Why is there a 'hard problem' of consciousness? Why do we seem unable to grasp intuitively that physical brain processes can be identical to experiences? Here I comment on the 'meta-problem' (Chalmers, 2018), based on previous ideas (Storm, 2014; 2018). In short: humans may be 'inborn dualists' ('neuroscepticism'), because evolution gave us two (types of) brain systems (or functional modes): one (Sp) for understanding relatively simple physical phenomena, and another (Sm) specialized for mental phenomena. Because Sp cannot deal with (...) the immense complexity of the brain processes underlying consciousness, it represents them as fundamentally different from nonmental physical phenomena (dualist intuition), using 'simulations' to produce 'Sm-type understanding'/predictions that seems radically different from 'Sp-type understanding'. (By analogy, different sensory modalities, handled by distinct brain systems, evoke qualitatively different experiences.) Brain systems for Sp representations of our brain processes never evolved, because they would be useless. When lacking a single 'template' matching different aspects of reality (objective vs. subjective = simulated), complementary 'models' are needed ('neuro-complementarity'), like the wave–particle duality in quantum mechanics. Thus, it seems plausible that Sp and Sm evolved because they were needed to cope with different challenges, and that 'problem intuitions' are side effects of these useful but different brain systems. (shrink)

According to L.E.J. Brouwer, there is room for non-definable real numbers within the intuitionistic ontology of mental constructions. That room is allegedly provided by freely proceeding choice sequences, i.e., sequences created by repeated free choices of elements by a creating subject in a potentially infinite process. Through an analysis of the constitution of choice sequences, this paper argues against Brouwer’s claim.

According to L.E.J. Brouwer, there is room for non-definable real numbers within the intuitionistic ontology of mental constructions. That room is allegedly provided by freely proceeding choice sequences, i.e., sequences created by repeated free choices of elements by a creating subject in a potentially infinite process. Through an analysis of the constitution of choice sequences, this paper argues against Brouwer’s claim.

The publication of Heidegger's Black Notebooks has provoked a storm of controversy. Much of this has centred on the pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic comments the volumes contain. But these aspects of the Notebooks are perhaps the least surprising and important. This essay offers a summary overview of the issues to which the Notebooks give rise, at the same time as it also aims to provide a preliminary assessment of their overall significance, especially in relation to what they show about the (...) nature and development of Heidegger's thinking from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. (shrink)

Sometimes the thesis has been put forth that the languages of 3- Dimensionalism and 4-Dimensionalism are completey translatable into each other without any loss of meaning. Prominently, this thesis has recently been defended by Jonathan Lowe and Storrs McCall. A global inter-translatability would show that there is no deeper systematic or even ontological difference between these philosophical positions despite that both are using a different vocabulary to describe the same features of reality. In this paper, I want to argue that (...) the thesis of 3D-4D-Equivalence covers some interesting aspects of the discussion between 3-Dimensionalists and 4-Dimensionalists, but is not able to grasp fully the ontological intuitions of both positions. At the end of the day, it seems necessary to refute the thesis that 3-Dimensionalism and 4-Dimensionalism are eqivalent in the sense that both are completely translatable into each other. (shrink)

