Citation: Braun G, Hellwig MK, Byrnes WM (2007) Global Climate Change and Catholic Responsibility: Facts and Faith Response. Journal of Catholic Social Thought 4(2): 373-401. Abstract: The scientific evidence is now overwhelming that human activity is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to grow hotter, which is leading to global climate change. If current rates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue, it is predicted that there will be dramatic changes, including flooding, more intense heat waves and storms, and an increase in (...) disease. Indigenous peoples and the poor will be most severely affected, as will Earth’s wild animals and plants, a quarter of which could become extinct in fifty years. We urgently need to switch to renewable (non-GHG emitting) energy sources, and try to live in a simpler, more sustainable way. In this article, a renewable energy expert, a biochemist, and a theologian have come together to describe the situation in which we find ourselves, and present ideas for a solution that incorporates Catholic social teaching. (shrink)

Concise and understandable, the book explains pertinent findings of modern neuroscience and describes how consciousness arises in complex brains.

This book contains the material for a first course in pure model theory with applications to differentially closed fields.

This paper develops a stronger version of ‘inference-to-the-best explanation’ scientific realism. I argue against three standard assumptions of current realists: realism is confirmed if it provides the best explanation of theories’ predictive success ; the realist claim that successful theories are always approximately true provides the best explanation of their success ; and realists are committed to giving the same sort of truth-based explanation of superseded theories’ success that they give to explain our best current theories’ success. On the positive (...) side, I argue that the confirmation of realism requires explaining theories’ explanatory success, not just their predictive success ; in turn this task requires a richer realist model of explanation that brings into the explanans both successful theories’ epistemic virtues and the standards governing these virtues, as well as truth; this richer realist model is further confirmed because it can better explain the success of theories in gaining wide acceptance among scientists; and the model is further supported because it is superior to ‘preservative realism ’ in providing a plausible rebuttal of the pessimistic meta-induction from the many past successful-but-false theories to the like- lihood that our best current theories are likewise false. (shrink)

In this essay, I criticize Laudan's view that methodological rules in science are best understood as hypothetical imperatives, for example, to realize cognitive aim A, follow method B. I criticize his idea that such rules are best evaluated by a naturalized philosophy of science which collects the empirical evidence bearing on the soundness of these rules. My claim is that this view yields a poor explanation of (1) the role of methodological rules in establishing the rationality of scientific practices, (2) (...) the debates scientists have over rival methodological rules, and (3) the reasons on the basis of which scientists actually embrace, challenge, or transform methodological rules. A better explanation is provided by treating at least some methodological rules as foundational standards of theory-appraisal which define the criteria of scientific truth, knowledge, evidence, proof, explanations, etc., for a certain tradition or community of scientific practice. Such standards are in turn grounded or challenged on the basis of their coherence or incoherence with a wider body of scientific judgments. This view leads away from a naturalized philosophy of science back to its more classical epistemological conception. (shrink)

Adopting a much broader notion of thinking than that associated with the Critical Thinking movement, this paper addresses the question of thinking skill generality. An analysis of the concept of ‘thinking skill’ suggests ways in which this notion has been misapplied. The paper demonstrates the importance of thinking tasks and argues for a non–universalistic notion of thinking skill generality. The domains–view of thinking is assessed, evidence from secondary research being used to show that thinking skills are not domain–specific simply by (...) virtue of being instantiated with disciplinary content. The prevalence of general procedural knowledge in our thinking practices notwithstanding, empirical evidence suggests the existence of at least two kinds of domain–specific thinking skills: those in which thinking is essentially the application of domain–specific declarative knowledge; and those addressing specialised, domain–specific, thinking tasks. (shrink)

Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) propose that the use of a chemical restraint that affects only a particular conscious state is ethically permissible if, and only if, (1) it is the least restrictive...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

We introduce a new class of real-valued monotones in preordered spaces, injective monotones. We show that the class of preorders for which they exist lies in between the class of preorders with strict monotones and preorders with countable multi-utilities, improving upon the known classification of preordered spaces through real-valued monotones. We extend several well-known results for strict monotones (Richter–Peleg functions) to injective monotones, we provide a construction of injective monotones from countable multi-utilities, and relate injective monotones to classic results concerning (...) Debreu denseness and order separability. Along the way, we connect our results to Shannon entropy and the uncertainty preorder, obtaining new insights into how they are related. In particular, we show how injective monotones can be used to generalize some appealing properties of Jaynes’ maximum entropy principle, which is considered a basis for statistical inference and serves as a justification for many regularization techniques that appear throughout machine learning and decision theory. (shrink)

Treatment pressures are communicative strategies that mental health professionals use to influence the decision-making of mental health service users and improve their adherence to recommended treatment. Szmukler and Appelbaum describe a spectrum of treatment pressures, which encompasses persuasion, interpersonal leverage, offers and threats, arguing that only a particular type of threat amounts to informal coercion. We contend that this account of informal coercion is insufficiently sensitive to context and fails to recognize the fundamental power imbalance in mental healthcare. Based on (...) a set of counterexamples, we argue that what makes a proposal coercive is not whether service users will actually be made worse off if they reject the proposal, but rather whether they have the justified belief that this is the case. Whether this belief is justified depends on the presence of certain contextual factors, such as strong dependency on professionals and the salient possibility of formal coercion. (shrink)

I INTRODUCTION - THE TOPIC EXPLAINED 1 GENERAL DIFFERENCES From its inception to the present, philosophy may be viewed as a series of struggles between ...

