Navigating Postmodern Theology: Insights from Jean-Luc Marion and Gianni Vattimo’s Philosophy provides an introduction to these two authors in relation to theology and metaphysics. This book invites the reader to consider new ways of thinking about theology in a postmetaphysical way, grounded in Marion’s phenomenology and Vattimo’s philosophy.

Essences have been assigned important but controversial explanatory roles in philosophical, scientific, and social theorizing. Is it possible for the same organism to be first a caterpillar and then a butterfly? Is it impossible for a human being to transform into an insect like Gregor Samsa does in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis? Is it impossible for Lot’s wife to survive being turned into a pillar of salt? Traditionally, essences (or natures) have been thought to help answer such central questions about (...) existence, identity, persistence, and modality. These questions are not only of great philosophical interest, they also are of great interest to society at large. This Handbook surveys the state of the art on essence. Core issues about essence are discussed in 33 chapters, all of them written exclusively for this volume by leading experts. (shrink)

Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the (...) fundamental questions concerning the nature of intrinsic value are treated in depth and from a variety of viewpoints. These questions include how to understand the concept of intrinsic value, what sorts of things can have intrinsic value, and how to compute intrinsic value. The editors have added an introduction that ties these questions together and places the contributions in context, and they have also provided an extensive bibliography. The result is a comprehensive, balanced, and detailed picture of current thinking about intrinsic value, one that provides an indispensable backdrop against which future writings on the topic may be assessed. (shrink)

New pedagogical visions and technological developments have brought argumentation to the fore of educational practice. Whereas students previously 'learned to 'argue', they now 'argue to learn': collaborative argumentation-based learning has become a popular and valuable pedagogical technique, across a variety of tasks and disciplines. Researchers have explored the conditions under which arguing to learn is successful, have described some of its learning potentials and have developed Internet-based tools to support such learning. However, the further advancement of this field presently faces (...) several problems, which the present book addresses. Three dimensions of analysis - historical, theoretical and empirical - are integrated throughout the book. Given the nature of its object of study - dialogue, interaction, argumentation, learning and teaching - the book is resolutely multidisciplinary, drawing on research on learning in educational and psychological sciences, as well as on philosophical and linguistic theories of dialogue and argumentation. (shrink)

Adherents of the Abrahamic religions have traditionally held that God is morally perfect and unconditionally deserving of devotion, obedience, love, and worship. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures tell us that God is compassionate, merciful, and just. As is well-known, however, these same scriptures contain passages that portray God as wrathful, severely punitive, and jealous. Critics furthermore argue that the God of these scriptures commends bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia, condones slavery, and demands the adoption of unjust laws-for example, laws that (...) mandate the death penalty for adultery and rebellion against parents, and laws institutionalizing in various ways the diverse kinds of bigotry and oppression just mentioned. In recent days, these sorts of criticisms of the Hebrew Bible have been raised in new and forceful ways by philosophers, scientists, social commentators, and others. This volume brings together eleven original essays representing the views of both critics and defenders of the character of God as portrayed in these texts. Authors represent the disciplines of philosophy, religion, and Biblical studies. Each essay is accompanied by comments from another author who takes a critical approach to the thesis defended in that essay, along with replies by the essay's author. (shrink)

Recent developments toward a more holistic biology do not eliminate reductionism and determinism, but they do suggest more complex forms of them, in which there are multiple, interacting influences, as there are in complex or chaotic systems. Though there is a place in biology for both systemic and atomistic modes of explanation, for those with a theological perspective the shift to complex explanations in biology is often welcome. It suggests a more subtle view of divine action in which God's purposes (...) are affected through engagement with the complex systems of creation rather than by discrete interventions. It also invites us to connect the biological interdependence with the interdependence in the nature and purposes of God, and it is consonant with a mystical vision of the unity of all things. (shrink)

Bovine tuberculosis is the most economically important animal health policy issue in Britain. The problem of what to do about badgers has plagued successive governments since a dead badger was discovered with bovine TB in 1971. Successive Labour governments oversaw the Randomised Badger Culling Trial from 1998 to 2006. Despite the RBCT recommendation against culling, the 2010–2015 Coalition government implemented pilot badger culls. This paper provides an account of the evolution of bovine TB and badger control policy, focusing on the (...) 1997–2010 Labour, the 2010–2015 Coalition and the 2015-present Conservative governments. Interviews with bovine TB policy stakeholders supplement discussion of the development of bovine TB policy. The paper discusses the science and politics of bovine TB policy, in which there are different badger control policies in Westminster, Welsh and Scottish governments. Badger control is a highly polarised issue, and the Coalition and Conservative governments have been heavily criticised for a culling policy opposed by the independent scientific community. Recent governments have defended badger culling on the basis of veterinary advice and experience in countries such as New Zealand. The paper concludes with two key recommendations to inform controversial animal health and welfare policy issues such as bovine TB. First, mandatory Animal Welfare Impact Assessment provides objective data on the impacts of policy options on cows and badgers. Second, robust ethical analysis, conducted by independent experts using established moral frameworks, should be applied to animal health and welfare issues for the benefit of decision makers. (shrink)

