This artists’ text examines the relationship between photographic images and Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) environments. We note that such scripted image worlds necessitate a fundamental reconsideration of the capacities of image, its formation, reproduction, storage and circulation. As an archaeologist would document an excavation, extending conventional methods through 3D visualization technology to work in new ways with the archaeological record, we chose to document a world built and razed digitally by a now dormant group of anonymous gamers called the Yung (...) Cum Bois (YCBs). We turn to some definitions of griefer as a subcultural phenomenon within online culture to attempt to contextualize our involvement some more, thinking through the forms of image-gathering that grief play has generated, such as scripted object attacks where image-objects spawn and self-replicate, continually spurting out copies of themselves, lagging the region, slowing down frame rates, consuming land resources. Here we witness images blockading network logistics. This was active fieldwork. We got involved. We applied visualization technology learnt from archaeological computing research to the avatars, temporary structures and abandoned ruins of an online world, Second Life (SL). We patched together a kind of virtual photogrammetry, enabling the monumentalization of avatars, objects and scenarios, recompiling these into new configurations and uploading them freely to be reused, detourned and weaponized by our virtual friends. We situate this endeavour within a cobbled history of imaging technology, the networked self and its pathologies, riffling through our own image dump. Here. (shrink)

Hello, my name is Francis Fukuyama and I am delighted to be able to participate in this symposium at EAFIT, on The End of History? I am a Senior fellow at Stanford University and in the summer of 1989, I published an article in the journal The National Interest titled The End of History? 30 years have passed since the publication of this article and this was a good opportunity to reflect on what has happened to the state of (...) global democracy and global politics in those three decades. (shrink)

