Can humanity abandon its meat-based diet, and is it willing to? This diet is unique in that it institutes an endlessly bloody relationship to animals. Highlighted time and again in analyses of the sacrificial system, the possibility of substituting a plant-based offering for one that requires killing, replacing the latter with the former and eventually achieving equivalence between the two, could prove unexpectedly fruitful in contemporary discussions of substitutes for meat. This is the guiding question and the answer, in the (...) form of a structuralist hypothesis, that this article proposes to clarify and develop. (shrink)

My argument proceeds in two stages. In §I, I sum up the intuitions of a popular argument for 'satisfaction accounts' of Purgatory that I label, TAP. I then offer an argument, taken from a few standard orthodox Christian beliefs and one axiom of Christian theology, to so show that TAP is unsound. In the same section, I entertain some plausible responses to my argument that are prima facie consistent with these beliefs and axiom. I find these responses wanting. In §II, (...) I offer a sorites problem for TAP, given the orthodox Christian understanding of Christ’s parousia, showing that TAP and the intuitions driving it are faulty. To attempt something of a corrective, I end by offering some modest theological suggestions for thinking through “the logic of total transformation.”. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown cognitive task performance to be affected by tinnitus severity, but also that the literature is conflicted. This study sought to identify neuroticism as a possible confound, since severe tinnitus distress is associated with higher levels of neuroticism. A total of 78 participants undertook two cognitive tasks. It was found that when undertaking a Stroop paradigm, controlling for neuroticism rendered previously significant results not significant. It was also found that neuroticism was not a significant covariate for a (...) change blindness task. Gender, age, anxiety, and depression were all controlled for, and future implications for the literature discussed. (shrink)

The symposium »Does the Concept of ›Truth‹ Have Value in the Pursuit of Cross-Cultural Philosophy?« hones on a methodological question which has deep implications on doing philosophy cross-culturally. Drawing on early Confucian writers, the anchor, Henry Rosemont, Jr., attempts to explain why he is skeptical of pat, affirmative answers to this question. His co-symposiasts James Maffie, John Maraldo, and Sonam Thakchoe follow his trail in working out multi-faceted views on truth from Mexican, Japanese Confucian, and Tibetan Buddhist perspectives respectively. (...) As these positions substantiate, the aforementioned non-Anglo-European traditions seem to draw on an integrated view of thinking, feeling, and living a human life. For their practitioners, truth is less of a correspondence with a given external reality. In fact, it enables human beings to strike the right path in living good, social lives. (shrink)

In a recent paper titled “Mencius and an Ethics of the New Century,” Donald J. Munro argues that recent theories in the evolutionary sciences regarding the biological basis of altruism and infant bonding might lend credence to Mencius’ philosophy of human nature.1 Such theories, says Munro, support Mencius’ contention that certain moral concepts derive from something that is inborn. What such naturalistic theories do not address, however, is whether or not these moral concepts are also “founded on something transcendental,” and (...) by this Munro is referring to the suggestion that “human nature” (renxing 人性) is derived from “Heaven” (tian 天).2 Munro suggests that contemporary philosophers who draw inspiration from .. (shrink)

Background Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are federally mandated to include both nonscientific and unaffiliated representatives in their membership. Despite this, there is no guidance or policy on the selection of unaffiliated or non-scientist members and reports indicate a lack of clarity regarding members’ roles. In the present study we sought to explore processes of recruitment, training, and the perceived roles for unaffiliated and non-scientist members of IRBs.Methods We distributed a self-administered REDCap survey of members of the Association for the Accreditation (...) of Human Research Protection Programs familiar with IRB member recruitment. The survey included closed and open-ended questions regarding: the operation of the HRPP/IRB(s), how unaffiliated and non-scientist members are recruited, whether they had faced challenges recruiting for these roles, and training and mentorship offered. The survey also collected information regarding the perceived value and roles of unaffiliated and non-scientist members.Results 76 responses were included in the analysis (38% completion rate). The most common approach for recruitment was referral from current IRB members, with almost half of respondents indicating challenges recruiting unaffiliated members. Over 75% indicated no additional training was provided to unaffiliated or non-scientist members compared to affiliated or scientist members. Most common supports provided were travel/parking expenses and honoraria. Commonly perceived roles were to provide an independent voice from the participant perspective, notably regarding consent processes and materials.Conclusions Respondents indicated challenges in defining unaffiliated and non-scientist members and limited practices toward recruitment and support. Future work should more closely examine the challenges in defining these roles and applying the definitions in practice, as well as strategies that may improve recruitment and retention of unaffiliated and non-scientist members. (shrink)

"Embracing the One" (baoyi 抱—) and "holding to the One" (zhiyi 孰—) are phrases that appear in different versions of the Daodejing. This essay argues that, in a specific philosophical context, these two phrases represent competing philosophical attitudes that stem from opposing cosmological visions. The recently unearthed "Great One Produces the Waters" (Taiyishengshui ) assists in the reconstruction of this philosophical context, as does a re-reading of the "One" in the famous generative sequence of chapter 42 of the Daodejing. Ultimately, (...) it is argued, the phrase "embracing the One" represents an attitude that is quintessential "Daoist" in nature, while "holding to the One" signifies the adoption of the Daodejing by competing philosophical interests. (shrink)

