Strategic Reliabilism is a framework that yields relative epistemic evaluations of belief-producing cognitive processes. It is a theory of cognitive excellence, or more colloquially, a theory of reasoning excellence (where 'reasoning' is understood very broadly as any sort of cognitive process for coming to judgments or beliefs). First introduced in our book, Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (henceforth EPHJ), the basic idea behind SR is that epistemically excellent reasoning is efficient reasoning that leads in a robustly reliable fashion (...) to significant, true beliefs. It differs from most contemporary epistemological theories in two ways. First, it is not a theory of justification or knowledge – a theory of epistemically worthy belief. Strategic Reliabilism is a theory of epistemically worthy ways of forming beliefs. And second, Strategic Reliabilism does not attempt to account for an epistemological property that is assumed to be faithfully reflected in the epistemic judgments and intuitions of philosophers. If SR makes recommendations that accord with our reflective epistemic judgments and intuitions, great. If not, then so much the worse for our reflective epistemic judgments and intuitions. (shrink)

A combination of social forces has thrown marriage into question in westernised societies at the end of the millennium. This uncertainty creates space for new ways of thinking about marriage. In this context, we examine the idea of marriage as friendship. We trace its genealogy in the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor and then subject it to critical scrutiny using some of Michel de Montaigne’s ideas. We ask how applicable the ideal of higher friendship is (...) to marriage and what might be gained and lost by a synthesis of marriage and friendship. Grounding the discussion in historical sources is valuable because the topic is so little explored in the contemporary philosophical literature. This approach also allows any enduring value in these historical texts to be elicited. (shrink)

In contrast to the introspective doubts of nineteenth century agnosticism comes a synthetic survey of the Age of Faith through the sharp eyes of a candid believer. Professor Warrington translates with care and grace the third of a herculean series of five Church history volumes, which have been widely successful in the original French edition. It is economically understandable but unfortunate that the bibliography of its rich French and German sources is omitted as well as the cross-references to its two (...) predecessors, although a useful twenty-five page index is provided. In an age of specialists who find the humane sharing of discovery increasingly difficult, M. Daniel-Rops is a publicist-prodigy—a practised littérateur with a comprehensive grasp of ideas, events and writings, sacred and profane, which he diffuses widely in works properly described as being de haute vulgarisation. This vivid view of the medieval Church as a whole—spiritually, politically and culturally—is personally rethought as a live unity, and should benefit both the exacting specialist in constant danger of failing to see the wood for his pet trees and the serious beginner trying to recapture the events and mentality of a remote past. Nor should one cavil at the author’s presentation in terms of his own unconcealed belief in its value. A definitive history, in which the observer conceals his own viewpoint and muffles his personal conviction, is an artificial ideal healthily rejected nowadays, as at best producing a stale record of uninspiring fact. This personal testament frankly judges the interaction of Christian belief and institution in the High Middle Ages, which saw the Christianisation of the whole continent, its cultural manifestation in cathedral and university and its militant challenge in the wars of Investiture and crusade. (shrink)

This pioneering monograph, published by the Jesuit Faculties of Philosophy and Theology at Montréal, disclaims being ‘un essai original de philosophie spéculative’. Nevertheless Père Desjardins’ critico-historical study of the metaphysical grounding in some Absolute Reality of the absolute character experienced in moral obligation leads him beyond criticism of the notable diversity of its evaluation by neo-Scholastics to a deeper exploration of moral obligation in human action and its dialectic of physical liberty and moral necessity. The deontological argument to God was (...) first formulated by Bańez, when the sixteenth century discoverers of the New World met pagans ignorant of God’s revealed sanction for morality. Today’s growing appreciation of Bańez’s creative insight into Thomist metaphysic is tested, perhaps, by this succinct argument in his commentary upon the Summa theologiae 2a-2ae, 10, 1. (shrink)

The 1957 Presidential address of Fr. Klubertanz pleads for greater study of Thomist ethics, especially in view of its recent criticism by Leclerc and Niebuhr, which is expounded and tentatively evaluated. Père Eschmann portrays St. Thomas’s approach to moral philosophy as balancing human autonomy with objective order. Fr. Doyle analyses the current problem of subalternating ethics to theology. Miss Salmon investigates the relationship of moral truth to modern epistemology, while Dr. Riedl further analyses ethics as a practical science in the (...) historical light of Aristotle and St. Thomas. (shrink)

This admirable volume inagurates a manual series which precisely implements, neither more nor less, what its experienced Dominican writer claims: a clear introduction to Thomist philosophy. Within the classic simplicity of the manual tradition it expounds the vital first principles of metaphysical psychology without overloading the beginner with unnecessary technical difficulties, and refreshingly illustrates the lucid concentration of Thomas upon the relevant questions. Sometimes its simplicity is deceptive, since it is inspired by the traditional commentary upon the classic intellectualism, which (...) is the basis of epistemology as Thomas conceived it historically, in his developing Aristotelianism. It expounds this doctrine sensibly in its own historical right, apart from the findings of modern empirical psychology. To his own text, Père Gardeil adds a valuable selection of passages from the relevant works of St. Thomas, notably the Quaestiones Disputatae, De Anima et De Veritate, with pedagogical cross-references. Dr. Otto’s translation is unpretentiously faithful and easy for a twentieth century student unaccustomed to Scholastic terminology and method. (shrink)

There is an evident gulf between the modern sciences of nature and the classic Aristotelian science of the physical universe, which was in fact both a broad philosophy in its principles and a narrow, positive science in its concrete detail. Père Gardeil believes that it is possible to reconcile these differing versions of the same world of nature by accepting a distinction between the respective objects and limitations of a philosophy and of a science of nature: “Specifically, the Aristotelian philosophy (...) of nature needs to divest itself of certain non-essentials, which are hangovers from an outdated science and do not affect its substance. Modern science, on the other hand, must forgo the claim of being the highest wisdom, the last word on reality, a claim it can make by usurpation only”. (shrink)

The philosophical problem of the existence of God has acquired a pressing importance from the force of contemporary atheism. Some twenty expert thinkers express their personal reflections in the papers presented in April 1960 to the seventh Rencontres doctrinales at the Dominican college of theology at La Sartre in Huy, Belgium. A ten-page annex of critical discussion on the relation between belief and proof, between metaphysical experience and its dialectic towards the explicit affirmation of God reveals a candid appreciation that (...) theological reflection must justify itself in terms of modern epistemology - in Canon Dondeyne’s words. (shrink)

The enterprise of Messrs Desclée is promoting a fresh and handsome series of tracts upon the essential theses of Christian theology in the searching light of present-day reflection and with the rich benefit of the past half-century’s probing research into Scripture, patristic and liturgical sources of belief and the current aggiornamento of its official Church statement. Composed in collaboration by a distinguished group of French-speaking theologians, they are addressed not merely to the technical interest of clerics and seminary students but (...) also to the cultivated layman, whose faith should be personally intelligible in proportion to his intellectual rigour and actual human problems. The scholastic tradition of a developing fides quaerens intellectum is realistically put in the publisher’s terms of reference. (shrink)

Psychiatric diagnosis and prognosis is fraught with important philosophical and conceptual problems. This chapter focuses on some epistemological issues and moral issues that arise in contemporary psychiatric practice. It examines various clinical and actuarial techniques for psychiatric diagnosis, ordered very loosely in terms of how "structured" or "automated" they are. The chapter makes the case for assessing psychiatric treatments with controlled experiments, raises several epistemological dangers that arise from relying on uncontrolled investigations, and considers some of the unique methodological and (...) ethical issues that arise when trying to assess talk therapy. (shrink)