Resumen Este artículo ofrece una lectura de la pintura renacentista según los principios establecidos por Leon Battista Alberti, uno de los primeros teóricos de la perspectiva en cuyo Tratado de pintura se refiere al cuadro como “una ventana abierta a la historia”. El concepto de historia empleado por Alberti, que se presta a numerosas interpretaciones, es abordado a partir de las reflexiones de Erwin Panofsky en torno a la perspectiva como “forma simbólica”, avanzando hacia una hipótesis en torno al carácter (...) simbólico de la configuración y representación del tiempo en el cuadro-ventana albertiano.This paper offers a reading of the renaissance painting according to the principles established by Leon Battista Alberti, one of the first theorists of perspective in painting which Trattato della pittura define the frame of the painting as “an open window into history”. The concept of history employed by Alberti, which lends itself to many interpretations, is approached from the reflections of Erwin Panofsky about the prospect as “symbolic form”, moving towards a hypothesis about the symbolic nature of the configuration and representation of time in the alberti’s window. (shrink)

El autor interpreta el pragmatismo defendido por R. Rorty como una variante más del cambio cultural denominado "Postmodernidad ", e identifica y comenta algunas afirmaciones rortianas sobre el sentido de la filosofia y el pensamiento crítico que le permitan encarar los temores expresados por J. Searle sobre el posible irracionalismo ofrecido por los posmodernos en el campo de la educación. A fin de establecer un marco conceptual lo suficientemente amplio para desarrollar su tesis, el autor confronta dos de las múltiples (...) distinciones ofrecidas sobre el sentido de la "postmodernidad" para criticar la epistemología como núcleo de las tareas de la modernidad occidental. Establecido dicho marco se da paso a algunas de las tesis de Rorty sobre el sentido que toman en su propuesta los conceptos de filosofia, razón y educación. Desde este punto de vista, la educación se convierte en una genuina actividad ética y no en una nueva destreza metodológica propia de la educación liberal ilustrada tal como la defiende Searle. Otra tesis complementaria del autor es que la posmodernidad no es el reino del relativismo ni la sinrazón. (shrink)

in a january 1642 letter, rené descartes advises his correspondent—his then-follower, the Utrecht medical professor Henricus Regius—to consistently endorse the view that the human mind is related to its body by means of a "substantial union": Whenever the occasion arises, as much privately as publicly, you ought to profess that you believe a human to be a true ens per se and not per accidens and the mind to be really and substantially united to the body not through position or (...) disposition [situm aut dispositionem], as you say in your last written text, but through a true mode of union [verum modum unionis], as everyone... (shrink)

This essay explores Francisco Suárez’s account of the nature of human free will. To that end, Suárez’s engagement with John Calvin is considered so as to place the Jesuit’s account into greater relief. The conclusion of this study will reveal that, for Suárez, the human will’s freedom of self–determination is both caused by God and consists in its own indifference regarding the power to act and the power not to act.

Merleau-Ponty suggests that to perceive is to be “geared into” the world. In perceiving, we are related to a temporally structured modal space of bodily possibilities that is co-constituted by the body and the world. When we perceive, we are “geared into” this structure and responsive to it; when we misperceive, we are not. In misperceiving, we are unaware of our failure to be geared into the world, and in this respect, we lack awareness of what we are doing. In (...) explaining misperception via this lack of self-awareness, Merleau-Ponty anticipates a key feature of M. G. F. Martin's epistemic disjunctivism: the idea that perceptions and misperceptions can be indiscriminable because of a self-awareness we lack, rather than a set of positive phenomenal features that two experiences share. However, because Merleau-Ponty's account of self-awareness imposes relatively few cognitive demands, he is able to explain how adults, infants, and dogs can be self-aware in the same sense, and how they can fail to discriminate between their experiences in the same way. This provides Merleau-Ponty with the resources to answer Susanna Siegel's objection to epistemic disjunctivism on the basis of “cognitively unsophisticated hallucinators.”. (shrink)

