Guthrie has an interesting point: "I claim religion consists of seeing the world as humanlike and arises because doing so is a good bet even though, like other bets, it may fail". This book is best understood by identifying its two interwoven arguments. The first is that religion is anthropomorphism. The second is that this anthropomorphism is due to a perceptual strategy. He does an admirable job of presenting the first. Marshaling the thought of Spinoza, Hume, Feuerbach, and others, he (...) argues that religion arises from projecting human traits into nature. His second argument basically runs as follows: anthropomorphism permeates our world, in science, philosophy, commercial and fine art, and religion. There is a universal cause of anthropomorphism in all of these enterprises, and it is due to the perceptual strategy that anthropomorphism is "the result of a general, spontaneous, and unconscious interpretive tendency... to find as much organization as possible in things and events". For Guthrie, the most organization indicates what matters the most, and what matters the most are living beings, and especially humans. He theorizes "that perception is interpretation, that interpretation attends to the most important possibilities, and that the most important possibilities are humanlike". (shrink)

This book is a tribute to the thought and person of Louis Dupré. The editors caution that this “is not a Festschrift” because the work and wisdom of Dupré continue to expand even after his retirement from Yale as T. Lawrason Riggs Professor in the Philosophy of Religion.

This is a multidisciplinary and multicultural study of traditional and contemporary terms and issues in religious studies. It “is intended as a guide for people who are seeking a more adequate understanding of the history as well as the contemporary significance of religion”. This work is neither a dictionary nor an encyclopedia. It is a collection of essays discussing terms meaningful to religion in its postmodern context. The essays are not intended to provide a basic outline for the undergraduate. They (...) are for the serious student or scholar who seeks an ongoing dialogue with what has been written in the past as it is transformed into future meaning. (shrink)

On a cold Sunday afternoon in February, the fifty-eighth Aquinas Lecture was presented at Marquette University by Louis Dupré. His unassuming gentle manner coupled with his expert command of philosophy, theology, science, and literature left no doubt that those assembled were in the presence of greatness. Following his presentation, an expanded version of this lecture was made available in print. This small volume takes its well-deserved place as Dupré's twelfth book, in addition to the five he has edited.

To attain mastery of the writings of one seminal thinker is no small achievement; Purcell succeeds twice. This book is not for the philosophically timid. It is a work best suited for the true scholar of either Rahner or Levinas, with more than a general knowledge of both. This work is a significantly revised version of Purcell's doctoral thesis completed in Louvain, Belgium. It is brimming with quotations and references to primary and secondary works.

The problem of evil remains a central objection to belief in God for many professional and would-be philosophers. In this final volume of his tetralogy on the philosophy of Christian doctrine, Swinburne provides a coherent attempt to respond to this issue.

A more descriptive subtitle for this work would have been, “A Thomistic Guide to the Subject.” In many ways this book is an updated incarnation of introductory texts in philosophy written decades ago for use in Catholic seminaries and institutions.

This book is a collection of nine previously published articles from 1980–92. Of the more than 150 original articles Dupré has written, these are an excellent representation and overview, weaving the threads of his thought together. In general the venture of combining articles into books is fraught with difficulties; yet these articles are presented as a cohesive work, unfolding gracefully in three sections, starting with methodological questions, leading to religious symbolization, and ending with the shape of religious experience in the (...) modern world. (shrink)

This book gathers together eight essays which are loosely united by the thin thread of gnosticism. In fact, this thread is not long enough to extend to the last three chapters which embrace a different theme, namely, philosophy of religion, broadly understood. The first and second chapters complement each other nicely. The first treats the early gnostics and in so doing raises such basic questions as the complex origins of gnosticism and the multifarious expressions which can be identified under this (...) heading. Hanratty’s specific interest is in the gnostic movement with its “spectrum of ideas and attitudes which formed the many sided heresy of the early Christian centuries”. The second chapter moves from these issues of the early gnostics to a wider investigation of gnostic thought through the centuries. These first chapters provide a useful introductory overview of certain key figures and concepts. Following F. C. Baur’s classification of Hegel as a modern gnostic, Hanratty asserts in the next essay that Hegel’s early development took place within a gnostic framework which subsequently affected his own approach to reality. The next essay turns to Simone Weil and interprets her thought within the boundaries of gnostic elitism. A similar explanation of the ideas of Carl Jung—albeit from the vantage of psychology— is advanced in the fifth essay. (shrink)

Through a detailed re-reading of Saussure's work in the light of contemporary developments in the human, life and physical sciences, Paul Thibault provides us with the means to redefine and refocus our theories of social meaning-making. Saussure's theory of language is generally considered to be a formal theory of abstract sign-types and sign-systems, separate from our individual and social practices of making meaning. In this challenging book, Thibault presents a different view of Saussure. Paying close attention to the original (...) texts, including the Cours de Linguistic Generale, he demonstrates that Saussure was centrally concerned with trying to formulate a theory of how meanings are made. In addition to demonstrating the continuing viability of Saussure's thinking through a range of examples, Re-reading Saussure makes an important intervention in contemporary linguistic and semiotic debate. (shrink)

Proceedings held May 1989. Topics include temporal logic, hierarchical knowledge bases, default theories, nonmonotonic and analogical reasoning, formal theories of belief revision, and metareasoning. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Clinical ethicists encounter the most emotionally eviscerating medical cases possible. They struggle to facilitate resolutions founded on good reasoning embedded in compassionate care. This book fills the considerable gap between current texts and the continuing educational needs of those actually facing complex ethics consultations in hospital settings. 28 richly detailed cases explore the ethical reasoning, professional issues, and the emotional aspects of these impossibly difficult consultations. The cases are grouped together by theme to aid teaching, discussion and professional growth. The (...) cases inform any reader who has a keen interest in the choices made in real-life medical dilemmas as well as the emotional cost to those who work to improve the situations. On a more advanced level, this book should be read by ethics committee members who participate in ethics consultations, individual ethics consultants, clinicians who seek education about complex clinical ethics cases, and bioethics students. (shrink)

