We describe the case of a 46-year-old male who could perform certain rule-induction tasks without awareness of the operative rules after surviving nonaccidental carbon monoxide poisoning. We tested the performance of SC on a series of rule-induction tasks at three stages in his recovery: when he was unable to solve a picture discrimination task, when he could succeed on rules that were based on physical features of the task stimuli , but not on rules that were more abstract in nature, (...) and when he managed to solve both kinds of rules and could verbalize them. The focus of this paper is the differential pattern of performance in the latter two stages. Near-perfect scoring on control tasks suggested that this pattern could not be attributed to either verbal or memory deficits. We offer an explanation in terms of a dissociation between conscious and unconscious modes of information-processing. (shrink)

In this volume twenty-three major scholars comment on and critically evaluate In Search of a Universal Ethic, the 2009 document written by the International Theological Commission (ITC) of the Catholic Church. That historic document represents an official Church contribution both to a more adequate understanding of a universal ethic and to Catholicism s own tradition of reflection on natural law. The essays in this book reflect the ITC document s complementary emphases of dialogue across traditions (universal ethic) and reflection on (...) broadly applicable ethical guidance within the Christian tradition (natural law). Among other things, the document situates the natural law ethical tradition within the larger search for a universal ethic. Along with its insightful essays, Searching for a Universal Ethic offers — for the first time in published form — the Vatican s official English translation of In Search of a Universal Ethic. Contributors: John Berkman Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P. David Burrell, C.S.C. Lisa Sowle Cahill Joseph E. Capizzi David Cloutier Anver M. Emon Robert P. George Sherif Girgis Jennifer A. Herdt Russell Hittinger M. Cathleen Kaveny Anthony J. Kelly, C.Ss.R. Fergus Kerr, O.P. Steven A. Long William C. Mattison III Gilbert Meilaender Livio Melina Michael S. Northcott David Novak Jean Porter Martin Rhonheimer Tracey Rowland. (shrink)

Daniel K. Finn’s Moral Agency Within Social Structures and Culture: A Primer on Critical Realism for Christian Ethics (Moral Agency for short) contributes well to the mutual enrichment of critical...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:322 BOOK REVIEWS the Holy Office, who in the early 1800s recognized that empirical demonstrations of the earth's motion had finally been given and convinced Pope Pius VII to revoke the longstanding decree against Copernicanism. Unfortunately his greatest opponent turned out to be another Dominican, Father Filippo Anfossi, Master of the Sacred Palace at the time, who had views similar to those voiced by Cardinal Bellarmine in 1615 (pp. (...) 473-475). The story is told in great detail by Walter Brandmiiller and Johannes Griepl, Copemico, Galilei e la Chiesa: Fine delta controversia (1820), gli atti del Sant'Uffizio, Vatican City 1992-summarized in my notice in The Catholic Historical Review 80 (1994): 380-83. It is ironic, of course, that the battle was fought out by two Thomists, the one a progressive and the other a traditionalist, but it is indeed fortunate that it was the progressive Thomist who won out in the end. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. WILLIAM A. WALLACE, O.P. Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism and Just War Theory. By LISA SOWLE CAHILL. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 252. $17.00 (paper). Lisa Cahill's Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism and Just War Theory provides an excellent introduction to questions of peace-making and war-making in the history of Western Christianity. Cahill canvasses the standard sources for her history: the generally pacifist period of the New Testament and the early church (chapters two and three); the emergence of the just war tradition with Augustine and Aquinas (chapters four and five); just war, crusade, and pacifist responses during the Reformation period (chapters six through eight); and just war and pacifist responses in the twentieth -century American debate (chapters nine and ten). Love Your Enemies is relatively comprehensive, even-handed, and well-written. Beyond its general competence, Love Your Enemies provides rich theological fare, situating questions on war and peace in the context of Christian discipleship as a whole. One result of using discipleship as the organizing motif is that pacifism gets an unusually sympathetic and fair hearing. Cahill serves as an excellent reporter on these contentious questions. While often intimating her sympathies, she consistently avoids taking decisive positions or closing avenues of exploration. The title of her final chapter -the "Fragility of the Gospel"-reflects this approach. In this chapter Cahill emphasizes that Christian communities must continuously challenge themselves and their society to live out the gospel of peace (239-44). BOOK REVIEWS 323 What does it mean to live as a follower of Jesus today (ix)? This is Cahill's central question. To this end she asks two further questions. First, what is the way of discipleship established by Jesus with regard to doing violence? Second, to what extent can Christians hope to apply this ethic of discipleship to the wider civil society (40)? These questions arise in a variety of forms throughout the book. For instance, Cahill elegantly shows how a Christian's eschatological commitments (i.e., beliefs about the extent to which God's peaceful rule can be established by a community of believers and/or the extent to which this can be realized in "the world") can affect her response to the possibility of doing violence. While setting as one's task the attempt to find a way to combine Christian discipleship with public responsibility has many strengths, it is not without possible pitfalls. Typically, "Christian responsibility" is contrasted with "the evangelical imperative of non-violence" (see 55-56). But this notion of "responsibility" often begs the central question-i.e., for the Christian, can the most "responsible" stance be anything but what Cahill proclaims to be the evangelical stance of non-violence? While Cahill does acknowledge the strength of the argument by advocates of "responsibility" (i.e., those ~ho set up the non-violent stance in opposition to the faithful following of Jesus), she does not explicitly endorse their move. From her self-professed Catholic context, Cahill strives fo harmonize a neo-Thomist understanding of natural law-that there is "an objective moral order, knowable by reason, that yields universal moral laws by which all human persons and communities should abide" (3)-with a more particularistic... (shrink)