This paper compares the development of the notion of continuous quantity in the work of Francisco Suárez and René Descartes. The discussion begins with a consideration of Suárez’s rejection of the view – common to ‘realists’ such as Thomas Aquinas and ‘nominalists’ such as William of Ockham – that quantity is inseparable from the extension of material integral parts. Crucial here is Suárez’s view that quantified extension exhibits a kind of impenetrability that distinguishes it from other kinds (...) of extension. This view sheds considerable light on initially obscure remarks on impenetrability in Descartes’ late correspondence with Henry More. Though Descartes differs from Suárez and other major scholastic figures in his understanding of the relation of quantity to material substance, he nonetheless requires in the end some version of the Suárezian distinction between quantified and unquantified extension. (shrink)

This paper explores the thinking of some Salamancan theologians regarding the notion of pure nature. In particular, I address Suárez’s thinking on this subject and locate it within the context of the debate over whether human beings have a desire for the beatific vision. Insofar as a number of Thomists and Suárez think that there is no natural desire for a supernatural end, human beings are, by nature, left only with a desire for natural beatitude. The theoretical possibility (...) of a human nature created without any order to a supernatural end and also falling outside the economy of grace becomes a subject of speculation that serves to illuminate something about created nature itself. (shrink)

In his discussions of the Eucharist, Descartes gives prominent place to the notion of the “surfaces” of bodies. Given this context, it may seem that his account of surfaces is of limited interest. However, I hope to show that such an account is in fact linked to a philosophically significant medieval debate over whether certain mathematical “indivisibles”, including surfaces, really exist in nature. Moreover, the particular emphasis in Descartes on the fact that surfaces are modes rather than parts of bodies (...) bespeaks the influence of the later scholastic Francisco Suárez. However, in his own contribution to the medieval debate, Suárez refrained from identifying surfaces with modes, holding instead that they are special “constituents” of bodies that differ from the parts of which these bodies are composed. Two main conclusions derive from the comparison of the views of Suárez and Descartes on surfaces. The first is that Descartes’s “modal realist” account is in fact superior to the “moderate realist” account that Suárez offers, for reasons internal to Suárez’s own system. The second is that Suárez’s reasons for refraining from adopting modal realism in this case serve to highlight a serious deficiency in Descartes’s version of this view. In this way, a consideration of the relevant Suárezian background allows us to better appreciate both the strengths and the weaknesses of Descartes’s stance on the metaphysics of surfaces. (shrink)

The following essay considers Luis de Losada’s thinking with respect to the scholastic dispute between univocity and analogy. Noteworthy is the fact that the conclusions he reaches are at odds with those of Francisco Suarez, whom the younger Jesuit otherwise regards with unmitigated filial devotion. Though Losada differs from his master regarding analogy, the position he puts forth capitalizes upon a distinction between a logico-semantic perspective and a metaphysical perspective. The result is an irenic balance among all the schools (Thomistic, (...) Scotist, and Jesuit) regarding univocity and analogy. Nevertheless, Losada goes beyond the discussions dividing proponents of analogy and those of univocity when he inquires whether any kind of analogical community obtains between real being and beings of reason. Remarkably, he answers that there is a univocal community, thereby embracing the scholastic notion of supertranscendentality. (shrink)

