Liberation theology is in retreat. Once orthodox Catholics, starting with Pope John Paul II, recognized liberation theology's cultural challenge, they effectively countered it. They insisted on a traditional Catholic hierarchy of values. They undercut liberation theology's appeal by taking back key words and precepts that liberationists tried to appropriate. The Magisterium's sensus fidei included practical steps to demonstrate the weakness of liberation theology's hold, especially on poor people. Orthodox Catholics thus used the theological and practical weapons that the Church (...) always had at her disposal. The response of many liberation theologians has been to change some of liberation theology's precepts. (shrink)

The Willowbrook Hepatitis Study is one of the best-known examples of unethical medical research, but the research has always had defenders. One of the more intriguing defenses continually used was that critics did not know the researchers on the study and, therefore, could not assess their ethics. This essay traces the appeal to the researchers’ characters across published research and archival sources from the 1960s through today. These appeals reflect the observation as old as Aristotle that one of the most (...) potent modes of persuasion is ethos or character. The specific types of character in these appeals develop out of the paternalistic nature of clinical and research practice in the mid-twentieth century. If the individual physician is the locus of medical judgment, then the physician’s character becomes a key concern for bioethics. These appeals still appear and have implications for bioethics in the present day. (shrink)

In the fifth of his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes offers a version of the ontological proof for the existence of God. As Caterus argues in the First Objections, however, it seems that if this argument were valid, then so also would be any number of absurd arguments, for insofar as Descartes infers that God exists from the fact that existence belongs to His essence, we should also be able to infer that other objects---the fictitious existing lion, say---exist on similar (...) grounds. Descartes's lone defense against this objection is to distinguish true and immutable essences from fictitious ones , a distinction that, in its details, seems to imply a realistic view of essences. Such a view of essences, though, conflicts with Descartes's explicit rejection of Platonism in the Principles of Philosophy , among other places. ;In this dissertation, I offer an interpretation of the Fifth Meditation that resolves this problem by treating true and immutable natures as nothing more than ideas, and I argue that, by a careful reading of several crucial yet rarely noticed texts, we can bring Descartes's cryptic and confusing Fifth Meditation claims under an anti-Platonic rubric. As an upshot of this interpretation, I propose an unusual reading of Descartes's ontological proof, one that draws it much closer to the proof of the Third Meditation and one that, in the end, forces us to reevaluate Descartes's connection to three great figures in the tradition of the ontological proof. St. Anselm, St. Thomas, and Kant. (shrink)

Excerpt from John Dewey: His Thought and Influence Any valid appraisal and criticism Of a man's thought, however, must well up from intellectual charity (sympathy, if you will) and not from either resentment fed by hearsay, or at best, superficial study, nor from partisanship. NO true understanding of a man's thought can be had unless we learn by critical and historical study to see how he came to put his questions in the way he did and give the answers (...) he gave to them. You need to go on and see how far a man's theory will really take you, and how much truth can be got out Of it, and just where and Why it breaks down. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

As genomic science has evolved, so have policy and practice debates about how to describe and evaluate the ways in which genomic information is treated for individuals, institutions, and society. The term genetic exceptionalism, describing the concept that genetic information is special or unique, and specifically different from other kinds of medical information, has been utilized widely, but often counterproductively in these debates. We offer genomic contextualism as a new term to frame the characteristics of genomic science in the debates. (...) Using stasis theory to draw out the important connection between definitional issues and resulting policies, we argue that the framework of genomic contextualism is better suited to evaluating genomics and its policy-relevant features to arrive at more productive discussion and resolve policy debates. (shrink)

Abstract: Contrary to received opinion, Descartes' view on the merits of the ontological proof may actually agree with that of Thomas Aquinas, whose rejection of the a priori existence proof has stocked the armories of anti-Anselmians ever since. In a rarely noted passage of the First Replies, Descartes claims not to differ in any respect from Thomas on the proof, a claim that gains sense in light of recent work on the Fifth Meditation. That work in turn reveals a well-founded, (...) if surprising, understanding of the Cartesian proof and of Cartesianism's true relation to Thomism. (shrink)

O pensamento político-constitucional do Marquês de Caravelas -- Extratos de discursos parlamentares do Marquês de Caravelas.

