Augustine’s political theology is characterized by two apparently contradictory impulses: his harsh moral critique of non-Christian political communities, and his approbation of Christian participation in these communities. I argue that Augustine’s ecclesiology illuminates the coherence of his thought on these matters. Augustine’s assertion against the Donatists that Christians do not contract guilt from ecclesial fellowship with sinners reflects his larger vision of the relation between the earthly and heavenly cities. Association with sinners is no more avoidable in the civic sphere (...) than in the ecclesial, and the vicious character of non-Christian political orders does not taint Christians who participate in them. Indeed, Christian rulers exercise authority over the earthly city faithfully when they direct their civic authority toward heavenly ends. This perspective funds Augustine’s defense of religious coercion. Since the Christian ruler ultimately belongs to the heavenly and not the earthly city, he should use his earthly power to enforce church unity according to ecclesial and not civic duty. (shrink)

In City of God 19.24, Augustine rejects Cicero's definition of res publica as a society founded on justice for a new definition focused on common objects of love. Robert Markus, Oliver O'Donovan, and a host of Augustinian political theologians have depicted this move as a positive gesture toward secular society. Yet this reading fails to account for why Augustine waited so long to address Cicero's definition, first discussed in Book 2, and for the radical dualism Augustine sets forth between the (...) two cities throughout his text. I argue, in line with Rowan Williams and John Milbank, for a minority reading of Book 19 that draws upon the narrative structure of City of God. In Books 3–5, Augustine recounts the history of the earthly city according to Rome's penchant for violence and idolatry, both a function of love for temporal goods. In Book 18, Augustine traces the history of the earthly city before Rome according to the same themes, completing a narrative argument that humanity has always been divided according to differing loves. Book 19 advances the idea that such idolatry is injustice—a failure to grant God the worship he is due. With the new definition of 19.24, Augustine retains Cicero's emphasis on the importance of virtue in civic society while characteristically shifting the terms of discussion from justice to love. While such a definition means that Rome can be called a res publica, it also prompts a negative judgment upon her history according to her objects of love. Given her violence and idolatry, Rome is no better than Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Greece—all subject to withering critique in Book 18. Thus, Augustine's new definition does not retract but extends the polemic of City of God. (shrink)

James K. A. Smith’s Awaiting the King is the most effective popularization of Augustine’s political thought currently available, but its reliance on the work of Oliver O’Donovan obscures uncomfortable elements of Augustine’s thought, and it does not adequately address how the racial and socioeconomic composition of Christian communities is itself formative.

Successful psychopaths, defined as individuals in the general population who nevertheless possess some degree of psychopathic traits, are receiving increasing amounts of empirical attention. To date, little is known about such individuals, specifically with regard to how they respond to ethical dilemmas in business contexts. This study investigated this relationship, proposing a mediated model in which the positive relationship between psychopathy and unethical decision-making is explained through the process of moral disengagement, defined as a cognitive orientation that facilitates unethical choice. (...) The results of the study supported this model, and implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that permitting, say, voluntary euthanasia would erode the motivations and inhibitions supporting other, legitimate prohibitions on killing to the point where widespread disregard for the moral law would result. this paper discusses the relevance of such "slippery slope" arguments for the rule-utilitarian who claims that we can assess moral rules by asking whether their acceptance would maximize utility. first it is argued that any normative theory of this type cannot recognize slope arguments as legitimate considerations in (...) this assessment. second, it is suggested that a theory based on the very different notion of choosing a moral code can permit slope arguments to weigh as relevant considerations. (shrink)

Starting in June 2012, a series of articles in the journal Nature and in the online journals of the Public Library of Science made public the first results of a massive, international collaborative scientific endeavor known as the “Human Microbiome Project” . This project, which is attempting to categorize the vast number of microbiological species and organisms that live in and on the “healthy” human body, raises important questions about what it means to be a whole individual organism, especially if (...) that individual involves a community of some hundreds of trillions of others. In this article, we will explore a handful of political, ethical, and philosophical issues that this new research raises .. (shrink)

Defences of inference to the best explanation (IBE) frequently associate IBE with scientific realism, the idea that it is reasonable to believe our best scientific theories. I argue that this linkage is unfortunate. IBE does not warrant belief, since the fact that a theory is the best available explanation does not show it to be (even probably) true. What IBE does warrant is acceptance: taking a proposition as a premise in theoretical and/or practical reasoning. We ought to accept our best (...) scientific theories since they are the theories that are most likely to lead to the goal of science, which is that of knowledge. In support of this claim I invoke Bill Lycan's Panglossian reflections regarding Mother Nature.1. (shrink)

