In Why Faith is a Virtue, Philip D. Smith builds on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Robert Adams to argue that faith contributes to human excellence. To make the argument, Smith sorts through conflicting possible "faiths" and shows how some of them are not virtues at all. Nevertheless, he argues that faith, properly understood, contributes to crucial human practices: scientific research, social reform, and parenting.

What is hope? A feeling? Something you do? A belief or a cluster of beliefs? A way of perceiving the world? Is hope the same as wishful thinking? Hope is complicated. Nevertheless, hope can make our lives better. In Understanding Hope, Philip Smith combines theology, psychology, philosophy, and his own experience of personal loss to help readers understand and practice hope. Understanding Hope is short, but it requires hard thinking. It's worth the effort.

Virtue of Civility in the Practice of Politics is a book at the intersection of ethical theory, political philosophy and Christian belief. The book argues that there is a true political virtue: civility. Civility is a virtue that is directed toward the political opponent. MacIntyre's schema for understanding a virtue is used to show how civility contributes to better human living in a variety of contexts: business, family life, church life, and public affairs.

Moral philosophy and education, by H. D. Aiken.--The moral sense and contributory values, by C. I. Lewis.--Realms of value, by P. W. Taylor.--The role of value theory in education, by J. D. Butler.--Does ethics make a difference? By K. Price.--Educational value statements, by C. Beck.--Educational values and goals, by W. K. Frankena.--Conflicts in values, by H. S. Broudy.--Levels of valuational discourse in education, by J. F. Perry and P. G. Smith.--Education and some moves toward a value methodology, by A. S. (...) Clayton.--You can't pray a lie, by M. Twain.--Men, machines, and morality, by J. F. Soltis.--Teaching and telling, by I. Scheffler.--Reason and habit, by R. S. Peters.--The two moralists of the child, by J. Piaget.--Causes and morality, by R. S. Peters.--On education and morals, by R. W. Sleeper.--Moral autonomy and reasonableness, by T. D. Perry. (shrink)

_Philosophy Through Science Fiction_ offers a fun, challenging, and accessible way in to the issues of philosophy through the genre of science fiction. Tackling problems such as the possibility of time travel, or what makes someone the same person over time, the authors take a four-pronged approach to each issue, providing · a clear and concise introduction to each subject · a science fiction story that exemplifies a feature of the philosophical discussion · historical and contemporary philosophical texts that investigate (...) the issue with rigor, and · glossary, plot profiles of pertinent science fiction stories and films, and questions for further reflection. _Philosophy Through Science Fiction_ includes stories from contemporary science fiction writers including Greg Egan and Mike Resnick, as well as from classic authors like Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein. Philosophy readings include historical pieces by René Descartes and David Hume, and contemporary pieces by John Searle and Mary Midgley. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

What determines whether an action is right or wrong? Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader explores for students and researchers the relationship between consequentialist theory and moral rules. Most of the chapters focus on rule consequentialism or on the distinction between act and rule versions of consequentialism. Contributors, among them the leading philosophers in the discipline, suggest ways of assessing whether rule consequentialism could be a satisfactory moral theory. These essays, all of which are previously unpublished, provide students in (...) moral philosophy with essential material and ask key questions on just what the criteria for an adequate moral theory might be. (shrink)

It is sometimes suggested that expressivism in meta-ethics is to be criticized on grounds which do not themselves concern meta-ethics in particular, but which rather concern philosophy of language more generally. Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit (1998; see also Jackson and Pettit 1999, and Jackson 2001) have recently advanced a novel version of such an argument. They begin by noting that expressivism in its central form makes two claims—that ethical sentences are not truth evaluable, and that to assert an (...) ethical sentence is to express one’s desires or feelings rather than to report a fact. They then argue that, given some plausible premises in the philosophy of language emanating mainly from Locke, the two central claims of expressivism are contradictory: when combined with the plausible premises, they say, the second claim refutes the first. The purpose of this paper is to formulate Jackson and Pettit’s Lockean argument, and to suggest that it fails. (shrink)

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

The Factualistic, Positivistic Basis . . . this life of suffering, of doubt, which makes you deeply love naked, living reality. Zola "Gustave Doret,"Mex ...