This article builds on the tradition of attitudinal measures of religiosity established by Leslie Francis and colleagues with the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity by introducing a new measure to assess the attitudinal disposition of Pagans. A battery of items was completed by 75 members of a Pagan Summer Camp. These items were reduced to produce a 21-item scale that measured aspects of Paganism concerned with: the God/Goddess, worshipping, prayer, and coven. The scale recorded an alpha coefficient (...) of 0.93. Construct validity of the Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism was demonstrated by the clear association with measures of participation in private rituals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epigram into Lyric: Francis Bacon Translates from the Greek Anthology GORDON BRADEN If sir francis bacon did not exactly invent modern science and technology, he did predict it, with remarkable accuracy. The unfinished project of which the writings of his later years were to be component parts is a reformation of the life of the human mind from the ground up—“a complete Instauration of the arts and (...) sciences and all the learning of mankind, raised upon proper foundations ”1—and the most (arguably the only) successful such plan ever drafted. It foresaw both the previously unimaginable worldly triumph of the human race over nature in the centuries that followed and the intellectual means by which that triumph was to be achieved. He also wrote poetry. It is no surprise that someone of his time and place and station should have done so, and its existence is not in itself remarkable. Not much of it has survived, and we have no particular reason to think there was more; and, despite the extensive scholarly and critical scrutiny that Bacon’s work has received, very little attention has been given to this part of it. Still, one poem has achieved something of an afterlife and is worth attention, especially alongside the triumphalism of Bacon’s Magna Instauratio. It concerns hopelessness. Serious attention has been given to Bacon’s remarks on literature and the imagination, including his proposal, amid all his other plans, for what he calls “literary history” (historia literarum).2 But his poems are a different matter. They can be found in the great 19th-century edition of Bacon’s collected works, tucked in between his Prayers and his Christian Paradoxes.3 Most of the poems are from a small volume of psalm translations published under his own name the year before arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 his death; these are now available in one of the published volumes of the new Oxford edition of Bacon’s works.4 There is also 12-line poem in hexameter couplets that begins sounding like a translation of Horace’s Integer vitae but goes on to be a fairly straightforward completion of its opening thesis and never gets around to sweetly laughing, sweetly speaking Lalage; a manuscript in the British Library attributes it to Bacon, though it is also printed in two of Thomas Campion’s books of airs as if it were one of his.5 My own interest is in the one remaining poem, a 32-line translation of a 10-line poem from the Greek Anthology (9.359 in the Palatine Anthology, though known in Bacon’s time from the Planudean). It first appears in print in 1626, anonymously, as “Certaine verses concerning the present estate of Man,” appended with other “characters, and many other witty conceits ” to an edition of Thomas Overbury’s poem “A Wife.”6 Three years later the classical scholar Thomas Farnaby prints it with an ascription to Bacon in a selection of poems from the Greek Anthology, along with the original text of the Greek poem, a Latin translation of it, and the editor’s facing translation of Bacon’s poem back into Greek.7 Bacon’s poem can also be found, both complete and in fragmentary form, in quite a few manuscripts, which are being collated for the first time for The Oxford Francis Bacon, though the editors have not yet decided where to put it. Isolated citations and quotations of the poem occur over the next several centuries; Francis Turner Palgrave includes it in his much-reprinted Golden Treasury, with the title “Life.”8 But there has been little discussion of the poem. It is the subject of an excellent scholarly article by Herbert Grierson, but that was over a hundred years ago.9 Paul Fussell has some sharp observations on Bacon’s use of his stanza form, but they fit onto a single page.10 Other comment is mostly incidental. I want to gather and slightly enhance what has been learned or said about the poem, and explore why it has snagged my interest. The Greek original is variously attributed; the most commonly mentioned name is Posidippus, probably the Mace50 epigram into... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:1. The present state of the questionEsser's turnaboutIn his collection of studies on the writings of Francis, published in 1973, Kajetan Esser, the acknowledged master of Franciscan textual criticism, wrote that in verse 13 of Francis's Letter to the Clergy there exists "a striking difference, that is difficult to explain," between the oldest manuscript which originally belonged to the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco and was written before (...) 1238, and the famous manuscript Assisi 338 which originated between 1250 and 1260. However, Esser considered this difference "a too weak basis to accept a double version of the Letter to the Clergy." It is therefore somewhat strange, to say the least, that in his textcritical edition of the writings of Francis, published only three years later in 1976, the same Esser concludes, without any further explanation, that the differences are "so serious that one has to accept two versions of one and the same letter."Esser's conclusion immediately raises the question about which one of the two versions would be the first. Esser opted for the Subiaco manuscript as the first version and the Assisi manuscript as the second. An important reason for Esser's option was the fact that the Assisi manuscript of the Letter to the Clergy added in verse 13 that the clerics have to observe all of these matters "according to the precepts of the Lord and the constitutions of holy mother Church ." With "the constitutions of holy mother Church" Francis referred, according to Esser, to the papal bull Sane cum olim, issued by pope Honorius III on November 22, 1219. And as this bull, in Esser's view, also "contained references to the will of God as laid down in Holy Scripture," Francis decided to insert both a reference to the papal bull and to "the precepts of the Lord" in a new, second version of the letter. This would imply that Francis, who in the summer of 1219 left for Egypt, wrote the second version only after his return from the Middle East in the spring of 1220. For it was only then that he came to know about the existence of the papal bull issued during his absence from Italy, and could refer to it in order to strengthen his appeal to the clergy to show greater reverence for the Eucharist. At the same time, however, the absence of these important additions in the first version implies that this version was written before the papal bull of Honorius was issued and thus also before Francis's departure for the Middle East in the summer of 1219.Present reception of Esser's theoryThe latest English translation, published in 1999, follows Esser and contains a separate translation of both versions, the first of which was written before 1219 and the second in 1220. In the most recent German translation Leonhard Lehmann acknowledges the existence of two versions but the differences between the two are so small that it suffices to print only the text of the oldest manuscript, that of Subiaco, written before 1238. He agrees, though, that the addition constitutiones sanctae matris Ecclesiae in the second version refers to the papal bull Sane cum olim and that the earlier version may have been written before 1219. The revised edition of the Fonti Francescane still follows Esser's theory as regards the existence of two versions, the early date of the first version and the reference of the second version to Sane cum olim. However, in a lengthy article on Francis's letters, C. Paolazzi, the author of the introduction to the Letters in FF, revised his previous opinion in 2008. He still accepts the existence of two versions but dates both after Sane cum olim and therewith also after Francis's return from the Middle East in 1220. His main argument is that theimplicit quotations.. (shrink)

