One of the great mysteries of the history of southern Italy, if studied from a purely literary point of view, is the ethnic composition of the Greek cities in the era of the Oscan and Roman conquests. Ancient authors paint a most gloomy picture of those cities which were conquered by the Oscan peoples at the end of the 5th century B.C. or later, saying in some cases that the entire Greek population was slaughtered , in others that the entire (...) elite was slaughtered , and in yet others that the remainder of the Greek population was kept in a state of dire subjection . While not wishing to minimize the horrors of war, these lurid tales must be an over-simplification of the actual situation. It is not readily plausible that entire Greek populations disappeared so abruptly. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 96 Heft: 1 Seiten: 288-290.

How Doctors Think defines the nature and importance of clinical judgment. Although physicians make use of science, this book argues that medicine is not itself a science but rather an interpretive practice that relies on clinical reasoning. A physician looks at the patient's history along with the presenting physical signs and symptoms and juxtaposes these with clinical experience and empirical studies to construct a tentative account of the illness. How Doctors Think is divided into four parts. Part one introduces the (...) concept of medicine as a practice rather than a science; part two discusses the idea of causation; part three delves into the process of forming clinical judgment; and part four considers clinical judgment within the uncertain nature of medicine itself. In How Doctors Think, Montgomery contends that assuming medicine is strictly a science can have adverse side effects, and suggests reducing these by recognizing the vital role of clinical judgment. (shrink)

The Catholic Tradition requires the faithful to form and follow their conscience. This is the case even with the recognition that consciences can be malformed and one can make errors in practical judgments. Water Shaping Stone examines various aspects of this tradition regarding conscience by using, among other sources, twentieth-century magisterial documents, theologians' works, and Scripture. Kathryn Lilla Cox argues that while the Magisterium retains teaching authority, and a responsibility to help form consciences through its teaching, focusing only on (...) the Magisterium leads to incomplete formation. A more holistic vision of conscience formation means considering the formation of the moral agent to be a multifaceted process that draws on, for example, teaching, prayer, rituals, Scripture, practices, and virtues, along with relationships with the Triune God and communities of accountability. This vision of conscience formation retains the magisterial teaching authority while acknowledging discipleship as the theological basis for making and assessing practical judgments of conscience. (shrink)

In Moral Passages, Kathryn Pyne Addelson presents an original moral theory suited for contemporary life and its moral problems. Her basic principle is that knowledge and morality are generated in collective action, and she develops it through a critical examination of theories in philosophy, sociology and women's studies, most of which hide the collective nature and as a result hide the lives and knowledge of many people. At issue are the questions of what morality is, and how moral theories (...) (whether traditional or feminist) are implemented. Addelson takes up a large number of historical cases and contemporary social problems, including teen pregnancy, contraception and abortion, and gay rights. These cases allow her to see how the knowledge and lives of some people are declared deviant or immoral, while those of others appear to show the public consensus. One case she uses throughout the book is Margaret Sanger's early work on birth control with the anarcho-syndicalist movement--a revisionist history that reveals rather than hides the collective nature of morality and knowledge. Addelson shows how the usual individualist philosophies promote theories which hide the authority of the professionals who make them. A collectivist approach, she argues, must show the part professionals play in collective action. Her aim is to allow professional knowledge makers to be morally and intellectually responsible. Based on Addelson's twenty years of work in feminist philosophy and interactionist sociology as well as her long-standing involvement in women's community organization, Moral Passages investigates how morality and knowledge are collectively enacted in today's world. (shrink)

The article “Revive and Refuse: Capacity, Autonomy, and Refusal of Care After Opioid Overdose,” Marshall et al. (2024) highlights the critical issue of care after an opioid overdose. “Revive and Re...

I am persuaded both by the theory of evil advanced by Claudia Card in The Atrocity Paradigm and by the idea that there are evils done to the environment; however, I argue that the theory of evil she describes has difficulty living up to her claim that it "can make sense of ecological evils the victims of which include trees and even ecosystems" (2002, 16). In this paper, I argue that Card's account of evil does not accommodate the kinds of (...) harms inflicted on ecosystems and such nonhuman individuals as trees. I consider the possibility that Card intends a much broader version of evils than the language of the atrocity paradigm lets on, with its attention to sentience and dignity. I'm so persuaded by the atrocity paradigm, however, that I retain the centrality of suffering and introduce the idea that atrocities are intuitively massive, that is, done to groups or generations and not an individual person, animal or tree, so that the paradigm encourages us to think of evil as it relates to far more holistic entities which include the sentient. Evil may require the sort of suffering that only sentience can give rise to, which is not to say we let out trees but says rather that it is impossible to identify wrongs to ecosystems and groups that are not also intertwined with the fates of their sentient dependents. I conclude that Card is right to emphasize victims' suffering as a chief component of evil, and that the ontology of what constitutes a victim must be interpreted broadly, not the notion of suffering. (shrink)

Pretty much everyone knows that our genes have at least something to do with how able or how high achieving we are. Some believe that we should not speak of this common knowledge, nor inquire into how genetic influence works or what it might mean. If we do not keep an open mind to the fact of genetic influence on academic achievement, however, then we cannot explore its possible implications. And if we do not consider the implications, then we cannot, (...) as a society, harness any potential benefits or avoid possible pitfalls. So that's what this essay is about—exploring what behavioral genetics research might be able to offer to educational theory, policy, and practice.We cannot yet use biological information to make accurate predictions for all children. We do know, however, that academic achievement is heritable, which is to say that differences between individuals are influenced by differences in their DNA. If genes are part of the problem for some pupils (to take the negative spin on this), then it seems likely that studying them could be part of a solution. And that's what behavioral geneticists are trying to do—to chart and understand pathways from DNA to behavior and to identify interventions that can maximize outcomes for all. The fact is, though, that we have an awfully long way to go. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente artículo es trazar un recorrido por las principales líneas de la cosmología de Filón de Alejandría tal y como ésta se manifiesta en su obra De Opificio Mundi. Dicha obra es exponente de la síntesis que lleva a cabo el autor entre judaísmo alejandrino y algunas corrientes filosóficas del helenismo tardío. Por eso, estudiar la concepción que de la creación del mundo tiene Filón es estudiar sus influencias filosóficas y religiosas, pero es asimismo estudiar las innovaciones (...) que el alejandrino propone en sus escritos y que suponen un importante paso hacia delante en el camino hacia la formulación de la doctrina de la creatio ex nihilo. (shrink)

