In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism by Brenda AbbottRobert J. Karris, OFMBrenda Abbott, Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism. Durham, UK: Franciscan Publishing, 2021. Pp. vii + 388. 16 photos. £15.00. ISBN: 9781915198013.Father Eric Doyle, OFM, a member of the Province of the Immaculate Conception, UK, was born in 1938 and died in 1984. He was (...) highly talented and educated, steeped in the Franciscan tradition, a superb and humorous communicator. He was just right for his time, he was ahead of his time, and he may be just what Franciscans need today in their time as they continue to renew themselves in the spirit of St. Francis and in Franciscan Christology and spirituality.Abbott sets down her goal: "My purpose and goal in publishing this book is that something of the man and his vision will be communicated here, and that a new generation of Franciscan friars and scholars, as well as believers and unbelievers more widely, may be inspired by this vision and become aware of Doyle's enduring and precious legacy" (ii). She accomplishes her goal through an introduction, fifteen chapters which mainly delve into Doyle's Franciscan Christology and spirituality, and a conclusion. Endnotes follow each chapter. The book, which is very well-researched and written, ends with two appendices and a bibliography. Abbot has marvelously achieved her goal.The introduction is followed by: chapter 1, "Early Life: 1938–1970"; chapter 2, "The Friar"; chapter 3, "The Teacher"; chapter 4, "The Shepherd and Evangeliser"; chapter 5, "The Scholar"; chapter 6, "The Mystic"; chapter 7, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 1)"; chapter 8, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 2)"; chapter 9, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 3)"; chapter 10, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 4)"; chapter 11, "The Ecologist: Our Sister Mother Earth"; chapter 12, "The Ecumenist: Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ"; chapter 13, "The Post–Vatican II Theologian"; chapter 14, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 1)"; and chapter 15, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 2)."In the space allotted me, I provide three snapshots of Eric Doyle. First is the assessment of Doyle from an outside source, Bishop Thomas McMahon, who in his eulogy said: "He put profound truths in a very [End Page 249] simple way and conveyed always a sense of the numinous. … [He was] vivid, articulate, deeply learned, intensely human, hugely alive, full of mischief, unsparing of self … a contemporary Francis. His Franciscan spirituality permeated his total thinking" (174). I underscore Bishop Mc-Mahon's emphasis on St. Francis and his spirituality. I see implied here Doyle's teaching about the Absolute Primacy of Christ—that Christ is head of all creation and conqueror of sin and death, and that the reason for Christ's incarnation is not sin but love—demonstrating Doyle's retrieval of the best from the Franciscan tradition.The second snapshot points to two areas where Doyle was ahead of his time. First, he was a TV personality. Abbott dedicates pages 117–23 to Doyle as a wonderful TV presence. From 1971 to 1984 he was on four hundred programs of The Big Question. One reviewer noted: "The length, breadth and width of his discourse … is colossal … This man is an original, a non-pareil; before they made him, they broke the mould" (121). Second, in his book on Francis's Canticle of Brother Sun, first published in 1980, Doyle anticipated many of Pope Francis' teachings in Laudato Si'. As Abbott says: "Foreshadowing much of Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si', Doyle demonstrates how belief in the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of creation can help us create a better world" (270).The third snapshot is an indication of how Doyle's legacy continues in print. Doyle's St Francis and the Song of Brotherhood has been reprinted a number of times, most recently in 1997 by Franciscan Institute Publications as St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood and Sisterhood. It has been translated into five languages: Italian, German, Portuguese, Korean, and Japanese. Under the imprint of Tau Publications is My Heart's Quest: Collected Writings of Eric Doyle, Friar Minor, Theologian, edited by Josef Raischl... (shrink)