Francisco Suarez published, at Coimbra in 1612, five years before his death, what is undoubtedly one of the greatest contributions to scholastic moral and legal philosophy, his Tractatus de legibus et legislatore Deo. It was part of his commentary on the Prima-Secundae of St. Thomas’s Summa. The complementary study of justice, commenting upon the Secunda-Secundae, never appeared, not even in the posthumous volumes edited by Balthasar Alvarez from the notes and lectures of Suarez. The omission is all the more remarkable (...) when one recalls the innumerable treatises De iustitia et iure that began with Suarez’s own predecessors and contemporaries—Soto, Molina, Lessius and the rest. This omission is now in part repaired by the happy recovery of some Disputationes on justice from Suarez’s sojourn at the Collegium Romanum between 1580 and 1585. They probably belong to the year 1584. The manuscript, a reportatio of whose authenticity there can be no doubt, begins about two-thirds of the way through the second Disputatio and goes on to the end of the fourth. The lost first Disputatio was probably on the object of justice; the second, of which we are now given qq. 11-16, is on ownership; the third, comprising only two questions, is inscribed De actibus iustitiae in genere; and the fourth, of eight questions, De habitu iustitiae. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à LeibnizSteven NadlerVincent Carraud. Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à Leibniz. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002. Pp. 573. € 42,00.Over the last two decades, there has been a good deal of outstanding work on the problem of causation in early modern philosophy. Some of it has been devoted to first-order questions: for (...) example, on whether this or that thinker allows for real causal activity among finite substances (and which ones). Other studies, by contrast, have focused on second-order questions, especially the proper formulation of the causal principle itself. Vincent Carraud's book is primarily concerned with second-order questions, although it does have something to say with respect to first-order questions as well. But the depth and breadth of this study makes it much more than just another entry in the ongoing discussion over who thought what about causality among the early moderns. Carraud has a large and complex story to tell: the development of the principle of sufficient reason in the seventeenth century. In particular, he wants to know which philosophers can truly be said to have adopted that principle in its most rigorous formulation. It is both a philosophical and a historical story, and it appears in what is surely one of the most important and interesting books in early modern philosophy in recent years.Carraud directs our attention to a particular phrase that originates with Descartes but then seems to reappear (in various forms) throughout the period: causa sive ratio, "cause or reason." Every term in the phrase is subject to interpretation, of course—'cause,' 'reason' and especially 'or'—and the thesis it embodies (and a philosopher's attitude toward it) is a function of how those terms are to be understood. Carraud's interest is in what this phrase can tell us about how a select group of philosophers (primarily Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche and Leibniz) regard the relationship between causality and intelligibility.The story begins with Suarez, the late sixteenth-century Scholastic. Suarez's contribution to the rise of the principle of sufficient reason is modest but crucial. He privileges efficient causation over all of the other Aristotelian varieties. While he still grants some explanatory role for formal, material and final causes, they have lost their status as "true" causes for Suarez; in fact, they qualify as causes only by analogy with efficient causation. As Carraud reads Suarez, the ratio causae belongs properly only to the efficient cause, since it alone can provide the reason for the existence and being of a thing.It is Descartes, however, who occupies the central role—both historically and philosophically—in Carraud's story. For it is he who truly effects the ultimate reduction (or, as Carraud puts it, unicité) of causality. In the Cartesian scheme, all but efficient causes are banished. Moreover, the efficient cause of an effect is now defined as the sufficient cause, one that explains why the effect is as it is. "La primauté et l'absoluité de la cause lui viennent de ce qu'elle rend raison de l'effet... Les causes sont d'abord les raisons (suffisantes) des effets, en quoi elles les expliquent" (199-200). Moreover, with Descartes we find a universal application of the principle of causality to all things, even to those that previously either were not regarded as sufficiently real to need a cause (the objective reality of ideas) or were regarded as standing outside the domain of causality altogether (God). It is not that God is a caused being for Descartes. Rather, the important thing is that God is, like all existing things, subject to the causal question. That is, it is legitimate to ask why God does not need a cause. And, in Carraud's account, this is where ratio comes in to its own. God is not a caused being, but there is a reason (in God's immense power) why God does not require a cause. Moreover, the only analogy we have for thinking of the way in which God's immensity forestalls God needing a cause is in terms of efficient causality itself... (shrink)

Abstract -/- Before Descartes, middle age philosophers like Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Duns Scotus (1266-1308), and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) used to discuss the distinction between essence and existence in three ways (of course, Ibn-Sina was the first who made this distinction to rehabilitate Aristotelian philosophy in the Islamic heritage). Descartes was aware of that, but discussed it according to the relation between mind and body. Yet, he told us many times that he was used to separate essence from existence in metaphysical (...) issues. The objective of this paper is first to rephrase his untold opinion about the relation between essence and existence on the basis of his conception of the problem of distinction according to mind and body, and second, to disclose that Descartes's conception of existence is twofold. At the end, it is claimed that his twofold notion of existence and his inability to overcome it, is the principal factor in his failure to explicate everything according to first principles, and so in his failure to defeat skepticism. (shrink)

The wave function of quantum mechanics can be understood in terms of the dispositional role it plays in the dynamics of a distribution of matter in three-dimensional space (or four-dimensional spacetime). There is more than one way, however, of specifying its dispositional role. This paper considers Suárez’s theory of ‘Bohmian dispositionalism’, in which the particles are endowed with their own ‘Bohmian dispositions’, and Simpson’s theory of ‘Cosmic Hylomorphism’, in which the particle configuration comprises a hylomorphic substance which has an (...) intrinsic power. I argue that Bohmian dispositionalism fails to capture intuitively correct counterfactuals about what would happen in Small Worlds which have only a small number of particles, but that this problem is avoided by Cosmic Hylomorphism, in which the cosmic power manifests a teleological process. (shrink)