Through the summer and fall of 1989, Hegel scholars in America were treated to the unusual spectacle of a debate in the mass media over the meaning and truth of Hegel’s philosophy of history, a debate running through the pages of major daily newspapers, the weekly news magazines, and the journals of opinion. The occasion for this unaccustomed attention devoted to Hegel was the appearance of an article by Francis Fukuyama in the Summer 1989 issue of The National Interest (...) entitled “The End of History?”. (shrink)

In the summer of 2017, much of the world was riveted by the case of Charlie Gard, a baby in London whose parents wanted an experimental treatment and whose doctors thought that further treatment would be futile. The case worked its way through the British courts and, eventually, was even heard by the European Court of Human Rights. Pope Francis and President Trump weighed in. If nothing else, the case revealed how controversial the issues around medical futility and shared (...) decision-making still are. Many ethical issues resolve over time. Discussions about disagreements lead to discovery of common ground. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the issue of medical futility and, particularly, with... (shrink)

This article uses behavioral theories to develop an ethical decision-making model that describes how psychological factors affect the development of unethical intentions to commit fraud. We evaluate the effects of the dark triad of personality traits on fraud intentions and behaviors. We use a combination of survey results, an experiment, and structural equation modeling to empirically test our model. The theoretical insights demonstrate that psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism affect different parts of the unethical decision-making process. Narcissism motivates individuals to act (...) unethically for their personal benefit and changes their perceptions of their abilities to successfully commit fraud. Machiavellianism motivates individuals not only to act unethically, but also alters perceptions about the opportunities that exist to deceive others. Psychopathy has a prominent effect on how individuals rationalize their fraudulent behaviors. Accordingly, we find that the dark triad elements act in concert as powerful psychological antecedents to fraud behaviors. (shrink)

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

If $\mathcal{A}$ (V) is a net of local von Neumann algebras satisfying standard axioms of algebraic relativistic quantum field theory and V 1 and V 2 are spacelike separated spacetime regions, then the system ( $\mathcal{A}$ (V 1 ), $\mathcal{A}$ (V 2 ), φ) is said to satisfy the Weak Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle iff for every pair of projections A∈ $\mathcal{A}$ (V 1 ), B∈ $\mathcal{A}$ (V 2 ) correlated in the normal state φ there exists a projection C (...) belonging to a von Neumann algebra associated with a spacetime region V contained in the union of the backward light cones of V 1 and V 2 and disjoint from both V 1 and V 2 , a projection having the properties of a Reichenbachian common cause of the correlation between A and B. It is shown that if the net has the local primitive causality property then every local system ( $\mathcal{A}$ (V 1 ), $\mathcal{A}$ (V 2 ), φ) with a locally normal and locally faithful state φ and suitable bounded V 1 and V 2 satisfies the Weak Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle. (shrink)

& The functional equivalence of overt movements and dynamic imagery is of fundamental importance in neuroscience. Here, we investigated the participation of the neocortical motor areas in a classic task of dynamic imagery, Shepard and Metzler's mental rotation task, by time-resolved single-trial functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The subjects performed the mental-rotation task 16 times, each time with different object pairs. Functional images were acquired for each pair separately, and the onset times and..

In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, an incredibly sophisticated chatbot. Its capability is astonishing: as well as conversing with human interlocutors, it can answer questions about history, explain almost anything you might think to ask it, and write poetry. This level of achievement has provoked interest in questions about whether a chatbot might have something similar to human intelligence or even consciousness. Given that the function of a chatbot is to process linguistic input and produce linguistic output, we consider the (...) question whether a sophisticated chatbot might have inner speech. That is: Might it talk to itself, internally? We explored this via a conversation with ‘Playground’, a chatbot which is very similar to ChatGPT but more flexible in certain respects. We asked it questions which, plausibly, can only be answered if one first produces some inner speech. Here, we present our findings and discuss their philosophical significance. (shrink)

Prominent views about representation share a premise: that mathematical communication theory is blind to representational content. Here I challenge that premise by rejecting two common misconceptions: that Claude Shannon said that the meanings of signals are irrelevant for communication theory (he didn't and they aren't), and that since correlational measures can't distinguish representations from natural signs, communication theory can't distinguish them either (the premise is true but the conclusion is false; no valid argument can link them).

