This book addresses the idea of justice in order to guide society towards a more effective justice system. The authors trace impoverished and accomplished thinking in criminological and justice discourses and show that when justice and love are seen as synonyms, the historic ills that have plagued humanity tend to evaporate.

This article, the first of a two-part series, examines how Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s (1548/ 1991 ) nearly 500 year-old approach to the transformation of others in their leadership journeys is still being actualized, with applications to transformations in workplaces and the graduate education of business leaders, by drawing upon both the handbook Ignatius wrote to guide his work—called the _Spiritual Exercises_—and upon the account of his own transformation experience captured in his _Autobiography_. Our exploratory prelude to practice is guided (...) by the following questions that approximate (both in content and order) Ignatius of Loyola’s approach to personal and spiritual transformation: First, “What are my deepest desires?” (and this question has two distinct parts: “What don’t I want?” and “What do I want?”); once that has been clarified, the next question is “What does this require of me?” (In other words, what must be done to avoid the things you don’t want and achieve the things that you do want?); and finally, the last question requires an answer that lasts a lifetime: “How does this shape the person I am becoming?”. After characterizing the stages of Ignatius of Loyola’s (1548/ 1991 ) own transformation as: Deconstruction (the cannonball at Pamplona); Choice (while convalescing at Loyola); Reconstruction (during his retreat at Montserrat); and Integration (actualized by his mystical experience in Manresa), our contribution concludes by returning to the questions that frame our interrogative inquiry, but with an eye toward the professional formation of online graduate students of organizational leadership. In the second article (Tran and Carey 2023 ), our exploration continues by integrating academic theory with andragogical practice. Particular attention is paid to the qualitative reflections from online graduate leadership education students at a Jesuit university in the Inland Northwest of the United States. (shrink)

Over the past three decades, more and more students are expressing a desire to attend college, yet for many members of disenfranchised groups, this goal is often not attained. While many factors contribute to these disparities, research has shown that students begin adjusting their expectations (what they think they can achieve) for the future in relation to their idealised aspirations (what they would like to achieve). The current study explores this gap among 207 eighth grade students from two urban middle (...) schools. Using the School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised, three factors were found to predict expectations which matched student aspirations. These factors were academic motivation and self-regulating behaviours, academic self-perception and attitudes towards teachers. Implications for educational interventions and school reform are discussed. (shrink)

Building on a previous piece that harnessed both the handbook that Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1548/ 1991 ) authored to guide his work – the _Spiritual Exercises_ – and the account of his own transformation experience captured in the _Autobiography_ – to appropriate the dynamics of Ignatius’ _Spiritual Exercises_ into a series of life-affirming questions and delineate his transformation into four phases (Carey and Tran 2023 ), this essay continues our exploratory inquiry. Following a brief overview of the contemporary organizational (...) leadership context, our article positions Ignatius’ insights on transformation within the transformational leadership discourse and considers his contribution to the professional formation of business leaders. Our study concludes with qualitative examples of how insights from St. Ignatius’ conversion process has encouraged online graduate students of organizational leadership in their quest to transition from profession to purpose. To further fuse theory and practice, the student reflections are categorized according to the Ignatian-inspired questions that inaugurated our theoretical inquiry and guides our pedagogical practice as organizational leadership educators. (shrink)

Parental expectations have long been studied as a factor in increasing adolescent educational aspirations, often linking these expectations to parental level of education and involvement in academic endeavours. This study further explores this relationship in a statewide Midwestern sample of parents and their adolescent children. Regression analysis and independent samples t?tests were used to predict adolescent aspirations and compare groups. Results suggest that adolescent educational aspirations can to some degree be predicted by parental expectations. Parents reported high expectations for their (...) children despite low levels of personal educational attainment. However, these high expectations were buffered by a reported unfamiliarity with college requirements and an expressed concern about college affordability and limited awareness of financial aid opportunities. Limitations and suggestions for future research and intervention are discussed. (shrink)

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

Interview with Michael Bruce and Steven Barbone, editors of Just the Arguments.

