Biblical Christianity should be a powerful, life-forming, paradigm-shifting experience leading to increasing levels of Christlikeness. Unfortunately, the experience of many Christians today is far short of the transformation described in Scripture. This article reports on a portion of mixed-methods research examining the transformative learning reported by alumni of a 22-lesson discipleship process called the Immersion Experience by Aphesis Group Ministries. Holistic spiritual health involves listening to our emotions, confronting toxic shame, addressing childhood defenses, and untangling our distorted spirituality.

The purpose of this paper is to apply Aristotle''s theory of causation to the administrative realm in an attempt to provide the manager/student with a more complete basis for organizational analysis. The authors argue that the traditional approach to administrative case studies limits the manager''s/student''s perspective to the positivistic world view at the expense of a more encompassing perspective which can be achieved through the use of an Aristotelian approach. Aristotle''s four-part theory of causation is juxtaposed with contemporary views of (...) organizational ideology/philosophy, culture, climate and leadership, and staff or personnel. The Mazda automobile plant in Flat Rock, Michigan is provided as a sample case study to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of the Aristotelian method in organizational contexts. (shrink)

Really statistical explanation is a hitherto neglected form of noncausal scientific explanation. Explanations in population biology that appeal to drift are RS explanations. An RS explanation supplies a kind of understanding that a causal explanation of the same result cannot supply. Roughly speaking, an RS explanation shows the result to be mere statistical fallout.

In his contribution to the Journal of Medical Ethics, Joseph Mazor1 makes a logical case, based on the premises underlying his reasoning, for his article's primary thesis: he concludes that parents have the prerogative to determine the ‘best interests’ of their infant son in a circumcision decision. If the facts of the matter were ultimately no different from what he adduces, one could admit the soundness of his argument. But the paper is flawed by some questionable assumptions and grievous incompleteness.First, (...) the author insufficiently explores the profound implications of a serious equivocation in the term ‘circumcision’ that is common throughout the literature. He does superficially reference the article on ‘Circumcision’ in The Jewish Encyclopedia, which describes in detail the actual steps involved in brit milah versus brit periah.2 Despite this general allusion, though, he hardly discusses the matter further, as though the distinction were practically irrelevant. It does have fundamental import, however. Milah is merely a token clip of the very tip of the prepuce, which leaves most of the organ system intact. This was evidently the version practiced in biblical times under the old Abrahamic–Mosaic covenant, before the Talmudic guardians of Judaic ethnic and religious identity proposed a means to prevent Hellinising Jewish men from attempting foreskin restoration by stretching their remaining preputial tissue forward. The rabbis mandated the replacement of milah with the more drastic procedure of periah, a radical surgery that cuts and tears from the penis its entire covering, leaving the glans irreversibly denuded. Unlike traditional milah, the innovation of periah necessarily has significant adverse consequences .Second, Mazor concedes that circumcision might cause a ‘moderate’ reduction of sexual pleasure in the lad's …. (shrink)

The development of the notion of continuous physical quantity is traced from Aristotle to Aquinas to Suarez. It is concluded that Aristotle’s divisibility definition fails to excavate the ontological core of material quantification. Although the basic germ of the solution to the problem is discovered in Aquinas, it is Suarez who fully articulates the essence of continuous physical quantity with his explicit concept of aptitudinal extension — which has crucial theological implications. Résumé Nous considérons ici le développement de la notion (...) de quantité physique continue, d’Aristote à Thomas d’Aquin à Suarez. Nous concluons que la définition d’Aristote en termes de divisibilité ne parvient pas à dégager le noyau ontologique de la quantification matérielle. Encore que le germe fondamental de la solution au problème soit découvert par Thomas d’Aquin, c’est Suarez qui articule pleinement l’essence de la quantité physique continue, grâce à son concept explicite d’extension « aptitudinale » — dont les implications théologiques sont cruciales. (shrink)

