Comment la création poétique s'accommode-t-elle du savoir religieux qui l'inspire ? la question sera étudiée à l'aide d'illustrations prises chez des poètes chrétiens d'avant-guerre ou d'après-guerre . On testera à cet effet une typologie qui distingue une poésie « confessionnelle », une autre « confessante », et un troisième type « indirect », selon les réminiscences verbales qu'on y trouve ou les innovations de langage ou le jeu des références à l'expérience spirituelle. Il devrait apparaître finalement que la ligne de (...) démarcation de la créativité poétique sépare moins les deux premiers types du troisième qu'elle ne passe entre le premier et les deux autres, quand ces deux derniers préservent l'ouverture de la référence à des interprétations diverses.How does poetical creation adapt to the religions knowledge that inspires it ? The question will be treated with the help of illustrations taken from pre-war Christian poets - Claudel, Reverdy – or post-war ones – La Tour du Pin, Lemaire, Mambrino –. To that effect, a typology distinguishing a « denominational » poetry, a « confessing » one, and a third, indirect type, will be tested, according to the verbal influences that are to be found, or to the language innovations, or to the interaction of the references to the spiritual experience. It should eventually be obvious that the boundary line of the poetical creativity does not separate the first two types from the third one, as much as it runs between the first one and the two others, when the latter enable various interpretation. (shrink)

For Suarès, Baudelaire was the first poet to take himself as an object of reflection : as an innovator in introspection, he was inevitably pessimistic. Bringing in light his history of misfortune and his guilt, Suarès sees him as a theologian, among other things, especially in his assertion : "What is natural is vile". Since nature is corrupt, art is purification. If Baudelaire is religious, it is in a strange way indeed. Nevertheless, one finds in him the presence of a (...) religious idea of "redemption", to which the poet aspires with all his might. "The flowers are not all 'of evil', as one might imagine. Sin insinuates its singular virtue there, prompting great remorse in the sinner and then leading him towards redemption". Starting from Suarès, as well as the reflections of Benjamin Fondane and Yves Bonnefoy, J.-P. Jossua attempts in these pages to understand what Baudelaire's religion was. (shrink)

Not long ago, one of us has clarified and defended a bare particular theory of individuation. More recently, D. W. Mertz has raised a set of objections against this account and other accounts of bare particulars and proffered an alternative theory of individuation. He claims to have shown that 'the concept of bare particulars, and consequently substratum ontology that requires it, is untenable.' We disagree with this claim and believe there are adequate responses to the three arguments Mertz raises against (...) bare particulars. To substantiate this assertion, we clarify the nature of bare particulars as individuators, state Mertz's objections, and respond to them. We conclude that Mertz has failed to show that bare particular theory is untenable. (shrink)

First published in 1982, this reissue contains a critical exposition of the views of Frege, Dedekind and Peano on the foundations of arithmetic. The last quarter of the 19th century witnessed a remarkable growth of interest in the foundations of arithmetic. This work analyses both the reasons for this growth of interest within both mathematics and philosophy and the ways in which this study of the foundations of arithmetic led to new insights in philosophy and striking advances in logic. This (...) historical-critical study provides an excellent introduction to the problems of the philosophy of mathematics - problems which have wide implications for philosophy as a whole. This reissue will appeal to students of both mathematics and philosophy who wish to improve their knowledge of logic. (shrink)

Objectives: To determine the effects of risk and payment on subjects’ willingness to participate, and to examine how payment influences subjects’ potential behaviours and risk evaluations.Methods: A 3 × 3 , between subjects, completely randomised factorial design was used. Students enrolled at one of five US pharmacy schools read a recruitment notice and informed consent form for a hypothetical study, and completed a questionnaire. Risk level was manipulated using recruitment notices and informed consent documents from hypothetical biomedical research projects. Payment (...) levels were determined using the payment models evaluated by Dickert and Grady as a guide. Five dependent variables were assessed in the questionnaire: willingness to participate, willingness to participate with no payment, propensity to neglect to tell about restricted activities, propensity to neglect to tell about negative effects, and risk rating.Results: Monetary payment had positive effects on respondents’ willingness to participate in research, regardless of the level of risk. However, higher monetary payments did not appear to blind respondents to the risks of a study. Payment had some influence on respondents’ potential behaviours regarding concealing information about restricted activities. However, payment did not appear to have a significant effect on respondents’ propensity to neglect to tell researchers about negative effects.Conclusions: Monetary payments appear to do what they are intended to do: make subjects more willing to participate in research. Concerns about payments blinding subjects to risks could not be substantiated in the present study. However, the findings do raise other concerns—notably the potential for payments to diminish the integrity of a study’s findings. Future research is critical to make sound decisions about the payment of research subjects. (shrink)

