It must strive to defeat our centuries-old habituation to the book as spectacle, in order that we may be brought to dwell in the immediacies of our lively selves in the world, as we do in our oral/aural life.

This book sets forth an ontological Copernican revolution.

Building upon the scholarship of Michael Polanyi, William Poteat has dedicated himself to offering an alternative model to the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and matter that has dominated Western thought for centuries. These essays, collected by James Nickell and James Stines, cover a wide range of subjects, from Poteat's analysis of the epistemological crisis brought on by the Cartesian program to his first attempts at formulating an alternative to the mind-body dichotomy. These essays relentlessly diagnose the present (...) situation of Western thought by making explicit the philosophical presuppositions to which it is committed. They include theological affirmations, reflections on epistemology, conceptual analyses, as well as dialogues with other writers in the field of cultural criticism and linguistic theory such as George Steiner, Noam Chomsky, and Walker Percy. Most significant is Poteat's bold affirmation of the primacy of persons and his analysis and critique of our cultural misconstructions of human awareness. _The Primacy of Persons and the Language of Culture_ provides an excellent introduction to the scholarship of William Poteat. It should be of particular interest to scholars of philosophy and theology, as well as others who share Poteat's deep concern for the state of human culture. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- The above was already on the database - below was copied from the web William Poteat has dedicated himself to offering an alternative model to the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and matter that has dominated Western thought for centuries. These essays further diagnose the present situation of Western thought by making explicit the philosophical presuppositions to which it is committed. (shrink)

William H. Poteat’s thought, while indebted to Michael Polanyi, originates in Poteat’s own project of remembering all articulate significances to their pre-articulate grounding in the mindbody. He invented the term mindbody both to overstep the traditional distinction between mind and body and to name the living arche of all meaning and meaning-discernment. In focusing on the recovery of the mindbody as the bedrock ontological matrix for the aquisition of speech, the act of explicit reference par excellence, (...) class='Hi'>Poteat radicalizes and advances Polanyi’s efforts to reclaim the tacit roots of all explicit knowledge. (shrink)

William H. Poteat’s thought, while indebted to Michael Polanyi, originates in Poteat’s own project of remembering all articulate significances to their pre-articulate grounding in the mindbody. He invented the term mindbody both to overstep the traditional distinction between mind and body and to name the living arche of all meaning and meaning-discernment. In focusing on the recovery of the mindbody as the bedrock ontological matrix for the aquisition of speech, the act of explicit reference par excellence, (...) class='Hi'>Poteat radicalizes and advances Polanyi’s efforts to reclaim the tacit roots of all explicit knowledge. (shrink)

This essay provides a timeline charting contact between Michael Polanyi and William H. Poteat. We trace the contours of the intimate, multifaceted, and mutually influential friendship of Polanyi and Poteat which developed over more than twenty years.

I here introduce a set of essays on William H. Poteat by quoting in full a 1968 letter from Poteat to Marjorie Grene. Poteat articulates reasons he cannot collaborate with Grene in editing the volume of Polanyi essays that was eventually published as Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi in 1969.

I here introduce a set of essays on William H. Poteat by quoting in full a 1968 letter from Poteat to Marjorie Grene. Poteat articulates reasons he cannot collaborate with Grene in editing the volume of Polanyi essays that was eventually published as Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi in 1969.

As is well known among readers of Tradition and Discovery, William H. Poteat was a central influence in bringing Michael Polanyi to the attention of American scholars and, particularly, to the interest of scholarship in religion and theology. Poteat’s own work was heavily impacted by Polanyi. In turn, Polanyi’s affiliationwith Poteat at Duke and elsewhere clearly impressed and edified Polanyi and led to Polanyi’s request for Poteat’s collaboration with him on Meaning and to the prospect (...) of Polanyi’s coming to Duke for six weeks to facilitate this. Unfortunately, that promising time was not realized. This present essay represents an effortto discern a direction in which such a collaboration might have deeply and felicitously influenced Polanyi’s interpretation and celebration of his own poignant, yet quite restless, religious sensibilities. (shrink)

