Augustine’s doctrine of Jewish witness maintains that, although Christianity has superseded Judaism as the one true religion, it is God’s will that the Jews continue to exist because they preserve and authenticate the Old Testament, divinely-inspired texts which foretold the coming of Jesus. Thus, Christian rulers are obligated to protect the religious liberties of the Jewish people, and the church should focus its missionary efforts on pagans rather than Jews. Current scholarly consensus holds that Augustine adhered consistently to this doctrine (...) from its first iteration in Contra Faustum in 398 until his death in 430. However, this essay argues that, when Augustine spoke his last words on the subject in the Tractatus Aduersus Iudaeos, the doctrine was no longer his primary guide in thinking about how Christians should interact with Jews. In marked contrast to his earlier views, here, Augustine passionately urges Jews to accept Christ and encourages his congregation to try to convert them. This reading of the Tractatus Aduersus Iudaeos calls for a re-examination of the development of Augustine’s teaching, particularly in the context of dramatic changes in imperial policy toward Jews in the 420s. (shrink)

Provides a substantial selection and new translation of texts from the full range of Aquinas' writings.

Blindsight is the term commonly used to describe visually guided behaviour elicited by a stimulus falling within the scotoma (blind area) caused by a lesion of the striate cortex. Such is normally held to be unconscious and to be mediated by subcortical pathways involving the superior colliculus. Blindsight is of considerable theoretical importance since it suggests that destriate man is more like destriate monkey than had been previously believed and also because it supports the classical notion of two visual systems. (...) It is also of potential clinical importance, since it has been claimed recently that systematic practice in blindsight can lead to the recovery of normal visual function in patients with cortical lesions. From a review of the literature it is concluded that all of the phenomena of blindsight can be attributed either to light scatter into unimpaired parts of the visual field or to residual vision resulting from spared striate cortex. The possible contribution f other factors is also considered. It is concluded that blindsight studies have generally failed to control for such nonblindsight interpretations partly because of poor methodology and partly because of difficulties in defining the term. (shrink)

Mere physical experiences of warmth, distance, hardness, and roughness are found to activate the more abstract psychological concepts that are analogically related to them, such as interpersonal warmth and emotional distance, thereby influencing social judgments and interpersonal behavior without the individual's awareness. These findings further support the principle of neural reuse in the development and operation of higher mental processes.

Observing adaptive evolution is difficult. In the fossil record, phenotypic evolution happens much more slowly than in artificial selection experiments or in experimental evolution. Yet measures of selection on phenotypic traits, with high heritabilities, suggest that phenotypic evolution should also be rapid in the wild, and this discrepancy often remains even after accounting for correlations between different traits (i.e. making predictions using the multivariate version of the breeder's equation). Are fitness correlations with quantitative traits adequate measures of selection in the (...) wild? We should instead view fitnesses as average properties of genotypes, while acknowledging that they can be environment‐dependent. Populations will tend to remain at fitness equilibria, once these are attained, and phenotypes will then be stable. Thus, studying the causes of adaptive change at a genotypic rather than phenotypic level may reveal that, typically, it is occurring too slowly to be easily observed. (shrink)

McFetridge (in Logical necessity and other essays . London: Blackwell, 1990 ) suggests that to treat a proposition as logically necessary—to believe a proposition logically necessary, and to manifest that belief—is a matter of preparedness to deploy that proposition as a premise in reasoning from any supposition. We consider whether a suggestion in that spirit can be generalized to cover all cases of absolute necessity, both logical and non-logical, and we conclude that it can. In Sect. 2, we explain the (...) significance that such an account of manifestation of belief in absolute necessity has for the prospects of a non-realist theory of modality. In Sect. 3, we offer a sympathetic articulation of the detail that underlies the McFetridge conception of belief in logical necessity. In Sects. 4 and 5, we show that the conception so articulated will not generalize to encompass all cases of belief in absolute necessity and proceed to offer a remedy. Our proposal is based upon a distinction between two kinds of suppositional act: A-supposing and C-supposing (Sect. 6). In Sect. 7, we then explain and defend our central thesis: (roughly) that (manifestation of) belief in absolute necessity is a matter of preparedness to deploy as a premise in reasoning under any C-supposition. Finally, we indicate that there is some promise in the parallel thesis that manifestation of the treatment of a proposition as a priori is a matter of preparedness to deploy as a premise in reasoning under any A-supposition (Sect. 8). (shrink)

While interest in doing business continues to rise steadily, information concerning the evolving social ethics of Chinese managers is sparse. This study reports the findings obtained from intensive interviews with thirty-nine Chinese advertising executives. In general, there appears to be developing a cautious optimism about the role of advertising in the Chinese economy. Findings are compared with earlier studies of American and Hong Kong managers and it is suggested that further research and observation is needed to track the development of (...) business ethics in this largest of the world's developing nations. (shrink)

The Alu sequence is a SINE (Short INterspersed Element) that is abundant in the human genome. A new analysis(1) reveals an unexpected conservation of some bases in the DNA sequence of the element. The bases involved include those forming an RNA polymerase III promoter. An unresolved question is whether this conservation results from selection for transposability. This, in turn, is related to the larger question of the evolutionary relationship between members of the Alu sequence family.