I advance a type of conceptualist argument for substance dualism – minimally, the view that we are spiritual substances that have bodies – based on the understandability of what it would be for something to be a spirit, e.g. what it would be for God to be a spirit. After presenting the argument formally, I clarify and defend its various premises with a special focus on what I take to be the most controversial one, namely, if thinking matter is metaphysically (...) possible, it is not the case that we have a distinct positive concept of God's being a divine spirit. (shrink)

The ‘decapitation gambit’ holds that, if physical decapitation normally entails the death of the human being, then physiological decapitation, evident in cases of total brain failure, entails the death of the human being. This argument has been challenged by Franklin Miller and Robert Truog, who argue that physical decapitation does not necessarily entail the death of human beings and that therefore, by analogy, artificially sustained human bodies with total brain failure are living human beings. They thus challenge the current neurological (...) criterion for determining death and argue for a return to the traditional criterion of the irreversible loss of circulation and respiration. In this paper, I defend the decapitation gambit and total brain failure as a criterion for determining death against Miller and Truog's criticism. (shrink)

1. Introduction . In the chapter which he devotes to the applications of his principle of individual liberty, Mill considers the question ‘how far liberty may legitimately be invaded for the prevention of crime, or of accident’. On the latter topic, he writes:—‘… it is a proper office of public authority to guard against accidents. If either a public officer or anyone else saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe, and there were (...) no time to warn him of his danger, they might seize him and turn him back, without any real infringement of his liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river.”. (shrink)

Russell claims that ordinary proper names are eccentric, i.e. that the semantic referent of a name is determined by the descriptive condition that the individual utterer of the name associates with the name. This is deeply puzzling, for the evidence that names are subject to interpersonal coordination seems irrefutable. One way of making sense of Russell’s view would be to claim that he has been systematically misinterpreted and did not, in fact, offer a semantic theory at all. Such a view (...) is put forward in Sainsbury Departing from Frege, Routledge, London, 2002). Sainsbury claims that Russellian descriptivism is not the theory that the thought in the mind of the speaker determines the semantic reference of a name, but simply a theory about the thought in the mind of the speaker using a name. I argue that the truth is subtly different, and points the way towards an intuitive explanation of Russell’s eccentricity. (shrink)

In our earlier work, we argued, contra Searle, that institutional facts can be understood in terms of non-institutional facts about actions and incentives. Butchard and D’Amico claim that we have misinterpreted Searle, that our main argument against him has no merit and that our positive view cannot account for institutional facts created via joint action. We deny all three charges.

Graham Oppy had criticized my argument for God from consciousness (AC) in my recent book ’Consciousness and the Existence of God’ (N.Y.: Routledge, 2008). In this article I offer a rejoinder to Oppy. Specifically, I respond to his criticisms of my presentation of three forms of AC, and interact with his claims about theism, consciousness and emergent chemical properties.

