Michael H. McCarthy has carefully studied the writings of Bernard Lonergan (Canadian philosopher-theologian, 1904-1984) for over fifty years. In his 1989 book, The Crisis of Philosophy, McCarthy argued for the superiority of Lonergan's distinctive philosophical project to those of his analytic and phenomenological rivals. Now in Authenticity as Self-Transcendence: The Enduring Insights of Bernard Lonergan, he develops and expands his earlier argument with four new essays, designed to show Lonergan's exceptional relevance to the cultural situation of late modernity. The (...) essays explore and appraise Lonergan's cultural mission: to raise Catholic philosophy and theology to meet the intellectual challenges and standards of his time. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to clarify Kant’s conception of self-contentment, which is a particular kind of satisfaction associated with being a virtuous person. I do so by placing the term in the context of Kant’s answer to an objection made by Kant’s contemporary Christian Garve, namely the objection that if virtuous action is accompanied by a feeling of satisfaction, then virtuous action might only performed in order to experience this feeling of satisfaction . I begin by illustrating the (...) main features of Kant’s concept of self-contentment before turning to Garve’s objection and Kant’s response to it. I conclude by clarifying the differences between self-contentment, respect for the moral law, and Kant’s concept of moral pleasure. (shrink)

Founded in 1365, not long after the Great Plague ravaged Europe, the University of Vienna was revitalized in 1384 by prominent theologians displaced from Paris--among them Henry of Langenstein. Beginning with the 1384 revival, Michael Shank explores the history of the university and its ties with European intellectual life and the city of Vienna. In so doing he links the abstract discussions of university theologians with the burning of John Hus and Jerome of Prague at the Council of Constance (...) (1415-16) and the destruction of the Jewish community of Lower Austria (1421). Like most other scholars of the period, Henry of Langenstein (d. 1397) at one time believed that Aristotle's syllogistic was universally valid even in Trinitarian theology. In touch with the vibrant Jewish community in Vienna, Langenstein had high hopes of converting its members by logical argument. When he failed in his purpose, he lost his confidence in Aristotle's syllogistic as a universal tool of apologetics and handmaiden to Trinitarian theology. ("Unless you believe, you shall not understand," he quoted from Isaiah, in order to express his change of opinion.) During the next generation, the intellectual climate at the university changed from academic openness to increasing rigidity, and theologians turned from argument to persecution. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Contents: PART I: AESTHETICS OF ARCHITECTURE: QUESTIONS. Francis SPARSHOTT: The Aesthetics of Architecture and the Politics of Space. Arnold BERLEANT: Architecture and the Aesthetics of Continuity. Stephen DAVIES: Is Architecture Art? PART II: NATURE OF ARCHITECTURE. B.R. TILGHMAN: Architecture, Expression, and the Understanding of a Culture. David NOVITZ: Architectural Brilliance and the Constraints of Time. Michael H. MITIAS: Expression in Architecture. Ralf WEBER: The Myth of Meaningful Forms. Michael H. MITIAS: Is Meaning in Architecture a Myth? A Response (...) to Ralf Weber. PART III: AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE. Allen CARLSON: Existence, Location, and Function: The Appreciation of Architecture. Martin DONOUGHO: Spaced Out or Folded In? Trends in Architectural Choreography. Tom LEDDY: Dialogical Architecture. Roy T. DECKER: Tactility and Imagination: Considerations of Aesthetic Experience in Architecture. Robert GINSBERG: Aesthetics in Hiroshima. The Architecture of Remembrance. (shrink)

This article is a critical response to the claim advanced by Robert Elliott Allinson in three issues of Dialogue and Universalism that we need a new Enlightenment for the 21st century. In contradistinction to this claim, I argue that what we really need is a new interpretation of the ideals of the European Enlightenment. This assertion is based on the assumption that the basic beliefs and values that constitute the heart and soul of the European Enlightenment are founded in human (...) nature and that this nature is one and the same among all human beings. My discussion is composed of two parts, the first is formal, and the second is analytical. In the first part, I present general observations on the cultural and historical dynamics of the European Enlightenment. In the second part, I advance an analysis and a critical evaluation of the arguments Allinson advances in the editorial he wrote for the three issues of Dialogue and Universalism. The proposition I defend is that we need not a new Enlightenment but an interpretation and a comprehensive, efficacious implementation of the ideals of reason, science, and humanism. (shrink)