As is well known among readers of Tradition and Discovery, William H. Poteat was a central influence in bringing Michael Polanyi to the attention of American scholars and, particularly, to the interest of scholarship in religion and theology. Poteat’s own work was heavily impacted by Polanyi. In turn, Polanyi’s affiliationwith Poteat at Duke and elsewhere clearly impressed and edified Polanyi and led to Polanyi’s request for Poteat’s collaboration with him on Meaning and to the prospect (...) of Polanyi’s coming to Duke for six weeks to facilitate this. Unfortunately, that promising time was not realized. This present essay represents an effortto discern a direction in which such a collaboration might have deeply and felicitously influenced Polanyi’s interpretation and celebration of his own poignant, yet quite restless, religious sensibilities. (shrink)

As is well known among readers of Tradition and Discovery, William H. Poteat was a central influence in bringing Michael Polanyi to the attention of American scholars and, particularly, to the interest of scholarship in religion and theology. Poteat’s own work was heavily impacted by Polanyi. In turn, Polanyi’s affiliationwith Poteat at Duke and elsewhere clearly impressed and edified Polanyi and led to Polanyi’s request for Poteat’s collaboration with him on Meaning and to the prospect (...) of Polanyi’s coming to Duke for six weeks to facilitate this. Unfortunately, that promising time was not realized. This present essay represents an effortto discern a direction in which such a collaboration might have deeply and felicitously influenced Polanyi’s interpretation and celebration of his own poignant, yet quite restless, religious sensibilities. (shrink)

This essay provides a timeline charting contact between Michael Polanyi and William H. Poteat. We trace the contours of the intimate, multifaceted, and mutually influential friendship of Polanyi and Poteat which developed over more than twenty years.

My essay offers a personal reflection on Poteat as both a beloved teacher and philosopher. I suggest that Poteat’s teaching and writing had to do most radically with describing an alternative ontology to the ones that have haunted both modern and postmodern thought. Poteat’s ontology leads him to a profound embrace of the Incarnation and its liturgical celebration in the eucharist.

This book explores aspects of William H. Poteat’s philosophical anthropology, which proposes a post-critical alternative to the prevailing dualistic conception of the person and opens a path to recovery of the pre-reflective ontological ground of the person where our personhood can be recovered and re-appropriated.

This book explores aspects of William H. Poteat's philosophical anthropology, which proposes a post-critical alternative to the prevailing dualistic conception of the person and opens a path to recovery of the pre-reflective ontological ground of the person where our personhood can be recovered and re-appropriated.

An increasingly number of patients in Western civilizations suffer from weak authenticity structure which is characterized by a lack of self-realization, autonomy, character strength, stereotype behavior, inability to use (internal) dialogue in order to learn about oneself and defining oneself as a individual, and so on. In this paper a theoretical model of fragile authenticity structure and some suggestions to regain a more authentic attitude are presented.

Working memory limits are best defined in terms of the complexity of the relations that can be processed in parallel. Complexity is defined as the number of related dimensions or sources of variation. A unary relation has one argument and one source of variation; its argument can be instantiated in only one way at a time. A binary relation has two arguments, two sources of variation, and two instantiations, and so on. Dimensionality is related to the number of chunks, because (...) both attributes on dimensions and chunks are independent units of information of arbitrary size. Studies of working memory limits suggest that there is a soft limit corresponding to the parallel processing of one quaternary relation. More complex concepts are processed by or In segmentation, tasks are broken into components that do not exceed processing capacity and can be processed serially. In conceptual chunking, representations are to reduce their dimensionality and hence their processing load, but at the cost of making some relational information inaccessible. Neural net models of relational representations show that relations with more arguments have a higher computational cost that coincides with experimental findings on higher processing loads in humans. Relational complexity is related to processing load in reasoning and sentence comprehension and can distinguish between the capacities of higher species. The complexity of relations processed by children increases with age. Implications for neural net models and theories of cognition and cognitive development are discussed. (shrink)

The core issue of our target article concerns how relational complexity should be assessed. We propose that assessments must be based on actual cognitive processes used in performing each step of a task. Complexity comparisons are important for the orderly interpretation of research findings. The links between relational complexity theory and several other formulations, as well as its implications for neural functioning, connectionist models, the roles of knowledge, and individual and developmental differences, are considered.