While most philosophers agree that libertarian agency and naturalism are incompatible, few attempts have been offered to spell out in some detail just why this is the case. My purpose in this article is to fill this gap in the literature by expanding on and clarifying the connection between naturalism as it is widely understood today and the rejection of libertarian agency. To accomplish this end I begin by clarifying different forms of libertarian agency and identity the key philosophical components (...) that constitute libertarian agency per se. Second, three different aspects of contemporary scientific naturalism are analyzed and the relations among them clarified: the naturalist epistemic attitude, etiology, and ontology. This is followed by a presentation of six arguments for the claim that libertarian agency should be rejected by advocates of scientific naturalism. Finally, I criticize a recent attempt by Randolf Clarke to reconcile libertarian agency and scientific naturalism. (shrink)

Philosophy is experiencing a resurgence of property (PD) and generic substance dualism (SD). One important argument for SD that has played a role in this resurgence is some version of a modal argument. Until recently, premise (3) of the argument (Possibly, I exist, and no wholly physical objects exist.) has garnered most of the attention by critics. However, more recently, the focus has also been on (2) (Wholly physical objects are essentially, wholly, and intrinsically physical and wholly spiritual substances are (...) essentially, wholly, and intrinsically immaterial.). Andrew Bailey has provided one of the best criticisms of (2) on offer. In what follows, I present and clarify one form of the argument and defend premise (2) by responding to important defeaters proffered by Andrew Bailey and his contingent physicalism. (shrink)

Voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should not be legalised because too much that is important about living and dying will be lostIn the first of this two part series, I unpack the historical philosophical distinction between killing and allowing a patient to die in order to clear up the confusion that exists. Historically speaking the two kinds of actions are morally distinct because of older notions of causality and human agency. We no longer understand that distinction primarily because (...) we have shifted our notions of causality from a traditional formulation to a modern formulation of causality and thus of moral assessment that focuses on the effects of an action. In this essay, I prepare the ground for a companion essay by showing that the traditional formulation allows us to maintain notions of meaning and purpose to human living and dying that are precluded in the efficiency paradigm of modernity. Taken together with the companion essay, I am claiming that voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should not be legalised because too much that is important about dying and living will be lost.TWO LIESIt would be naïve to think that euthanasia, in either the VAE sense, or in the more passive sense of PAS, does not happen. It would even be naïve to think that it does not occur in a non-voluntary form. It would be equally naïve, however, to think it could be controlled through governmental regulation. The real question with regard to PAS/VAE, put so eloquently by Martha Minow, is which lie do you countenance: the lie that euthanasia does not already happen, or the lie that it can be controlled without having repercussions well beyond the limits of procedural mastery?1 With this two part paper series, I will argue that the …. (shrink)

The structures of space and time associated with various four-dimensional symmetries are constructed and examined. It is interesting that some of these four-dimensional symmetries are compatible with the existence of an aether in the Einstein sense. There are two classes of infinitely many four-dimensional symmetries that cannot be ruled out by previous experiments. We discuss some laser experiments that test these two classes of four-dimensional symmetries. An interesting connection between the nonclassical aether and gravity through the equality of inertial and (...) gravitational mass is explored. (shrink)

Construed metaphysically, the problem of individuation is the problem of offering an ontological assay of two entities that share all their pure properties in common so as to offer an account of what makes them distinct particulars. This article provides a survey of the major contemporary attempts to answer this problem. To accomplish this goal, the most important contemporary advocates of each solution is analyzed: the trope nominalism of Keith Campbell, the realism of D. M. Armstrong, the Leibnizian essence view (...) of Alvin Plantinga, and the bare particular position of Gustav Bergmann. As a secondary purpose, the article provides a brief critique of the first three solutions and a brief defense of the fourth. (shrink)

During the months before and after he saw Julius Caesar assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BC, Cicero wrote two philosophical dialogues about religion and theology: On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination. This book brings to life his portraits of Stoic and Epicurean theology, as well as the scepticism of the new Academy, his own school. We meet the Epicurean gods who live a life of pleasure and care nothing for us, the determinism and beauty of (...) the Stoic universe, itself our benevolent creator, and the reply to both that traditional religion is better served by a lack of dogma. Cicero hoped that these reflections would renew the traditional religion at Rome, with its prayers and sacrifices, temples and statues, myths and poets, and all forms of divination. This volume is the first to fully investigate Cicero's dialogues as the work of a careful philosophical author. (shrink)

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a technique that may aid researchers in their attempts to elucidate the underlying brain functions involved in consciousness. By employing TMS along with other neuroimaging methods and case studies, researchers may be aided in addressing their various hypotheses. Employing the ‘brain as mobile’ analogy, it may be possible to determine the individual contributions of single elements of the brain without upsetting the overall balance.

