This paper explores the question of whether or not the law is a computable number in the sense described by Alan Turing in his 1937 paper ‘On computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.’ Drawing upon the legal, social, and political context of Alan Turing’s own involvement with the law following his arrest in 1952 for the criminal offence of gross indecency, the article explores the parameters of computability within the law and analyses the applicability of Turing’s computability thesis (...) within the context of legal decision-making. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:348 BOOK REVIEWS to God's commandments is "the way and condition of salvation" (VS # 12). Now obedience to the commandments entails, in addition to a good motivation or a willingness to strive, the conformity of an action's object to the specifying content of the commandment. What is the significance of a commandment to honor one's father and mother, if it does not specify actions? The commandments of God (...) specify what kinds of action are, or are not, in conformity with the true good of man. In his analysis of the moral act, the Pope holds that the object of the act is "the primary and decisive element for moral judgment" (VS # 79). Actions which by the nature of their object are unable to be ordered to man's true end can never be "good" actions. Further, he notes that acts, even individual acts, are determinative of the goodness or badness of the person. These points are summarized nicely in the following passage: Activity is morally good when it attests to and expresses the voluntary ordering of the person to his ultimate end and the conformity of a concrete action with the human good as it is acknowledged in its truth by reason. If the object of the concrete action is not in harmony with the true good of the person, the choice of that action makes our will and ourselves morally evil, thus putting us in conflict with our ultimate end, the supreme good, God himself (VS # 72). I believe that Keenan's study commendably highlights the freedom of the will in the order of exercise, and its power to exercise dominion over the intellect in the order of specification. Keenan also insightfully emphasizes the central role of the love of God as the root of our striving to live well. Yet any willing can only be consequent to some knowing. Further, the willingness to strive and be determined, if it is good, is a willingness to be determined, or specified, by the true good known by reason and faith. This willingness, which is a crucial element in moral goodness, must be completed by actions in conformity with the true good. Human goodness is in freely, and lovingly, living out the truth of human nature and its end. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. JOHN A. D. CUDDEBACK Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth. By JOHN FINNIS. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. 113. $24.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper). Not long after his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Alasdair MacIntyre told a group of Catholic bishops: " As a matter of autobio- BOOK REVIEWS 349 graphical fact, I came to the conclusion that there were exceptionless and binding [moral] norms prior to and quite independently of any faith in Divine Revelation." Within the Church Macintyre entered, however, there existed, and exists, widespread doubt and confusion about "moral absolutes" or " exceptionless moral norms." Certain eminent Catholic moral theologians today dissent from Pope John Paul's teaching that " there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object." In the face of this dissent, John Finnis has produced a powerful philosophical and theological defense of the papal teaching. Moral Absolutes presents the 1988 Michael J. McGivney Lectures which Finnis delivered at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. The hook consists of four chapters: "Foundations," "Clarifications," "Christian Witness," and "Challenge and Response." Like Macintyre, Finnis maintains that the authority of scripture and tradition supplement reason's grasp of certain specific types of act as intrinsically wicked and, therefore, never to he performed. Although his goal is to vindicate the proposition that there are moral absolutes, rather than to say which, or even how many, moral norms qualify as " exceptionless " (and therefore as, in the relevant sense of the term, " absolute "), his examples include norms against abortion (and, more generally, the direct killing of innocent human beings), adultery, fornication, contraception, homosexual sex, blasphemy, and disclaimer of the faith. As Finnis observes, the Church's tradition of proclaiming these norms and their absoluteness is "massively solid." Against certain neoscholastic... (shrink)

In his discussion of the ethics of suicide Plato alludes to more than one traditional injunction against it:indicates a fairly general acceptance of its wickedness. Cebes has heard the Pythagorean Philolaus, among others, saying that suicide was immoral, but has gathered no satisfactory explanation as to why this should be so. One reason, impressive, but, Socrates admits, difficult is to be found.

ONE OF HUME’S ARGUMENTS IN "OF MIRACLES" CONCLUDES (A) THAT MIRACLES IN DIFFERENT RELIGIONS ARE CONTRARY FACTS, AND (B) THAT ANY MIRACLE IN FAVOR OF ONE RELIGION IS EVIDENCE AGAINST ALL OTHERS. I ARGUE THAT WHILE (A) IS ABSURD, (B) IS APPLICABLE TO CHRISTIANITY IN VIRTUE OF ITS EXCLUSIVIST CLAIMS. IT WAS ACCEPTED BY THE EARLY FATHERS AND STILL HAS TO BE ASSUMED BY ALL BUT THE MOST DIFFIDENT CHRISTIANS.

