Thomas Merton is one of the most important spiritual voices of the last century. He has never been more relevant as new generations look to him for guidance in addressing some of life's biggest questions: how can we find God, how should we engage with other faiths, and how can we oppose violence and injustice? Looking carefully, one can find, tucked away in Merton's prodigious writings, his response to another timeless question: Why do we suffer? Why does an (...) all-powerful and all loving God permit evil and suffering? By carefully examining all of Merton's work, we find that he repeatedly confronted this question throughout most of his adult life. Intriguingly, Merton's approach to this question changed dramatically a few years before he died in 1968. An examination of all aspects of his life yields evidence that Merton’s immersion in Zen during this time contributed most to that change. (shrink)

Fragmenta Herculanensia - Fragmenta Herculanensia: A descriptive catalogue of the Oxford copies of the Herculanean rolls, together with the texts of several papyri, accompanied by facsimiles. Edited, with introduction and notes, by Walter Scott, M.A., Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Clarendon Press, 1885. 21s. - Volume 1 Issue 7.

The likely impact of applying the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to higher education are examined. GATS aims to “open up” services to competition: no preference can be shown to national or government providers. The consequences for teaching are likely to be that private companies, with degree-awarding powers, would be eligible for the same subsidies as public providers. Appealing to the inadequate recently introduced “benchmark” statements as proof of quality, they would provide a “bare bones” service at lower (...) cost. Public subsidies would go: education being reduced to that minimum which could be packaged in terms of verifiable “learning outcomes”. The loss of “higher” aspirations, such education of critically-minded citizens of a democratic and civilised society would impoverish the university’s research culture which demands honesty and openness to public scrutiny. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to corroborate or undermine a previously presented conjecture that physicians’ estimations of others’ opinions are influenced by their own opinions. We used questionnaire based cross-sectional design and described a situation where an imminently dying patient was provided with alleviating drugs which also shortened life and, additionally, were intended to do so. We asked what would happen to physicians’ own trust if they took the action described, and also what the physician estimated would happen (...) to the general publics’ trust in health services. Decrease of trust was used as surrogate for an undesirable action. The results are presented as proportions with a 95 % Confidence Interval. Statistical analysis was based on inter-rater agreement -test as well as χ2 test and Odds Ratio with 95 % CI. We found a moderate inter-rater agreement between what would happen with the physicians’ own trust in healthcare and their estimations of what would happen with the general population’s trust. We identified a significant difference between being pro et contra the treatment with double intentions and the estimation of the general population’s trust. Focusing on either decreasing or increasing own trust and being pro or contra the action we identified a strong association [OR 79 ]. Although the inter-rater agreement in the present study was somewhat weaker compared to a study about the explicit use of the term ‘physicians assisted suicide’ we found that our hypothesis—physicians’ estimations of others’ opinions are influenced by their own opinions—was corroborated. This might have implications in research as well as in clinical decision-making. We suggest that Merton’s ideal of disinterestedness should be highlighted. (shrink)

The foundation of the Christian counselling movement -- Christian counselling in the UK -- The aims of Christian counselling -- Integrating psychological and biblical truth -- Sigmund Freud--the founding father of psychotherapy -- The individual psychology of Alfred Adler -- Abraham Maslow--the man with new age tendencies -- Carl Rogers--a man who believed in himself -- Albert Ellis--the aggressive atheist -- The Bible's verdict on psychological 'truth' -- The case against Larry Crabb -- Self-esteem: the secular foundation -- Self-esteem and (...) the Christian counselling movement -- Self-esteem dogma in the light of scripture. (shrink)