El presente artículo pretende rastrear los caminos por los que la noción de belleza ha transitado durante el pensamiento medieval, identificando dos grandes líneas de pensamiento: la belleza ontológica y la belleza formal. Ambos vienen a coincidir en la reflexión de Tomás de Aquino, cuya mirada abrirá el camino hacia una reflexión más autónoma del arte.

Sometimes form-meaning mappings in language are not arbitrary, but iconic: they depict what they represent. Incorporating iconic elements of language into a compositional semantics faces a number of challenges in formal frameworks as evidenced by the lengthy literature in linguistics and philosophy on quotation/direct speech, which iconically portrays the words of another in the form that they were used. This paper compares the well-studied type of iconicity found with verbs of quotation with another form of iconicity common in sign languages: (...) classifier predicates. I argue that these two types of verbal iconicity can, and should, incorporate their iconic elements in the same way using event modification via the notion of a context dependent demonstration. This unified formal account of quotation and classifier predicates predicts that a language might use the same strategy for conveying both, and I argue that this is the case with role shift in American Sign Language. Role shift is used to report others’ language and thoughts as well as their actions, and recently has been argued to provide evidence in favor of Kaplanian “monstrous” indexical expressions. By reimagining role shift as involving either quotation for language demonstrations or “body classifier” predicates for action demonstrations, the proposed account eliminates one major argument for these monsters coming from sign languages. Throughout this paper, sign languages provide a fruitful perspective for studying quotation and other forms of iconicity in natural language due to their lack of a commonly used writing system which is otherwise often mistaken as primary data instead of speech, the rich existing literature on iconicity within sign language linguistics, and the ability of role shift to overtly mark the scope of a language report. In this view, written language is merely a special case of a more general phenomenon of sign and speech demonstration, which accounts more accurately for natural language data by permitting more strict or loose verbatim interpretations of demonstrations through the context dependent pragmatics. (shrink)

The authors examine the nature of the relationship between social science and philosophy and address the sort of work social science should do, and the role and sorts of claims that an accompanying philosophy should engage in. In particular, the authors reintroduce the question of ontology, an area long overlooked by philosophers of social science, and present a cricital engagement with the work of Roy Bhaskar. The book argues against the excesses of philosophising and commits itself to a philosophical approach (...) more deeply grounded in the social sciences. (shrink)

Our experiences with many sorts of evils yield debates about the role of forgiveness as a possible moral response. These debates include (1) the preliminary question whether evils are, by definition, unforgivable, (2) the contention that evils may be forgivable but that forgiveness cannot entail reconciliation with one’s evildoer, (3) the concern that only direct victims of evils are in a position to decide if forgiveness is appropriate, (4) the conceptual worry that forgiveness of evil may not be genuine or (...) complete if hard feelings recur, (5) the interest of many in holding that forgiveness is never required, and (6) the concern that analyses of evil ought to prioritize the suffering, and credit the perspectives, of victims of evils, in tension with the possibility that forgiveness concerns the well-being of offenders. In this paper, I critically evaluate these concerns from the perspective of nonideal theory. I conclude that crediting victims’ perspectives is importantly basic to empirically informed moral theory, and that objections to forgiveness including (1) evil’s unforgivability ignore victims’ differing accounts. When we take actualities and experiences to be informative and central, some of the usual debates become less pressing, perhaps even moot. (shrink)

"Change is not merely necessary to life--it is life." That's Alvin Toffler, characteristically stating the profound in a profoundly direct way. And yes, even when we see change coming--as we're about to graduate from school, take a new job, get married--it's still not so easy to accept. And when we don't see it coming--oof, we have an even harder time. Here to help us embrace change and defuse its unsettling power is Change Happens, a full-color illustrated gift book to consult, (...) to share, to give, and to keep on a night table. Curated by Kathryn and Ross Petras, the ultimate connoisseurs of quotes whose books and calendars have over 4.5 million copies in print, these words of wisdom inspire us to be open to change and remind us that nothing positive in life ever happens without it. Arranged alphabetically by subject--including Adapting, Curveballs, Faith, Letting Go, Regrets, Second Chances, Vulnerability--it's a book to turn to in moments of need, when offering advice to a friend or loved one, when urging a child to find the courage to take a step, when marking an important occasion. (shrink)

The author develops her account of Claudia Card's ethical work as nonideal ethical theory (NET). She clarifies Card's role in ethical theorizing of the recent past, partly in order to brief the unfamiliar reader on Card's ethics and nonideal theory, and partly to enter Card's contributions into the story of nonideal theory's emergence in philosophy. She then recommends, to other NET philosophers, the prioritization of (i) Card's rejection of the "administrative point of view", and (ii) Card's focus on "intolerable harms" (...) as critical to excellent ethical theorizing. She ends with the observation that NET may helpfully point toward reasons to take a pessimistic stance toward moral progress as elaborated in some classic texts in political philosophy; her appreciation of Card's insights yields a variety of pessimism that Card herself did not share. (shrink)