Sometimes the thesis has been put forth that the languages of 3- Dimensionalism and 4-Dimensionalism are completey translatable into each other without any loss of meaning. Prominently, this thesis has recently been defended by Jonathan Lowe and Storrs McCall. A global inter-translatability would show that there is no deeper systematic or even ontological difference between these philosophical positions despite that both are using a different vocabulary to describe the same features of reality. In this paper, I want to argue that (...) the thesis of 3D-4D-Equivalence covers some interesting aspects of the discussion between 3-Dimensionalists and 4-Dimensionalists, but is not able to grasp fully the ontological intuitions of both positions. At the end of the day, it seems necessary to refute the thesis that 3-Dimensionalism and 4-Dimensionalism are eqivalent in the sense that both are completely translatable into each other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionCarolyn J. Dean (bio)... even since he [Nietzsche] became famous has he ever been anything but an occasion for misunderstanding?—Georges Bataille, The Accursed ShareAt the current juncture in the history of studies “on Bataille,” admiration and indebtedness have given way to admiration constrained by ambivalence and indebtedness complicated by a desire for accountability. This special issue provides an opportunity to work through these inevitable critical shifts, symptoms of an (...) immeasurable debt to a writer from whom we have necessarily taken distance. It is also an occasion to ask about our own investments in the renewed production of Bataille.During his lifetime (1897–1962), Georges Bataille was called many names, including a “pornographer” and a fascist, and when he died he became a cult figure among some intellectuals, for whom he represented an eclectic and unappreciated thinker. Since his untimely death, Bataille has become very famous. Now, according to Jürgen Habermas, this former librarian at the Bibliothèque Nationale, editor of Critique, author of covertly circulated erotic books and other works that did not sell well, stands first in a line of French intellectuals leading from “Bataille via Michel Foucault to Jacques Derrida” [Habermas 14]. 1 Bataille’s remains are located in the posthumanist pantheon: his work is joined to the giants of the French philosophical, psychoanalytic, and literary heritage, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, and Maurice Blanchot; he has been the subject of countless literary exegeses and even of a prizewinning biography [see Surya]. Bataille no longer has the merit of being unknown.But who is the Bataille we pretend to know? He is the one with whom many critics identify, yet his work is necessarily misunderstood, sometimes (but not always) in the interests of preserving its insights. Critical work on Bataille naturally emphasizes his theory of dépense (expenditure), his mysticism, his attraction to the sacrificial, sadomasochistic erotics of fascist politics, and tends, viscerally if implicitly, to identify with Bataille’s refusal to be hard in the conventional sense—his repudiation of impermeable, phallic masculinity and its association with moral resolve. In 1945, Bataille wrote that he was the “contrary of him who tranquilly watches the dismasted vessels from the shore, because in fact... I cannot imagine anyone so cruel that he could notice the one who is dismasted with such carefree laughter. Sinking is something altogether different, one can have it to one’s heart’s content...” [OC 6:358]. In 1966, a sensitive critic wrote: “Bataille’s cogito, thus, reads: ‘I sink therefore I am’” [Hollier 138]. In other words, Bataille was no proponent of a sink-or-swim philosophy, but of “the hard desire to endure”—words he wrote to describe Vincent Van Gogh, whose self-mutilation was, from Bataille’s perspective, the necessary precondition of his art. This hard desire is paradoxically the hard labor of unbinding the self, a project that entails yet moves beyond empathizing with those caught in the storm: Bataille insisted that creation required symbolic castration rather than the phallic virtue of the moral man or the swollen pride of those who volunteer heroically for the rescue mission (“Heroism,” he said, “is an [End Page 3] attitude of flight” [OC 5: 347]). As countless critics have demonstrated, even Bataille’s most relentlessly hard-core texts use sexuality as an allegory for the self-shattering of the phallic body.The sacrificial constitution of the man who would sink—for this Bataille was giddily embraced after his death. By 1990, when Yale French Studies devoted a special issue to him, the embrace was equally enthusiastic, but giddiness had given way to some defensiveness. Those theorists who did not admire Bataille equated his repudiation of phallic virtue with the ego-dissolving sublimity of fascism. After all, some of his friends and intellectual heirs had been subjected to public scrutiny for their anti-Semitic, often fascist sympathies. Implicitly defending Bataille, the editor of that special issue insisted on Bataille’s “ethics” of sacrifice. He claimed that Bataille held “onto the possibility of an ethics” through a paradoxically “incessant repositing of the ethical” [Stoekl 2, 5]. This account of Bataille’s ethics avoids the problem that the ethics of sacrifice in... (shrink)

This article argues that an apocalyptic interpretation of divine revelation provides the theological foundation for discerning the appropriate space for human life to thrive. This apocalyptic theological ethic is contrasted with that of end-time Christians who have supported Donald Trump as God’s chosen one and who joined the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. It contrasts five features of apocalyptic thinking for both groups: (1) expectation of the end of the world, (2) ethics, (3) Christ, nation, and (...) the first commandment (4) Christians and Jews, and (5) the cross. While the article seeks to give a fair description of the beliefs of end-time Christians, it argues that their beliefs have taken a heretical and dangerous turn. (shrink)