This book uses the tools of analytic philosophy of disability (and Disability Studies more generally) and close readings of medieval Christian philosophical and theological texts in order to survey what these thinkers said about what today we call “disability.” The chapters also compare what these medieval authors say with modern and contemporary philosophers and theologians of disability. This dual approach enriches our understanding of the history of disability in medieval Christian philosophy and theology and opens up new avenues of research (...) for contemporary scholars working on disability. The volume is divided into three parts. Part I addresses theoretical frameworks regarding disability, particularly on questions about the definition(s) of “disability” and how disability relates to well-being. The chapters are then divided into two further parts in order to reflect ways that medieval philosophers and theologians theorized about disability. Part II is on disability in this life, and Part III is on disability in the afterlife. Taken as a whole, these chapters support two general observations. First, these philosophical theologians sometimes resist Greco-Roman ableist views by means of theological and philosophical anti-ableist arguments and counterexamples. Here we find some surprising disability-positive perspectives that are built into different accounts of a happy human life. We also find equal dignity of all human beings no matter ability or disability. Second, some of the seeds for modern and contemporary ableist views were developed in medieval Christian philosophy and theology, especially with regard to personhood and rationality, an intellectualist interpretation of the imago Dei, and the identification of human dignity with the use of reason. This volume surveys disability across a wide range of medieval Christian writers from the time of Augustine up to Francisco Suarez. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in medieval philosophy and theology or disability studies. (shrink)

This book examines the thought of scholasticism’s Doctor eximius in its entirety: both philosophically and theologically. Many of the most distinctive features of Suárez’s thought are identified and evaluated in light of his immediate historical context. What emerges from the studies contained in this volume is the picture of a thinker who is profoundly steeped in the riches of divergent schools of thought and yet who manages to find his own unique voice to add to the chorus of scholasticism.

