Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes that (...) which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise. (shrink)

Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes that (...) which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise. (shrink)

Scientists engaged in global health research are increasingly faced with barriers to access and use of human tissues from the developing world communities where much of their research is targeted. In part, the problem can be traced to distrust of researchers from affluent countries, given the history of 'scientific-imperialism' and 'biocolonialism' reflected in past well publicized cases of exploitation of research participants from low to middle income countries. To a considerable extent, the failure to adequately engage host communities, the opacity (...) of informed consent, and the lack of fair benefit-sharing have played a significant role in eroding trust. These ethical considerations are central to biomedical research in low to middle income countries and failure to attend to them can inadvertently contribute to exploitation and erode trust. A 'tissue trust' may be a plausible means for enabling access to human tissues for research in a manner that is responsive to the ethical challenges considered. Preventing exploitation and restoring trust while simultaneously promoting global health research calls for innovative approaches to human tissues research. A tissue trust can reduce the risk of exploitation and promote host capacity as a key benefit. (shrink)

Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes that (...) which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise. (shrink)

When a Jehovah’s Witness patient is traumatically injured, the lack of uniform professional consensus guidelines and the cultural knowledge deficit of many clinicians adds an additional layer of legal and ethical complexity to the inherent difficulty of managing a critically ill patient. We present here the case of an incapacitated Jehovah's Witness patient with severe traumatic hemorrhagic shock. We go on to discuss the historical and contemporary case law on proxy refusal of blood transfusion for the incapacitated adult, as well (...) as the ethics of self-determination and the application of the principle of proportionate reason in the management of the critically injured Jehovah's Witness patient. (shrink)

There is a debate in normative ethics about whether or not our moral obligations depend solely on either our evidence concerning, or our beliefs about, the world. Subjectivists maintain that they do and objectivists maintain that they do not. I shall offer some arguments in support of objectivism and respond to the strongest argument for subjectivism. I shall also briefly consider the significance of my discussion to the debate over whether one’s future voluntary actions are relevant to one’s current moral (...) obligations. (shrink)

David Lewis has offered a reply to the standard argument for the claim that the truth of determinism is incompatible with anyone’s being able to do otherwise than she in fact does. Helen Beebee has argued that Lewis’s compatibilist strategy is untenable. In this paper I show that one recent attempt to defend Lewis’s view against this argument fails and then go on to offer my own defense of Lewis’s view.

In this paper I sketch an account of moral blame and blameworthiness. I begin by clarifying what I take blame to be and explaining how blameworthiness is to be analyzed in terms of it. I then consider different accounts of the conditions of blameworthiness and, in the end, settle on one according to which a person is blameworthy for φ-ing just in case, in φ-ing, she violates one of a particular class of moral requirements governing the attitudes we bear, and (...) our mental orientation, toward people and other objects of significant moral worth. These requirements embody the moral stricture that we accord to these others a sufficient level of respect, one that their moral worth demands. This is a familiar theme which has its roots in P. F. Strawson’s pioneering views on moral responsibility. My development of it leads me to the conclusion that acting wrongly is not a condition of blameworthiness: violating a moral requirement to perform, or refrain from performing, an action is neither necessary nor sufficient for being blameworthy. All we are ever blameworthy for, I will argue, are certain aspects of our mental bearing toward others. We can be said to be blameworthy for our actions only derivatively, in the sense that those actions are the natural manifestations of the things for which we are strictly speaking blameworthy. (shrink)

In the last few years, the U.S. health care system has seemingly been gripped by “back to the nineties” fever. But there is a notable change in professional debates about how to better control health care costs. Discussion of health care rationing, which was hotly debated in the nineties, has become much more muted.Is health care rationing passé? I contend that debates about health care rationing have waned not because the need to ration has dwindled nor because ethical debates about (...) how or whether to ration have been resolved. They have declined because the word “rationing,” and unrelated concepts such as cost‐effectiveness analysis, have been replaced by terms—“parsimony,” “value,” and “CER”—that are not burdened by emotional and historical baggage.Sometimes the best way to promote healthy moral debate is to turn to new words that don't carry the burden of past debates. (shrink)