Racist jokes are often funny. And part of this has to do with their racism. Many Polish jokes, for example, may easily be converted into moron jokes but are not at all funny when delivered as such. Consider two answers to ‘What has an I.Q. of 1007’: a nation of morons; or Poland. Similarly, jokes portraying Jews as cheap, Italians as cowards, and Greeks as dishonest may be told as jokes about how skinflints, cowards, or dishonest people get on in (...) the world. But they are less funny as such. As this suggests, racist humor is ‘put down’ humor. We laugh, in part, because we find put-downs funny, sometimes even if they are about us. In many contexts, this tendency is relatively harmless; indeed, within reason, it may be therapeutic to join others in a good laugh at oneself. Why, then, all the commotion about racist humor? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Michael’s Story or the Paradox of NormalcyMichael KreuzerI was born in Montreal in 1974. My parents were both “older.” My mother was almost 45; my father was in his 50’s. I have a sister who is six years older than me. What I know about my mother’s prenatal care is that it was quite basic.I was premature. My mother’s due date was in mid–August, however I showed up (...) about three weeks earlier. I know that initially upon my birth I was declared male. However, upon closer examination, a few “abnormalities” of my genitals were found. I urinated through a small hole at the base of my penis; adjacent to this hole was another opening, barely big enough for a Q–tip. My scrotum was empty; my gonads had not descended.The doctors who examined me decided that they could not assign a gender without further testing. They told my mother I would need to remain in the hospital until such testing was completed. Apparently not being able to determine sex/gender is a life–threatening condition that requires hospitalization.It was determined that I had a uterus and it was presumed that my undescended gonads were ovaries (not verified by biopsy). There was a small vaginal opening behind my small urethral opening. Structures such as the labia were not developed. I found out later my vagina had fistulated into both my urethra and my perineum. Karyotyping was performed resulting in 46,XX with a diagnosis of female pseudo–hermaphroditism. My parents were informed that in spite of my external genitalia I was female and I would never develop as a male. I would require “corrective surgeries” which should be performed as soon as possible so I would not have any issues with my gender identity. They were even told that I would be able to become pregnant if I had the surgeries. In fact, I never ovulated and I have a small unicornuate uterus.My father refused all surgeries on my behalf most likely because he was a full–blooded Navajo who had suffered from abuse in an Indian boarding school during his childhood in New Mexico. His family was traditional, and because they didn’t adapt to prevailing Christian values, he and several of his siblings were removed from their parents. My dad was the oldest of 12 children and by the time his youngest siblings were born, the practice to take children away from their families had been changed.I think my father was deeply traumatized by his childhood and did not associate much with his family, nor did he want to visit the reservation. He spoke the language but never encouraged us to learn it. He did teach us some of the traditions. He told me about the nadleh, which is the other gender besides male and female in the Navajo tradition. There are two kinds of nadleh, which are almost like male–to–female and female–to–male transsexuals. Mostly I educated myself later and learned about the Navajo belief system in which the creation story is an important part. In the Navajo tradition, the creation story tells of First Man and First Woman; the first children born to them are the Hermaphrodite Twins. [End Page E7]My father was a US Army Master Sergeant, which was an unusual career for a man of his origins; he was a veteran of the Second World War. After he left the army he took his family to Montreal where he had a job in security. I think he preferred to live outside the U.S. He used to say that in Germany, where he had managed to stay for a long time while serving in the Army, he was just another American soldier. In spite of his career, he had a deep mistrust for “white people.” I remember he used to say that he was in the Army because this was his country long before the white people came and he loved it. He did not love the people who governed it. All this very much played into the decision not to listen to the doctors’ recommendations about surgery. My... (shrink)

The Expeditions: An Early Biography of Muḥammad by Maʿmar Ibn Rāshid according to the Recension of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī. Edited and translated by Sean W. Anthony. Library of Arabic Literature. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Pp. xlv + 372. $35.

It is generally assumed that if it is possible to believe that p without believing that q, then there is some difference between the object of the thought that p and the object of the thought that q. This assumption is challenged in the present paper, opening the way to an account of epistemic opacity that improves on existing accounts, not least because it casts doubt on various arguments that attempt to derive startling ontological conclusions from seemingly innocent epistemic premises.

