In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IN PRAISE OF PLURALISM * RONALD F. THIEMANN Harvard Diviinity School Cambridge, Massachusetts K CENTLY A GROUP of scholars at Harvard University met to discuss the question of whether the United States ha;d entered a. period of moral decline. Our conversations ranged over a wide spectrum of topics: the distinction between priva.te and public life, the relation of notions like mol'lality and justice, the issue of how a decline (...) in morality might be dooumented. The discuS'sion was carried on with a sense of intellectual seriousness and passion but was also characterized by a degree of frustration, given the brea;dth of the topic and the diversity of the participants, who were drawn from the faculties of arts and sciences, 1aw, medicine, government, business, and divinity. Our approaches to the topic were diverse and consequentily our disputes were spirited. Whatever the disagreements among the group, however, we were united by a conviction tha.t such conversations a;re essential if we are to under:s.tand the moral complexity of our pluralistic society. Tihis gathering of soho1ars at Harvard exhibits four important ohamcteristics of the current deba.te about moraility and public life. 1) The recognition that the moral issues we are facing cut a;cross traditional disciplinary lines and require a joint effort by scholar:s working in diverse fields and pl'ofessions ; 2) an awaireness that the plurality of moral positions within pwblic and aicademic life threatens the possibility of consensus on issues of public importance; 3) the conviction, nonetheless, that joint scholarly refieob:ion can have an impact *Ethics After Babel. By JEFFREY STOUT. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. Pp. 338. $27.50. 489 490 RONALD F. THIEMANN on the moral issues currently vexing American public life: 4) the a;eknowledgement that religion has a role to play in the conversation about the future of momlity and public affairs.1 Jeffrey Stout'·s new book Ethics After Babel is an important and lively contiribution to the current discussion about mora;lity and public life. While the book focuses primarily on issues central to moral philosophy, its arguments have broad implications for debate on topics of importance to public life more generally. Stout'.s work can be seen as an exemplification, expansion, and justification of the four points identified in the previous pM"agraph. But the book is much more than that: it is an extended, sustained, and persuasive argument that pluralism iin public discourse about moral issues need not lead to 1skepticism, nihilism, or relativism. Stout steers a steady oourse between the cultural pessimists who decry our current state as one of hopeless mor:al fragmentation and the intellectual foundationafists who seek to dispel our cultural malaise through some philosophical sleight-of-hand. Ethics After Babel is divided into three major sections. The first," Spectres of MoI"al Diversity," tackles the issue of truthclaiming in moral discouvse and defends non-foundational ethics against the charge of relativism. The -second, " The Eclipse of Religious Ethics," deals with the relation between reJigion and moraJity, reruson and tradition, and with the question of the future of a public theology. In the final section, "Moral Discourse in P·lur:aiistic Society," Stout defends aversion of pragmatic liiberalism and distinguishes his own po.s:i.tion from that of Alasdair Maicintyre and Richaro Rorty. In the·last chapter Stout shows how many of the concepts Macintyre has introduced into the philosopmcal discussion can be used in service of Li:beral social criticism. The reader gilimpses in 1 It is unlikely that the Divinity School would have been represented in any such gathering as recently as five years ago. The fact that no one from the School of Education was invited to join this group is evidence of the continuing marginality of certain crucial professions within American higher education. IN PRAISE OF PLURALISM 491 these final chapters the :beginnings of Stout's own constructive oontriibution to the issues of morality and pwblic life. Stout seeks in this v:olume to move the discussion in poJitical philosophy and ethics beyond the "liberal vs. oommuntarian " issues that have dominruted the recent litemture. In opposition to the individualism and foundationalism that characterize the classic modern... (shrink)

Throughout his life, John Tyler Bonner contributed to major transformations in the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology. He pondered the evolution of complexity and the significance of randomness in evolution, and was instrumental in the formation of evolutionary developmental biology. His contributions were vast, ranging from highly technical scientific articles to numerous books written for a broad audience. This historical vignette gathers reflections by several prominent researchers on the greatness of John Bonner and the implications of his work.

