Schools have always been under presure to change or reform. Recent public criticism of schools provoked an attempt to address weaknesses in American education. Goals 2000 is a legislative effort that would reform schools using national goals for education. Selected goals are highlighted and The Language of Education provides a structure to develop understanding of the goals. We conted that Scheffler's method for examining the discussion on education and policies developed from it is valid in the contemporary context. The analysis (...) possible using The Language of Education would bring a missing sense of order to educational policy development and possibly give voice to those often disenfranchised by the process. (shrink)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s book Never Let Me Go is a thoughtful and provocative exploration of what it means to be human. Drawing on insights from the hermeneutic-phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, I argue that the movement of Ishiguro’s story can be understood in terms of actualising the human potential for autonomous action. Liberal theories take autonomy to be concerned with analytically and ethically isolatable social units directing their lives in accordance with self-interested preferences, arrived at by means of rational calculation. However, I (...) argue that such theories are simplistic abstractions from our human-life world, distorting the fundamental embodied, embedded, and relational nature of autonomy. When we attend closely to our concrete, lived existence we see instead that autonomy is about responding appropriately to others with whom we share a world. As we follow the path of Ishiguro’s central character Kathy H., we are shown how an awareness and acceptance of our existential finitude as precarious and fallible creatures is necessary for guiding such appropriate interactions. As Kathy grows and is affirmed into her life-world, which grounds and supports her Being, she moves from heteronomy to autonomy; from being moved by external laws to embodying those laws, thereby becoming autonomous. This is exemplified by her appropriation of the carer role, through which she responds in a fitting way to those with whom she shares her world, bearing the weight of and dwelling responsibly within our human condition. (shrink)

The primary resource for quantum computation is Hilbert-space dimension. Whereas Hilbert space itself is an abstract construction, the number of dimensions available to a system is a physical quantity that requires physical resources. Avoiding a demand for an exponential amount of these resources places a fundamental constraint on the systems that are suitable for scalable quantum computation. To be scalable, the effective number of degrees of freedom in the computer must grow nearly linearly with the number of qubits in an (...) equivalent qubit-based quantum computer. (shrink)

It is true that Hegelian historicism has indeed led to a dominant ethos of moral relativism bound up with the belief that individual self-actualization is the highest value, thus creating a society that is, in the phrase of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. “after God.” Nevertheless, this egocentric and nihilistic relativism exists alongside a robust and militant moral totalitarianism enforced by the modern clerisy of the media, multi-national corporations, and government bureaucrats, that is, a “managerial elite.” This article argues that the (...) transcendental idealism of Kant and the subsequent historicization of Kant’s dialectic by Hegel has served to reconceptualize the older, Baconian view of science, creating the idea that scientific progress is moving toward the goal of a future perfection of absolute rational unity. The a priori rational structure of reality that makes science possible is not a Platonic Ideal, but something that unfolds within history. This is what allowed Marx to conceive of dialectical materialism as a science, and this is what allows the managerial elite of the present to claim a scientific and objective basis for their programs while at the same time using the tools of historical and cultural criticism to relativize and historicize the claims of all competing moral and social “constructs.”. (shrink)

A recent proposal by Dr. W. H. McCrae, cosmologist and mathematician, to the effect that decisions between such cosmogonies as those of Hoyle and of Gamow are experimentally impossible by virtue of a general cosmological indeterminacy principle, is here examined and elaborated upon. Some comments on the "antinomies" in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" are made in reference to this principle as well as to the Heisenberg indeterminacy principle. If McCrae's principle is accepted, we will have moved a long way (...) toward Kant's conclusion that a logically consistent understanding of an underlying "ultimate reality" is outside the confines of science--whatever one may think of Kant's own line of reasoning. (shrink)

Clark Carlton brings a much-needed theological sensitivity to the issues surrounding current debates about homosexuality and the ethics of sexual reorientation therapy. Yet, Carlton’s portrayal seems to mischaracterize and unnecessarily dismiss reorientation therapy on etiological and other theoretical grounds. It is suggested that for most therapists engaged in sexual reorientation therapy the role of developmental factors in homosexual attraction is neither overstated nor minimized.