Bradley's metaphysical views, akin to those of Hegel, with a special emphasis on the internal relations of the Absolute are developed at length in Appearance ...

First published in 1876, this forceful and vigorous classic of English moral philosophy, written in opposition to Utilitarianism by one of England's most eminent philosophers, is now available for the first time since 1977.

In the past thirty years, the United States has undergone a profound transformation in its social structure: Crime has increased, trust has declined, families have broken down, and individualism has triumphed over community. Has the Great Disruption of recent decades rent the fabric of American society irreparably? In this brilliant and sweeping work of social, economic, and moral analysis, Francis Fukuyama shows that even as the old order has broken apart, a new social order is already taking its place. (...) The Great Disruption forges a new model for understanding the Great Reconstruction that is under way. (shrink)

Many viruses evolved mechanisms for capping the 5′‐ends of their plus‐strand RNAs as a means of hijacking the eukaryotic messenger RNA (mRNA) splicing/translation machinery. Although capping is critical for replication, the RNAs of these viruses have other essential functions including their requirement to be packaged as either genomes or pre‐genomes into progeny viruses. Recent studies indicate that human immunodeficiency virus type‐1 (HIV‐1) RNAs are segregated between splicing/translation and packaging functions by a mechanism that involves structural sequestration of the 5′‐cap. Here, (...) we examined studies reported for other viruses and retrotransposons that require both selective packaging of their RNAs and 5′‐RNA capping for host‐mediated translation. Our findings suggest that viruses and retrotransposons have evolved multiple mechanisms to control 5′‐cap accessibility, consistent with the hypothesis that removal or sequestration of the 5′ cap enables packageable RNAs to avoid capture by the cellular RNA processing and translation machinery. (shrink)

The DSM–5 characterizes mental disorders as significant disturbances in cognition, emotion, or behavior. But what might unite the disturbances on this list? We hypothesize that mental disorders can all be meaningfully characterized as failures of attention. We understand these as failures to distribute attention in the way one has most reason to, and we include both failures of tendency and of ability. We discuss six examples of mental disorders and offer a preliminary gloss of how to recast each as centrally (...) involving a failure of attention. We close by highlighting theoretical and practical upshots of our proposal. (shrink)

Since Austin’s introduction of the locutionary-illocutionary-perlocutionary distinction, it has been a matter of debate within speech act theory whether illocutionary acts like promising, warning, refusing and telling require audience ‘uptake’ in order to be performed. Philosophers on different sides of this debate have tried to support their positions by appealing to hypothetical scenarios, designed to elicit intuitive judgements about the role of uptake. However, philosophers’ intuitions appeared to remain deadlocked, while laypeople’s intuitions have not yet been probed. To begin rectifying (...) that, we ran two experiments probing lay intuitions about the implications of uptake failure. Overall, we found that participants’ responses were skewed towards agreement that speech acts were performed, despite the lack of uptake. There were, however, significant differences across the four different speech act types we investigated (with the highest levels of agreement found for refusing, followed by warning, then telling, and finally promising). We also obtained evidence of complex effects relating to the (high or low) stakes involved in the scenarios. While this study only represents an initial exploration of intuitions about uptake, our results form a basis for further research into their nature and significance, across a range of speech acts, scenarios, and experimental designs. (shrink)

The main aim of this final essay is to draw on the insights gathered in the Debate “Do Referendums Enhance or Threaten Democracy” to inform future normative and empirical discussions about the design of popular vote processes. We first offer some clarifications regarding three of the concerns raised by respondents about our introductory essay. We then propose a systematic classification of the lines of variation along which the design of popular vote processes usually varies. More precisely, we highlight nine lines (...) of variation: trigger, origin of the text, legal basis, scope, trigger requirements, time, ballot, information, and decision rule. We conclude by emphasizing the relevance and necessity of debating the formal institutional design of popular vote processes. (shrink)

