Current theories suggest that the brain is the sole source of mental illness. However, affective disorders, and major depressive disorder (MDD) in particular, may be better conceptualized as brain-body disorders that involve peripheral systems as well. This perspective emphasizes the embodied, multifaceted physiology of well-being, and suggests that afferent signals from the body may contribute to cognitive and emotional states. In this review, we focus on evidence from preclinical and clinical studies suggesting that afferent thermosensory signals contribute to well-being and (...) depression. Although thermoregulatory systems have traditionally been conceptualized as serving primarily homeostatic functions, increasing evidence suggests neural pathways responsible for regulating body temperature may be linked more closely with emotional states than previously recognized, an affective warmth hypothesis. Human studies indicate that increasing physical warmth activates brain circuits associated with cognitive and affective functions, promotes interpersonal warmth and prosocial behavior, and has antidepressant effects. Consistent with these effects, preclinical studies in rodents demonstrate that physical warmth activates brain serotonergic neurons implicated in antidepressant-like effects. Together, these studies suggest that (1) thermosensory pathways interact with brain systems that control affective function, (2) these pathways are dysregulated in affective disorders, and (3) activating warm thermosensory pathways promotes a sense of well-being and has therapeutic potential in the treatment of affective disorders. (shrink)

This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-generated health data. We define “user-generated health data” as data captured through devices or software and used outside of traditional clinical settings for tracking personal health data. The investigators conducted qualitative research through semistructured interviews with researchers, health technology start-up companies, and members of the general public to inquire why and how they interact with and understand the value of user-generated health data. We found significant (...) results concerning new attitudes toward trust, privacy, and sharing of health data outside of clinical settings that conflict with regulations governing health data within clinical settings. Members of the general public expressed little concern about sharing health data with the companies that sold the devices or apps they used, and indicated that they rarely read the “terms and conditions” detailing how their data may be exploited by the company or third-party affiliates before consenting to them. In contrast, interviews with researchers revealed significant resistance among potential research participants to sharing their user-generated health data for purposes of scientific study. The widespread rhetoric of personalization and social sharing in “user-generated culture” appears to facilitate an understanding of user-generated health data that deemphasizes the risk of exploitation in favor of loosely defined benefits to individual and social well-being. We recommend clarification and greater transparency of regulations governing data sharing related to health. (shrink)

The last two decades have seen two significant trends emerging within the philosophy of science: the rapid development and focus on the philosophy of the specialised sciences, and a resurgence of Aristotelian metaphysics, much of which is concerned with the possibility of emergence, as well as the ontological status and indispensability of dispositions and powers in science. Despite these recent trends, few Aristotelian metaphysicians have engaged directly with the philosophy of the specialised sciences. Additionally, the relationship between fundamental Aristotelian concepts—such (...) as "hylomorphism", "substance", and "faculties"—and contemporary science has yet to receive a critical and systematic treatment. _Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science _aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together essays on the relationship between Aristotelianism and science that cut across interdisciplinary boundaries. The chapters in this volume are divided into two main sections covering the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of the life sciences. Featuring original contributions from distinguished and early-career scholars, this book will be of interest to specialists in analytical metaphysics and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

This wide-ranging anthology of philosophical writings on the concept of God presents a systematic overview of the chief conceptions of deity as well as skeptical and atheistic critiques of theological ideas. The selections cover key philosophic developments in this subject area from ancient times to modern in both the East and West. Editors Hartshorne and Reese-two of the most highly respected scholars in the philosophy of religion-have not only selected many arresting passages from the world's great thinkers but have also (...) analyzed and evaluated the underlying ideas, showing how they fit into major, overarching systems of thought. Part One, "Classical Views," includes passages from ancient Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, and Judeo-Christian scriptures as well as philosophical writings from ancient Greece, the medieval church, and the Enlightenment. Part Two, "Modern Views," considers the ideas of more recent influential thinkers from diverse cultures and philosophical schools: Schelling, Peirce, Whitehead, Schweitzer, Buber, Radhakrishnan, and Watts, among others, are represented and discussed. Part Three, "Skeptical or Atheistic Views: Ancient and Modern," examines various kinds of skepticism and includes selections from Carneades, Buddha, Hume, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Dennes, and Freud. Throughout their presentation the editors analyze and contrast theistic, atheistic, pantheistic, and panentheistic systems of thought. Philosophers Speak of God is a richly varied selection of high-quality writing on a perennial subject that will provide the serious student a thorough foundation in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

By pointing to deep philosophical confusions endemic to cognitive science, Wittgenstein might seem an enemy of computational approaches. We agree that while Wittgenstein would reject the classicist’s symbols and rules approach, his observations align well with connectionist or neural network approaches. While many connectionisms that dominated the later twentieth century could fall prey to criticisms of biological, pedagogical, and linguistic implausibility, current connectionist approaches can resolve those problems in a Wittgenstein-friendly manner. We present the basics of a Vector Symbolic Architecture (...) formalism, inspired by Smolensky, and indicate how high-dimensional vectors can operate in a context-sensitive and object-independent manner in biologically plausible time scales, reflecting Wittgenstein’s notions of language-games and family resemblance; we show how “soft” symbols for such a formalism can be formed with plausible learning cycles using Sparse Distributed Memory, resolving disputes surrounding Wittgenstein’s private language argument; and show how connectionist networks can extrapolate meaningful patterns to solve problems, providing “ways to go on” without explicit rules, which indicates linguistic plausibility. Connectionism thus provides a systematicity and productivity that is more than a mere implementation of a classical approach, and provides Wittgenstein-friendly and Wittgenstein-illuminating models of mind and language for cognitive science. (shrink)