Every genuine history of philosophy is a guide-book which directs intellectual travel without substituting for it, even when it maps the shifting sands and storms of contemporary thinking which often seem too close to exhibit any permanent pattern of behaviour to the casual visitor. Useful current introductions are rare and invaluable to the beginner. Father Bochenski offers his work both as a general survey—and this will demand a high degree of intelligent concentration from his general reader—and as a bridgehead for (...) further systematic study, providing it with a fifty-five page bibliography. One feels at once that it is the specialist and the student already familiar to some extent with these philosophers and philosophies who will benefit most from this guide. It is a remarkable achievement to accurately summarise and summarily judge in some 264 pages the varied cross-currents of about forty years of intensely lived experience and reflection, particularly when there is no single dominant school of thought. Indeed the author notes: “To-day, as always, a violent struggle is raging between antagonistic views of the world, and it is possibly more violent in our own time than it was during the past century. Rarely has it been of such intensity, with such a wealth of opposing viewpoints or expressed in such elaborate and refined conceptual frameworks”. (shrink)

Climate change represents a significant challenge to the entire planet and its inhabitants. While few, if any, will be able to escape totally the effects of climate change, it will fall most heavily, at least initially, on the poor, regardless of where they reside. We may observe already possible scenarios. The tragic situation in Darfur may be less an ethnic conflict and more a clash between marginal farmers and herdsmen in an increasingly more arid local climate. More powerful storms on (...) the scale of hurricane Katrina, which affected the poor more than other economic groups, may become commonplace. The alteration of the maple sugar cycle may be a harbinger of stress on the world's flora and fauna that humanity depends upon. Mainstream climatologists have concluded that human behavior, primarily the effects of industrialization, causes human-induced climate change. Left unchecked climate change will have serious consequences for humanity, especially the poor. Business, the primary agent of industrialization, is both the problem and the solution. This paper will apply the ethics of philosophers John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Aristotle, along with the work of strategist Michael Porter. Understanding how climate change management fits into a firm's strategic opportunity will contribute to the ability of business to develop the technologies and business processes necessary to cope with climate change. The paper will conclude with a brief discussion of GE's Ecomagination program as an example of a promising moral response to climate change. (shrink)