Co-published with the University of Queensland Press. HPC holds rights in North America and U. S. Dependencies. Since its first publication in 1976, Alan Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read work--translated into eighteen languages--has become a classic introduction to the scientific method, known for its accessibility to beginners and its value as a resource for advanced students and scholars. In addition to overall improvements and updates inspired by Chalmers's experience as a teacher, comments from his readers, and recent developments in (...) the field, this fourth edition features an extensive chapter-long postscript that draws on his research into the history of atomism to illustrate important themes in the philosophy of science. Identifying the qualitative difference between knowledge of atoms as it figures in contemporary science and metaphysical speculations about atoms common in philosophy since the time of Democritus offers a revealing and instructive way to address the question at the heart of this groundbreaking work: What is this thing called science? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 199-200 [Access article in PDF] Benedict's Dharma James Wiseman Monastic Interreligious Dialogue Bulletin The book Benedict's Dharma: Buddhists Reflect on the Rule of Saint Benedict was published by Riverhead Books in the late summer of 2001. Several years in the making, the volume was edited by Patrick Henry, director of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. It (...) contains the reflections of four Buddhist authors—Norman Fischer, Joseph Goldstein, Judith Simmer-Brown, and Yifa—on selected parts of the Rule of Saint Benedict and has already met with such success that plans are underway to have it translated into several foreign languages.To coincide with the publication of the book, the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID) board decided to hold a conference at Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove, Indiana, from September 21-23, 2001. Originally all four of the Buddhist authors had intended to come, but in light of the terrorist attacks of September 11, Norman Fischer and Joseph Goldstein felt it was more important that they remain with their own communities during those days. However, Judith Simmer-Brown and Yifa did attend, along with more than a hundred other persons. The attendees included Father Patrick Barry, the former abbot of Ampleforth Abbey in England, who is currently residing at St. Louis Abbey in Missouri. His sensitive translation of the Rule of Saint Benedict is included as an appendix to Benedict's Dharma.On the opening evening, Father William Skudlarek, OSB, the chair of the MID board, extended a warm welcome to those attending and then introduced Patrick Henry, who served as moderator of the entire conference. Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB, who had worked closely on the project from its inception and had written an afterword to the book, spoke on the Rule of Benedict as a "trellis," which is the root meaning of the Latin and Greek words translated as "rule." Just as a trellis in a garden provides a structure for the plant climbing on it, so does the Rule of Saint Benedict establish a framework on which a life can grow. Brother David's talk was followed by the assigning of "dyads," groups of two participants each; the pairs would use allotted times during the conference for dialogue about matters raised in the general sessions.The next day, Saturday, September 22, began with sitting meditation in the monastery chapel, followed by the service of Morning Praise with the resident community of Benedictine sisters. Various other activities were in the conference schedule, [End Page 199] but especially prominent were talks given by Christian monastics as their responses to the book out of their own experience of living according to the Benedictine Rule. The first of these talks was given by Sister Sarah Schwartzberg of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. Her assigned topic was the section of the book Benedict's Dharma dealing with the themes of "freedom and forgiveness." Following a late-morning Eucharist and lunch, two presentations were made in the afternoon: Abbot Francis Cline, OCSO, of Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina, reflected on "discipline and spontaneity," and Father Columba Stewart, OSB, of Saint John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota, spoke on the part of the book focusing on "tradition and adaptation." Those attending the conference again joined the resident community for vespers in the monastery chapel and then, after dinner, heard Father James Wiseman, OSB, of Saint Anselm's Abbey in Washington, D.C., speak on the themes of "leadership and humility" as these had been treated by the Buddhist authors in the last section of the book.The Sunday schedule began in a way similar to that of Saturday, with morning talks by the Buddhist scholar the Venerable Heng Sure and the MID chair Father Skudlarek. After Eucharist, Judith Simmer-Brown made some extemporaneous closing remarks to thank persons who had worked so hard to make the entire project a success. She also expressed pleasant surprise at how positively the book had been received. In her own words, "I think I speak for all... (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