Abstract Pavel Florensky solves Lewis Carroll’s ‘Barbershop’ paradox to support his reasoning in a previous chapter. Our discussion includes a) the problem (which we also refer to as the p paradox), b) Carroll’s solution, c) Bertrand Russell’s solution, d) Florensky’s solution and then e) a material example proffered by Florensky. Both Russell and Florensky disagree with Carroll’s solution, yet, (ostensibly) unbeknownst to themselves they offer the same solution, which is ‘p implies not-q’. Given Florensky’s material example, the solution seems to (...) tell us something about the logic of belief. We ask whether Florensky’s example has reverse implications for Russell’s solution. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-10 DOI 10.1007/s11406-011-9333-6 Authors Michael Rhodes, Philosophy and Religious Studies (NPD), Chicago, IL, USA Journal Philosophia Online ISSN 1574-9274 Print ISSN 0048-3893. (shrink)

Consider a superagent, a being with extraordinary rational capactities. Not only are a superagent’s beliefs closed under entailment, but a superagent also has a wonderful kind of introspective awareness: whenever she believes that she doesn’t believe something, she is right—she doesn’t believe it. A superagent, then, is a being who satisfies the following two principles: (I) If p entails q, and if S believes p, then S believes q. (II) If S believes that she doesn’t believe p, then S doesn’t (...) believe p. I don’t suppose anyone thinks that there is such a thing as a superagent, or that there ever will be. But I do suppose that there could be a superagent, in the sense that it’s not conceptually impossible for a superagent to exist. Our concept of belief, whatever it is, should not be such as to rule out the possibility of a being of this kind. In this paper I expose a paradox: although our concept of belief shouldn’t rule out the possibility of a being of this kind, it apparently does.1 I end the paper by arguing that the key to solving this paradox lies in the recognition that the question of whether an agent could believe so-and-so can sometimes diverge from the question of whether it is possible that she believes so-and-so. (shrink)

\newtheorem command recognizes a \theoremstyle specification (as in Mittelbach’s theorem package) and has a * form for defining unnumbered environments. The amsthm package also defines a proof environment that automatically adds a Q.E.D. symbol at the end. AMS document classes incorporate the amsthm package, so everything described here applies to them as well. A number of examples are given in the file thmtest.tex.

Stit theory (a logic of seeing-to-it-that) is applied to cases involving many agents. First treated are complex nestings of stits involving distinct agents. The discussion is driven by the logical impossibility of "a sees to it that b sees to it that Q" in the technical sense, even though that seems to make sense in everyday language, Of special utility are the concepts of "forced choice", of the creation of deontic states, and of probabilities, Second, joint agency, both plain and (...) strict (every participant is essential) is given a rigorous treatment. A central theorem is that strict joint agency is itself agentive. (shrink)

Mississippi Representative L.Q.C. Lamar was one of the most aggressive slavery supporters in Congress on the eve of the Civil War. Lamar had a personal stake in slavery, owning a plantation and 26 slaves in north Mississippi. In a speech delivered at the height of national debate on the slavery issue, Lamar attacked abolitionism and sought to justify slavery based on the supposed natural inferiority of blacks. His chief authority in the speech was Hegel.

Reaction-diffusion systems which have reaction term satisfying f(-q) = -f(q) tend strongly to form striped patterns. Haken’s slaving principle is used to derive differential equations for unstable mode amplitudes close to the Turing instability. This connects a dynamical symmetry to pattern selection, with possible relevance to biological and chemical pattern-forming phenomena.

Whether the new natural law theory counts as a plausible interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas is not a mere antiquarian question in the history of philosophy but is itself a philosophical question, which bears on how we should interpret and assess the NNLT. Through an examination of problems in Germain Grisez’ influential paper “The First Principle of Practical Reason,” which proposed an interpretation of Summa theologiae I–II, q. 94, a. 2, it is argued that the NNLT is on every major (...) point at odds with Aquinas, such that the NNLT involves a rejection of the classical and Catholic traditions of natural law and not a reformulation, revival, or saving of that tradition. The NNLT gives a flawed account of individual morality, not a Thomistic account of law as binding a community. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.1 (Spring 2013): 57–67. (shrink)