We study the proof-theoretic strength and effective content of the infinite form of Ramsey's theorem for pairs. Let RT n k denote Ramsey's theorem for k-colorings of n-element sets, and let RT $^n_{ denote (∀ k)RT n k . Our main result on computability is: For any n ≥ 2 and any computable (recursive) k-coloring of the n-element sets of natural numbers, there is an infinite homogeneous set X with X'' ≤ T 0 (n) . Let IΣ n and BΣ (...) n denote the Σ n induction and bounding schemes, respectively. Adapting the case n = 2 of the above result (where X is low 2 ) to models of arithmetic enables us to show that RCA 0 + IΣ 2 + RT 2 2 is conservative over RCA 0 + IΣ 2 for Π 1 1 statements and that $RCA_0 + I\Sigma_3 + RT^2_{ , is Π 1 1 -conservative over RCA 0 + IΣ 3 . It follows that RCA 0 + RT 2 2 does not imply BΣ 3 . In contrast, J. Hirst showed that $RCA_0 + RT^2_{ does imply BΣ 3 , and we include a proof of a slightly strengthened version of this result. It follows that $RT^2_{ is strictly stronger than RT 2 2 over RCA 0. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Is what we’re morally permitted to do grounded in our subjective situation? Subjectivists maintain that it is. Objectivists deny this. I shall offer two arguments for Objectivism about moral permissibility.

Numbers Skeptics deny that when faced with a choice between saving some innocent people from harm and saving a larger number of different, though equally innocent, people from suffering a similar harm you ought to save the larger number. In this article, I aim to put pressure on Numbers Skepticism.

ABSTRACT Is what we’re morally permitted to do grounded in our subjective situation? Subjectivists maintain that it is. Objectivists deny this. I shall offer two arguments for Objectivism about moral permissibility.

There is a moral phenomenon of “Secondary Permissibility” in which an otherwise morally impermissible option is made morally permissible by the presence of another option. In this paper I explain how this phenomenon works and argue that understanding how it works suggests a new model for the structure of the ethics of harming.

I am, however, not interested in rescuing words. My underlying concern is so to distinguish between "person" and "personality" that the relation of each to the other and to environment is adequately clear. After indicating why the theory of personality development in the social sciences requires the reintroducing of the person, I shall outline a conception of the person that eases theoretical difficulties both in the philosophy of the person and of personality.

Through extensive textual analysis, this book concludes that the prevailing opinion about the nature of modern and contemporary philosophy is wrong. It maintains that almost all modern and contemporary philosophy is deconstructed, secularized, Augustinian theology, not philosophy. The work is divided into eight chapters, a guest Foreword by Herbert I. London notes, bibliography, and an index. Chapter 1 considers Cartesian thought, Hobbes, and Newton. Chapter 2 examines Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Chapter 3 investigates Lessing and Rousseau. Chapters 4 and 5 (...) treat Kant. Chapters 6 and 7 deal with Hegel. Chapter 8 concludes that a lack of philosophical and historical experience coupled with a widespread inability to read philosophical texts according to the intention of the author causes us to mistake secularized theology for philosophy and is a main cause for the decline of contemporary universities. (shrink)

While I cannot conclude that Langer is successful so far in this formidable undertaking, I find myself not only resonating to much that she sets out but also applauding the attempt to develop a philosophy of mind in a new key. Surely, to decide what we mean by mind without reference to the mind-in-art is myopic philosophizing. No systematic metaphysician can but be grateful for the attempt to show that in the nature of feeling as found in art there is (...) a kind of organization that will enable us to get beyond the persistent frustrations created by a dualistic view of mind and body, and will possibly give us a clue even to the dynamics of physical beings. (shrink)

: Samia Hurst and Marion Danis provide a thoughtful framework for how to judge the morality of bedside rationing decisions. In this commentary, I applaud Hurst and Danis for advancing the level of debate about bedside rationing. But when I attempt to apply the framework to my own clinical practice, I conclude that the framework comes up short.

