This article discusses Ronald Preston's understanding of William Temple and the relationships between the two thinkers. It shows how both develop a theology of Christian realism which places great emphasis on the autonomy of the social sciences and the importance of economic expertise. Questions are raised about the appropriateness of this method, as well as their understanding of the state as an order of creation: these can easily lead to the reduction of the sphere of political morality and its substitution (...) with a form of technical rationality. After a brief discussion of the cult of the expert and the manager in contemporary British politics, and the limitation of political action through the rhetoric of ‘there is no alternative', the article concludes by calling for a remoralisation of political life against an economic reductionism which threatens to remove ethics from politics altogether. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship of history, theology and mythmaking with reference to the myths of Glastonbury. These related to the legends associated with Joseph of Arimathea’ purported visit to England, the burial place of King Arthur, as well as the quest for the Holy Grail. It draws on the work of Joseph Armitage Robinson, one of the most important Biblical and patristic scholars of his generation who, after becoming Dean of Westminster and later Dean of Wells Cathedral in Somerset, (...) and close to Glastonbury, became a distinguished medievalist. After assessing the development of the Glastonbury legends and the use of early British history made in the earlier Anglican tradition, particularly in the work of Archbishop Matthew Parker, it goes on to discuss their revival in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries especially under the local parish priest Lionel Smithett Lewis. It concludes by showing that while there might be no historical substance in the myths, that there is nevertheless an important history to devotion and piety which is as equally open to theological and historical investigation as the events of history. (shrink)

This paper discusses theological responses in the Church of England to the South African War as reflected in sermons by theologians and church leaders and the limited amount of theological writing on the subject during the period. Three points emerge: first is the strong sense in which the mission was to civilise and Christianize. The fact that the war was being fought against a white enemy led to a characterisation of the Boer as uncivilised and primitive. Secondly, the British Empire (...) was not understood simply as a means of promoting the British interest across the world. Instead it was regarded as at least potentially a Christian Empire which embodied higher universal values. The emphasis was on humility and judgement, whereby moral absolutes were relativised by the vision of a more universal goal. This undoubtedly helped lessen the strength of some of the imperialist rhetoric. Finally, the higher values of self-sacrifice created a sense of moral seriousness: the universal values displayed in love for the community were prioritized over those of a narrow patriotism or individualism. Like the early days of the First World War, the Boer War functioned as an “antidote to anomie”. All in all, the strong dose of Platonism injected into Anglicanism in the nineteenth century meant that it functioned as a modest check on unfettered jingoism. A limited degree of prophetic critique – albeit deeply ambiguous, compromised and sometimes racist – remained the dominant theological discourse of Anglicanism, even at the highest point of imperialism. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of MacIntyre's After Virtue, the ‘Enlightenment Project’, where morality was uprooted from its traditional context and where human reason reigned supreme, has been regarded as doomed to failure. This view has been shared by a large number of theologians, but it is based on a misrepresentation of the Enlightenment, one strand of which sought to set limits to human reason. In particular, Immanuel Kant, who is discussed in detail, believed in the principle of perpetual criticism, a (...) method which refused to see human reason as supreme, but which also criticised all other systems of absolute authority. A trust in criticism was part and parcel of ‘growing‐up’: the educational process was thus of crucial importance as children gradually learnt to think for themselves. For Kant, this method was rooted in a theological position, where transcendence or ‘holiness’ functioned as a constant reminder of human finitude, and served to prevent all forms of idolatry. The article concludes with an outline of a theology suitable for grown‐ups, more aware of ideology and power than was Kant, where all truth is seen as relative to an absolute truth, but one which can never be known in full. Such a position, which is seen as profoundly Christological, encourages tolerance and openness, but makes a stand against those who claim a certainty or an authority they can never possess. The church is seen as that body which lives away from human certainties in a life of hope. (shrink)

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several chapters (...) discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

Causation is one of philosophy's most venerable and thoroughly-analyzed concepts. However, the study of how ordinary people make causal judgments is a much more recent addition to the philosophical arsenal. One of the most prominent views of causal explanation, especially in the realm of harmful or potentially harmful behavior, is that unusual or counternormative events are accorded privileged status in ordinary causal explanations. This is a fundamental assumption in psychological theories of counterfactual reasoning, and has been transported to philosophy by (...) Hitchcock and Knobe (2009). A different view--the basis of the culpable control model of blame (CCM)--is that primary causal status is accorded to behaviors that arouse negative evaluative reactions, including behaviors that stem from nefarious motives, negligence or recklessness, a faulty character, or behaviors that lead to harmful or potentially harmful consequences. This paper describes four empirical studies that show consistent support for the CCM. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as an effective way for firms to create favorable attitudes among consumers. Although prior research has addressed the direct influence of proactive and reactive CSR on consumer responses, this research hypothesized that consumers’ perceived organizational motives (i.e., attributions) will mediate this relationship. It was also hypothesized that the source of information and location of CSR initiative will affect the motives consumers assign to a firms’ engagement in the initiative. Two experiments were conducted to test (...) these hypotheses. The results of Study 1 indicate that the nature of a CSR initiative influences consumer attribution effects and that these attributions act as mediators in helping to explain consumers’ responses to CSR. Study 2 suggests that the source of the CSR message moderates the effect of CSR on consumer attributions. The mediating influence of the attributions as well as the importance of information source suggests that proper communication of CSR can be a viable way to inculcate positive corporate associations and purchase intentions. (shrink)