ABSTRACT This essay argues that science education can gain from close engagement with the history of science both in the training of prospective vocational scientists and in educating the broader public about the nature of science. First it shows how historicizing science in the classroom can improve the pedagogical experience of science students and might even help them turn into more effective professional practitioners of science. Then it examines how historians of science can support the scientific education of the general (...) public at a time when debates over “intelligent design” are raising major questions over the kind of science that ought to be available to children in their school curricula. It concludes by considering further work that might be undertaken to show how history of science could be of more general educational interest and utility, well beyond the closed academic domains in which historians of science typically operate. (shrink)

This is a study of the rise of Hegelian thought throughout the intellectual world in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century. The book has three interrelated purposes. First, it constitutes the first synthetic description and comprehensive reconstruction of the historical genesis and humanist transformation of Hegelian ideology. Secondly, the study addresses the problem of recurrent patterns of hope and disillusionment in the successive phases of dialectical thought. Finally, the book is concerned with ideological responses to the experience (...) of communal and religious disintegration. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay argues that science education can gain from close engagement with the history of science both in the training of prospective vocational scientists and in educating the broader public about the nature of science. First it shows how historicizing science in the classroom can improve the pedagogical experience of science students and might even help them turn into more effective professional practitioners of science. Then it examines how historians of science can support the scientific education of the general (...) public at a time when debates over “intelligent design” are raising major questions over the kind of science that ought to be available to children in their school curricula. It concludes by considering further work that might be undertaken to show how history of science could be of more general educational interest and utility, well beyond the closed academic domains in which historians of science typically operate. (shrink)

This article attempts to present an X-ray of reactionary populism in power by describing how several ideological elements of Brazilian and international political culture that have gathered by the far rightwing movement led by Jair Bolsonaro. The authors hark back to the politological debate on right-wing populism and conclude with an analysis of bolsonarismo as “lulismo in reverse” [às avessas].

Este artículo pretende presentar una radiografía del populismo reaccionario en el poder, describiendo cómo diversos elementos ideológicos de la cultura política brasileña e internacional han sido reunidos por el movimiento político de extrema derecha liderado por Jair Bolsonaro. Los autores se retrotraen a la discusión politológica sobre el populismo de extrema derecha y concluyen por un análisis del bolsonarismo como “lulismo al revés” [às avessas].

The objectives of this book are to provide a new translation of Plato's M eno together with a series of studies on its philcisophical argument in the light of recent secondary literature. My translation is based mainly on the Oxford Classical Text, 1. Burnet's Platonis Opera (Oxford Clarendon Press 1900) Vol. III. In conjunction with this I have made extensive use of R.S. Bluck's Plato's Meno (Cam bridge University Press, 1964). At critical places in the dialogue I have also consulted (...) A. Croiset's Gorgias, Menon (Bude text). My debt ~o two other sources will be clearly in evidence. They are E.S. Thompson's Plato's Meno (London, MacMillan 1901), and St. George Stock's The Meno of Plato (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1894). One of the greatest difficulties facing a translator is to achieve a balance between accuracy and elegance. Literal translations are more likely to be accurate, but, alas, they also tend to be duller. Free translations run into the opposite danger of paying for elegance and liveliness with the coin of inaccuracy. Another hurdle, for a translator of a Platonic dialogue, is posed by the challenge to maintain the conversational pattern and fast moving character of the discussion. This is easier where the exchang~s are short, but much more difficult where Socrates gets somewhat long-winded. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 3, Page 293-305, September 2021.

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has argued that rock and roll happens from the neck down. In this contribution to The Rolling Stones and Philosophy, edited by Luke Dick and George Reisch, I draw on neuroscience to argue that, in the parlance of John Stuart Mill, rock and roll is both a higher and a lower pleasure.

In Physics Book 2, Aristotle defines nature as an internal source of change. By elaborating Aristotle's view of change, Book 3 takes an important step in establishing the claim - to be made in Book 8 - for a divine mover who causes change but in whom no change occurs. Book 3 also introduces Aristotle's doctrine of infinity as always potential, but never actual and never traversed.

In this book, author John Lynch shows how three controversial experiments--the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the Willowbrook Hepatitis Study, and the Cincinnati Total Body Irradiation Study--have been remembered and forgotten, and why their memorialization or their erasure matters today.

