Whether attempts should be punished as severely as the completed crime poses fundamental problems concerning the proper goals of the criminal law and the philosophy of punishment. An answer to this question would require an assessment of the significance of the fact that harm occurs as a result of conduct. Does the occurrence of harm give us any reason for distinguishing between completed offenses and attempts? Contemporary theory is almost united in the view that the occurrence of harm does not (...) mark a moral distinction. Yet, there does seem to be a common intuition that a person is somehow more blameworthy if his conduct results in harm than if it does not. This distinction in gravity between attempts and the completed crime is also recognized in the law; most United States’ jurisdictions provide a lesser punishment for attempts. (shrink)

On 18–19 May 2018, a symposium was held in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Ronald W. Hepburn (1927–2008). The speakers at this event discussed Hepburn’s oeuvre from several perspectives. For this book, the collection of the revised versions of their talks has been supplemented by the papers of other scholars who were unable to attend the symposium itself. Thus this volume contains contributions from (...) eighteen notable scholars of different disciplines, ranging from contemporary aesthetics and art theory through to philosophical approaches to religion, education and social anthropology. It also includes a bibliography of Hepburn’s writings. The essays were first published in two special issues of the Journal of Scottish Thought, vols. 10–11 (2018–2019). -/- Ronald William Hepburn was born in Aberdeen on 16 March 1927. He went to Aberdeen Grammar School, then he graduated with an M.A. in Philosophy (1951) and obtained his doctorate from the University of Aberdeen (1955). His tutor at Aberdeen was Donald MacKinnon (1913– 1994), a Scottish philosopher and theologian, the author of A Study in Ethical Theory (1957) and The Problem of Metaphysics (1974). Hepburn taught as Lecturer at the Department of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen (1956–60), and he was also Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy at New York University (1959–60). He returned from the United States as Professor of Philosophy at Nottingham University. In 1964, he was appointed as a Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and between 1965 and 1968 he was also Stanton Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. From 1975 until his retirement in 1996, he held the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. He died in Edinburgh on 23 December 2008. His philosophical interests ranged from theology and the philosophy of religion through moral philosophy and the philosophy of education to art theory and aesthetics. Notably, Hepburn is widely regarded as the founder of modern environmental and everyday aesthetics as a result of the influence of papers in the 1960s which pioneered a new approach to the aesthetics of the natural world. (shrink)

This volume contains thirty-one papers grouped under the following headings: "The Nature of Philosophy," "Man and Knowledge," "God and Religious Knowledge," "Ethics," "Law," and "Texts." A few of the papers discuss the Augustinian tradition. Munoz-Alonso, Blondel, and Sciacca are mentioned as men who have renewed for our time the thought of Augustine. The papers on St. Bonaventure include an analysis by John O. Riedl of some of Bonaventure’s texts on Dionysius the Areopagite, a comparison and contrast by Bernardino Bonansea of (...) the position of Bonaventure and Thomas on the question of creation from eternity, a study by Ewert Cousins of Bonaventure’s dynamic self-diffusive God, and a discussion of his symbolic theology by Leonard Bowman. Scholars will be interested in the report of Ignatius Brady on the Quaracchi edition of Bonaventure’s writings, as well as in the report of James P. Reilly, Jr. on the Leonine Commission’s work on the texts of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

An approach to argument macrostructure -- The dialectical nature of argument -- Toulmin's problematic notion of warrant -- The linked-convergent distinction, a first approximation -- Argument structure and disciplinary perspective : the linked-convergent versus multiple-co-ordinatively compound distinctions -- The linked-convergent distinction, refining the criterion -- Argument structure and enthymemes -- From analysis to evaluation.