In the course of his ethnography of Sicily, Thucydides gives this account of the settlement of Eryx and Egesta in the west of the island : Upon the fall of Troy, some of the Trojans, fleeing the Achaeans by ship, came to Sicily and settled as neighbours to the Sicans; as a group they were called Elymi, while their cities were called Eryx and Egesta. There joined with them in the settlement also some Phocians who were carried from Troy on (...) the same occasion first to Africa by a storm, later from there to Sicily. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11.4 (2001) 391-400 [Access article in PDF] Bioethics Inside the Beltway A Shooting on Capitol Hill: "The Ruby Satellite System," Mental Illness, and Failure of the American Legal System Peter J. Cohen On 24 July 1998, Russell Eugene Weston, Jr., stormed the United States Capitol, forced his way through a security checkpoint, bypassed a metal detector, and entered the office complex of Representative Tom (...) DeLay (R-TX), the House Majority Whip (Weil 1998). During this period of terror, he shot and killed two officers of the Capitol Police and seriously wounded another as they attempted to end his foray. 1 Weston was severely wounded by several Capital police officers and taken into custody. After being treated for his injuries, he was incarcerated in the District of Columbia. 2On 5 May 1999, Weston was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institute in Butner, North Carolina (United States v. Weston, 69 F. Supp. 2d 99 (D.D.C. 1999), 103), where he remains to this day. He has neither been brought to trial nor received appropriate psychiatric therapy, but continues to be warehoused "in solitary confinement under constant observation... in a psychotic state (United States v. Weston, 255 F.3d 873; LEXIS 16851 (U.S. App. 2001b), 3-4 [LEXIS]). I will briefly detail the legal events responsible for this mad situation and suggest alternative actions that should have been taken at the very onset of the case. Early Chronology Although overtly the crime appeared to be senseless and without any conceivable motivation, Weston believed that his acts were justified and necessary. The story he told to the court-appointed forensic psychiatrist, Sally C. Johnson, M.D., 3 was that while working for NASA in the early 1980s, he had developed a "Ruby Satellite System," a powerful machine that could reverse time. With access to this system, nothing was permanent--the user could simply reverse time and exit from the current scene. However, the "System" was now controlled by cannibals who were developing and spreading "Black Heva," the deadliest disease known to [End Page 391] humankind, similar to HIV or the plague. It resulted from human corpses rotting and turning black. Time was running out, and Weston believed he had to return to override the "Ruby Satellite System" in the Capitol so that he could stem the spread of "Black Heva" and prevent world calamity. He believed that if he were tried, convicted, and even executed, he could simply time reverse himself, place himself in a safe within the Capitol, and subsequently resume his life at whatever point he chose (United States v. Weston, 206 F.3d 9 (D.C. Cir. 2000), 19-20).On 22 April 1999, the district court accepted Dr. Johnson's diagnosis that Weston suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, the symptoms of which were so severe that he would be incapable of understanding the proceedings against him and of assisting in his own defense. On this basis, the court had no difficulty in finding him incompetent to stand trial (U.S. v. Weston 1999, 102).At Weston's initial hearing, Dr. Johnson had testified that medication would be efficacious in treating Weston's delusions: [T]he standard of care in someone suffering from this type of symptom picture would be to treat them with medication.... [T]here is a good likelihood that he'll have a positive response, positive in the sense that his symptoms will diminish in response to treatment.... The potential benefits to treating the defendant far outweigh the risks.... (U.S. v. Weston 1999, 108) The defense presented no expert testimony refuting Dr. Johnson's presentation. The district court then ordered that Weston begin receiving medication in order to render him nondangerous and competent for trial (U.S. v. Weston 1999, 108-9). The Problem Weston refused to be medicated! 4 He has continued to claim that the administration of antipsychotic drugs against his will would violate his Fifth Amendment due process liberty interest in avoiding unwanted bodily intrusion and implicated... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Canti VI, Bruto Minore GIACOMO LEOPARDI (Translated by Steven J. Willett) To Peter Green After Italian Valor, lying in Thracian dust an immense ruin, had been uprooted, then in the valleys of green Hesperia, on Tiber’s shore, Fate prepares the tramp of barbarian horse, and from naked forests oppressed by the freezing Bear, calls forth the Gothic swords to overthrow Rome’s renowned walls; sitting alone, soaked in brothers’ (...) blood, through black night in a desolate site, Brutus is determined to die, and the implacable gods and Hell itself he accuses with savage cries and strikes the somnambulant air in vain. Fatuous Valor, the empty mists, the fields of unquiet phantoms are your schools, and behind you strides remorse. To you, marmoreal gods, (whether you reside in Phlegethon or the clouds), to you a laughingstock and mockery is the miserable race from whom you extort temples and a fraudulent law insulting to mortals. Is heaven’s wrath, then, so provoked by terrestrial piety? and do you then sit, Jove, impiety’s protector? and when storm clouds exult through the air, and when arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 you hurl the swift thunderbolt, do you cast the sacred fire on the just and faithful? Invincible destiny and iron necessity crush the sickly slaves of death: and if nothing avails to end their indignities, the common man takes comfort in their necessity. Is the evil without cure less harsh? Does he feel no grief who’s stripped naked of hope? War to the death, eternal, o ignoble fate, the valorous man wages, incapable of surrender; and your tyrannical right hand, victorious as it bears him down, indomitable he shrugs off with a valiant show, when in his noble side the bitter blade runs with blood, and malignly he smiles at the darkening shadows. He displeases the gods who violently breaks into Tartarus. No such courage could be found in their feeble, eternal breasts. Perhaps our torments, perhaps our bitter accidents and wretched passions heaven created as a pleasing spectacle for their idle hours? Not between calamities and crimes, but free in the forests and pure Nature appointed us, once our queen and goddess. But since on earth impious custom has destroyed the blessed realms and subjected our miserable life to other laws; when a virile soul rejects his luckless days does Nature return, and accuse the arrow that’s not hers? 166 CANTI VI, bruto minore Ignorant of guilt and their own misfortunes are the fortunate beasts; serene old age guides them to an unforeseen passage. But if they dash their foreheads on rough tree-trunks or from a mountain cliff cast bodies headlong to the winds, moved by their