With a few exceptions, Thomists have by and large failed to engage with the historical and hermeneutical turns in philosophy and theology. This article offers an account of what the beginnings of a Thomistic engagement with recent hermeneutical philosophy might look like. In order to develop such an account, the author turns to arguably the most important contemporary hermeneutical philosopher, namely Hans-Georg Gadamer, as a dialogue partner. Despite claims to the contrary, this article argues that Gadamer does not successfully deal (...) with the specter of relativism. It goes on to show how that the thought of Thomas Aquinas can ably deal with this specter. There are two central elements in the argument put forward. Firstly, the author argues that the human being exists in between God as First Efficient Cause of all that exists and God as Final Cause of all that exists. This existence between God as First Efficient Cause of all that exists and God as Final Cause of all that exists furnishes the connatural context in which human knowing and willing unfolds. Secondly, he considers the dynamics of “interinvolvement” between intellect and will. The upshot of these arguments is a construal of reason that is at once capable of universal truth and hermeneutical in nature. Indeed, the universal range of reason and its hermeneutical dimension are in no way opposed to each other: they are rather dual aspects of one and the same reality. (shrink)

Since the appearance of his earliest works on the subject of the emotions, namely, his article “Emotions and Choice” in 1973 and his book The Passions in 1976, Robert C. Solomon has never ceased to develop the idea that we are in some significant sense and to some significant degree responsible for our emotions. His presentation of this thesis in these two works was, on his own admission, somewhat polemical and stood in need of considerable revision. This present volume, which (...) brings together twelve different articles, beginning with “Emotions and Choice” and concluding with two papers from the year 2001, allows those interested in emotion theory to follow in great detail the contours of the development of the thought of one of the most important figures working in this field. (shrink)

According to Heidegger’s interpretation, while Aristotle’s treatment of practical wisdom cannot be divorced from his account of theoretical wisdom, there has nevertheless been a tendency in Western thought to separate what he terms the theoretical and practical modes of concern and to afford a certain priority to the theoretical mode. This article argues that one thinker in the tradition with which Heidegger engaged, namely Thomas Aquinas, constitutes an exception to this analysis. Thomas’s treatment of prudence (prudentia), rooted in Aristotle’s discussion (...) of phronēsis, furnishes an initial point of contact with Heidegger. Turning to Thomas’s account of the precepts of the natural law, I show that implicit therein is an understanding of care that corresponds to Heidegger’s notion of Sorge, albeit an understanding that is imbued with a strikingly different character—namely, a theistic one. Central to this argument is the claim that Thomas escapes Heidegger’s dismissal of ontotheology thanks to his analogical construal of being. (shrink)

This study elicits a concern to show forth those elements in the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas that can menaingfully engage with those trends in contemporary hermeneutical philosophy and theology that highlight the conditioned nature of human understanding. The main point of reference in this regard os the hermeneutical philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. At the heart of this hermeneutical enterprise is Thomas's construal of the relationship between intellect and will, a relationship that can be described as one of dynamic reciprocity. (...) A dynamic interaction between intellect and will obtains in both their natural and graced operations. Hence, the title of this book, The Hermeneutics of Knowing and Willing in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Some might be concerned that the notion of hermeneutics will import the spectre of relativism into Thomas's thought. By guiding the reader through Thomas's doctrine of man as made to the image of the Trinity, his Trinitarian theology, his Christology, and his treatment of grace, the theological virtues of faith and charity, and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the author shows how Thomas in fact offers us resources for a theological hermeneutics of objectivity. The criteria for this objectivity, so the author argues, are Trinitarian, Christological, Pneumatological, ecclesial, and Scriptural. It is to be hoped that this book will be read not only by those who have a particular interest in Thomas's theology but also by theologians outside of the Thomistic tradition, particularly those interested in hermeneutics. (shrink)

Since the appearance of his earliest works on the subject of the emotions, namely, his article “Emotions and Choice” in 1973 and his book The Passions in 1976, Robert C. Solomon has never ceased to develop the idea that we are in some significant sense and to some significant degree responsible for our emotions. His presentation of this thesis in these two works was, on his own admission, somewhat polemical and stood in need of considerable revision. This present volume, which (...) brings together twelve different articles, beginning with “Emotions and Choice” and concluding with two papers from the year 2001, allows those interested in emotion theory to follow in great detail the contours of the development of the thought of one of the most important figures working in this field. (shrink)

