In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC TIME AND MOTION J. J. MACINTOSH University ofCalgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada A. THOMAS'S STANDARD DOCTRINE: THE NEED FOR ASINGLE TIME. T HERE IS an under-discussed problem about time for St. Thomas. Most discussions of his views on time center around either the question of God's foreknowledge or around the notions of eternity and aeviternity. Even those discussions which deal directly with Thomas's views on time (...) ignore the issue I wish to discuss here.' The problem is this: St. Thomas held both that there is a single time, created by God, and that there are three distinct times: two for the angels, and one for the rest of creation. Moreover, he seems, fairly explicitly, to have been unwilling to adopt either of the obvious ways out of this apparent contradiction. Thomas believed, and often said, that time is unitary, and typically offered an Aristotelian reason for the claim: "the true reason why time is one, is to be found in the oneness of the first movement by which, since it is most simple, all other movements are measured. Therefore time is referred to that movement, not only as a measure is to the thing measured, but also as accident 1 See, for example, Piero Ariotti, "Celestial reductionism of time: on the scholastic conception of time from Albert the great and Thomas Aquinas to the end of the 16th century," Studia Internationale Filosofia 4 (1972): 91-120, and Antonio Moreno, "Time and Relativity: Some Philosophical Considerations," The Thomist 45 (1981): 62-79. I have referred to this problem earlier in "Time and St. Thomas" (in To Myselffrom Others, ed. David Miller [Warwick: University of Warwick, 1989)), and in "Aquinas, Ockham, and Prior (and the unexpected examination),'' Auckland Philosophy Papers, no. 1 (1990). 547 548 J. J. MACINTOSH is to subject; and thus receives unity from it."2 Moreover, such a doctrine is necessary if what he tells us about the foreknowledge of God, and God's inability to change the past,3 not to mention his views on the knowledge that angels and demons have of what is genuinely future, is to be correct. Briefly, those views commit him to a view of a single time that is linear past, and is nonbranching future as well.4 There is some exegetical question as to whether or not his views on time, contingency, and freedom led him to adopt a truth-gap account of genuinely future tense contingent propositions, but that the singleness of time is required has not been questioned.5 This is not the place to deal with the difficulties Aquinas faced concerning God's foreknowledge, but a brief introductory word is in order to show how central the singleness of time is for his thought in this area. Since all past- and present-tense truths have necessity per accidens (that is, they concern matters which are now irrevocable), the class of contingent truths is a proper subset of genuinely future-tense claims. A proper subset because 2 Summa Theologiae, I, q. 10, a. 6 c (hereafter cited as sn; English translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols., (1920; reprint, Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1981). This is the translation I have standardly used, sometimes with slight changes, but I have also made use of the translation by the Blackfriars (61 vols. [London: Blackfriars, in conjunction with Eyre and Spottiswood, 1964-81], hereafter cited as Blackfriars). 3 Thus, for example, "God can make the existence of an angel not future; but He cannot cause him not to be while he is, or not to have been, after he has been" (ST I, q. 10, a. 5, ad 3). 4 By contrast, Ockham, for example, adopted an implicit tense logic with branching future possibilities. As far as I know, no mediaeval thinker allowed branching pasts. For a discussion of that possibility, see John Mackie, Truth, Probability and Paradox: Studies in Philosophical Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). For a helpful general discussion of the issues involved, see R. Thomason, "Combinations of Tense and Modality," in D. Gabbay and D. Guenthner, eds., Handbook of Philosophical Logic, 3 vols. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984), 2... (shrink)

Telling a patient that the outcome of his illness is not good, or even hopeless, requires sensitivity and the ability to communicate with him in the setting of a hospital which is an unnatural environment divorced from family and friends. It is a task which must be taught and learned by doctors and nurses.

The prophets of the Old Testament did make predictions, and biblical scholars are paying more attention to that fact. Now, serious theological reflection on what came of the predictions of the prophets is needed.

Isaiah's recurring emphasis on God's plan gave impetus to the conception of an overarching divine plan for history, a conception the New Testament found useful for interpreting the meaning of Jesus Christ.