anguish, against that miserable desire would stand no arcane law or shadowy conception. You alone, among the numerous progeny that heaven created, alone among all, children of Prometheus, regret life. Alone o wretched ones, to you Jove bans, if sluggish fate delays, the shores of death. And you, from the sea stained by our blood, you rise bright moon, and explore the unquiet night and the deadly battlefield of Italian Valor. The victor tramples on kinsmen’s breasts, the hills shudder, from her highest summits ancient Rome collapses— and are you so placid? You saw the birth of Lavinia’s offspring, and their years of happiness, and the memorable victories; and on the mountain peaks you pour your immutable silent light when, in the wreck of the servile Italian name, this solitary place will echo beneath the barbarian tramp. Giacomo Leopardi 167 Here among naked rocks or on green boughs, beast and bird, breasts heavy with their habitual oblivion, ignore the profound ruin and the altered destiny of the world: and as the rooftop of the industrious peasant first glows red, with its morning song the one will wake the valleys, while through high slopes the other will startle the helpless multitude of smaller creatures. Oh destiny! oh insensate race! we are an abject part of things; neither the bloodstained soil nor the howling caves has our calamity ever perturbed, and no human cares stain the stars. Neither to Olympus’ or Cocytus’ deaf kings, or to the unworthy earth, and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionCarolyn J. Dean (bio)... even since he [Nietzsche] became famous has he ever been anything but an occasion for misunderstanding?—Georges Bataille, The Accursed ShareAt the current juncture in the history of studies “on Bataille,” admiration and indebtedness have given way to admiration constrained by ambivalence and indebtedness complicated by a desire for accountability. This special issue provides an opportunity to work through these inevitable critical shifts, symptoms of an (...) immeasurable debt to a writer from whom we have necessarily taken distance. It is also an occasion to ask about our own investments in the renewed production of Bataille.During his lifetime (1897–1962), Georges Bataille was called many names, including a “pornographer” and a fascist, and when he died he became a cult figure among some intellectuals, for whom he represented an eclectic and unappreciated thinker. Since his untimely death, Bataille has become very famous. Now, according to Jürgen Habermas, this former librarian at the Bibliothèque Nationale, editor of Critique, author of covertly circulated erotic books and other works that did not sell well, stands first in a line of French intellectuals leading from “Bataille via Michel Foucault to Jacques Derrida” [Habermas 14]. 1 Bataille’s remains are located in the posthumanist pantheon: his work is joined to the giants of the French philosophical, psychoanalytic, and literary heritage, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, and Maurice Blanchot; he has been the subject of countless literary exegeses and even of a prizewinning biography [see Surya]. Bataille no longer has the merit of being unknown.But who is the Bataille we pretend to know? He is the one with whom many critics identify, yet his work is necessarily misunderstood, sometimes (but not always) in the interests of preserving its insights. Critical work on Bataille naturally emphasizes his theory of dépense (expenditure), his mysticism, his attraction to the sacrificial, sadomasochistic erotics of fascist politics, and tends, viscerally if implicitly, to identify with Bataille’s refusal to be hard in the conventional sense—his repudiation of impermeable, phallic masculinity and its association with moral resolve. In 1945, Bataille wrote that he was the “contrary of him who tranquilly watches the dismasted vessels from the shore, because in fact... I cannot imagine anyone so cruel that he could notice the one who is dismasted with such carefree laughter. Sinking is something altogether different, one can have it to one’s heart’s content...” [OC 6:358]. In 1966, a sensitive critic wrote: “Bataille’s cogito, thus, reads: ‘I sink therefore I am’” [Hollier 138]. In other words, Bataille was no proponent of a sink-or-swim philosophy, but of “the hard desire to endure”—words he wrote to describe Vincent Van Gogh, whose self-mutilation was, from Bataille’s perspective, the necessary precondition of his art. This hard desire is paradoxically the hard labor of unbinding the self, a project that entails yet moves beyond empathizing with those caught in the storm: Bataille insisted that creation required symbolic castration rather than the phallic virtue of the moral man or the swollen pride of those who volunteer heroically for the rescue mission (“Heroism,” he said, “is an [End Page 3] attitude of flight” [OC 5: 347]). As countless critics have demonstrated, even Bataille’s most relentlessly hard-core texts use sexuality as an allegory for the self-shattering of the phallic body.The sacrificial constitution of the man who would sink—for this Bataille was giddily embraced after his death. By 1990, when Yale French Studies devoted a special issue to him, the embrace was equally enthusiastic, but giddiness had given way to some defensiveness. Those theorists who did not admire Bataille equated his repudiation of phallic virtue with the ego-dissolving sublimity of fascism. After all, some of his friends and intellectual heirs had been subjected to public scrutiny for their anti-Semitic, often fascist sympathies. Implicitly defending Bataille, the editor of that special issue insisted on Bataille’s “ethics” of sacrifice. He claimed that Bataille held “onto the possibility of an ethics” through a paradoxically “incessant repositing of the ethical” [Stoekl 2, 5]. This account of Bataille’s ethics avoids the problem that the ethics of sacrifice in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Political Theology of Climate Change by Michael S. Northcott, and: Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration by Gretel Van WierenKevin J. O’BrienA Political Theology of Climate Change Michael S. Northcott grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2013. 335 pp. $30.00Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration Gretel Van Wieren washington, dc: georgetown university press, 2013. 