Randomised placebo-controlled trials (RPCTs) are the gold standard for evaluating novel treatments. However, this design is rarely used in the context of orthopaedic interventions where participants are assigned to a real or placebo surgery. The present study examines attitudes towards RPCTs for orthopaedic surgery among 687 orthopaedic surgeons across the USA. When presented with a vignette describing an RPCT for orthopaedic surgery, 52.3% of participants viewed it as ‘completely’ or ‘mostly’ unethical. Participants were also asked to rank-order the value of (...) five different types of evidence supporting the efficacy of a surgery, ranging from RPCT to an anecdotal report. Responses regarding RPCTs were polarised with 26.4% viewing it as the least valuable (even less valuable than an anecdote) and 35.7.% viewing it as the most valuable. Where equipoise exists, if we want to subject orthopaedic surgeries to the highest standard of evidence (RPCTs) before they are implemented in clinical practice, it will be necessary to educate physicians on the value and ethics of placebo surgery control conditions. Otherwise, invasive procedures may be performed without any benefits beyond possible placebo effects. (shrink)

According to physicalism, everything is physical or metaphysically connected to the physical. If physicalism were true, it seems that we should – in principle – be able to reduce the descriptions and explanations of special sciences to physical ones, for example, explaining biological regularities, via chemistry, by the laws of particle physics. The multiple realization of the property types of the special sciences is often seen to be an obstacle to such epistemic reductions. Here, we introduce another, new argument against (...) epistemic reduction. Based on mathematical complexity, we show that, under certain conditions, there can be “complexity barriers” that make epistemic reduction – in principle – unachievable even if physicalism were true. (shrink)

The paper aims to show how by elaborating the Peircean terms used in the title creativity in learning processes and in scientific discoveries can be explained within a semiotic framework. The essential idea is to emphasize both the role of external representations and of experimenting with those representations , and to describe a process consisting of three steps: First, looking at diagrams "from a novel point of view" offers opportunities to synthesize elements of these diagrams which have never been perceived (...) as connected before. Second, by forming those observed syntheses to "new objects" of thinking, and by signifying these objects through new signs , new means of thinking and acting are created . And finally, by applying these new means – in proofs, for instance – the "intelligibility" of new discoveries and their power to explain problematic facts must be tested. (shrink)

_Taking Religious Claims Seriously_ is a systematic, critical, and comprehensive study of the fundamental questions of the philosophy of religion: religious experience, the existence and nature of God, religious knowledge and truth, good and evil, immortality of the soul, religious diversity, religious claims about the person, faith, and the religious way of life. In this study the author seeks to capture the reality and meaning of the religious as such: What is the foundation of religion? Under what conditions is an (...) authentic religious way of life possible? His method of inquiry is phenomenological. The author begins his discussion with a general characterization of the basic features of all the literate and illiterate religions of the world. He then identifies the ideas, beliefs, and concerns which are common to these religions: What are the central claims of these religions? How did the various religions understand these claims? The author makes a serious attempt to clarify these claims and explore the possibility for a reconcilation between them. For him, the foundation of religion is the religious experience, and the essence of this experience consists in a serious, cognitive, and meaningful encounter with the Ultimate Being. This being is the ground of the world and human life. This book is a comparative, pluralistic study of the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Although there is increasing interest in philosophy of science in transcendental reasoning, there is hardly any discussion about transcendental arguments. Since this might be related to the dominant understanding of transcendental arguments as a tool to defeat epistemological skepticism, and since the power of transcendental arguments to achieve this goal has convincingly been disputed by Barry Stroud, this contribution proposes, first, a new definition of the transcendental argument which allows its presentation in a simple modus ponens and, second, a pragmatist (...) re-interpretation of this argument form that leaves it to the scientific community to debate, criticize, refine, or reaffirm its core claim: a premise which claims that the truth of a certain assumption is a necessary condition for something that is generally accepted. The proposed “logico-pragmatist interpretation” highlights the role of transcendental arguments as a methodological step to move science forward, just as abduction and inference to the best explanation do. (shrink)

