Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is credited as one of the first clinicians to formalize recommendations for working with patients with advanced medical illnesses. In her seminal book, On Death and Dying,...

Canada’s population is aging, and seniors constitute the fastest growing demographic in the nation. The chronic health conditions, limited social support, functional decline, and cognitive impairment experienced by seniors may necessitate admission to a personal care home (PCH) setting up until the time of their death. The ethical problems that arise in the care of dying patients are numerous and complicated. The care of dying seniors in PCHs, however, is largely provided by frontline workers such as healthcare aides (HCAs), who (...) usually have little training in palliative care or ethics. Research examining the identification and resolution of ethical problems in care of the dying has been conducted from the perspectives of nurses and physicians in various clinical settings, but the voice of HCAs in PCHs is virtually absent from clinical ethics. Given that the inability to satisfactorily resolve ethical issues in clinical practice is associated with feelings of guilt, powerlessness, avoiding contact with patients, failing to provide good physical care, and increased staff turnover, an empirical examination of HCAs’ experiences of ethically challenging situations is warranted.We conducted a phenomenological study to access the lived experience of HCAs (N=12) working in proprietary and nonproprietary care homes as they encountered situations they deemed ethically challenging in providing end-of-life care to dying seniors. The findings reported here explicate: (1) the types of situations that are ethically problematic for HCAs; (2) the meanings they assign to these situations, and (3) the impact such situations have on the provision of end-of-life care. (shrink)

Though they worked in very different disciplines, Max Weber and Thomas Mann were engaged from early in their careers in a remarkably similar enterprise converging on questions of personal identity and national self-understanding, and built upon conceptions drawn from a common intellectual and national heritage. Harvey Goldman's ambitious new book is about a part of that enterprise, the foundation of their understanding of the relation of self and work as set out in Weber's essays on religion and Mann's pre-World (...) War I writings. Weber and Mann sought to revitalize a set of ideas of character and action—calling and personality—to guide their own lives and intellectual creation, as well as politics and the life of the nation. In their hands these ideas also became explanatory tools for understanding the crisis of their class and of Germany. By organizing the interpretation of Weber and Mann around the conceptual nexus of calling and personality, the author reveals a number of issues and problems that have been overlooked, providing an altogether new approach to Weber's famous explanation of the capitalist spirit and recovering a vital modern debate around the idea and meaning of the person. In the convergence of so many themes in their writings, Weber and Mann exemplify the self-understanding of their age and cast a special light on problems of self, identity, and social life. This work contains fascinating material for students of intellectual history and modern political theory. Anyone concerned generally with twentieth-century European history, politics, philosophy, and literature will welcome this rich, vigorously written book. (shrink)

Though they worked in very different disciplines, Max Weber and Thomas Mann were engaged from early in their careers in a remarkably similar enterprise converging on questions of personal identity and national self-understanding, and built upon conceptions drawn from a common intellectual and national heritage. Harvey Goldman's ambitious new book is about a part of that enterprise, the foundation of their understanding of the relation of self and work as set out in Weber's essays on religion and Mann's pre-World (...) War I writings. Weber and Mann sought to revitalize a set of ideas of character and action—calling and personality—to guide their own lives and intellectual creation, as well as politics and the life of the nation. In their hands these ideas also became explanatory tools for understanding the crisis of their class and of Germany. By organizing the interpretation of Weber and Mann around the conceptual nexus of calling and personality, the author reveals a number of issues and problems that have been overlooked, providing an altogether new approach to Weber's famous explanation of the capitalist spirit and recovering a vital modern debate around the idea and meaning of the person. In the convergence of so many themes in their writings, Weber and Mann exemplify the self-understanding of their age and cast a special light on problems of self, identity, and social life. This work contains fascinating material for students of intellectual history and modern political theory. Anyone concerned generally with twentieth-century European history, politics, philosophy, and literature will welcome this rich, vigorously written book. (shrink)

Let R Õ [1,n]3k ¥ [1,n]k. We define R = {y Œ [1,n]k:($xŒA3)(R(x,y))}. We say that R is strictly dominating if and only if for all x,yŒ[1,n]k, if R(x,y) then max(x) < max(y).