An attempt is made to pinpoint the way in which perception is related to belief. Although, for familiar reasons, it is not true to say that we necessarily believe in the existence of the objects we perceive, nor that they actually have their ostensible characteristics, it is argued that the relation between perception and belief is more than merely contingent.There are two main issues to address. The first is that ‘collateral’ beliefs may impede perceptual belief. It is argued that this (...) still assigns an essential role to belief in perception, though the belief may be of an attenuated form. The second is Fred Dretske’s claim that even attenuated belief may be entirely absent from perception. It is argued that ‘non-epistemic’ perception can be understood only by employing the concept of ‘epistemic’ perception; that the former can occur only partially---i.e., within perceptions that are otherwise epistemic; and that by switching attention from the perception of objects to the Phenomenological tradition’s concern with the perception of world, we can see that perception must be entirely permeated with ‘doxastic’ force. (shrink)

An attempt is made to pinpoint the way in which perception is related to belief. Although, for familiar reasons, it is not true to say that we necessarily believe in the existence of the objects we perceive, nor that they actually have their ostensible characteristics, it is argued that the relation between perception and belief is more than merely contingentThere are two main issues to address. the first is that ‘collateral’ beliefs may impede perceptual belief. It is argued that this (...) still assigns an essential role to belief in perception, though the belief may be of an attenuated form. the second is Fred Dretske's claim that even attenuated belief may be entirely absent from perception. It is argued that (a) ‘non‐epistemic’perception can be understood only by employing the concept of ‘epistemic’perception; (b) that the former can occur only partially—i.e., within perceptions that are otherwise epistemic; and (c) that by switching attention from the perception of objects to the Phenomenological tradition's concern with the perception of world, we can see that perception must be entirely permeated with ‘doxastic’force. (shrink)

We show that assuming modest large cardinals, there is a definable class of ordinals, closed and unbounded beneath every uncountable cardinal, so that for any closed and unbounded subclasses $P, Q, {\langle L[P],\in,P \rangle }$ and ${\langle L[Q],\in,Q \rangle }$ possess the same reals, satisfy the Generalised Continuum Hypothesis, and moreover are elementarily equivalent. Examples of such P are Card, the class of uncountable cardinals, I the uniform indiscernibles, or for any n the class $C^{n}{=_{{\operatorname {df}}}}\{ \lambda \, | \, (...) V_{\lambda } \prec _{{\Sigma }_{n}}V\}$ ; moreover the theory of such models is invariant under ZFC-preserving extensions. They also all have a rich structure satisfying many of the usual combinatorial principles and a definable wellorder of the reals. The inner model constructed using definability in the language augmented by the Härtig quantifier is thus also characterized. (shrink)

We review some recent developments in the conformal gravity theory that has been advanced as a candidate alternative to standard Einstein gravity. As a quantum theory the conformal theory is both renormalizable and unitary, with unitarity being obtained because the theory is a PT symmetric rather than a Hermitian theory. We show that in the theory there can be no a priori classical curvature, with all curvature having to result from quantization. In the conformal theory gravity requires no independent quantization (...) of its own, with it being quantized solely by virtue of its being coupled to a quantized matter source. Moreover, because it is this very coupling that fixes the strength of the gravitational field commutators, the gravity sector zero-point energy density and pressure fluctuations are then able to identically cancel the zero-point fluctuations associated with the matter sector. In addition, we show that when the conformal symmetry is spontaneously broken, the zero-point structure automatically readjusts so as to identically cancel the cosmological constant term that dynamical mass generation induces. We show that the macroscopic classical theory that results from the quantum conformal theory incorporates global physics effects that provide for a detailed accounting of a comprehensive set of 138 galactic rotation curves with no adjustable parameters other than the galactic mass to light ratios, and with the need for no dark matter whatsoever. With these global effects eliminating the need for dark matter, we see that invoking dark matter in galaxies could potentially be nothing more than an attempt to describe global physics effects in purely local galactic terms. Finally, we review some recent work by ’t Hooft in which a connection between conformal gravity and Einstein gravity has been found. (shrink)

The concept of wilderness, as denned in the U.S.A. Wilderness Act of 1964, is analyzed and found to be ambiguous. This is an administrative advantage. The concept of underground wilderness is then introduced and found to be applicable under the terms of the Act. It is argued that the longest cave in the world, the Flint Ridge Cave System in Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky, can and should be officially declared as wilderness by Congress even though the surface above it (...) is now developed. (shrink)

A correction is needed to our paper: to the definition contained within the statement of Lemma 1.5 and thus arguments around it in §3.

v. 1. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian Constitution. Rhetoric. On Poetics.--v. 2. Logic.--v. 3. Physics. Metaphysics. On the soul. Short physical treaties.--v. 4. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Biological treatises.

