Background: Informed consent in clinical research is mandated throughout the world. Both patient subjects and investigators are required to understand and accept the distinction between research and treatment.Aim: To document the extent and to identify factors associated with therapeutic misconception in a population of patient subjects or parent proxies recruited from a variety of multicentre trials .Patients and methods: The study comprised two phases: the development of a questionnaire to assess the quality of informed consent and a survey of patient (...) subjects based on this questionnaire.Results: A total of 303 patient subjects or parent proxies were contacted and 279 questionnaires were analysed. The median age was 49.5 years, sex ratio was 1 and 61% of respondents were professionally active. Overall memorisation of the oral or written communication of informed consent was good , and satisfaction with the process was around 70%. Therapeutic misconception was present in 70% of respondents, who expected to receive better care and ignored the consequence of randomisation and treatment comparisons. This was positively associated with the acuteness and severity of the disease.Conclusion: The authors suggest that the risk of therapeutic misconception be specifically addressed in consent forms as an educational tool for both patients and investigators. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE IN HINDU RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS Francis X. Clooney, SJ. Boston College Outline I.Violence, Sacrifice and Ritual 1. Some basic attitudes toward the killing of animals 2.Resolving the problem of sacrificial violence by internalization 3.Substitutions 4.Renunciation and nonviolence: an elite pathway 5.Violence andnonviolenceinrelation to vegetarianism: Hans Schmidt's theses?. Traditional Hindu Theorizations of Violence in Mimamsa Ritual Theory and Vedanta Theology 1. The ritual analysis (at Mimamsa Sutra 1.1.2) (...) of the Shyena rite which is performed in order to harm enemies 2.The Vedanta analysis (at Uttara Mimamsa Sutra 3.1.25) of ritual violence in relation to the prohibition of violence??. Violence in the Life of the State HOFrancis X. Clooney, S.J. 1. The royal power to punish (danda) 2.The synthesis of the ideals of brahmin and king a..The distribution and management of violence in the Laws ofManu (1st century CE) b. Policy toward warfare in the Arthashastra of Kautilya 3.The collapse of the brahmanical synthesis—and the emergence of a (seemingly) more nonviolent Hinduism 4.A comment on Gandhi (1 869-1948) and the contemporary emergence of post-Gandhian Hindu perspectives IV.Alternate Views from Outside the Sanskritic Tradition 1. Tamil Wisdom on Violence and Nonviolence: a.Tirukkural (c. 2nd century CE) b.Cilappatikaram (5th century CE) 2.Blood and Goddesses 3.From a Village Perspective a. Some Trouble with Cows b.Mahasweta Devi and the Literary Exposure of Violence V.The Question of a Christian Perspective on the Hindu Treatment of Violence and Religion: Are Victims Necessary? Some Presuppositions: • The following reflections, complex as they are, are governed by a reluctance to simplify Hindu teaching. I seek to avoid the view that the Hindu traditions had only one view of violence and nonviolence. • I use the term "Hindu" loosely and as a shorthand, without claiming that there is a single Hindu tradition, or a single creed shared by all Hindus, or a single attitude toward violence. But neither do I claim that there are simply many traditions without any common elements which justify the appellation "Hindu." • I am reluctant to idealize the Hindu traditions as if nonviolence must necessarily be taken as the epitome ofHindu thought. India's traditions are complex, and require complex treatment. • A serious artificiality of this paper is that I treat Hinduism without simultaneously lookinginto Buddhist andJain materials, though both were traditions with important and enduring commitments to nonviolence. Particularly with respect to the renunciant, marginal components of traditions, one ought not to make overly neat or decisive distinctions Violence and Nonviolence in Hindu Religious Traditions 1 1 1 between the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain theories and practices related to violence and nonviolence. • I attempt to give preference to indigenous discussions ofissues related to violence and nonviolence; the context and mode of thinking are important, notjust the conclusions drawn. I therefore avoid simply mining Hindu texts for an answer to a contemporary question, "What is the Hindu attitude toward violence and nonviolence?" • In most ofwhat follows we must distinguish contexts where "violence" indicates "physical action which causes pain to some living being," from contexts where "violence" indicates "an intention, rooted in anger or malice, to hurt someone." I use the word "violence" for both in order to highlight the complex issues of distinction involved. In considering the Sanskrit formulations, one likewise has to distinguish himsa as "causing pain" from himsa as "intending to harm." • It is often difficult to date ancient texts, and even when one narrows down a date—within 200-300 years—its significance still depends on other, often equally broadly stated dates. Nevertheless, I do offer dates throughout, as summarized here: •ancient Vedic sacrificial practices, from before 1200 BCE •Vedic ritual analyses and reformulations of sacrifices as ritualized acts, in the Brahmanas, from after 1000 BCE •the Upanishadic exploration of the deeper meanings of ritual and interiorized alternatives to ritual, from after 900 BCE •the Buddha, c. 500 BCE •key texts in the theorization of royal power, The Laws of Manu (beginning of Common Era) and Arthashastra (c. 150 CE) •the Tamil wisdom text Tirukkural (100 CE) •Goddess texts as evidenced in Sanskrit formulations, from after 500 CE... (shrink)