In the Rhetoric Aristotle frequently illustrates the points he is making with examples drawn both from oratory and from other literary genres. Although some of these citations have been used to date the work, they have never been systematically examined. It is the contention of this article that, when Aristotle gives examples from speeches, he quotes exclusively from epideictic works, and that this fact tells us much both about the circulation of written speeches at Athens and about the preoccupations of (...) Aristotle and his pupils. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show the relationship between the normative outlook and political philoso- phy of traditional societies on the one hand, and the crises of governance and leadership in contemporary African Societies, particularly subSaharan states, on the other. Although there are quite some differences in the quality of leadership and governance among sub-Saharan African states because of the different political and economic circumstances, this part of the globe taken as a whole remains underdeveloped in terms of (...) having the will to institute and maintain stable polities with responsive, responsible and efficient governance. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of ideology in the emergence of the empirical sciences and the evolution of philosophy. It argues that the orientation of the religious ideology, Christianity, at the epistemological and ontological levels was very instrumental in the emergence of the empirical sciences in the area dominated by the culture of the Western (Latin) church. This claim is demonstrated by an analysis of the theoretical and methodological orientation of pre-Christian Europe, the epistemological and other philo- sophical values sponsored (...) by Christianity, as well as a comparative analysis of other cultural regions where such philosophical values did not exist. The paper then explores the evolution of philosophy after the emergence of the empirical sciences. It points out that the progress of philosophy along rational lines and the generation of knowledge thereof is not equivalent to embracing the method of the empirical sciences (scientism), but rather is a rediscovery of the rational attitude bearing in mind the context in which it has to operate. (shrink)

We present here a direct elementary construction of continuous utility functions on perfectly separable totally preordered sets that does not make use of the well-known Debreu’s open gap lemma. This new construction leans on the concept of a separating countable decreasing scale. Starting from a perfectly separable totally ordered structure, we give an explicit construction of a separating countable decreasing scale, from which we show how to get a continuous utility map.

In this paper weak utilities are obtained for acyclic binary relations satisfying a condition weaker than semicontinuity on second countable topological spaces. In fact, in any subset of such a space we obtain a weak utility that characterizes the maximal elements as maxima of the function. The addition of separability of the relation yields the existence of semicontinuous representations. This property of the utility provides a result of existence of maximal elements for a class of spaces that include compact spaces. (...) However, we offer a negative result that continuity may not be reached under such hypotheses. (shrink)

The female reproductive axis in mammals is a highly complex dynamic system which goes through different transient or absorbent states during the course of a life-time. Little is known about the mechanisms controlling this system during fetal life and at birth, although it has been shown in numerous species, including primates, that the whole machinery is already functioning . After a delay ranging from a few days to a few weeks, according to the species, the reproductive axis becomes quiescent and (...) activity apparently resumes only at the time of puberty. Here again understanding of the phenomenon is still limited. (shrink)

Common sense, affirmed Ferrier, can neither be set aside nor taken for granted by philosophy. Rather, it must be converted into philosophy, and this "by accepting completely and faithfully the facts and expressions of common sense as given in their primitive obscurity, and then by construing them without violence, without addition, and without diminution into clearer and more intelligible forms". In the period under discussion, the early nineteenth century, the attempt to elucidate the phenomena of mind and their linguistic moulds (...) came under the title of 'mental science' or 'analysis'. More specifically, the process envisaged for this science was inductive, what Dugald Stewart would call a dual operation of analysis and synthesis or Cabanis the method of decomposition and recomposition. Agreement on the use of such a procedure for the philosophy of mind or on the details of the technique employed was never unanimous: in the case of the latter, it had first to be established whether the 'scientist' was dealing at the outset with 'simple' or 'compound' phenomena and whether he was to proceed from the known to the unknown or vice versa. Beneath this controversy lay the roots of an earlier separation between the 'analysis of nature' and the 'analytic of imagination'. Michel Foucault, whose distinction this is, argues that these two directions of analysis begin to converge towards the end of the eighteenth century. But the moment of convergence, being fraught with difficulties for those at the intersection, is less than happy. This uneasiness of mind accounts, moreover, for the strain of conversion in 'Common Sense' philosophy. Nevertheless, where the struggles at the juncture are most intense, there is a commensurate heightening of philosophical awareness. Faintly visible in the first inquiries of Thomas Brown into causality and volition, it reaches a crescendo in his more mature reflections on memory and attention, the nature of consciousness and reflection itself. Emerging with this apprehension, and giving it depth, is Brown's sensitivity to the feelings of selfhood and his belief in the recovery, however imaginary, of the individual's past. That sense of an order to be captured and restored, combined with a recognition of the affections which, more often, reap the havoc of human nature, create in his writings the sort of excitement associated not with the resolution of dilemmas, but with a prolonged, agonizing and continual tension. The subsequent discussion moves towards as it is moved by that realization. (shrink)