This paper draws from the turnover and emotions literatures to explore how job embeddedness, in the context of abusive supervision, can impact job frustration, citizenship withdrawal, and employee deviance. Results indicate that employees with abusive supervisors were more likely to be frustrated with their jobs and engage in more deviance behaviors. And yet, the relationship between abusive supervision and job frustration was moderated by job embeddedness such that the relationship was weaker and negative for those higher in job embeddedness and (...) stronger and positive for those lower in job embeddedness. In other words, contrary to our original predictions, individuals who were more embedded in their jobs with an abusive supervisor were actually less likely to experience job frustration or engage deviance behaviors. Important implications for management research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This study examined how sales managers react to ethical and unethical acts by their salespeople. Deontological considerations and, to a much lesser extent, teleological considerations predicted sales managers' ethical judgments. Sales managers' intentions to reward or discipline ethical or unethical sales force behavior were primarily determined by their ethical judgments. An organization's perceived ethical work climate was not a significant predictor of sales managers' intentions to intervene when ethical and unethical sales force behavior was encountered.

Chapter The Need for a Theory of Argument Structure. THE STANDARD APPROACH The approach to argument diagramming which we call standard was originated, ...

Because the mind is the significance of the brain and God is the significance of the mind, the concept “mind” bridges how the brain works and traditional patterns of belief. The left mind, which utilizes rational vigilance and the imperative instructions of proclamation, names and analyzes the urgently right. The right mind, which discloses the relational responsiveness of numinous presence and natural symbolism, is immersed in and integrates the ultimately real. Together they provide a typology of mind‐states with which to (...) assess regressive, functional, and creative patterns. Hand dominance, gender differences, and cultural bias qualify the use of the metaphor. (shrink)

When, if ever, is one justified in accepting the premises of an argument? What is the proper criterion of premise acceptability? Can the criterion be theoretically or philosophically justified? This is the first book to provide a comprehensive theory of premise acceptability and it answers the questions above from an epistemological approach that the author calls common sense foundationalism. It will be eagerly sought out not just by specialists in informal logic, critical thinking, and argumentation theory but also by a (...) broader range of philosophers and those teaching rhetoric. (shrink)

The study of ethical leadership has emerged as an important topic for understanding the effects of leadership in organizations. In a study with 845 working adults across multiple organizations, the relationships between ethical leadership with positive employee outcomes were examined. Results suggest that ethical leadership is related to both psychological well-being and job satisfaction in employees, but the processes are different. Employee voice mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and psychological well-being. Feelings of psychological ownership mediated the relationship between ethical (...) leadership and job satisfaction. A discussion of theoretical and practical implications concludes the article. (shrink)

This article examines the occurrence of the phrase dharmaparyāyo hastagato, “having the enumeration of the teaching in one’s hand,” in a select number of texts classified as Mahāyāna sūtras and theorizes its occurrence in relation to the use of the book in the religious cultures of middle period Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. In recent scholarly discourse, the “cult of the book” in Mahāyāna Buddhist formations has been hypothesized to occur in relation to shrines or not even to have occurred at all. (...) This article suggests an alternative hypothesis. The paper first analyzes the syntax and composition of the terms dharmaparyāya and the participle hastagata as well as their occurrences within Indian Buddhist literature in Indic languages and in Tibetan and Chinese translations. The paper then identifies the occurrence of the phrase dharmaparyāyo hastagato in a select number of Mahāyāna sūtras and relates this phrase to an observable gradual process of bibliofication, a process where texts increasingly reference themselves as protective objects, that is detectable in the layers of accretion found within the comparative analysis of extant manuscripts. Based on this analysis, the paper concludes that the “cult of the book,” rather than being a stable or local cult phenomena, was comprised of highly mobile and translocal textual communities who carried their object of veneration with them. (shrink)

As human beings we inevitably try to explain our experience. In philosophical language, we deal with transcendent assertions and aspirations. The issue, then, is: how can we talk about what matters, given the structures inherent in language and basic to the way we are made? Instead of the philosophical category of Being, I advance a case for giving the human brain privileged status as an analogical expression of God, the symbol‐concept of what matters most, and then suggest the illumination which (...) can come with using that analogical expression, especially as that analogy connects us with the environment at the limbic level and constructs our world at the cerebral level. (shrink)