In this paper we make some observations about Natural Deduction derivations [Prawitz, 1965, van Dalen, 1986, Bell and Machover, 1977]. We assume the reader is familiar with it and with proof-theory in general. Our development will be simple, even simple-minded, and concrete. However, it will also be evident that general ideas motivate our examples, and we think both our specific examples and the ideas behind them are interesting and may be useful to some readers. In a sentence, the bare technical (...) content of this paper is: Extending natural deduction with global well-formedness conditions can neatly and cheaply capture classical and intermediate logics. The interest here is in the ‘neatly’ and ‘cheaply’. By ‘neatly’ we mean ‘preserving proof-normalisation’,1 and ‘maintaining the subformula property’, and by ‘cheaply’ we mean ‘preserving the formal structure of deductions’ (so that a deduction in the original system is still, formally, a deduction in the extended system, and in particular it requires no extra effort to write just because it is in the extended system). To illustrate what we have in mind consider intuitionistic first-order logic (FOL) [van Dalen, 1986] as a paradigmatic example of a formal notion of deduction. A natural deduction derivation (or deduction) is an inductively defined tree structure where each node contains an instance of a formula. A deduction is valid when each successive node follows from its predecessors in accordance with some predetermined inference rules. A particular attraction of Natural Deduction is its clean and economical presentation. Here for example are deduction (fragments) proving A ∧ B from A and B, and ∀x. (P (x) ∧ Q(x)) from ∀x. P (x) and ∀x. Q(x): ∀x. P (x) (∀E). (shrink)

Confucianism and Catholicism are among the most influential religious traditions and share a long and intricate relationship. Beginning with the work of Matteo Ricci, the nature of this relationship has sometimes generated great debate, which is still alive today. The ten essays in this volume continue and advance this long conversation. Written by specialists in both traditions, the essays are organized into two groups. Those in the first group focus primarily on the historical and cultural contexts in which Confucianism and (...) Catholicism encountered one another in the four major Confucian cultures of East Asia. These essays seek to understand specific figures, texts, and issues in light of those broader contexts. The essays in the second part offer comparative and constructive studies of specific figures, texts, and issues in the Confucian and Catholic traditions from both theological and philosophical perspectives. By bringing these historical and constructive perspectives together, this volume seeks not only to understand the past dialogue between these traditions, but also to renew and reinvigorate the conversation between them today. In light of the unprecedented expansion of Eastern Asian influence in recent decades, and considering the myriad of challenges and new opportunities faced by both the Confucian and Catholic traditions in a world that is rapidly becoming globalized, this volume could not be more timely. Confucianism and Catholicism: Reinvigorating the Dialogue will be of interest to professional theologians, historians, and scholars of religion, as well as those who work in interreligious dialogue. Contributors: Michael R. Slater, Erin M. Cline, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Vincent Shen, Anh Q. Tran, S.J., Donald L. Baker, Kevin M. Doak, Xueying Wang, Richard Kim, Victoria S. Harrison, and Lee H. Yearley. (shrink)

I argue for modal realism from the following principles:(R1) p just in case there are truth-makers for the proposition that p.(R2) If there are truth-makers for the proposition that p and the proposition that p relevantly entails the proposition that q, then there are truthrmakers for the proposition that q.(M) The proposition that p relevantly entails the proposition that possibly p.(R3) I f there are truth-makers for the proposition that q, then necessarily, if q, there are truth-makers for the proposition (...) that q.All of the above principles are to be read as necessary truths. Also, the propositional variable 'p' is restricted to propositions that necessarily satisfy R1. 'q' is not so restricted.The argument is ontological because I argue that the possibility of modal reaUsm together with R3 entails that modal realism is true. The possibility of modal realism follows from R1, R2 and M. (shrink)

