Memory is the least studied dimension of Augustine's psychological trinity of memory-intellect-will. This book explores the theme of 'memory' in Augustine's works, tracing its philosophical and theological significance. The first part explores the philosophical history of memory in Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. The second part shows how Augustine inherits this theme and treats it in his early writings. The third and final part seeks to show how Augustine's theological understanding of Christ draws on and resolves tensions in the theme of (...) memory. The place of memory in the theological anthropology of Augustine has its roots in the Platonic epistemological tradition. Augustine actively engages with this tradition in his early writings in a manner that is both philosophically sophisticated and doctrinally consistent with his later, more overtly theological writings. From the Cassiacum dialogues through De musica, Augustine points to the central importance of memory: he examines the power of the soul as something that mediates sense perception and understanding, while explicitly deferring a more profound treatment of it until Confessions and De trinitate. In these two texts, memory is the foundation for the location of the Imago Dei in the mind. It becomes the basis for the spiritual experience of the embodied creature, and a source of the profound anxiety that results from the sensed opposition of human time and divine time (aeterna ratio). This tension is contained and resolved, to a limited extent, in Augustine's Christology, in the ability of a paradoxical incarnation to unify the temporal and the eternal (in Confessions 11 and 12), and the life of faith (scientia) with the promised contemplation of the divine (sapientia, in De trinitate 12-14). (shrink)

Though the invocation to be “reflexive” is widespread in feminist sociology, many questions remain about what it means to “turn back” and resituate our work—about how to engage with research subjects’ visions of the world and with our own theoretical models. Rather than a superficial rehearsal of researcher and interlocutor standpoints, I argue that “reflexivity” should help researchers theorize the social world in relational ways. To make this claim, I draw together the insights of feminist standpoint theory and Bourdieu’s reflexive (...) sociology to lay the foundation for a renewed reflexive project that centers epistemic privilege, the idea that positions of structural exclusion provide the best resources for theorizing social power. Reflexive sociology should consider interlocutors’ experiences of exclusion and contradiction, engaging with sites of alternative knowledge and incorporating them into the object of study. This type of reflexivity provides improved resources for relational theory building. I offer support for these theoretical arguments with a historical analysis of knowledge production in the feminist anti-violence movement. (shrink)

There was more than one response to the nuclear age. Countering well-documented attitudes of protest and pessimism, Muriel Howorth (1886–1971) models a less examined strain of atomic enthusiasm in British nuclear culture. Believing that the same power within the atomic bomb could be harnessed to make the world a ‘smiling garden of Eden’, she utilized traditionally feminine domains of kitchen and garden in her efforts to educate the public about the potential of the atom and to ‘safeguard’ it on their (...) behalf. Boldly entering an overtly masculine arena in which, as a woman and a layperson, she was doubly an ‘other’, Howorth used a variety of publications, organizations and staged events to interpret atomic science and specifically to address women. Her efforts, dating roughly from 1948 to 1962, preceded but had broad overlaps with official Atoms for Peace programmes, and culminated in the formation of the Atomic Gardening Society in 1960 to promote the cultivation of gamma-irradiated seeds by British gardeners. (shrink)

The extinct human relatives known as Neanderthals have long been described as brutish and dumb. This conception is often traced to paleontologist Marcellin Boule, who published a detailed analysis on a Neanderthal skeleton in the early twentieth century. The conventional historical narrative claims that Boule made an error in his analysis, causing the Neanderthals to be considered brutish. This essay challenges the narrative of “Boule’s error,” arguing instead that the brutish Neanderthal concept originated much earlier in the history of Neanderthal (...) research and was, in fact, an invention of the earliest analyses of the first specimen recognized as a Neanderthal in the mid-nineteenth century. I argue that temporally relocating this conception of Neanderthals allows for a better understanding of the interconnected nature of the study of fossil humans and the science of living human races during the nineteenth century. This new view of the brutish Neanderthal sheds light on the earliest phases of the science that became paleoanthropology, while examining the racial, cultural, and political attitudes about race and extinction that accompanied the science at that time. By inspecting the ways in which the Neanderthals’ image was a product of a particular time and place, we gain a perspective that provides a new basis for thinking about the conceptions of hominin fossil species. (shrink)

Over the past few decades criminal law scholarship has been dominated by moralistic conceptions of the criminal law but recent years have seen the emergence of the so-called ‘political turn’ in criminal law theorizing. In this article I analyze the theory proffered by Vincent Chiao, one of the most persuasive proponents of the political or ‘public law’ trend, in contradistinction to the moralistic theory of criminalization defended by Anthony Duff. I demonstrate that the differences between the two theories are more (...) nuanced and more complex than first appears. In fact, because of how it concerns itself only with moral wrongdoing of a certain kind – namely, public wrongdoing – it turns out that Duff’s theory is best analyzed as a version of the public law account of criminal law. I argue that taking on Chiao’s public law approach, but allowing it to be informed by the principles of Duff’s (rather than Chiao’s) political philosophy, holds out the most promise for reaching a satisfactory conception of criminal law. I finish by considering this conclusion in light of the fact that hybrid theories are nothing new in the debate between retributivism and instrumentalism, a dividing line along which Chiao’s and Duff’s theories fall. I argue that the particular hybrid theory I defend holds important advantages over other such theories. (shrink)