The death of Geoffrey Mure is a greater loss to the world of scholarship than the present-day philosophical community is likely to recognize. He was one of the very few Oxford philosophers who had the courage and steadfastness to stick to his staunch belief in speculative Idealism when the explosion of Logical Positivism and the successive shock-waves of Empiricism and Ordinary Language Philosophy overwhelmed the Oxford schools. Mure’s philosophy was, therefore, not congenial to his colleagues. Nevertheless, throughout the hey-day of (...) the Rylian Empire, Mure remained at Oxford as the Warden of Merton, exerting what influence he could to keep alive the tradition of F.H. Bradley, Harold Joachim and R.G. Collingwood. Had he been appointed to the White’s Chair of Moral Philosophy or the Wykeham Professorship of Logic, the history of recent British philosophy would have been different, but that was hardly to be expected in the philosophical climate of the time. The force of the current against which Mure swam can be judged from the story told in the 1950s that as they walked down the High, students would point him out in incredulous wonder as the sole surviving Hegelian in Oxford. (shrink)

A live issue in anthropology and development studies, humanism is not typically addressed by analytic philosophers. Arguing for humanism as a view about truths, Humanism and Embodiment insists that disembodied reason, not religion, should be the target of secularists promoting freedom of enquiry and human community. Susan Babbitt's original study presents humanism as a meta-ethical view, paralleling naturalistic realism in recent analytic epistemology and philosophy of science. Considering the nature of knowledge, particularly the radical contingency of knowledge claims upon causal (...) mechanisms, religious thinkers like Thomas Merton and Ivan Illich offer more scientific conceptions of practical deliberation than are offered by some non-religious ethicists. Drawing on philosophical sources such as Marxism, Buddhism and Christianity, this original study considers implications of an embodied conception of reason, revealing philosophical, practical and political implications. (shrink)

In 'Een handvol filosofen' staan de filosofen centraal die sinds de oprichting van de Vrije Universiteit in 1880 aan deze instelling verbonden zijn geweest. Het gaat hierbij niet alleen om de inhoud van hun werk, maar ook om de personen zelf. Er waren filosofiedocenten die zich met de universiteit identificeerden en zich volledig konden ontplooien. Er waren er echter ook voor wie dit niet gold, die geïsoleerd of in gewetensnood raakten. Veel filosofiestudenten waren actief betrokken bij wat er in hun (...) faculteit gebeurde. Zij namen initiatieven, protesteerden soms tegen de gang van zaken en kozen partij in conflictsituaties. Sinds het eind van de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw verloor de Vrije Universiteit geleidelijk haar christelijk karakter. Tegenwoordig werken alle stafleden vanuit hun eigen motivatie mee aan een hoofdzakelijk seculier geworden universiteit, die ruimte biedt voor religieuze en levensbeschouwelijke diversiteit. (shrink)

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

_Seeing the World through Children’s Eyes_ brings an overarching emphasis on ‘seeing’ to early years research and provides an opportunity to see and hear from leading researchers in the field concerning how they work with visual methodologies in their early years research.

Background: In 2014, companies began covering the costs of egg freezing for their employees. The adoption of this benefit was highly contentious. Some argued that it offered women more reproductive...

Sound moves us. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our responses to genuine emotional vocalizations, be they heartfelt distress cries or raucous laughter. Here, we present perceptual ratings and a description of a freely available, large database of natural affective vocal sounds from human infants, adults and domestic animals, the Oxford Vocal (OxVoc) Sounds database. This database consists of 173 non-verbal sounds expressing a range of happy, sad, and neutral emotional states. Ratings are presented for the sounds on a (...) range of dimensions from a number of independent participant samples. Perceptions related to valence, including distress, vocalizer mood, and listener mood are presented in Study 1. Perceptions of the arousal of the sound, listener motivation to respond and valence (positive, negative) are presented in Study 2. Perceptions of the emotional content of the stimuli in both Study 1 and 2 were consistent with the predefined categories (e.g., laugh stimuli perceived as positive). While the adult vocalizations received more extreme valence ratings, rated motivation to respond to the sounds was highest for the infant sounds. The major advantages of this database are the inclusion of vocalizations from naturalistic situations, which represent genuine expressions of emotion, and the inclusion of vocalizations from animals and infants, providing comparison stimuli for use in cross-species and developmental studies. The associated website provides a detailed description of the physical properties of each sound stimulus along with cross-category descriptions. (shrink)