A student of Étienne Gilson and Joseph Owens, John P. Doyle taught medieval and Scholastic philosophy at Saint Louis University for forty years. Of continuing interest to Doyle has been the thought of Francisco Suárez, S.J. On this topic Doyle has published over a dozen articles and four English translations of portions of Suárez's key works. This volume celebrates the life and career of one of those rare kinds of scholars who has mastered an entire field of inquiry (...) and thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes and Augustine by Stephen MennSteven NadlerStephen Menn. Descartes and Augustine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi + 415. Cloth, $74.95.As most readers of this journal well know, scholars in the history of philosophy can, however roughly, be divided into two distinct (and sometimes antagonistic) camps: those who think that work on the great philosophers of the past should focus almost exclusively on an analysis of (...) their theses and arguments, and those who believe that we cannot truly understand any philosopher’s ideas without serious investigation into the historical, philosophical and even more general intellectual context of their thought. Stephen Menn’s book is a profoundly good example of the latter school.While it is undeniable that Descartes was strongly influenced by his Jesuit education and by his later reading of latter-day scholastics like Suarez, and that he was motivated in part by a desire to move philosophy beyond its sterile and unprogressive Aristotelian paradigm, one of the crucial questions in Cartesian scholarship concerns the extent to which Descartes was himself an Augustinian Platonist. In this long, brilliant, learned, at times tedious but generally fascinating study, Menn argues that in terms of both method and substance, with respect to motivation, discipline and goals, there was no thinker more important for Descartes’s intellectual development and philosophical project than St. Augustine. Taking on the great triumvirate of French Cartesian scholarship—Gilson, Gueroult and Gouhier, all of whom argued that, while it is possible to find Augustinian elements in Descartes’s philosophy, nonetheless his thought is radically anti-Augustinian, sharing neither “the Augustinian spirit nor the Augustinian conception of philosophy itself” (8–10)—Menn insists that Augustinian principles inform and sustain in a very deep way Descartes’s metaphysics and epistemology. Moreover, Descartes’s general philosophical project is fundamentally the same as that of the Bishop of Hippo: to show how true wisdom can be born only from scientia. For Descartes, this means showing how the failure of Aristotelian science should lead not to a suspicion of science in general, nor to limiting oneself to a skeptical prudentialist moralizing (such as that of the Renaissance humanists), but to a true wisdom based on certain knowledge of the world. That knowledge of the world will, of course, be a mechanistic one, but it will be grounded in an Augustinian metaphysics. In the end—and here is where Menn most clearly takes issue with Gilson [End Page 625] and Co.—the project is to reconcile Christianity and philosophical knowing, precisely what Augustine set out to do.Understanding Augustine, Menn claims, requires an understanding of Plotinus and the Platonist tradition. And this, he further insists, demands that we know the essential elements of Plato’s metaphysics itself. Menn’s pursuit of depth and attention to detail can sometimes be wearying—do we really need in a book such as this a discussion of the variations in Plato’s explanation of how sensible particulars relate to intelligibles between the middle and late dialogues?—but in the end most of it pays off. We find out what Augustine found of value in his reading of Plotinus and what he needed to leave behind. Of the greatest importance, especially for someone seeking to move beyond the materialism of the Manicheans, was a conception of the human soul as an incorporeal thing and an understanding of God or nous as an immaterial and transcendent source of being and, through illumination, of knowledge. “[Augustine] went to the Platonists to learn a method for understanding God and the soul, and he accepts a great deal of the doctrine that comes from this way of understanding them, but he knew from the beginning what it was he wanted to understand: it was the God and the human souls described in the Christian scriptures” (166).What Descartes wanted was much the same, although he hoped to put it to further use by returning from the heights of metaphysics to the most general science of the natural world (physics) and the particular, practical sciences (wisdom) that follow from it. If he could successfully ground his physics in proper metaphysical first principles, then his philosophical goals would... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes and Augustine by Stephen MennSteven NadlerStephen Menn. Descartes and Augustine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi + 415. Cloth, $74.95.As most readers of this journal well know, scholars in the history of philosophy can, however roughly, be divided into two distinct (and sometimes antagonistic) camps: those who think that work on the great philosophers of the past should focus almost exclusively on an analysis of (...) their theses and arguments, and those who believe that we cannot truly understand any philosopher’s ideas without serious investigation into the historical, philosophical and even more general intellectual context of their thought. Stephen Menn’s book is a profoundly good example of the latter school.While it is undeniable that Descartes was strongly influenced by his Jesuit education and by his later reading of latter-day scholastics like Suarez, and that he was motivated in part by a desire to move philosophy beyond its sterile and unprogressive Aristotelian paradigm, one of the crucial questions in Cartesian scholarship concerns the extent to which Descartes was himself an Augustinian Platonist. In this long, brilliant, learned, at times tedious but generally fascinating study, Menn argues that in terms of both method and substance, with respect to motivation, discipline and goals, there was no thinker more important for Descartes’s intellectual development and philosophical project than St. Augustine. Taking on the great triumvirate of French Cartesian scholarship—Gilson, Gueroult and Gouhier, all of whom argued that, while it is possible to find Augustinian elements in Descartes’s philosophy, nonetheless his thought is radically anti-Augustinian, sharing neither “the Augustinian spirit nor the Augustinian conception of philosophy itself” (8–10)—Menn insists that Augustinian principles inform and sustain in a very deep way Descartes’s metaphysics and epistemology. Moreover, Descartes’s general philosophical project is fundamentally the same as that of the Bishop of Hippo: to show how true wisdom can be born only from scientia. For Descartes, this means showing how the failure of Aristotelian science should lead not to a suspicion of science in general, nor to limiting oneself to a skeptical prudentialist moralizing (such as that of the Renaissance humanists), but to a true wisdom based on certain knowledge of the world. That knowledge of the world will, of course, be a mechanistic one, but it will be grounded in an Augustinian metaphysics. In the end—and here is where Menn most clearly takes issue with Gilson [End Page 625] and Co.—the project is to reconcile Christianity and philosophical knowing, precisely what Augustine set out to do.Understanding Augustine, Menn claims, requires an understanding of Plotinus and the Platonist tradition. And this, he further insists, demands that we know the essential elements of Plato’s metaphysics itself. Menn’s pursuit of depth and attention to detail can sometimes be wearying—do we really need in a book such as this a discussion of the variations in Plato’s explanation of how sensible particulars relate to intelligibles between the middle and late dialogues?—but in the end most of it pays off. We find out what Augustine found of value in his reading of Plotinus and what he needed to leave behind. Of the greatest importance, especially for someone seeking to move beyond the materialism of the Manicheans, was a conception of the human soul as an incorporeal thing and an understanding of God or nous as an immaterial and transcendent source of being and, through illumination, of knowledge. “[Augustine] went to the Platonists to learn a method for understanding God and the soul, and he accepts a great deal of the doctrine that comes from this way of understanding them, but he knew from the beginning what it was he wanted to understand: it was the God and the human souls described in the Christian scriptures” (166).What Descartes wanted was much the same, although he hoped to put it to further use by returning from the heights of metaphysics to the most general science of the natural world (physics) and the particular, practical sciences (wisdom) that follow from it. If he could successfully ground his physics in proper metaphysical first principles, then his philosophical goals would... (shrink)