The "Why be moral?" problem has been one of the more persistent problems of ethics. The problem is typically posed as a conflict between what is straightforwardly maximal for a person to do in specific circumstances and what is recommended by the principles or rules of ethics, usually what is communally optimal, in those circumstances. Typically ethicists try to convince us that both collectively and individually we will be better off in the long run if we each adopt cooperative strategies (...) despite the temptations of immediate profit offered by straightforward maximization policies. After reworking the notion of "straightforward maximizer" such that it makes sense to say that I may sometimes have rationally good reasons to perform actions that do not in the circumstances, taken individually, maximize my utility just so long as the best-for-me accessible-to-me possible world is realized, l am able to show why it is the case that in social interactions that mirror iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas the constraints of ethics on straighforward maximization are redundant. The policy of straighforward maximization that I defend is more flexible that one of cooperation. It reaps the benefits of cooperation when they are to be had and avoids the disasters of cooperation that lurk in every meeting one has with potentially treacherous strangers. Where the policy of straightforward maximization departs from the ethical choice, I argue, it does so because making that choice would be scrificial, supererogatory, even from the moral point of view. Acting ethically by constraining one's straighforward maximinzation therefore cannot be rationally justified. (shrink)

Self-blaming expressions are common. For example, “I blame myself for missing the deadline;” “I’m the only one to blame for my alcoholism;” “I can’t stop blaming myself for what he did to me;” “Bless me Father, for I have sinned;” “My bad, I’ll pay for it;” “I’m so ashamed of having done that;” and, “Damn me, I’ve done it again!”Self-blame occupies a sizable chunk of what is published in academic psychology, but there is not that much on the topic in (...) philosophy. My intent is to offer some thoughts and explorations about self-blaming in the context of a wider view of negative responsibility ascriptions that are not uttered at the time of the untoward action, and to use a distinction drawn in a piece from the psychological literature to suggest a link between a certain kind of self-blame, repentance, and acts of atonement.PreliminariesSelf-blaming is a form of holding oneself responsible, a way of expressing a negative self-reactive attitude subsequent to the performance of an action. .. (shrink)

I suggest that part of the reason the on-going debate in the West between the liberal democrats and the communitarians about the future and/or the ills of democracy is futile because both sides are committed to conceptually different accounts of democracy. The roots of communitarianism in the Athenian polis and that of liberalism in the atomistic individualism of the Enlightenment are contrasted in order to discern the motivating visions and overarching structures of both. Whereas communitarian democracy is willdominated, liberal democracy (...) is choice-dominated. My purpose here is not to argue for the supremacy of one over the other, but to call attention to the distinctions between the two that are often blurred in contemporary discussion about democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Without Buddha I Could not Be a ChristianPeter A. HuffWithout Buddha I Could not Be a Christian. By Paul F. Knitter. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. xvii + 240 pp.Paul Knitter’s contributions to interfaith dialogue and Christian theologies of religions are well known and widely appreciated. Even critics of Christian theories of pluralism, most prominently Pope Benedict XVI, have acknowledged the significance of Knitter’s strategic integration of perspectives from liberation (...) theology into what is sometimes an overly abstract field of inquiry. Colleagues active in Buddhist-Christian studies hold Knitter in especially high esteem as a writer, teacher, translator, [End Page 211] editor, self-described interreligious theologian, and unapologetic person of faith. This book, his first major publication since accepting the Paul Tillich chair at Union Theological Seminary, offers a uniquely first-person reflection on the spiritual fruits of a career profoundly and provocatively shaped by two religious traditions.Written for a popular audience, the book, the author says, has been in the works “for the past forty years” (p. xv). The reader gains valuable insight into the professional and private life of a remarkable “dialogical theologian” (p. xv), whose experience includes a rather conventional upbringing in working-class Midwestern Catholicism, some twenty years of service as a seminarian and missionary priest with the Society of the Divine Word, graduate education in Europe with the likes of Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) and Karl Rahner (1904–1984) during the revolutionary years of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), and nearly four decades of pioneering work as a productive scholar-activist in mainstream academic theology. At times Knitter even quotes from his unpublished journals in an effort to document fully his unscripted intellectual and spiritual development.Though highly personal, the book is not primarily an autobiography or conversion narrative. Instead, it is an introspective analysis of the internal dialogue that virtually all participants in interreligious affairs recognize as the heart of the global ecumenical encounter. Knitter’s book serves as something of an apologia for what is known today as dual religious belonging or hyphenated religious identity. The author concludes his text with this intriguing but not surprising spiritual self-portrait: both lifelong baptized Christian and “card-carrying Buddhist” (p. 216). The challenge of accounting for this “both /and” orientation grants the book its distinctive character and its reason for being.Knitter borrows his method from the twentieth-century minor classic The Way of All the Earth: Experiments in Truth and Religion (1978). In that work, Notre Dame theology professor and Holy Cross priest James Dunne suggested that the path to holiness in the contemporary West leads inevitably through intimate engagement with the ancient wisdom traditions of the East. Even a casual review of the spiritual history of the last century or so will confirm how earnest seekers in modernity’s secular city have renewed, rediscovered, or critically redefined their native faith commitment through life-changing contact with the ideas and values of Asian religious traditions. It is a story familiar to anyone acquainted with the extraordinary religious pilgrimages of interfaith saints such as Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), Thomas Merton (1915–1968), and Bede Griffiths (1906–1993).Dunne dubbed this experience the “spiritual adventure of our time” (p. 2); Knitter passionately agrees. He applies Dunne’s dialectical method and his special terminology to his own spiritual odyssey, “passing over” from Christian questions and problems to possible answers and solutions in the Buddhist tradition and then “passing back” to Christian belief and practice with enhanced purpose and a fresh sense of integrity.The starting point for Knitter’s project is cognitive, moral, even emotional dissatisfaction with some of the fundamental structures of the historic Christian worldview: God as transcendent creator and lord of history, Jesus Christ as incarnate Logos and [End Page 212] universal savior, and salvation as the survival of human personality after death and the eschatological redemption of all finite reality. In essence, Knitter claims, traditional theism and the core myth of Christianity as expressed in scripture, creed, and liturgy appear painfully ineffective and to a large extent incoherent in the context of modern life and the international interface of world religions. What especially drives the... (shrink)