In 1991, Jones developed an issue-contingent model of ethical decision making in which moral intensity is posited to affect the four stages of Rest's 1986 model. Jones claimed that moral intensity, which is "the extent of issue-related moral imperative in a situation", consists of six characteristics: magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity, and concentration of effect. This article reports the findings of two studies that analyzed the factor structure of moral intensity, operationalized by a 12-item (...) Perceived Moral Intensity Scale adapted from the work of Sing-hapakdi et al. [1996, Journal of Business Research, 36, 245-255] and Frey [2000, Journal of Business Ethics, 26, 181-195]. The two items that were purported to measure CE were dropped due to their inability to effectively tap into the characteristic proposed by Jones. Factor analyses of the remaining 10 items supported a 3-factor structure, with the MC, PE, and TI items loading on the first factor, the PX items loading on the second factor, and the SC items loading on the third factor. These factors were labeled: Probable Magnitude of Consequences, Proximity, and Social Consensus. The authors conclude that moral intensity consists of three characteristics, rather than the six posited by Jones. (shrink)

Every account of moral responsibility has conditions that distinguish between the consequences, actions, or traits that warrant praise or blame and those that do not. One intuitive condition is that praiseworthiness and blameworthiness cannot be affected by luck, that is, by factors beyond the agent’s control. Several philosophers build their accounts of moral responsibility on this luck-free condition, and we may call their views Luck-Free Moral Responsibility (LFMR). I offer moral and metaphysical arguments against LFMR. First, I maintain that considerations (...) of fairness that often motivate LFMR do not require its adoption. Second, I contend that LFMR has counterintuitive implications for the nature and scope of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness and that LFMR is vulnerable to a reductio ad absurdum. Third, I state some common reasons for thinking that LFMR’s commitment to true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom is problematic, and I argue that if there are no such true counterfactuals and if LFMR is true, a person is praiseworthy and blameworthy at most for a tiny fraction of her actions. Fourth, I argue that proponents of LFMR cannot escape this skeptical cost by appealing to a different kind of counterfactual of freedom. Fifth, I develop an anti-skeptical motivation to affirm the idea that luck can affect moral responsibility. (shrink)

Putnam and Searle famously argue against computational theories of mind on the skeptical ground that there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function a physical system is computing: both conclude (albeit for somewhat different reasons) that virtually any physical object computes every computable function, implements every program or automaton. There has been considerable discussion of Putnam's and Searle's arguments, though as yet there is little consensus as to what, if anything, is wrong with these arguments. In (...) the present paper we show that an analogous line of reasoning can be raised against the numerical measurement (i.e., numerical representation) of physical magnitudes, and we argue that this result is a reductio ad absurdum of the challenge to computational skepticism. We then use this reductio to get clearer about both (i) what's wrong with Putnam's and Searle's arguments against computationalism, and (ii) what can be learned about both computational implementation and numerical measurement from the shortcomings of both sorts of skeptical argument. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer is widely recognized as the leading exponent of philosophical hermeneutics. The essays in this collection examine Gadamer's biography, the core of hermeneutical theory, and the significance of his work for ethics, aesthetics, the social sciences, and theology. There is full consideration of Gadamer's appropriation of Hegel, Heidegger and the Greeks, as well as his relation to modernity, critical theory and poststructuralism.

This paper develops a view of the content of perceptual states that reflects the cognitive significance those states have for the subject. Perhaps the most important datum for such a theory is the intuition that experiences are ‘transparent’, an intuition promoted by philosophers as diverse as Sartre and Dretske. This paper distinguishes several different transparency theses, and considers which ones are truly supported by the phenomenological data. It is argued that the only thesis supported by the data is much weaker (...) than those typically considered in the literature, and has no obvious implications for the existence of sensory intermediaries. It does, however, have implications for the content of perceptual experience. It is argued that combining the first personal project with the transparency intuition yields an error theory of perception. The counterintuitive implications of this error theory are mitigated, however, by an account of perceptual beliefs which allows for them to be true even if the perceptual states are non-veridical. (shrink)

The problem of moral luck is that a general fact about luck and an intuitive moral principle jointly imply the following skeptical conclusion: human beings are morally responsible for at most a tiny fraction of each action. This skeptical conclusion threatens to undermine the claim that human beings deserve their respective eternal reward and punishment. But even if this restriction on moral responsibility is compatible with the doctrine of the final judgment, the quality of one’s afterlife within heaven or hell (...) still appears to be lucky. Utilizing recent responses to the problem of moral luck, I explore several Molinist accounts of the final judgment that resolve both theological problems of moral luck. Some of these accounts entirely eliminate moral luck while others ensure that the moral luck involved in the judgment is overall good luck. (DOWNLOAD the published version at the external link below.). (shrink)