Measuring gene expression on a global scale has been one of the vexing problems of cell biology. Velculescu et al.(1) recently proposed a system for identifying gene expression levels based on very short sequence tags – about nine base pairs – located at a specific site within a gene transcript. By coupling the strategy to current automated sequencing machines and the large expressed sequence tag databases, it should be possible to follow changes in gene expression for large numbers of genes (...) economically and accurately. (shrink)

Is it rational to strive for the unattainable? In this short and provocative study, Nicholas Rescher vigorously defends both the rationality and practicality of seriously pursuing impossible dreams.

In the common law world, Albert Venn Dicey is known as the high priest of orthodox constitutional theory, as an ideological and nationalistic positivist. In his analytical coldness, his celebration of sovereign power, and his incessant drive to organize and codify legal rules separate from moral values or political realities, Dicey is an uncanny figure. This book challenges this received view of Dicey. Through a re-examination of his life and his 1885 book Law of the Constitution, the high priest Dicey (...) is defrocked and a more human Dicey steps forward to offer alternative ways of reading his canonical text, who struggled to appreciate law as a form of reasoned discourse that integrates values of legality and authority through methods of ordinary legal interpretation. The result is a unique common law constitutional discourse through which assertions of sovereign power are conditioned by moral aspirations associated with the rule of law. (shrink)

An Argument From Evolutionary Naturalism An Argument from Personal Dignity References.

We show that the fundamental legal structure of a well-written financial contract follows a state-transition logic that can be formalized mathematically as a finite-state machine (specifically, a deterministic finite automaton or DFA). The automaton defines the states that a financial relationship can be in, such as “default,” “delinquency,” “performing,” etc., and it defines an “alphabet” of events that can trigger state transitions, such as “payment arrives,” “due date passes,” etc. The core of a contract describes the rules by which different (...) sequences of events trigger particular sequences of state transitions in the relationship between the counterparties. By conceptualizing and representing the legal structure of a contract in this way, we expose it to a range of powerful tools and results from the theory of computation. These allow, for example, automated reasoning to determine whether a contract is internally coherent and whether it is complete relative to a particular event alphabet. We illustrate the process by representing a simple loan agreement as an automaton. (shrink)

The rapid, recent emergence of new medical knowledge models has engendered a dizzying number of new medical initiatives, programs and approaches. Fields such as evidence-based medicine and translational medicine all promise a renewed relationship between knowledge and medicine. The question for philosophy and other fields has been whether these new models actually achieve their promises to bring about better kinds of medical knowledge—a question that compels scholars to analyze each model’s epistemic claims. Yet, these analyses may miss critical components that (...) explain how these models actually work and function. Using the case of translational medicine, this paper suggests that analyses which treat these models as a primarily epistemic interventions miss the way that new approaches are increasingly shaped by specific financial and commercial agendas. Ultimately, social epistemological analyses that are attentive to market forces are required to make sense of emerging bioscientific research models, which are increasingly tethered to or a manifestation of increasingly financialized models of science research and innovation. (shrink)

I argue in this article that there is a mistake in Searle's Chinese room argument that has not received sufficient attention. The mistake stems from Searle's use of the Church-Turing thesis. Searle assumes that the Church-Turing thesis licences the assumption that the Chinese room can run any program. I argue that it does not, and that this assumption is false. A number of possible objections are considered and rejected. My conclusion is that it is consistent with Searle's argument to hold (...) onto the claim that understanding consists in the running of a program. (shrink)

American orthodox medicine consolidated its professional authority in the early 20th Century on the basis of its unbiased scientific method. The centerpiece of such a method is a strategy for identifying truly effective new therapies, i.e., the randomized clinical trial (RCT). A crucial component of the RCT in illnesses without established treatment is the placebo control. Placebo effects must be identified and distinguished from pharmacological effects because placebos produce actual but unexplained therapeutic successes. The blinding necessary for a proper placebo-controlled (...) RCT therefore introduces an epistemic bias into orthodox medicine: therapeutic successes that rely upon a direct link between knowing and healing, such as placebo effects, are discarded in favor of therapeutic successes that rely upon an indirect link between knowing and healing, such as pharmacological interventions. Where the capacity to produce therapeutic results once validated the method of clinical medical science, now method validates results. The clinical consequences of this method of testing therapies include a diminished vision of the therapeutic potential of the doctor-patient relationship and of the potential human resources available for healing. Keywords: doctor-patient relationship, epistemology, placebo effect, professionalization, randomized clinical trials CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Prior research has studied the antecedents of beliefs regarding ethics and social responsibility (ESR). However, few studies have examined how individual well-being may be related to such beliefs. In this exploratory study, we assessed the relationship between perceived importance of ESR – both individually and of one's company – and indicators of physical and psychological well-being. Results demonstrated that perceived importance of ESR was associated with three aspects of well-being: exuberance for life, sleep problems, and job stress. The results are (...) discussed in terms of future directions for research, and the need for a conceptual framework connecting individual and organizational perceptions of ESR and outcomes of well-being. (shrink)