A term and its contradictory exhaust the universe of discourse, but when examined for their relation to each other, I believe they are seen to exhaust that universe in a more particular respect than may have come into notice. They seem to exhaust or annul one of the leading notions of mathematical logic. This notion is the one concerning the whereabouts of the null class.

The Mind Argument is an argument for the incompatibility of indeterminism and anyone's having a choice about anything that happens. Peter van Inwagen rejects the Mind Argument not because he is able to point out the flaw in it, but because he accepts both that determinism is incompatible with anyone's having a choice about anything that happens and that it is possible for someone to have a choice about something that happens. In this paper I first diagnose and clear (...) up a confusion in recent discussions of the Mind Argument and then go on to show why it is a bad argument. (shrink)

As Jonathan Haidt explains in The Righteous Mind, it is often our moral intuitions that come first, rapidly or even automatically, with ethical reasoning coming later. Haidt's book is one of many that have come out in recent years highlighting the relevance of psychology (and its close cousin, neuroscience) for understanding human morality. As a behavioral scientist, I have devoured many of these books. I am fascinated by human nature and love trying to understand why all of us behave and (...) think the way we do. But as a physician ethicist, I often find myself reading these books with a parallel agenda: not just to understand human nature, but also to see whether this line of research has relevance for my work as an ethicist. My bottom line: Understanding moral psychology ought to be a required component of ethics training, not because the science will help us to differentiate between right and wrong, but because it will better equip us to teach ethics in a way that promotes moral behavior in our students. (shrink)

Gaunilo assumes that there is no greatest conceivable island, and most philosophers have followed him in this assumption. But the option was open for Anselm (and remains open for us) to bite the bullet and ‘give him his island.’ I argue that such a response is perfectly reasonable for a Platonist like Anselm, and that even a theist who isn’t a Platonist can tolerate the island as a fairly minor addition his or her ontology.

