Mr. A's physician recommends immediate dialysis. However, Mr. A is in the United States illegally, has no family living in the area, and is unemployed. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires the hospital not only to examine Mr. A, but to provide him with any needed stabilizing treatment without considering his lack of insurance coverage or ability to pay. The needed treatment to stabilize Mr. A is dialysis. Therefore, the physician admits him and starts dialysis. But Mr. A (...) will need to continue dialysis indefinitely. Because he has no insurance and is an illegal immigrant, he is not eligible for any outpatient dialysis units. He is also unable to afford any medical treatments. Once Mr. A is stabilized, should he be discharged? His physician and social worker turn to the hospital ethics committee for help. What should Mercy Hospital do? (shrink)

Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar pushed back in various ways against the tide of historical criticism in the twentieth century. On the one hand Rahner wished to distance theology from biblical revelation in his turn towards the subject. In so doing, he sought to preserve theology from the rising tide of skepticism resulting from contemporary exegesis. His philosophical system left little room for historical revelation because of a fixation on individual revelation. Balthasar, on the other hand, questioned whether (...) the Rahnerian system strips Christianity of the need to bear witness to the world, and relativizes Christ’s Incarnation. Balthasar saw the indestructible unity of the form (gestalt) presented to humanity in the revelation of Old and New Testaments as an antidote to the fragmentation within biblical studies. Because of gestalt, Scripture is more than a mere sum of its parts. For Balthasar, the faith of the exegete is an irreplaceable requisite for accurate hermeneutics. Dispensing with the revelatory character of the Scriptures would also be unscientific; it is an unsuitable approach to a text that calls one to bear witness. Balthasar thus correctly called for a theological hermeneutic whereby the faithful exegete recognizes the unity of the scriptural account. (shrink)

Eight scholars answered the call printed in both issues of volume 19 of The Owl to “bone up for Loyola” by attending a week-long seminar devoted to the study of Hegel’s Science of Logic. The seminar was held at Windy Pine, a summer retreat of the Trent University Canadian Studies Program, on Kushog Lake in Ontario’s Haliburton Highlands. A half dozen rustic cabins lining a rocky, wooded cove provided a delightful setting for the exercise of both mind and body. The (...) best of Hegel, along with more empirical events such as enjoying fine food, swimming, canoeing, fishing, hiking, and long evenings of pleasant conversation left all of the participants wishing that Hegel had written a sequel. (shrink)

This paper is a study about Philadelphia’s comprehensive user engagement sites (CUESs) as the authors address and examine issues related to the upcoming implementation of a CUES while seeking solutions for its disputed questions and plans. Beginning with the federal drug schedules, the authors visit some of the medical and public health issues vis-à-vis safe injection facilities (SIFs). Insite, a successful Canadian SIF, has been thoroughly researched as it represents a paradigm for which a Philadelphia CUES can expand upon. Also, (...) the existing criticisms against SIFs are revisited while critically unpackaged and responded to in favor of the establishment. In the main section, the authors propose the layout and services of the upcoming CUES, much of which would be in congruent to Vancouver’s Insite. On the other hand, the CUES would be distinct from Insite, as the authors emphasize, in that it will offer an information center run by individuals in recovery and place additional emphasis on early education for young healthcare professionals by providing them a platform to work at the site. The paper will also briefly investigate the implementation of a CUES site under an ethical scope of the Harm Reduction Theory. Lastly, the authors recommend some strategic plans that the Philadelphia City government may consider employing at this crucial stage. (shrink)

Kevin M. Cahill reclaims one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's most passionately pursued endeavors: to reawaken a sense of wonder around human life and language and its mysterious place in the world. Following the philosopher's spiritual and cultural criticism and tying it more tightly to the overall evolution of his thought, Cahill frames an original interpretation of Wittgenstein's engagement with Western metaphysics and modernity, better contextualizing the force of his work. Cahill synthesizes several approaches to Wittgenstein's life and thought. He stresses (...) the nontheoretical aspirations of the philosopher's early and later writings, combining key elements from the so-called resolute readings of the _Tractatus_ with the "therapeutic" readings of _Philosophical Investigations_. Cahill shows how continuity in Wittgenstein's cultural and spiritual concerns informed if not guided his work between these texts, and in his reading of the _Tractatus_, Cahill identifies surprising affinities with Martin Heidegger's _Being and Time_--a text rarely associated with Wittgenstein's early formulations. In his effort to recapture wonder, Wittgenstein both avoided and undermined traditional philosophy's reliance on theory. As Cahill relates the steps of this bold endeavor, he forms his own innovative, analytical methods, joining historicist and contextualist approaches to text-based, immanent readings. The result is an original, sustained examination of Wittgenstein's thought. (shrink)