There are good reasons for envisioning a global discourse about God, premised necessarily agreed upon perfections considered to be by definition proper to God, and for thinking through the implications of our understanding of God for morality. Philosophically, it makes sense to hold that claims about omnipotence, omniscience, and other superlative perfections are indeed maximal, and define “God” wherever the terminology of divine persons is taken up. Religiously too, it makes sense to assert that a deity possessed of perfections is (...) not just the deity of one’s own tribe or religion, but also the deity of the whole world, whether acknowledged as such or not. This essay delves into the larger set of rich complexities by three moves. First, I look into a single extended historical case of the extension of the discourse about God beyond the Christian West, the discourse on God proffered by Western Jesuit missionaries in India from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. Second, I place next to that Jesuit learning the instance of a famed Hindu theologian’s discourse on God, God’s perfections, and their moral implications. Third, I briefly step back and assess the dangers and fruitful prospects inherent in thinking about God and morality in an interreligious context. (shrink)

We have empirically examined the relationship between top executives’ turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility by identifying the influence of ten specific turnover reasons resulting in the chairman’s departure and two important types of chairman’s succession. Using a sample of 782 manufacturing listed companies across 3 years in China, we find that the corporate environmental responsibility is negatively associated with the involuntary and negative turnover (i.e., dismissal, health and death, and forced resignation) and positively associated with improving corporate governance, and (...) not associated with the normal turnover (i.e., retirement and contract expiration) and the types of chairman’s succession (i.e., independence, and internal or external promotion). Our study significantly contributes to research in environmental disclosure by revealing the relationship between chairman’s turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility. A feasible way is suggested to regulators and other stakeholders in monitoring or assessing the possible abnormality of environmental responsibility when firms experience involuntary and negative chairman’s turnover in the emerging economies. (shrink)

A part of relativistic dynamics is axiomatized by simple and purely geometrical axioms formulated within first-order logic. A geometrical proof of the formula connecting relativistic and rest masses of bodies is presented, leading up to a geometric explanation of Einstein's famous E = mc² . The connection of our geometrical axioms and the usual axioms on the conservation of mass, momentum and four-momentum is also investigated.

For Spinoza, the highest thing we can hope for is acquiescentia in se ipso—acquiescence in oneself. As an ethical ideal, this might appear as a complacent quietism, a licence to accept the way you are and give up hope of improving either yourself or the world. I argue that the opposite is the case. Self-acquiescence in Spinoza’s sense is a very challenging goal: it requires a form of self-understanding that is extremely difficult to attain. It also involves occupying a daring (...) and radical political position, one that obstructs the psychological mechanisms by which political power is typically maintained. (shrink)

I’m to push back on Hill’s (2022) criticism in four ways. First: we need some context for the debate that occurred in the pages of the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective that so concerns Hill. Second: getting precise with our terminology (and not working with stereotypes) is the only theoretically fruitful way to approach the problem of conspiracy theories. Third: I address Hill’s claim there is no evidence George W. Bush or Tony Blair accused their critics, during the build-up (...) the invasion of Iraq in 2003ACE, as being “conspiracy theorists.” Fourth (and finally): I will gently suggest that Hill has succumbed to a stereotypical view of work in Philosophy on conspiracy theories. (shrink)

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 譚傑志(Joseph Tham) 教授在其 “Bioethics: Cross-Cultural Explorations”(Tham 2022, 13) —文中回顧了生命倫理學在發展過程中的世俗化歷程、聯合國教科文組織生命倫理學和人權主席(UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights) 專案“生命倫理學、多元文化和宗教”在過去12年中的開展情況、以及最近這些年在生命倫理學領域中涉及文化多元性較為突出的問題。譚教授為生命倫理學領域中跨文化交流做出了卓越的貢獻，特別是其擔任上述項目負責人 以來。生命倫理學領域中的很多主題，如代孕、墮胎、基因編輯等，既複雜乂敏感；可以想像，推動生命倫理學領域中跨文化交流是一件富挑戰的事情。正如譚教授所言：“……在不同宗教之間尋求共識或思想融合是一個相當宏 大，甚至有些不現實的目標。”儘管如此，譚教授依然以極大的耐心和熱情通過改進專案中的對話機制，不斷地推動跨文化交流取得實質性進展和一系列學術成果。在這個過程中，如何讓不同文化和宗教背景的學者就某個主題進 行有意義的對話成為關鍵。譚教授探索出的“主旨論文+跨文化回應”模式，即一位元學者基於自身的文化或宗教背景撰寫針對特定主題的主旨論文，由另一位不同文化背景的學者撰寫回應論文，為不同的文化和宗教搭建了對話 的橋樑。(撮要取自內文首段) I am grateful for Professor Joseph Tham's efforts to improve cross-cultural dialogue on bioethics by continually updating the dialogue mechanisms in the “Bioethics, Multiculturalism and Religion Project,” conducted by the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights. The dialogue helps moral strangers to discuss their local cultures and to enter and learn about other (...) cultures and religions. Through this process, moral strangers may find that they hold similar values. The dialogues have also shown us the importance of cross-culture differences. Although we can foster consensus or convergence on some issues, it should be noted that the differences in cultures and religions are not the second-best option when agreement cannot be reached. Such differences constitute the cultural diversity of the world and have their own values. Respecting these differences is just as important as seeking consensus or convergence. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories are often portrayed as unwarranted beliefs, typically supported by suspicious kinds of evidence. Yet contemporary work in Philosophy argues provisional belief in conspiracy theories is—at the very—least understandable (because conspiracies occur) and if we take an evidential approach—judging individual conspiracy theories on their particular merits—belief in such theories turns out to be warranted in a range of cases. Drawing on this work, I examine the kinds of evidence typically associated with conspiracy theories, showing that the evidential problems typically (...) associated with conspiracy theories are not unique to such theories. As such, if there is a problem with the conspiracy theorist’s use of evidence, it is one of principle: is the principle which guides their use of evidence somehow in error? I argue that whatever we might think about conspiracy theories generally, there is no prima facie case for a scepticism of conspiracy theories based purely on their use of evidence. (shrink)