There is still considerable debate among commentators about the extent to which Descartes intended to, or actually did, exercise the principle of methodic doubt. Basically, the debate is about the import of the word “all” in the opening sentence of the synopsis of the Meditations: “In the first Meditation I set forth the reasons for which we may, generally speaking, doubt about all things … ”. A. K. Stout and Willis Doney have argued that the thing to be doubted is (...) all knowledge to the extent in which memory plays a role in it. They attempt to show that Descartes is looking for a guarantee for the reliability of memory rather than for, say, a guarantee for the reliability of all clear and distinct ideas. Most commentators do not restrict methodic doubt in this way. For example, Alan Gewirth has recently suggested that sometimes Descartes even doubts the cogito. (shrink)

In the criminal law of many jurisdictions complicity, though not itself a substantive crime but a way of committing a crime, is a doctrine that determines when one person is legally liable for a criminal offense that was committed by another person, typically by being an accomplice. That doctrine has a number of troubling moral implications with respect to responsibility, particularly when complicity is employed as a devise to capture one agent as morally accountable for the actions of another agent (...) and/or the consequences of those actions. I focus on the issue of responsibility for consequences and actus reus and mens rea difficulties with complicity as a moral concept in the light of two cases in which complicity is the basis for ascriptions of moral and criminal responsibility to someone who was not the primary wrongdoer. The book on the topic by Chiara Lepora and Robert E. Goodin provokes my discussion. (shrink)

I argue that Fischer’s attempts to undermine the “Ought” Implies “Can” principle (OIC) fail. I argue both against his construal of the natural motivation for OIC and against his argument for the falsity of OIC. I also consider some attempts to salvage Fischer’s arguments and argue that they can work only if the true moral theory is motive determinative--i.e., it is such that, necessarily, any action performed from a motive which renders one of the blame emotions appropriate is morally impermissible, (...) no matter what other features it has. But, as motive-determinative moral theories are implausible, Fischer’s arguments are not salvageable. (shrink)

It was a little over ten years ago, 1967–8, that H. D. Lewis delivered the first series of Gifford lectures, The Elusive Mind, in the University of Edinburgh. It was my privilege that year to be an auditor in the Seminar at King's College that Professor Lewis was conducting with his students in the area of this topic. I had already read the works in which, in the midst of neo-orthodox and existentialist religious movements, he had devoted himself to critical (...) valuation of those doctrines - witness his Morals and the New Theology, and Morals and Revelation. This earlier work prepared for a comprehensive interpretation of religious experience in his book in 1960: Our Experience of God. (shrink)

Measurement of scientific productivity is difficult. The measures used (impact factor of the journal, citations to the paper being measured) are crude. But these measures are now so universally adopted that they determine most things that matter: tenure or unemployment, a postdoctoral grant or none, success or failure. As a result, scientists have been forced to downgrade their primary aim from making discoveries to publishing as many papers as possible—and trying to work them into high impact factor journals. Consequently, scientific (...) behaviour has become distorted and the utility, quality and objectivity of articles has deteriorated. Changes to the way scientists are assessed are urgently needed, and I suggest some here. (shrink)

In this paper, I take for granted that, today, something is radically wrong metaphysically with Western culture. I maintain that this problem arises, as Marcelsays, from the very depths of our being. This paper’s purpose is to consider some aspects of Marcel’s metaphysical teaching, especially about our need tostart philosophizing in the concrete, not the abstract, situation, to battle against the spirit of abstraction, and use these reflections for the practical purpose ofconsidering what sorts of steps we need to take (...) at the present moment to recover philosophical practice in the postmodern age. Within the context of this paper,I argue that Marcel is a realist humanist in the tradition of Plato and Aquinas whose battle against the spirit of abstraction is fundamentally a fight againstnominalism and sophistry. (shrink)