Gary Becker and others have done important work to broaden the content of self interest, but have not departed from seeing rationality in terms of the exclusive pursuit of self-interest. One reason why committed behavior is important is that a person can have good reason to pursue objectives other than self interest maximization (no matter how broadly it is construed). Indeed, one can also follow rules of behavior that go beyond the pursuit of one's own goals, even if the goals (...) include non-self-interested concerns. By living in a society, one develops possible reasons for considering other people's goals as well, which takes one beyond an exclusive concentration on one's own goals, not to mention the single-minded pursuit of one's own self interest. The recognition of other people's goals may be a part of rational thought. If rational behavior may depart from the relentless pursuit of one's own goals, commitment has to be important in a theory of rationality. Furthermore, seeing the role of commitment in human behavior can have explanatory importance in allowing us to understand behavior patterns that are hard to fit into the narrow format of contemporary rational choice theory. Commitment is, thus, important both for practical reason and for causal explanation. Footnotes1 Paper presented at a Workshop on Rationality and Commitment at the University of St. Gallen, May 13–15, 2004. (shrink)

These brief selections could use explanatory footnotes for frequently obscure passages. --E. S. C.

The locus classicus for Plutarch's own views on his methods is in the Alexander He has begun by asking for the indulgence of his readers if they do not find all the exploits of Alexander and Caesar recounted by the biographer or if they discover him not reporting some famous incident in detail (); and he goes on to compare his own search for evidence which will indicate the kind of soul, with the activity of the painter, who, in order (...) to create a likeness, concentrates on the eyes and pays little attention to the other parts. Commentators and critics have been right to take this as a key text for the purpose of understanding Plutarch's attitude towards his biographical work; nevertheless there are other passages in the Lives where we can at least glimpse his attitude to his subject, and we can only see the Alexander-remarks in correct perspective if we take these other passages into account. I propose therefore, starting with the Alexander, to see how far these critical remarks apply to Plutarch's theory and practice elsewhere in the Lives. (shrink)

Dopo aver considerato i caratteri generali dei prologhi di Tommaso ai commenti aristotelici, ed in particolare i proemi alla Fisica e al De sensu et sensato, l'A. dimostra come Pietro di Alvernia utilizzi queste due fonti tomiste nel suo proemio al De sensu. Del proemio, diviso in sette sezioni esaminate singolarmente, viene data anche una edizione critica in appendice , che si basa sull'unico manoscritto che tramanda il testo, conservato a Oxford, Merton College, 275. Nell'ultima parte del saggio l'A. (...) propone alcune considerazioni finali, ribadendo che la fedeltà di Pietro al testo di Tommaso non può considerarsi «tomismo», ma rivela piuttosto il bisogno avvertito da Pietro di una guida all'interpretazione dei testi aristotelici. (shrink)

The complex hexaploid wheat genome offers many challenges for genomics research. Expressed sequence tags facilitate the analysis of gene-coding regions and provide a rich source of molecular markers for mapping and comparison with model organisms. The objectives of this study were to construct a high-density EST chromosome bin map of wheat homoeologous group 2 chromosomes to determine the distribution of ESTs, construct a consensus map of group 2 ESTs, investigate synteny, examine patterns of duplication, and assess the colinearity with rice (...) of ESTs assigned to the group 2 consensus bin map. A total of 2600 loci generated from 1110 ESTs were mapped to group 2 chromosomes by Southern hybridization onto wheat aneuploid chromosome and deletion stocks. A consensus map was constructed of 552 ESTs mapping to more than one group 2 chromosome. Regions of high gene density in distal bins and low gene density in proximal bins were found. Two interstitial gene-rich islands flanked by relatively gene-poor regions on both the short and long arms and having good synteny with rice were discovered. The map locations of two ESTs indicated the possible presence of a small pericentric inversion on chromosome 2B. Wheat chromosome group 2 was shown to share syntenous blocks with rice chromosomes 4 and 7. (shrink)

An introductory work on the various school of Indian philosophy.