We say that R is strictly dominating if and only if for all x,yŒ[1,n], if R(x,y) then max(x) 3k ¥ [1,n], there exists A Õ [1,n] such that R = A. Furthermore, A Õ [1,n] is unique.

Festschriften may have gone out of style, but not out of print. The desire to pay tribute to an important thinker remains strong and no one has found a more suitable vehicle. Hence the present volume in honor of Max Fisch, who retired recently from the University of Illinois after a long and distinguished career in the academic world, which began in 1926. The volume consists of fourteen essays by former graduate students of Fisch, as well as two short pieces (...) by Fisch himself, a biographical sketch by Max Harold Fisch, a preface by D. W. Gotshalk, a chronological bibliography of Fisch's writings, and a list of theses directed by Fisch from 1947 to 1968 at the University of Illinois. The essays cover such diverse philosophers as Aristotle, Hartshorne, Merleau-Ponty, Agassiz, Harvey, Hegel, and Peirce and range from subjects like Freedom and the Justification of Morality to Logic, Frequency Theory of Probability, Language and the Self--and even beyond, to subjects such as The Origin of the Species and a Taoist Treatise on the Nourishment of Life. Curiously, despite Fisch's pioneer work in bringing Vico to the attention of American readers, none of the essays center on Vichian thought; nor do any of the theses listed in the back of the book take Vico as the subject of the dissertation.--H. B. (shrink)

Dieser Aufsatz widmet sich dem Begriff "Männlichkeit". Die Klärung des Begriffes soll mithilfe dreier philosophischer Strategien unternommen werden. Erstens werde ich zwei philosophische Modelle von Männlichkeit einander gegenüberstellen. Harvey C. Mansfields Theorie soll mithilfe von Pierre Bourdieus Konzept der männlichen Herrschaft kritisiert werden. Während Mansfield eine verbreitete Auffassung von Männlichkeit vertritt, die diese mit Assertivität, Mut und Adel verbindet, bietet Bourdieu uns ein gutes Instrumentarium dafür, versteckte Strukturen der männlichen Ordnung hinter diesem Bild zu entdecken. Zweitens wird diese Kritik (...) mit Bourdieu durch einen phänomenologischen Hintergrund motiviert. Dabei werde ich sowohl die phänomenologischen Wurzeln von Bourdieus Denken als auch die Möglichkeit der phänomenologischen Weiterführung seiner Ideen berücksichtigen. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit wird den Übereinstimmungen von Bourdieu und Max Scheler gewidmet. Schließlich werde ich den Vorschlag machen, „Männlichkeit“ als einen offenen Begriff zu verstehen, der historisch, sozial und kulturell wandelbar ist. Die Idee des offenen Begriffs bietet eine Alternative zu essenzialistischen Definitionen anhand notwendiger und hinreichenden Kriterien, lässt genügend Freiraum, um die Interdependenz zwischen gesellschaftlichem Wandel und un-seren Männlichkeitskonstruktionen zu berücksichtigen. (shrink)

Although Harvey Sacks' `Max Weber's Ancient Judaism' is an early student paper, it raises issues of theory, method and disciplinary mandate which have continuing relevance. I frame the article in two ways. First, I sketch the academic and intellectual context in which the paper was written, in particular the institutional setting in Berkeley of the early 1960s, and the activities and preoccupations animating the work of the group of students which was the most proximate context for Sacks' writing at (...) this time, including the efforts to come to terms with Garfinkel's early work. Second, I relate this article to two others written by Sacks in roughly the same period, and sketch a thematic continuity and development running through them - a theme whose endpoint is the centrality of what must surely be called `culture' to the calling of Sociology. (shrink)