We claim that a recent article of P. Cotogno ([2003]) in this journal is based on an incorrect argument concerning the non-computability of diagonal functions. The point is that whilst diagonal functions are not computable by any function of the class over which they diagonalise, there is no ?logical incomputability? in their being computed over a wider class. Hence this ?logical incomputability? regrettably cannot be used in his argument that no hypercomputation can compute the Halting problem. This seems to lead (...) him into a further error in his analysis of the supposed conventional status of the infinite time Turing machines of Hamkins and Lewis ([2000]). Theorem 1 refutes this directly. The diagonalisation misunderstanding Infinite computation Conclusion. (shrink)

In her careful consideration of my book, The Problem of Perception, Susanna Siegel highlights what she takes to be a number of shortcomings in the work. First, she suggests that a sense-datum theorist has two options—what she calls the “complex sense-data option” and the “two-factor option”—that survive the argument of my book unscathed. I consider these two options in the first two sections of this reply. Secondly, she criticizes my suggestion that there are three and only three basic and independent (...) sources of perceptual consciousness: an issue I take up in my third section. Thirdly, she expresses reservations about my response to the argument from hallucination. In particular, she argues that the phenomenological considerations on which I put so much weight cannot settle the fundamental issue here. I address this criticism in the fourth section of this reply. Finally, she spends a certain amount of time discussing the notion of a “veridicality-relevant property”, a topic to which I devote the concluding section of this reply. (shrink)

In her careful consideration of my book, The Problem of Perception (henceforth, PP), Susanna Siegel highlights what she takes to be a number of shortcomings in the work. First, she suggests that a sense‐datum theorist has two options–what she calls the “complex sense‐data option” and the “two‐factor option”–that survive the argument of my book unscathed. I consider these two options in the first two sections of this reply. Secondly, she criticizes my suggestion that there are three and only three basic (...) and independent sources of perceptual consciousness: an issue I take up in my third section. Thirdly, she expresses reservations about my response to the argument from hallucination. In particular, she argues that the phenomenological considerations on which I put so much weight cannot settle the fundamental issue here. I address this criticism in the fourth section of this reply. Finally, she spends a certain amount of time discussing the notion of a “veridicality‐rele‐vant property”, a topic to which I devote the concluding section of this reply. (shrink)

On the basis of relative strengths that have been attributed to the autistic cognitive profile, it has been suggested by a number of theorists that people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) excel at spatial navigational tasks. However, many of these claims have been made in the absence of a close inspection of extant data in the scientific literature, let alone anecdotal reports of daily navigational experiences. The present review gathers together published studies that have attempted to explicitly address functional components (...) of navigation in ASD populations, including assays of wayfinding, large-scale search, and path integration. This inspection reveals a pattern of apparent strengths and weaknesses in navigational abilities, thus illustrating the necessity for a more measured and comprehensive approach to the understanding of spatial behavior in ASD. (shrink)

In the paper, which pretends to be a program manifesto, its authors justify a necessity of the new theoretical approach to culture which they call a “strong program” in sociology of culture. While the existing sociological approaches to culture bear a reductionist character, the “strong program” treats culture in terms of its autonomy. After a general review of the sociological conceptions of culture authors analyze the most significant approaches within the “weak program.” In the core section of the paper they (...) discuss the required steps that will make a “strong program” possible on the grounds of synthesis of structuralism and hermeneutics. (shrink)

Our long experience with Newtonian potentials has inured us to the view that gravity only produces local effects. In this paper we challenge this quite deeply ingrained notion and explicitly identify some intrinsically global gravitational effects. In particular we show that the global cosmological Hubble flow can actually modify the motions of stars and gas within individual galaxies, and even do so in a way which can apparently eliminate the need for galactic dark matter. Also we show that a classical (...) light wave acquires an observable, global, pathdependent phase in traversing a gravitational field. Both of these effects serve to underscore the intrinsic difference between nonrelativistic and relativistic gravity. (shrink)