The body is a rich object for aesthetic inquiry. We aesthetically assess both our own bodies and those of others, and our felt bodily experiences have aesthetic qualities. The body features centrally in aesthetic experiences of visual art, theatre, dance and sports. It is also deeply intertwined with one's identity and sense of self. Artistic and media representations shape how we see and engage with bodies, with consequences both personal and political. This volume contains sixteen original essays by contributors in (...) philosophy, sociology, dance, disability theory, critical race studies, feminist theory, medicine, and law. They explore bodily beauty, sexual attractiveness, the role of images in power relations, the distinct aesthetics of disabled bodies, the construction of national identity, the creation of compassion through bodily presence, the role of bodily style in moral comportment, and the somatic aesthetics of racialized police violence. -/- Contents: Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, "Black Silhouettes on White Walls: Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern"; A. W. Eaton, "Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression"; C. Winter Han, "From 'Little Brown Brothers' to 'Queer Asian Wives': Constructing the Asian Male Body"; Deborah L. Rhode, "Appearance as a Feminist Issue"; Shirley Anne Tate, "A Tale of Two Olympians—Beauty, 'Race,' Nation"; Glenn Parsons, "The Merrickites"; Stephen Davies, "And Everything Nice"; Tobin Siebers, "In/Visible: Disability on the Stage"; Jill Sigman, "Live, Body-Based Performance: An Account from the Field"; Barbara Gail Montero, "Aesthetic Effortlessness"; Peg Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser, "Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite Women's Sports"; Yuriko Saito, "Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues"; George Yancy, "White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Un-Suturing"; Richard Shusterman, "Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating"; Ann J. Cahill, "Sexual Desire, Inequality, and the Possibility of Transformation"; Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin, "Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness" -/- . (shrink)