Some recent cognitive-scientific research suggests that a considerable amount of intelligent action is generated not by the systematic activity of internal representations, but by complex interactions involving neural, bodily, and environmental factors. Following an analysis of this threat to representational explanation, we pursue an analogy between the role of genes in the production of biological form and the role of neural states in the production of behaviour, in order to develop a notion of genic representation. In both cases an appeal (...) to normal ecological context is used to balance multi-factoral, interactive causal determination against the intuition that certain aspects of the causal nexus play a special role in promoting adaptive success. Certain worries abut this vision help us to get a better grip on the concept of genic representation itself. We end with a puzzle concerning the relation between cognition and representation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HAPPINESS: THE NATURAL END OF MAN? KEVIN M. STALEY St. Anslem Oollege Manchester, New Hampshire I AONG THE QUESTIONS the philosopher considers, none perhaps ris more important than that of ' the good life.' This question looks for the distinguishing marks of a. life which is fully human and which constitutes the actualization of one's uniquely human potential. For the ancient philosophers, such a life was considered the (...) highest good that one could achieve, the end and the raison d' etre of one's activity. This end was known as happiness. As a Christian theologian well versed in the writings of the ancients, Thomas Aquinas also had occasion to reflect on the nature of happiness. His inquiry possessed a dimension which was completely lacking to the ancients, namely, the belief that man is destined to enjoy the ' face to face ' vision of God. Thomas left no doubt that this, man's most ultimate end, was to be possessed after death through the gifts of grace. On the other hand, in his Sententia Libri Ethicorum he gives Aristotle his due, commenting with approval on many 0£ Aristotle's conclusions. In his discussion of happiness in the Summa Theo~ logiae, one can also find the Philosopher's doctrine of happiness, here distinguished from ·supernatural beatitude as imperfect from perfect beatitude. Are we to assume then that inquiry rinto the nature of happiness is twofold, admitting of a. theological and philosophical dimension? A philosopher would, on this showing, be concerned ·with the natural, albeit imperfect, end and the theologian with the supernatural end of man. Many philosophers within the Thomistic tradition have ~15 216 KEVIN M. STALEY been comfortable with this assumption. Recently, for example, John Finnis has stated, St. Thomas very plainly says, the task of ' considering and determining the ultimate end of human life and human affairs' belongs to the principle practical science; Aristotle called it ethics and Thomas moral philosophy.1 Others do not share Finnis' confidence in this regard. Alan Dona.gan, for example,,argues to the contrary that Thomas' final word on the end of man was that Aristotle was simply mistaken. According to Donagan, Thomas saved Aristotle's thesis that the ultimate end of human life is eudaimonia by two drastic amendments. First, he reinterpreted eudaimonia as what he called beatitudo: the total satisfaction of desires of an intellectual creature by a vision of God's essence.... Secondly, he denied that human beings could either attain beatitudo, or even learn what it really is, except by grace.2 If Donagan is correct, then the philosopher is clearly not competent to discuss the end o£ man, since the consideration of supernatural beatitude lies beyond the power of unaided.reason. Finnis recognizes the distinction between perfect and imperfect beatitude, and his position need only entail that it is the latter which is the concern of philosophy proper. However, although the notion of 'imperfect beatitude' served well Thomas' purpose of integrating the thought of the Philosopher within the framework of Christian theology, the fact remains that Thomas did not disengage this notion from its theological context. That is rto say, he did not carry out 'an explicit treatment of imperfect beatitude as the natural end of man. In itself, this need not imply that such an inquiry is impossible or ill-conceived. Nevertheless, the notion of ' imperfect beatitude ' (construed as some sort of natural end of man 1" Practical Reasoning, Human Goods, and the End of Man", Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Society, v. 58, 1984, p. 26. 2 Human lilnds and Human Actions (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1985), p. 38. HAPPINESS: THE NATURAL END OF MAN? 217 amenable to philosophical treatment), is still quite problematic ; and Finnis himself has recognized the difficulty. Happiness signified, even for Aristotle, a good which is perfect and in every way final.3 Finnis observes that "the 'perfect,' the 'fully satisfactory,' is what the concept of eudaimooia /bemitudo is about; an 'imperfect beatitude' is, by definition, a state which is not ' adequate to the aspira.tion of human nature '." 4 Thus, the very concept of ' imperfect happiness ' appears at best to be paradoxical, at worst self-contradictory -at least to the philosopher. This... (shrink)

Paul Roth claims that “interpretivists” in the philosophy of social sciences like Charles Taylor assume a positivist caricature of natural science to motivate their arguments against naturalism in the social sciences. Roth argues that not only is adopting the view of meaning relied upon by those he sometimes refers to as the “friends of understanding” unmotivated once the critique of positivism has been taken on board, he argues further that Quine has shown why this “meaning realism” is unavailable in principle. (...) Roth bolsters his use of Quine against interpretivists by referring to Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein on rule-following. But McDowell has shown how Kripke overlooks an alternative reading of those remarks, which provides “interpretivists” with arguments against mainstream naturalism and which makes no use of anything resembling “meaning realism.” This opening for interpretivists is actually already present in Roth’s discussion of the distinction between “thin” and “thick” description. This suggests how mainstream naturalism itself might be rethought to accommodate interpretivism. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 35-37.