A repulsive core force is derived which, assuming π mesons are the field particles, gives binding energies in good agreement with binding energies per nucleon of heavy nuclei. The physical model consists of a field of relatively short range, in which emission of a π meson by a nucleon and subsequent absorption by a neighboring nucleon is equivalent to a potential well. The binding energy at the equilibrium spacing of the nucleons is the self-energy of the π mesons, which is (...) calculated by analogy with classical electric fields. (shrink)

In a recent discussion, Earman and Norton [(1998)] propose a classification of supertasks that generate indeterminism which is flawed. An emendation is presented here.

We explore the mathematical structure and the physical implications of a general four-dimensional symmetry framework which is consistent with the Poincaré—Einstein principle of relativity for physical laws and with experiments. In particular, we discuss a four-dimensional framework in which all observers in different frames use one and the same grid of clocks. The general framework includes special relativity and a recently proposed new four-dimensional symmetry with a nonuniversal light speed as two special simple cases. The connection between the properties of (...) light propagation and the convention concerning clock systems is also discussed, and is seen to be nonunique within the four-dimensional framework. (shrink)

This paper responds to the recent situationist critique of practical rationality and decision-making. According to that critique, empirical evidence indicates that our choices are governed by morally irrelevant situational factors and not durable character traits, and rarely result from overt rational deliberation. This critique is taken to indicate that popular moral theories in the Western tradition are descriptively deficient, even if normatively plausible or desirable. But we believe that the situationist findings regarding the sources of, or influences over, our moral (...) agency do not reflect durable features of human nature, and claim that these findings are a byproduct of a deficient approach to moral education. Existing models of moral education, which are “positive” in nature, do a poor job of developing virtuous people. Instead, we argue that a “negative” approach to moral education, traceable to Locke, Smith, and Rousseau, would be more successful. This strategy represents something of a compromise between the strategies adopted by thinkers like Rachana Kamtekar : 458–491 2004), who argues that traditional moral categories escape largely untouched by findings in social psychology, and John Doris :504–530 1998) and Gilbert Harman : 87–94 2003), who argue that findings in psychology prove our traditional moral theories are defective. (shrink)

One of the most important features of living beings that seems universal is perhaps their ability to be modified in a functional way.In order to modelize this characteristic, we designed automata with a finite number of instantaneous internal descriptions, with input(s) and output(s) and which are able to be functionally modified.

Death cannot be mastered through a metaphysics of efficiency that interprets all actions in terms only of cause and effect, but it can be transcended if we leave the frame open to death’s ambiguityIn the second of this two part series, I describe how in shifting our frames from one of human purpose and meaning to one of efficiency, we shift the possible answers we get to our questions about voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide . Thus, by placing (...) VAE/PAS within the frame of efficiency, we narrow our focus to the final effect in the world of cause and effect—namely death. Thus, in ensconcing euthanasia within a legal framework meant to instrumentally and efficiently control euthanasia, we are in fact narrowing our focus on death. Thus, in legalising VAE/PAS we are not just adding one choice to a panoply of other choices, we are in fact changing the nature of all choices, for each choice conditions all others. We should therefore live with the lie that VAE/PAS do not happen as opposed to living with the lie that through efficient legal control we protect patients from medical dominance.AN ANECDOTESeveral years ago an acquaintance told me about a terrible situation in which he found himself during the Vietnam war. He was Green Beret—one of the elite special forces corps of the US army. He was in an area that was officially off limits to the US. His unit came under heavy fire and a buddy was shot in several places but was still alive. His comrade was in serious pain, but what scared him the most was that he might die in the jungle, be eaten by a wild animal, or be captured by the enemy. There was no way to get him out. The wounded soldier …. (shrink)

The claim that the disorganized subtype of schizophrenia results from glutamate hypofunction is enhanced by consideration of current subtypology of schizophrenia, symptom definition, interdependence of neurotransmitters, and the nature of the data needed to support the hypothesis. Careful specification clarifies the clinical reality of disorganization as a feature of schizophrenia and increases the utility of the subtype.