Research on conspiracy theories has proliferated since 2016, in part due to the US election of President Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasingly threatening environmental conditions. In the rush to publication given these concerning social consequences, researchers have increasingly treated as definitive a 2016 paper by Michael Wood (Political Psychology, 37(5), 695–705, 2016) that concludes that the phrase “conspiracy theory” has no negative effect upon people’s willingness to endorse a claim. We revisit Wood’s findings and its (re)uptake in the recent (...) literature. Is the label “conspiracy theory” a pejorative? If so, does it sway or affect people’s belief in specific claims of conspiracy (i.e. particular conspiracy theories), or is the effect one that concerns claims of conspiracy more generally (i.e. all conspiracy theories)? Through an examination of the conceptual and methodological scope of Wood’s work and the results of our similar quasi-experimental design, we argue that it is premature to suggest the label “conspiracy theory” has no impact on the believability of a claim, or that it has no rhetorical power. (shrink)

What can I know? What can I hope for? What should I do? These are three perennial questions of life, and few thinkers have offered such penetrating answers as Augustine. FRIENDSHIP AND SOCIETY is a fascinating volume meant for those interested in what one of history's greatest minds had to say about life in an imperfect world. Bridging expert scholarship and a popular readership, this volume assumes no in-depth knowledge of philosophy or prior acquaintance with Augustine's writings. An introductory reflection (...) on the human predicament is followed by a clear and accurate outline of Augustine's thought on such relevant topics as ethics, politics, society, history, the family, war and peace, crime and punishment, and church and state. Unifying the book is a powerful argument that "friendship" can be the tie that binds us all. (shrink)

A reply to Patrick Stokes' 'Reluctance and Suspicion'—itself a reply to an early piece by myself replying to Stokes—in which I clarify what it is I intend when talking about how we should investigate conspiracy theories.

Context: Phenomenology and the enactive approach pose a unique challenge to dream research: during sleep one seems to be relatively disconnected from both world and body. Movement and perception, prerequisites for sensorimotor subjectivity, are restricted; the dreamer’s experience is turned inwards. In cognitive neurosciences, on the other hand, the generally accepted approach holds that dream formation is a direct result of neural activations in the absence of perception, and dreaming is often equated with “delusions.” Problem: Can enactivism and phenomenology account (...) for the variety of dream experiences? What kinds of experiential and empirical approaches are required in order to probe into dreaming subjectivity? Investigating qualities of perception, sensation, and embodiment in dreams, as well as the relationship between the dream-world and waking-world requires a step away from a delusional or altered-state framework of dream formation and a step toward an enactive integrative approach. Method: In this article, we will focus on the “depth” of dream experiences, i.e., what is possible in the dream state. Our article is divided into two parts: a theoretical framework for approaching dreaming from an enactive cognition standpoint; and discussion of the role and strategies for experimentation on dreaming. Based on phenomenology and theories of enactivism, we will argue for the primacy of subjectivity and imagination in the formation of lived experience. Results: We propose that neurophenomenology of dreaming is a nascent discipline that requires rethinking the relative role of third-, first- and second-person methodologies, and that a paradigm shift is required in order to investigate dreaming as a phenomenon on a continuum of conscious phenomena as opposed to a break from or an alteration of consciousness. Implications: Dream science, as part of the larger enterprise of consciousness and subjectivity studies, can be included in the enactive framework. This implies that dream experiences are neither passively lived nor functionally disconnected from dreamers’ world and body. We propose the basis and some concrete strategies for an empirical enactive neurophenomenology of dreaming. We conclude that investigating dream experiences can illuminate qualities of subjective perception and relation to the world, and thus challenge the traditional subject-object juxtaposition. Constructivist content: This article argues for an interdisciplinary enactive cognitive science approach to dream studies. (shrink)