In this timely study, Dawes defends the methodological naturalism of the sciences. Though religions offer what appear to be explanations of various facts about the world, the scientist, as scientist, will not take such proposed explanations seriously. Even if no natural explanation were available, she will assume that one exists. Is this merely a sign of atheistic prejudice, as some critics suggest? Or are there good reasons to exclude from science explanations that invoke a supernatural agent? On the one hand, (...) Dawes concedes the bare possibility that talk of divine action could constitute a potential explanation of some state of affairs, while noting that the conditions under which this would be true are unlikely ever to be fulfilled. On the other hand, he argues that a proposed explanation of this kind would rate poorly, when measured against our usual standards of explanatory virtue. (shrink)

Erving Goffman's distinctive contribution to an understanding of others was grounded in his information control and ritual models of the interaction process. This contribution centered on the forms of the interaction order rather than self-other relations as traditionally conceived in phenomenology. Goffman came to phenomenology as a sympathetic but critical outsider who sought resources for the sociological mining of the interaction order. His engagement with phenomenological thinkers (principally Gustav Ichheiser, Jean-Paul Sartre and Alfred Schutz) has to be understood in these (...) terms. The article traces basic differences in analytical focus through a range of phenomenological critiques of Goffman and a comparison of salient aspects of Schutz's and Goffman's writings. While the contrasts have perhaps been overplayed, I conclude that Goffman's thinking about others probably owed more to his pragmatist roots than to his later encounters with phenomenology. (shrink)

The goal of this study was to construct a valid new instrument to measure the effect of moral intensity on managers' propensity to manage earnings. More specifically, this study is a pilot study of the impact of moral intensity on financial accountants' propensity to manage earnings. The instrument, once validated, will be used in a full-study of managers in the hotel industry. Different ethical scenarios were presented to respondents in the survey; each ethical scenario was designed in both high or (...) low moral intensity form, to reflect the importance of the moral dilemma at hand. The results were analysed by factor analysis. The findings of this study have positively validated the instrument, with three of the five moral intensity components identified as having appropriate eigenvalues. This indicates that they have a significant influence in the study. The first factor captures the social consensus dimension and one scenario of the proximity dimension. The second factor indicates an interaction between the temporal immediacy and the magnitude of consequences dimension. The third dimension is probability of effect and one scenario of the proximity dimension. In addition, t-tests indicated that the manipulation of high and low conditions within each scenario were also successful. One limitation of the study might be the use of undergraduate accounting students as manager proxies, although prior evidence suggests use of accounting students as proxies is a valid approach in this type of study. This is a highly novel project as most prior studies have focussed on moral intensity and the general ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

For more than 30 years, historians have rejected what they call the ‘warfare thesis’ – the idea that there is an inevitable conflict between religion and science – insisting that scientists and believers can live in harmony. This book disagrees. Taking as its starting point the most famous of all such conflicts, the Galileo affair, it argues that religious and scientific communities exhibit very different attitudes to knowledge. Scripturally based religions not only claim a source of knowledge distinct from human (...) reason. They are also bound by tradition, insist upon the certainty of their beliefs, and are resistant to radical criticism in ways in which the sciences are not. If traditionally minded believers perceive a clash between what their faith tells them and the findings of modern science, they may well do what the Church authorities did in Galileo’s time. They may attempt to close down the science, insisting that the authority of God’s word trumps that of any ‘merely human’ knowledge. Those of us who value science must take care to ensure this does not happen. (shrink)

Many philosophers have come to believe there is no single criterion by which one can distinguish between a science and a pseudoscience. But it need not follow that no distinction can be made: a multifactorial account of what constitutes a pseudoscience remains possible. On this view, knowledge-seeking activities fall on a spectrum, with the clearly scientific at one end and the clearly non-scientific at the other. When proponents claim a clearly non-scientific activity to be scientific, it can be described as (...) a pseudoscience. One feature of a scientific theory is that it forms part of a research tradition being actively pursued by a scientific community. If a theory lacks this form of epistemic warrant, this is a pro tanto reason to regard it as pseudoscientific. (shrink)

