This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

The theory of lexical selection presented by Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer addresses the mechanisms of semantic activation that lead to the selection of isolated words. The theory does not appear to extend naturally to the referential use of words in coherent discourse. A more complete theory of lexical selection has to consider the semantics of discourse as well as lexical semantics.

Joshua Greene and Peter Singer argue, on the basis of empirical evidence, that deontological moral judgments result from emotional reactions while dispassionate reasoning leads to consequentialist judgments. Given that there are good reasons to doubt these emotionally driven intuitions, they argue that we should reject Kantian ethics. I argue that the evidence does not support the claim that consequentialism is inherently more reason-based or less emotion-based than Kantian ethics. This is partly because the experiments employ a functional definition of (...) ‘deontological’ that is so broad as to include any non-consequentialist theory, including virtue ethics, divine command theory, and even rule-utilitarianism. Thus the experiments failed to capture the reasons behind the judgments. Also, the results of the experiments are partly due to the extensive use of moral dilemmas like the footbridge version of the trolley scenario. The options in these dilemmas involve different levels of moral thinking. The consequ.. (shrink)

When Christians worship God, their cultic activities display, in widely varying combinations, attitudes of fear, respect, love, trust, awe, deference and obedience. They worship the Lord with all their heart, soul and strength, confessing their own insignificance in comparison to God, yet expressing confidence in the divine mercy which they believe will assist them through the trials of this life, toward a joyful existence beyond the grave. In the liturgical churches, the dominating mood varies according to the tables of feasts (...) and fasts: Christmas and Easter are times for joyful song, brightly coloured vestments and festive activities. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of penitence, sorrow and sombre hymnody. Throughout the year, the houses of worship are places of bowed heads and lowered voices, of respect and sobriety, and sometimes of veneration for icons and the objects used in worship. The inventory of revered objects varies considerably, as do the activities thought to be appropriate in this connection, ranging from the Low Protestant's respectful handling of the Bible to the High Churchman's prostration before the Monstrance, in the Benediction of the Holy Sacrament. But it is clear that divine worship normally involves reverence and awe and that it usually involves some form of self-abasement. (shrink)

Increasingly, clinical research is evaluated on the quality of its statistical analysis. Traditionally, statistical analyses in clinical research have been carried out from a ‘frequentist’ perspective. The presence of an alternative paradigm – the Bayesian paradigm – has been relatively unknown in clinical research until recently. There is currently a growing interest in the use of Bayesian statistics in health care research. This is due both to a growing realization of the limitations of frequentist methods and to the ability of (...) Bayesian methods explicitly to incorporate prior expert knowledge and belief into the analyses. This is in contrast to frequentist methods, where prior experience and beliefs tend to be incorporated into the analyses in an ad hoc fashion. This paper outlines the frequentist and Bayesian paradigms. Acute myocardial infarction mortality data are then analysed from both a Bayesian and a frequentist perspective. In some analyses, the two methods are seen to produce comparable results; in others, they produce different results. It is noted that in this example, there are clinically relevant questions that are more easily addressed from a Bayesian perspective. Finally, areas in clinical research where Bayesian ideas are increasingly common are highlighted. (shrink)

This paper presents an integrative, descriptive model of ethical decision making, with special attention given to issues of measurement. After building the model, hypotheses are developed from a portion of it. These hypotheses are tested in an exploratory analysis to determine if further research and testing of this model and the measurement instruments it employs are warranted.

Psychologists' emerging interest in spirituality and religion as well as the relevance of each phenomenon to issues of psychological importance requires an understanding of the fundamental characteristics of each construct. On the basis of both historical considerations and a limited but growing empirical literature, we caution against viewing spirituality and religiousness as incompatible and suggest that the common tendency to polarize the terms simply as individual vs. institutional or ′good′ vs. ′bad′ is not fruitful for future research. Also cautioning against (...) the use of restrictive, narrow definitions or overly broad definitions that can rob either construct of its distinctive characteristics, we propose a set of criteria that recognizes the constructs' conceptual similarities and dissimilarities. Rather than trying to force new and likely unsuccessful definitions, we offer these criteria as benchmarks for judging the value of existing definitions. (shrink)