Continuing work initiated by Jónsson, Daigneault, Pigozzi and others; Maksimova proved that a normal modal logic (with a single unary modality) has the Craig interpolation property iff the corresponding class of algebras has the superamalgamation property (cf. [Mak 91], [Mak 79]). The aim of this paper is to extend the latter result to a large class of logics. We will prove that the characterization can be extended to all algebraizable logics containing Boolean fragment and having a certain kind of local (...) deduction property. We also extend this characterization of the interpolation property to arbitrary logics under the condition that their algebraic counterparts are discriminator varieties. We also extend Maksimova's result to normal multi-modal logics with arbitrarily many, not necessarily unary modalities, and to not necessarily normal multi-modal logics with modalities of ranks smaller than 2, too.The problem of extending the above characterization result to no n-normal non-unary modal logics remains open. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness” by Michael D. Kirchhoff & Daniel D. Hutto. Upshot: Kirchhoff and Hutto argue that the metaphysical commitments of neurophenomenology, as formulated by Varela in 1996, endorse a form of non-reductionism, which assumes and does not resolve the hard problem of consciousness. Although I share Kirchhoff and Hutto’s conceptual concern, I disagree that denying the gap between the phenomenal and the physical, opting (...) for an identity theory in a radical enactivism framework, is a promising alternative to a better understanding of human experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wellspring or Circuit?Commentary on Dewey and the Aesthetic UnconsciousnessFrank X. RyanEditor's note: This article contains material similar to a book review by the same author previously published in The Pluralist, vol. 18, no. 2, pp 114–21. The present article represents a further critical use of this material that we deem worthy of publication.in this vital and splendidly crafted work, Bethany Henning recovers a philosophy of aesthetic wisdom far richer (...) than the narrow epistemological lens dominant today. From its start, American philosophy looked beyond Europe's atomistic empiricism toward a continuity between our thought and nature's aesthetic splendor. Jonathan Edwards found beauty in the structure of being reflected in relations among ideas. For Emerson, each of us is a "transparent eyeball" in which nature's beauty fortifies our moral and spiritual agency. At the apex of this tradition is John Dewey, for whom "aesthetic experience [is] the highest mode of human experience" (Henning 55).Although aesthetic theory is usually associated with the cognitive evaluation of art, Dewey explores a broader non-reflective or unconscious dimension. Henning's appropriation of "unconscious"—the cradle of Freud's infantile id—is intentionally provocative. American culture, reflected in academic thought, has largely resisted appeals to subterranean urges and drives. In doing so, however, we perpetuate a myth of rational and moral exceptionalism masking a history of colonialism, oppression, and crass commercialism. In accepting the unconscious, European thought has taken strides to acknowledge and address such ills. Henning wonders whether America might accept "a dynamic unconscious, were it presented with an alternative mythology" (10) and finds a viable candidate in Dewey's underappreciated notion of qualitative immediacy: an "aesthetic (directly felt) connection between ourselves and [End Page 77] the world" (Henning 5). In affirming the unconscious depth of experience, this American reconfiguration welcomes "aesthetic experience back into our philosophical lives" (Henning 5).When embodied meaning supplements cognitive reflection, we come to champion "the sensuous, lived body" as "the primary reality" of qualitative immediacy—a felt aesthetic unity punctuated by "impulsions" arising from an organism's needs (Henning 69). As "a site of adaptive adjustments," Henning continues, "the body is responsive to the brink of coalescence at the point of contact with the world, in which things that are 'outside of it' belong to it" (71). "To move adeptly into aesthetic experience means to be skilled at loosening focal consciousness" so as to cultivate "the essential porousness of the world" (130).With this, the body-mind relation becomes a problem of normative aesthetics, not epistemology. The Cartesian detachment of intellect from nature perpetuated our cultural alienation from our bodies, our environments, and one another (Henning 81–84). With the re-emergence of the body, however, we can begin to acknowledge and heal this trauma.In tapping the significance of qualitative immediacy, of "having" beyond "knowing," Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious strives to recover Dewey's remarkable insight into our essential situatedness in the world. This alone establishes its importance. But Henning's book is equally ambitious in suggesting how Dewey's aesthetic understanding can(1). reconfigure the shadowy daemons of Freud's id;(2). replace the myth of American exceptionalism with authentic relationships rooted in pluralist values;(3). rehabilitate the body as an authentic vehicle of expression and communication;(4). vindicate the bold claim that all unified experience is aesthetic; and(5). identify and promote connections forged in shared human experiences.These aims are of inestimable value. I pledge to do whatever I can to defend and advance them. At the outset, however, I feel we must shore up the relationship between two different approaches to thinking about our situatedness in the world: (1) of organic beings existing in a porous world they dynamically interact with, and (2) a phenomenology of experience wherein nonreflective having is an unanalyzed totality from which thought and thing, subject and object, organism and environment, functionally emerge in what Dewey calls the pattern of inquiry. [End Page 78]The general consensus that Dewey failed to reconcile these two approaches—of existence with experience—was dubbed the "deep crack" in Dewey's thought, by Richard Bernstein in 1961. Bernstein laments Dewey's being caught between (1... (shrink)

I often tell my students that the only thing that is not controversial in philosophy is that everything else in it is controversial. While this might be a bit of an exaggeration, it does contain a kernel of truth, as many exaggerations do: philosophy is a highly contentious discipline. So it is remarkable the extent to which there is agreement in the philosophy of religion amongst theists, agnostics, and atheists alike that John Mackie’s argument for atheism is either invalid or (...) unsound. As a result, the focus has entirely shifted from the logical problem of evil to the so-called evidential one. But I think that this is a mistake, not necessarily because I think Mackie’s argument is sound, but rather because I reject an assumption made by apparently all parties to the debate, which is that there is only one logical problem of evil. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to defend a deductive argument that God* does not exist. As far as I can tell, the basic idea of this argument is a novel one: while Mackie’s argument has a more or less consequentialist framework, mine has a deontological one. The evil of which I will speak is that of our having been thrown into the world. (shrink)