Henri de Lubac’s treatment of the relationship between nature and grace will be critiqued by Herman Bavinck’s ‘grace restores nature’ theme. In two significant addresses, Bavinck critiqued a Roman Catholic approach to nature and grace. De Lubac’s influence upon Roman Catholic thinking addressing nature and grace occurred post-Bavinck and has altered Catholic thinking on the subject. Neo-Calvinist scholar, Wolter Huttinga admits that Bavinck and de Lubac offer similar critiques of Roman Catholicism. The question remains then, do Bavinck’s critiques still hold? (...) I propose that Bavinck’s account of grace restores nature still makes valid critiques of a post-Vatican II construction of nature and grace. The paper is broken into three sections: an exploration of de Lubac’s nature and grace theme, the framework of Bavinck’s ‘grace restores nature’ theme, and a Bavinckian critique of de Lubac’s nature and grace theme. (shrink)

History and the modern sciences are characterized by what is sometimes called a methodological naturalism that disregards talk of divine agency. Some religious thinkers argue that this reflects a dogmatic materialism: a non-negotiable and a priori commitment to a materialist metaphysics. In response to this charge, I make a sharp distinction between procedural requirements and metaphysical commitments. The procedural requirement of history and the sciences—that proposed explanations appeal to publicly-accessible bodies of evidence—is non-negotiable, but has no metaphysical implications. The metaphysical (...) commitment is naturalistic, but is both a posteriori and provisional, arising from the fact that for more than 400 years no proposed theistic explanation has been shown capable of meeting the procedural requirement. I argue that there is nothing to prevent religious thinkers from seeking to overturn this metaphysically naturalistic stance. But in order to do so they would need to show that their proposed theistic explanations are the best available explanations of a range of phenomena. Until this has been done, the metaphysical naturalism of history and the sciences remains defensible. (shrink)

The goal of this study was to construct a valid new instrument to measure the effect of moral intensity on managers' propensity to manage earnings. More specifically, this study is a pilot study of the impact of moral intensity on financial accountants' propensity to manage earnings. The instrument, once validated, will be used in a full-study of managers in the hotel industry. Different ethical scenarios were presented to respondents in the survey; each ethical scenario was designed in both high or (...) low moral intensity form, to reflect the importance of the moral dilemma at hand. The results were analysed by factor analysis. The findings of this study have positively validated the instrument, with three of the five moral intensity components identified as having appropriate eigenvalues. This indicates that they have a significant influence in the study. The first factor captures the social consensus dimension and one scenario of the proximity dimension. The second factor indicates an interaction between the temporal immediacy and the magnitude of consequences dimension. The third dimension is probability of effect and one scenario of the proximity dimension. In addition, t-tests indicated that the manipulation of high and low conditions within each scenario were also successful. One limitation of the study might be the use of undergraduate accounting students as manager proxies, although prior evidence suggests use of accounting students as proxies is a valid approach in this type of study. This is a highly novel project as most prior studies have focussed on moral intensity and the general ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

Wana Manitpisitkul1, Sabrina Lee2, Matthew Cooper31Department of Pharmacy, University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, MD, USA; 2Solid Organ Transplant Program, University of Utah Health Care, Salt Lake City, UT, USA; 3Department of Surgery, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA: Addition of mycophenolate mofetil to calcineurin-based immunosuppressive therapy has led to a significant improvement in graft survival and reduction of acute rejection in renal transplant recipients. However, in clinical practice, MMF dose reduction, interruption, or discontinuation due to hematological (...) and gastrointestinal side-effects occurred in up to 50% of the patients. Large retrospective analyses have demonstrated that patients requiring MMF dose manipulation due to adverse events experienced a higher rate of rejection and graft loss. Enteric-coated mycophenolate sodium was developed with the goal of improving upper GI side-effects. Here, we review the efficacy and safety of EC-MPS in de novo kidney transplant recipient, and in stable renal transplant patients who were converted from MMF. The changes in GI-related adverse events using patient-reported outcome instruments are also reviewed.Keywords: enteric-coated mycophenolate sodium, mycophenolate mofetil, kidney transplant, efficacy, gastrointestinal tolerability. (shrink)

The sciences are characterized by what is sometimes called a “methodological naturalism,” which disregards talk of divine agency. In response to those who argue that this reflects a dogmatic materialism, a number of philosophers have offered a pragmatic defense. The naturalism of the sciences, they argue, is provisional and defeasible: it is justified by the fact that unsuccessful theistic explanations have been superseded by successful natural ones. But this defense is inconsistent with the history of the sciences. The sciences have (...) always exhibited what we call a domain naturalism. They have never invoked divine agency, but have always focused on the causal structure of the natural world. It is not the case, therefore, that the sciences once employed theistic explanations and then abandoned them. The naturalism of the sciences is as old as science itself. (shrink)

This volume examines the diversity of new scientific theories of religion, by outlining the logical and causal relationships between these enterprises.