Published posthumously in the early 1920's, Max Weber's Economy and Society has since become recognized as one of the greatest sociological treatises of the 20th century, as well as a foundational text of the modern sociological imagination. The first strictly empirical comparison of social structures and normative orders conducted in world-historical depth, this two volume set of Economy and Society—now with new introductory material contextualizing Weber’s work for 21st century audiences—looks at social action, religion, law, bureaucracy, charisma, the city, and (...) the political community. Meant as a broad introduction for an educated general public, in its own way Economy and Society is the most demanding textbook yet written by a sociologist. The precision of its definitions, the complexity of its typologies, and the wealth of its historical content make the work an important challenge to our sociological thought: for the advanced undergraduate who gropes for her sense of society, for the graduate student who must develop his own analytical skills, and for the scholar who must match wits with Weber. (shrink)

Max Weber: Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus Edition Holzinger. Taschenbuch Berliner Ausgabe, 2016, 4. Auflage Vollständiger, durchgesehener Neusatz bearbeitet und eingerichtet von Michael Holzinger In: Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 20. Bd., Heft 1, S. 1-54, 1904; 21. Bd., Heft 1, S. 1-110, 1905. Erstdruck der vorliegenden, umgearbeiteten Fassung in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, Bd. I, Tübingen (Mohr Siebeck) 1920, S. 17-206. Textgrundlage ist die Ausgabe: Max Weber: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. 8., photomechanisch gedruckte Auflage; Band 1, (...) Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1986 (1. Auflage 1920) Herausgeber der Reihe: Michael Holzinger Reihengestaltung: Viktor Harvion Gesetzt aus der Minion Pro, 11 pt. (shrink)

Newly updated study surveys concept of space from standpoint of historical development. Space in antiquity, Judeo-Christian ideas about space, Newton’s concept of absolute space, space from 18th century to present. Extensive new chapter (6) reviews changes in philosophy of space since publication of second edition (1969). Numerous original quotations and bibliographical references. "...admirably compact and swiftly paced style."—Philosophy of Science. Foreword by Albert Einstein. Bibliography.

I explore physics implications of the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans. I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure. I discuss various implications of the ERH and MUH, ranging from standard physics topics like symmetries, irreducible representations, units, free parameters, randomness and initial conditions to broader issues like consciousness, parallel universes and (...) Gödel incompleteness. I hypothesize that only computable and decidable (in Gödel’s sense) structures exist, which alleviates the cosmological measure problem and may help explain why our physical laws appear so simple. I also comment on the intimate relation between mathematical structures, computations, simulations and physical systems. (shrink)

Este trabajo afronta dos de las objeciones que cabe aducir contra la presencia de un proyecto de filosofía social en Dialéctica negativa. En primer lugar, se matiza la continuidad del diagnóstico social de Adorno con la teoría lukacsiana de la cosificación, interpretando el núcleo de su teoría social como un análisis del proceso de subsunción que se produce con la autonomización de la objetividad social. En segundo lugar, se presenta la noción de constelación como núcleo del razonamiento epistemológico de Adorno (...) en Dialéctica negativa y se cuestiona el argumento acerca de su incompatibilidad con el trabajo de las ciencias sociales, analizando su relación con respecto al método de los tipos ideales de Max Weber y su afinidad con los modelos teóricos de Edward P. Thompson y David Harvey. (shrink)

My paper addresses a number of questions raised in the Statesman by the Eleatic Visitor’s identification of certain ontological conditions for the existence of art of due measure, and therefore of all the technai. My view is that evidence relevant to these questions can be found in the Philebus, and specifically, in an ontological doctrine presented at 23c–27c. What emerges from an examination of the Statesman and Philebus is a highly developed conception of technê, one that affords a place for (...) such ordinary human activities within the broader framework of Plato’s philosophy. (shrink)

Avner Baz claims that questions philosophers ask about hypothetical cases lack the kind of ‘point’ possessed by ‘everyday’ questions. He concludes from this that there is something wrong with the philosophical practice of asking questions about hypothetical cases. This paper defends the practice from Baz’s criticism.