In this book, Kevin M. Cherry compares the views of Aristotle and Plato about the practice, study, and above all, the purpose of politics.

The practice of surgical trainees operating in developing countries is gaining interest in the medical community. Although there has been little analysis about the ethical impact of these electives, there has been some concerns raised over the possible exploitation of trainees and their patients. An ethical review of this practice shows that care needs to be taken to prevent harm. Inexperienced surgeons learning surgical skills in developing countries engender greater risk of violating basic ethical principles. Advanced surgical trainees who have (...) already achieved surgical competence are best qualified to satisfy these ethical issues. All training programs need to develop a structured ethical review for international electives to protect their trainees and their patients from harm. (shrink)

Latvia presents a unique and counterintuitive case in the history of postsocialist ethnic relations. Despite the USSR's having annexed Latvia by fiat and armed force in the 1940s—and despite the population transfers of so many Russians and other Soviet peoples to the region that Latvians themselves nearly became an ethnic minority in “their own” republic—there has been no ethnic violence between Latvians and Russians in the postsocialist era. Yet the events of summer 2014 have radically shifted the political imaginary of (...) this region, raising the specter of a loss of social cohesion and an eruption of violence. The essay examines one of the factors that has supported amity in Latvia for the past two decades: late-Soviet cosmopolitanism and its legacies in present-day Latvian cultural life. Analysis focuses on public art projects in Riga during the summer of 2014, in the shadow of the war in Ukraine. (shrink)

Old Indic diphthongs underwent a chain shift whereby e and o monophthongized and ai and au shortened, filling the gap. While it is clear that these changes were complete by the end of the Vedic period, it has been unclear when during that period they occurred. Based on the avoidance of superheavy syllables in metrical cadences, which is corroborated here, I argue that both shifts took place during the compositional period of the R̥ gveda. That is, they had not yet (...) begun when the oldest material was composed, but were largely complete by later material, including book 10. (shrink)

In this analysis of the problem of freedom from a humanistic-Marxist perspective, philosopher Kevin M. Brien draws on the full chronological spectrum of Marx's writings to reconstruct the mature Marx's view of freedom under three broad categories: freedom as a mode of being, freedom as transcendence, and freedom as spontaneity. While recognizing that many students of Marx have noted two distinctly different perspectives in early and late Marx, Brien interprets Marx's philosophy as a coherent organic whole. He demonstrates that (...) Marx's thought is principally and systematically an elaborated philosophical-scientific theory of freedom. New to this second edition is an extended postscript in which Brien provides critical responses to a number of published reviews of the first edition of his book. In addition, Brien also presents a humanistic-Marxist interpretation of spirituality. In so doing he identifies a potential revolutionizing agency in the context of the 21st century. Finally, an addendum shows how humanistic Marxism and Buddhism converge on the same basic values and mutually complement each other. This comparison serves to emphasize the viability of projecting a nontheistic spiritual dimension and shows that there is a genuine moral basis for common social action among adherents of different perspectives. This rigorously argued and deeply thoughtful analysis reveals the continuing relevance and promise of Marx's thought in the 21st century. (shrink)

This paper explores Marx’s mature method of dialectical explanation. Drawing from Marx’s formulations, the paper proceeds to philosophically elaborate what this method involves. It discloses that: a) all explanatory factors come from prior empirical inquiry; b) this method moves in stages from more ..

Reinhold Niebuhr, the father of Christian realism, died in the early 1970s. Since that time, discussions in theological ethics have been dominated by two competing accounts of just-war rationality: the presumption against harm position (PAH) and the presumption against injustice position (PAI). Starting from the accounts of moral tragedy found in the PAI and PAH positions, this article argues that there are reasons for Christian realists to reject both positions. Basil Mitchell’s account of ‘cumulative case’ argumentation provides a model for (...) arguing about war that better fits with Christian realism than either of these alternative positions. (shrink)