The October 2016 publication of the 2015 convegno on Peter of John Olivi begins with a fine survey of Provence and Languedoc in Olivi's time. J. Chiffoleau, with C. Lenoble, supplies the reader with much detail and some summary, along with abundant reference, on Olivi's home turf. In the come and go of life religious and lay, Olivi saw to critical support for business while trying to stabilize Franciscan life. He did very well by both. Chiffoleau finishes his pages on (...) Olivi's days by suggesting that Olivi had better to do around Narbonne than in Paris.Tiziana Suarez-Nani offers thoughts and examples of Peter Olivi's "spiritual philosophy". That he offers Aristotle little esteem we know; that Olivi... (shrink)

t. 1. Problemy obshcheĭ teorii prava -- t. 2. Garantii prav lichnosti v ugolovnom sudoproizvodstve -- t. 3. Teorii︠a︡ sudebnykh dokazatelʹstv.

In this closely packed survey of basic Scholastic concepts the octogenarian author has siphoned off the cream of a half-century's reflection upon them. Contrary to a much trumpeted contemporary outlook, he takes the refreshing stand that not only the questions the Scholastics asked but "also their answers have still much of importance to tell us today". He notes that while "Scholasticism" covers unsystematized differences in thought, a doctrinal as well as historical account of its basic concepts and their relations to (...) today's use of the terms for them is possible. Though recognizing appropriate truth in Scholastics such as Albert, Scotus, Cajetan, and Suarez, he focuses the thrust of his inquiry upon Aquinas, who has not always been correctly understood by professed followers. With warning to avoid any reifying or hypostatizing of its principles and notions he regards metaphysics as the basic philosophy, understanding it not as a philosophical theology but as an ontology. Consequently the basic concepts will above all be metaphysical. (shrink)

The actual “crisis of care” in western societies highlights the limits of a sex/gender based citizenship and the persistence of the subordination of women. The fact that women are responsible for the provision of care in domestic units has never been a matter of difference but a matter of subordination against which we have developed legal strategies, such as anti-discrimination law, and political strategies, such as increasing the presence of women in decision-making. The paper shows some of these strategies and (...) their limits and argues that we need to resignify citizenship in a way that includes human dependency and the webs of relationships, both local and global, this dependency creates. (shrink)

Two fundamental business ethics issues that repeatedly surface in the academic literature relate to business's role in the development of public policy [Suarez, S. L.: 2000, Does Business Learn? (The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI); Roberts, R. W. and D. D. Bobek: 2004, Accounting, Organizations and Society 29(5-6), 565-590] and its role in responsibly managing the natural environment [Newton, L.: 2005, Business Ethics and the Natural Environment (Blackwell Publishing, Oxford)]. When studied together, researchers often examine if, and how, (...) corporations influence environmental policy decisions. Drawing from literatures on corporate political activity, corporate social and environmental performance, and corporate environmental disclosure, we develop and empirically examine two research questions concerning the relations between corporate political expenditures, environmental performance, and environmental disclosure. The questions are: (1) Do corporations that are poorer environmental performers spend more on political activities than their better-performing counterparts? (2) Is there an association between corporations' spending on political activities and the extent of their financial report environmental disclosures? We investigated these questions through analyses of data we gathered on a sample consisting of 119 U.S. environmentally sensitive firms for the 2001-2002 election cycle. After controlling for firm size and specific industry effects, our tests reveal a significant, inverse relationship between firm environmental performance and political spending. This is consistent with the notion that U.S. firms with relatively poorer environmental performance records engage more intensely in corporate political activities as part of their overall strategic management of their relationship with the state. In addition, a significant and positive association between the amount of political spending and the extent of environmental disclosure suggests that environmental disclosure and political spending are both proactive, complementary tactics to strategically manage public policy pressure. If corporations' strategies are intentionally designed to unreasonably limit their environmental responsibilities or to misrepresent firm environmental performance, then we argue that these activities reflect a significant lapse in ethical conduct. (shrink)

"Neuroscience and Philosophy" begins with an excerpt from "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience," in which Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker question the ...