208 pp. $29.95These two excellent books, A Political Theology (...) of Climate Change by Michael S. Northcott and Restored to Earth by Gretel Van Wieren, offer distinct directions for Christian environmental ethics: Northcott develops a rigorous analysis of climate change as a failure of enlightenment rationality and politics, while Van Wieren argues that those who care about the earth can connect with it through the practice of ecological restoration. Northcott theologically defines a complex global problem; Van Wieren theologically engages a community-based solution. Each book advances Christian environmental ethics in important ways; considered together, they have much to teach about the content and methods of the field.Northcott’s A Political Theology of Climate Change argues that climate change is a “cosmopolitical crisis” and that Christians should embrace a more ecological and theological politics in response. Theologians and ethicists have long argued that environmental degradation has cosmological roots: The belief that human beings are separate from nature makes global-scale degradation and pollution acceptable. Northcott adds a nuanced political analysis, noting that modern politics is based on a denial “that the weather is political, or that politics influences the climate” (46). Enlightenment thinkers who laid the groundwork for contemporary political structures insisted that storms and floods were not divine responses to human behavior, so modern nation-states are premised on an ideological separation from nature. Climate change reveals the failure of such thinking, so the facts of climate change pose an inherently political challenge.Thus, failures to act on climate change are political failures. Mainstream politics cannot consider that economic growth is unsustainable because it is premised on ignorance about nature. Nations cannot collaborate to solve the problem because they have no common moral agreement “about the ends and goals of human life” (245). Any response to climate change that simply extends [End Page 198] the enlightenment project—by ascribing “rights” to the natural world, or by trusting existing secular political structures—is doomed to failure. Instead, climate change calls for a different cosmology and a different politics.Northcott argues that both can be found in the Christian tradition. Natural law thinking respects the relationship between human beings and external moral standards “set into the structure of the cosmos,” demanding careful accounting for the atmospheric consequences of human action (246). Virtue ethics teaches the ideal of politics as a “community of friendship and love,” nurturing practices of participation in the good life, lived with less consumption and less destructive energy (200).Northcott hopes that small-scale communities inspired by Christian cosmology and Christian politics will transition away from destructive practices and thereby demonstrate a new way of life to the world. His book concludes by reasserting that because climate change is a political problem, it is fundamentally a theological problem, calling human communities to “re-create the historic and customary connections between nature and culture, land and life, love for neighbour and nature which are central to the Jewish and Christian messianism of empire-challenging love” (316).In contrast to Northcott’s focus on political and philosophical failures, Gretel Van Wieren’s Restored to Earth seeks a “more positive, solution-oriented” approach to Christian ethics (viii). The book is about reconnecting humans with the natural world through ecological restoration, “the science and art of repairing ecosystems that have been damaged by human activities” (2), and it argues that restoration models moral life by creating physical, intellectual, emotional, communal, and spiritual connections with the natural world.Van Wieren begins with an interdisciplinary definition of ecological restoration and argues that views on the practice depend upon varied definitions of nature. She then moves to a nuanced account of restoration ecology as a spiritual practice (chapter 3) of community formation (chapter 4). Evocatively recounting a controlled prairie burn in Illinois on Maundy Thursday, Van Wieren... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:There are only three surviving biographical notices regarding Marcus of Orvieto: two as colophons of Vatican manuscripts and a third as an entry in a catalog of the papal library in Avignon where we read: "Item, liber de mortalitatibus septem Martini de Urbevetani Ordinis Minorum." While the spelling of the book title and its author can be attributed to scribal errors or misreadings, the 'seven,' place of origin, and (...) religious order affiliation are accurate. Marcus's Liber de Moralitatibus is indeed divided into seven treatises: On the celestial bodies, On the elements, On the birds, On the fish, On the animals, On trees and plants and On precious gems. The colophons of the two Vatican manuscripts attest to his being a Friar Minor: Ego frater Marcus Urbis Veteris Fratrum Minorum Ordinis pauperculus. The prooemium of the Liber de Moralitatibus attests to the fact that Marcus's patron was Benedict Gaetani cardinal of St. Nicholas in carcere Tulliano,' the future pope Boniface VIII. This would put the time of composition circa 1290. Several allusions in Marcus's work to Paris, viz. the Parisian masters, its patron Ste. Genevieve, indicate that Marcus was at one time a student there and it is conceivable that Benedict commissioned the work while he was a papal legate there. Marcus's opus falls into the category of exempla literature, i.e. a source book for preachers.We offer the English translation of the chapter on pelicans as typical of Marcus's way of proceeding which, generally speaking, is threefold. First a physical description, which was generally copied from Bartholomew of England's 'On the Properties of Things,' secondly its spiritual signification attested to by pertinent passages from Scripture and bolstered by citations from the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and thirdly examples of persons who exemplify the spiritual lesson either supportively or adversely. The legend of the pelican piercing its breast in order to revivify its dead chicks was familiar in Christian literature and art signifying analogously Christ's salvific blood redeeming the human race from its fallen state. The following is the English translation of Marcus's treatise 3, 'De avibus,' chapter 31.Chapter 31: On the pelicanThe pelican is seen to possess the following conditions or properties according to the doctors.1. First of all, as Isidore says, it is a "bird dwelling in solitude along the banks of the Nile." This signifies preachers and contemplative persons who flee the vanities of the world and occupy themselves with heavenly consolations or delightful and re-creative consolations of Sacred Scripture, Psalm 54, 8-9: Far away I would flee; I would lodge in the wilderness. I would hasten to find shelter from the violent storm and the tempest. Bernard, On the Canticle of Canticles and in his sermons: "Divine consolation is delicate, it is not given to those preoccupied with what is alien to it." Ambrose, On Luke: "Those preoccupied with secular vanities cannot know what is divine."2. Secondly, as Isidore says, whatever it eats, it first dips in water with its foot and having done so, using the foot as a hand as it were, puts it [the morsel] in its mouth. This signifies doctors [i. e. teachers] and preachers who practice what they teach or preach after the example of the Apostle, Romans 15, 18: I will not dare to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me. Jerome, To Nepotian: "Make sure your deeds do not 'confound' your words, lest when you speak in the assembly someone might say to himself: 'Physician, cure yourself'."3. Thirdly, as Isidore says, of all the birds, with the exception of the phylargum, only the pelican uses its foot as a hand. This signifies a devout religious who frequently, motivated by holy desires and affections, prefers holy meditations rather than manual labor. 1Tim. 4: 7-8: Train yourself for devotion, for while physical training is of.. (shrink)