. The human brain combines empathy and imagination via the old brain which sets our destiny in the evolutionary scheme of things. This new understanding of cognition is an emergent phenomenon—basically an expressive ordering of reality as part of “a single natural system.” The holographic and subsymbolic paradigms suggest that we live in a contextual universe, one which we create and yet one in which we are required to adapt. The inadequacy of the new brain—specially the left hemisphere's rational view (...) of destiny—is replaced by a view of a new relatedness in reality in which human destiny comes from and depends upon the mutual interchange between the new brain and the old brain for the survival of what is significant to the whole systemic context in which we live. (shrink)

The human experience of meaning‐making lies at the roots of consciousness, creativity, and religious faith. It arises from the basic experience of separation from a loved object, suffered by all mammals, and, in general terms, from the experienced gap between ourselves and our environment. We fill the gap with transitional objects and symbols that reassure us of basic continuity in ourselves and in the world. These objects and symbols also serve the neurognostic function of demonstrating what the world is like. (...) Thus, humanity lives by faith, as manifested in its pattern‐making capacity, and not by literal sight. (shrink)

As a concept, affordance is integral to scholarly analysis across multiple fields—including media studies, science and technology studies, communication studies, ecological psychology, and design studies among others. Critics, however, rightly point to the following shortcomings: definitional confusion, a false binary in which artifacts either afford or do not, and failure to account for diverse subject-artifact relations. Addressing these critiques, this article demarcates the mechanisms of affordance—as artifacts request, demand, allow, encourage, discourage, and refuse—which take shape through interrelated conditions: perception, dexterity, (...) and cultural and institutional legitimacy. Together, the mechanisms and conditions constitute a dynamic and structurally situated model that addresses how artifacts afford, for whom and under what circumstances. (shrink)

This article surveys the distribution of wealth and its relationship to economic inequality more broadly. It shows that wealth inequality is high and contributes significantly to inequality in income and consumption, although higher wealth inequality is not always an indicator of greater inequality in well-being. In particular, welfare state policies can improve the well-being of low income groups while at the same time reducing their incentive to save. This may lead to high observed wealth inequality in places where it would (...) otherwise not be expected, such as some of the Scandinavian countries. More research is needed to better illuminate such connections between public policy and wealth inequality. (shrink)

The teachings of Madhyamaka have been the basis of Tibetan Buddhist thought and practice since the eighth century. After the twelfth century, Tibetan scholars distinguished two branches of Madhyamaka: Autonomist and Consequentialist. What distinctions in Madhyamaka thought and practice did twelfth century Tibetan scholars make to differentiate these two branches? This article focuses upon a newly identified twelfth century Tibetan manuscript on Madhyamaka from the Collected Works of the Kadampas: Khu lo tsā ba’s Treatise. Khu lo tsā ba, also known (...) as Khu ston Mdo sde ’bar, was a contemporary of Jayānanda and Pa tshab Lo tsā ba Nyi ma grags and instrumental for the revitalized reception of Madhyamaka in twelfth century Tibet. Khu lo tsā ba’s Treatise outlines a multifaceted understanding of Madhyamaka as the work solely focuses upon the distinctions between Autonomist and Consequentialist Mādhyamikas. The paper outlines the structure and content of the Treatise and identifies six topics that the author emphasizes to distinguish Autonomist and Consequentialist branches of Madhyamaka. Based on an overview of these topics, the paper concludes that the Autonomist/Consequentialist distinction of Madhyamaka was already well developed in twelfth century Tibet and involved a differential of systems that encompassed much more than distinct styles of logical proof. (shrink)

Making sense of soul and Sabbath necessitates understanding these phenomena experientially and then suggesting “biochemical” or empirical analogues. Soul, which is defined as the core or essence of a person (or group), includes a working memory of personally purposeful behavior. The states of the soul are reflected in the states of the mind and their physiological correlates-the states of the brain. Such uniqueness appears similar to the biblical cycle of creation-Sabbath-consciousness and its analogue in the biorhythm of brain-mind-that is, waking (...) and work, sleeping and rest, dreaming (rapid eye movement [REM]) and the reorganization-integration process that is ever making sense of our senses by synthesizing what they mean to us. Working memory and biorhythm, therefore, are crucial for the making of meaning, and meaning is the making of soul. (shrink)