Although scholarship in philosophy of action has grown in recent years, there has been little work explicitly dealing with the role of time in agency, a role with great significance for the study of action. As the articles in this collection demonstrate, virtually every fundamental issue in the philosophy of action involves considerations of time. The four sections of this volume address the metaphysics of action, diachronic practical rationality, the relation between deliberation and action, and the phenomenology of agency, providing (...) an overview of the central developments in each area with an emphasis on the role of temporality. Including contributions by established, rising, and new voices in the field, _Time and the Philosophy of Action _brings analytic work in philosophy of action together with contributions from continental philosophy and cognitive science to elaborate the central thesis that agency not only develops in time but is shaped by it at every level. (shrink)

We highlight connections between accessible categories and abstract elementary classes , and provide a dictionary for translating properties and results between the two contexts. We also illustrate a few applications of purely category-theoretic methods to the study of AECs, with model-theoretically novel results. In particular, the category-theoretic approach yields two surprising consequences: a structure theorem for categorical AECs, and a partial stability spectrum for weakly tame AECs.

We do things in time. Philosophy of action can capture this phenomenon in at least two ways. On one hand, it might focus on the way that temporal preferences and long-term temporal horizons affect the rationality of decisions in the present (see, e.g., Parfit 1984; Rawls 1971). Such work may focus on the way we discount the distant future, for example, or prioritize the future over the past. Approaches of this kind treat time as, in a sense, something external to (...) agency; it sets various constraints on what we may rationally intend, for example. But if temporal considerations can constrain agency, it follows that they can also structure it internally, and if they can do so, it seems likely that this is possible because agency is already temporally structured. This volume focuses on the way that agency is temporally structured from within, such that time is an ineliminable constituent of agency. (shrink)

The paper examines the problematic understanding of “risk” in entrepreneurial literature that locates courage in either the loss orgain of having or in the difficulty and hardship of the doing. We argue in this paper that what is lost in this vernacular view of courage is a deeper notion of the subjective dimension of work and the social need of society. Grounded within the Catholic social and moral tradition, we find a richer notion of courage, which in part corrects and (...) rounds out the insufficient description of the vernacular understanding of courage in entrepreneurship. What we also find in this account of the virtues and subjective dimension of work is greater explanatory power of what happens to the entrepreneur in the work that he or she does. The end result of this analysis is a more spiritual, ethical and social understanding of entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Bovine tuberculosis is an important animal health policy issue in Britain, which impacts farmers, the public, domestic farmed cattle and the wild badger population. The Westminster government’s badger culling policy in England, which began in 2013, has caused considerable controversy. This is in part because the Independent Scientific Group advised against culling, based on the Randomised Badger Culling Trial. Those opposed to badger culling support more stringent cattle-based measures and the vaccination of badgers. This paper argues for ethical analysis of (...) public policy options which impact sentient species. It provides a summary Animal Welfare Impact Assessment of a do-nothing approach, badger culling, and badger vaccination. A utilitarian analysis is then applied to these policy options considering human wellbeing and animal welfare. The analysis compares a badger culling policy that achieves a 19% reduction in bovine TB incidence, a badger vaccination model achieving a 12.5% reduction, and a do-nothing approach. Policy options are assessed over 9 years and a longer timeframe, and uncertainty is considered. The analysis finds that non-culling approaches, particularly badger vaccination, result in greater total utility, compared to badger culling. Badger culling causes 30% reduction in the badger population in England as well as substantial harms due to the culling process. Culling is opposed by public opinion and is associated with considerable risks and uncertainty. In contrast, non-culling approaches, such as cattle-based measures and badger vaccination, are supported by public opinion and are not associated with such risks. (shrink)