Ownership rights influence thought and behavior in relation to the physical world and in relation to other people. We review recent research examining the nature of ownership rights, and how young children and adults conceive of them. This research examines issues such as the rights ownership is assumed to confer; whether ownership rights reflect principles specific to ownership or instead depend on more general moral principles; and whether ownership rights are inventions of law and culture, or whether they have a (...) more natural basis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Séduire, C'est ToutFrancis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and the Struggle of InfluencePaul Sharma (bio)One of the painter Francis Bacon's favorite bon mots was "séduire, c'est tout."1 With such a worldview, it is unsurprising that Bacon's work and life can be understood using René Girard's insights regarding the desire to influence or be influenced by the envied model, be it a person, a crowd, or even a country, resulting in (...) mimetic forces that unleash violence.This piece looks at Bacon's life and how the mimetic forces he experienced and intuitively understood are displayed in his painting. It examines the social and personal forces at play in four key works: Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), Head VI (1949), Two Figures (1953), and Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969), beginning with the work that put Bacon on the artistic map at the end of World War II, to the triptych that foretold the breakup of the long friendship between Bacon and Lucian Freud. [End Page 205]1943: THE BLITZ ENDSBy the summer of 1943, the dust caused by the Luftwaffe bombing raid was mostly gone from the air in London, allowing the asthmatic Francis Bacon to return to South Kensington. The same summer, Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony, one of the last great pieces of English neo-romanticism and arguably his greatest work, premiered at the nearby Royal Albert Hall.It is strange to think that at the same time Vaughan Williams's Fifth was being played, down the road in Cromwell Place, the preparatory ground was being laid by Francis Bacon for Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, a work that went well beyond any idea of English nostalgia and of which John Russell wrote, "There was English art before the Three Studies and there was English art after."2Before looking at the work in more detail, it is worth examining its inception, as it follows a pattern outlined by René Girard, that of a conversion in which there is a profound change in beliefs and values. In the same way that diamonds are formed out of coal if there is high enough pressure, Girard notes that "an experience of demystification, if radical enough, is very close to an experience of conversion."3Bacon's conversion occurred at the latter end of 1940 to 1942, a period he never discussed. He retreated to the country sixty miles outside London, to recover from his asthma and very likely from some form of breakdown, following a period as an air raid warden in London.The formula for each conversion is unique, and for Bacon, the catalyst bringing his experiences of art, the Blitz, his view of society, and his personal history together into a single style was the recently issued W. B. Stanford's Aeschylus in His Style: A Study in Language and Personality. A clue to Stanford's importance is Bacon later recalling that "some of the images are so startlingly beautiful in there and so exciting I go on reading it over and over again."4Stanford's insight into the use of a combination of a highly expressive and at the same time formal style in Aeschylus enabled Bacon to gather his influences and preoccupations of the previous decade to create his vision and, arguably, his first fully impactful works. (It could be said that the first work of real originality was the 1933 painting Crucifixion (Figure 1), a protype of the 1944 triptych, being of sufficient force to be included in Herbert Read's Art Now review of the same year).Stanford argued that the Greek playwright's "style was not of the unobtrusive, subtly modulated kind that escapes criticism," adding, "One is reminded of the strained, almost grotesque figures of a painting by El Greco … and the [End Page 206] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Francis Bacon, Crucifixion, 1933. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.reason for both of these Greeks' extraordinary style is similar—the tension between an original and... (shrink)

No detailed description available for "The State of the Art".