Background: Caring for terminally ill patients is a meaningful task, however the patient’s suffering can be a considerable burden and cause of frustration.Objectives: The aim of this study is to describe the experiences of general practitioners in The Netherlands in dealing with a request for euthanasia from a terminally ill patient.Methods: The data, collected through in-depth interviews, were analysed according to the constant comparative method.Results: Having to face a request for euthanasia when attempting to relieve a patient’s suffering was described (...) as a very demanding experience that GPs generally would like to avoid. Nearly half of the GPs strive to avoid euthanasia or physician assisted suicide because it was against their own personal values or because it was emotional burdening to be confronted with this issue. They explained that by being directed on promoting a peaceful dying process, or the quality of end-of-life of a patient by caring and supporting the patient and the relatives it was mainly possible to shorten patient’s suffering without “intentionally hastening a patient’s death on his request”. The other GPs explained that as sometimes the suffering of a patient could not be lessened they were open to consider a patient’s request for euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. They underlined the importance of a careful decision-making process, based on finding a balance between the necessity to shorten the patient’s suffering through euthanasia and their personal values.Conclusion: Dealing with requests for euthanasia is very challenging for GPs, although they feel committed to alleviate a patient’s suffering and to promote a peaceful death. (shrink)

The emotion theory of concepts maintains that concepts may be in part constituted by sentiments and emotions. Very few works in the contemporary concepts literature discuss this possibility that concepts may be sentiments and emotions, and those that do discuss this possibility ultimately fail to establish the viability of this view. However, by in part relying on experimental evidence from psychology and neuroscience, I contend that some concrete and abstract concepts are in part constituted by sentiments and emotions.

The principle argument of the book is that, given the background of philosophy of mind, it is possible to identify a notion of human agency which goes beyond the limitations which Hume seems to have imposed upon empiricism and which takes advantage of a version of Aristotle's notion of 'soul.' Action, as it has been developed recently, particularly by those of an utilitarian inclination, has been subject to two criticisms: it makes responsibility a rather cheap and ordinary commodity, it makes (...) human agency simple and identifiable. The author accepts this first criticism, but spends most of his effort arguing against the second; he does not contend that action is always simple, but he does argue that the human agent can be identified with precision and that effects can be attributed to him in his role as someone who considered his act and decided to bring about the observed effect. The starting point is a consideration of embodiment, the situation in which considered effects are seen to be situated in the same realm as simple inanimate interactions; any version of human action will have to first of all differentiate itself from inanimate action; the fact that a man is involved in an event is no guarantee that the effect is the result of genuine action. Having done justice to what might be termed the empirical nature of the human condition, the author follows out his announced program: he argues that Hume's empiricism restricts and reduces the human agent and that if we mean by soul nothing much more than what Anscombe means when she typifies the agent as one for whom the question of his own activity arises, then the human agent may be said to have his own unique point of view in virtue of his soul. Whether agent or spectator, there is something uniquely purposeful about the being in the empirical order who manifests this view; it is this view which classical empiricism does not appreciate, and which enables the author to review a set of examples in order to determine what kind of conditions must be satisfied in order to be able to meaningfully attribute an effect to an agent. The examples are intentionally very simple, but the thesis of the argument is not.--J. J. E. (shrink)

This book basically traces the historical movements that saw Aristotelian thought introduced to Islamic studies. The most significant translation movement was begun in Baghdad in the eighth century and sporadically continued until the middle of the eleventh century. When this movement was completed, every extant work of Aristotle was translated into Arabic. Peters offers a formidable collection of bibliography, doxography, and gnomonology that appeals more to eastern classical scholars than to Aristotelian philosophers. No significant philosophical issues are raised--this is really (...) not the author's intention. Whenever a remote philosophical point does arise, however, it does so a bit arbitrarily. For example, when Peters introduces a chapter on the triumph of Kalam in Islamic thought, he asserts, "it was the Greeks themselves who reduced philosophy to its status of 'handmaiden of theology'." No further explanation is given and Peters continues on his more certain ground--Islamic culture.--J. J. R. (shrink)