Originally published in 1966, this volume reappraises the educational philosophy of Comenius. Until recently the attention given to Comenius and his work concentrated on a narrow interpretation of his pedagogy which played down his pansophic theory. In the second half of the nineteenth century Germany led the way in pedagogical study and Comenius was widely accepted as having laid the foundations of a science of education. The emergence of education as an academic subject in England and the USA led to (...) a considerable interest in the history of educational ideas and Comenius’ work. (shrink)

The introduction of computer simulation to paleobiology ushered in a new, experimental style of reasoning. Rather than starting with observed fossil patterns and hypothesizing causal processes that may have produced them, it became possible to start with a process model, and from it to simulate a range of possible patterns. ;The MBL Model is a stochastic model of phylogenetic evolution . Computer simulations conducted with the MBL Model served as thought experiments in stochastic evolution. In the MBL work, similarities between (...) empirical and stochastically simulated clades mounted a visual argument that stochastic processes potentially explained large fluctuations in diversity. Stanley and others countered that the similarities were an artifact of scaling. The scaling problem may have been obscured by visual bias: measures of clade shape are scale-invariant, but diversification itself is highly scale-dependent. ;Null and neutral models are frequently conflated. Null models generate hypothetical data distributions under conditions that exclude some process of interest to test whether patterns in an actual data distribution provide statistical evidence for that process. A neutral model assumes selective equivalence among all units at a specified hierarchical level in the evolving system. Neutral models are often inappropriate as null models. Pattern recognition presupposes a null model, but tacit null models are subject to persistent cognitive biases, necessitating explicit formulation of null models. Nonetheless, failure to reject the null model should not preclude further investigation of a pattern. ;Often, models are not candidates for falsification, but serve to simulate data for testing concepts or methods. Sepkoski and Kendrick , and Robeck, Maley, and Donoghue used the MBL Model to test whether mass extinction periodicity is an artifact of paraphyly in taxonomic data. Such numerical experiments, which make all assumptions explicit, can serve as templates for localizing points of disagreement. Models may fall into lineages, each generation providing lessons for the next, but often sharing operational assumptions. Artifacts of shared operational assumptions are often a threat to the validity of inferences. Results holding across models should not be accepted unless they withstand rigorous robustness analysis. (shrink)

There is a phenomenology of the body worked out implicitly in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, in which the full implications of a rejection of a dualistic conception of self and body are articulated. A concept of body can be derived from Hegel's analysis of life, according to which the body is the phusis, hexis and logos of the self, that is, it is the qualitatively determinate conditions--hexis--of un-self-conscious comportment to the world in and by which a situation is constituted which (...) allows immediate satisfaction for the self-conscious will--phusis--and which expresses the pre-reflective commitments of the self--logos. This is a dynamic concept, and its dialectic is one side of the dialectic of selfhood which is the explicit theme of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In its dialectic, the body develops through stages in which each one of these moments in turn takes precedence. The three stages are the natural body, the institutional body, and the self-communicative body. ;Chapters 1 and 2 develop the adequate concept of self-conscious selfhood by analyzing, respectively, Chapter IV, Section B, "Freedom of Self-Consciousness," and Chapter V, "Reason." Chapter 3 develops the concept of body in relation to self-consciousness based on an analysis of the sections of Chapter IV, "Self-Consciousness" which deal with "Desire," "Life" and "Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness," and considers natural embodiment. Chapter 4 analyzes Chapter VI, "Spirit," to develop the notion of institutional embodiment. Chapter 5 analyzes Chapter VIII, "Absolute Knowing," to develop the concept of self-communicative embodiment. ;The conclusion of the Hegelian phenomenology of the body is that self-conscious selfhood can only be adequately embodied by a situation in which the totality of its otherness constitutes a living system of signs, the very life of which is the process of coming to self-understanding as such a system. The dialectic of body is the process of the body's overcoming of its own naturalness, and the bringing of itself to self-consciousness as mind. (shrink)

This book examines the ways in which selfhood and cultural solidarity came to be understood and lived as historical identities during the 1800s. It examines the stages and conflicts in the process of 'becoming historical' through the works of prominent Prussian artists and intellectuals who attached their personal visions to the reformist agenda of the Prussian regime that took power in 1840. The historical account of the evolution of analogous and inter-related commitments to a cultural reformation that would create communal (...) solidarity through subjective identification with public memory is framed by the philosophical perspectives on historical selfhood provided by F. W. J. Schelling and his radical critics, Karl Marx and Søren Kierkegaard, thus drawing this story of building selves and communities in early nineteenth-century Berlin into debates about historical determined and contingently constructed identities. (shrink)