This study examines the influence of ethics instruction, religiosity, and intelligence on cheating behavior. A sample of 230 upper level, undergraduate business students had the opportunity to increase their chances of winning money in an experimental situation by falsely reporting their task performance. In general, the results indicate that students who attended worship services more frequently were less likely to cheat than those who attended worship services less frequently, but that students who had taken a course in business ethics were (...) no less likely to cheat than students who had not taken such a course. However, the results do indicate that the extent to which taking a business ethics course influenced cheating behavior was moderated by the religiosity and intelligence of the individual student. In particular, while students who were highly religious were unlikely to cheat whether or not they had taken a business ethics course, students who were not highly religious demonstrated less cheating if they had taken a business ethics course. In addition, the extent of cheating among highly intelligent students was significantly reduced if such students had taken a course in business ethics. Likewise, individuals who were highly intelligent displayed significantly less cheating if they were also highly religious. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

In order for theology to have a cognitive dimension, it is necessary to have procedures for testing and critically evaluating theological models. We make use of certain features of scientific models to show how science has been able to move beyond the poles of foundationalism, represented by logical positivism, and antifoundationalism or relativism, represented by the sociologists of knowledge. These ideas are generalized to show that constructing and testing theological models similarly offers a means by which theology can move beyond (...) confessionalism and postmodernism. Our starting point is Paul Tillich's concept of God as the ground of being and the different levels of consciousness and thinking that accompany his understanding of theology. The ontological argument of Anselm is shown to play a key role, not as a proof for the existence of God but as a means for testing theological models. An example of a theological model, drawn from the domain of philosophy of science, is presented to show how theological models are constructed and tested. (shrink)

A major challenge in global sales research is helping managers understand sales ethics across countries. Addressing this challenge, our research investigates whether a few demographic variables and psychographic variables reduce unethical sales behaviors (USBs) in Canada, Mexico, and the USA. Further, using literatures associated with business ethics, national culture, and customer orientation advocacy, we hypothesize why sales managers should expect similarities and differences in USBs between countries. We tested hypotheses using a sales contest scenario and six USBs, examining survey responses (...) from 948 business-to-business salespeople of a multinational company’s sales force in Canada, Mexico, and the USA. The results reveal that several psychographic variables (such as commitment, relationship to sales manager, and achievement need) affect salespeople’s tendency to engage in USBs differently in each country. In addition, business ethics, individualism, and customer orientation advocacy associated with each country can be used to anticipate similarities and differences in USBs between countries. This research offers important theoretical contributions and implications for more effectively managing sales forces and reducing USBs across countries. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays concerned with the morality of hu man treatment of nonhuman animals. The contributors take very different approaches to their topics and come to widely divergent conclusions. The goal of the volume as a whole is to shed a brighter light upon an aspect of human life-our relations with the other animals-that has recently seen a great increase in interest and in the generation of heat. The discussions and debates contained herein are addressed by (...) the contributors to each other, to the general public, and to the academic world, especially the biological, philosophical, and political parts of that world. The essays are organized into eight sections by topics, each sec tion beginning with a brief introduction linking the papers and the sec tions to one another. There is also a general introduction and an Epilog that suggests alternate possible ways of organizing the material. The first two sections are concerned with the place of animals in the human world: Section I with the ways humans view animals in literature, philosophy, and other parts of human culture, and Section II with the place of animals in human legal and moral community. The next three sections concern comparisons between human and nonhuman animals: Section III on the rights and wrongs of killing, Section IV on the humanity of animals and the animality of humans, and Section V on questions of the conflict of human and animal interests. (shrink)

The field of clinical ethics consultation has matured into a multidisciplinary profession, with clinical ethics consultants (CECs) being trained in bioethics, philosophy, theology, law, medicine, n...

This book includes both classic and more contemporary readings by both professional philosophers and other people with philosophically intriguing viewpoints. The material provided is diverse, yet also contains certain themes to achieve the element of unity. One such theme, the debate of the "nationalist" focus on blackness vs. the many critics of this focus, runs through a great number of issues and readings.

[The book] offers instructors and students a well-balanced anthology for ethics courses of all kinds. Applied ethics, Social problems, Introduction to ethics, and Moral problems are just some of the courses that might use this up-to-date collection of readings on the most hotly debated issues of our time. The book also includes important readings in moral theory, providing students with the necessary framework to evaluate positions. The book juxtaposes several different viewpoints on [various] social issues. -Back cover. This book is (...) primarily intended for undergraduates taking philosophy courses that address contemporary moral problems. -Pref. (shrink)

A collection of late essays, an interview, and a poem by Kenneth Burke (1897-1993), renowned literary critic, philosopher, poet, essayist, and rhetorician.