This short essay was published by Shelterforce, the journal of affordable of housing and community development published by the National Housing Institute. It is largely taken from my law review article entitled "'We Shall Not Be Moved': Eminent Domain, Urban Redevelopment and the Socioeconomics of Just Compensation" published by St. John's Law Review. That article can be downloaded from SSRN at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=904224 This shorter piece focuses on the two proposals outlined in the second part of the law review article that (...) are designed to curb abuses of eminent domain in the urban redevelopment context without destroying its effectiveness as a tool for community revitalization and, even, community empowerment. Specifically, homeowners should not be subject to eminent domain pursuant to a redevelopment plan until the majority of them have approved the plan. To further solidify resident ownership of redevelopment, the right to continued residency in the community should be protected by amending relocation laws to guarantee an alienable entitlement to be offered replacement housing in the redeveloped district area. Together, these two legislative reforms express a more nuanced balance of property and liability rules that will facilitate a more productive interface between community residents and redevelopment officials. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer something of a prolegomenon, outlining some areas in which certain strands of biblical theology and analytic theological reflection can be mutually informative. To do so, my paper unfolds in three ways. In the first section, I provide some reasons to think that biblical theologians are onto a reading of Scripture that merits the attention of analytic theologians. In section II, I outline some areas in the biblical theological data that would benefit from analytic exploration and (...) reflection. Finally, in sections III and IV, I present a test case: the imago Dei and the importance of the future bodily resurrection. This should help show how this strand of biblical theology and analytic theological reflection can be mutually informative. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the SubjectJames J. Brown Jr. and Joshua GunnActs of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the Subject by Thomas Rickert. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. Pp. x + 252. $24.95, hardcover.Thomas Rickert had a falling-out with his brother, and this distresses him so much that his disrupted relation is described as “traumatic.” Rickert reports that while listening (...) to a portable CD player during a run on an unexpectedly warm winter day, a song by the now defunct jazz/rock band Morphine reminded him of a happy time at a pool hall with his brother (24). Mediated—or better, medicated—by music, the homological happiness of running in the sun and a positive past memory also resurfaced a painful relational rupture, the reason of which Rickert omits to underscore that mysterious, “little detail or object” of the Real that marks his singular finitude as a writing subject (216 n. 11). We’ll want to come back to this curiously deliberate omission, but for the present we note Rickert is not simply an undead author but a human being with relations and feelings. He is not just a gifted scholar or a bundle of reflections, but a nexus of body and movement and words and affect. If there is anything that Rickert’s study can be said to work through with brilliance, humor, and grace, it is the reality of complex personhood.Rickert’s brotherly confession comes in Chapter 1 as a way to introduce a psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity, and more specifically, to help illustrate how trauma works itself out as an afterwardness or “belatedness” ( Nachträglichkeit ): traumatic events from the past are not reckoned with or worked-through until some coincidence or reminder, such as a similar [End Page 183] sensory experience, reintroduces the event in doubled re-presentation (18–27). This implies the “subject” (a paradigm person) is a kind of timedelay, a self-conscious temporal moving that becomes this way through re-presentation. The rhetorical subject is analogously a retrojected reckoning with events past (not all traumatic) that Rickert identifies as a scene of writing, a locus that has important implications for rhetorical studies in general and writing pedagogy in particular. Rickert’s logic is as follows: if we agree that the subject is a belated one in the psychoanalytic sense, then how we teach rhetoric needs to change. Rickert opens the book with the observation that his students are producing excellent cultural critiques but that such critiques do not lead the students to change their actions (1–7), perhaps evidence enough that something is not quite right in a classroom grounded by “cultural studies pedagogy” and ideology critique—or at the very least, proof that something has changed. The opening gambit is simply that a “postpedagogy” premised on an understanding of rhetorical subjectivity as belatedness is better than a status quo rooted in the rational subject of the Enlightenment.Mostly through a Žižek-filtered, Lacanian lens, Acts of Enjoyment then undertakes a retake of the rhetorical field, frequently scanning from the traumatic ontology of the rhetorical subject to that domain of knowledge that we hold dear, the subject of rhetoric. In Chapter 2, the (primal) scene thus shifts from the slo-mo subject to rhetorical studies, initially through a reassessment of Kinneavy’s “communications triangle,” but ultimately in response to the shock treatment of poststructuralism. The initial theoretical traumas introduced by Victor Vitanza, Diane Davis, Sharon Crowley, and others discussed in Chapter 1 are threaded into an account of “poststructural” redress in Chapter 2: as is true of all forms of trauma, the initial poststructural jolt delivered to the concept of subjectivity was deadened; poststructural theory was eventually used to “shore up rather than challenge Kinneavy’s triangle” (37). To truly work-through our traumatized subject in both senses, we need a second trauma: Lacanian psychoanalysis. Presumably, “poststructuralist thought” is to be opposed because it has no account of the subject (21–24); “Lacan,” after all, “is not a poststructuralist” (48). The remainder of the chapter is then used to deploy Lacan’s conceptual lexicon.Just as... (shrink)

In working his way through his complex conception of the relation of fiction and reality, [Henry] James thus found the unconscious moral dimension inextricably embedded within "realism" itself. In following the threads of realism back to consciousness itself, James invariably found there intertwined with its roots those aspects and elements that other theorists kept carefully separate. By exploring experience to its source, he found imagination. By following objective life from "out there" to conception, he found individual vision. By (...) following the seeming oneness of the passing show back to perception, he found infinite variation and multiplicity. By following the uncolored flux and flow of events to their embodiment in the fictional medium, he found coloration of personality. And by following the "felt life" back to the artist's "prime sensibility", James found there the "moral sense" and the "enveloping air of the artist's humanity"—that which gives "the last touch to the worth of a work." James E. Miller, Jr., professor of English at the University of Chicago, is the author of A Critical Guide to Leaves of Grass; Walt Whitman; F. Scott Fitzgerald: His Art and His Technique; J.D. Salinger; Theory of Fiction: Henry James; and numerous articles on American literature and education. He contributed "Catcher In and Out of History" to Critical Inquiry, Spring 1977. (shrink)

This book discusses topics normally excluded from the current educational conversation such as soul, authority, irony, memory, style, luck, privacy, power, and hospitality.