In his writings, Edmund Pellegrino analyzes four deficiencies in the humanity of those who fall ill: the loss of (1) freedom of action, (2) freedom to make rational choices, (3) freedom from the power of others, and (4) a sense of the integrity of the self. Since Pellegrino's analysis and commitment to virtuebased ethics preceded much of the attention later given by philosophers to the importance of the moral principle of autonomy (in contrast to beneficence) in patient care, it is (...) helpful to trace the source of his commitment to virtue-based ethics and his account of freedom to Aristotle's analysis of the human soul, as an entelechy of an intact and healthy living organism that, unimpeded by illness, moves itself to act, to actualize its intellectual potential in the form of making rational choices, and to free itself from the power of others by remaining independent and without need of continuous assistance, while at the same time retaining the integrity of a unified self that can act, think, and choose for itself autonomously. (shrink)

A competent and philosophically subtle study of S. K.'s notion of the relation of Christianity and history. The relation of time and eternity, of "sacred history" and ordinary history and the problem of contemporaneity in the Fragments, the Postscript and Training in Christianity are brought into focus through S. K.'s doctrine of the incarnation. This Holm interprets as "fictionalist"; "it is valid to believe that this man is God... as if it were so, although his empirical appearance can never reveal (...) it." --F. M. S. (shrink)

Thoughts on various subjects arranged in alphabetical order from "abnormal" to "zero."--F. M. S.

Written for Catholic students, this textbook presents simplified neo-Thomistic answers to basic neo-Thomistic questions. Points of view other than the "perennial philosophy" are briefly mentioned but quickly dismissed. --F. M. S.

Rotenstreich sees history as a domain defined by the distinctive relation between the historical subject and the historical process, which are ontologically identical but epistemologically separate. The dialectic between subject and object sets the framework for discussions of objectivity, historical time, the relation of history to the social sciences, and the role of causality and laws in history. The book should prove rewarding to any one who will take the trouble to wade through a style which is difficult and often (...) very obscure.--F. M. S. (shrink)

Seven scholarly studies developing the thesis that no significant history has been or will be written apart from the historian's having a philosophical and political conception of history." Recognizing the dangers inherent in this recommended interpenetration of history with philosophy and politics, the author discusses its philosophical distortion in dialectical idealism and materialism and its political distortion in the subordination of history to political ideology in Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism. The book is representative of the non-speculative "philosophy of history" being (...) done in Germany today. --F. M. S. (shrink)

This study centers on Sein und Zeit, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, and Einführung in die Metaphysik, and emphasizes the shift from the earlier to the later Heidegger. It should be useful to beginning students: consisting largely of translation and paraphrase, it does not distort Heidegger. It contains some good insights, but it is much too short to do justice to the subject--F. M. S.

This book effectively challenges the dogma that all explanation can be reduced to the "general law" type. The author maintains that this theory accounts for most historical explanation only by making qualifications and exceptions which vitiate whatever force the theory might have and by excluding the most important considerations from the theory itself by calling them "psychological," "heuristic," etc. This leads Dray to argue that the "general law" theory is being assumed true a priori and then forced to fit a (...) mode of explanation to which it is unsuited--indeed, he goes so far as to doubt that the theory is suitable for physics. Because he meets the analytic defenders of the theory on their own ground, his criticisms are lucid, relevant, and compelling; but the constructive proposals are sketchy.--F. M. S. (shrink)

A semi-popular defense of the objective validity and cognitive truth of moral, aesthetic and religious insight. The author describes Kant's method of defending "scientific insight" in the first Critique and attempts to apply this method to the other areas of experience more consistently and successfully than Kant did.--F. M. S.

A nicely documented and interesting, though loosely argued and dogmatic, study, from a neo-Calvinist perspective, of the Christian doctrine of man and its relation to doctrines of man implicit in politics, literature and philosophy.--F. M. S.

A report on the teacher education programs supported by the Fund for the Advancement of Education which calls for a broad liberal education for all teachers and greater attention to the philosophy of education.--F. M. S.

Volumes two and three of this six-volume work together deal with Greek culture from its pre-hellenic origins to the period of the Skeptics. It is philosophy of history in the grand style. Though the language is diffuse and metaphorical, the work is learned and has a certain precision. Voegelin's thesis is that the creation of order is a constant of human nature. A concrete society, besides being an organization for pragmatic survival, is also an attunement with the order of being (...) and an attempt to bring the two realms into harmony. The Greek pragmatic order took the form of polis, and its conception of the order of being reached its highest form in the overcoming of the cosmological myth in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle.--F. M. S. (shrink)