C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE QUEST FOR AN ADEQUATE PROPORTIONALIST THEORY OF VALUE RoNALD H. McKINNEY, S.J. U'IWversity of Scranton Scranton, Pennsylvania EDWARD VACEK shrewdly observes that proportionalism attempts to synthesize the crucial insights of both the teleologist and the deontologist.1 Indeed, Vacek provides a fine summary of this achievement. However, he reflects that the most underdeveloped feature of proportionalism is its value theory by which we are enabled to know how to (...) resolve conflict situations.2 Richard McCormick, among others, has attempted to meet this deficiency by ·adopting John Finnis' notion of associated basic goods. In this essay, I will show how such an ·approach fails to remain true to the basic aims of proportionalism. Nor should this come as a surprise, since Finnis is himself indebted to one of McCormick's archopponents, Germain Grisez. Moreover, I will attempt to outline the elements involved in a non-hierarchfoal theory of value which I will argue to be the only adequate alternative to McCormick 's attempted solution. Deontologists argue that certain acts are right or wrong regardless of the ·consequences. Proportionalists, however, are opposed to such notions as an " intrinsically evil " act or an "absolute" duty, since they recognize the existence of moral dilemmas. A moral dilemma arises whenever there is a situation in which pre-moral values •are in conflcit, i.e., whatever choice one makes will result in the omission or harm of one or other of the values at stake. According to the proportionl Edward Vacek, "Proportionalism: One View of the Debate," Theological Studies 46/2 (June, 1985), 289. 2 Va.eek, 302. 56 PROPORTIONALIST THEORY OF VALUE 57 alist reformulation of the principle of double effect, the permission or oausrution of ontic evil is not necessarily a moral evil as long as there is a proportionate reason justifying,such an action, e.g., when a father shoots an!intruder threatening to harm his family. McCormick's initial description of the requirements of proportionate reason [s ias follows: "a) a v1alue at least equal to that sacrificed is at 1 stake; b) there is no less harmful way of protecting ithe value here and now; c) the manner of its protection here and now will not undermine it in the long run." 8 McCormick argues that it simply will not do to claim that the ontic evil permitted or caused in a conflict situation is always only indirectly intended.4 For, in many instances, this simply is not true. Moreover, he would argue that to intend an end is not necess1arily to desire it as deontologists suppose. What justifies the ontic evil resulting from such actions, then, is solely the proportionate reason for which it is allowed or caused. There are some obvious criticisms that have been hurled at this proportionalist proposal for resolving conflict situations: I) that it leaves itself open to the practical, if not theoretical, difficulty of weighing different values;!2) that it results in the possibility of many resolutions that could go counter to our normal moral intuitions; 8) that there exists an inherent fallibility in the calcul,ation of long-range consequences; and 4) that this uncertainty might easliy promote an undesirable attitude of skeptical relativism. It is perhaps the onslaught of these and other criticisms which prompted McCormick to adopt Finnis' theory of associated basic goods. Lisa Cahill,argues that this new theory constitutes an "abandonment" of McCormick's prior proposal.5 To understand how this new theory leads to inevitable s Richard McCormick, ".Ambiguity in Moral Choice," Doing Evil To Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Oonfiict Situations, eds. R. McCormick and P. Ramsey (Chicago: Loyola U. Press, 1978), 45. 4 McCormick, 35-38. 5 Lisa Cahill, "Theology, Utilitarianism, and Christian Ethics," Theologica,I Studies 42/4 (Dec., 1981), 618-24. 58 RONALD H. MCKINNEY, S.J. inconsistency for McCormick, we must first examine Finnis' position itself. Finnis' Theory of Basic Goods By "value," Finnis refers to any " general form of good that oan be participated iin or realized in indefinitely many ways on indefinitely many occasions." 6 Basic values, moreover, refer to ·intrinsic goods that are desired for their own sake (NL, 62, 65). They are good not because they are... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 155 Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later. By JANET SMITH. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. xvi + 425. $42.95 hardcover; $17.95 paper. This is an ambitious and important study. I will first offer an overview of the volume to indicate its scope and note some of its major features. I will then respond briefly to some of the major criticisms Smith makes of (...) the argument against contraception advanced by Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and myself. The work contains 8 chapters and 4 appendices. Chapters 3 and 4, as Smith says, "provide an analysis of Humanae Vitae itself and thus constitute the heart of the hook" (p. xi). Since this is so I will first summarize briefly Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 and then center atten· tion on the two central chapters and the four appendices. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the context for Humanae Vitae. The first chapter is devoted largely to an account of the so-called " Minority " and "Majority" documents of the Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth Rate, while the second seeks to summarize Catholic teaching on Christian marriage prior to the encyclical. This summary draws principally from Pius XI's Casti Connubii and from nn. 47-52 of Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes. Smith takes up in some detail the issue of the" primacy" of procreation, concluding that Gaudium et Spes " seems to sidestep " this issue which, in her judgment, is irrelevant to the question of contraception. She thinks that this central document of Vatican II sent " mixed signals " on the question of contraception, although she believes that several passages " can very plausibly he read to support the position that contraception is portrayed as a violation not only of the procreative good of marriage hut also of the values of conjugal love" (p. 66). Chapter 5 deals with a wide range of theological issues: the biblical foundations for the teaching found in Humanae Vitae, the relevance of the concept of munus for this teaching, the possibility of acting " in good conscience " in a way contrary to its teaching, and the infallibility of the teaching. Of special value is the extended discussion of the con· cept expressed by the Latin term munus. Smith examines the rich meaning of this term in several magisterial documents, including Gaudium et Spes as well as Humanae Vitae. While a munus implies duties, it is essentially a noble, honor-bringing "gift" or "reward," signifying a vocation and sublime honor. Paul VI, in developing the integral vision of marriage in his encyclical, uses this concept to show that God, in giving to spouses the munus of handing on new life, has conferred on them the honor of sharing with him in the work of bring· 156 BOOK REVIEWS ing new life into the world. Smith shows beautifully how the rich theological meaning of this term helps " illuminate and enrich " the teaching of the encyclical. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate the arguments presented by dissenting theologians after Humanae Vitae to justify their repudiation of its teaching. In Chapter 6 Smith considers the views of Charles Curran and Bernard Haering, while in Chapter 7 she examines the proportionalist approach to moral issues developed by Joseph Fuchs, Richard McCormick and others. She provides intelligent criticism both of Curran and Haering and of proportionalist thought, focusing on the repudiation of specific moral absolutes. In Chapter 8 Smith provides a very helpful summary of Pope John Paul II's understanding of the human person, human sexuality and marriage. In particular, she takes up his notion that in marriage and in the act proper rto it man and woman make a " gift " of themselves to one another. Simultaneously to choose to give themselves to each other in the marital act and to contracept is then seen to involve an inner contradiction, a falsification of the " language of the body " (pp. 230258 ). Smith also takes up some of the major criticisms levelled against John Paul II's thought, in particular Lisa Sowle Cahill's, which charges him with an overromantic view of love and a failure to recognize that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE QUEST FOR AN ADEQUATE PROPORTIONALIST THEORY OF VALUE RoNALD H. McKINNEY, S.J. U'IWversity of Scranton Scranton, Pennsylvania EDWARD VACEK shrewdly observes that proportionalism attempts to synthesize the crucial insights of both the teleologist and the deontologist.1 Indeed, Vacek provides a fine summary of this achievement. However, he reflects that the most underdeveloped feature of proportionalism is its value theory by which we are enabled to know how to (...) resolve conflict situations.2 Richard McCormick, among others, has attempted to meet this deficiency by ·adopting John Finnis' notion of associated basic goods. In this essay, I will show how such an ·approach fails to remain true to the basic aims of proportionalism. Nor should this come as a surprise, since Finnis is himself indebted to one of McCormick's archopponents, Germain Grisez. Moreover, I will attempt to outline the elements involved in a non-hierarchfoal theory of value which I will argue to be the only adequate alternative to McCormick 's attempted solution. Deontologists argue that certain acts are right or wrong regardless of the ·consequences. Proportionalists, however, are opposed to such notions as an " intrinsically evil " act or an "absolute" duty, since they recognize the existence of moral dilemmas. A moral dilemma arises whenever there is a situation in which pre-moral values •are in conflcit, i.e., whatever choice one makes will result in the omission or harm of one or other of the values at stake. According to the proportionl Edward Vacek, "Proportionalism: One View of the Debate," Theological Studies 46/2 (June, 1985), 289. 2 Va.eek, 302. 56 PROPORTIONALIST THEORY OF VALUE 57 alist reformulation of the principle of double effect, the permission or oausrution of ontic evil is not necessarily a moral evil as long as there is a proportionate reason justifying,such an action, e.g., when a father shoots an!intruder threatening to harm his family. McCormick's initial description of the requirements of proportionate reason [s ias follows: "a) a v1alue at least equal to that sacrificed is at 1 stake; b) there is no less harmful way of protecting ithe value here and now; c) the manner of its protection here and now will not undermine it in the long run." 8 McCormick argues that it simply will not do to claim that the ontic evil permitted or caused in a conflict situation is always only indirectly intended.4 For, in many instances, this simply is not true. Moreover, he would argue that to intend an end is not necess1arily to desire it as deontologists suppose. What justifies the ontic evil resulting from such actions, then, is solely the proportionate reason for which it is allowed or caused. There are some obvious criticisms that have been hurled at this proportionalist proposal for resolving conflict situations: I) that it leaves itself open to the practical, if not theoretical, difficulty of weighing different values;!2) that it results in the possibility of many resolutions that could go counter to our normal moral intuitions; 8) that there exists an inherent fallibility in the calcul,ation of long-range consequences; and 4) that this uncertainty might easliy promote an undesirable attitude of skeptical relativism. It is perhaps the onslaught of these and other criticisms which prompted McCormick to adopt Finnis' theory of associated basic goods. Lisa Cahill,argues that this new theory constitutes an "abandonment" of McCormick's prior proposal.5 To understand how this new theory leads to inevitable s Richard McCormick, ".Ambiguity in Moral Choice," Doing Evil To Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Oonfiict Situations, eds. R. McCormick and P. Ramsey (Chicago: Loyola U. Press, 1978), 45. 4 McCormick, 35-38. 5 Lisa Cahill, "Theology, Utilitarianism, and Christian Ethics," Theologica,I Studies 42/4 (Dec., 1981), 618-24. 58 RONALD H. MCKINNEY, S.J. inconsistency for McCormick, we must first examine Finnis' position itself. Finnis' Theory of Basic Goods By "value," Finnis refers to any " general form of good that oan be participated iin or realized in indefinitely many ways on indefinitely many occasions." 6 Basic values, moreover, refer to ·intrinsic goods that are desired for their own sake (NL, 62, 65). They are good not because they are... (shrink)

