Among the many dichotomous cleavages among philosophers and theologians few seem to me as questionable as the Procrustean division into supematuralists and naturalists. “Naturalism” and “supernaturalism” have become party labels whose original meanings have been lost in the heat of banner-waving and slogan shouting. Even the great minds of the past, who were innocent as yet of this philosophical two-party system, are being herded into one pen or the other. And apparently few of the penkeepers are aware of the fact, (...) pointed out almost apologetically by Professor Randall, that “the usage is hardly fashionable abroad, even in England.” I, for one, confess that, not having been acclimatized in my European cave to this stern disjunction, I have to this day felt rather uneasy, if not evasive, at the outspoken or tacit expectation to line up with one faction or the other, much as my leanings were toward the other rather than toward the one. I therefore decided that some day I had to get to the bottom of this uneasiness. (shrink)

Catholic theology’s traditional understanding of the spiritual nature of the human person begins with the idea of a rational soul and human mind that is made manifest in free will—the spiritual experience of the act of consciousness and cause of all human arts. The rationale for this religion-based idea of personhood is key to understanding ethical dilemmas posed by modern research that applies a more empirical methodology in its interpretations about the cause of human consciousness. Applications of these beliefs about (...) the body/soul composite to the theory of evolution and to discoveries in neuroscience, paleoanthropology, as well as to recent animal intelligence studies, can be interpreted from this religious and philosophical perspective, which argues for the human soul as the unifying cause of the person’s unique abilities. Free will and consciousness are at the nexus of the mutual influence of body and soul upon one another in the traditional Catholic view, that argues for a spiritual dimension to personality that is on a par with the physical metabolic processes at play. Therapies that affect consciousness are ethically problematic, because of their implications for free will and human dignity. Studies of resilience, as an example, argue for the greater, albeit limited, role of the soul’s conscious choices in healing as opposed to metabolic or physical changes to the brain alone. (shrink)

The ability of nurses to act as moral agents in accordance with their conscience is both an essential human freedom and an important part of professional ethics. Recent developments in Canada related to Medical Assistance in Dying have revealed new and important challenges related to conscientious objection – challenges that may require rethinking of how nurses do professional ethics. Notably, the inclusion of a personalist bioethical approach is needed to introduce and explicate what conscience is for nurses to be able (...) to apply it to nursing practice. In this article, we explore the importance of conscience and conscientious objection as ethical concepts to support nurses in addressing issues of conscience amid ethically challenging situations. We discuss how a personalist basis for conscience can support nurses to inclusively engage with one another across diverse moral perspectives. (shrink)

Modes-of-being figure centrally in Heidegger's masterwork Being and Time. Testimony to this is Heidegger's characterisation of two of his most celebrated enquiries—the Existential analytic and the Zeug analysis—as investigations into the respective modes-of-being of the entities concerned. Yet despite the importance of this concept, commentators disagree widely about what a mode-of-being is. In this paper, I systematically outline and defend a novel and exegetically grounded interpretation of this concept. Strongly opposed to Kantian readings, such as those advocated by Taylor Carman (...) and Cristina Lafont, I interpret a mode-of-being as a universal that defines a district —that is, a natural class of entities that ought to be conceptualised in a special way. As such, every mode-of-being plays an important metaphysical and epistemic role: serving both to unify a natural class of a high degree of generality and as the interpretandum of an act yielding the basic-concepts pertaining to the entities therein. In explicating and arguing for this interpretation, I attribute a characteristically Aristotelian philosophical position to the early Heidegger, encompassing both metaphysical and epistemological realism and a conceptualist theory of universals. (shrink)

The study discusses Aristotle's special use of Greek language as a historical construct defined by the need to accommodate the communicative needs of an expanding world (morphoplastic synapses). It addresses the paradoxical synthesis of Platonic idealism and empirical cognition which is expressed in his philosophical language and detects a deep incommensurability in their structural form. It argues that such conflict of paradigms in the work of Aristotle neutralized the interpretive potential of Greek language which focused on commentaries over a long (...) period of time. Aristotle's thinking became important in Thomas Aquinas' philosophical summa by establishing a creative synthesis through the potentialities of Latin. The semantic neutralization of Greek continued until the 20th century when Cornelius Castoriadis proposed a new Aristotelian synthesis by re-interpreting his principle of imagination within a modern understanding of creativity. (shrink)

Recently, Edwards and Liaschenko questioned the validity of an argument put forward by Dr Søren Holm and Joseph Dunne concerning the impossibility of a theory of nursing. Taking into consideration the premises of the argument, I describe how Maritain's conception of philosophy allows for the possibility of a theory of nursing conceived as a philosophy of nursing art that is both practical and propositional in nature. As well, I identify how the philosophy of nursing art guides nursing art in developing (...) and applying other kinds of artistic practical nursing knowledge: artistic nursing rules and artistic prudential nursing judgements. Finally, the relationship of ethical knowledge to artistic practical nursing knowledge is set down. (shrink)

In 2014, Morten Tønnessen and the editors of Biosemiotics officially launched the Biosemiotic Glossary Project in the effort to: solidify and detail established terminology being used in the field of Biosemiotics for the benefit of newcomers and outsiders; and to by involving the entire biosemiotics community, to contribute innovatively in the theoretical development of biosemiotic theory and vocabulary via the discussions that result. Biosemiotics, in its concern with explaining the emergence of, and the relations between, both biological ‘end-directedness’ and semiotic (...) ‘about-ness’, would seem a fertile field for re-conceptualizing the notion of intentionality. The present project is part of a systematic attempt to survey and to document the current thinking about this concept in our field. (shrink)

The paper explores two avenues to the union of the believer with God in Thomas Aquinas inspired by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite; namely, the intellectual union in faith through the gift of understanding and the union in charity as the basis for the knowledge associated with the gift of wisdom. The former amounts to an intellectual grasp of revealed truths without full understanding of the terms used (without the apprehension of the essences), yet with a clear understanding of what would be (...) erroneous interpretations and meanings. The latter is an (quasi-)experimental knowledge of God based on connaturality with him due to the infused virtue of charity. Both kinds of knowledge or “mystical theology” are open to any believer in the state of sanctifying grace and are its effects. (shrink)

There is a well known debate between those who defend a traditional (or classical) concept of God and those who defend a process (or neoclassical) concept of God. Not as well known are the implications of these two rival concepts of God in the effort to understand religious experience. With the aid of the great pragmatist philosopher John Smith, I defend the process (or neoclassical) concept of God in its ability to better illuminate and render as intelligible as possible mystical (...) experience. (shrink)

This paper presents a version of analytical Thomism that brings the principles of Aquinas into systematic and sustained contact with the sciences as opposed to contemporary philosophy. The leading idea of this version of analytical Thomism is to test the viability of scholastic principles by seeing if they provide the resources to cope with problems emerging from the natural and social sciences. If they do, then Thomism vindicates itself in the marketplace of ideas. If not, then the analytical Thomist knows (...) where the perennial philosophy needs further development and perhaps revision. The first part of the paper sets out the rationale for this project. The remainder of the paper illustrates this approach by examining a problem emerging from evolutionary biology, namely, the provision of a theory of individuation for living entities. (shrink)

This thesis articulates a novel interpretation of Heidegger’s explication of the being (Seins) of gear (Zeugs) in §15 of his masterwork Being and Time (1927/2006) and develops and applies the position attributed to Heidegger to explain three phenomena of unreflective action discussed in recent literature and articulate a partial Heideggerian ecological metaphysics. Since §15 of BT explicates the being of gear, Part 1 expounds Heidegger’s concept of the ‘being’ (Seins) of beings (Seienden) and two issues raised in the ‘preliminary methodological (...) remark’ in §15 of BT regarding explicating being. §1.1 interprets the being (Sein) or synonymously constitution of being (Seinsverfassung) of a being (Seienden) as a regional essence: a property unifying a region (Region), district (Bezirk), or subject-area (Sachgebiet) – a highly general (‘regional’) class of entities. Although Heidegger posits two components of the being of a being, viz. material-content (Sachhaltigkeit, Sachgehalt) and mode-of-being (Seinsart) or way-of-being (Seinsweise, Weise des Seins, Weise zu sein) (1927/1975, 321), the unclarity of this distinction means that it does not figure prominently herein. §1.2 addresses Heidegger’s distinction between ontological and ontic investigations and his notion of ‘modes of access’ (Zugangsarten, Zugangsweisen). Part 2 expounds §15 of BT’s explication of the being of gear. §2.1 analyses Heidegger’s two necessary and sufficient conditions for being gear and three core basic concepts (Grundbegriffe) enabling comprehension of these conditions and therewith a foundational comprehension of gear. Heidegger explicates the being of gear through content of unreflectively purposeful, non-intersubjective intentional states. I term such states ‘mundane concern’, which is almost synonymous with Hubert Dreyfus’s term ‘absorbed coping’ (1991, 69). Heidegger’s explication highlights around-for references (Um-zu-Verweisungen) as the peculiar species of property figuring in mundanely concernful intentional content. §2.2 clarifies Heidegger’s position on the relationship between to-hand-ness (Zuhandenheit) and extantness (Vorhandenheit) in the narrow sense: two of Heidegger’s most widely discussed concepts. I reject Kris McDaniel’s recent reading of Heidegger as affirming that nothing could be both to-hand and extant simultaneously (McDaniel 2012). Part 3 develops and applies Heidegger’s phenomenology of mundane concern. §3.1 explains the phenomena of situational holism, situated normativity, and mundanely concernful prospective control. §3.2 undertakes the metaphysical accommodation of around-for references, which §3.1 posited as featuring prominently within mundanely concernful intentional content. This thesis thus contributes not only to Heidegger scholarship, but also to contemporary debates within the philosophy of action and cognitive science. (shrink)