Elders' work is patterned after Ross's editions of Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, and Analytics, except that Elders does not include the Greek text to accompany his commentary. Each chapter of the four books of De Caelo is briefly summarized and a line by line commentary ensues with special consideration given to the more controversial passages. In an introduction to his commentary, Elders develops the essential themes surrounding Aristotle's cosmology: 1) The proper historical setting, 2) The notion of natural movement and elementary (...) bodies, 3) The role of metaphysics in Aristotle's cosmology, Aristotle's notion of science and methodology. Elders seems to gloss over the main problem that Aristotle's Cosmology engenders, viz., whether the heavenly spheres move by a natural necessity or are moved by a supra-celestial principle. His comment on the first chapter of Book III points out Aristotle's intention of including both the heavens and the sub-lunar sphere under the study of Physics. He correctly points out that if one is to understand the De Caelo, then one must "look upon cosmology the way its author did, viz., as a science of intellectual vision, rather than as a labor of toilsome research: the study of the cosmos is an intellectual effort which finds its end and its reward in itself."—J. J. R. (shrink)

This account should be of great help in dispelling some of the mystery that surrounds the subject for the uninitiated. The author, concentrating on Sartre and Heidegger, locates modern existentialism in the history of philosophy; outlines typical existentialist positions on such issues as the human condition, freedom, authenticity, and death; and makes critical comments on these positions from Anglo-American viewpoints, especially pragmatism.--J. J.

This edition of Aristotelian scholarship contains the proceedings of the third Symposium Aristotelicum. Choosing to discuss one work of Aristotle, the Topics, the participants were thus able to center their discussions around Aristotle's notion of dialectics. Owen has arranged the papers into interesting categories, some of which contain critical analyses of the text. There is also a valuable index of sources. One especially interesting chapter deals with the question of the relationship between Aristotelian thought and Platonic thought. Under the specific (...) scrutiny of the Symposium, the question is: to what extent do the dialectics of Aristotle rely upon Plato's theory of Forms and the method of diaeresis that leads up to the Forms? Friedrich Solmsen, the most emphatic of all the writers on this point, claims that the dialectics of the Topics ignore any ontological reference. According to Solmsen, Aristotle accepted the logical structure of Plato's dialectic and diaeresis but then prescinded from any commitment to the Forms. C. J. De Vogel agrees with Solmsen insofar as Aristotle begins to see the theory of Forms as "problematic" due to the immaturity of Aristotle's own theory. De Vogel cites several passages that would seem to counter the position of Solmsen. For example, in defining "justice" as a virtue, Aristotle prefers the abstract term δικαιοσύνη as properly falling under the category ἀγαθόν, rather than the concrete δίκαιον. In a paper by Gilbert Ryle it is claimed that Aristotle never formally learned dialectical philosophy at Plato's academy, so that questions of how and why Aristotle broke from his master are unreal. Ryle suggests that the second part of Plato's Parmenides was written to exemplify the categories of the Topics and to school the more advanced students in the art of dialectics which was not taught to those under thirty years of age. How much Aristotle's dialectical philosophy is indebted to Plato is still a debatable point; but it is debated very well in these papers.--J. J. R. (shrink)

This survey of American philosophy first presents the classical "Golden Age of American Philosophy" with selections from Peirce, James, Dewey, Santayana, Whitehead, and Mead. This first part also includes selections from the schools of new and critical realism with R. B. Perry, A. O. Lovejoy, R. W. Sellars among the representatives. Part Two is entitled "The Contemporary Philosophical Scene" and has selections from the works of C. I. Lewis, Carnap, C. L. Stevenson, Quine, M. Black, B. Blanshard, Tillich, S. Hook, (...) and E. Nagel. Anthologies rarely please everyone. Some may feel that Josiah Royce should have been included in the "Golden Age" section. There are two good features of this volume, however, that make it suitable as either a text for a seminar in American philosophy or as a research manual or both. Each philosopher or philosophical movement is adequately introduced by the editor, and each section is concluded with a rather complete bibliography.—J. J. R. (shrink)