Among Thomists the standard practice is to show the openness of human nature to beatitude from the speculative side. The intellectual desire to know the richness of the notion of being, the ratio entis, becomes the desire to know the creator who as esse subsistens embodies the intelligible heart of being. I want to try the same strategy but from the practical side. I believe that more people experience a desire to love than a desire to know. Few have noticed (...) that Aquinas’s first practical principle “Good ought to be done” is, as I will explain, a call to be respectful and solicitous of ourselves and others as intellectors of being. Hence, fidelity to this principle illustrates a connection between being and love so that the greater is the concentration of being, then the greater is the concentration of love. A subsistent instance of being should be a subsistent instance of love. In his metaphysics Aquinas attains the creator as subsistent being. Hence, contact with that instance would strengthen in an unparalleled way the human’s fidelity to the first practical principle. Does this contact in fact occur? That philosophical question raises the religious possibility. In its parade of saints, Christianity provides tantalizing evidence that that contact is realized. (shrink)

Among Thomists the standard practice is to show the openness of human nature to beatitude from the speculative side. The intellectual desire to know the richness of the notion of being, the ratio entis, becomes the desire to know the creator who as esse subsistens embodies the intelligible heart of being. I want to try the same strategy but from the practical side. I believe that more people experience a desire to love than a desire to know. Few have noticed (...) that Aquinas’s first practical principle “Good ought to be done” is, as I will explain, a call to be respectful and solicitous of ourselves and others as intellectors of being. Hence, fidelity to this principle illustrates a connection between being and love so that the greater is the concentration of being, then the greater is the concentration of love. A subsistent instance of being should be a subsistent instance of love. In his metaphysics Aquinas attains the creator as subsistent being. Hence, contact with that instance would strengthen in an unparalleled way the human’s fidelity to the first practical principle. Does this contact in fact occur? That philosophical question raises the religious possibility. In its parade of saints, Christianity provides tantalizing evidence that that contact is realized. (shrink)

In several recent issues of this journal, I argued for an account of property possession as strict, numerical identity. While this account has stuck some as being highly idiosyncratic in nature, it is not entirely something new under the sun, since as I will argue in this paper, it turns out to have a historic precedent in Plato⠀™ s theory of forms. Indeed, the purpose of this paper is twofold. The first is to show that my account of property (...) possession can be utilized to provide a novel interpretation of Plato⠀™ s theory of forms. And the second is to show that once it has been divorced from a variety of implausible doctrines with which it has historically been wedded, Plato⠀™ s central insight that all properties possess themselves, far from being of mere historical interest, is independently plausible, ironically enough, even from an empirical point of view. (shrink)

This essay carefully examines the debate between Hegel and Wilhelm von Humboldt about the meaning of the Bhagavad Gîtâ, and more specifically about several verses in Gîtâ 6 regarding the radical emptying and purification of the mind. My aim is to propose a new and wider conversation, not possible in Hegel’s time but necessary in ours, between European scholars and peer Indian intellectuals in traditions familiar with the Gîtâ for centuries before any European knew of it at all. To exemplify (...) this new work, I attend to the reading of the same Gîtâ 6 passage by the famed philosopher and theologian Madhusûdana Sarasvatî. In this way, the European inquiry into the status of Indian thought and religion ceases to be an exclusively European endeavor, becoming instead a beneficial and mutually corrective crosscultural and interreligious conversation about texts and history, philosophy and theology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Note From A Narcissist (Amores 1.11) OVID (Translated by Caleb M. X. Dance) Yoohoo! Yes! You! You do her hair. Right? Not like the one who does her legs or nails, right? You know where she goes, right? And you can let her know, like before, to rush those lovely toes— Oh! I mean her hair, to me. Oh, you’ve always been a friend! Right! Take this little note (...) to her tomor— Oh! and hand it to her. Understand? No delay! You’ve got a heart, right? You might be softer than you think and not as “plain Jane” as you think? I think you’ve felt a bit of love, no? You see it in me too, no? So— anyway, if she wants to know what I’m thinking, tell her I can’t wait to hold her close tonight. Right! Enough. My note will say the rest. Oh, it’s late! I’m blabbing. Go! No! Wait! Catch her in a good mood—when she’s free. Oh! but make her read it right away. Watch her eyes! And her face, reading. I mean as she reads. Oh, you learn a lot, even from dumb faces. Don’t be slow! When she’s read it, arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 make her write right back. Lots. Tell her! It’s the worst when every page is filled with loads of empty space. She should pack them in—lines—so eyes linger on words in the margins. My eyes! No! Wait! Tell her not to tire fingers writing long. Let her only write: “Come!” No delay—I’ll praise these letters right away. I’ll dedicate them to... oh... you know, Lady Love herself, and I’ll note, “To Love: Ovid offers up these loyal saviors— you who just were scraps of paper.” 154 note from a narcissist... (shrink)