This volume offers an English translation of John of St. Thomas's Cursus theologicus I, question I, disputation 2. In this particular text, the Dominican master raises questions concerning the scientific status and nature of theology. At issue, here, are a number of factors: namely, Christianity's continual coming to terms with the "Third Entry" of Aristotelian thought into Western Christian intellectual culture - specifically the Aristotelian notion of 'science' and sacra doctrina's satisfaction of those requirements - the Thomistic-commentary tradition, and the (...) larger backdrop of the Iberian Peninsula's flourishing "Second Scholasticism." In this latter context, John of St. Thomas applies the theological principles of Thomas Aquinas to the Scholastic disputes preoccupying Thomist, Franciscan, and Jesuit theologians, such as Cajetan, Bañez, Luis de Molina, Vazquez, Suárez - to name only a few - in a tour de force of theological thinking throughout the entire period of Scholasticism. In the process - and not insignificantly - the status quaestionis of theology's scientific character is clearly framed and answered according to John's satisfaction. Key to John of St. Thomas's resolution of the question is his understanding of the continuity of the power of human reason with the super-intelligibility of divine revelation spelled out in terms of what he calls "virtual revelation." This text presented in this volume is a quintessential example of the deep and abiding harmony that flourished between faith and reason as well as grace and nature within the golden era of Baroque Scholasticism. (shrink)

IntroductionThe present study aimed to evaluate the effects of the Active Communication Education program on the social/emotional impacts of hearing loss in a group of older adults with a cochlear implant.DesignProspective cohort study design, with a “within-subject” control procedure.Study SampleTwenty adults over-65 post-lingually deafened CI users. All subjects were required to be native Italian speakers, to have normal cognitive level, have no significant psychiatric conditions and/or diagnosed incident dementia, and used CI for at least 9 months.Materials and MethodsTwenty participants were (...) assessed using the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly, the Geriatric Depression Scale, and the Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale before, during, and after ACE program, with a one and 6-month follow up. The cognitive and audiological evaluation was carried out before commencing the ACE program.ResultsThe ACE program had a positive impact by reducing HL’s social/emotional effects. Participants benefited from a rehabilitative approach by improving multilevel skills: comprehension of audiological and hearing dimensions, acquisition of communicative, pragmatic and problem-solving strategies, and interaction and sharing of experiences with peers.ConclusionAlthough targeting the older adults with moderate HL, the ACE program also seemed to benefit older adult CI users. An improvement in social and emotional adaptation to hearing difficulties can, in turn, significantly promote optimal use of CI in the older adults, thereby possibly reducing the risk of losing motivation and engagement in device use and in rehabilitation protocols. (shrink)

"The extensive attention devoted to abortion has led Christians for too long to overlook much of the exploding bioethics agenda. Moreover, to focus only on 'issues' is to fail to address the profound changes taking place in the very nature of the medical profession. This book signals the commitment of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity to help expand the church's bioethical vision and to foster a more substantial Christian contribution to the public debate."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by (...) Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

The debate on universals is, generally speaking, a well-known subject in the history of philosophy, but views on universals from the end of the sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century—the object of Heider’s welcome contribution—are quite neglected. Such views are extremely sophisticated, drawing on the established traditions of Thomism and Scotism, in particular, but bringing them to a new level of technicality. Heider investigates three major positions: those of Francisco Suárez, João Poinsot, and the joint position of Bartolomeo Mastri and (...) Bonaventura Belluto. The three views are chosen to.. (shrink)

The study ascertained (1) whether an observer's scope of justice with reference to either the moral agent or the target person of a moral act, would affect his/her judgements of the ethicality of the act, and (2) whether observer judgements of ethicality parallel the moral agent's decision processes in systematically evaluating the intensity of the moral issue. A scenario approach was used. Results affirmed both research questions. Discussions covered the implications of the findings for the underlying cognitive processes of moral (...) judgements, for the link between judgements of fairness and ethicality, as well as for the debate of ethical absolutism versus relativism. (shrink)