Nagle, Cormac M The advent of the social sciences, psychology and sociology, and their development over the past eighty years or so have made us much more aware of the integrated nature of the human person. Today we are less likely to speak about souls and bodies as separate entities or to be dualistic in our thinking. Nevertheless, the influence of the Stoics in their teaching on natural law and its ethical implications, based on what is natural physically, (...) and later the attempt by Descartes to extend his mechanical approach to science to include human beings (he explicitly describes the body as a machine in his work, Description of the Human Body, (La description du corps humain) is an unfinished treatise, (1647) still seem to infect our thinking in the area of moral teaching and practice. (shrink)

Nagle, Cormac M Global warming has made us much more aware of the need to respect the physical laws of nature and make responsible decisions. This article examines the nature and role of the concept of natural law in guiding us to choose morally and wisely in face of the responsibilities and especially the conflicting values encountered in daily living.

Nagle, Cormac At the 2015 national conference of Catholic Health Australia, Fr Cormac Nagle OFM was awarded CHA's highest honour, the Maria Cunningham Lifetime Contribution Award. After receiving this award, Fr Cormac reflected on his years of ministry at the Chisholm Centre's 2015 Annual General Meeting. We are pleased to present a slightly edited version of his speech here. Fr Cormac reminds us that Catholic health and aged care follows in the footsteps of Jesus (...) Christ, and that both our service and our ethics are based on a profound respect for human dignity. He advises how our ethical standards should always be interpreted so that they reveal rather than obscure the Good News which Christianity proclaims. Fr Cormac also highlights the need for a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to healthcare. Rather than treating only physical or medical problems, this holistic approach cares for the whole person and also attends to their emotional, social and spiritual needs. (shrink)

Nagle, Cormac The goal of this essay is to seek a better understanding of the freedom of the children of God that Jesus Christ lived, taught and bequeathed to the world. To pursue this we consider briefly the meaning of independence as distinct from childish dependence and libertarianism. The essay goes on to present an overview of the teaching of the New Testament on law and freedom. Since there have been different understandings of the nature of authority in (...) the church and especially the practical exercise of authority, we examine its history and tradition. This helps us to avoid being impaled exclusively on one or other approach, whether legalist or relativist or one burdened by a particular culture or historical circumstance. (shrink)

Nagle, Cormac Life, health and income insurance are very important in peoples' lives. For this reason, insurance companies should not use genetic testing to restrict access to these goods.

Nagle, Cormac The supporters of euthanasia regularly air through the media their arguments for the right to have the freedom to take one's life. The emphasis on personal freedom despite present laws struck me as I read Phillip Nitschke's description of his homemade suicide pill and self-injecting apparatus. The goal, in this situation, is to give people the freedom to end their own life with the assistance of others. I want to look at the end of life period (...) from the other quite factual perspective, namely, that since we are not free not to die, what freedoms do we retain in these circumstances? (shrink)

This article outlines the following concepts: beauty in a philosophical sense: why we respect persons, creation, the environment, even animals that externally present as ugly, noting their magnificent structure, their survival apparatus; why we are asked to look for integrity beyond the external and seek and value internal beauty in others and in the creation, leading to the theological question: what role does beauty play that so delights us in beautiful persons, beautiful creatures, and objects in forming our moral life?

The collection presents a variety of promising new directions in Royce scholarship from an international group of scholars, including historical reinterpretations, explorations of Royce's ethics of loyalty and religious philosophy, and contemporary applications of his ideas in psychology, the problem of reference, neo-pragmatism, and literary aesthetics.

The proposed adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the United States has ignited a debate as to whether the principles‐based nature of these standards better serves the interests of investors. While it is argued that these principled‐based standards will encourage more transparent financial reporting than the current rules‐based U.S. standards, critics argue that IFRS will invite more aggressive financial reporting through the liberal exercising of professional judgment. This empirical study aims to understand what individual and organizational factors may (...) affect aggressiveness when making accounting judgments. In particular, we examine the influence that prior ethics training, codes of ethics and an individual's predominant moral reasoning schema have on adherence to company policy in an accounting‐related (depreciation) judgment. Results of the study show that respondents with prior ethics training are more likely to adhere to company accounting policy than those who have not had formal ethics education. Respondents presented with a company ethics code also were less aggressive in their accounting judgments than those who were not presented with a code prior to reading the scenario. Finally, decision aggressiveness was moderated by individuals who used conventional moral reasoning schemas. (shrink)

Beitrage von Ludwig Nagl, Richard Heinrich, Arthur C. Danto, Barry Stroud, Peter F. Strawson, Herbert Hrachovec, Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Hubert L. Dreyfus und Stuar E. Dreyfus, Kurt R. Fischer und Franz M. Wimmer.