For several decades, renewed interest in the connection between perception and knowledge has sustained a robust debate over external world skepticism. Recently, however, a growing consensus claims the skeptical challenge has been substantially met, and that realism in some robust form has emerged a clear victor. I invite us to rethink this consensus in a two-part response. The first forges a temporary alliance with skepticism against prominent forms of contemporary realism. That these fail to rebuff ews bolsters Barry Stroud’s call (...) for a new paradigm of objectivity. In the second part I sketch such a paradigm based upon a transactional interpretation of John Dewey’s pragmatism, and indicate its resilience to skeptical attacks. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Many of the results of Timothy Williamson's Knowledge and Its Limits depend upon his argument that many, if not all, of our mental states fail to be luminous in the sense that if we are in them, then we are in a position to know that we are in them. The purpose of this article is to show that his argument is unsound. I conclude by distinguishing between partial and total luminosity, and by arguing that even if mental states (...) are not totally luminous, they are at least partially so.RÉSUMÉ: Plusieurs des résultats du livre de Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and Its Limits dépendent de son argument à l'effet que la plupart, sinon tous nos états mentaux ne sont pas lumineux au sens où tout en se trouvant dans un tel état, nous sommes en position, de savoir que tel est notre état. Cet article a pour objectif de démontrer que ce raisonnement ne tient pas. Nous concluons par une distinction entre luminosité partielle ou complète et soutenons que, même si les états mentaux ne sont pas entièrernent clairvoyants, ils le sont en partie. (shrink)

My target is Kenny’s claim that if God can be thought not to be in the same manner as men or phoenixes, then God too is an essence/existence composite. I argue that our ignorance about the existence of the phoenix and our ignorance about God do not have the same bases and so they do not lead to the same conclusion, namely, a distinction between thing and existence in both cases. The notion of the phoenix is existence neutral because it (...) is reflective of conceptual notes that have to be existence neutral in order to be in existential multiplicities. Our notion of subsistent existence is not existence neutral but it is composed of a formed intention of existence that gives it an independence from the context of the second operation in which it was formed. The first case leads to a situation involving a distinction between essence and existence. Knowledge of the existence of the phoenix adds something over and beyond the essence of the phoenix. In the second case, knowledge of the existence of subsistent existence does not do that because existence is what the formed intention here is of. What knowledge of subsistent existence adds does not belong to it. It belongs to us. It adds our second operation knowledge of the esse of sensible things and our reasoning from that to subsistent existence. (shrink)

Over the years I have written a number of articles critiquing Transcendental Thomism both from philosophical and from textual points of view. In the course of these articles, I have made comments on Bernard J. F. Lonergan’s epistemology. These comments have caught the eye of Jeremy D. Wilkins, and have provoked his article, “A Dialectic of ‘Thomist’ Realisms: John Knasas and Bernard Lonergan.” The violence of Wilkins’s reaction leads me to believe that despite the passing nature of my comments, they (...) are sufficiently incisive to have cut a nerve. Nevertheless, it is my opinion that no reader of Wilkins would come away with any accurate grasp of my understanding of Lonergan, my reasons for it, and the precise point of contention between us. So, both for the record and the benefit of calm discussion of this influential figure, I would like to provide my hermeneutic of Lonergan and to pinpoint my trouble with him. To this end, I will repeat some descriptions of Lonergan from a recently published monograph, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), and then address the criticisms of Wilkins. (shrink)

Scott Aiken and Thomas Dabay contend that a satisfactory account of truth is both infallibilist and antiskeptical. Externalist correspondence theories, they say, preserve the infallibility of the truth-relation yet invite skeptical qualms. In tying truth to experience, pragmatist theories resist skeptical challenges, but embrace a fallibilism that renders their account of truth inconsistent and even incoherent. While agreeing with Aiken and Dabay that externalist accounts are vulnerable to skepticism, I dispute each of the four arguments they offer against pragmatist fallibilism. (...) Though partially successful against Peirce’s more popular view that truth is the final belief of a community of inquirers, their arguments are wholly ineffective against Dewey’s account of truth as warranted assertability. (shrink)

Among Thomists the standard practice is to show the openness of human nature to beatitude from the speculative side. The intellectual desire to know the richness of the notion of being, the ratio entis, becomes the desire to know the creator who as esse subsistens embodies the intelligible heart of being. I want to try the same strategy but from the practical side. I believe that more people experience a desire to love than a desire to know. Few have noticed (...) that Aquinas’s first practical principle “Good ought to be done” is, as I will explain, a call to be respectful and solicitous of ourselves and others as intellectors of being. Hence, fidelity to this principle illustrates a connection between being and love so that the greater is the concentration of being, then the greater is the concentration of love. A subsistent instance of being should be a subsistent instance of love. In his metaphysics Aquinas attains the creator as subsistent being. Hence, contact with that instance would strengthen in an unparalleled way the human’s fidelity to the first practical principle. Does this contact in fact occur? That philosophical question raises the religious possibility. In its parade of saints, Christianity provides tantalizing evidence that that contact is realized. (shrink)

Among Thomists the standard practice is to show the openness of human nature to beatitude from the speculative side. The intellectual desire to know the richness of the notion of being, the ratio entis, becomes the desire to know the creator who as esse subsistens embodies the intelligible heart of being. I want to try the same strategy but from the practical side. I believe that more people experience a desire to love than a desire to know. Few have noticed (...) that Aquinas’s first practical principle “Good ought to be done” is, as I will explain, a call to be respectful and solicitous of ourselves and others as intellectors of being. Hence, fidelity to this principle illustrates a connection between being and love so that the greater is the concentration of being, then the greater is the concentration of love. A subsistent instance of being should be a subsistent instance of love. In his metaphysics Aquinas attains the creator as subsistent being. Hence, contact with that instance would strengthen in an unparalleled way the human’s fidelity to the first practical principle. Does this contact in fact occur? That philosophical question raises the religious possibility. In its parade of saints, Christianity provides tantalizing evidence that that contact is realized. (shrink)