Approaching the concept of multilateral democracy -- The transnational dimension of liberal democracy -- Multilateral democracy from a republican point of view -- The conception of the people in multilateral democracy -- The rational case for multilateralism -- Multilateral democracy: the original position -- Principles of multilateral democracy -- Final remarks.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd 76 Reviews REAPPRAISING GILBERT MURRAY Louis Greenspan Religious Studies / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4k1 [email protected] ChristopherStray,ed.GilbertMurrayReassessed: Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2007. Pp. xii, 400. £65; £27.50 (pb). Cdn. $156 (hb). us$55 (pb). isbn 978-0-19-920879-1 (hb). For much of the Wrst half of the twentieth century Gilbert Murray was a leading Wgure in British (...) academia, in British theatre, on the British and American lecture circuits and even in British politics. He was admired by the community of scholars as Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, the most prestigious position in classical scholarship in the English-speaking world. He was also esteemed by a wider reading public as the champion of a magisterial liberalism rooted in classical Greek culture. Finally he was respected by the world at large as a liberal activist who, during World War 1, wrote well-argued pamphlets in support of the war and who later became co-chairman of the League of Nations Union, an organization that in the ’20s and ’30s attracted 400,000 members. Among his companions were George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell, both of whom remained his friends for life. As chief editor of the Home University Library he commissioned Russell’s The Problems of Philosophyz, which is still unsurpassed as an introduction to this subject. Today he is forgotten. Younger classical scholars would endorse the statement by Fowler (quoted in this volume): “in spite of his great fame when he was alive, he might never have written, so far as most scholars are concerned today” (p. 58). His role as the public intellectual who connected modern liberalism with Hellenism has been taken over by the followers of Leo Strauss who view this connection rather diTerently than Murray did. As for his liberal activism, when he died in 1957 Murray was regarded aTectionately as a noble ghost of Victorian liberalism past, whose passionate advocacy of the League of Nations was seen as well meaning and futile as the organization he had championed. In the ’60s and ’70s his words and deeds were swept away in the tides of anti-liberal fervour that inspired the newly emerging leftist revolutionaries and neo-conservatives. At Wrst perusal Gilbert Murray Reassessed zhas the format of festschrifts and other scholarly reviews of the accomplishments of a particular writer. There are articles on every aspect of Murray’s activities: his translations of Greek drama, his critical editions of Euripides, his views of Hellenism, his post-World War 1 September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 77 internationalism and even his lectures on the bbc, all by specialists in these topics. But this volume is more than a summing up of Murray’s contributions to scholarship. The aim of the volume is to revive Murray the public intellectual, a voice of liberalism that deserves a new hearing. The book could have been entitled Gilbert Murray Retrieved for Our Timesz: a contribution to the struggle to Wnd a liberalism that addresses the anti-liberal, anti-intellectual forces that threaten us today. In this spirit the volume is dedicated to those who died in the London terrorist attack of July 2005. The volume opens with two sets of memoirs, one by Murray’s grandchildren Ann Pauladan and Alexander Murray, the other Francis West’s account of Murray ’s reXections on an Australian childhood. The memoirs of his grandchildren, aTectionate and charming, seem less interested in refashioning Gilbert Murray for our time. They still portray Murray as one who inhabited a world that is no more, the proponent of a liberalism that was naively optimistic and top heavy with reason at the expense of the emotions. Murray’s optimism is evident in their anecdote about an encounter between Murray and Sir Edward Grey, during a summer walk in 1914. Murray opened the conversation by scoUng at rumours of impending war in Europe, for him impossible between civilized powers. Grey closed it by assuring him that war was certain, thus causing the speechless and horriWed Murray... (shrink)

The debate on the European Union's democratic deficit usually operates within a national-democratic framework of analysis. This article argues for a change in methodology. It follows the thesis that the EU is a ‘demoicracy’– a polity of multiple demoi– and has to be evaluated as such. Core principles of demoicracy are developed and the EU is assessed accordingly. Such an evaluation is not only more adequate, but also provides original insights: it is found that, whereas the constitutional development of the (...) EU has approached demoicratic standards in general, major deficits remain at the national level. (shrink)

Le recueil Salut gnostique et métaphysique plotinienne contient cinq études portant sur les relations entre Plotin et différents courants gnostiques, plus particulièrement celui des séthiens platonisants. L’ouvrage est le résultat de rencontres et de discussions intervenues entre les auteurs, mais aussi de la volonté de poursuivre la réflexion entamée par Zeke Mazur sur ce sujet à la suite de son décès en 2016. Les articles de ce recueil cherchent à relier entre elles plusieurs idées de même nature que l’on découvre (...) entre plusieurs traités plotiniens et des textes appartenant au courant séthien platonisant, des thèmes communs, fruits sans doute d’échanges qui eurent lieu avant ou même pendant que Plotin enseignait à Rome. (shrink)