I describe the development of my work in relating brain research and religion from my personal roots in my family of origin through my professional responsibilities as a pastor, a clinician, and a theological educator to my developing what I call “a neurotheological approach” to faith and ministry. My early correlations gave simplistic attention to bimodal consciousness as an interpretive tool for understanding religion. Subsequently came a more sophisticated exploration of whole‐brain functioning and suggested cultural correlates. Currently, I am explicating (...) tae humanizing brain as reflective of our living in an open system, a universe that is unfolding and evolving, a universe in the hands of the whole‐making, integrating, emerging God whose reality far exceeds the insights of cultural construction. As we humans relate to this God, attachment and aspiration are reciprocal. (shrink)

The concept “mind” refers to the human and humanlike features of the brain. A historical review of thinking about the mind contextualizes humanity's search to understand itself by sketching biblical and philosophical perspectives from the Hebrew scriptures through the Greeks and Descartes to the German philosophers Goethe, Kant, and Hegel. These provide an enlarged context for an analytic approach to mind as focusing on the interface between physical signals and experiential symbolic expressions. Drawing on a holistic paradigm, several features are (...) discernible: empathic rationality, imaginative intentionality, meaningful memory, and adaptability. These reflect the evolutionary development of uncommitted cortex that contributes to the brain's explosive capacity for order, complexity, and novelty. The basic issue continues, namely, how are the distributed modules of information‐processing integrated into the meaning‐making reality of human beings? (shrink)

The author traces the path from split brains to basic beliefs by linking the deautomatized pattern of spiritual masters, as reorted in Rorschach protocols, with subsymbolic, parallel, distriguted processing, The older brain structures constitute humanity's common heritage, while the new brain constitutes particular cultural heritages. Expanding levels of complexity move from the limbic system throuh conitive left‐mind vigilance and right‐mind responsiveness to %Pelie patterns of proclamation and manifestation to the world‐integrating mysticism of limbic input and the world‐fulfilling action of the (...) new brain. Whole brain activity combines emotional meaning and propositional explanation. Analogically seaking, the brain provides clues to understanding God. A ialectical theology parallels the reciprocal integration of brain processes. Whole brain belief originates in the old brain's evolutionary adaptation to our genetic inheritance and in the new brain's conscious intention to fulfill the will of God through our cultural inheritances. (shrink)

Among the more significant developments of the twentieth century, the widespread attention given to 'rights issues' must surely justify ranking it somewhere near the top. Never before has the issue of rights attracted such a wide audience or stirred so much controversy. Until very recently 'rights' were traditionally recognized as attributable only to humans. Today, we increasingly are hearing a call to extend 'rights' to the nonhuman animal and, on occasion, to the environment. In this book, James B. Reichmann, (...) S.J., undertakes an investigation of the metaethical grounds of 'rights' theory, with special focus on the controversial issue of whether creatures other than humans can and should be considered true subjects of 'rights.' He contends that before assigning rights to this or that individual or group, whether human or not, we need to be very clear about what it is we are assigning, to whom, and why. The book argues forcefully that the various recent efforts to build a case supporting animal and environmental 'rights' fail in their quest, and that any such effort resting on a Darwinian evolutionary base is likewise condemned to fail. In furtherance of this claim the author first investigates life phenomena, followed by a detailed comparative study of knowing, communicating and doing, as these are observed in the human and the nonhuman animal. This in turn is followed by an overview of diverse views advanced by contemporary environmental ethicists and animal 'rights' advocates, including Peter Singer, Tom Regan, J. Baird Callicott, Laura Westra, and Don E. Marietta, Jr. Representative though doubtless provocative conclusions drawn from this study include the claims that: (1) Classic Darwinian theory provides no admissable premise from which to derive a theory of inherent, inalienable rights. (2) No satisfactory explanation of the origin of rights and obligation can derive save from within the context of natural law theory. (3) The human person alone unqualifiedly possesses rights. (4) The view that vegetarianism is an ethical mandate is neither compatible with the Christian world view, nor philosophically sound. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James B. Reichmann, S.J., is professor emeritus of philosophy at Seattle University where he continues to teach. (shrink)