Research consent processes must provide potential participants with the necessary information to help them decide if they wish to join a study. On the Oxford ‘A’ Research Ethics Committee we’ve found that current research proposals mostly provide adequate detail (even if not in an easily comprehensible format), but often fail to support decision making, a view supported by published evidence. In a previous paper, we described how consent might be structured, and here we develop the concept of an Information and (...) Decision Aid (IDA) that can support decision making and be used to guide the dialogue between researcher and potential participant. Our proposal requires limited changes to current processes or paperwork and would provide an easily accessible document for others that the potential participant might approach for advice. It could later be integrated with the Informed Consent Form to ensure all matters of concern to the individual participant have been addressed before consent is formally signed off. (shrink)

People with mild to moderate intellectual or multiple disabilities may have serious difficulties in accessing leisure events, managing communication exchanges with distant partners, and performing functional daily activities. Recently, efforts were made to develop and assess technology-aided programs aimed at supporting people in all three areas. This study assessed a new technology-aided program aimed at helping four participants with intellectual and multiple disabilities in the aforementioned areas. The program, which was implemented following a non-concurrent multiple baseline across participants design, relied (...) on the use of a smartphone or tablet connected via Bluetooth to a two-switch device. This device served to select leisure and communication events and to control the smartphone or tablet’s delivery of step instructions for the activities scheduled. Data showed that during the baseline phase, three participants failed in each of the areas while one participant managed to access a few leisure events. During the intervention phase, all participants managed to independently access leisure events, make telephone calls, and carry out activities. These results suggest that the program might be a useful tool for helping people with intellectual and multiple disabilities improve their condition in basic areas of daily life. (shrink)

Compared to our understanding of positive prediction error signals occurring due to unexpected reward outcomes, less is known about the neural circuitry in humans that drives negative prediction errors during omission of expected rewards. While classical learning theories such as Rescorla–Wagner or temporal difference learning suggest that both types of prediction errors result from a simple subtraction, there has been recent evidence suggesting that different brain regions provide input to dopamine neurons which contributes to specific components of this prediction error (...) computation. Here, we focus on the brain regions responding to negative prediction error signals, which has been well-established in animal studies to involve a distinct pathway through the lateral habenula. We examine the activity of this pathway in humans, using a conditioned inhibition paradigm with high-resolution functional MRI. First, participants learned to associate a sensory stimulus with reward delivery. Then, reward delivery was omitted whenever this stimulus was presented simultaneously with a different sensory stimulus, the conditioned inhibitor. Both reward presentation and the reward-predictive cue activated midbrain dopamine regions, insula and orbitofrontal cortex. While we found significant activity at an uncorrected threshold for the CI in the habenula, consistent with our predictions, it did not survive correction for multiple comparisons and awaits further replication. Additionally, the pallidum and putamen regions of the basal ganglia showed modulations of activity for the inhibitor that did not survive the corrected threshold. (shrink)

After having developed his theory of being, the causes and theology, Avicenna studies in chapter 7 of book IX of Philosophia prima the end of human beings. In this paper I analyze Avicenna’s considerations from a metaphysical perspective, and the importance that metaphysics has in the education of human desire. This education must be developed on metaphysical grounds because human being’s most proper desire does not match that of our sensitive desires. This kind of desire is not immediate to our (...) sensory experience, but is known through the arguments placed at the end of the Metaphysics. Thus, metaphysics as an essential feature of the education of human desire might allow us to distinguish different kinds of men. This attitude leads to the classification between ordinary souls and holy souls, i.e. those which enjoy the pleasure of knowledge and those which not. (shrink)

This paper reviews the fate of the central ideas behind the complementary learning systems (CLS) framework as originally articulated in McClelland, McNaughton, and O’Reilly (1995). This framework explains why the brain requires two differentially specialized learning and memory systems, and it nicely specifies their central properties (i.e., the hippocampus as a sparse, pattern-separated system for rapidly learning episodic memories, and the neocortex as a distributed, overlapping system for gradually integrating across episodes to extract latent semantic structure). We review the application (...) of the CLS framework to a range of important topics, including the following: the basic neural processes of hippocampal memory encoding and recall, conjunctive encoding, human recognition memory, consolidation of initial hippocampal learning in cortex, dynamic modulation of encoding versus recall, and the synergistic interactions between hippocampus and neocortex. Overall, the CLS framework remains a vital theoretical force in the field, with the empirical data over the past 15 years generally confirming its key principles. (shrink)

This paper introduces the state space theory of consciousness, positing that the cortex processes information through delay coordinate embedding operationalized by recurrent neural network engines. This leverages the power of Takens' theorem, giving rise to representations of reality as points within state space. Consciousness is posited to arise at the highest order engines amongst hierarchical and parallel engine pathways. Consciousness is cast as a dynamic process rather than as a neuronal state, reconciling dualist intuitions with a monist perspective. Neuronal representations (...) develop uniquely in each individual due to history-dependent training of these engines, accounting for the privacy of qualia while also addressing cortical plasticity and the heuristic nature of cortical processing. Posited engines exhibit non-linear dynamics that are sensitive to initial conditions, explaining phenomena such as ambiguous figure interpretation and offering a pathway to explaining free will. The state space theory aligns with and expands upon major theories (e.g.higher-order theories, global workspace theories, integrated information theory), essentially providing a computational mechanism that unifies elements of these theories. Future work will explore neural mechanisms and validate predictions. (shrink)