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and PoliticsGeorge HarveyChristopher Bobonich. Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xi + 643. Cloth, $49.95.In tracing developments in Plato's views between his middle- and late-period dialogues, Plato's Utopia Recast focuses on the differences between philosophers and non-philosophers with respect to their capacities to become genuinely virtuous. The central thesis of this (...) extensive work is that the Laws reveals a degree of optimism about the prospects for non-philosophers in attaining virtue and happiness not found in dialogues of the middle period. Specifically, Bobonich describes this development in terms of four claims that he thinks Plato denies in the Phaedo and Republic but later affirms in the Laws: first, that at least some non-philosophers are capable of being virtuous; second, that they can value virtue for its own sake; third, that they can value the virtue and happiness in others for its own sake; and fourth, that these non-philosophers are capable of living happy lives.Bobonich devotes most of the first chapter to describing Plato's pessimism about non-philosophers in the middle period. The cause for this pessimism is both epistemic and psychological. In the Phaedo, non-philosophers are incapable of knowing what is genuinely valuable. Failure to grasp non-sensible value properties means that in non-philosophers, reason simply takes over the ends defined by bodily impulses. The Republic is less pessimistic, but even here, Plato's tripartitioning of the soul makes clear that the rational part of the soul in non-philosophers fails to fulfill its proper ruling function. Bobonich's claim is that the more optimistic view presented in the Laws is indicative of developments not only in Plato's political theory, but also in the areas of psychology and epistemology.The central feature of the political theory advanced in the Laws is that the proper goal of legislation is not victory in war, but the cultivation of virtue in all citizens. More importantly for Bobonich, it suggests that all citizens, both philosophers and non-philosophers, are capable of attaining some degree of genuine virtue. For evidence of this, he points to the preludes that accompany each piece of legislation designed to provide a rational justification for what the laws command. In identifying virtue as the aim of legislation, Bobonich observes that the Laws endorses a dependency thesis about goods, making the value of a dependent good such as wealth, honor or military victory dependent upon its possessor being virtuous. His position is that Plato's endorsement of this dependency thesis in the Laws implies that ordinary citizens are capable of at least a partial grasp of what is genuinely valuable, making some degree of virtue and happiness attainable.Bobonich's view that this optimism about non-philosophers has implications for Plato's later epistemology and psychology is developed in the third and fourth chapters. He argues that the Republic's partitioning of the soul into three distinct, agent-like parts is abandoned in the later dialogues in favor of a more unified conception. This approach in the [End Page 334] middle period served to account for akratic action and the formation of non-rational desires, but Bobonich believes that Plato came to see this doctrine as ultimately flawed. By contrast, the Laws offers an account of akratic action and non-rational desire that maintains a unified subject and avoids the problems found in partitioning. In chapter four, Bobonich considers how the Laws' unified conception of the subject, supported by the Phaedrus, Philebus and Timaeus, reveals how all human aims and desires, both rational and non-rational, are structured and conceptualized through the soul's rational faculty. In this unified conception of the subject, Bobonich sees important implications for the role of non-rational elements in the ethical education of even ordinary human beings.In the fifth and final chapter, Bobonich returns to politics, and considers how Plato's conception of citizenship in the Laws reflects the more optimistic view of human nature. He examines how citizens in the Laws develop non-instrumental concerns for the happiness... (shrink)

Reflection, in the sense of [Fr03a] and [Fr03b], is based on the idea that a category of classes has a subclass that is “similar” to the category. Here we present axiomatizations based on the idea that a category of classes that does not form a class has extensionally different subclasses that are “similar”. We present two such similarity principles, which are shown to interpret and be interpretable in certain set theories with large cardinal axioms.