Bovine tuberculosis is the most important animal health and welfare policy issue in Britain. Badgers are a wildlife reservoir of disease, although the eight-year Independent Scientific Group Randomised Badger Culling Trial concluded with a recommendation against culling. The report advised government that bovine TB could be controlled, and ultimately eradicated, by cattle-based measures alone. Despite the ISG recommendation against culling, the farming and veterinary industries continued to lobby government for a badger cull. The 2005–2010 Labour government followed the ISG advice (...) and decided against a cull. The 2010–2015 Coalition and the 2015-present Conservative governments have followed a badger culling policy. This paper investigates whether a virtuous government would cull badgers. It provides an overview of virtue theory in the context of government animal health and welfare policy. Bovine TB and badger control policy options are then analysed in the context of the virtues of justice, wisdom, integrity, loyalty, curiosity, trust, empathy, compassion and aesthetics. Justice is the first virtue of government, and badger culling is seriously problematic from a virtue perspective given that five badgers are culled per cow that avoids slaughter as a result. Analysis based on other virtues strongly suggests that government should not cull badgers. The paper concludes that a virtuous government would not cull badgers as part of policy to control bovine TB in cattle. (shrink)

The paper examines the problematic understanding of “risk” in entrepreneurial literature that locates courage in either the loss orgain of having or in the difficulty and hardship of the doing. We argue in this paper that what is lost in this vernacular view of courage is a deeper notion of the subjective dimension of work and the social need of society. Grounded within the Catholic social and moral tradition, we find a richer notion of courage, which in part corrects and (...) rounds out the insufficient description of the vernacular understanding of courage in entrepreneurship. What we also find in this account of the virtues and subjective dimension of work is greater explanatory power of what happens to the entrepreneur in the work that he or she does. The end result of this analysis is a more spiritual, ethical and social understanding of entrepreneurship. (shrink)

We introduce a family of rank functions and related notions of total transcendence for Galois types in abstract elementary classes. We focus, in particular, on abstract elementary classes satisfying the condition known as tameness, where the connections between stability and total transcendence are most evident. As a byproduct, we obtain a partial upward stability transfer result for tame abstract elementary classes stable in a cardinal $\lambda$ satisfying $\lambda^{\aleph_{0}}\gt \lambda$, a substantial generalization of a result of Baldwin, Kueker, and VanDieren.

Bovine tuberculosis is an important and controversial animal health policy issue in England, which impacts humans, cattle and badgers. The government policy of badger culling has led to widespread opposition, in part due to the conclusions of a large field trial recommending against culling, and in part because badgers are a cherished wildlife species. Animal rights theorists argue that sentient nonhumans should be accorded fundamental rights against killing and suffering. In bovine TB policy, however, pro-culling actors claim that badgers must (...) be culled to avoid the slaughter of cattle. The first part of the paper compares AR theories of Regan, Francione, Cochrane, Garner and Donaldson and Kymlicka in the context of wildlife species. The second part of the paper applies these AR theories to bovine TB and badger control. AR theories are applied to badger control policy options of do nothing, badger culling, and badger vaccination. We conclude that AR theories are strongly opposed to badger culling. In general, culling is prohibited due to a badger’s right to life and its rights against suffering. The AR theories support a do-nothing, i.e. non-culling, non-vaccination approach to badger control. In the case of the AR theories of Regan and Francione, this is based on abolitionist positions with respect to farming. For Cochrane, Garner, and Donaldson and Kymlicka, the do-nothing policy option is preferred because badger vaccination causes a degree of suffering which generally is not for the individual’s benefit. (shrink)

Gene drives are selfish genetic elements that use a variety of mechanisms to ensure they are transmitted to subsequent generations at greater than expected frequencies. Synthetic gene drives based on the clustered regularly interspersed palindromic repeats genome editing system have been proposed as a way to alter the genetic characteristics of natural populations of organisms relevant to the goals of public health, conservation, and agriculture. Here, we review the principles and potential applications of CRISPR drives, as well as means proposed (...) to prevent their uncontrolled spread. We also focus on recent work suggesting that factors such as natural genetic variation and inbreeding may represent substantial impediments to the propagation of CRISPR drives. CRISPR-based synthetic selfish genetic elements, or gene drives, have been proposed as a means by which to genetically alter natural populations to address issues in agriculture, conservation, and public health. We describe key concepts of CRISPR gene drives and limitations that must be addressed before their use in the wild. (shrink)

This book analyses the response of the classic texts of Jewish tradition to Plato's 'Euthyphro dilemma': does God freely determine morality, or is morality independent of God?

