The _Companion to Bonaventure_ provides an invaluable guide to understanding this great 13th century scholastic luminary. Together the essays will deliver a critical overview of the current research, the major themes in Bonaventure’s life and writings, and how they are being reinterpreted at the start of the twenty-first century.

Bonaventure's Breviloquium is a concise compilation of the principal points of theology, from creation to the last judgement. It is the gateway to the seraphic doctor's major treatises, such as the classical De reductione artium ad theologiam and Itinerarium mentis in Deum. It articulates Christian teaching on God, creatures, the Fall, the Incarnation, grace, the sacraments and judgement. It provides a summary of material treated elsewhere in his Opera Omnia and is accorded the first place among his authentic works by (...) Balduinus Distelbrink in his Bonaventurae Scripta. This persuasive text is revisited by a team of bonaventurean scholars. The genesis of this project is explained by J. A. Wayne Hellmann, OFM.Conv.... (shrink)

Many skills are required for research and many virtues too: patience, humility, audacity, prudence… But I would like to illustrate a very important dimension of our activity: friendship. Actually, our session at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, with Sean Field and Timothy Johnson, under Wayne Hellmann’s chairmanship, is exactly the illustration of what I want to say.1On September 15, 2014, I received an email from Sean Field, in which he told me about a manuscript on (...) sale on Sandra Hindman’s site, Les Enluminures. In the excellent description on line by Laura Light, I was immediately attracted by the mention “THOMAS OF CELANO, Vita et miracula sancti Francisci”: “The opening sections... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reduction's FutureTheology, Technology, and the Order of KnowledgeKevin L. HughesLet me begin with something of a confession. When as a young undergraduate I first encountered medieval texts, and so, for the first time, began to know something of the medieval "way of seeing," I was intoxicated. And I was intoxicated, in part, by the comprehensiveness and unity of this worldview, where God, humans, the cosmos, science, theology, philosophy, nature, (...) supernature – all of these elements fit. So often in my thinking I have repaired to those famous last lines of Dante's Comedy, to the "Love which moves the sun and other stars," as the epitome of the comprehension, coherence, and harmony of the medieval worldview.Perhaps this is one of the reasons I have been attracted to the work of St. Bonaventure. We may all be familiar with the statements that now have become almost truisms, that to know Bonaventure at all, one needs to know the whole system, and that the whole system is found in every kind of work that he had done. "Procession, exemplarity, return, this is the whole of our metaphysics."1 This principle of Order in Bonaventure, as described and analyzed by Wayne Hellmann, is a kind of keystone to all of Bonaventure's work.2 [End Page 227]If you understand the "order," you understand Bonaventure. Such admirable consistency and harmony! Such remarkable unity of perspective! And, at least by many accounts, the Reduction of the Arts to Theology3 is a perfect concise instance of Bonaventure's synthetic vision.It is precisely this unity, as found in the Reduction of the Arts to Theology, that Dieter Hattrup finds problematic. For Hattrup, the notion of unity itself is not problematic; rather, it is the unity of knowledge as conveyed in the Reduction that approaches a deeply problematic modern understanding of knowledge. Hattrup believes he has discovered in this brief treatise the seeds of what we might call a technological or manipulative knowledge. Whatever the limits of Dieter Hattrup's historical and textual brief against the authenticity of the Reduction, his theological queries should put us all on guard if we are to imagine a future for any "reduction of the arts to theology," Bonaventurean or otherwise.A Theological QuestionBonaventura zwischen Mystik und Mystifikation4 begins with a basic theological premise: Christian theology is interested in the relationship between faith and reason, and this interest follows from the even more basic Christian claim that God is distinct from the world. If one has an intra-cosmic notion of the divine, wherein gods are the greatest or most powerful beings among all other beings, then the question between faith and reason does not arise. Gods who are beings can be known in the way we know all other beings, i.e., through reason. Faith, on the other hand, describes the kind of knowledge we can have of the One who is not part but [End Page 228] Maker of the created order. From the time of Philo on, Jewish and Christian believers5 have drawn this careful distinction and explored how faith and reason might be related without being reduced one into the other. Hattrup suggests that this perpetual question is raised with particular intensity with the revival of Aristotelian philosophy in the High Middle Ages, and Bonaventure stands as a major figure in scholastic inquiry. But, he tells us, this question remains crucial to our own time under the sign of "secularization."6It is important to note this opening overture, as it tells us that Hattrup is exploring what he takes to be first and foremost a theological puzzle: Does the Reduction of the Arts to Theology faithfully represent Bonaventure's understanding of the relationship between faith and reason as ways of knowing? Is it consistent with what we find (and what Hattrup has studied elsewhere)7 in his Sentence Commentary, Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, and the Collations on the Hexaëmeron? Most importantly, and more theologically, does the Reduction distinguish properly between faith and reason, as would befit this Doctor of the Church? Or is it the beginning of the collapse of this classic distinction... (shrink)

Milner and Goodale's influential account of the primate cortical visual streams involves a division of consciousness between them, for it is the ventral stream that has the responsibility for visual consciousness. Hence, the dorsal visual stream is a ‘zombie’ stream. In this article, I argue that certain information carried by the dorsal stream likely plays a central role in the egocentric spatial content of experience, especially the experience of visual spatial constancy. Thus, the dorsal stream contributes to a pervasive feature (...) of consciousness. (shrink)

This paper proposes a subjectivist approach to color within the framework of an externalist form of representationalism about phenomenal consciousness. Motivations are presented for accepting both representationalism and color subjectivism, and an argument is offered against the case made by Michael Tye on behalf of the claim that colors are objective, physical properties of objects. In the face of the considerable difficulties associated with finding a workable realist theory of color, the alternative account of color experience set out, projectivist representationalism, (...) claims that the color properties we encounter in experience exist only in the representational contents of our experiences. Color experiences are caused by the physical structure of objects, but objects are never actually colored and color experiences systematically misrepresent objects as colored. However, despite being an error theory of color, projectivist representationalism does not do violence to our everyday use and understanding of color concepts and terms, nor does it undermine the role of color experience in aiding the perceiving subject in navigating through the world. (shrink)

In response to Mole 2009, I present an argument for zombie action. The crucial question is not whether but rather to what extent we are zombie agents. I argue that current evidence supports only minimal zombie agency.

Reflection on the fine-grained information required for visual guidance of action has suggested that visual content is non-conceptual. I argue that in a common type of visually guided action, namely the use of manipulable artefacts, vision has conceptual content. Specifically, I show that these actions require visual attention and that concepts are involved in directing attention. In acting with artefacts, there is a way of doing it right as determined by the artefact’s conventional use. Attention must reflect our understanding of (...) the function and appropriate ways to use these artefacts, understanding that requires possession of the relevant concept. As a result, we attend to the artefact’s relevant functional properties. In these cases, attention is structured by concepts. This discussion has a bearing on the dual visual stream hypothesis. While it is often held that the two visual streams are functionally independent, the argument of this essay is that the constraints on attention suggest a functional interaction between them. (shrink)

Consider the much-discussed case of the distracted driver, who is alleged to successfully navigate his car for miles despite being completely oblivious to his visual states. Perhaps he is deeply engrossed in the music playing over the radio or in philosophical reflection, and as a result he goes about unaware of the scene unfolding before him on the road. That the distracted driver has visual experiences of which he is not aware is a possibility that first-order representationalists happily accept, but (...) higher-order representationalists steadfastly deny. HOR claims that perceptual states become conscious only as the object of higher-order states; perceptual states are not intrinsically conscious. According to HOR, since the driver is supposed to be completely distracted by other cognitive tasks, he cannot form higher-order representations of his visual states, with the result that those states are disqualified as experiences.1 HOR theories have come in two flavors, those that claim that the relevant higher-order representations are thought-like and those that that rely on an inner perception-like mechanism that is directed toward one. (shrink)

The authors of this essay challenge the notion that “philosophy” is irredeemably Eurocentric by providing a series of personal, professional, and pedagogical reflections on their experience in a new graduate seminar on “Indigenous philosophy.” The authors—a graduate student, professor, and Indigenous course-facilitator—share in the fashion of “Indigenous storywork,” as outlined by Stó:lō pedagogue Jo-Ann Archibald. We begin with the instructor and how he was personally challenged to re-evaluate his roots and philosophical praxis in spite of his experience teaching over several (...) decades. The second section describes a student experience and how they measured the exigencies of decolonization against the esteem that their family holds for Canada’s brand of multiculturalism. Finally, we turn to the Indigenous seminar facilitator and his skepticism over whether the course truly constituted decolonized, or “landed,” pedagogy. Throughout, the authors ask about the demands of decolonization and how philosophical pedagogy may center Indigenous futurity. (shrink)

Background U.S. federal regulations require that certain ethical elements be followed to protect human research subjects. The location and clinical circumstances of a proposed research study can differ substantially and can have significant implications for these ethical considerations. Both the location and clinical circumstances are particularly relevant for research in intensive care units (ICUs), where patients are often unable to provide informed consent to participate in a proposed research intervention. Purpose Our goal is to elaborate on the updated 2013 U.S. (...) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance document regarding an exemption from the requirement of obtaining informed consent from patients or their surrogates and to address certain elements within that document, thereby assisting clinicians in developing a framework for emergency research in accordance with the regulatory bodies at their own institutions and in the United States. Methods Review of the 2011 and updated FDA guidance document on exemption from informed consent. Results The current process of obtaining informed consent within ICUs needs to be revisited, especially for research in which timely informed consent is not likely. In particular, the process of obtaining informed consent may not be appropriate or even ethical for critically ill patients in extremis who require an intervention for which there is no current acceptable standard of care and clinical equipoise exists. We provide clinicians with a viewpoint that further elaborates on the FDA guidance document. Limitations The viewpoints provided herein are those of the authors and are therefore inherently limited by the personal views of a selected few. Other clinicians or researchers may not interpret the FDA guidelines in a similar manner. Moreover, the discussion of a guideline document is a limitation in and of itself. The guidelines set forth by the FDA are precisely that—guidelines. Therefore, they may not be followed as outlined in the guidance document within one’s own institution. Our goal is that, by elaborating on the guidelines for planned research involving human subjects in the ICU, institutional regulatory bodies may gain a better understanding in drafting their own document when faced with a clinician or a researcher who wishes to conduct planned research in an ICU. Conclusions We believe that the interpretations provided will allow clinicians to safely undertake planned research in ICUs without endangering the main tenets of ethical research involving human participants. This research is needed for the advancement of care in the critically ill. (shrink)

There are good reasons for pursuing a theory of knowledge by way of understanding the connection between knowledge and luck. Not surprisingly, then, there has been a burgeoning of interest in “luck theories” of knowledge as well as in theories of luck in general. Unfortunately, “luck” proves to be as recalcitrant an analysandum as “knows.” While it is well worth pursuing a general theory of luck despite these difficulties, our theory of knowledge might be made more manageable if we could (...) find a more restricted notion that captured the core phenomena of luck that are relevant to whether or not someone knows. This essay makes the attempt to delineate such a notion, called “mere coincidence.”. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Locke: Sensibilism and Subjectivism Berkeley and Hume: The Separability Principle and the Paradox of Necessary Relations.

Medical students’ concerns during clinical clerkships may not always be addressed with mentors who work under significant time constraints. This study examined 3rd year students’ survey responses regarding patient encounters to elucidate what may be hidden aspects of their learning environment. We analyzed results to an 18-item survey completed during a required ethics and professionalism course in third-year medicine clerkships over a period of 18 months. The survey covered types of concerns elicited by patient encounters, interactions with mentors about concerns, (...) perceptions of mentors, and level of moral distress. We also examined results of a 7-item evaluation of small group discussions during the study period. 1210 surveys and 195 evaluations constituted the study samples. Students’ concerns related primarily to ethics (36.4%, n = 441) and quality of care (34.5%, n = 418). Concerns had not been raised with a mentor in 535 (44.2%) instances. Students experienced moral distress in connection with 35.4% (n = 324) of cases; this was particularly common when a concern applied to a mentor. Higher levels of moral distress were associated with a lower likelihood of wishing to emulate the mentor (r = -0.27, p <.001). Two thirds of students, 66.9% (n = 107), stated that small group discussions where concerns were discussed lowered their stress levels. We suggest that clinical mentors be made aware of students’ learning needs and that structured discussions be available for students to articulate concerns with peers and facilitators in efforts to uncover elements of the hidden curriculum with the goal of optimizing students’ well-being, learning and professional development. (shrink)

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1952.

It is nearly universally acknowledged among epistemologists that a belief, even if true, cannot count as knowledge if it is somehow largely a matter of luck that the person so arrived at the truth. A striking feature of this literature, however, is that while many epistemologists are busy arguing about which particular technical condition most effectively rules out the offensive presence of luck in true believing, almost no one is asking why it matters so much that knowledge be immune from (...) luck in the first place. I argue that the best explanation for the consensus that luck undermines knowledge is that knowledge is, complications aside, credit-worthy true believing. To make this case, I develop both the notions of luck and credit, and sketch a theory of knowledge in those terms. Furthermore, this account also holds promise for being able to solve the “value problem” for knowledge, and it explains why both internal and external conditions are necessary to turn true belief into knowledge. (shrink)

Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter (1987)2 have argued for a version of reductive physicalism about color which they claim can accommodate the basic intuitions that have led others to embrace dispositionalism or subjectivism about color. Jackson (1996) has further developed the view and provided responses to some objections to its original statement. While Jackson and Pargetter do not have much company in endorsing their specific form of color physicalism, elements of their view have shown up in other realist accounts, including (...) the relativized account of color offered by John Spackman (2002), the disjunctivism of color properties endorsed by Peter Ross (2000), and the subjectivist strain present in Sydney Shoemaker’s (1994) discussion of color.3 Additionally, Mark Johnston (1992) has used Jackson and Pargetter’s view as a principal target in his arguments against color physicalism. (shrink)

This paper examines the relevance of philosophical work on consciousness to its scientific study. Of particular concern is the debate over whether consciousness can be naturalized, which is typically taken to have consequences for the prospects for its scientific investigation. It is not at all clear that philosophers of consciousness have properly identified and evaluated the assumptions about scientific activity made by both naturalization and anti- naturalization projects. I argue that there is good reason to think that some of the (...) assumptions about physicalism and explanation made by the parties to the debate are open to serious doubt. Thus this paper is an invitation for those inquiring into whether consciousness can be naturalized to more carefully consider the expected payoff of such efforts. (shrink)

Strong Representationalism (SR) claims that the phenomenal character of experience is a certain kind of representational content. Furthermore, SR theorists often maintain that the phenomenal qualities of experience just are properties of the objects of experience, represented in experience.1 Another claim held by SR theorists, often cited as a reason for embracing their view, is that experience is transparent. Transparency is the phenomenon of introspection of your experience revealing nothing but the objects, properties, and relations that your experience is an (...) experience of. In this note, I will raise a problem for SR based on its apparent difficulty in accounting for representation under an aspect at the level of phenomenal appearances. I will then discuss and briefly criticize Michael Tye’s proposed response to this sort of concern. I conclude by offering my own reply to the problem. What follows focuses on pain experience, but there is no barrier to extending these comments to certain other forms of experience, both sensory and perceptual. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to show how scientific explanation functions in the context of idealized models. It argues that the aspect of explanation most urgently requiring investigation is the nature of the connection between global theories and explanatory local models. This aspect is neglected in traditional accounts of explanation. The paper examines causal, minimal model, and structural accounts of model-based explanation. It argues that they too fail to offer an account of the connection with global theory that can (...) justify the explanatory power of an idealized local model, and consequently these accounts are unable effectively to distinguish explanatory from non-explanatory models. On the account proposed here, scientific explanation requires theoretical integration between the local model described in the explanation and a global theory with independent explanatory power. (shrink)

This paper responds to Philipona & O’Regan (2006), which attempts to account for certain color phenomena by appeal to singularities in the space of “accessible information” in the light striking the retina. Three points are discussed. First, it is unclear what the empirical significance/import is of the mathematical analysis of the data regarding the accessible information in the light. Second, the singularity index employed in the study is both mathematically and empirically faulty. Third, the connection drawn between their findings and (...) some data from the World Color Survey is lacking in quantitative analysis in places where it is needed. The difficulties raised prevent Philipona & O’Regan’s conclusions from being accepted. (shrink)

This paper examines the status of unattended visual stimuli in the light of recent work on the role of attention in visual perception. Although the question of whether attention is required for visual experience seems very interesting, this paper argues that there currently is no good reason to take a stand on the issue. Moreover, it is argued that much of the allure of that question stems from a continued attachment to the defective ‘inner picture view’ of experience and a (...) mistaken notion that the ultimate goal of vision is to produce visual experience. The paper considers a promising general account of the content and structure of vision and presents reasons for not taking that account to be committed to any substantive claims about the experiential status of unattended visual stimuli. Also addressed are the active nature of vision and the role of vision in enabling our ecological success. These considerations highlight that visual experience is not the whole of vision and that a much more important question about unattended visual stimuli than whether they are consciously experienced is what contribution they make to how we interact with the world. (shrink)

Tetris provides a difficult, dynamic task environment within which some people are novices and others, after years of work and practice, become extreme experts. Here we study two core skills; namely, choosing the goal or objective function that will maximize performance and a feature-based analysis of the current game board to determine where to place the currently falling zoid so as to maximize the goal. In Study 1, we build cross-entropy reinforcement learning models to determine whether different goals result in (...) different feature weights. Two of these optimization strategies quickly rise to performance plateaus, whereas two others continue toward higher but more jagged heights. In Study 2, we compare the zoid placement decisions made by our best CERL models with those made by 67 human players. Across 370,131 human game episodes, two CERL models picked the same zoid placements as our lowest scoring human for 43% of the placements and as our three best scoring experts for 65% of the placements. Our findings suggest that people focus on maximizing points, not number of lines cleared or number of levels reached. They also show that goal choice influences the choice of zoid placements for CERLs and suggest that the same is true of humans. Tetris has a repetitive task structure that makes Tetris more tractable and more like a traditional experimental psychology paradigm than many more complex games or tasks. Hence, although complex, Tetris is not overwhelmingly complex and presents a right-sized challenge to cognitive theories, especially those of integrated cognitive systems. (shrink)

In a recent book, ^[1] Michael Tye has offered a representational theory of phenomenal consciousness. As Tye himself admits, part of his account involves arguing for a position which has traditionally received little support; he contends that _all_ experiences and feelings have representational.

There is significant interest in type-free systems that allow flexible self-application. Such systems are of interest in property theory, natural language semantics, the theory of truth, theoretical computer science, the theory of classes, and category theory. While there are a variety of proposed type-free systems, there is a particularly natural type-free system that we believe is prototypical: the logic of recursive algorithms. Algorithmic logic is the study of basic statements concerning algorithms and the algorithmic rules of inference between such statements. (...) As shown in [1], the threat of paradoxes, such as the Curry paradox, requires care in implementing rules of inference in this context. As in any type-free logic, some traditional rules will fail. The first part of the paper develops a rich collection of inference rules that do not lead to paradox. The second part identifies traditional rules of logic that are paradoxical in algorithmic logic, and so should be viewed with suspicion in type-free logic generally. (shrink)

In Practical Reality, Jonathan Dancy argues that our reasons for action are not psychological states, but things we take to be facts about the world, and shows that the reasons themselves are not causes. Dancy concludes that intentional actions are not explained by beliefs and desires, and that explanations of action in terms of reasons are not causal explanations. I show that these further conclusions are unwarranted by sketching an alternative theory of reasons according to which what it is for (...) an action to be done for a reason is for certain beliefs and desires to cause the action. Our reasons for action are the contents of those beliefs and desires. This theory is not only compatible with the facts about reasons Dancy has established, but explains many things that Dancy’s theory does not account for. I make no claim here about the precise adequacy of the simplified theoretical definitions I present. My goal is to show that a systematic theory along these lines is a promising approach to understanding an important aspect of human nature. (shrink)

We develop a functional abstraction principle for the type-free algorithmic logic introduced in our earlier work. Our approach is based on the standard combinators but is supplemented by the novel use of evaluation trees. Then we show that the abstraction principle leads to a Curry fixed point, a statement C that asserts C ⇒ A where A is any given statement. When A is false, such a C yields a paradoxical situation. As discussed in our earlier work, this situation leaves (...) one no choice but to restrict the use of a certain class of implicational rules including modus ponens. (shrink)

Grice’s Razor is a methodological principle that many philosophers and linguists have used to help justify pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena over semantic explanations. A number of authors in the debate over contextualism argue that an invariant semantics together with Grice’s (1975) conversational principles can account for the contextual variability of knowledge claims. I show here that the defense of Grice’s Razor found in these “Gricean invariantists,” and its use against epistemic contextualism, display all the problems pointed out earlier in (...) Davis (1998). The everyday variation in acceptable knowledge claims is better explained in terms of implicature than indexicality, but general conversational principles shed little light on whether ‘know’ is used hyperbolically, meiotically, or loosely in a context, although this issue is crucial in deciding what if anything ‘S knows p’ implicates. I present reasons favoring an account of the representative bank case in terms of loose use, making clear how they differ from Grice’s Razor. (shrink)

This review essay emphasizes the distinction between academic art history, based ultimately on the model of scientific research, and the sort that Roberto Calasso practices in his 2009 study Tiepolo in Pink. It is difficult to locate the book's genre, and the reviewer rejects identifying it as a biography (of the sort practiced by Irving Stone, Somerset Maugham, and Dimitri Merejkovski), since Calasso, like most other writers on Tiepolo, stresses how little we know about his personality, which was elusive, and (...) about his private life, which was undramatic. What chiefly interests both Calasso and the reviewer is whether Tiepolo, whose ceiling frescoes are without gravity—their “antigravity” draws the painted figures upward—is an artist without gravitas. The reviewer supports Calasso's argument that the thirty-two etchings comprising the Capricci and Scherzi make it absurd to consider Tiepolo artistically, intellectually, or morally frivolous. “Scientific” art historians have applied the category of “decoration” to these somber etchings, with their incomprehensible allegories, but Calasso, himself an artist (a novelist), approaches these pictures without scientific prejudice. The reviewer traces the dour attitude of mainstream art historians toward Tiepolo to his rivalry for commissions in the 1760s with Anton Raphael Mengs, a representative of the rising Enlightenment cult of virtue and the austere aesthetics of a rising neoclassicism. From that time on, art historians have treated Tiepolo's work as unhealthy, lightweight, and bizarre, but this review supports Calasso's claim that his work is actually sober and moving. The review concludes that there are artists whom the narrow sensibility of standard art historians will never be able to accommodate, Tiepolo being only one among several. (shrink)

Discusses the origins, philosophy, and most notorious attacks of the Basque separatist group ETA, including their present activities, possible plans, and counter-terrorism efforts directed against them.

Husserl's explication of "self" and "others" occurs within his founding science of pure possibilities or "bracketed" consciousness and experience. His analysis of self and others seeks, in part, to demonstrate that "personal" or "self-experience" is not the only possibility of immanent consciousness but that "other persons" are also given as possibilities. The possibility of others, though in a form of givenness different from that of self, provides a basis for inter-subjectivity. Thus, Husserl's phenomenological analysis can, if it does avoid solipsism (...) and subjective idealism in general, establish inter-subjectivity as coextensive with subjectivity within the deepest possibilities of experience. Husserl's discussion of how the other as an external person or alien ego occurs as a given after all beliefs in an independently existing world are suspended (bracketed) shares some interesting parallels with psychological concepts and also suggests foundational possibilities for research on how the other is constituted as a separate "person" within our consciousness. (shrink)