The Doctor, like many time-travelers, often finds himself in the midst of a causal loop. Events in the future cause events in the past, which in turn cause the future events. There is a worry that a person in this situation could never have true libertarian freedom: facts about the past entail their future actions, so they couldn't do otherwise than they in fact do. -/- In this paper, I argue that there are logically coherent (though perhaps unlikely!) ways of (...) understanding the relationship between human actions and Everett's "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics that could salvage The Doctor's libertarian free will. I show that the existence of a causal loop does not entail that *THE* Doctor will have to do a certain thing, only that *A* Doctor will have to do it. On this interpretation, "free will" might turn out to be the choice, not of what happens in the future, but rather of which future person we are going to be. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Memoriam:Benjamin Lee Wren (1931–2006)Peter A. HuffAlmost a year after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated his beloved New Orleans, Benjamin Wren, longtime member of the history department at Loyola University–New Orleans, died on July 20, 2006. Wren joined the Loyola faculty in 1970 and taught popular courses in Chinese history, Japanese history, and world history. He is best remembered for his unprecedented courses in Zen and the unique (...) campus zendo where he taught them. His courses integrated meditation practice, philosophical reflection, historical investigation, and a bit of group therapy into what many students have described as life-changing experiences.Wren was the son of an American Marine and a Hong Kong native who met in Tientsin, China. Growing up in the American South during the Great Depression and World War II, he encountered firsthand the racism and xenophobia that defined the Bible Belt as a distinct cultural region in the first half of the twentieth century. He entered the Society of Jesus when he was seventeen years of age and earned degrees from Spring Hill College, Saint Louis University, and the University of Arizona. Nearly fifty years later, he left the Jesuits and married Patricia Wren.Wren's professional life did not follow the path of the conventional academic career. For several years he taught in Jesuit high schools. After discovering a book on the Japanese art of flower arranging in a Texas public library, he pursued graduate studies in Asian religion and history. Like many of his generation, he was influenced by Jean Dechanet's Christian Yoga and Dom Aelred Graham's Zen Catholicism. He studied Zen with Yamada Roshi in Kamakura and ikebana with Sofu Teshigahara of the Sogetsu School in Tokyo. He initiated his Zen courses at Loyola partially in response to student unrest in the wake of the Kent State massacre.Wren published very little and did not easily negotiate the tenure process. His Zen among the Magnolias (1999) represents more personal testimony than scholarly argument. He did, however, have the extraordinary ability to stretch his students' imaginations and aspirations beyond the formal limitations of higher education and professional expectations. I saw this dimension of his [End Page 137] work very clearly when he served as the keynote speaker for Centenary College's 2004 one-day conference on "The Dharma in Dixie," a program featuring leaders and practitioners from Louisiana's Hindu and Buddhist communities. Wren's animated talk, fusing a whirlwind tour of Chinese history with a riveting critique of contemporary American culture, was by all accounts the highlight of the event.In Zen among the Magnolias, Wren wrote, "The two symbols used to write the word Zen are the symbols for God and warfare. For us who come out of a Judaic/ Christian background, we have the tradition of Jacob fighting with God and emerging from the fight with a new name, Israel (He who has fought with God)" (p. 7). By the time he spoke at my institution, Wren was already engaged in his final battle with cancer. During the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, we lost track of each other. Then I heard of the memorial service to be held in his honor at an Episcopal church in a New Orleans suburb."Zen Ben" Wren's brand of personal passion and intellectual integrity is a rare commodity in today's corporate academy. "The best teachers," he said, "never lose their student IDs, and they also bring out the master in their respective students" (p. 16). Loyola's zendo once housed an unforgettable teacher. [End Page 138]Peter A. HuffCentenary College of LouisianaCopyright © 2007 The University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 2008 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesPeter A. HuffThe Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS) sponsored two sessions in conjunction with the 2008 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The first session addressed the topic "Cognitive Science, Religious Practices, and Human Development: Buddhist and Christian Perspectives." The second session focused on the life and legacy of Trappist monk, spiritual writer, and interfaith pioneer Thomas Merton (...) (1915–1968).The first session, moderated by Sandra Costen Kunz (Phillips Theological Seminary), featured five papers probing the relationship between research in the natural and social sciences and lessons from the experience of Buddhist and Christian practice: "The Body and the Mind: Buddhist Bowing and Neuroscience," presented by Paula K. Arai (Louisiana State University) and coauthored with Sascha du Lac (Salk Institute for Biological Sciences); "Who Hears? A Zen Buddhist Perspective" by Robert Aitken Roshi, founder and retired Zen master of the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu (read by Ruben Habito, Southern Methodist University); "'Your Cell Will Teach You Everything': Old Wisdom, Modern Science, and the Art of Attention" by Noreen Herzfeld (St. John's University); "Verbal Imagining: Scientific Reflection on Visual Cognition in Light of Traditional Tibetan and Christian Theologies of the Image" by Thomas Cattoi (Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley); and "Cognitive Error and Contemplative Practices: The Cultivation of Discernment in Mind and Heart" by Wesley J. Wildman (Boston University). Revised versions of three of these papers with an introductory essay by Prof. Costen Kunz are included in this issue of Buddhist-Christian Studies.The theme for the society's second session, chaired by Alice Keefe (University of Wisconsin), was "Thomas Merton Forty Years after His Death: Buddhist and Christian Perspectives." Four presenters examined and evaluated Merton's distinctive contributions to Buddhist-Christian relations, theological reflection, and interreligious dialogue. In her paper "Self-Surrender in Merton's Writings and Contemplative Psychology," Daijaku Judith Kinst (California Institute of Integral Studies) concentrated on the place of subjective transformation in Merton's thought, describing his [End Page 143] "great gift" to the literature on the contemplative life as the "fearless" rejection of self-centeredness in the practice of prayer and spiritual formation. "Thomas Merton Meets Tibetan Buddhism" by Judith Simmer-Brown (Naropa University) shed new light on the impact of the dzogchen ("great completion") tradition on Merton's evolving spirituality, particularly as expressed in the letters, speeches, and private documents included in the posthumously published Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1973). In "Non-Dual Wisdom as Feminine: Sophia and Prajnaparamita in Merton's Poem 'Hagia Sophia,'" Paula Hirschboeck (Edgewood College) explored suggestive parallels between Christian mystical experience and Buddhist madhyamika teaching in Merton's long, dreamlike Marian hymn from the early 1960s. Kristin Johnston Largen (Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg) concluded the session with an analysis of the role of Buddhism-inspired insights in Merton's approach to soteriological questions, especially as seen in his changing attitudes toward traditional Christian doctrines of hell, purgatory, eschatology, and the human person.Between sessions, members and friends of the society participated in the annual SBCS/AAR field trip to a local site significant for its relevance to interdisciplinary Buddhist-Christian studies. This year members visited the Chicago Cultural Center of Soka Gakkai International-USA (SGI-USA), the Buddhist association for peace, culture, and education based on the teachings of thirteenth-century Japanese monk and reformer Nichiren Daishonin. Located at 1455 South Wabash Avenue in downtown Chicago, the cultural center serves as the primary facility for SGI-USA activities in the Midwest. Mr. Guy McCloskey, senior vice president, publisher, and member of the board of directors for SGI-USA, organized the event. The evening's program included a tour of the center's award-winning architecture, an informal overview of the aims and initiatives of SGI-USA, and a delicious dinner served by members of the organization. [End Page 144]Peter A. HuffCentenary College of LouisianaCopyright © 2009 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