The ethical propriety of routine male infant circumcision has been debated in journals of medicine and law for many years. This article explores the issue from historical, medical, and moral perspectives. Two essentially different forms of circumcision (one more drastic than the other) are distinguished. Discussion focuses on the effects of the more radical kind of nontherapeutic surgery on a normal healthy child’s body: whether it constitutes a mutilation, whether it is medically warranted, and whether it is ethically defensible in (...) light of general philosophical principles and Catholic moral doctrine. The conclusion questions the social bias favoring parental choice to circumcise a non-consenting son. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.1 (Spring 2012): 99–128. (shrink)

The article titled The pearl of the ‘Pro-Life’ movement? Reflections on the Kermit Gosnell controversy is a thoughtful piece in which the author raises some important questions, including those impinging on the motivations and apparent inconsistencies of the more vocal officials of the more visible segments of a vast and somewhat diverse grass-roots social uprising.1The pro-life movement has indeed showcased the Gosnell trial, but not because many of its members actually believe that gestational age is a morally relevant criterion. In (...) fact, there is probably a nearly uniform desideratum among the most influential groups to abolish all induced abortion from the first moment of conception, even if that goal logically also requires a ban on all potentially abortifacient contraceptives .2 Even the umbrella National Right to Life Committee with its 50 state affiliates, many of which have been criticised for their incremental approach to ending elective abortion,3 holds that ‘a new individual human being begins at fertilisation, when the sperm and ovum meet to form a single cell.’4 There is no practical necessity to split temporal or geographical hairs about when or how far the sperm must enter the ovum for formal union to occur, because the process is virtually inexorable once it starts, and is, thence, confined to a short span of time and space.Nor are the pro-life leaders being ‘disingenuous’ in their focal interest on this particular case. The underlying motivation is not to go delving for a mere ‘pearl’ , but rather to dive into some deep metaphysical waters about the …. (shrink)

This paper presents Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0. IIT aims to account for the properties of experience in physical (operational) terms. It identifies the essential properties of experience (axioms), infers the necessary and sufficient properties that its substrate must satisfy (postulates), and expresses them in mathematical terms. In principle, the postulates can be applied to any system of units in a state to determine whether it is conscious, to what degree, and in what way. IIT offers a parsimonious explanation of (...) empirical evidence, makes testable predictions, and permits inferences and extrapolations. IIT 4.0 incorporates several developments of the past ten years, including a more accurate translation of axioms into postulates and mathematical expressions, the introduction of a unique measure of intrinsic information that is consistent with the postulates, and an explicit assessment of causal relations. By fully unfolding a system's irreducible cause-effect power, the distinctions and relations specified by a substrate can account for the quality of experience. (shrink)

We prove that for every Scott set S there are S-saturated real closed fields and S-saturated models of Presburger arithmetic.

First published in 1985, D. M. Armstrong's original work on what laws of nature are has continued to be influential in the areas of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Presenting a definitive attack on the sceptical Humean view, that laws are no more than a regularity of coincidence between stances of properties, Armstrong establishes his own theory and defends it concisely and systematically against objections. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Marc (...) Lange, illuminating its continuing importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this influential work is available for a new generation of readers. (shrink)

The merits of David Lewis’s Best System Account of natural law are frequently debated. But to my knowledge, the prospects for extending the BSA to cover meta-laws have never been examined. I shall identify two obstacles facing the most natural way of extending the BSA to cover meta-laws. The BSA’s fans should consider how these obstacles are to be overcome. Meta-laws are laws about laws. For example, Einstein’s special theory of relativity incorporates a meta-law: The content of the [special] (...) relativity theory can … be summarized in one sentence: all natural laws must be so conditioned that they are covariant with respect to Lorentz transformations. [The special theory of relativity] is not a theory in the usual sense but is better regarded as a second-level theory, or a theory of theories that constrains first-level theories. The principle of relativity is an example of a symmetry principle: a principle requiring that the first-order laws be unchanged under a given transformation. Long before Einstein proposed the principle of relativity, other spacetime symmetries were widely believed to be meta-laws: that the first-order laws are covariant under arbitrary spatial displacements, temporal displacements and spatial rotations. These spacetime symmetries require the laws to treat all spatial locations and directions alike and all moments alike. For instance, symmetry under temporal displacements rules out a fundamental force law specifying that a given force declines with the inverse-square of the distance before a given moment but with the inverse-cube of the distance at and after that moment. Wigner characterizes such a symmetry principle as ‘a superprinciple which is in …. (shrink)