Clinical bioethics is big business. There are now hundreds of people who bioethics in community and university hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation and home care settings, and some who play the role of clinical ethics consultant to transplant teams, managed care companies, and genetic testing firms. Still, there is as much speculation about what clinically active bioethicists actually do as there was ten years ago. Various commentators have pondered the need for training standards, credentials, exams, and malpractice insurance for ethicists engaged (...) in clinical consultation. Much of the discussion seems to accept an implicit presumption that all clinical ethics consultation practices look pretty much alike. But is this accurate? What do clinical ethicists do, how and where do they do it, and what kind of clinical ethics is useful in the hospital and in other settings? (shrink)

If libertarianism is true, then there is a sense in which agents have it within their power to bring it about that some world is actual. Against recent arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, I offer an account of power over the past which takes this implication of libertarianism into consideration. I argue that the resulting account is available to Ockhamists and that it is immune to recent criticisms of the notion of counterfactual power over the (...) past. But I contend that it is not an option for Molinists and that this fact leaves that position vulnerable to incompatibilist arguments. (shrink)

Prior research has studied the antecedents of beliefs regarding ethics and social responsibility (ESR). However, few studies have examined how individual well‐being may be related to such beliefs. In this exploratory study, we assessed the relationship between perceived importance of ESR – both individually and of one's company – and indicators of physical and psychological well‐being. Results demonstrated that perceived importance of ESR was associated with three aspects of well‐being: exuberance for life, sleep problems, and job stress. The results are (...) discussed in terms of future directions for research, and the need for a conceptual framework connecting individual and organizational perceptions of ESR and outcomes of well‐being. (shrink)

During periods of scarcity, or the fear of it, many health systems create or adopt triage protocols to determine how to best allocate limited resources. Interest in such protocols has become acute...

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 83-85.

For more than 20 years, both here and abroad, significant efforts have been undertaken to provide equal access to nutritional food for all citizens. Yet, the numbers of under-nourished continue to rise, as do those afflicted with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Clearly, current efforts are not working. Relying on the psychological phenomena of learned helplessness and fundamental attribution error, it is argued that certain individuals may not be willing, or able, to take actions (...) that are currently prescribed regarding access to nutritious food. The water is muddied regarding potential solutions as the various actors involved (e.g., corporations, governments, individuals) cannot agree on a starting point and continue to point fingers regarding responsibility. It is posited that emphasis needs to shift from the current “one-size-fits-all” approach to one that is more tailored to the various actors, specifically the individuals. Within the group of individuals (consumers), based on Wenar’s Least Cost Theory, even further distinction must be made between those who see themselves as capable actors and those who do not. In this conceptual piece intended to refocus the discussion surrounding food access, we propose that future research should approach these issues from a unit of analysis perspective in an attempt to identify the solutions most likely to succeed at various participating levels. (shrink)

Lonergan's account of human consciousness as polymorphic self-presence differs significantly from both the variety of contemporary reductionistic accounts and phenomenological treatments still influenced strongly by Cartesian suppositions and/or Kantian restrictions. It is argued that Lonergan's account grounds not only a critical meta-philosophy, but also provides a heuristic structure for a nuanced genetic account of philosophic differences. In this regard, Lonergan's account is claimed to be an adequate grounding for a thorough contemporary response to the Hegelian requirement that philosophers account not (...) only for their own views but for the existence of contrary and differing philosophic convictions. (shrink)

In "Behavioral Law and Economics: The Assault on Consent, Will, and Dignity," Mark D. White uses the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to examine the intersection of economics, psychology, and law known as "behavioral law and economics." Scholars in this relatively new field claim that, because of various cognitive biases and failures, people often make choices that are not in their own interests. The policy implications of this are that public and private organizations, such as the state and employers, (...) can and should design the presentation of options and default choices in order to "steer" people to the decision they would make, were they able to make choices in the absence of their cognitive biases and failures. Such policies are promoted under the name "libertarian paternalism," because choice is not blocked or co-opted, but simply "nudged." White argues that such manipulation of choice is impossible to conduct in people's true interests, and any other goal pursed by policymakers substitutes their own ends, however benevolent they may be, for people's true ends. Normatively, such manipulation should not be conducted because it fails to respect the dignity and autonomy of persons, what some hold to be the central idea in Kant's ethical system, and which serves to protect the individual from coercion, however subtle, from other persons or the state. (shrink)