The most prominent arguments for scepticism in modern epistemology employ closure principles of some kind. To begin my discussion of such arguments, consider Simple Knowledge Closure (SKC): (SKC) (Kxt[p] ∧ (p → q)) → Kxt[q].1 Assuming its truth for the time being, the sceptic can use (SKC) to reason from the two assumptions that, firstly, we don’t know ¬sh and that, secondly, op entails ¬sh to the conclusion that we don’t know op, where ‘op’ and ‘sh’ are shorthand for ‘ordinary (...) proposition’ and ‘sceptical hypothesis’ respectively. (SKC), however, fails for familiar reasons: since knowledge entails belief (KB), we can derive the falsity (F) from (SKC) by hypothetical syllogism, and thus reduce (SKC) to absurdity: (KB) Kxt[p] → Bxt[p]. (F) (Kxt[p] ∧ (p → q)) → Bxt[q]. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop and refine the idea that understanding is a species of explanatory knowledge. Specifically, we defend the idea that S understands why p if and only if S knows that p, and, for some q, S’s true belief that q correctly explains p is produced/maintained by reliable explanatory evaluation. We then show how this model explains the reception of James Bjorken’s explanation of scaling by the broader physics community in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The (...) historical episode is interesting because Bjorken’s explanation initially did not provide understanding to other physicists, but was subsequently deemed intelligible when Feynman provided a physical interpretation that led to experimental tests that vindicated Bjorken’s model. Finally, we argue that other philosophical models of scientific understanding are best construed as limiting cases of our more general model. (shrink)

The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic Hijaz: Five Prosopographical Case Studies. By Asad Q. Ahmed. Prosopographica et Genealogica, vol. 14. Oxford: Linacre College, University of Oxford, 2011. Pp. xi + 339. £50.

Increasing farmers’ acceptance and adoption of environmentally beneficial farming practices is essential for mitigating negative impacts of agriculture. To support adoption through policy, it is necessary to understand which types of farms or farmers do or do not apply such practices. However, farmers are not a homogeneous group and their behavior is subject to a complex array of structural, socioeconomic, and socio-psychological influences. Reducing this complexity, farmer typologies or archetypes are useful tools for understanding differing motivations for the uptake of (...) sustainable farming practices. Previous investigations of the role of farmer archetypes in the adoption of such practices rely on either purely qualitative or purely quantitative methods in data collection, typology creation, and hypothesis testing. Our study combines both approaches by classifying survey respondents into farmer types based on a previous Q methodological study. We then use these types in a two-part regression model that aims to explain participation in agri-environmental schemes and the level of scheme participation. To control for farm structural factors, we additionally link our questionnaire data to secondary data from the farm accountancy data network. Results indicate that in Austria, AES are attractive to all types of farmers, but the level of participation in these schemes differs between archetypes: Profitability-oriented farmers participate less, and nature-oriented farmers participate more than other types. This suggests that monetary compensations for sustainable farming practices are not perceived as sufficient by certain groups of farmers, and policy makers need to consider additional kinds of incentives. (shrink)

The path-integral approach to quantum theory of continuous measurements has been developed in preceding works of the author. According to this approach the measurement amplitude determining probabilities of different outputs of the measurement can be evaluated in the form of a restricted path integral (a path integral “in finite limits”). With the help of the measurement amplitude, maximum deviation of measurement outputs from the classical one can be easily determined. The aim of the present paper is to express this variance (...) in a simpler and transparent form of a specific uncertainty principle (called the action uncertainty principle, AUP). The most simple (but weak) form of AUP is δS≳ℏ, whereS is the action functional. It can be applied for simple derivation of the Bohr-Rosenfeld inequality for measurability of gravitational field. A stronger (and having wider application) form of AUP (for ideal measurements performed in the quantum regime) is |∫ ′ t″ (δS[q]/δq(t))Δq(t)dt|≃ℏ, where the paths [q] and [Δq] stand correspondingly for the measurement output and for the measurement error. It can also be presented in symbolic form as Δ(Equation) Δ(Path) ≃ ℏ. This means that deviation of the observed (measured) motion from that obeying the classical equation of motion is reciprocally proportional to the uncertainty in a path (the latter uncertainty resulting from the measurement error). The consequence of AUP is that improving the measurement precision beyond the threshold of the quantum regime leads to decreasing information resulting from the measurement. (shrink)