The principle of the child's right to an open future was first proposed by the legal philosopher Joel Feinberg and developed further by bioethicist Dena Davis. The principle holds that children possess a unique class of rights called rights in trust—rights that they cannot yet exercise, but which they will be able to exercise when they reach maturity. Parents should not, therefore, take actions that permanently foreclose on or pre-empt the future options of their children, but leave them the greatest (...) possible scope for exercising personal life choices in adulthood. Davis particularly applies the principle to genetic counselling, arguing that parents should not take deliberate steps to create physically abnormal children, and to religion, arguing that while parents are entitled to bring their children up in accordance with their own values, they are not entitled to inflict physical or mental harm, neither by omission nor commission. In this paper, I aim to elucidate the open future principle, and consider whether it is applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision of boys, whether performed for cultural/religious or for prophylactic/health reasons. I argue that the principle is highly applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision, and conclude that non-therapeutic circumcision would be a violation of the child's right to an open future, and thus objectionable from both an ethical and a human rights perspective. (shrink)

Nos proponemos pensar una teoría de la acción implícita en la filosofía deleuziana del espacio. El concepto de profundidad, en el que se despliega el carácter de la intensidad como afirmación de la diferencia, funciona como presupuesto de esta teoría. A partir de dos textos de Ruyer y Simondon mencionados por Deleuze, los afectos aparecen como expresión de aquella dimensión espacial en el sujeto. La profundidad se articula a su vez con las síntesis temporales en un recorrido que encuentra en (...) la noción de pliegue el concepto adecuado para pensar un sujeto de la acción alternativo al yo sustancial. (shrink)

George Dickie has been one of the most innovative, influential, and controversial philosophers of art working in the analytical tradition in the past twenty-five years. Dickie's arguments against the various theories of aesthetic attitude, aesthetic perception, and aesthetic experience virtually brought classical theories of the aesthetic to a halt. His institutional theory of art was perhaps the most discussed proposal in aesthetics during the 1970s and 1980s, inspiring both supporters who produced variations on the theory as well as passionate detractors (...) who thought the theory thoroughly wrongheaded. Dickie has also written widely on the history of aesthetics, and his work ranks among the best examples of analytic aesthetics. The philosophy of George Dickie continues to provoke reaction and reflection. The essays in this collection pay homage not only to Dickie's ideas but also to his influence. A brief biography of George Dickie and a bibliography of his works complete the volume. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne argues that belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition for faith, and he also argues that, while faith is voluntary, belief is involuntary. This essay is concerned with the tension arising from the involuntary aspect of faith, the Christian doctrine that human beings have an obligation to exercise faith, and the moral claim that people are only responsible for actions where they have the ability to do otherwise. Put more concisely, the problem concerns the coherence of the (...) following claims: (1) one cannot have faith, (2) one has an obligation to have faith, and (3) ought implies can. To solve this dilemma, I offer three solutions that I believe have the philosophical resources to demonstrate the consistency of these claims. Thus, I defend the claim that it is logically possible for a person to be culpable for an involuntary failure to have faith in God. (shrink)