My article confronts three of Spinoza’s four arguments against free will in God with Aquinas’s contrary position in the Summa contra Gentiles, Book I. Spinoza’s three arguments come from his Ethics, props. XVII and XXXII. First, since free choice is always exclusive, free choice in God would leave unactualized power in God. Second, if God’s will could be different without entailing divine mutability, then a divine voluntarism would reign. Third, if God has freedom of will but his willing is his (...) essence, the God’s essence could be otherwise. I note that these pitfalls open by assuming that the divine will bears upon creatures directly and immediately. I then show that since for Aquinas, God wills creatures by principally willing himself, none of Spinoza’s criticisms follow. (shrink)

My article confronts three of Spinoza’s four arguments against free will in God with Aquinas’s contrary position in the Summa contra Gentiles, Book I. Spinoza’s three arguments come from his Ethics, props. XVII and XXXII. First, since free choice is always exclusive, free choice in God would leave unactualized power in God. Second, if God’s will could be different without entailing divine mutability, then a divine voluntarism would reign. Third, if God has freedom of will but his willing is his (...) essence, the God’s essence could be otherwise. I note that these pitfalls open by assuming that the divine will bears upon creatures directly and immediately. I then show that since for Aquinas, God wills creatures by principally willing himself, none of Spinoza’s criticisms follow. (shrink)

In his introduction to this extraordinarily important and useful volume, Herman Geertman (G.) points out that the editions of the Liber Pontificalis produced around a century ago by Theodor Mommsen and Louis Duchesne made the Liber more an instrument, than an object, of research. For some years an international group of scholars under the leadership of Girolamo Arnaldi, François Bougard, Paolo Delogu, and G. himself, have been conducting a collaborative project on “The Liber Pontificalis as Source for the History and (...) Material Culture of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: A Collective Research Project on the Biographies from 314 to 891.” This book arises out of that project. But the present study, reflecting in particular G.'s interests, does not confine itself to “history” and “material culture.” Although the volume contains many valuable contributions on these important subjects, it also emphasizes the nature of the text of the Liber Pontificalis, the intentions of its redactors, and the accessibility of the text in terms of its language, contents, and conceptual underpinnings. G. notes that the project and the book also attempt a systematic updating of Duchesne's historical and archaeological material. The volume under review contains excellent papers that do indeed update DUCHESNE, but it cannot be said that this volume is “systematic” if by that word one understands comprehensive and exhaustive. I am not, be it emphasized, criticizing G. and his collaborators for failing to accomplish the impossible. It is important to say, however, that G.'s approach makes the Liber Pontificalis once again an object as well as an instrument of research. (shrink)

Aristotle's claim in Metaphysics Z.6 that "each substance is the same as its essence" has long puzzled commentators. For it seems to conflict with two other Aristotelian theses: (1) primary substances are individuals (e.g., Socrates and Callias), and (2) essences are universals (e.g., Man and Horse). Three traditional solutions to this difficulty are considered and rejected. Instead, to make the Z.6 equation consistent with (1) and (2), I propose that it be interpreted to be making something other than a straightforward (...) identity claim. Callias is the same as his essence in the sense that to be identical to Callias is to be the same man as Callias (where Man is the essence of Callias). In general, x is identical to y if, and only if, x and y are the same E (where E specifies the "what it is to be" for x, i.e., the essence of x). So each of Socrates and Callias is the same as his essence, and Man is that essence, but Socrates and Callias are not identical, for they are not the same man. (shrink)

UPDATE WITH NOMINAL CENTERING (UCδ) D1.0 (UCδ types) The set of UCδ types Θ is the smallest set such that: i. t, δ, s ∈ Θ ii. (ab) ∈ Θ, if a, b ∈ Θ D1.1 (UCδ basic terms). For each a ∈ Θ, a set of a-constants Cona and a-variables Vara, incl.: Conδ = {a, b, c} Var(sδ) = {x, y, z}.

In book X of the Republic, Plato famously reports “a quarrel between poetry and philosophy.” The present essay examines this quarrel in book X, along with other relevant parts of the Republic, by understanding “philosophy” and “poetry” as rival ways of life and rival ways of discourse. The essay first explains why, in Plato’s view, poetic discourse weakens one’s power to reason and is at odds with philosophic discourse. Then it shows how poetic discourse is bound up with a way (...) of life that champions the value of freedom. Such a life forms a contrast with the philosophic life, which is marked more by stability and unity than by freedom. The quarrel, however, is not a simple antagonism. The essay hence concludes by discussing why, despite the opposition between the two, philosophy cannot do without poetry. (shrink)

In book X of the Republic, Plato famously reports “a quarrel between poetry and philosophy.” The present essay examines this quarrel in book X, along with other relevant parts of the Republic, by understanding “philosophy” and “poetry” as rival ways of life and rival ways of discourse. The essay first explains why, in Plato’s view, poetic discourse weakens one’s power to reason and is at odds with philosophic discourse. Then it shows how poetic discourse is bound up with a way (...) of life that champions the value of freedom. Such a life forms a contrast with the philosophic life, which is marked more by stability and unity than by freedom. The quarrel, however, is not a simple antagonism. The essay hence concludes by discussing why, despite the opposition between the two, philosophy cannot do without poetry. (shrink)

The paper analyses the material features of the MSS/ BNE 10124 in order to refute the theory that it belonged to King Alfonso X. It also studies three excerpts of the second text of the manuscript to prove that it contains the Etica in volgare attributed to Taddeo Alderotti, not the Italian translation of Brunetto Latini’s Tresor.