Abstrak: Untuk mengembangkan suatu teologi ekologi, yang dikenal sebagai ekoteologi, mesti didasarkan pada fakta mengenai keterhubungan semua ciptaan sebagai suatu ekosistem. Metodologinya adalah induktif dan interdisipliner. Kosmologi dan antropologi amat membantu memberikan data ilmiah. Data-data tersebut merupakan titik awal untuk melakukan teologi ekologi, selain sumber-sumber yang diperoleh dari Wahyu, seperti Kitab Suci, Tradisi dan Magisterium. Artikel ini merupakan suatu upaya mengembangkan teologi ekologi berdasarkan tradisi teologi Kristiani yang menggaris bawahi sejumlah titik pandang teologis, seperti penciptaan sebagai suatu proses melalui itu (...) Allah menciptakan dunia; peran khas manusia sebagai partner Allah Pencipta, selaku gambar dan rupa Allah, merawat dan memelihara ciptaan atas nama Allah; antroposentrisme tidak memiliki akar dalam teologi ekologi Kristiani. Mistisisme kosmik St. Fransiskus sebagaimana diajukan Paus Fransiskus dalam ensiklik Laudato Si’ akan menjadi bagian kedua dari artikel ini, agar dapat memahami spiritualitas ekologis yang meresap dalam seluruh ensiklik. Bagi orang-orang Kristen memelihara ciptaan merupakan suatu kewajiban yang berakar dalam iman Kristiani. Kata-kata Kunci: Teologi ekologi, ekosistem, penciptaan sebagai proses, Teosentrisme, antroposentrisme, gambar dan rupa Allah, mistisisme, penyair ontologis. Abstract: A theology on ecology, known as eco-theology, should be based on the reality of the interconnection of all creations as an ecosystem. The methodology should be both inductive and inter-disciplinary. Cosmology, biology and anthropology are helpful in contributing scientific data. The given data could be the starting points in doing a theology of ecology, besides the resources from Revelation, such as Scriptures, Tradition and Magisterium. This article is an effort to elaborate a theology of ecology based on Christian Tradition of Theology which underlines several theological points of view such as: creation as a process through which God creates the world; a special role as co-partner of the Creator for human being as “imago Dei” has to conserve and to take care of creation as God’s representative; anthropocentrism has no root on Christian theology of ecology. The Cosmic mysticism of St. Francis, promoted by Pope Francis in his encyclical letter Laudato Si’, occupies the second part of this article in order to understand ecological spirituality which emerges throughout the encyclical letter. For Christians, taking care of creation is also an imperative rooted in their Christian faith. Keywords: Theology of ecology, ecosystem, creation as a process, Theocentrism, anthropocentrism, imago Dei, cosmic mysticism, ontological poet. (shrink)

This selection of essays and reviews written between 1962 and 1983 focus on the creativity of the American photographer as artist and on the nature of his work and life, placing special attention on the creative impulse of the art photographer and the significance of his pictures as expressive works of art. Among the major artist-photographers examined are Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Harry Callahan, Emmet Gowin and Jerry Uelsmann. Topics discussed include the collecting of photographs, the nature of (...) pictorial visioning photography, photographic portraiture, and manipulative photography. Degrees of Guidance differs from other anthologies in that it focuses on individual photographers rather than on the more social or ontological aspects of photography. (shrink)

In The Political Limits of Environmental Regulation: Tracking the Unicorn, Bruce Yandle identifies some of the key weaknesses of federal environmental regulation, including its regressive effects, its tendency to better serve selected political interests than the cause of environmental protection, and the EPA's failure to follow sensible priorities. Additional problems may also be cited, including the tendency to exclude citizens? voices from deliberations regarding the degree of pollution control. But Yandle's conclusion regarding the likely superiority of decentralized and market?sensitive alternatives (...) to centralized regulation is overstated. Any such alternatives necessarily will continue to be grounded in relatively uniform national standards. Moreover, in the context of American political economy, market?based controls would continue to deny many citizens real voice and choice. The quest continues to be for the combination of controls that best preserves both the environment and liberty. (shrink)

Six characteristics of effective representational systems for conceptual learning in complex domains have been identified. Such representations should: (1) integrate levels of abstraction; (2) combine globally homogeneous with locally heterogeneous representation of concepts; (3) integrate alternative perspectives of the domain; (4) support malleable manipulation of expressions; (5) possess compact procedures; and (6) have uniform procedures. The characteristics were discovered by analysing and evaluating a novel diagrammatic representation that has been invented to support students' comprehension of electricity—AVOW diagrams (Amps, Volts, Ohms, (...) Watts). A task analysis is presented that demonstrates that problem solving using a conventional algebraic approach demands more effort than AVOW diagrams. In an experiment comparing two groups of learners using the alternative approaches, the group using AVOW diagrams learned more than the group using equations and were better able to solve complex transfer problems and questions involving multiple constraints. Analysis of verbal protocols and work scratchings showed that the AVOW diagram group, in contrast to the equations group, acquired a coherently organised network of concepts, learnt effective problem solving procedures, and experienced more positive learning events. The six principles of effective representations were proposed on the basis of these findings. AVOW diagrams are Law Encoding Diagrams, a general class of representations that have been shown to support learning in other scientific domains. (shrink)

In the fifth–sixth century CE the rulers of the Kadamba dynasty claimed the town of Halsi in modern Karnataka as the northern capital of their expanding polity. Their investments in this locale are recorded in a corpus of copper-plate inscriptions spanning four generation of kings. The plates record the growth of a thriving Jain community at Palāśikā and are revelatory of their relationships with the Kadamba rulers and their agents. This study of the donative and political processes converging in Palāśikā (...) shows that the use of Sanskrit inscriptions as media for royal representation and public self-fashioning was highly developed in the Kadamba polity, where idioms and trends developed independent of the Gupta royal model. Moreover, the evidence from Halsi is indicative of the centrality of Jain religious communities, ideologies, and institutions in the administration of the Kadamba polity and the expression of a lineage identity. (shrink)

This essay is a response to Struan Jacobs, “Recovering the Thought of Edward Shils,” which is an extended review of Adair-Toteff and Turner’s The Calling of Social Thought. It considers Edward Shils as a “stranger,” in the sense defined by Georg Simmel, relative to contemporary sociology. Christian Smith’s claim that American sociology is implicitly pursuing a “sacred project” is invoked, in contrast with Shils’ vision for consensual sociology. The expansion by CST to “Social Thought” as a calling (vocation), and its (...) ties to science as understood by Polanyi, are strongly affirmed. (shrink)