Suppose that unobtanium-346 is a rare radioactive isotope. Consider: (1) Every Un346 atom, at its creation, decays within 7 microseconds (µs). (50%) Every Un346 atom, at its creation, has a 50% chance of decaying within 7µs. (1) and (50%) can be true together, but (1) and (50%) cannot together be laws of nature. Indeed, (50%)'s mere (non-vacuous) truth logically precludes (1)'s lawhood. A satisfactory analysis of chance and lawhood should nicely account for this relation. I shall argue first that (...) class='Hi'>David Lewis's Humean picture accounts for this relation only by inserting this relation ‘by hand’. Next, I shall argue that this relation between law and chance also threatens a radically non-Humean picture of laws and chances. Finally, I shall offer an account of natural law that nicely explains the relation between chancy facts and deterministic laws. This explanation is not ad hoc because it derives the relation from the very same features of lawhood that account for the laws' special relation to counterfactuals and explain how the laws (unlike the accidents) possess a variety of necessity. The reason that a chancy fact such as (50%) keeps (1) from being a law, without keeping (1) from being true, is ultimately that a chancy fact constrains the subjunctive facts and (1)'s lawhood, unlike (1)'s truth, depends upon the subjunctive facts. (shrink)

The ‘Responsibility Objection’ to Judith Thomson's famous argument for the permissibility of abortion challenges the relevance of her ‘Violinist Analogy’ to certain types of voluntary unwanted pregnancy, on the grounds that those pregnancies, even though they may be unwanted, are pregnancies for which the woman can be plausibly held responsible. This article considers the force of a number of recent objections to the Responsibility Objection, advanced by Harry Silverstein, David Boonin, and Jeff McMahan, and judges them to be unpersuasive. (...) It is concluded that, in the absence of further considerations, the Responsibility Objection carries force. (shrink)

The article discusses the issue of the justification of experimenting on human subjects from the point of view of the individual participant. The discussion is conducted on three levels, which can be viewed as a hierarchy:I. Rationality: does one have good self-regarding reasons to subject oneself to medical experimentation?II. Justice: does one have a duty or an obligation to take part in medical research?III. Virtue: ought one contribute to the long-term attempt to promote medical knowledge and the overall health of (...) human beings?Rationality is shown to have only a limited force in such a justification, since many experiments cannot be shown to serve the interests of the participant in any way. Justice fares slightly better, since it is based on the idea of a social contract which goes beyond individual prudence. But, since many medical experiments promote the health only of future generations, the condition of mutuality, which is one of the bases of a social contract, is not satisfied. Thus, the ultimate reason to take part in medical research is associated with the supererogatory volunteering of people, who are motivated by the wish to contribute to a highly valuable enterprise with no expectation of return.The three types of reasons are complementary rather than exclusive, and the potential failure of all of them may lead to the undesirable commercialization of the field. Der Beitrag untersucht die Frage, ob und wie medizinische Versuche an Menschen aus der Sicht des einzelnen Teilnehmers gerechtfertigt werden können. Die Diskussion dieser Frage wird auf drei Ebenen geführt, die sich in einem Stufenverhältnis darstellen lassen,I. der Ebene der Zweckrationalität: Gibt es gute Gründe, und zwar durchaus des individuellen Eigennutzes, sich selbst für medizinische Versuche zur Verfügung zu stellen?II. der Ebene der Gerechtigkeit: Besteht eine Pflicht oder eine Verbindlichkeit zur Teilnahme an medizinischer Forschung?III. der Ebene der Tugend: Soll man zu dem auf lange Sicht angelegten Versuch beitragen, das medizinische Wissen und die Gesundheit der Menschen insgesamt zu fördern?Es wird gezeigt, daß das Argument der Zweckrationalität für eine mögliche Rechtfertigung nur von begrenzter Bedeutung ist. Denn viele Experimente dienen den Interessen des unmittelbaren Teilnehmers nachweislich in keiner Weise. Das Argument der Gerechtigkeit hat zwar eine etwas größere Kraft, weil Gerechtigkeit auf der Idee eines Gesellschaftsvertrags beruht, die über den Horizont individueller Klugheit hinausreicht. Da aber viele medizinische Experimente nur die Gesundheit zukünftiger Generationen fördern, ist die Bedingung der Gegenseitigkeit, die eine der Grundlagen des Gesellschaftsvertrags bildet, nicht erfüllt. Der dritte und letzte Grund für eine Teilnahme an medizinischer Forschung steht deshalb in enger Verbindung mit dem freiwilligen supererogatorischen Verhalten von Leuten, die durch den Wunsch motiviert sind, ohne Aussicht auf Gegenleistung zu einer höchst wertvollen Unternehmung etwas beizutragen.Die drei Arten von Gründen ergänzen sich mehr, als daß sie sich ausschließen. Ein mögliches Scheitern aller dieser Gründe könnte zu einer unerwünschten Kommerzialisierung der Teilnahme an medizinischen Experimenten führen. (shrink)