Can punishments ever meaningfully be proportioned in severity to the seriousness of the crimes for which they are imposed? A great deal of attention has been paid to the general justification of punishment, but the thorny practical questions have received significantly less. Serious analysis has seldom delved into what makes crimes more or less serious, what makes punishments more or less severe, and how links are to be made between them. In Of One-eyed and Toothless Miscreants, Michael Tonry has (...) gathered together a distinguished cast of contributors to offer among the first sustained efforts to specify with precision how proportionality can be understood in relation to the implementation of punishment. Each chapter examines scholarly and lay thinking about punishment of people convicted of crimes with particular emphasis on "making the punishment fit the crime." The contributors challenge the most prevalent current theories and emphasize the need for a shift away from the politicized emotionalism of recent decades. They argue that theories that coincided with mass incarceration and rampant injustice to countless individuals are evolving in ways that better countenance moving toward more humane and thoughtful approaches.0Written by many of the leading thinkers on punishment, this volume dissects previously undeveloped issues related to considerations of deserved punishment and provides new ways to understand both the severities of punishment and the seriousness of crime. (shrink)

We define a rich model to be one which contains a proper elementary substructure isomorphic to itself. Existence, nonstructure, and categoricity theorems for rich models are proved. A theory T which has fewer than $\min(2^\lambda,\beth_2)$ rich models of cardinality $\lambda(\lambda > |T|)$ is totally transcendental. We show that a countable theory with a unique rich model in some uncountable cardinal is categorical in ℵ 1 and also has a unique countable rich model. We also consider a stronger notion of richness, (...) and use it to characterize superstable theories. (shrink)

Wicked problems—that is, problems that can be framed in a number of different ways, depending on who is looking at them—pose ethical challenges for professionals that have scarcely been recognized as such. Even though wicked problems are all around us, they are rarely addressed in education. A reason for this failure might be that wicked problems pose almost insurmountable challenges in educational settings. This contribution shows how students can learn to cope with wicked problems in problem-based learning projects that are (...) structured by the Reflect! platform. (shrink)

This argument map presents Paul Loewi’s crucial experiment in which he showed that neural transmissions of signals are chemical in nature, not electrical, in form of an argumentation. The map can be used in science education to show how the formulation of hypotheses should be related to a corresponding determination of experimental designs.

Commentators disagree about the extent to which Kant’s ethics is compatible with consequentialism. A question that has not yet been asked is whether Kant had a view of his own regarding the fundamental difference between his ethical theory and a broadly consequentialist one. In this paper I argue that Kant does have such a view. I illustrate this by discussing his response to a well-known objection to his moral theory, namely that Kant offers an implicitly consequentialist theory of moral appraisal. (...) This objection was most famously raised by Mill and Schopenhauer, but also during Kant’s time by Pistorius and Tittel. I show that Kant’s response to this objection in the second Critique illustrates that he sees the fundamental difference between his moral theory and a broadly consequentialist one to be one that concerns methodology. (shrink)

Although there is increasing interest in philosophy of science in transcendental reasoning, there is hardly any discussion about transcendental arguments. Since this might be related to the dominant understanding of transcendental arguments as a tool to defeat epistemological skepticism, and since the power of transcendental arguments to achieve this goal has convincingly been disputed by Barry Stroud, this contribution proposes, first, a new definition of the transcendental argument which allows its presentation in a simple modus ponens and, second, a pragmatist (...) re-interpretation of this argument form that leaves it to the scientific community to debate, criticize, refine, or reaffirm its core claim: a premise which claims that the truth of a certain assumption is a necessary condition for something that is generally accepted. The proposed “logico-pragmatist interpretation” highlights the role of transcendental arguments as a methodological step to move science forward, just as abduction and inference to the best explanation do. (shrink)

Why do we formulate arguments? Usually, things such as persuading opponents, finding consensus, and justifying knowledge are listed as functions of arguments. But arguments can also be used to stimulate reflection on one’s own reasoning. Since this cognitive function of arguments should be important to improve the quality of people’s arguments and reasoning, for learning processes, for coping with “wicked problems,” and for the resolution of conflicts, it deserves to be studied in its own right. This contribution develops first steps (...) towards a theory of reflective argumentation. It provides a definition of reflective argumentation, justifies its importance, delineates it from other cognitive functions of argumentation in a new classification of argument functions, and it discusses how reflection on one’s own reasoning can be stimulated by arguments. (shrink)