During the mid-18th century, when electricity was coming into its own, natural philosophers began to entertain the possibility that electricity is the mysterious nerve force. Their attention was first drawn to several species of strongly electric fish, namely torpedoes, a type of African catfish, and a South American "eels." This was because their effects felt like those of discharging Leyden jars and could be transmitted along known conductors of electricity. Moreover, their actions could not be adequately explained by popular mechanical (...) theories. Many of the early documents supportive of the hypothesis of animal electricity were associated with the Dutch colonies in South America. This article presents and examines those documents, and shows how Dutch scientists on both sides of the Atlantic conducted experiments and communicated with each other in the 1750s and 1760s. It reveals the important roles played by inquisitive physicians and lovers of nature in South America, and by natural philosophers and collectors of exotic specimens in the Netherlands—learned men who began to make a credible case for animal electricity in some exciting places at a pivotal moment in time. (shrink)

Cooperation can evolve in the context of cognitive activities such as perception, attention, memory, and decision making, in addition to physical activities such as hunting, gathering, warfare, and childcare. The social insects are well known to cooperate on both physical and cognitive tasks, but the idea of cognitive cooperation in humans has not received widespread attention or systematic study. The traditional psychological literature often gives the impression that groups are dysfunctional cognitive units, while evolutionary psychologists have so far studied cognition (...) primarily at the individual level. We present two experiments that demonstrate the superiority of thinking in groups, but only for tasks that are sufficiently challenging to exceed the capacity of individuals. One of the experiments is in a brain-storming format, where advantages of real groups over nominal groups have been notoriously difficult to demonstrate. Cognitive cooperation might often operate beneath conscious awareness and take place without the need for overt training, as evolutionary psychologists have stressed for individual-level cognitive adaptations. In general, cognitive cooperation should be a central subject in human evolutionary psychology, as it already is in the study of the social insects. (shrink)