The globalization in business and tourism becomes crucial more and more for the economical sustainability of local communities. In the presence of an epidemic outbreak, there must be such a decision on the policy by the host community as whether to accept visitors or not, the number of acceptable visitors, or the condition for acceptable visitors. Making use of an SIRI type of mathematical model, we consider the influence of visitors on the spread of a reinfectious disease in a community, (...) especially assuming that a certain proportion of accepted visitors are immune. The reinfectivity of disease here means that the immunity gained by either vaccination or recovery is imperfect. With the mathematical results obtained by our analysis on the model for such an epidemic dynamics of resident and visitor populations, we find that the acceptance of visitors could have a significant influence on the disease’s endemicity in the community, either suppressive or supportive. (shrink)

In my Steinberger 2009 I argued that Neil Tennant’s Harmony requirement is untenable because of its failure to account for the standard quantifier rules.1 Instead of justifying the customary rules for the existential and universal quantifiers, Tennant’s account appears to sanction only wholly unrestricted – and so patently disharmonious – quantifier rules. In his characteristically thoughtful response Tennant 2010, Tennant offers a sequent calculus version of his Harmony requirement that rules out such pathological would-be quantifiers. While I agree with Tennant (...) that recasting his Harmony requirement in the sequent format as he proposes blocks the said disharmonious quantifier rules, I submit that Tennant’s revamped Harmony requirement nevertheless misses the mark. I present two objections to substantiate my claim. First, I show that the crucial additional assumption underlying Tennant’s sequent calculus-based account – what I call the admissibility assumption – is excessively strong: so strong, in fact, that it renders otiose the core of Tennant’s original account. Second, I argue that the admissibility assumption, as a global requirement on deductive systems, is ill-suited for the purposes of codifying the intuitive notion of harmony. Fortunately, though, as I will demonstrate, we can dispense with the admissibility assumption altogether. (shrink)

Ethics for Enemies comprises three original philosophical essays on torture, terrorism, and war. F. M. Kamm deploys ethical theory in her challenging new treatments of these most controversial practical issues. First she considers the nature of torture and the various occasions on which it could occur, in order to determine why it might be wrong to torture a wrongdoer held captive, even if this were necessary to save his victims. In the second essay she considers what makes terrorism wrong--whether it (...) is the intention to harm civilians, rather than harm to them being 'collateral damage,' or something else--and whether terrorism is always wrong. The third essay discusses whether having a right reason, in the sense of a right intention, is necessary in order for a war to be just. Kamm then examines ways in which the harms of war can be proportional to the achievement of the just cause and other goods that war can bring about, so as to make the declaration of war permissible. (shrink)

This book is the 1906 second edition of the Hulsean Lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge between 1901 and 1902. In these four lectures, F. R. Tennant challenges conventional teachings on Original Sin and the story of the Fall, arguing that his contemporaries had misinterpreted the biblical presentation of sin and its manifestations. Tennant aims to redefine the sin of both the race and the individual, and in doing so engages with traducianism and the philosophies of Malebranche, Kant and (...) Hegel. He argues that action predates modern conceptions of right and wrong, and that transgression is only sin if the actor is aware of what is morally right. Of course, these theories were met with great opposition, an opposition which Tennant uses the preface of this second edition to confront. These fascinating lectures and their appendages will be of great interest to scholars of Christian theology and the fin de siècle alike. (shrink)

There is an interesting controversy in recent literature over the nature of Reid's theory of perception. Interpreters are divided over whether Reid's theory of perception is compatible with an acquaintance model of perception. This article discusses Nicholas Wolterstorff's objections to the acquaintance interpretation of Reid. I argue that these objections are inadequate insofar as they do not account for the possibility that Reid offers a ‘state conceptual’ – rather than a ‘state nonconceptual’ – acquaintance theory of perception. I provide textual (...) support for thinking that a state conceptual acquaintance interpretation of Reid is a live possibility, and show how such an interpretation is immune to Wolterstorff's criticisms. (shrink)

This book traces the history of philosophy in Great Britain from the time when it began to be written until the end of the Victorian era. A valuable feature is the extensive bibliography, which was revised especially for the first printing of this 1965 back edition.