Published in 1918, _The View of Life_ is Georg Simmel’s final work. Famously deemed “the brightest man in Europe” by George Santayana, Simmel addressed a variety of topics across his essayistic writings, which have influenced scholars in aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, and sociology. Nevertheless, a set of core issues emerged over the course of his career, most centrally the genesis, structure, and transcendence of social and cultural forms and the nature and genesis of authentic individuality. Composed in the years before his (...) death, _The View of Life_ was, according to Simmel, his “testament,” a capstone work of profound metaphysical inquiry intended to formulate his conception of life in its entirety. Now Anglophone readers can at last read in full the work that shaped the argument of Heidegger’s _Being and Time_ and whose extraordinary impact on European intellectual life between the wars was extolled by Jürgen Habermas. Presented alongside these seminal essays are aphoristic fragments from Simmel’s last journal, providing a beguiling look into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

The liberal-communitarian debates, which became prominent in social and political philosophy during the 1980s, continue to be waged in those disciplines and in politics today with even more fervor, and this time, both the ‘80s and the ‘90s are called forth as bleak and sorry evidence for one side or the other. The current scene is reminiscent of some of the ‘60s ideological disputes, especially the reformist critique of conservatism within liberalism. And that dispute itself is reminiscent of yet another, (...) the one from whence it derived, John Dewey's well-known opposition of new and old individualism. (shrink)

Like any construction of the human mind, ideologies and utopias are products of reason and social imagination. The human interactions they feed off are nowadays being intensified by processes of globalization. Utopian projects, which are by nature ambitious, consist of dreams of freedom and equality but the voluntarist character of their implementation very often takes them far from their declared objectives. Thus utopia frequently tips over into ideology. In order to survive, utopia has to go through a process of ‘universalization’ (...) that allows ideas from different cultures to develop and mature in contact with one another. By forging bonds between individuals and cultures, this process could define the outlines of a constantly evolving global civil society. Universalization of conceptualizations that transform and motivate us, such as the global inclusivity of human rights, freedom and justice, builds an ethic of peace for the emergence, beyond frontiers, of an extended society such as that envisioned by the American philosopher John Dewey. (shrink)

Résumé Comme toute construction de l’esprit humain, les idéologies et les utopies sont des produits de la raison et de l’imagination sociale. Les interactions humaines dont elles se nourrissent se trouvent aujourd’hui intensifiées par des processus de mondialisation et de globalisation. Par nature ambitieux, les projets utopiques consistent en rêves de liberté et d’égalité mais le caractère volontariste de leur mise en œuvre les éloigne bien souvent de leurs objectifs déclarés. Ainsi l’utopie verse bien souvent dans l’idéologie. L’utopie pour survivre (...) doit passer par un processus de « mondialisation » permettant aux idées de différentes cultures de se développer et de mûrir les unes au contact des autres. En tissant des liens entre individus et entre cultures, ce processus pourrait définir les contours d’une société civile globale en constante évolution. La mondialisation des conceptualisations qui nous transforment et nous motivent, comme l’inclusivité globale des droits de l’homme, la liberté et la justice, forgent une éthique de paix pour l’émergence au-delà des frontières, d’une Société élargie telle que l’avait envisagée le philosophe américain John Dewey. (shrink)

Self-deception may be a natural consequence of active goal operation instead of an adaptation for negotiating the social world. We argue that because autonomous goal programs likely drove human judgment and behavior prior to evolution of a central executive or “self,” these goal programs can operate independently to attain their desired end states and thereby produce outcomes that “deceive” the individual.

Born in Granada, April 30, 1901, Antonio De Luna was educated in the universities of Granada and of Madrid, continued his studies at Freiburg in Bresgovia, Paris, and Oxford and received the doctorate in law from Bologna. At the age of 27 he was appointed to the chair of natural law at the University of La Laguna in the Canary Isles, and from there went on to Salamanca and Granada. In 1932 he obtained the chair of international public law of (...) the Faculty of Law of the University of Madrid. At this time he began a period of intense professional activity: He was Secretary of the Federation of Spanish Associations of International Studies (1932–1936), founder and director of the Institute of International and Economic Studies (1932–1936), and Secretary of the Juridical Assessory Commission of the Spanish Republic (1931–1934). After the interruption of the Civil War, Luna, with a sense of continuity, resumed his essential tasks. (shrink)