In physics, the temporal dimension has units of infinitesimally brief duration. Given this, how is it possible to perceive things, such as motion, music, and vibrotactile stimulation, that involve extension across many units of time? To address this problem, it is proposed that there is what is termed an “information construct of happening” (ICOH), a simultaneous representation of recent, temporally differentiated perceptual information on the millisecond time scale. The main features of the ICOH are (i) time marking, semantic labeling of (...) all information in the ICOH with ordinal temporal information and distance from what is informationally identified as the present moment, (ii) vector informational features that specify kind, direction, and rate of change for every feature in a percept, and (iii) connectives, information relating vector informational features at adjacent temporal locations in the ICOH. The ICOH integrates products of perceptual processing with recent historical information in sensory memory on the subsecond time scale. Perceptual information about happening in informational sensory memory is encoded in semantic form that preserves connected semantic trails of vector and timing information. The basic properties of the ICOH must be supported by a general and widespread timing mechanism that generates ordinal and interval timing information and it is suggested that state‐dependent networks may suffice for that purpose. Happening, therefore, is perceived at a moment and is constituted by an information structure of connected recent historical information. (shrink)

I. On the morning of 28 November 1979 flight TE-901, a DC-10 operated by Air New Zealand Limited, took off from Auckland, New Zealand, on a sightseeing passenger flight over a portion of Antarctica. The pilot in command was Captain Collins. The following are paragraphs from the official Report of the Royal Commission that inquired into the events surrounding that flight.