Principles and the context, by J. C. Bennett.--Love monism, by J. M. Gustafson.--Responsibility in freedom, by E. C. Gardner.--The new morality, by G. Fackre.--When love becomes excarnate, by H. L. Smith.--Situational morality, by R. W. Gleason.--The nature of heresy, by G. Kennedy.--Situation ethics under fire, by J. Fletcher.

This study investigated the relationship between supervisor personality and subordinate reports of exposure to bullying and harassment at work. Three research questions were examined: (a) Is there a direct relationship between supervisor personality and reports of workplace bullying? (b) Is there an interaction between supervisor personality and supervisors' perceived stress as predictors of workplace bullying? (c) Will subordinates who experience bullying at their workplace rate their supervisor's personality more negatively (negative halo effect)? The sample consisted of 207 supervisors and employees (...) within 70 Norwegian restaurants. Supervisors low on conscientiousness, high on neuroticism and portraying high levels of exposure to stress were the subject of significantly more reports from subordinates of exposure to workplace bullying. An interaction between agreeableness and stress was found showing that agreeableness is related to bullying under low levels of stress. In addition, subordinates who perceived their supervisor as being low on agreeableness and high on introversion reported significantly more workplace bullying, supporting a negative halo effect hypothesis. (shrink)

This study investigated the relationship between supervisor personality and subordinate reports of exposure to bullying and harassment at work. Three research questions were examined: Is there a direct relationship between supervisor personality and reports of workplace bullying? Is there an interaction between supervisor personality and supervisors’ perceived stress as predictors of workplace bullying? Will subordinates who experience bullying at their workplace rate their supervisor’s personality more negatively? The sample consisted of 207 supervisors and employees within 70 Norwegian restaurants. Supervisors low (...) on conscientiousness, high on neuroticism and portraying high levels of exposure to stress were the subject of significantly more reports from subordinates of exposure to workplace bullying. An interaction between agreeableness and stress was found showing that agreeableness is related to bullying under low levels of stress. In addition, subordinates who perceived their supervisor as being low on agreeableness and high on introversion reported significantly more workplace bullying, supporting a negative halo effect hypothesis. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that mammalian chromosomes contain discretecis‐acting loci that control replication timing, mitotic condensation, and stability of entire chromosomes. Disruption of the large non‐coding RNA gene ASAR6 results in late replication, an under‐condensed appearance during mitosis, and structural instability of human chromosome 6. Similarly, disruption of the mouse Xist gene in adult somatic cells results in a late replication and instability phenotype on the X chromosome. ASAR6 shares many characteristics with Xist, including random mono‐allelic expression and asynchronous replication timing. (...) Additional “chromosome engineering” studies indicate that certain chromosome rearrangements affecting many different chromosomes display this abnormal replication and instability phenotype. These observations suggest that all mammalian chromosomes contain “inactivation/stability centers” that control proper replication, condensation, and stability of individual chromosomes. Therefore, mammalian chromosomes contain four types ofcis‐acting elements, origins, telomeres, centromeres, and “inactivation/stability centers”, all functioning to ensure proper replication, condensation, segregation, and stability of individual chromosomes. (shrink)

In this article I argue — drawing on texts of May Sarton and my own research —that old age is often difficult, particularly for women. They have to become dependent and have to survive changes, separation and losses. It can become extremely difficult to maintain a positive sense of self. A network of friends and an image of God in which unconditional love, nearness and togetherness prevail may help older women to live with dignity till the end.

How can hope, love and faith stay alive when dementia enters a home? In this article I shall look especially at the spouse or partner who shares an abode with a person with dementia. Most of the authors in this field, also John Swinton who is perhaps the best known author whose books are written from a theological perspective, focus on care in institutions, that means care by professionals. A partner living with a dementia patient has two main roles: as (...) partner and caregiver. Night and day a partner is witness to the ongoing deterioration of her or his beloved partner, without being a professional. This article is founded not only on literature about dementia patients, but also on the experiences of several partners, as well as my own experiences as a partner. The question we all ask is: 'From where does our strength come?' I argue that what is said in the literature on the subject of dementia patients does not help the partners, because it lays a heavy burden on them, who are already suffering from feelings of grief and guilt. I do not agree with John Swinton's idea that God created dementia. Looking for different ways of thinking about God and faith to survive with hope and love, I turn to the exegesis of the creation stories by Ellen van Wolde. These give the opportunity to take the evil of the situation of the deterioration of the personality of a patient with dementia seriously, and at the same time grant the possibility to turn the grief and guilt feelings into strength to fight evil, together with a God whose empathy and love stays with a partner in her or his loneliness and grief. (shrink)