Interpretations of Poetry and Religion is the third volume in a new critical edition of the complete works of George Santayana that restores Santayana's original text and provides important new scholarly information.Published in the spring of 1900, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion was George Santayana's first book of critical prose. It developed his view that "poetry is called religion when it intervenes in life, and religion, when it merely supervenes upon life, is seen to be nothing but poetry." This statement (...) and the point of view it espoused contributed significantly to the debate between science and religion at the turn of the century, and its eloquence and clearsightedness continue to have an impact on current discussions about the nature of religion.Interpretations of Poetry and Religion affronted Santayana's peers with its assault on literary and religious pieties of the cultivated classes. William James called its philosophy of harmonious and integral ideal systems nothing less than "a perfection of rottenness."In his insightful introductory essay, Joel Porte observes that while Santayana's theory of correlative objects, his espousal of the "ideal" - the normal human affinity for abstraction - and exaltation of the imagination may have offended some at Harvard, these ideas had a significant influence on other Harvard scholars T.S. Eliot and Santayana's "truest disciple," Wallace Stevens.Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., heads the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at Texas A & M University. William G. Holzberger is a Professor of English at Bucknell University. Joel Porte is Whiton Professor of American Literature at Cornell University. (shrink)

1. Introduction The policy of deterrence, at least to avert nuclear war between the superpowers, has been a controversial one. The main controversy arises from the threat of each side to visit destruction on the other in response to an initial attack. This threat would seem irrational if carrying it out would lead to a nuclear holocaust – the worst outcome for both sides. Instead, it would seem better for the side attacked to suffer some destruction rather than to retaliate (...) in kind and, in the process of devastating the other side, seal its own doom in an all-out nuclear exchange. Yet, the superpowers persist in their adherence to deterrence, by which we mean a policy of threatening to retaliate to an attack by the other side in order to deter such an attack in the first place. To be sure, nuclear doctrine for implementing deterrence has evolved over the years, with such appellations as “massive retaliation,” “flexible response,” “mutual assured destruction”, and “counterforce” giving some flavor of the changes in United States strategic thinking. All such doctrines, however, entail some kind of response to a Soviet nuclear attack. They are operationalized in terms of preselected targets to be hit, depending on the perceived nature and magnitude of the attack. Thus, whether U.S. strategic policy at any time stresses a retaliatory attack on cities and industrial centers or on weapons systems and armed forces, the certainty of a response of some kind to an attack is not the issue. (shrink)

The leading models of disability struggle to fully encompass all aspects of “disability.” This difficulty arises, the author argues, because the models fundamentally misunderstand the nature of disability. Current theoretical approaches to disability can be understood as “nounal,” in that they understand disability as a thing that is caused or embodied. In contrast, this paper presents an adverbial perspective on disability, which shows that disability is experienced as a personally irremediable impediment to daily-living tasks or goals-like-ours. The picture theory of (...) disability technically constitutes a species of relational approach because its analysis references the interplay between an individual and their environment; it differs from other relational accounts, however, by interpreting disability as a certain kind of negative experience—rather than a function of that relationship. This purely descriptive theory makes no normative claims about disability and operates as both a mechanism for the evaluation of the experience of disability and a heuristic device for the proper interpretation of disability. When disability is reframed in this way, the theory offers a particularist perspective which shows if, when, where, and how disability is experienced. (shrink)