BackgroundDespite rapid growth of the scientific literature, no consensus guidelines have emerged to define the optimal criteria for editors to grade submitted manuscripts. The purpose of this project was to assess the peer reviewer metrics currently used in the surgical literature to evaluate original manuscript submissions.MethodsManuscript grading forms for 14 of the highest circulation general surgery-related journals were evaluated for content, including the type and number of quantitative and qualitative questions asked of peer reviewers. Reviewer grading forms for the seven (...) surgical journals with the higher impact factors were compared to the seven surgical journals with lower impact factors using Fisher’s exact tests.ResultsImpact factors of the studied journals ranged from 1.73 to 8.57, with a median impact factor of 4.26 in the higher group and 2.81 in the lower group. The content of the grading forms was found to vary considerably. Relatively few journals asked reviewers to grade specific components of a manuscript. Higher impact factor journal manuscript grading forms more frequently addressed statistical analysis, ethical considerations, and conflict of interest. In contrast, lower impact factor journals more commonly requested reviewers to make qualitative assessments of novelty/originality, scientific validity, and scientific importance.ConclusionSubstantial variation exists in the grading criteria used to evaluate original manuscripts submitted to the surgical literature for peer review, with differential emphasis placed on certain criteria correlated to journal impact factors. (shrink)

There is a driving need computationally to interrogate large bodies of text for a range of non-denotative meaning (e.g., to plot chains of reasoning, detect sentiment, diagnose genre, and so forth). But such meaning has always proven computationally allusive. It is often implicit, ‘hidden’ meaning, evoked by linguistic cues, stylistic arrangement, or conceptual structure – features that have hitherto been difficult for Natural Language Processing systems to recognize and use. Non-denotative textual effects are the historical concern of rhetorical studies, and (...) we have turned to rhetoric in order to find new ways to advance NLP, especially for sophisticated tasks like Argument Mining. This paper highlights certain rhetorical devices that encode levels of meaning that have been overlooked in Computational Linguistics generally and Argument Mining particularly, and yet lend themselves to automated detection. These devices are the linguistic configurations known as Rhetorical Figures. We argue for the importance of these devices for Argument Mining, especially in collocations, and we present an XML annotation scheme for Rhetorical Figures to make figuration more tractable for computational approaches, particularly with an eye on the improvements they offer Argument Mining. We also discuss the intellectual and technical challenges involved in figure annotation and the implications for Machine Learning. (shrink)

Literature reviews have repeatedly emphasized the need to further investigate relationships between corporate social responsibility and micro-organizational variables. The present research attempts to address this call by examining the direct and indirect relationship between individual perceptions of CSR and employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors. Multiphasic data from 207 workplace supervisor–subordinate dyads recruited from an online panel were analyzed to show that organizational identification mediated the relationship between CSR and OCBs. Furthermore, supervisor transformational leadership style moderated the mediation, such that the indirect (...) effect of the organizational identification on the relationship between CSR and OCBs became nonsignificant under low transformational leadership. Based on these results, we make suggestions for using embeddedness programs to improve perceptions of CSR. (shrink)

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H2O). Although this thought experiment was originally introduced to illuminate questions in the theory of reference, it has also played a crucial role in empirically informed debates within the philosophy of psychology about people’s ordinary natural kind concepts. Those debates have sought to accommodate (...) an apparent fact about ordinary people’s judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results from four experiments showing that people do not, in fact, have this intuition. Instead, people tend to have the intuition that there is a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which it is water. We explore the implications of this finding for debates about theories of natural kind concepts, arguing that it supports views positing two distinct criteria for membership in natural kind categories – one based on deeper causal properties, the other based on superficial, observable properties. (shrink)

People more frequently select norm-violating factors, relative to norm- conforming ones, as the cause of some outcome. Until recently, this abnormal-selection effect has been studied using retrospective vignette-based paradigms. We use a novel set of video stimuli to investigate this effect for prospective causal judgments—i.e., judgments about the cause of some future outcome. Four experiments show that people more frequently select norm- violating factors, relative to norm-conforming ones, as the cause of some future outcome. We show that the abnormal-selection effects (...) are not primarily explained by the perception of agency (Experiment 4). We discuss these results in relation to recent efforts to model causal judgment. (shrink)