This paper addresses two of the objections that can be raised against the presence of a project of social philosophy in Negative Dialectics. First, I argue that the continuity of Adorno’s social diagnosis with Lukács’ theory of reification should be nuanced by interpreting the core of his social theory as an analysis of the process of subsumption that occurs with the autonomization of social objectivity. Secondly, I present the notion of constellation as the core of Adorno’s epistemological argument in Negative (...) Dialectics and I challenge the idea of an incompatibility between the negative dialectic and social sciences. This is pursued through a discussion of the relation with Max Weber’s ideal types and the affinity between Adorno’s epistemological program and the theoretical models of Edward P. Thompson and David Harvey. (shrink)

Developing a reading of some of Beauvoir and Sartre's most influential writings in philosophy, Max Deutscher explores contemporary philosophy in the light of the phenomenological tradition within which Being and Nothingness and The Second Sex occurred as striking events operating on the border of the modern and the 'post-modern'. Deutscher traces the shifts of genre that produce their gendered philosophies, and responds in terms of contemporary experience to the mood and the arguments of their works. Drawing upon the writings of (...) two contemporary critics in particular - Michele Le Dœuff and Luce Irigaray - Deutscher reworks this part of philosophy's history in order to advance thinking in contemporary philosophy, generate renewed philosophical reflection on consciousness, freedom and one's relation to others, and to return a look still cast in our direction from an earlier time. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band enthalt den ersten Teil der Studien Max Webers zur Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. Vergleichende religionssoziologische Versuche, die seit 1915 als eine Aufsatzfolge im "Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik" erschienen sind. Den Auftakt bildete die Studie uber Konfuzianismus und Taoismus, die in die soziologischen Grundlagen der chinesischen Religiositat und ihrer spezifischen Haltung zu wirtschaftlichem Handeln einfuhrt. Spatestens seit 1910 weitete Max Weber seine in der `Protestantischen Ethik' entwickelte Fragestellung aus. Die Frage nach den Bedingungen fur die Entstehung des modernen (...) okzidentalen Rationalismus fuhrte ihn zu seinen universalhistorisch angelegten Studien. Diese zielen darauf ab, die Besonderheit der Moderne vor der Kenntnis anderer Kulturen und ihrer Sinnsysteme besser zu verstehen. Das grossangelegte Forschungsprogramm wird in der Einleitung zur Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen systematisch umrissen und in der Zwischenbetrachtung: Theorie der Stufen und Richtungen religioser Weltablehnung vertieft. Max Weber hat die Aufsatze uber Konfuzianismus und Taoismus sowie Einleitung und Zwischenbetrachtung kurz vor seinem Tod fur den ersten Band Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie uberarbeitet und in den Satz gegeben. Die Edition prasentiert diese beiden Textfassungen und berucksichtigt eine bisher unbekannte Korrekturfassung, so dass die Textgenese nun zuverlassig und im Detail nachvollziehbar ist. Philologisch gepruft und bearbeitet wurden Max Webers Angaben zur chinesischen Geschichte und Literatur. Der Ertrag findet sich in den textkritischen und erlauternden Apparaten sowie in den Verzeichnissen. Ein wichtiger Teil der religionssoziologischen Arbeiten Max Webers liegt damit in einer zuverlassigen Ausgabe vor, die die verschiedenen Textschichten berucksichtigt. (shrink)

Modern consciousness studies are in a healthy state, with many progressive empirical programmes in cognitive science, neuroscience and related sciences, using relatively conventional third-person research methods. However not all the problems of consciousness can be resolved in this way. These problems may be grouped into problems that require empirical advance, those that require theoretical advance, and those that require a re-examination of some of our pre-theoretical assumptions. I give examples of these, and focus on two problems—what consciousness is, and what (...) consciousness does—that require all three. In this, careful attention to conscious phenomenology and finding an appropriate way to relate first-person evidence to third-person evidence appears to be central to progress. But we may also need to re-examine what we take to be “natural facts” about the world, and how we can know them. The same appears to be true for a trans-cultural understanding of consciousness that combines classical Indian phenomenological methods with the third-person methods of Western science. (shrink)