The recent renewal of interest in the philosophy of Henri Bergson has increased both recognition of his influence on twentieth-century philosophy and attention to his relationship to phenomenology. Until now, the question of Martin Heidegger’s debt to Bergson has remained largely unanswered. Heidegger’s brief discussion of Bergson in Being and Time is geared toward explaining why he fails in his attempts to think more radically about time. Despite this dismissal, a close look at Heidegger’s early works dealing with temporality reveals (...) a sustained engagement with Bergson’s thought. In The Origin of Time, Heath Massey evaluates Heidegger’s critique of Bergson and examines how Bergson’s efforts to rethink time in terms of duration anticipate Heidegger’s own interpretation of temporality. Massey demonstrates how Heidegger follows Bergson in seeking to uncover “primordial time” by disentangling temporality from spatiality, how he associates Bergson with the tradition of philosophy that covers up this phenomenon, and how he overlooks Bergson’s ontological turn in Matter and Memory. Through close readings of early major works by both thinkers, Massey argues that Bergson is a much more radical thinker with respect to time than Heidegger allows. (shrink)

The fossilized primate skull known as the Taungs Baby, discovered in South Africa, was put forward in 1925 as a controversial ‘missing link’ between humans and apes. This essay examines the controversy generated by the fossil, with a focus on practice and the circulation of material objects. Viewing the Taungs story from this perspective provides a new outlook on debates, one that suggests that attention to the importance of place, particularly the ways that specific localities shape scientific practices, is crucial (...) to understanding such controversies. During the 1920s, the fossil itself did not move or circulate from its South African location, a fact that raised methodological concerns in understanding its significance and drew immense criticism from a range of experts. Examining the criticisms regarding the fossil’s failure to circulate draws attention to the importance of centers of accumulation in the analysis of hominid fossils. Diverging from existing histories that primarily emphasize the role of theory in paleoanthropological debates, then, this article argues that scientific practice played an important role in the Taungs fossil controversy. Examining this dimension of the debates has broader implications for revealing the underlying imperial assumptions that guided hominid paleontology during the early twentieth century. (shrink)

This essay examines a controversy that erupted in 2004 over the bones of a human relative discovered in Indonesia, proclaimed to be a new species named Homo floresiensis. It argues that the controversy comprised two intertwined struggles with roots in Indonesia’s colonial history. Indonesia’s transition to an independent country, it contends, gave rise to a particular set of cultural values, scientific practices, and theories that resulted in scientific objects becoming tied to national identity in ways that shaped the debates. Highlighting (...) the imbalances that can occur in cross-cultural negotiations over the study of human relatives, this essay reveals that the circulation of scientific objects is not a simple process. By focusing on how anthropological objects moved—and the claims of ownership and access embedded in those movements—it illustrates the role of local circumstances in shaping that knowledge as it contributes to increasingly global science. (shrink)

Patient data is used to drive an ecosystem of advanced digital tools in health care, like predictive models or artificial intelligence‐based decision support. Patients themselves, however, receive little information about these technologies or how they affect their care. This raises important questions about patient trust and continued engagement in a health care system that extracts their data but does not treat them as key stakeholders. This essay explores these tensions and provides steps forward for health systems as they design advanced (...) health information‐technology (IT) policies and practices. It centers patients, their concerns, and the ways they perceive trustworthiness to reframe advanced health IT in service of patient interests. (shrink)

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic violence came to be understood as a national emergency. In this paper, we ask how and why domestic violence was constructed as a crisis specific to the pandemic. Drawing from newspaper data, we show that the domestic violence victim came to embody the violation of gendered boundaries between “public” and “private” spheres. Representations of domestic violence centered on violence spilling over the boundaries of the home, infecting the home, or the home (...) imploding. While theorists of crisis have focused on the central role of temporality in crisis construction, and especially the performative invocation of “new time,” we argue that crisis rhetoric often relies on anxiety about the transgression of spatial boundaries. Our spatial approach to crisis has two components. First, we argue that crisis framings often invoke the idea that seemingly distinct arenas of social life are becoming disorganized or blurred. And second, because thresholds between social spaces are coded as sacred during crisis, this spatial reordering is rendered dangerous, resulting in calls to resecure boundaries. (shrink)