Psychologists and neuroscientists extensively rely on computational models for studying and analyzing the human mind. Traditionally, such computational models have been hand-designed by expert researchers. Two prominent examples are cognitive architectures and Bayesian models of cognition. While the former requires the specification of a fixed set of computational structures and a definition of how these structures interact with each other, the latter necessitates the commitment to a particular prior and a likelihood function which – in combination with Bayes’ rule – (...) determine the model's behavior. In recent years, a new framework has established itself as a promising tool for building models of human cognition: the framework of meta-learning. In contrast to the previously mentioned model classes, meta-learned models acquire their inductive biases from experience, i.e., by repeatedly interacting with an environment. However, a coherent research program around meta-learned models of cognition is still missing to this day. The purpose of this article is to synthesize previous work in this field and establish such a research program. We accomplish this by pointing out that meta-learning can be used to construct Bayes-optimal learning algorithms, allowing us to draw strong connections to the rational analysis of cognition. We then discuss several advantages of the meta-learning framework over traditional methods and reexamine prior work in the context of these new insights. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John DeweyFrank X. RyanJames A. Good A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John Dewey Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. xxx + 288 pp.Among the revelations of Dewey's rare moments of autobiographical reflection, none has generated more curiosity and investigative zeal than his 1930 claim to have (...) "drifted" from Hegel in the decade following his move from Michigan to Chicago in 1894. Beginning with Morton White's Origin of Dewey's Instrumentalism (1943), biographers have divided on the question of whether Dewey's later philosophy was more strongly influenced by William James's experimental psychology or F. J. E. Woodbridge's Aristotelian naturalism. Despite their differences, both approaches are essentially empirical and realistic, and thus the majority of sympathetic commentators have agreed that Dewey was a realist, albeit of a decidedly unorthodox stripe. For them the notion that Dewey retained any significant commitment to idealism, given its virtual eradication at the beginning of the twentieth century, would damage his influence and legacy.It has been something of a puzzle, accordingly, that in the same autobiographical essay Dewey alludes to a "permanent Hegelian deposit." For years Richard Rorty has claimed this differentiates a "good" Dewey committed to "social flourishing" from a "bad" Dewey prone to metaphysical dalliance. But the first systematic inquiry into Dewey's enduring Hegelianism is John R. Shook's Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (2000). Shook argues convincingly that Dewey never abandoned idealism, but rather transformed it into an experimental naturalism by doing away with both "mind-stuff" and equally noxious "things-in-themselves." In many ways James Good's A Search for Unity in Diversity is a bookend to Shook's project, though Good further differentiates Anglo-American Neo-Hegelianism from Hegel himself. According to Good, Dewey endorsed a Humanistic/Historicist interpretation of Hegel rooted in the reciprocal engagement of individuals and societies, rather than the supernatural and architectonic absolute championed by Neo-Hegelians such as T. H. Green, and F. H. Bradley. With [End Page 216] top-notch scholarship and scrupulous attention to detail, A Search for Unity in Diversity is both an excellent intellectual biography and a penetrating plea for a radical reinterpretation of Dewey's contribution to philosophy. I'll briefly sketch the historical account before addressing the more controversial claims about the "permanent Hegelian deposit."Even readers familiar with the half-dozen book-length treatments of Dewey's development will find this account refreshing and informative. Good's professional credentials as a historian shine as he recreates the rough and bustling Burlington of Dewey's youth. In the 1870s, German idealism was considered the epitome of political liberalism and progressive education, and Dewey's journey toward the "inclusive philosophical idea" of the social began in an environment swirling with the crosscurrents of Kant, Hegel, and Schelling. At the White Street Congregational Church, Lewis Barstow preached a liberal orthodoxy that was essentially "man-building" (102), and Good presents a convincing case for the likelihood that even in boyhood Dewey never viewed God as an aloof law-giver or cosmic architect, but as a process unifying the individual and the social within a natural world of unlimited potential. At the University of Vermont Dewey encountered a struggling rural college transformed into the first bastion of American transcendentalism by James Marsh, who inspired a "Burlington philosophy" that rejected atomistic empiricism for a holistic integrity of knowing and doing, facts and values, and pure and practical reasons (57–59).In noting the influence of the "St. Louis Hegelians" upon Dewey, most biographers have focused on W. T. Harris, the prominent founder of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy who published Dewey's earliest submissions and offered encouragement that led to his pursuit of graduate work at Johns Hopkins. Good augments this familiar tale with fascinating depictions of equally influential yet lesser-known Hegelians such as H. C. Brokmeyer, Denton Snider, and Thomas Davidson. At a time when European Hegelianism was polarized between, on the one hand, reactionary apologists for traditional Christianity and Prussian militarism and, on the other, radical... (shrink)