C. S. Lewis sets out to disentangle this knotty issue but wisely adds that in the end no intellectual solution can dispense with the necessity for patience and ...

I argue that mind-independence realism should be characterised in terms of what I call 'essential', rather than 'modal', independence from our mental lives. I explore the connections between the two kinds of independence, and argue that characterizations in terms of essence respect more intuitions about what realism is, harmonize better with standard characterizations of anti-realism, and avert the threat of subversion from Blackburn's quasi-realist.

Aristotle's treatise De Interpretatione is one of his central works; it continues to be the focus of much attention and debate. C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system, basing this view upon a detailed chapter-by-chapter analysis.By treating the work systematically, rather than concentrating on certain selected passages, Whitaker is able to show that, contrary to traditional opinion, it forms (...) an organized and coherent whole. He argues that the De Interpretatione is intended to provide the underpinning for dialectic, the system of argument by question and answer set out in Aristotle's Topics; and he rejects the traditional view that the De Interpretatione concerns the assertion and is oriented towards the formal logic of the Prior Analytics. In doing so, he sheds valuable new light on some of Aristotle's most famous texts. (shrink)

_Verificationism_ is the first comprehensive history of a concept that dominated philosophy and scientific methodology between the 1930s and the 1960s. The verificationist principle - the concept that a belief with no connection to experience is spurious - is the most sophisticated version of empiricism. More flexible ideas of verification are now being rehabilitated by a number of philosophers. C.J. Misak surveys the precursors, the main proponents and the rehabilitators. Unlike traditional studies, she follows verificationist theory beyond the demise of (...) positivism to examine its reappearance in the work of modern philosophers. Most interestingly, she argues that despite feminism's strenuous opposition to positivism, verificationist thought is at the heart of much of contemporary feminist philosophy. _Verificationism_ is an excellent assessment of a major and influential system of thought. (shrink)