Most of the epistemological debate on disagreement tries to develop standards that describe which actions or beliefs would be rational under specific circumstances in a controversy. To build things on a firm foundation, much work starts from certain idealizations—for example the assumption that parties in a disagreement share all the evidence that is relevant and are equal with regard to their abilities and dispositions. This contribution, by contrast, focuses on a different question and takes a different route. The question is: (...) What should people actually do who find themselves in deep disagreement with others? And instead of building theory on some “firm foundation,” the paper starts from a specific goal—building consensus by creating new proposals—and asks, first, which actions are suitable to achieve this goal and, second, what are the epistemic conditions of these actions. With regard to the latter, the paper focuses on what has been called framing and reframing in conflict research, and argues that both metaphors need and deserve a suitable epistemological conceptualization. (shrink)

Among the many problems posed by Peirce's concept of abduction is how to determine the scope of this form of inference, and how to distinguish different types of abduction. This problem can be illustrated by taking a look at one of his best known definitions of the term:Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea; for induction does nothing but determine a value, and deduction merely evolves the necessary (...) consequences of a pure hypothesis.The second half of this quote is not part of the definition, but an explanation of it. However, it adds something to this definition because it says implicitly that there are only three logical.. (shrink)

Few studies examine plagiarism in a Middle Eastern context, specifically from the perspectives of preservice teachers. As future gatekeepers of academic integrity, preservice teachers need to understand plagiarism. This study surveyed 128 female preservice teachers in one university in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The survey explores preservice teachers regarding their understandings and reasons for academic plagiarism and their responses to particular scenarios. Findings indicate that preservice teachers have a thorough comprehension of plagiarism and suggest a lack of knowledge (...) of citing sources, weak writing skills, a lack of time, and not knowing the research process as reasons for plagiarism. Informants' responses to six scenarios are presented to illustrate their perspectives further. Discussion addresses language and cultural issues to contextualize the study. (shrink)

A crucial problem of conflict management is that whatever happens in negotiations will be interpreted and framed by stakeholders based on their different belief-value systems and world views. This problem will be discussed in the first part of this article as the main cognitive problem of conflict management. The second part develops a general semiotic solution of this problem, based on Charles Peirce's concept of "diagrammatic reasoning." The basic idea is that by representing one 's thought in diagrams, the conditions (...) that determine interpretations can become visible, we can "experiment" with them, and we can change them eventually. The third part, finally, focuses on a concrete tool, called Logical Argument Mapping , that can be used in conflict management to perform such diagrammatic reasoning and to cope with the cognitive problems discussed in the first part. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the sovereignty over Jerusalem will be used as an example to show how LAM could work in practice. (shrink)

The proposition I elucidates and defend in this paper is that the Transcendent can be an object of genuine knowledge and that the knowledge the philosophical mystic claims of it is symbolic in nature. In my endeavor to achieve this aim I rely on Małgorzata Czarnocka’s conception of symbolic truth as a model of explanation. I am inclined to think that, as a model of explanation, this conception sheds ample light on the possibility of having a cognitive experience of the (...) Transcendent. The paper is composed of four parts. The first part raises the question of the Transcendent as an object of knowledge. The second part advances a brief analysis of the main elements of Czarnozka’s conception of symbolic truth with special emphasis on her view of human nature. The third part explicates the sense in which the conception of symbolic truth functions as a model of explanation. The fourth part analyzes the conditions under which the Transcendent can be an object of knowledge. (shrink)

The proposition I elucidate and defend in this paper is that the explanatory power of Malgorzata Czarnocka’s conception of symbolic truth extends beyond our knowledge of empirical reality and includes our knowledge of human nature and human values. The paper is composed of two parts. In the first part I present a detailed analysis of the conception of symbolic truth. The focus in this analysis is on the nature of the correspondence relation which connects a true statement and the cognitive (...) object. Czarnocka persuasively argues that this relation is neither isomorphic nor homomorphic in character. She advances a detailed analysis of sensual perception as the locus of the cognitive act. The outcome of this analysis is that the structure of the statement which is articulated in this act does not copy or mirror the structure of the object but is a linguistic representation. In the second part of the paper I argue that empirical reality is not the paradigm of reality and that scientific knowledge is not the paradigm of knowledge. The domain of humanity is as real as the domain of empirical reality, and our knowledge of this domain is as central to our life as scientific knowledge is. Moreover, I argue that Czarnocka’s conception of symbolic truth functions adequately in explaining the possibility of knowledge of human nature and human values with special focus on the literary work of art. (shrink)