ...