Work on analogy has been done from a number of disciplinary perspectives throughout the history of Western thought. This work is a multidisciplinary guide to theorizing about analogy. It contains 1,406 references, primarily to journal articles and monographs, and primarily to English language material. classical through to contemporary sources are included. The work is classified into eight different sections (with a number of subsections). A brief introduction to each section is provided. Keywords and key expressions of importance to research on (...) analogy are discussed in the introductory material. Electronic resources for conducting research on analogy are listed as well. (shrink)

An understanding of the nature and development of nursing intuition can help nurse educators foster it in young nurses and give clinicians more confidence in this aspect of their knowledge, allowing them to respond with greater assurance to their intuitions. In this paper, accounts from philosophy and neurophysiology are used to argue that intuition, specifically nursing intuition, is a valid form of knowledge. The paper argues that nursing intuition, a kind of practical intuition, is composed of four distinct aspects that (...) include: embodied knowledge rather like that knowledge we have when we have learned to ride a bicycle; well‐trained sensory perceptions attentive to subtle details of complex, often rapidly changing situations; a significant store of pertinent conceptual knowledge; and a history of habitual actions intentionally directed towards achieving the best outcomes for our patients. Contemporary neurophysiology research strongly suggests that human persons experience other persons such that they directly understand the meaning of a variety of different human actions, intentions, emotions, and sensations in immediate, non‐reflective, and non‐conceptual perceptions. This research is supported by the philosophical theories of Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon found in their accounts of practical knowledge. Together, these accounts offer us a rich view of the reality of nursing intuition that helps us understand why we find intuitive actions in some but not all nurses and gives us some specific information about how to develop intuition in young nurses. Finally, this research shows us a path for further research. (shrink)

The doctrine of the conceptual priority of the perfect (CPP) is the claim that the concept of the perfect is prior to that of the imperfect insofar as possessing the latter presupposes a grasp of the former, but not vice versa. The goals of this study are to provide an account and defense of the Cartesian argument for CPP, to determine the consequences of this priority for the relationship between our concepts of human and divine properties, and to explore its (...) implications for bottom-up accounts of theological concept formation. I argue that the predicates “perfect” or “infinite” in Descartes’ version of CPP are equivalent to “true” or “genuine” and thus function in the same way they would in geometrical examples where the perfection at issue is definitive of the kind and where imperfection constitutes falling short of the kind. I can thus be said to have the idea of a “perfect” circle (of that which is “infinitely” circular, as it were) merely by virtue of having the idea of a circle, yet I cannot apprehend something as imperfect or finite insofar as it resembles but fails to be a circle unless I already possess a concept of the kind in question—a true or perfect circle. CPP thus implies a qualitative distinction between the perfect and imperfect that, when applied to God and creation, is consistent with a theory of analogy. Unlike traditional ‘bottom-up’ theories of analogy, however, CPP entails a ‘top-down’ order of derivation in which concepts of creaturely perfections are derived (via a sort of ‘partial negation’) from concepts of divine ones. The ‘top-down’ order of derivation yields epistemological advantages over the traditional approach, which had always struggled to explain how we can derive analogical concepts of God from creatures. Further, CPP enables its proponents to address the classic anthropomorphism critiques leveled at practitioners of Perfect Being Theology. Though I acknowledge that CPP is not without its own weaknesses, I present a largely sympathetic account of the argument and its relevance for contemporary philosophy of religion. (shrink)