Problem ukrytości Boga staje się coraz częściej dyskutowanym tematem filozoficznym. W swoim artykule chciałbym zająć się kwestią nazwaną przez Jacka Wojtysiaka (w jego książce Między jawnością a ukryciem) (Wojtysiak 2023) „wiedzą testymonialną” i powiązać ją z Newmanowską koncepcją rozumowania implikatywnego. Odróżnienie od siebie dwóch rodzajów rozumowania — jednego spontanicznego, praktycznego, znajdującego swoje zastosowanie m.in. w obszarze wiary i moralności, oraz drugiego krytycznego, analitycznego i retrospektywnego, używanego w nauce, a także w filozofii i teologii – wydaje mi się kluczowe dla zrozumienia (...) obserwowalnej ukrytości Boga. (shrink)

After having achieved some level of competency in their critical thinking classes, students are often frustrated by the effects of their use of critical thinking with their friends and family. This threat to their long-standing relationships and social comfort should be addressed in our pedagogy if we are to enable critical thinking to realize its potential for effective communication. Explicit attention to the emotional component of critical thinking exchanges is a possible step towards alleviating the negative tensions that would otherwise (...) result from the socially clumsy deployment of critical thinking. This paper offers suggestive evidence of relational frustration experienced by freshman critical thinking students and provides practical suggestions whereby criticaI thinking can nurture, rather than jeopardize social networks. (shrink)

This was one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns that appeared during 2014 in Crisismagazine.com and The Wanderer and at his blog site. He argues that, despite the criticism of President Obama’s seemingly excessive exercise of executive power to further an ideologically leftist secularist agenda, the strong and maybe unprecedented use of presidential power after him may be the most certain way to try to restore weakened American constitutional principles and traditional liberties and (...) to begin to reverse our serious cultural decay. (shrink)

This was one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns that appeared during 2014 in Crisismagazine.com and The Wanderer and at his blog site. It discusses how Catholic social teaching does not mandate particular public policies and must not be confused with a point of the teaching itself. It emphasizes that there can typically be many different policy approaches that can be used to make sure that moral demands are met.

The planet’s swiftly growing population coupled with the lack of food security and the degradation of natural resources has caused many demographers to worry about the ramifications of unchecked population growth while many philosophers worry about the ethical issues surrounding the methods of population control. Therefore, I intend to argue a system of encouraging a decrease in personal fertility rate via financial incentives offers a solution that is both viable and not morally reprehensible.

‘And’ thus splits up the ambiguous starting unity, introduces into it the difference between ideology and science... since the gesture of distinguishing ‘mere ideology’ from ‘reality’ implies the epistemologically untenable ‘God's view’, that is, access to objective reality as it ‘truly is’... [And] what emerges via distortions of the accurate representation of reality is the real -- that is, the trauma around which social reality is structured. (Zizek, 2000, pp. 24-5, original emphasis).

‘And’ thus splits up the ambiguous starting unity, introduces into it the difference between ideology and science... since the gesture of distinguishing ‘mere ideology’ from ‘reality’ implies the epistemologically untenable ‘God's view’, that is, access to objective reality as it ‘truly is’... [And] what emerges via distortions of the accurate representation of reality is the real -- that is, the trauma around which social reality is structured. (Zizek, 2000, pp. 24-5, original emphasis).

‘And’ thus splits up the ambiguous starting unity, introduces into it the difference between ideology and science... since the gesture of distinguishing ‘mere ideology’ from ‘reality’ implies the epistemologically untenable ‘God's view’, that is, access to objective reality as it ‘truly is’... [And] what emerges via distortions of the accurate representation of reality is the real -- that is, the trauma around which social reality is structured. (Zizek, 2000, pp. 24-5, original emphasis).

This paper is a modified version of a talk presented by the author at the SCSS’s Capitol Hill Luncheon-Seminar on “Defending the Family,” at the Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C., April 23, 2004. It is an updated examination of the subject in question since the author’s lengthy and more comprehensive article on the subject in the SCSS’s 1998 anthology, Defending the Family; A Sourcebook. Like the earlier article, it shows that the problem of false allegations of child abuse and (...) neglect against parents continues to be massive. It identifies vague laws, attitudes of operatives in the child protective system, the ease of making reports, and the legal immunity of protective system operatives as the main reasons for this. It discusses the threats to children and innocent families posed by the system. It finds the limited protections for parents written into recent federal law an encouraging development, but points out that parents still have relatively few rights in the face of the system. It presents the case as to why the current child protective system is fundamentally flawed and should be eliminated in favor of a different approach to protecting children from true abuse and neglect. (shrink)

The author argues that there are serious problems from the standpoint of Catholic social teaching in making the forcible spreading of democracy an objective of U.S. foreign policy. He argues that U.S. policy, in light of Catholic social teaching, should be prudently interventionist—but not primarily in a military sense—in promoting human rights, diffusing international tensions, and peacekeeping. Also, the author discusses such questions as shaping U.S. foreign policy in conjunction with allies and foreign aid, in light of Catholic social teaching.

This article presents reflections on the Terri Schiavo starvation case: the public confusion about the facts of the case, the ethical and legal principles governing it, the modern philosophical trends that led to it, the failure of all three branches of government to properly address it, the authority of the Florida governor and the President to intervene to save Terri Schiavo, and how the case illustrated a gross and outrageous lack of political will.