From February 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to closures of educational institutions to reduce the spread of infectious disease. This forced the U.S. education system into a massive experiment with online education. Despite conducting online bioethics education for nearly twenty years, our bioethics program, a joint endeavor of Clarkson University and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, was not immune to this disruption because our curriculum features intensive, one-week onsite courses. Even in the face of historic disruptions, it is (...) vital to ensure minimal interruptions to teaching and assessing students to provide effective education. This paper reviews the steps we took to successfully convert the onsite components of our curriculum to a synchronous online format, and it focuses on how we preserved instruction and assessment of practical skills that comprise these courses’ core. It also explains how we fostered interactive classroom environments. (shrink)

With this paper I aim to demonstrate that a look beyond the Aristotelian square of opposition, and a related non-conservative view on logical determiners, contributes to both the understanding of Aristotelian syllogistics as well as to the study of quantificational structures in natural language.

This exploration of a notorious mathematical problem is the work of the man who discovered the solution. Written by an award-winning professor at Stanford University, it employs intuitive explanations as well as detailed mathematical proofs in a self-contained treatment. This unique text and reference is suitable for students and professionals. 1966 edition. Copyright renewed 1994.

Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy, Moral Markets makes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, but Moral Markets shows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more (...) virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both, Moral Markets provides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis. Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith, and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHélène Landemore's Democratic Reason offers a new justification for democracy and for broad-based citizen participation, appealing to the “emergent” intelligence of large, diverse groups. She argues that ordinary citizens should rule as directly as possible because they will make better informed, more intelligent decisions than, for example, appointed officials, councils of experts, or even elected representatives. The foundation of this conclusion is the premise that “diversity trumps ability” in a wide range of contexts. But the main support for that claim (...) is merely a series of computer experiments that are strongly biased toward that result and tell us essentially nothing about decision making in real-world political settings. Moreover, Landemore's analyses of alternative forms of rule deal only in abstract comparisons between sharply distinguished ideal types. Among other difficulties, they entirely overlook the central consideration in such comparisons: the relative ability of any decision-making process to go beyond stereotyped, intrinsic strategies and integrate multiple sources and varieties of information. In the end, Landemore's claims for the superior intelligence of broadly participatory forms are thus not supported by credible evidence. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 2, February 2022.

This article revisits the manuscript tradition and the different redactions of John Buridan’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics. The aim of the article is threefold. First, it makes some corrections to the lists of manuscripts containing the third redaction and the final redaction of Buridan’s questions commentary on the Physics. Second, it argues that manuscript Zaragoza, Biblioteca Capitular de la Seo, cod. 15-61, ff. 1r-62v, contains a previously unknown version of the final redaction (together with the standard version from f. 62v (...) onwards). Third, to facilitate further study of the manuscripts of Buridan’s questions on the Physics and their mutual relations, appendices at the end of the article provide detailed tables of contents for the third redaction and the final redaction, as well as editions of selected questions from the Zaragoza manuscript, the third redaction of Buridan’s questions on the Physics, and the so-called Quaestiones breves. (shrink)

: This contribution offers a detailed presentation of an anonymous book on the soul ascribed to the fourteenth-century Franciscan philosopher and theologian Nicholas Bonet. The work is conserved in two manuscripts of the National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague. In both manuscripts the work is almost certainly incomplete. It has a strong focus on the vegetative and sensitive operations of the human soul and on phenomena such as light and colour. Keywords: Fourteenth-century philosophy, Nicholas Bonet, philosophical manuscripts, philosophical (...) psychology, the soul. (shrink)

This article examines Gerald Odonis' view on the nature of place as found in his commentary on the Sentences and in an anonymous question extant in manuscript Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 4229. Both texts defend a thoroughly un-Aristotelian conception of place as three-dimensional space. Odonis not only deviates from Aristotle's definition of place as the inner surface of a surrounding body, but also from the positions of his contemporaries, including fellow Franciscans. Despite some remarkable doctrinal similarities between Odonis' view and that (...) of Renaissance innovators like Francesco Patrizi and Bernardino Telesio, it seems unlikely that Gerald played a role in the rise of new conceptions of place in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. An edition of the anonymous Quaestio de loco is given in an appendix. (shrink)

This book traces the historical roots of the cognitive sciences and examines pre-modern conceptualizations of the mind as presented and discussed in the tradition of commentaries on Aristotle's De anima from 1200 until 1650. It explores medieval and Renai.

Historiography of Renaissance philosophy and science has long been characterized by tendencies to minimize the influence of medieval Arabic philosophy and science. According to the standard narrative, the humanists successfully eliminated Arabic writers, along with their Latin scholastic interpreters. Against this background, Dag Nikolaus Hasse calls for a "sober historical approach" in order to "assess the factual influence of Arabic sciences and philosophy in the Renaissance". His narrative is summarized by the title of his impressively erudite and well-documented...

This contribution offers a detailed presentation of the commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s De anima by Walter of Wervia. Walter wrote his commentaries between 1445 and 1472 at the University of Paris. Both works bear witness to the influence of John Duns Scotus and Scotism on Parisian Masters of Arts.

Because Paul has proven difficult to understand, the interpreter must pay careful attention to the language, the rhetorical structure, and the context if unnecessary difficulties are to be avoided.

In his identity, words, and deeds Jesus of Nazareth provides the possibility and promise of ministry in his name.