Parmenides didn't mention reference as such, but if he had he would have undoubtedly agreed with the philosophers who nowadays hold what is called "the axiom of existence": that one can only refer to what exists. The sources of possible support for this view are examined and rejected. Primary support for the axiom is given by two sorts of argument; one concerning quantification, the other summarizing a standard Parmenidean puzzle. Weaknesses in both are exposed. Finally, the relations between the axiom (...) and connected claims about predication and truth are probed, and an attempt is made to determine the limits of the mutual support these claims give one another. (shrink)

In this essay I sketch a philosophical argument for classical liberalism based on the requirements of public reason. I argue that we can develop a philosophical liberalism that, unlike so much recent philosophy, takes existing social facts and mores seriously while, at the same time, retaining the critical edge characteristic of the liberal tradition. I argue that once we develop such an account, we are led toward a vindication of “old” (qua classical) liberal morality—what Benjamin Constant called the “liberties of (...) the moderns.” A core thesis of the paper is that a regime of individual rights is crucial to the project of public justification because it disperses moral authority to individuals thus mitigating what I call the “burdens of justification.” Footnotesa Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Philosophy Department workshop on the morality of capitalism, and at the conference on rights theory at the Murphy Institute, Tulane University. I am grateful for the comments of the participants; my special thanks to David Schmidtz, Julian Lamont, and Andrea Houchard for their useful written comments and suggestions. (shrink)

Chi sites are examples of special sites enhancing homologous recombination in their region of the chromosome. Chi, 5′ G‐C‐T‐G‐G‐T‐G‐G3′, is a recognition site for the RecBC enzyme, which nicks DNA near Chi as it unwinds DNA. A molecular model of genetic recombination incorporating these features is reviewed.

The ethical choices faced by engineers today are increasingly complex. Competing and conflicting ethical demands from clients, communities, employees, and personal objectives combine to suggest that engineers employ ethical approaches that are adaptive yet grounded in three concrete professional circumstances: first, that engineers apply unique professional skills in the service of a client, subject to protecting the public interest; second, that engineers advance the state of knowledge of their professional field through reflection, research, and sharing experience in journals and conferences, (...) and third, that they develop new professionals by active mentoring. This paper examines five features of American pragmatism and suggests that its emphasis on specific, context-based ethical decision making can assist engineers in a postmodern setting. In particular, it considers the venues of interpersonal ethical choices, institutional ethical conflicts, and social choices that have ethical components. Pragmatism suggests that in such a complex ethical climate, there is a need for the co-evolution of judgment and action, for individual reflective judgment in particular situations, and for ceasing to search for a single, immutable principle for ethical choice. (shrink)

In " Re-Emergence" he explores the question of conscious properties arising from brute, unthinking matter, making the case that there is no equally plausible non-emergent alternative.

This almost self-contained introduction to higher recursion theory is essential reading for all researchers in the field.

David lyons has recently argued that mill's ethics is an alternative to both act and rule utilitarianism. In the first part of this paper I argue that lyons makes mill out to be far too much of a rule utilitarian. The second part of the article then provides an account of mill's theory of moral rules based on an analysis of the four functions rules serve in his ethics. On this reading mill's theory is a hybrid of act and rule (...) utilitarianism: violation of a moral rule is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for wrongdoing. (shrink)

Virtues and reasons are two of the most fruitful and important concepts in contemporary moral philosophy. Many writers have commented upon the close connection between virtues and reasons, but no one has done full justice to the complexity of this connection. It is generally recognized that the virtues not only depend upon reasons, but also sometimes provide them. The essays in this volume shed light on precisely how virtues and reasons are related to each other and what can be learned (...) by exploring this relationship. Virtue’s Reasons is divided into three sections, each of them devoted to a general issue regarding the relationship between virtues and reasons. The first section analyzes how the virtues may be related to, or linked with, normative reasons in ways that improve our understanding of what constitutes virtuous character and ethical agency. The second section explores the reasons moral agents have for cultivating the virtues and how the virtues impact moral responsiveness or development. The final section examines how reasons can be employed in understanding the nature of virtue, and how specific virtues, like modesty and practical wisdom, interact with reasons. This book will be of major interest to scholars working on virtue theory, the nature of moral character, and normative ethics. (shrink)

A partir de las reflexiones propuestas por Buenaventura en Breviloquium, I, 6, los conceptos trascendentales unidad, verdad y bondad pueden ser pensados como resultado de las diversas relaciones de indivisión interna del ser. Estas “condiciones nobilísimas y generalísimas del ser”, como las llama Buenaventura, son presentadas en el texto a modo de apropiaciones divinas y por esa razón triádica no incluyen en principio a la belleza. Sin embargo, enseguida es mencionada bajo la forma de una correspondencia esencial verdad-belleza. De esta (...) manera, la belleza comporta una cualidad formal intrínseca de la verdad, que le permite transmitir a la percepción tanto sensorial cuanto intelectual la trama íntima de la estructura del mundo. El presente trabajo señala las instancias deductivas y simbólicas de esa belleza participada. (shrink)

El lenguaje ha sido desde sus orígenes y en sus variadas formas el instrumento privilegiado para transmitir el conocimiento. Por ello, en los contextos teóricos de la gnoseología y la metafísica, la historia del pensamiento se ha cuestionado incesantemente la relación entre lenguaje, conocimiento y realidad. En el siglo VI d.C., Damascio de Siria, último escolarca de la Academia platónica de Atenas, plantea la paradoja de un principio o fundamento metafísico inaccesible al conocimiento y a la vez un uso del (...) lenguaje que, desde la conciencia de la propia construcción, remite a la instancia inaccesible para elaborar una representación simbólica de lo inefable. El presente trabajo analiza esa paradoja en el tratado De principii (Περὶ ἀρχῶν), donde Damascio niega la identidad entre el conocimiento y su objeto en favor de una trascendencia unitaria que se despliega como Verdad y Bien. Se examina por último la posibilidad de considerar esta última afirmación como un antecedente para la doctrina medieval de los conceptos trascendentales del ser. (shrink)