Recent models in quantum cosmology make use of the concept of imaginary time. These models all conjecture a join between regions of imaginary time and regions of real time. We examine the model of James Hartle and Stephen Hawking to argue that the various no-boundary attempts to interpret the transition from imaginary to real time in a logically consistent and physically significant way all fail. We believe this conclusion also applies to quantum tunneling models, such as that proposed by Alexander (...) Vilenkin. We conclude, therefore, that the notion of emerging from imaginary time is incoherent. A consequence of this conclusion seems to be that the whole class of cosmological models appealing to imaginary time is thereby refuted. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo propone una lectura del concepto de lo Natal desde la perspectiva de la ontología de Diferencia y repetición. El estudio de los rasgos ontológicos que esa noción ofrece, en especial en Mil mesetas, arroja una nueva luz sobre el aspecto intensivo de la teoría deleuziana del fundamento. En este sentido, el concepto de lo Natal se vincula especialmente con los conceptos de profundidad y campo de individuación. La consideración conjunta de estas nociones permite postular la novedad de (...) la teoría deleuziana del fundamento en relación con la tradición de la metafísica occidental, que se expresa en el hecho de que el fundamento se presenta como ámbito de la individuación, el devenir y la multiplicidad. En última instancia, el fundamento se ve superado hacia un sin-fondo.This article proposes a reading of the concept of The Natal in the light of the ontology of Difference and repetition. The study of the ontological aspects of this notion in A thousand plateaus brings a new light to the intensive aspect of Deleuze's theory of ground. In this sense, the concept of The Natal is linked with the concepts of depth and field of individuation. The bond between these concepts puts forth the novelty of Deleuze's theory of ground in relation to the tradition of Western metaphysics, expressed in the fact that the ground is presented as a realm of individuation, becoming and multiplicity. The ground is ultimately overcome by an ungrounding. (shrink)

Professional historians of science generally recognize the importance of Lavoisier's theory of heat. However, it commonly receives scant attention in the historical treatment of his chemical theories except perhaps as an example illustrating his conservatism and giving the impression that the caloric theory, although perhaps important in the development of ideas on the nature of heat, is independent of and bears little relationship to his general chemistry or is incidental to an understanding of that chemistry. An examination of Lavoisier's writings (...) suggests that the caloric theory is not merely a milestone in the development of physics; and rather than an omittable appendage, his concept of heat forms an integral part of his chemical system and plays a central, necessary role in his oxidation theory in particular. The purpose of this paper is to give a general description of Lavoisier's ideas on the nature and action of heat, the origin of these ideas, their development, and their relation to his general chemistry, pointing out his conservatism as well as his innovations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ON BEING OR NOT BEING A THOMIST ROBERT E. LAti'DER St. John's University Jamaica, New York Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method. Gerald A. McCool, S.J. New York: Fordham University Press, 1989. 301 pages (paper). From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism. Gerald A. McCool, S.J. New York: Fordham University Press, 1989. 9248 pages (hardcover). BEFORE I READ Gerald A. McCool's two volumes examining (...) nineteenth and twentieth centrury scholast :i:cism and Thomism, if someone had asked my philosophica ;l o:rientation, I would have replied "I am a Thomist." Having rerud McCool's two books, I still and with a strong sense of gratitude articulate my philosophical self-des,ignation as Thomisit, but what I mean by Thomist has become considerably more nuanced. Not only those who identify themselvies with the thought of St. Thomas but a, wider philosophical and theologiea1l community shou1d be grateful to Father McCool for- his eXiceHent scholarly contribution to the understanding of sicholasticism and Thomism. His two volumes show many of us who call ourselves Thomists where we have been an:d wheve we rare and, by illuminating our past,and present, clarify for us our options for the future. Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism was first published under,the title Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century by The Seabury Press in 1977, but it has been re-issued hy Fordham University to ruocompany the appearance of his second volume. In this earlier work McCool ohal'ts in detail the growth and 301 30~ ROBERT E. LAUDER d.wection of scholasticism, especially in relation to two influential Chmich documents: the Apostolic Consititu.tion on Faith Dei Filius, solemnly app:rovced in 1870 by the fathers of the First Vatican Council, and Leo XIII's 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris. The,earlier,document defined and darified the Church's teaching on the supernatural and free charac1te:r of faith and on the relation between supe:matural faith and natural reason; the encydical was a disciplinary document concerning the method of philosophicaJ instruction for priests. McCool \Stresses that the linking of the two documents in the minds of Roman authorities and theologians gave the documents enormous weight and influence during the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, but now, more than a hundred years fater, their influence is being and r'easses:sed. Though the present situation in Catholic philosophical and theological circles is not a case history reversing itself, it is an extra011dina :ry example of history leruding to the l'eopening of questions ithat,seemed definitivdy dosed. McCool suggests that there are at ~east two factors affecting contemporary Catholic theology which indicate that ·current historical research into nineteenth-century Catholic theology may point to a genuine option between a deveJoped Thomism and a restored pre-Thomistic nineteenth century system: The first of these is the freedom given to Catholic theologians by the Second Vatican Council to experiment with non-Thomistic theological systems. Aetelf'ni Patris no longer enjoys the status of an irrevocable theological option, based on immutable dogmatic and metaphysical principles. Its theological signification has been relativized. Aeterni Patris must now be considered an historical moment in the dialectical progress of theological development. The second distinctive characteristic of contemporary theology is the current ferment over theological method. This means that the nineteenth-century debate, which the official option of Aetelf'ni Patris seemed to have closed definitively, has been reopened. The disciples of SL Thomas and the partisans of the ' new ' theologies are free once more to submit their diverse theological methods to the judgment of their fellow theologians. (p. 6) GERALD MC COOL AND THOMISM 303 McCool views Joseph Kleutgen as the outstanding representativ ;e of the noo-Thomisit.ic movement in the nineteenth century. Kleutgen was trying to strike a balance between the extremes of fideisim and rationalism. He felt strongly thrut if one says positive and speculative theology are nort intrinsically difforent in their intellootua;} questions from a philosophy of·l'leve!Imtion then either natural veason's proper autonomy has to be compromised by a tmditional :fideism or the distinctiveness and gra.tuity of supernatuml knowledge has to be blurred by... (shrink)