Naturalism - the thesis that all facts are natural facts, that is the facts that can be recognised and explained by a natural science - plays a central role in contemporary analytical philosophy. Yet many philosophers reject the claims of naturalism. The essays in this anthology explore the difficulties of naturalism by revealing the ambiguities surrounding it, as well as the tensions that exist among its critics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Efficacious Grace and Free Will:Six Inadequate ArgumentsSteven J. JensenDuring the de auxiliis controversies, the idea of efficacious grace was used extensively as an attempt to explain the manner in which God infallibly achieves his will at the level of supernatural grace. One meaning of efficacious grace has often been considered inconsistent with the idea of free will. The inconsistency—if there is any—depends upon a particular meaning, according to which (...) efficacious grace has three important characteristics: it is an infallible physical pre-motion. (1) Efficacious grace is "physical" because it moves after the manner of an efficient cause rather than after the manner of a final cause (which would be called a "moral" motion).1 (2) The motion is prior (or a pre-motion) because it causally precedes the act of the will to which it gives rise. Finally, (3) the motion is infallible because that toward which it moves the will in every case must be achieved.Suppose, for instance, that God gives Jerry an efficacious grace to help Jane, who is in need. The grace is not merely the enticement of some good (a moral movement), but is the movement of an efficient cause, after the manner by which fire heats water. Furthermore, the grace is efficacious prior to Jerry's actual choice and does not depend upon his will for its efficacy. Finally, once Jerry is moved by this grace, he will of necessity (or infallibly) choose to help Jane.In what follows, references to efficacious grace will refer to this particular [End Page 115] understanding, with these three characteristics. Other conceptions of efficacious grace, such as that given by Jacques Maritain, are not relevant to this paper.2The combination of these three characteristics is sometimes thought to be inconsistent with a particular understanding of free will, according to which the will is the only created cause that determines itself to its final action. Since efficacious grace is a created cause (and not the divine will), since it is an efficient cause, since it is causally antecedent to the final act of the will, and since it determines the will to act, it is inconsistent with free will. Or so the argument goes, at any rate. Whatever the details of this argument, most people will concede that there is, at the very least, an intuitive inconsistency between free will and efficacious grace. To be moved infallibly by an efficient cause seems incompatible with the movement of the will, the agency of which is free, and which therefore is not moved determinately to some effect.3Those who wish to defend efficacious grace have advanced a contrary claim—that efficacious grace is consistent with human free will—which might be called the Consistency Thesis. Apparent inconsistencies are nothing more than apparent. In defense of the Consistency Thesis, a multiplicity of Thomistic arguments are offered by authors such as Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Steven Long, and Taylor O'Neill.This paper is concerned to show neither the truth nor the falsity of the Consistency Thesis. Rather, it considers six of the arguments defending the thesis and finds all of them wanting. Whatever their merits for other purposes (and often their merits are great), these arguments are inadequate to the task of defending the Consistency Thesis. They are often not bad arguments; they are simply insufficient. They are not enough to show a consistency between efficacious grace and free will. This goal, although modest, is significant, for when confronted with the six arguments readers can be left with the impression that the question is settled. [End Page 116]The Problem ClarifiedThe enemies of efficacious grace suggest the following implication: if the will is moved to act by an infallible physical pre-motion, then the will is determined. The Consistency Thesis may be defended by denying the implication. Even when moved by an infallible physical pre-motion such as efficacious grace (so the defense will argue), the will can remain undetermined. All the arguments discussed below (if they are indeed arguments in defense of the Consistency Thesis) take this approach, although the fourth argument does so only in a very indirect manner.The first argument claims... (shrink)

The aim of this collection is not to reject evolutionary psychology but to open up new vistas which students and researchers can use to ensure that evolutionary ...

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest public health crises of our time. The natural biological process that causes microbes to become resistant to antimicrobial drugs presents a complex social challenge requiring more effective and sustainable management of the global antimicrobial commons—the common pool of effective antimicrobials. This special issue of Health Care Analysis explores the potential of two legal approaches—one long-term and one short-term—for managing the antimicrobial commons. The first article explores the lessons for antimicrobial resistance that can be (...) learned from recent climate change agreements, and the second article explores how existing international laws can be adapted to better support global action in the short-term. (shrink)

Cutting a cake, dividing up the property in an estate, determining the borders in an international dispute - such problems of fair division are ubiquitous. Fair Division treats all these problems and many more through a rigorous analysis of a variety of procedures for allocating goods, or deciding who wins on what issues, when there are disputes. Starting with an analysis of the well-known cake-cutting procedure, 'I cut, you choose', the authors show how it has been adapted in a number (...) of fields and then analyze fair-division procedures applicable to situations in which there are more than two parties, or there is more than one good to be divided. In particular they focus on procedures which provide 'envy-free' allocations, in which everybody thinks he or she has received the largest portion and hence does not envy anybody else. They also discuss the fairness of different auction and election procedures. (shrink)

The identity conception of truth holds that a thinkable is true just in case it is a fact. As such, it sets itself against correspondence theories of truth, while respecting the substantive role played by truth in respect of enquiry. In this article, I motivate and develop that view, and, in so doing, promote a particular conception of sense. This allows me to defend the view from two substantial criticisms. First, that the identity conception of truth is incoherent in respect (...) of its treatment of objects in the realm of reference, and, second, that it is committed to a view of the world in which ordinary objects have no place. (shrink)

Neuromarketing is an emerging field in which academic and industry research scientists employ neuroscience techniques to study marketing practices and consumer behavior. The use of neuroscience techniques, it is argued, facilitates a more direct understanding of how brain states and other physiological mechanisms are related to consumer behavior and decision making. Herein, we will articulate common ethical concerns with neuromarketing as currently practiced, focusing on the potential risks to consumers and the ethical decisions faced by companies. We argue that the (...) most frequently raised concerns—threats to consumer autonomy, privacy, and control—do not rise to meaningful ethical issues given the current capabilities and implementation of neuromarketing research. But, we identify how potentially serious ethical issues may emerge from neuromarketing research practices in industry, which are largely proprietary and opaque. We identify steps that can mitigate associated ethical risks and thus reduce the threats to consumers. We conclude that neuromarketing has clear potential for positive impact on society and consumers, a fact rarely considered in the discussion on the ethics of neuromarketing. (shrink)

The problem -- The text -- Inclinations -- Good -- Nature -- The will -- Ought -- Obligation -- Principles -- Action.

Abstract“Psychological essentialism” refers to our tendency to view the natural world as emerging from the result of deep, hidden, and internal forces called “essences.” People tend to believe that genes underlie a person’s identity. People encounter information about genetics on a regular basis, as through media such as a New York Times piece “Infidelity Lurks in Your Genes” or a 23andMe commercial showing people acquiring new ethnic identities as the result of their genotyping. How do people make sense of new (...) scientific findings that are inherently complex if they don’t have years of specialized training and education at their disposal? Given the substantial overlap between a lay understanding of genetics and lay intuitions about essences, we argue that, when most people are thinking about genes, they are not really thinking about genes in the complex ways that good scientists are. Combating people’s essentialist biases can be a formidable challenge. Although we have identified some promising results of trying to reduce people’s genetic essentialist tendencies, there is still much to learn about how these essentialist biases can be countered. It is important to help people understand genetic information so they are able make well‐informed decisions about their lives. (shrink)

The Human Condition is neither a well-defined nor well-described concept—nevertheless, it is generally agreed that human sexuality is a fundamental and constituent part of it. For most able-bodied persons, accessing and expressing one's sexuality is a (relatively) trouble-free process. However, many disabled persons experience difficulty in accessing their sexuality, while others experience such significant barriers that they are often precluded from sexual citizenship altogether. Recognising the barriers to the sexual citizenship of disabled persons, the concept of a Welfare-Funded Sex Doula (...) Program has been advanced — a program specifically aimed at meeting the various (and often complex) sexual needs of disabled people. Below we show how that program can be justified within at least two different moral frameworks, the capabilities approach and liberal utilitarianism, and consider and repudiate arguments against it. (shrink)

Suppose two players wish to divide a finite set of indivisible items, over which each distributes a specified number of points. Assuming the utility of a player’s bundle is the sum of the points it assigns to the items it contains, we analyze what divisions are fair. We show that if there is an envy-free (EF) allocation of the items, two other desirable properties—Pareto-optimality (PO) and Maximinality (MM)—can also be satisfied, rendering these three properties compatible. But there may be no (...) EF division, in which case some division must satisfy a modification of Bentham’s (1789/2017) “greatest satisfaction of the greatest number” property, called maximum Nash welfare (MNW), that satisfies PO. However, an MNF division may be neither MM nor EFX, which is a weaker form of EF. We conjecture that there is always an EFX allocation that satisfies MM, ensuring that an allocation is maximin, precisely the property that Rawls (1971/1999) championed. We discuss four broader philosophical implications of our more technical analysis. (shrink)

The Welfare-Funded Sex Doula Programme is a proposed sexual needs service that advances the sexual citizenship of disabled people by providing specially trained ‘sex doulas’ to meet the various, often complex, sexual needs of disabled people. Conceived as providing disabled individuals with practical sexual support services, the role of the sex doula includes advocacy, counselling, therapy, and practical relief from sexual tension. The programme constitutes a robust, comprehensive, and theoretically cohesive welfare service that seeks to provision access to sexual citizenship (...) for disabled people. -/- Grounded in Aristotelian concepts of flourishing, the programme identifies sexual citizenship as a fundamental basic need and seeks to ensure that disabled people have the opportunity to achieve the same level of sexuality as able-bodied people. Work advancing the programme includes both philosophical and theoretical arguments showing how the programme is justified under several moral frameworks, and claims made therein have resulted in velitation in the literature regarding the potential of such a programme to violate individuals’ negative rights. (shrink)

The music learning environment is a context in which fundamental forces and values underlying human musicality may be evident. Social bonding within music-making groups is characterized by a high degree of complexity whereas issues of clarity, accuracy, and coordination remain the focus of learning. Physical and cognitive impairments that compromise music learning opportunities offer a critical test of music's link to social bonding.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes’s Dualism by Marleen RozemondSteven J. WagnerMarleen Rozemond. Descartes’s Dualism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. xx + 279. Cloth, $24.00.Rozemond gives particular attention to questions of mind-body distinctness vs. union and to the status of sensory ideas. Her historical emphasis, backed by impressive scholarship, is Descartes’s relation to the late scholastics. Rozemond is clear, alert to detail, and fair-minded. While the text is too long (esp. in (...) chapters 4–5), this study is indeed rich, its scope and architecture justified.Any good reading of a philosopher is defined—both enhanced and limited—by certain decisions. I have mentioned one of Rozemond’s: her account of Descartes’s dialogue with such predecessors as Suárez and Fonseca sheds important light. It makes one ask, further, whether standard histories are not just as wrong to ignore scholastic concerns in, say, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke. Yet Rozemond is less helpful with issues that make more sense when we read forward from the 1640s, not back. An historian also sets a level of philosophical engagement. One chooses between presenting a meaningful narrative, and struggling with the endless problems of detail that can both doom [End Page 678] a philosophical position and give it life. Rozemond inclines toward narrative, often stopping just short of hard questions. Yet she shows curiosity and intelligence throughout. As in the first case, another decision would not have been better or worse but simply yielded a different kind of history.Fundamental is a third choice. A philosopher’s thought may appear as an orderly structure; or as a mix of fixed points and shifting, inconsistent tendencies. Most of us are trained to the former style of representation (although we let philosophers “develop” over time). Rozemond’s Descartes, too, turns out this way. He occupies definite positions. Within each position he knows whether Ρ is a premise for Q, vice versa, or neither. This way of presenting a body of thought, i.e., as a determinate structure admitting logical assessment, is an indispensable tool for historians. Its value in any particular case is, however, a matter of judgment. Rozemond attacks textual problems with skill, often improving decisively on the competition, but the going looks smoother than it is. Sometimes she carries the privilege of selective reading too far. At other times, she overlooks the poor mutual fit of separately smooth solutions, or rests with an outcome that could not have satisfied Descartes. Some examples:1. There is an old question how far Descartes goes towards proving dualism in the Second Meditation, how much is left for the Sixth. Rozemond basically champions the Second Meditation. Although some texts favor this, she ignores important contrary passages. Her reconstruction of the “argument from separability” also fails completely to carry over to Descartes’s alternate proof (AT VII, 85–6) from the indivisibility of mind.2. Rozemond identifies (“pure”) intellection with thought or mind (56). This leaves a problem how sensation could be a mode of thought, given that for her sensations differ from pure thoughts in being ‘modes of the mind as united to the body’ (201, emphasis mine). She remarks that sensations are not ‘straightforward modes of the mind’; yet her earlier chapters have no place for obscure modal hybrids and indeed require the tidy metaphysical scheme that is now denied.3. Although Rozemond handles Descartes’s anti-empiricism well, the discussion of empty space (95–7) no sooner suggests than it drops a crucial question. Descartes traces belief in the void to a childhood prejudice according to which all bodies are perceptible; rejecting the prejudice is supposed to remove support for the hypothesis of the void. But can Descartes really pick up the doctrine of childhood prejudice, an anti-Aristotelian weapon, and turn it against the radically different atomist framework? Rozemond passes on the attendant philosophical and textual problems (cf. 133–7).4. Rozemond’s extensive treatment of sensory perceptions and qualities rewards study (particularly on the importance, for dualism, of problems about body). But she misses the chance for more. Her Descartes firmly “places sensory qualities in the mind.” The real one struggled repeatedly over whether sensory ideas can or must... (shrink)