General preface -- Preface to the second edition -- What is philosophy of religion? -- Philosophy of religion and other disciplines -- Philosophy of religion and philosophy -- Can thinking about religion be neutral? -- Fideism -- Neutralism -- Critical dialogue -- The theistic God : the project of natural theology -- Concepts of God -- The theistic concept of God -- A case study : divine foreknowledge and human freedom -- The problem of religious language -- Natural theology -- (...) Proofs of God's existence -- Classical arguments for God's existence -- Ontological arguments -- Cosmological arguments -- Teleological arguments -- Moral arguments -- Conclusions: The value of theistic argument -- Religious experience -- Types of religious experience -- Models for understanding experience -- Experience of God as direct and mediated -- Are religious experiences veridical? -- Checking experiential claims -- Special acts of God : revelation and miracles -- Special acts -- Theories of revelation -- Is the traditional view defensible? -- What is a miracle? -- Is it reasonable to believe in miracles? -- Can a revelation have special authority? -- Religion, modernity, and science -- Modernity and religious belief -- Naturalism -- Do the natural sciences undermine religious belief? -- Objections from the social sciences -- Religious uses of modern atheism -- The problem of evil -- Types of evil, versions of the problem, and types of response -- The logical form of the problem -- The evidential form of the problem -- Horrendous evils and the problem of hell -- Divine hiddenness -- Faith(s) and reason -- Faith : subjectivity in religious arguments -- The evidentialist challenge to religious belief -- Reformed epistemology -- The place of subjectivity in forming beliefs -- Interpretive judgments and the nature of a cumulative case -- Can faith be certain? -- Faith and doubt : can religious faith be tested? -- What is faith? -- Could one religion be true? (shrink)

Chapter One Triadomany defined You shall bind them in Three Classes; according to their Classes. William Blake, Milton In a manuscript of The Quest for ...

Philosophers now treat the relationship between classical genetics and molecular biology as a paradigm of nonreduction and this example is playing an increasingly prominent role in debates about the reducibility of theories in other sciences. This paper shows that the anti-reductionist consensus about genetics will not withstand serious scrutiny. In addition to defusing the main anti-reductionist objections, this critical analysis uncovers tell-tale signs of a significant reduction in progress. It also identifies philosophical issues relevant to gaining a better understanding of (...) what is now happening in genetics and of what we might expect to happen in other sciences. (shrink)

Identity theory The doctrine that mental states are identical with physical states was defended in antiquity by Lucretius and in the early modern era by Hobbes. It achieved considerable prominence in the 1950s as a result of the writings of Herbert Feigl, U. T. Place, and J. J. C. Smart. (See, e.g., Smart (1959). These authors developed reasonably precise formulations of the doctrine, clarified the grounds for embracing it, and responded persuasively to a range of objections. More recently it has (...) been defended systematically by Hill (1991) and Papineau (2002). Other contemporary advocates include Loar (1990), McLaughlin (2004), and Polger (2005). The doctrine also figures explicitly or implicitly in the writings of dualists, who are of course concerned to oppose it. Thus, for example, it plays an important role in Kripke’s influential defense of dualism (Kripke 1980). (shrink)

This book shows you what it is like to think along with Aristotle and helps you to see the universe and our place in it as he thought they had to be seen to be scientifically intelligible. As a portrait is composed of colors and shapes that collectively represent someone, so Aristotles works are composed of arguments that collectively represent the causal structure of the universe, from the stones, plants, and animals around us to the starry heavens above and the (...) god beyond them. The aim of this brief immersion is to guide you through those arguments in a way that lets you understand for yourself why they proceed as they do and end where they do."--Publisher. (shrink)

Explores the people and ideas that contributed to the formation of the 19th-century philosophico-religious movement known as New Thought, a movement dedicated in large measure to the remedying of illness through nonphysical means. Originally presented as the author's doctora thesis (Boston U., 1962) under the title Horatio W. Dresser and the Philosophy of New Thought. Supplementary bibliographical notes and an addendum outlining the author's further thoughts accompany this presentation. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

La traduction de l'epistrophe grecque en conversio latine a pu laisser entendre une continuite entre le retour des philosophies grecques neoplatoniciennes et l'evenement religieux proprement chretien de la conversion. Le paradigme en serait le passage de Plotin a Augustin. Mais peut-on oublier que les grecques classiques n'ont pas d'ethique du repentir et que, sans ce rapport au temps de la faute, la constitution de soi n'a ni le meme sens ni le meme lieu? C'est le travail du Centre A.J. Festugiere (...) de Paris X-Nanterre sur les entrecroisements et reprises entre philosophie et religion qui est a l'origine des etudes rassemblees en cet ouvrage. Que nous voyions apparaitre aujourd'hui une nouvelle forme de repentir publique convie a mieux distinguer deux modeles de constitution de soi qui se reconnaissent en ce que l'accent porte tantot sur l'etre et tantot sur le temps. (shrink)