A system S has the “converse Ackermann property” if -> C is unprovable in S whenever C is a propositional variable. In this paper we define the fragments with the C.A.P. of some well-know propositional systems in the spectrum between the minimal and classical logic. In the first part we succesively study the implicative and positive fragments and the full calculi. In the second, we prove by a matrix method that each one of the systems has the C.A.P. Thus, we (...) think the problem proposed in Anderson & Belnap § 8.12 has been solved. (shrink)

Traditionally, it has been held that critical thinking requires a set of cognitive skills and dispositions. The present work supports the opinion of some theorists who have proposed that these might not be the only two ingredients necessary for improving critical thinking. More specifically, new factors could be necessary if critical thinking is to be achieved, such as gaining an epistemological understanding of critical thinking; reaching a given level of epistemological development, or the beliefs that are held about thinking. These (...) new components are analysed conceptually and instructionally. Special attention is also devoted to dispositions. (shrink)

This paper explores the difficulties of implementing international human rights standards in post conflict states, particularly in Islamic States, using Afghanistan as a case study. The paper will submit that imposing international human rights law with a ‘top down' approach is ineffective, using the example of the western-style Afghan constitution which contains many human rights protections, such as freedom of religion, that cannot be realized in contemporary Afghan society. It will be argued that a more transparent, consultative and long-term approach (...) to human rights implementation should be taken in post conflict situations, if ‘human rights' is to be more than a catch phrase for membership of the international community. (shrink)

This article suggests that one of the key developments in Indian business following liberalization has been the increase in the number, diversity and activism of its stakeholders. This has presented managers with several ambiguous problems and tricky ethical dilemmas. Managers need to develop new competencies to cope, especially enhanced self-awareness, an ethical orientation, and the ability to think through, make judgments on and implement action after consideration of multiple (stakeholder) perspectives. Management education in India is yet to respond effectively to (...) the new competency requirements. There is need to introduce changes in the curriculum to inculcate these competencies. In this context, the suitability of the GVV approach to teaching ethics is reviewed. The evidence from the initial experiences of using the GVV approach in India, while anecdotal, has been positive. (shrink)

Despite the promise of international collaboration and sharing by bringing together bioethicists from throughout the world at the 2024 IAB conference in Qatar, I will not be attending. The authors...

Kurt Godel, the greatest logician of our time, startled the world of mathematics in 1931 with his Theorem of Undecidability, which showed that some statements in mathematics are inherently "undecidable." His work on the completeness of logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency of the axiom of choice and the continuum theory brought him further worldwide fame. In this introductory volume, Raymond Smullyan, himself a well-known logician, guides the reader through the fascinating world of Godel's incompleteness theorems. The (...) level of presentation is suitable for anyone with a basic acquaintance with mathematical logic. As a clear, concise introduction to a difficult but essential subject, the book will appeal to mathematicians, philosophers, and computer scientists. (shrink)

With disparate rates of morbidity and mortality among minoritized communities, COVID-19 illuminated the need for equity-informed practices in public health. Pacia et al posit FQHCs as entities that addressed inequity when others failed. This commentary further situates how FQHCs address the public health crisis of institutional racism and related health inequities every day and presents a FQHC-led Ethics and Equity Framework and Workflow Checklist to guide ethical and equitable engagement with FQHCs.

Despite its uniform appearance, the cerebellar cortex is highly heterogeneous in terms of structure, genetics and physiology. Purkinje cells (PCs), the principal and sole output neurons of the cerebellar cortex, can be categorized into multiple populations that differentially express molecular markers and display distinctive physiological features. Such features include action potential rate, but also their propensity for synaptic and intrinsic plasticity. However, the precise molecular and genetic factors that correlate with the differential physiological properties of PCs remain elusive. In this (...) article, we provide a detailed overview of the cellular mechanisms that regulate PC activity and plasticity. We further perform a pathway analysis to highlight how molecular characteristics of specific PC populations may influence their physiology and plasticity mechanisms. (shrink)

This article examines whether the degree of religiosity in an institutional environment can stimulate the emergence of a robust corporate governance system. This study utilizes the Nigerian business environment as its context and embraces a qualitative interpretivist research approach. This approach permitted the engagement of a qualitative content analysis (QCA) methodology to generate insights from interviewees. Findings from the study indicate that despite the high religiosity among Nigerians, religion has not stimulated the desired corporate governance system in Nigeria. The primary (...) explanation for this outcome is the presence of rational ordering over religious preferences thus highlighting the fact that religion, as presently understood and practiced by stakeholders, is inconsistent with the principles underpinning good corporate governance. (shrink)

It has been argued that organizational structures (the way tasks are defined, allocated, and coordinated) can influence moral agency in organizations. In particular, low values on different structural parameters (functional concentration, specialization, separation, and formalization) are said to foster an organizational context (allowing for relating to the goals and output of the organization, moral deliberation, and social connectedness) that is conducive to moral agency. In this paper, we investigate the relation between the organizational structure and moral agency in the case (...) of a.s.r. (a large Dutch insurance company). While our empirical results fit the thesis that low values on structural parameters positively relate to moral agency, they also refine our understanding of the influence of structural parameters. In particular, our data suggest that the influence of functional concentration not only depends on whether it is low, but also on the type of criterion used for identifying business units; they suggest that the specific organizational context may put a limit to lowering design parameters and points at several non-structural factors that have an influence on the relation between structure and moral agency. In all, the paper contributes to a more detailed understanding of the conditions conducive to moral agency in organizations. (shrink)