Objective Analyze racial differences in comfort with medical research using an alternative to the traditional approach that treats white people as a raceless norm.Methods Quantitative analysis of survey responses (n = 1,570) from Black and white residents of the US to identify relationships between perceptions of research as a right or a risk, and comfort participating in medical research.Results A lower proportion of white respondents reported that medical experimentation occurred without patient consent (p < 0.001) and a higher proportion of (...) white respondents reported that it should be their right to participate in medical research (p = 0.02). Belief in one’s right to participate was significantly predictive of comfort (b = 0.37, p < 0.001). Belief in experimentation without consent was significantly predictive of comfort for white respondents but not for Black respondents in multivariable analysis.Conclusions A rights-based orientation and less concern about the risks of medical research among white respondents demonstrate comparative advantage. Efforts to diversify medical research may perpetuate structural racism if they do not (1) critically engage with whiteness and its role in comfort with participation, and (2) identify and respond specifically to the needs of Black patients. (shrink)

Much of Grünbaum's work may be regarded as a careful development and systematic elaboration of the Riemann-Poincaré thesis of the conventionality of congruence, the thesis that the continuous manifolds of space, time, and space-time are intrinsically metrically amorphous, i.e. are devoid of intrinsic metrics. Therefore, to appreciate Grünbaum's philosophical contributions, one must have a clear understanding of what he means by an intrinsic metric. The second and fourth sections of this paper are exegetical; in them we try to piece together, (...) from his sundry remarks about intrinsic metrics, what Grünbaum means by the term 'intrinsic metric.' We shall argue that, the customary carefulness and precision of Grünbaum's writings notwithstanding, there are residual unclarities and difficulties which beset his conception of an intrinsic metric. In the fifth section we shall propose an explication of Grünbaum's notion of an intrinsic metric which seems on the whole faithful to Grünbaum's intuitions and insights and which also seems capable of performing the philosophical services which his work demands of that notion. The third section is a digression on Zeno's metrical paradox of extension. (shrink)

With this article, Paige Patterson identifies six events in the life of Martin Luther that shaped the Reformer and ultimately affected the entire Reformation. By surveying Luther’s journey to Rome, his friendship with Johann von Staupitz, the Leipzig Disputation, the Diet of Worms, his year in Wartburg Castle, and his marriage to Katharina von Bora, Patterson’s goal is for his readers to gain a greater understanding of Martin Luther. In so doing, Patterson encourages his readers to consider the contribution (...) of these events and the people involved to their own lives still today. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

When they abandoned the analytic-synthetic distinction, analytic philosophers substituted for it uncritical appeals to thought experiments or conceivability arguments. Although the history of philosophy is replete with thought experiments, medieval and early modern philosophers developed sophisticated theories concerning what governs what happens in thought experiments. By contrast, contemporary philosophers subscribe to the thesis of facile conception according to which casual allegations of conceivability or inconceivability are taken as good evidence of possibility or impossibility. Philosophers need to adopt standards of thought (...) experimentation like those found in science and to ground them in a general theory of conceivability. (shrink)

Policy-makers must allocate scarce resources to support constituents’ health needs. This requires policy-makers to be able to evaluate health states and allocate resources according to some principle of allocation. The most prominent approach to evaluating health states is to appeal to the strength of people’s preferences to avoid occupying them, which we refer to as decision utility metrics. Another approach, experienced utility metrics, evaluates health states based on their hedonic quality. In this article, we argue that although decision utility metrics (...) face a number of significant problems, the appropriate response to these problems is not to replace them with experienced utility metrics. Rather, decision utility metrics should be employed in conjunction with experienced utility metrics. Specifically, respondents to decision utility surveys should be provided with the results of experienced utility metrics in an effort to make their decisions better informed and more robust to the deficiencies of decision utility metrics. Ultimately, this approach would improve quality-adjusted life year calculations and enhance the decision-making of policy-makers in allocating resources to support constituents’ health needs. (shrink)

In early modern European natural philosophy and medicine, scholars encountered the problem of the “formless birth” in their studies into generation, alongside “monstrous” and “perfect” births. Such formless births included the hen’s egg, the unformed bear cub, and the human false conception – said to be shapeless lumps of moving flesh – and these types of conceptions influenced how natural philosophers, like William Harvey and Jan Baptiste van Lamzweerde, approached experiments on, or explanations of, generation. This article suggests that the (...) history of these unformed births provides fresh insights into how early modern scholars “thought” with formlessness. That is, early modern scholars drew on a longstanding discourse of shapeless conceptions to address the mechanisms of formless generation, “true” generation, as well as to understand other unformed or interstitial creatures in nature. The article argues that this history of thinking with formless births contributes to our picture of the significant role that unnatural births, such as “monsters”, played in early modern natural philosophy. (shrink)

Kant on Self-respect. SJ MASSEY Journal of the History of Philosophy La Jolla, Cal. 21:11, 57-73, 1983. L'A. veut montrer que selon Kant, toute immoralitcopyright est marque de manque de respect de soi.

In the era of precision medicine and expanding health information technologies, large representative datasets are considered necessary for addressing health inequities. Partially in response to gro...