What does it mean to be religious believers for people whose living conditions are defined by an increasingly secularized environment? Is the common distinction between faith and knowledge valid? The 21 essays cover approaches from various fields of the humanities. Some explore post-Kantian thoughts, discussing, i.a., American Pragmatism, M. Buber, M. Horkheimer, H. Putnam, J. Habermas, Ch. Taylor and variants of deconstruction, while other essays focus on ways in which the conflict between agnostics and seekers is addressed in US literary (...) works, as in Fl. O’Connor, W. Percy, N. Hawthorne, J. Updike and in novels dealing with pandemics, for instance by L. Wright, E. M. Wiseman and R. Cook. Historical studies examine the intermingling of the sacred and the secular in the American South and neo-scholastic objections to modernity. Theological issues are being re-framed in essays discussing the relevance of pluralism, the relation of religious conviction and public opinion, the situation of scientists who believe and the thoughts of N. Frye and M. McLuhan. Finally, essays pay attention to religious aspects in works of art, e.g. in Ukrainian poetry, G. Mahler’s symphonies and in a TV show presenting new “American Gods” of globalization. (shrink)

: This article draws upon the Roman Catholic distinction between "ordinary" and "extraordinary" means of medical treatment to analyze the case of "Jodie" and "Mary," the Maltese conjoined twins whose surgical separation was ordered by the English courts over the objection of their Roman Catholic parents and Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. It attempts to shed light on the use of that distinction by surrogate decision makers with respect to incompetent patients. In addition, it critically (...) analyzes various components of the distinction by comparing the reasoning used by Catholic moralists in this case with the reasoning used in other cases that raise similar issues, including women facing crisis pregnancies who prefer abortion to adoption and the Indiana "Baby Doe" case. (shrink)

Anthills and aardvarks -- The illusion of independence -- The myth of the master species -- Why law and jurisprudence matter -- The conceit of law -- Respecting the great law -- Remembering who we are -- The question of rights -- Elements of Earth governance -- Seeking Earth jurisprudence -- The rhythms of life -- The law of the land -- A communion of communities -- Transforming law and governance -- The mountain path.

The enduring failure of financial institutions to identify and deal with risk events continues to have serious repercussions, whether in the form of small but significant losses or major and potentially far-reaching scandals. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines an innovative version of the classic dictator game to inform prosocial tendencies with the survey-based Theory of Planned Behaviour, we examine the risk-escalation behaviour of individuals within a large financial institution. We discover evidence of purely selfish behaviour that explains the lack (...) significance in pressure to adhere to the Subjective Norms of colleagues around intention to report risks. A finding that has potentially important implications for efforts to instil a high-error management climate and incentivise risk reporting within organisations where risk, if ignored or unchecked, could ultimately have consequences that extend far beyond the institutions themselves. (shrink)

Answers to the traditional philosophical question “what is there?” that there are many substances rather than one substance have historically been called forms of “pluralism.” “Monism” has been the answer that there is only one substance. And there have been all sorts of variations on those themes: many attributes of one substance; many substances with one common attribute; etc.

In this book, Earl Mac Cormac presents an original and unified cognitive theory of metaphor using philosophical arguments which draw upon evidence from psychological experiments and theories. He notes that implications of this theory for meaning and truth with specific attention to metaphor as a speech act, the iconic meaning of metaphor, and the development of a four-valued system of truth. Numerous examples of metaphor from poetry and science are presented and analyzed to support Mac Cormac's theory. A (...) Cognitive Theory of Metaphortakes up three levels of explanation—metaphor as expressed in surface language, the semantics of metaphor, and metaphor as a cogitive process—and unifies these by interpreting metaphor as an evolutionary knowledge process in which metaphors mediate between minds and culture. Mac Cormac considers, and rejects, the radical theory that all use of language is metaphorical; however, this argument also recognizes that the theoryof metaphor may itself be metaphorical. The book first considers the computational metaphor often adopted by cognitive psychology as an example of metaphor requiring analysis. In contrast to three well-known philosophical theories of metaphor—the tension theory, the controversion theory, and the grammatical deviance theory—it develops a semantical anomaly theory of metaphor based on a quasi-mathematical hierarchy of words. In developing the theory, Mac Cormac makes much-needed connections between theories of metaphor and more orthodox analytic philosophy of meaning, including discussions of speech acts and the logic of fuzzy sets. This semantical theory of explanation is then shown to be compatible with contemporary psychological theories of memory. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

In this visionary book, Cormac Cullinan explains how, if the community of life on Earth is to survive, a new understanding of nature and a new concept of legal systems are needed.Cullinan proposes a new approach or "Earth Jurisprudence" and gives practical guidance on how to begin moving towards it. He shows that this philosophy could help develop new legal systems that would foster human connections to nature. It would encourage personal and social practices that ensure our planet remains (...) liveable.Wild Law is an inspiring and stimulating book, which fuses politics, legal theory, ancient wisdom and personal experiences into a fascinating and eminently readable story."This important book shows not only why we need to revise our governance systems completely, but also how to begin doing so in a way that draws inspiration from nature and from our diverse human communities."Professor Wangari Mathai, Nobel Peace Prize 2004. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2020, Page 101-113.

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)