With the rise of the scientific authority of neuroscience and recent neurotechnological advances, the understanding of the human being and its future is beginning to undergo a radical change. As a result, a normative and existential vacuum is opening and hopes as well as fears about the future are flourishing. Some philosophers are anticipating a broad neuroscientific disenchantment, sociocultural disruption and a new existential anxiety related to the clash of the neuroscientific and humanistic image of humans. Others are expecting the (...) technological and scientific developments to lead to human enhancement and existential emancipation. In the first part of this commentary, I outline these two contrasting responses to the rise of neurocentricism and non-anthropocentrism. In the second part, I argue that the divide between the old anthropocentric paradigm and the emerging neuroscientific is misconceived and that literature and fictional narrative are particularly illustrative of the possibility of integrating scientific materialism with humanism. I use the contemporary literary-philosophical work The Creative Act by Rick Rubin to show that humanist ideas can indeed cohere with anti-essentialist and neuroscientific notions of personal identity and self and how existential meaning and comfort can be found in a neuroscientifically and deterministically explained world. (shrink)

Book Reviews in this article Baptism and Resurrection: Studies in Pauline Theology against its Graeco‐Roman Background. By A.J.M. Wedderburn. Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians. By Frances Young and David Ford. Jesus and God in Paul's Eschatology. By L. Joseph Kreitzer. The Acts of the Apostles : By Hans Conzelmann. The Genesis of Christology: Foundations for a Theology of the New Testament. By Petr Pokorny. The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology. (...) By Hans Küng, translated by J.R. Stephenson. The Incarnation: Collected Essays in Christology. By Brian Hebblethwaite. Models for God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. By Sallie McFague. Pp. xv, 224, London, SCM Press, 1987, £8.50 Symbol and Sacrament: A Contemporary Sacramental Theology. By Michael G. Lawler. The Sacrifice We Offer: The Tridentine Dogma and its Reinterpretation. By David N. Power. New Eucharistic Prayers: An Ecumenical Study of their Development and Structure. Edited by Frank C. Senn. To Join Together: The Rite of Marriage. By Kenneth W. Stevenson. Company of Voices: Daily Prayer and the People of God. By George Guiver. The Long‐Legged Fly. By Don Cupitt. Approaches to Auschwitz. By Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth. Natural Law and Justice. By Lloyd L. Weinreb. Christian Morality: The Word Becomes Flesh. By Josef Fuchs S.J., translated by Brian McNeil. Medicine in Contemporary Society: King's College Studies 1986–87. Edited by Peter Byrne. Military Ethics: Guidelines for Peace and War. By N. Fotion and G. Elfstrom. Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action. By Alan Donagan. Persons and Personality: A Contemporary Inquiry. Edited by Arthur Peacocke and Grant Gillet. The Rationality of Emotion. By Ronald de Sousa. The Psychology of Personality: An Epistemological Inquiry. By James T. Lamiell. Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art. By Anne Sheppard. The Ascetic Element in Culture and Criticism. By Geoffrey Gait Harpham. Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. By Michael Heim. Education and Philosophical Anthropology: Toward a New View of Man for the Humanities and English. By David Holbrook. Evolution and the Humanities. By David Holbrook. Further Studies in Philosophical Anthropology. By David Holbrook. Women in Western Political Philosophy. Edited by Ellen Kennedy and Susan Mendus. The Light of the Soul: Theories of Ideas in Leibniz, Malebranche and Descartes. By Nicholas Jolley. Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas. By Stephen M. Nadler. Later Medieval Philosophy : An Introduction. By John Marenbon. Either/Or. By Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Howard and Edna Hong, Princeton University Press, 1987: Vol. One, Wittgenstein. By A.C. Grayling. Questions on Wittgenstein. By Rudolf Haller. The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein's Philosophy. By David Pears, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Vol. One, The Later Wittgenstein: The Emergence of a New Philosophical Method. By S. Stephen Hilmy. Knowledge of God: Calvin, Einstein and Polanyi. By Iain Paul. Conceptual Change and Religious Practice with Special Reference to Jews in Britain and Israel. By Janice Williams. The World's Religions. Edited by Stewart Sutherland, Leslie Houlden, Peter Clarke and Friedhelm Hardy. Religions in Conversation: Christian Identity and Religious Pluralism. By Michael Barnes. Theravāda Buddhism, A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modem Colombo. By Richard Gombrich. Mahāyāna Buddhism, The Doctrinal Foundations. By Paul Williams. Hinduism in Great Britain: The Perpetuation of Religion in an Alien Cultural Milieu. Edited by Richard Burghart. The Way of the Black Messiah. By Theo Witvliet. The Meaning of Religious Conversion in Africa. By Cyril C. Okorocha. Common Ground: Christianity, African Religion and Philosophy. By Emmanuel K. Twesigye. Islamic Spirituality I: Foundations. Edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. By Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor. Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine. By J. Neusner. Language and the Worship of the Church. Edited by David Jasper and R.C.D. Jasper. The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development and Meaning of Stational Liturgy. By John E. Baldovin. Leontii Presbyteri Constantinopolitani Homiliae. Edited by Cornells Datema and Pauline Allen. Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. By James A. Brundage. Melchior Hoffman: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation. By Klaus D Alonso de Zorita: RoyalJudge and Christian Humanist, 1512–1585. By Ralph H. Vigil. Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571–1591. By Stafford Poole. Archbishop William Laud. By Charles Carlton. The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730. By Callum G. Brown. Pastors and Pluralism in Württemberg, 1918–1933. By David J. Diephouse. The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol. One: Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions, 1918–1934. By Klaus Scholder. Reforming Fundamentalism. Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism. By George M. Marsden. The Hellenistic Philosophers Vol. II: Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography. By A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley. Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed. Edited by R.C.D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming. The Way of Paradox: Spiritual Life as Taught by Meister Eckhart. By Cyprian Smith. Meister Eckhart: The Man from whom God Hid Nothing. Edited by Ursula Fleming. The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola: A New Translation. Translated by Elisabeth Meier Tetlow. Courtfield and the Vaughans: An English Catholic Inheritance. By Mary Vaughan. Trinity College, Washington D.C.: The First Eighty Years, 1897–1977. By Columba Mullaly. John Henry Newman on the Idea of Church. By Edward Jeremy Miller. Journey from Paradise: Aft Athos and the Interior Life. By Ralph Harper. (shrink)