To localize wheat ESTs on chromosomes, 882 homoeologous group 6-specific ESTs were identified by physically mapping 7965 singletons from 37 cDNA libraries on 146 chromosome, arm, and sub-arm aneuploid and deletion stocks. The 882 ESTs were physically mapped to 25 regions flanked by 23 deletion breakpoints. Of the 5154 restriction fragments detected by 882 ESTs, 2043 were localized to group 6 chromosomes and 806 were mapped on other chromosome groups. The number of loci mapped was greatest on chromosome 6B and (...) least on 6D. The 264 ESTs that detected orthologous loci on all three homoeologs using one restriction enzyme were used to construct a consensus physical map. The physical distribution of ESTs was uneven on chromosomes with a tendency toward higher densities in the distal halves of chromosome arms. About 43% of the wheat group 6 ESTs identified rice homologs upon comparisons of genome sequences. Fifty-eight percent of these ESTs were present on rice chromosome 2 and the remaining were on other rice chromosomes. Even within the group 6 bins, rice chromosomal blocks identified by 1-6 wheat ESTs were homologous to up to 11 rice chromosomes. These rice-block contigs were used to resolve the order of wheat ESTs within each bin. (shrink)

A sympathetic study of the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition which attempts to clarify the nature of the Free Church heritage and show its contributions to religious and political freedom. Though well-documented and competent, it is episodic and somewhat disorganized; it dwells less on history than on the relevance of Free Church ideas to contemporary problems of religion and society.--F. M. S.

Berkson maintains that the "progressive" distortions of Dewey were not entirely unfounded and criticizes Dewey for his individualism, for a biologicism which cannot ground his own intentions except by a tour de force, and for his failure to recognize the necessity of clearly formulated ideal ends. Emphasizes the Hegelian side of Dewey.--F. M. S.

The final volume in the fine translation of Cassirer's central work deals with the problem of knowledge, "the structure and articulation of a theoretical world view." The analysis proceeds from perception and representation, through the function of signification and the idea of concept, to mathematics and the highest forms of natural science. Cassirer's introduction offers a concise discussion in historical context of the idea of symbolic form itself.--F. M. S.

An "essay on life" giving us in 60 pages a doctrine of man and the universe based on broadly Christian principles plus, for good measure, a commentary on every book of the Old Testament.--F. M. S.

Proceedings of the eighth trans-disciplinary symposium on philosophy and medicine held at Farmington, Connecticut, November 9-11,1978.

Whilst previous observational studies have linked negative thought processes such as an external locus of control and holding negative cognitive styles with depression, the directionality of these associations and the potential role that these factors play in the transition to adulthood and parenthood has not yet been investigated. This study examined the association between locus of control and negative cognitive styles in adolescence and probable depression in young adulthood and whether parenthood moderated these associations. Using a UK prospective population-based birth (...) cohort study: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, we examined the association between external locus of control and negative cognitive styles in adolescence with odds of depression in 4,301 young adults using logistic regression models unadjusted and adjusted for potential confounding factors. Interaction terms were employed to examine whether parenthood moderated these associations. Over 20% of young adults in our sample were at or above the clinical threshold indicating probable depression. For each standard deviation increase in external locus of control in adolescence, there was a 19% higher odds of having probable depression in young adulthood, after adjusting for various confounding factors including baseline mood and different demographic and life events variables. Similarly, for each SD increase in negative cognitive styles in adolescence, there was a 29% higher odds of having probable depression in the adjusted model. We found little evidence that parenthood status moderated the relationship between external locus of control or negative cognitive styles in adolescence and probable depression following adjustment for confounding factors. Effect estimates were comparable when performed in the complete case dataset. These findings suggest that having an external locus of control and holding negative cognitive styles in mid- to late adolescence is associated with an increased likelihood of probable depression in young adulthood. (shrink)

Task unrelated thought (TUT) refers to thought directed away from the current situation, for example a daydream. Three experiments were conducted on healthy participants, with two broad aims. First, to contrast distributed and encapsulated views of cognition by comparing the encoding of categorical and random lists of words (Experiments One and Two). Second, to examine the consequences of experiencing TUT during study on the subsequent retrieval of information (Experiments One, Two, and Three). Experiments One and Two demonstrated lower levels of (...) TUT and higher levels of word-fragment completion whilst encoding categorical relative to random stimuli, supporting the role of a distributed resource in the maintenance of TUT. In addition the results of all three experiments suggested that experiencing TUT during study had a measurable effect on subsequent retrieval. TUT was associated with increased frequency of false alarms at retrieval (Experiment One). In the subsequent experiments TUT was associated with no advantage to retrieval based on recollection, by manipulating instructions at encoding (Experiment Two), and/or at retrieval (Experiment Three). The implications of the results of all three experiments are discussed in terms of recent accounts of memory retrieval and conscious awareness. (shrink)