The sciences of ethology and sociobiology have as premisses that certain dispositions and behavioural patterns have evolved with species and, therefore, that the acts of individual animals and men must be viewed in light of innate determinates. These ideas are much older than the now burgeoning disciplines of the biology of behaviour. Their elements were fused in the early constructions of evolutionary theory, and they became integral parts of the developing conception. Historians, however, have usually neglected close examination of the (...) role behaviour has played in the rise of evolutionary thought. (shrink)

The following is an essay review of Paul Needham's translation of Pierre Duhem's Lemixte et la combinaison chimique and a numberof other essays. In this review we describe theintent and general features of Le mixte and try to place it in the larger context of Duhem'sprogram for energetics. The long essay (Essay3) opposing Marcellin Berthelot'sthermochemistry is singled out for detailedcommentary, since it gives Duhem's reasons forendorsing Josiah Willard Gibbs's chemicalstatics. We argue that a chemical mechanics ofa Gibbsian sort, defended in (...) Le mixte and otheressays in this volume, was the inspiration for,and basis of, Duhem's energetics. Needham'swelcome translations help an English-languageaudience to better understand the basiccontours of Duhem's important, if ultimatelymisguided, project. We conclude with somecomments on the difficulties in translatingDuhem and on the quality of the translationsNeedham has provided. (shrink)

Sport continues to be one of the primary means through which notions of Englishness and Britishness are constructed, contested, and resisted. The legacy of the role of sport in the colonial project of the British Empire, combined with more recent connections between sport and far right fascist/nationalist politics, has made the association between Britishness, Englishness, and ethnic identity(ies) particularly intriguing. In this paper, these intersections are explored through British media coverage of the Canadian‐born, British tennis player, Greg Rusedski. This coverage (...) is examined through the lens of ‘performativity,’ as articulated by Judith Butler. Through a critical application of Butler's ideas, the ways in which the media seek to recognise and normalise certain identities, while problematising and excluding others, can be more fully appreciated. Thus, it was within newspaper framings of Rusedski that hegemonic notions of White Englishness could be performed, maintained, and embedded. (shrink)

Is it justified to detect minor genetic aberrations before birth and terminate pregnancies based upon such information? We present the case of a woman who wanted Prenatal Diagnosis to detect whether her female fetus was a Haemophilia mutation carrier. Such carriers are usually healthy.She wished to eradicate the Haemophilia mutation from her family to avoid future generations being affected and to protect her children from having to go through PND themselves. We explore existing practice guidelines, public attitudes and possible objections (...) to providing PND for minor abnormalities. We argue that in a society where couples have considerable autonomy relating to decisions about the fetus at least until viability, the routine restriction of PND for minor genetic abnormalities would be an unjust infringement of individual liberty. (shrink)