As a compact representation of joint probability distributions over a dependence graph of random variables, and a tool for modelling and reasoning in the presence of uncertainty, Bayesian networks are of great importance for artificial intelligence to combine domain knowledge, capture causal relationships, or learn from incomplete datasets. Known as a NP-hard problem in a classical setting, Bayesian inference pops up as a class of algorithms worth to explore in a quantum framework. This paper explores such a research direction and (...) improves on previous proposals by a judicious use of the utility function in an entangled configuration. It proposes a completely quantum mechanical decision-making process with a proven computational advantage. A prototype implementation in Qiskit (a Python-based program development kit for the IBM Q machine) is discussed as a proof-of-concept. (shrink)

We investigate the index sets associated with the degree structures of computable sets under the parameterized reducibilities introduced by the authors. We solve a question of Peter Cholakand the first author by proving the fundamental index sets associated with a computable set A, {e : W e ≤ q u A} for q∈ {m, T} are Σ4 0 complete. We also show hat FPT(≤ q n ), that is {e : W e computable and ≡ q n ?}, is Σ4 (...) 0 complete. We also look at computable presentability of these classes. (shrink)

"Jim would still be alive if he hadn't jumped" means that Jim's death was a consequence of his jumping. "x wouldn't be a triangle if it didn't have three sides" means that x's having a three sides is a consequence its being a triangle. Lewis takes the first sentence to mean that Jim is still alive in some alternative universe where he didn't jump, and he takes the second to mean that x is a non-triangle in every alternative universe where (...) it doesn't have three sides. Why did Lewis have such obviously wrong views? Because, like so many of his contemporaries, he failed to grasp the truth that it is the purpose of the present paper to demonstrate, to wit: No coherent doctrine assumes that statements about possible worlds are anything other than statements about the dependence-relations governing our world. The negation of this proposition has a number of obviously false consequences, for example: all true propositions are necessarily true (there is no modal difference between "2+2=4" and "Socrates was bald"); all modal terms (e.g. "possible," "necessary") are infinitely ambiguous; there is no difference between laws of nature (e.g. "metal expands when heated") and accidental generalizations (e.g. "all of the coins in my pocket are quarters"); and there is no difference between the belief that 1+1=2 and the belief that arithmetic is incomplete. Given that possible worlds are identical with mathematical models, it follows that the concept of model-theoretic entailment is useless in the way of understanding how inferences are drawn or how they should be drawn. Given that the concept of formal-entailment is equally useless in these respects, it follows that philosophers and mathematicians have simply failed to shed any light on the nature of the consequence-relation. Q's being either a formal or a model-theoretic consequence of P is parasitic on its bearing some third, still unidentified relation to P; and until this relation has been identified, the discipline of philosophical logic has yet to begin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 119-121 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Ethics and Political Philosophy The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought Arthur Stephen McGrade, John Kilcullen, and Matthew Kempshall, editors. Ethics and Political Philosophy. Vol. 2 of The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 664. Cloth, $85.00. Paper, $29.95. M. S. Kempshall. The Common (...) Good in Late Medieval Political Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 401. Cloth, $95.00. With the exception of the thought of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, late medieval political and ethical philosophy has been neglected. Two recent books attempt to rectify this neglect. One is the second volume of The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts. A translator of this volume, Matthew Kempshall, has also recently written a thorough analysis of the common good as it is discussed in late thirteenth-century scholasticism. Many of the texts discussed in this second book are translated by Kempshall in the first book.The new volume of translations now makes it possible for the reader unfamiliar with Latin to have some exposure to the medieval reception of Aristotle's ethical and political thought. The selections are deliberately taken from lesser-known figures who are not often translated, such as Albert the Great, Godfrey of Fontaines, and Augustine of Ancona. The selections are carefully chosen to represent a wide variety of literary genres. For example, the selection from Albert is part of his commentary of Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, [End Page 119] whereas the selection from Godfrey is a Quodlibetal Question, and that from Augustine of Ancona is part of a treatise. Moreover, there are some selections that show developments within a particular genre. For example, a translation from Buridan's commentary on Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics contrasts nicely with that of Albert. The selection from Albert focuses mostly on pleasure, the relationship between the active and the contemplative lives, and the connection between ethics and politics. His discussion of pleasure is philosophically important in light of twentieth-century discussions about reasons for actions. Moreover, these issues are all discussed in at least one of the other selections. Interestingly, Buridan's commentary on the same Book focuses instead on human freedom. Buridan makes fine distinctions that are relevant to contemporary debates about free will. Selections from Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, and James of Viterbo all address the topic of the relationship between self-love and the virtuous life. These passages are relevant to the question of whether there is egoism in ancient and medieval ethical thought.The volume is a companion to The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy and suffers from one of its weaknesses, which is that the selections can seem arbitrary. For example, the passage from Albert takes up nearly one quarter of the volume. Furthermore, sometimes the representation of an author by only one genre is misleading. For example, although Giles of Rome wrote a Quodlibetal Question (Quod 2, q. 20) that is directly attacked in a translation from James of Viterbo, Giles is represented only by a passage from his treatise De regimine principum. Moreover, the moral psychology of the late thirteenth century is not well-covered, which is odd considering the importance of Bonnie Kent's work in this area.One additional problem is that there are few notes to aid the reader. Sometimes the translations can be confusing. For example, in one passage "the Commentator" should be identified, since the name can apply to at least three individuals (262-3). More seriously, readers with little background in medieval thought might confuse the medieval referents signified in the translation by the words "state" or "love" with contemporary referents. The translations themselves are clear and the different translators follow a consistent set of guidelines. Anyone who tries to translate some of these passages for herself will understand that some... (shrink)

Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge has a strictly observational basis. Rationalism is the doctrine that least some knowledge has non-observational, purely conceptual basis. In the present work, empiricism is carefully considered and found to have four dire shortcomings: -/- (1) Empiricism cannot account for our knowledge of what doesn't exist, let alone what cannot exist. -/- (2) Empiricism cannot account for our knowledge of dependence-relations, given (1), coupled with the fact that 'P depends on Q' is equivalent with (...) 'not-Q either necessitates or is dispositive of not-P.' -/- (3) Empiricism cannot account for our knowledge of the past, the future, or the possible, given (2), coupled with the fact knowledge of any of these domains requires knowledge of conditional truths (truths of the form "if P, then Q") and therefore of dependence-relations. -/- (4) Empiricism cannot by itself apprise us of any truths, given (3), coupled with the fact that knowledge of conditional truths is necessary to recognize the truths implicit in any body of sensory data. -/- The arguments of key empiricists are closely examined. Special attention is paid to George Berkeley's arguments for idealism ('to be is to be perceive/conceived'). It is shown that, although Berkeley's arguments fail, profound insights are embedded in the very sophisms that vitiate those same arguments, the three most important ones being: -/- (i) That data-modelling and truth-identification at least sometimes coalesce, -/- (ii) That scientific theories are at least sometimes capable of being represented as interpreted formal calculi, and -/- (iii) That when theoretical terms are defined contextually, as opposed to directly, otherwise unintelligible assertions acquire scientific significance. -/- Further, it is shown that, even though Berkeley's arguments for idealism fall through, he himself deserves credit for identifying the principle in terms of which the fallacies in those arguments are to be understood, namely: -/- (*) It is not sensory experience alone that yields awareness of the outside world, but sensory experience coupled with awareness on the subject's part of relational invariances holding among the objects of those awareness. -/- Thus, perceptual knowledge is knowledge of invariances. And, to make a point hinted at in Berkeley's work, knowledge of laws is meta-perceptual knowledge, given that laws of nature are invariances holding among the invariances holding among the objects of perception. (shrink)

"Aristotelian Dialectic" is a dialogue between two persons, T and Q, concerning Aristotle's views on the nature of dialectic and rhetoric and also on the role of dialectic and rhetoric in modern education. T advances two theses: that Aristotle views dialectic and rhetoric as intellectual martial arts. to be used to combat the sophists; and that these arts form the basis of Homeric education. T defends this view by examining what Aristotle has to say in the Topics, The Sophistical Refutations, (...) The Posterior Analytics, and The Rhetoric. T also indicates a strong belief that these arts are as important for education today as they were in Aristotle's time. To drive home this point, T uses many of the techniques he ascribes to Aristotle on Q in the course of their discussion. (shrink)

David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics yields a quantum potential, Q. In his early work, the effects of Q are understood in causal terms as acting through a real (quantum) field which pushes particles around. In his later work (with Basil Hiley), the causal understanding of Q appears to have been abandoned. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the use of certain metaphors leads Bohm away from a causal treatment of Q, and to evaluate the use of (...) those metaphors. (shrink)