Although Atiśa is famous for his journey to Tibet and his teaching there, his teachings of Madhyamaka are not extensively commented upon in the works of known and extant indigenous Tibetan scholars. Atiśa’s Madhyamaka thought, if even discussed, is minimally acknowledged in recent modern scholarly overviews or sourcebooks on Indian Buddhist thought. The following annotated translation provides a late eleventh century Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka teaching on the two realities attributed to Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna entitled A General Explanation of, and Framework for Understanding, (...) the Two Realities. The text furnishes an exposition of the Middle Way thought of Nāgārjuna based on an exegesis of conventional reality and ultimate reality within the framework of Mahāyāna path structures found in texts attributed to Maitreyanātha. The General Explanation fills an important gap in the historical knowledge of Madhyamaka teachings in eleventh century India and Tibet. The text presents a Madhyamaka teaching brought to Tibet by Atiśa and provides previously unknown evidence for the type of pure Madhyamaka teachings that circulated among the communities of early followers of Atiśa. These teachings were disseminated before the rise of the early Bka’-gdams-pa monastery of Gsang-phu ne’u-thog and its debating traditions that, particularly beginning in the twelfth century, placed emphasis on the merger of Madhyamaka and Epistemology. (shrink)

I describe my development as a thinker from that of simple pragmatism to applied theory. My style is that of discerning a rippling relatedness in the various dimensions of reality. I respond to Eve specific themes raised by colleagues: what it means to be human; the relation of whole to parts; the various methodological melodies; a relational view of reality; and ethical imperatives in the descriptive indicatives.

The rediscovery of the sacred needs to take into account the neural underpinnings of faith and meaning and also draw on the insights of the emerging discipline of complexity studies, which explore a tendency toward adaptive self‐organization that seemingly is inherent in the universe. Both neuroscience and complexity studies contribute to our understanding of the brain's activity as it transforms raw stimuli into recognizable patterns, and thus “humanizes” all our perceptions and understandings. The brain is our physical anchor in the (...) natural environment—and its human capacities orbit us into the emerging world of culture (including religion), which provides a template for the brain's function of making sense of an ambiguous reality. The humanizing brain holds together scientific causality and religious meaning, working both bottom‐up (linking the physical and the experiential) and top‐down (beginning with the whole of things, or God). These processes we know as “mind” (experienced as intentionality, subjective consciousness, empathy, imagination, memory, adaptability). We maintain that such processes are not only subjective but built into “the way things really are.” Thus, they carry the most privileged information about the nature of reality to which we human beings have access. For not only are we humans observers and logicians, but we are embedded in the larger reality; and as we strive to make sense of it all, we become both Homo sapiens and Homo religiosus. (shrink)

A key question in disability studies, philosophy, and bioethics concerns the relationship between disability and well-being. The mere difference view, endorsed by Elizabeth Barnes, claims that physical and sensory disabilities by themselves do not make a person worse off overall—any negative impacts on welfare are due to social injustice. This article argues that Barnes’s Value Neutral Model does not extend to intellectual disability. Intellectual disability is (1) intrinsically bad—by itself it makes a person worse off, apart from a non-accommodating environment; (...) (2) universally bad—it lowers quality of life for every intellectually disabled person; and (3) globally bad—it reduces a person’s overall well-being. While people with intellectual disabilities are functionally disadvantaged, this does not imply that they are morally inferior—lower quality of life does not mean lesser moral status. No clinical implications concerning disability-based selective abortion, denial of life-saving treatment, or rationing of scarce resources follow from the claim that intellectual disability is bad difference. (shrink)

The March 1999 issue of Zygon provides a case illustration of a religion‐and‐science conversation. The three responses to the issues raised by The Humanizing Brain represent a spectrum ranging from skepticism to affirmation. Each is examined in turn. Next, we present a constructive set of guidelines beginning with the recognition that interdisciplinary talk requires stretching disciplinary language into metaphor and analogy. We conclude with a methodology emphasizing empiricism and wholism.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1909 Edition.