The sexual citizenship of disabled persons is an ethically contentious issue with important and broad-reaching ramifications. Awareness of the issue has risen considerably due to the increasingly public responses from charitable organisations which have recently sought to respond to the needs of disabled persons—yet this important debate still struggles for traction in academia. In response, this paper continues the debate raised in this journal between Appel and Di Nucci, concurring with Appel’s proposals that sexual pleasure is a fundamental human right (...) and that access to sexual citizenship for the severely disabled should be publicly funded. To that endeavour, this paper refutes Di Nucci’s criticism of Appel’s sex rights for the disabled and shows how Di Nucci’s alternative solution is iniquitous. To advance the debate, I argue that a welfare-funded ‘sex doula' programme would be uniquely positioned to respond to the sexual citizenship issues of disabled persons. (shrink)

This paper reports an experiment which investigates a possible cognitive antecedent of event-splitting effects (ESEs) experimentally observed by Starmer and Sugden (1993) and Humphrey (1995) – the learning of absolute frequency of event category impacting on the learning of probability of event category – and reveals some evidence that it is responsible for observed ESEs. It is also suggested and empirically substantiated that stripped-down prospect theory will accurately predict ESEs in some decision making tasks, but will not perform well in (...) others. This contention, it is argued, is indicative of fundamental descriptive shortcomings in the economic conception of choice under uncertainty and may entail implications beyond the direct concerns of this paper. (shrink)

Prof. Steven Klees draws on 45 years of worldwide analysis as an economist and international educator to paint a detailed picture of conservative, liberal, and progressive views on a wide range of social issues.

Most proposals for new international agreements aim to address important global challenges. If the goal is to solve problems, then the value of these agreements depends on their ability to influence the world — to shape norms, constrain behavior, facilitate cooperation, and mobilize action. A recent review of empirical studies has suggested that many international agreements fail to achieve their aspirations. The review indicates that the form in which states make commitments to each other — through an international legal agreement (...) or through other means — may not be as important as commonly thought. It is the content of the commitments and how these are supported by mechanisms to encourage implementation that matter the most. When developing proposals for new international agreements, like the one that has recently been proposed to address antibiotic resistance, attention to implementation mechanisms should therefore be equal to if not greater than the attention paid to its form. (shrink)

This book offers an original theory of adjudication focused on the ethics of judging in courts of law, and proposes two main theses. One is the good faith thesis, which defends the possibility of lawful judicial decisions even when judges exercise discretion. The other is the permissible discretion thesis, which defends the compatibility of judicial discretion and legal indeterminacy with the legitimacy of adjudication in a constitutional democracy. Together these two theses oppose both conservative theories that would restrict the scope (...) of adjudication unduly, and leftist critical theories that would liberate judges from the rule of law. (shrink)

The reality of truth -- The reality of truth in a fallen world -- The reality of truth in the inerrant word -- The reality of truth in the written word -- The reality of truth in the exclusive Gospel -- The rejection of truth -- The rejection of truth by the first couple -- The rejection of truth by an unbelieving age -- The rejection of truth by a worldly church -- The rejection of truth in the Christian's life (...) -- The reign of truth -- The reign of truth in the expository pulpit -- The reign of truth in a believer's walk -- The reign of truth in the highest worship -- The reign of truth in the final judgment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Within the context of national traditions in colonial science, the scientific activities of Jesuit missionaries present us with a unique combination of challenges. The multinational membership of the Society of Jesus gave its missionaries access to virtually every Portuguese, Spanish, and French colony. The Society was thus compelled to engage an astonishingly diverse array of cultural and natural environments, and that diversity of contexts is reflected in the range and the complexity of Jesuit scientific practices. Underlying that complexity, however, (...) was what I see as a unique combination of institutional structures; namely, European colleges, overseas mission stations, and the regular circulation of personnel and information. With this institutional framework as a backdrop, I briefly trace what I see as the most salient themes emerging from recent studies of Jesuit overseas science: 1) the Societys ability to use scientific expertise to its advantage amid the complex web of dependencies upon which it missionary activities rested; 2) the ability of its missionaries to become intimate with a wide range of cultures and to appropriate natural knowledge held by indigenous peoples, especially in the fields of material medica and geography; and 3) the different ways Jesuits used published accounts of “remote nature” (i.e., natural histories of overseas colonies) to advance their corporate and religious causes. (shrink)