English summary: Max Weber's famous work Die protestantische Ethik und der 'Geist' des Kapitalismusm (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) is published here in the same form as the original version dating from 1904 and 1905. In addition, it includes texts that emerged during the first controversy surrounding the work in the years 1907 to 1910, namely four criticisms and four counter criticisms. These are presented their unabridged form. The volume contains other texts from the between 1905 and (...) 1910 which are related to the subject matter covered in the study, such as the summary of Weber's lecture at a meeting of the Eranos Circle in spring 1905, his 1906 draft Kirchen und Sekten in Nordamerika (churches and sects in North America) and his contributions to a debate on a lecture by Ernst Troeltsch at the Erster Deutscher Soziologentag (first German conference of sociological studies) in 1910. The introduction provides an explanation of the historical context of the texts with regard to their content and publication, the editorial reports illustrate in particular Weber's selection and use of sources. The volume is complemented by several indices and a glossary. German description: Max Webers weltberuhmte Studie Die protestantische Ethik und der 'Geist' des Kapitalismus wird hier in ihrer Fassung erster Hand aus den Jahren 1904 und 1905 vorgelegt. Hinzu kommen Texte, die wahrend der ersten Kontroverse uber diese Studie in den Jahren 1907 bis 1910 entstanden. Es handelt sich um vier Kritiken und vier Antikritiken. Sie werden ungekurzt prasentiert. Der Band enthalt weitere Texte aus der Zeit von 1905 bis 1910, die in thematischem Zusammenhang mit der Studie stehen, so die Zusammenfassung von Webers Vortrag im Eranos-Kreis aus dem Fruhjahr 1905, seine Skizze `Kirchen` und `Sekten` in Nordamerika aus dem Jahr 1906 und seine Diskussionsbeitrage zu einem Vortrag von Ernst Troeltsch auf dem Ersten Deutschen Soziologentag 1910. Eine Einleitung fuhrt in den problem- und werkgeschichtlichen Zusammenhang der Texte ein, die Editorischen Berichte erlautern insbesondere Webers Auswahl und Nutzung der Quellen. Mehrere Register und ein Glossar erganzen den Band. (shrink)

In diesem Band der Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe werden Webers Texte zum asketischen Protestantismus aus den Jahren 1904 bis 1906 in ihrer überarbeiteten Fassung, wie er sie 1919/20 zum Druck gab, zusammen mit der »Vorbemerkung« in historisch-kritischer Bearbeitung präsentiert. Diese »Vorbemerkung« stellte er an den Beginn seiner Sammlung religionssoziologischer Aufsätze, die vier Bände umfassen sollte, und legte darin den Zweck dieser Sammlung dar.

Let k ≥ 2 and f:Nk Æ [1,k] and n ≥ 1 be such that there is no x1 < ... < xk+1 £ n such that f(x1,...,xk) = f(x1,...,xk+1). Then we want to find g:Nk+1 Æ [1,3] such that there is no x1 < ... < xk+2 £ n such that g(x1,...,xk+1) = g(x2,...,xk+2). This reducees adjacent Ramsey in k dimensions with k colors to adjacent Ramsey in k+1 dimensions with 3 colors.

Here we take the view that LPC(=) is applicable to structures whose domain is too large to be a set. This is not just a matter of class theory versus set theory, although it can be interpreted as such, and this interpretation is discussed briefly at the end.

n + 1 nested k-ary fixed point operators are more expressive than n. This holds on finite structures for all sublogics of partial fixed point logic PFP that can express conjunction, existential quantification and deterministic transitive closure of binary relations using at most k-ary fixed point operators and that are closed against subformulas. Among those are a lot of popular fixed point logics.

We now fix A ⊆ Q. We study a fundamental class of digraphs associated with A, which we call the A-digraphs. An A,kdigraph is a digraph (Ak,E), where E is an order invariant subset of A2k in the following sense. For all x,y ∈ A2k, if x,y have the same order type then x ∈ E ↔ y ∈ E.