While a great deal of abuse has been directed at intelligent design theory (ID), its starting point is a fact about biological organisms that cries out for explanation, namely "specified complexity" (SC). Advocates of ID deploy three kind of argument from specified complexity to the existence of a designer: an eliminative argument, an inductive argument, and an inference to the best explanation. Only the first of these merits the abuse directed at it; the other two arguments are worthy of respect. (...) If they fail, it is only because we have a better explanation of SC, namely Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophical approach to religion that acknowledges both the diversity of religions and the many and varied dimensions of the religious life. Rather than restricting itself to Christian theism, it covers a wide range of religious traditions, examining their beliefs in the context of the actual practice of the religious life. After outlining the aims of religion, the book focuses on claims to knowledge. What kinds of knowledge do religions purport to offer? In what idiom is it (...) couched? From what sources do devotees draw their claims to knowledge? Are these sources reliable? Rather than trying to settle age-old questions about religious belief, the book offers its readers a set of criteria with which they can make informed decisions in matters of faith. Gregory W. Dawes is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He completed his first graduate degree at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome before returning to New Zealand to complete PhD degrees in both biblical studies and philosophy. His previous books include The Historical Jesus Question, Theism and Explanation, and Galileo and the Conflict between Religion and Science. (shrink)

Households and banks have increasingly displaced non-financial businesses and governments as the primary debtors in modern capitalist economies, resulting in more severe economic cycles, increased inequality, and external macroeconomic imbalances. Yet while the trend is nearly universal among developed economies, its intensity varies a great deal from country to country. This article highlights the common international causes behind the global expansion of household and financial sector debt; the divergent national approaches to household credit that cause household and financial sector indebtedness (...) to vary from country to country; and the likely causes of these disparate approaches. National approaches to interest rate restrictions, property transfer taxation, high loan-to-value mortgages, mortgage interest taxation, and secondary markets for consumer debt can either encourage or mitigate household and financial sector borrowing. Whether a country encourages or mitigates such credit is determined by an idiosyncratic mix of institutional, political, and ideational factors. Especially important are the size of domestic pension funds, banks’ preferred business models, the political power of financial firms, and whether policymakers are more sensitive to the gains promised by a credit-fueled expansion or to the risks posed by an overleveraged collapse. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga has recently argued that there are certain propositions which are necessary but known only a posteriori. If Plantinga is correct then he has shown that the traditional view that all necessary truths are knowable a priori is false. Plantinga's examples deserve special attention because they differ in important respects from other proposed examples of necessary a posteriori truths. His examples depend on a certain conception of possible worlds and in particular on his conception of the actual world. It (...) will be argued that these examples of necessary a posteriori propositions can be understood in two different ways. According to one way of understanding Plantinga, the propositions turn out to be contingent a posteriori truths, and according to the other way they turn out to be necessary a priori truths. The plausibility of Plantinga's position is due to a confusion between the two possible interpretations. (shrink)

A number of recent historians claim to have defeated what they call the ‘conflict thesis’, the idea that there exists some inevitable conflict between Darwinism and Christianity. This is often thought to be part of a broader ‘warfare thesis’, which posits an inevitable conflict between science and religion. But, all they have defeated is one, relatively uninteresting form of this thesis. There remain other forms of the conflict theses that remain entirely plausible, even in light of the historical record.

A recent legal ruling in the United States regarding ‘intelligent design’ argued that ID is not science because it invokes a supernatural agent. It therefore cannot be taught in public schools. But the important philosophical question is not whether ID invokes a supernatural agent; it is whether it meets the standards we expect of any explanation in the sciences. More generally, could any proposed theistic explanation – one that invokes the deity of classical theism – meet those standards? Could it (...) be both scientific and religious? The present paper sets out the factors to be taken into account when answering this question. (shrink)

As part of a multifactorial approach to address weak incentives for innovative antimicrobial drug development, market entry rewards are an emerging solution. Recently, the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy released the Priority Antimicrobial Value and Entry Award proposal, which combines a MER with payment reforms, transitioning from volume-based to “value-based” payments for antimicrobials. Here, the PAVE Award and similar MERs are reviewed, focusing on further refinement and avenues for implementation.