This book explores a wide range of philosophical issues in their connection with theism, including views of free will, ethical theories, theories of mind, naturalism, and karma-plus-reincarnation. In this clear and logical guide, C. Stephen Layman takes up eight important philosophical questions about God: Does God exist? Why does God permit evil? Why think God is good? Why is God hidden? What is God's relationship to ethics? Is divine foreknowledge compatible with human free will? Do humans have souls? Does reincarnation (...) provide the best explanation of suffering? Based on more than thirty years of experience in teaching undergraduates and in leading philosophical discussions related to God, Layman has arranged the text to deal with each of these eight questions in one or two chapters apiece. Many philosophical works take up questions about God, but the chapters of this book plunge the reader very quickly into the arguments relevant to each question. Layman presents the arguments cogently and simply, yet without oversimplifying the issues. The book emphasizes strengths and weaknesses of both theism and its metaphysical rivals. Readers will gain a clearer understanding of theism and naturalism, and of their sometimes surprising implications. (shrink)

Most of current theoretical analyses on biological functions can be classified as etiological or dispositional, depending on how they deal with the teleological dimension. In this paper, we propose a critical survey of these two perspectives, and we argue that some recent studies have set the basis of a new approach which grounds the teleological dimension of functional attributions in the organizational properties of living systems. We outline a new proposal within this new approach, based on an interpretation of living (...) systems as organized self-maintaining systems. (shrink)

This paper is the sequel of a previous one where we have introduced a paraconsistent logic termed paraclassical logic to deal with 'complementary propositions'. Here, we enlarge upon the discussion by considering certain 'meaning principles', which sanction either some restrictions of 'classical' procedures or the utilization of certain 'classical' incompatible schemes in the domain of the physical theories. Here, the term 'classical' refers to classical physics. Some general comments on the logical basis of a scientific theory are also put in (...) between the text, motivated by the discussion of complementarity. (shrink)

Multiple different understandings and uses exist of what granularity is and how to implement it, where the former influences success of the latter with regards to storing granular data and using granularity for reasoning over the data or information. We propose a taxonomy of types of granularity and discuss for each leaf type how the entities or instances relate within its granular level. Such unambiguous distinctions can guide a conceptual modeler to better distinguish between the types of granularity and the (...) software developer to improve on implementations of granularity. (shrink)

The Gesta Normannorum Ducum is one of the most important sources for the history of Normandy and England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and contains the earliest prose account of the Norman Conquest. It was written by a succession of authors, the first of whom was William of Jumieges, who wrote for William the Conqueror. Later historians, such as Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, interpolated and extended the chronicle as far as King Henry I. The later accretions reveal (...) much not only about changing attitudes towards the Norman invasion of England, but also about views of the early Viking foundations of Normandy.Elisabeth van Houts's two-volume edition is based on a study of all forty-seven extant manuscripts of the Gesta, including the earliest surviving copy of c. 1100, unknown until very recently. The full original text of William of Jumieges is supplied, as well as the integral text of the subsequent revisions and additions. Volume I contains Dr van Houts's introduction to the whole work, together with the text and translation of books i-iv. Volume II contains books v-viii. The edition forms an important contribution to our understanding of Anglo-Norman politics. (shrink)

This article shifts the emphasis away from debates on how to study the history of the Mediterranean. Instead, it examines the utopian perspectives that Mediterranean as a context and as a framework generates for artists and scholars. Arslan argues that the Mediterranean's _longue-durée_ history does not have to be thought of as a prison or a burden; rather, this history can provide new future visions. The article claims that artists can draw upon the Mediterranean's history to simultaneously resist against Western (...) imperialism and criticize discriminatory practices in their communities. Furthermore, recent works in Mediterranean studies can generate what the author calls a "disciplinary utopia," wherein critics can engage with theoretical issues without foregoing attention to the languages and historical contexts of the traditions they study. The Mediterranean is not solely a sea in which narratives are produced; it is also a context in which they can be reassessed. (shrink)