The early nineteenth century was a time between empires in German-speaking lands, following the collapse of the holy Roman empire in 1806. This was also the time at which modern concepts of nations, nationalism, and the state entered theological discourse, bound together with emerging notions of world historical progress. From this time until the First World War, the task of conceptualizing national identity and the nature of the ‘Christian state’ became a pressing theological problem. This essay seeks to locate Schleiermacher’s (...) reflections on the Christian state within this developing problematic. Schleiermacher’s philosophical and theological works closely engaged emerging ideas of the nation, state, and historical progress. However, he departed from the more totalizing affirmations of national spirit and the Christian state of many of his contemporaries, arguing for a more limited conception of the state as a point of transition in the ongoing historical development of the reign of God. (shrink)

Long‐term potentiation and long‐term depression are thought to be cellular mechanisms contributing to learning and memory. Although the physiological phenomena have been well characterized, little consensus of their underlying molecular mechanisms has emerged. One reason for this may be the under‐appreciated complexity of the signaling pathways that can arise if key signaling molecules are discretely localized within the synapse. Recent findings suggest an unanticipated degree of structural organization at the synapse, and improved methods in cellular imaging of living tissue have (...) provided much‐needed information about the intracellular dynamics of Ca2+, thought to be critical for both LTP and LTD. In this review, we briefly summarize some of these developments, and show that a more complete understanding of cellular signaling depends on the successful integration of traditional biochemistry and molecular biology with the spatial and temporal details of synaptic ultrastructure. Biophysically realistic computer simulations can have an important role in bridging these disciplines. BioEssays 24:1130–1144, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the political and legal context in which the 1999 Omaha (Nebraska) Public Schools bond issue was proposed and approved, and the conception of social justice that underpins it. I argue that the 1999 bond issue marks a shift from an ideal of social justice centered on integration toward another ideal of justice centered on fair distribution of resources. I indicate some of the limits of this distributive conception of justice from both a theoretical and a practical point (...) of view. I argue that distributive justice must be carried out in a context of participatory democracy in order to achieve social justice in public education in present-day Omaha. (shrink)

Every theory of justice presupposes a theory of agency which specifies the nature, capacities, and needs of the agents to whom it applies. Likewise, every theory of agency can serve as the basis for a theory of justice which specifies the social conditions in which persons can develop and exercise their capacities for agency. Contemporary liberal, communitarian, and feminist theories of justice all share an abstract understanding of agency as involving the capacity to pursue a conception of the good and (...) the capacity to fit that pursuit into a moral vision. Liberalism, communitarianism, and feminism do not differ primarily over what agency amounts to or whether agency is morally valuable, but over what social conditions persons require in order to develop and exercise their capacities for agency. ;I develop analytic models of a liberal and a communitarian theory of social justice, and I derive from each of these an analytic model of the theory of agency on which it tacitly depends. I show that neither the liberal nor the communitarian theory of agency can accommodate the needs of subordinate social groups such as African-Americans, women, and lesbians for a society in which denigrating racist, sexist, and homophobic cultural images are absent and in which the different needs for agency of members of different social groups can be addressed. ;I also develop a feminist dialogical theory of justice which leaves the demands of justice open to determination by an open, ongoing, egalitarian social dialogue about the social conditions required for agency. I then derive from it a theory of agency which is, I argue, better able to meet the differing needs for agency of members of different social groups, to uncover hidden forms of injustice, and to address changes in prevailing forms of domination and oppression over time. (shrink)

Some labor historians and social historians of race are tempted to try to explain Chinese American racial oppression in the US purely by appeal to economic factors, especially the role that Chinese American men played in the US labor market. In this essay, I argue that such reduction is not possible. I briefly describe the history of Chinese immigration to the US, focusing on key changes in US law governing immigration and citizenship as they affected the Chinese. I then refute (...) two economic reductionist views of Chinese American racial oppression. I conclude by suggesting a third, alternative understanding of this oppression that appeals to economic factors among others. (shrink)

If political dialogue is to identify and redress existing forms of injustice, participants in the dialogue must be able to appeal to the concept of objectivity in order to exchange claims, attitudes, and background beliefs which distort or conceal various forms of injustice. The conceptions of objectivity traditionally employed in liberal democratic political philosophy are not well-suited to play this role because they are insufficiently sensitive to the social and ideological pluralism of modern societies. Some liberal political philosophers have recently (...) offered more context-sensitive and pluralistic conceptions of objectivity, requiring participants in political dialogue to frame their demands for justice in terms of a conception of justice acceptable to all participants in the dialogue. I argue that this conception of objectivity constitutes an improvement over traditional liberal conceptions. However, it is ultimately unacceptable because it does not take adequate account of the limited and distorted knowledge that members of dominant social groups tend to possess about the oppression experienced by members of subordinate and marginalized groups. As a result, this conception of objectivity wrongly deems the demands for justice voiced by members of subordinate and marginalized groups to be subjective simply because they seem unreasonable from the limited and distorting standpoint of dominant social groups. (shrink)