On December 7, 1994, the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Illinois ruled that ERISA preempts a participant in an ERISA plan from suing the plan's administrator under a state common law theory of respondeat superior ) : at 208). On September 12, 1995, the Seventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed this decision and ordered that the case be tried in state court ). The court held that the case had been improperly removed to federal (...) court. The court of appeals stated that the federal court did not have jurisdiction because the plaintiff's claim did not fall within ERISA's provisions.In this case, plaintiff David Rice brought a medical malpractice suit against two doctors who provided treatment to him in accordance with his ERISA insurance plan. (shrink)

Una visión de la película de Lars Von Trier: Anticristo.

Philosophy is defined as "critical reflection on the justification of basic human beliefs and analysis of basic concepts in terms of which such beliefs are expressed." The text is divided into eight sections: "A Priori Knowledge," "Skepticism and The Problem of Induction," "Perception and the Physical World," "Body, Mind and Death," "Determinism, Freedom and Moral Responsibility," "Moral Judgments," "The Existence of God," "Meaning, Verification and Metaphysics." Each consists of an introduction by one of the editors, a group of readings, and (...) a bibliography. The introductions are helpful, and the readings show evidence of an effort at impartiality.--G. B. (shrink)

These lectures, delivered as part of the 1962 St. Augustine Lecture Series at Villanova University, develop the Thomistic conception of man as an "intellectual soul" which itself is both a self-subsisting substance and a substantial form. So viewed, man's unity consists in being a composite reality, not in the sense of a soul and a body functioning as co-parts of a whole, but in the sense of an intelligible substance which requires an organic body to realize its own nature. The (...) lectures neither criticize nor explicitly defend these claims but rather present them as a novel interpretation of man. This Aquinas was able to construct by drawing the conceptual tools of form, matter and substance from Aristotelian metaphysics and the view of man as an historical pilgrim from Augustinian theology.--B. G. R. (shrink)

A stimulating, detailed study of a most important aspect of Peirce's pragmaticism. In developing the "problem of universals" as it arises in the writings of Peirce, Boler presents the most informative analysis yet to appear of Peirce's indebtedness to the realist-nominalist controversy of the school-men. The author, taking seriously Peirce's characterization of himself as a "Scotistic Realist," uses Scotus as a model for constructing a systematic interpretation of Peirce's realism. In stressing Peirce's dependence upon, as well as divergence from, Scotus, (...) Boler provides a context in which realist, pragmatic, and idealist strands in Peirce's thought emerge, not as incompatible emphases, but as interdependent responses to different aspects of the "problem of universals." The author introduces a vast array of well-known Peircian themes and explicates their relation to Peirce's realism and to one another. The present study is excitingly developed and well worth the reader's serious attention.--B. G. R. (shrink)

The fifteen selections in this volume are collected around the thesis that many of the foundations and tenets of empiricism are mistaken and must be either rejected outright or radically revised. To introduce these essays, Morick briefly traces the development of modern empiricism from what he considers its source in Hume’s theory of knowledge through the phenomenalist stage to the present conception of empiricism, one of whose basic principles continues to be the fundamental role of observation in the acquisition of (...) knowledge: perception provides the foundation of empirical knowledge. It is particularly this "foundation picture" which has been denounced by many contemporary critics of empiricism as both oversimplified and misleading. The critics, including those in philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and scientists themselves, have proposed three related objections to this notion. The first is that rather than drawing a sharp distinction between observation claims and theoretical claims, observation claims must be understood in terms of a network of background assumptions. The second objection holds that it is this network of assumptions which bestows the very meaning on observation claims. Consequently, an observation term such as "red" will not maintain a fixed meaning throughout various changes in theories. Further, since the objection also covers observation words, the notion of ostensive words is rejected. The final objection is that our observations themselves should be looked upon as interpretations arising from these background assumptions rather than merely barren perceptions, isolated from one’s beliefs and preconceptions. The selections, most of which are well-known, specify these and other critical arguments and revisions. They are arranged into three slightly overlapping sections: "Empiricism and Ontology", "Empiricism and Science", and "Empiricism and Linguistics". Considering the purpose and scope of the book, the contributions have been appropriately chosen. An eight-page annotated bibliography is included.—B. G. H. (shrink)

Disagreeing with many students of American philosophy who have interpreted Chauncey Wright as foreshadowing basic elements in the pragmatisms of Peirce, James and Dewey, Madden contends that the characteristic elements of Wright's thought are neither peculiar to pragmatism nor anticipations of its basic tenets. After an introductory biography of Wright's short, often lonely, tragic life, Madden presents a penetrating analysis of Wright's more important essays dealing with many currently debated problems in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, philosophy of science (...) and cosmology, epistemology, metaphysics, and psychology. The case for Wright's "philosophical independence" seems to be based on Madden's neglect of important nuances within pragmatism itself.--B. G. R. (shrink)

The aim of Nordenstam’s capable but compact book is to examine the analytic-synthetic distinction and its relationship to empiricism in light of the criticisms expressed by W. V. Quine’s "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," M. G. White’s "The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism," and N. Goodman’s "On Likeness of Meaning." Nordenstam cites Pasch’s summary of the controversy: "Empiricism presupposes a sharp distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. There is no sharp distinction between analytic and synthetic statements in natural languages (...) but only in artificial languages. But the artificial language approach is incompatible with empiricism. Therefore, empiricism has to be abandoned, or at least it has to be modified." In addressing this argument, Nordenstam begins with an explication of some of the basic concepts: the various interpretations of the principle of analyticity, the gradualist positions of Quine et al., the principle of empiricism, and the relationship between these two principles. From this analysis he concludes that one can legitimately hold the principle of empiricism and still reject the principle of analyticity, thereby denying the first assumption of the above argument. Focusing attention on the opposition to the analytic-synthetic distinction, he introduces a number of criticisms by Quine et al. of some twelve common definitions of "analytic statement" involving the notions of synonymy, state-descriptions, and semantical rules of artificial languages. Here Nordenstam’s suggestion is that the resultant criteria of analyticity and synonymy demanded by Quine et al. are excessively stringent. (shrink)

A good analysis of the part Kant played in Fichte's The Second Introduction to the Doctrine of Science and in Schelling's On Construction in Philosophy. The study on Fichte considers a) his view of the genesis of Kant's intellectual intuition as the intuition of a historical reality, and b) his view of the genesis of Kant's recognition of a thing-in-itself as the recognition of a common consciousness. The study on Schelling discusses the way in which he extended the concept of (...) constructibility--limited by Kant to spatial constructibility in mathematics--to the eternal constructibility of the Absolute in philosophy.--G. B. (shrink)