In French, haute vulgarisation is a recognized genre. Not so in English, but even without the term A New History of Greek Mathematics is still an excellent representative. Regularly—and especially...

1. Fī fikrinā al-muʻāṣir -- [2] Fī fikr al-Gharbī al-muʻāṣir.

The purpose of this paper is to offer evidence for a set of related formulaic expres- sions meaning ‘bond and blow’, ‘of binding and smiting’, and ‘the substitute for binding and smiting’ in Luvian cuneiform texts of the second millennium bCe. The passages where the relevant formulae are attested have resisted a coherent interpretation thus far. Our argumentation is three-pronged. First, we resort to the combinatorial method to show that these formulae occur in the vicinity of other merisms, and therefore (...) are likely to constitute the same figure of speech. Further- more, we endeavor to demonstrate based on context that they denote something related to strong physical impact. The argument involves a great deal of restored text, but although voluminous, the contexts are so repetitive that the restorations appear warranted. Second, we use the etymological method in order to justify the claim that the roots supplying their reflexes to our formulae are Proto-Indo- European *seh2 ‘to bind’ and *wedh ‘to strike, smite’. The derivation of each of the derivatives occurring in the bipartite merisms under discussion is addressed in some detail, and additional evidence from a Luwian hieroglyphic inscription kululu 1 is adduced to flesh out our hypothesis. Third, we provide typological discussion facilitating the interpretation of “binding” and “smiting” in the context of the Hittite-Luvian antiwitchcraft rituals. It turns out that hostile witchcraft has a potential to both “bind” and “smite” the body parts of its victim. As a whole, the paper represents a contribution to the ongoing decipher- ment of the Luvian language. (shrink)

This title was first published in 2001: Tolstoy's view of art is discussed in most courses in aesthetics, particularly his main text What is Art? He believed that the importance of art lies not in its purely aesthetic qualities but in its connection with life, and that art becomes decadent where this connection is lost. This view has often been misconceived and its strength overlooked. This book presents a clear exposition of Tolstoy's What is Art?, highlighting the value and importance (...) of Tolstoy's views in relation to aesthetics. Mounce considers the problems which exercised Tolstoy and explains their fundamental importance in contemporary disputes. Having viewed these problems of aesthetics as they arise in a classic work, Howard Mounce affords readers fresh insights not simply into the problems of aesthetics themselves, but also into their contemporary treatment. Students and interested readers of aesthetics and philosophy, as well as those exploring the works of Tolstoy in literature, will find this book of particular interest and will discover that reading What is Art? with attention, affords something of the excitement found in removing the grime from an oil painting - gradually from underneath there appears an authentic masterpiece. (shrink)

In his 2018 book, Identity, the Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Stanford University politi­cal scientist Francis Fukuyama addresses themes which might more properly be considered matters of political philosophy and the philosophy of law: How are we to navigate between traditional, ethnic, unitary conceptions of the nation on the one hand, and the threat of identitarian fragmentation on the other? Though Fukuyama affirms the importance of the concepts of human dignity and identity, more or less as these (...) are commonly understood, he also criticizes the contemporary phenomenon of identity politics—which he views as a danger to liberal democ­racy. “The rise of identity politics in modern liberal democracies,” writes Fukuyama, “is one of the chief threats that they face;” and moreover, “unless we can work our way back to more universal understand­ings of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.” This paper raises the question of whether the well reasoned case against identity politics as a threat to national unity and purpose leaves room for skepticism of fast-paced and more ambitious (“Wilsonian”) pursuit of internationalist goals of globalization. Greater emphasis on political consensus at home may helpfully strengthen the hand of American foreign policy in support of liberal democracy. But we now look back with well founded skepticism on neo-conservative interventionism, and there are just and needed limits on globalizing internationalism imposed by and implicit in the retreat from identity politics. Having lost the unity of purpose of Cold War liberalism, we are yet to find a “golden mean” avoiding ethnic nationalism and short of political fragmentation. (shrink)