In this paper I argue that, while there are real tensions between phenomenology and critique, it makes a significant difference what we understand phenomenology to be, and that on a good understanding there is room for a project that is genuinely both critical and phenomenological. I will focus on four areas of tension: the eidetic character of phenomenology as opposed to the concrete character of critique; the transcendental orientation of phenomenology as opposed to social and political orientation of critique; the (...) descriptive nature of phenomenology as opposed to the normative nature of critique; and the possibly “naïve” character of phenomenology with respect to the shaping of phenomena by social forces. In each case, I will not try to show that there is no space between phenomenology and critique; rather, I suggest that the tension between the two can be mitigated to allow for a critical phenomenology. (shrink)

The comparative utility argument holds that the descendants of African slaves in America are not owed any compensation because they have not been harmed by slavery. Rather, slavery in America was beneficial to the descendants of slaves because they are now able to live in a country that is considerably richer today than any of the African countries from which slaves were taken. In this paper, I show that the comparative utility argument is a red herring with no bearing whatsoever (...) on the question of slave reparations because it conflates two separate wrongs: slavery and forced immigration. The fact that the descendants of slaves now live in America is a consequence of the latter, but not the former. As such, it has no bearing on the legitimacy reparations for slavery. (shrink)

“Know thyself!” This dictum in the Upanishads is also that of the Greeks 2000 years later. But what is meant by “know” and by “self” is different. The Biblical counsel, “Know thyself as created in the image of God,” also reminds us that man’s conception of himself is influenced by his conception of his relation to his ultimate environment. In fundamental terms, there is no East and West when reflective men ask: What is the essence of man? I cannot in (...) this paper pay adequate respect to certain historic approaches to the answer, but they are in mind as I develop a personalistic, temporalistic view of man. (shrink)

It would be useful to have a category of extensive-form games whose isomorphisms specify equivalences between games. Since working with entire games is too large a project for a single paper, I begin here with preforms, where a “preform” is a rooted tree together with choices and information sets. In particular, this paper first defines the category \, whose objects are “functioned trees”, which are specially designed to be incorporated into preforms. I show that \ is isomorphic to the full (...) subcategory of \ whose objects are converging arborescences. Then the paper defines the category \, whose objects are “node-and-choice preforms”, each of which consists of a node set, a choice set, and an operator mapping node-choice pairs to nodes. I characterize the \ isomorphisms, define a forgetful functor from \ to \, and show that \ is equivalent to the full subcategory of \ whose objects are perfect-information preforms. The paper also shows that many game-theoretic entities can be derived from preforms, and that these entities are well-behaved with respect to \ morphisms and isomorphisms. (shrink)

“Know thyself!” This dictum in the Upanishads is also that of the Greeks 2000 years later. But what is meant by “know” and by “self” is different. The Biblical counsel, “Know thyself as created in the image of God,” also reminds us that man’s conception of himself is influenced by his conception of his relation to his ultimate environment. In fundamental terms, there is no East and West when reflective men ask: What is the essence of man? I cannot in (...) this paper pay adequate respect to certain historic approaches to the answer, but they are in mind as I develop a personalistic, temporalistic view of man. (shrink)

I wish this essay to be a tribute to Edwin A. Burtt. He stands for a quality of intellectual and spiritual hospitality that is all the more inspiring because it stems from widespread scholarly analysis and a moral passion for catholicity and civility. Like Kant, he has given much of his acute philosophical ability to the task of understanding the foundations of scientific, moral, and religious beliefs. If anything, he goes a step further than Kant. Persons, he argues, win truth (...) only as love unifies all their efforts. (shrink)

I wish this essay to be a tribute to Edwin A. Burtt. He stands for a quality of intellectual and spiritual hospitality that is all the more inspiring because it stems from widespread scholarly analysis and a moral passion for catholicity and civility. Like Kant, he has given much of his acute philosophical ability to the task of understanding the foundations of scientific, moral, and religious beliefs. If anything, he goes a step further than Kant. Persons, he argues, win truth (...) only as love unifies all their efforts. (shrink)