Abstract David Ramsay Steele's From Marx to Mises argues correctly that the standard account of the economic calculation debate is a misrepresentation. Mises and Hayek were not bested by Lange and Taylor. However, it is not true, as Steele claims, that socialists have yet to face the Misesian challenge, nor that the debate over socialist calculation sheds much light on the recent collapse of communism. Steele's critiques of market socialism and worker self?management and his treatment of Marx are, moreover, (...) deficient, as a consequence of his ?Libertarian Panglossism.? Tout est an mieux . . . dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles. (shrink)

The principle of least action (PLA) has often been cited as a counterexample to the dominant mode of causal explanation in physics. In particular, PLA seems to involve an appeal to final causes or some other teleological ideology. However, Ben-Menahem (Causation in science, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2018) argues that such implications no longer apply given that PLA can be recovered as limiting case from quantum theory. In this paper, I argue that the metaphysical implications of PLA-based explanations are not (...) undermined by its status as derivative. However, I contend that PLA functions as a diachronic constraint that licenses explanations by constraint (Lange, Because without cause: non-casual explanations in science and mathematics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016). PLA-based explanations, on this account, are non-causal but also differ from familiar cases of teleological explanations in several respects. (shrink)

Nicht erst die moderne Philosophie hat die fundamentale Doppelnatur des Körperlichen erkannt, das einerseits diejenigen Gegenstände auszeichnet, die wir mit größtmöglicher Distanz und Objektivität wissenschaftlich untersuchen, das sich uns andererseits und zuallererst aber auch in der Form des jeweils eigenen, in seiner Integrität stets bedrohten und letztlich dem Zerfall ausgelieferten Körpers aufdrängt als Bedingung, an der unsere eigene Existenz durch und durch hängt. Schon die Denker der Antike arbeiten sich an dieser Problematik ab; und es gilt, die gedanklichen Ressourcen nutzbar (...) zu machen, die sie für uns bereithalten. Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge spiegeln die antike Auseinandersetzung um den Körper und das Körperliche in all ihren Dimensionen und Schattierungen wieder. Gleichzeitig machen sie deutlich, dass diese Auseinandersetzungen nur geführt werden konnten vor dem Hintergrund einer althergebrachten und für lange Zeit sehr wirkmächtigen Tendenz, Organismen wie die Menschen als paradigmatische körperliche Wesen aufzufassen und dieses Paradigma zum Ausgangspunkt für Reflexionen über das Körperliche als solches zu nehmen. Im ersten Teil des Bandes geht es um das antike Nachdenken über den lebendigen, insbesondere menschlichen Körper. Im Mittelpunkt steht weniger die wissenschaftliche Beschäftigung mit diesem Körper als vielmehr die existenzielle Situation, in der sich der Mensch als ein körperliches Wesen befindet. Der zweite und dritte Teil behandeln die Frage nach den Möglichkeiten, Bedingungen und Grenzen der wissenschaftlichen Beschreibung von Körpern und ihrem Verhalten bei Platon und in der platonischen Tradition sowie bei Aristoteles und in der aristotelischen Tradition. (shrink)