Proclus argues that place (topos) is a body of light, identified as the luminous vehicle of the soul, which mediates between soul and body and facilitates motion. Simplicius (in Phys. 611,10–13) suggests that this theory is original to Proclus, and unique in describing light as a body. This paper focuses on the function of this theory as a bridge between Proclus’ physics and metaphysics, allowing the Aristotelian physical notion of “natural place” to serve as a mechanism for the descent and (...) ascent of the soul. (shrink)

This work contains newly translated excerpts from Samuel Pufendor's two major works in political and moral thought, Elements of Universal Jurisprudence and The Law of Nature and Nations. The editor and translator have worked to present a readable and comprehensive introduction to Pufendorf's political philosophy. The new English translation far exceeds what is currently available in terms of sophistication and clarity. A substantive introduction is included to acquaint readers with Pufendorf's ideas.

This paper explores the role of early imperial Peripatetics – in particular, Andronicus of Rhodes, Boethus of Sidon, Herminus, and Alexander – in the development of the canonical reading of the Categories influentially maintained by Porphyry. I investigate the common threads of Middle Platonist and Peripatetic views on the value of the Categories, focusing on the utility of the method of division (diairesis) for acquiring knowledge (epistêmê), and argue for a shared Peripatetic-Platonist consensus about the reasons why the Categories should (...) ground the philosophical curriculum. In particular, I suggest that Andronicus of Rhodes and Eudorus might have played a significant role in the development of this consensus. (shrink)

This volume explores the many dimensions of the work of Joseph P. Fell. Drawing from continental sources such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as North American thinkers such as John William Miller, Fell has secured a place as an enduring and important thinker within the tradition of phenomenological thought. Fell’s critical development of these strands of philosophy has resulted in a provocative and original challenge to complacent dualism and persistent problems of skepticism, alienation, and nihilism.

Background: Prior research has explored reasons why health care providers may or may not choose to seek an ethics consultation. Although low-quality communication is evident in many ethics consultations, it is unknown whether poor communication in clinical settings is related to health care providers' requests for ethics involvement. Objective: To assess the relationship between self-reported ratings of health care providers' inter- and intraprofessional communication and ethics consultation requests. Method: This cross-sectional survey was conducted using a self-administered questionnaire of physicians and (...) nurses in six intensive care units at one academic medical center in the United States. The questionnaire assessed perceptions about requesting ethics consultations and how health care providers perceive communication. Results: Two hundred sixty-two participants (228 nurses and 34 physicians) responded to the survey (response rate 55%; 59% for nurses and 41% for physicians). Requests for an ethics consult were positively associated with perceived quality of interprofessional communication (r =.13, p <.05), but perceptions of the number of ethical dilemmas that occur on participants' units each month were negatively associated with the perceived quality of intra-professional communication (r = −.17, p <.01). Conclusion: The relationship that was hypothesized between perceived poor communication and increased number of ethics consultations was not borne out by these data. Indeed, we found the opposite; these finding suggests that good inter- and intraprofessional communication may promote the use of outside resources, such as ethics, when they are needed. (shrink)

The principate of Augustus coincided with a surge of interest in the short Aristotelian treatise which we now entitle Categories, contributing to its later installation at the outset of the philosophical curriculum and its traditional function as an introduction to logic. Thanks in part to remarks made by Plutarch and Porphyry , the origin of this interest has often been traced to Andronicus of Rhodes: his catalogue and publication of the Aristotelian corpus began with the Categories and may have drawn (...) fresh attention to a previously obscure treatise. But the later Neoplatonic sources name several other philosophers who also discussed the Categories and played an important role in crafting its interpretation during the first centuries of our era. For example, the Neoplatonist Simplicius discusses the views of Stoics and Platonists who questioned the Categories' value as a treatment of grammar or ontology, while others defended its usefulness as an introduction to logic. These early debates, as these later sources suggest, exercised a lasting influence on the shape of subsequent philosophy and philosophical education within and beyond the Aristotelian tradition. (shrink)

Review of "One For All: The Logic of Group Conflict," by Russell Hardin; "On Nationality," by David Miller; and "Liberal Nationalism," by Yael Tamir.

The concepts of joint probability as implied by the Copenhagen and realist interpretations of quantum mechanics are examined in relation to (a) the rules for manipulation of probabilistic quantities, and (b) the role of the Bell inequalities in assessing the completeness of standard quantum theory. Proponents of completeness of the Copenhagen interpretation are required to accept a modification of the classical laws of probability to provide a mechanism for complementarity. A new formulation of the locality postulate is given, not involving (...) factorizability or conditional probabilities, which clarifies the role of locality in the derivation of the Bell inequalities. (shrink)