"This volume explores what it means for applied theatre practice to be conducted in an ethical way and examines how this affects the work done with communities and participants. It considers how practitioners can effectively balance aesthetics and ethics in the process of creating performance, particularly with relatively inexperienced and often vulnerable groups of people who are being asked to both tell and stage their stories. While Part One offers an overview of critical debates and the editors' reflections on their (...) own practice, Part Two presents a range of international case studies that explore how the theories and issues are worked out in a variety of diverse practices. The two sections bring together both theoretical and practical ways for theatre-makers to examine the ethics of their applied theatre projects. In Part One, readers are presented with a critical introduction to ethics in applied theatre practice, informed by the thinking of philosophers, scholarly literature on applied theatre, and the editors' own experience, as they consider the question - What is the good? For practitioners working in the field of applied theatre, it provides recommendations for community-based ethical approaches working with principles of voice, agency, collaboration, relationality and reciprocity. Part Two presents a range of international case studies that consider ethics from varying critical perspectives and contexts, including projects in Australia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Covering work with participants of many ages, from children to seniors, the case studies include indigenous perspectives on a language revitalization project with the Hul'q'umi'num' people of British Columbia; the work of a professional dance theatre company working with addicts and people in recovery; interactive drama used in an educational context in Nigeria, and applied theatre projects in situations of trauma with refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos, among others"--. (shrink)

This article examines pregnancy as a dyadic body-project within surrogate motherhood arrangements. In gestational surrogacy arrangements, the surrogate mother agrees to have an embryo that has been created using IVF, with the genetic materials of the intended parents or of anonymous donors, surgically implanted in her womb. Based on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish-Israeli surrogates and intended mothers involved in these arrangements, this article focuses upon the interactive identity management practices that the women jointly undertake during the pregnancy. For each side, (...) creating an unambiguous definition of motherhood was central to their individual identity-work. For surrogates, the possible imputations of immorality required redefining pregnant embodiment as separate from maternal identity, while for intended mothers, the surrogate’s embodiment of the pregnancy represented competing claims to their own maternity. Through verbal communication and through practices of disembodiment and vicarious embodiment, the women construct a ‘shifting body’ which they use to designate the social label of pregnancy, identity-building processes associated with pregnant embodiment, and even the lived experience of pregnancy. This example of a dyadic body-project contributes to the existing scholarship on the role of the body in the management of identity. While previous works have examined projects of the body as individualistic pursuits, the shifting body exemplifies that body-projects can be collaborative, dual forms of identity-work and that pregnancy can be the site of these projects. (shrink)

In this new book, Michael Friedman argues that Kant's continuing efforts to find a metaphysics that could provide a foundation for the sciences is of the utmost ...

In this book, Slote offers the first full-scale foundational account of virtue ethics to have appeared since the recent revival of interest in the ethics of virtue. Slote advocates a particular form of such ethics for its intuitive and structural advantages over Kantianism, utilitarianism, and common-sense morality, and he argues that the problems of other views can be avoided and a contemporary plausible version of virtue ethics achieved only by abandoning specifically moral concepts for general aretaic notions like admirability and (...) virtue. Although this study is not bound by particular Aristotelian doctrines, it places an Aristotelian emphasis on both self-benefiting and other-benefiting virtues. Slote criticizes Kantian and common-sense morality for internal incoherencies and for downgrading the moral individual and her well-being in some previously unnoticed ways. By contrast, this book defends a distinctive, intuitive, and symmetric ethical principle according to which we should balance self-concern with concern for others, but it also concludes that there is, contrary to utilitarianism, no single basis for status as a virtue nor any simple relation between the virtues and human well-being. (shrink)

Morals from Motives develops a virtue ethics inspired more by Hume and Hutcheson's moral sentimentalism than by recently-influential Aristotelianism. It argues that a reconfigured and expanded "morality of caring" can offer a general account of right and wrong action as well as social justice. Expanding the frontiers of ethics, it goes on to show how a motive-based "pure" virtue theory can also help us to understand the nature of human well-being and practical reason.