Physicist, mathematician, and logician Charles S. Peirce was America's first internationally recognized philosopher, the man who created the concept of "pragmatism," later popularized by William James. Charles S. Peirce: The Essential Writings is a comprehensive collection of the philosopher's writings, including: "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man", which outlines his theory of knowledge; a review of the works of George Berkeley; papers from between 1877 and 1905 developing the ground of pragmatism and Peirce's theory of scientific (...) inquiry; his basic concept of metaphysics ; and the important 1902 articles in Baldwin's dictionary on his later pragmatism, uniformity, and synechism. Included are Peirce's well-known essays: "The Fixation of Belief" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." Book jacket. (shrink)

From the $700 billion bailout of the banking industry to president Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package to the highly controversial passage of federal health-care reform, conservatives and concerned citizens alike have grown increasingly fearful of big government. Enter Nobel Prize–winning economist and political theorist F. A. Hayek, whose passionate warning against empowering states with greater economic control, The Road to Serfdom, became an overnight sensation last summer when it was endorsed by Glenn Beck. The book has since sold over (...) 150,000 copies. The latest entry in the University of Chicago Press’s series of newly edited editions of Hayek’s works, The Constitution of Liberty is, like Serfdom, just as relevant to our present moment. The book is considered Hayek’s classic statement on the ideals of freedom and liberty, ideals that he believes have guided—and must continue to guide—the growth of Western civilization. Here Hayek defends the principles of a free society, casting a skeptical eye on the growth of the welfare state and examining the challenges to freedom posed by an ever expanding government—as well as its corrosive effect on the creation, preservation, and utilization of knowledge. In opposition to those who call for the state to play a greater role in society, Hayek puts forward a nuanced argument for prudence. Guided by this quality, he elegantly demonstrates that a free market system in a democratic polity—under the rule of law and with strong constitutional protections of individual rights—represents the best chance for the continuing existence of liberty. Striking a balance between skepticism and hope, Hayek’s profound insights are timelier and more welcome than ever before. This definitive edition of The Constitution of Liberty will give a new generation the opportunity to learn from his enduring wisdom. (shrink)

Physicist, mathematician, and logician Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) was America's first internationally recognized philosopher, the man who created the concept of "pragmatism," later popularized by William James. Charles S. Peirce: The Essential Writings is a comprehensive collection of the philosopher's writings, including: "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man" (1868), which outlines his theory of knowledge; a review of the works of George Berkeley; papers from between 1877 and 1905 developing the ground of pragmatism and Peirce's theory (...) of scientific inquiry; his basic concept of metaphysics (1891-93); and the important 1902 articles in Baldwin's dictionary on his later pragmatism (or pragmaticism), uniformity, and synechism. Included are Peirce's well-known essays: "The Fixation of Belief" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." Book jacket. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging by Gilbert MeilaenderCharles L. Kammer IIIShould We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging Gilbert Meilaender grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2013. 135 pp. $18.00.Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging provides a helpful focus on both aging and research being done to extend human life expectancy. As Gilbert Meilaender notes, human beings have always longed for an (...) extended as well as a more generative life span. He raises the question, however, of whether these two desires stand in opposition. Built into our very biology is the “survival instinct,” along with the imaginative ability to transcend our biological limits. Together they generate a religious legacy of imagining life after death. But Meilaender believes we have moved into a different time. Citing John Gray, he asserts that “the hope of life after death has been replaced by the faith that death can be defeated” (xi).Meilaender presents scientific research on antiaging while observing that there is little cultural reflection on its impacts or desirability. This book steps in to provide a reflection on these larger questions from the perspective of the virtues, or what constitutes a truly “good and human” life. As the author notes, our reflections on aging and immortality are tied to our assumptions of what it means to be human. This is evident, for example, among members of the transhumanist movement, which envisions a human brain freed from dependence on a biological body. He surmises that our scientific quest for immortality may have its roots in the human quest to overcome contingency and its associated anxiety; it is in many ways the embodiment of our wish to be “gods” who have total control over our destinies.Meilaender uses classic and modern Western philosophers and theologians (including Aristotle, Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karl Barth) as well as the work of life-stage theorists (Erik Erikson and Bernard Williams) who contribute to the discussion of what constitutes a “fully human life.” Would biological immortality make a life more fully human, or is it rooted in a crass form of narcissism that makes our own survival more important than the needs and perhaps even the possibility of future generations?The book closes with a brief conversation between three friends who represent different perspectives, a useful discussion tool for raising the deeper issues presented in the book. According to the first view, we are biological organisms with prescribed natural limits; fulfillment therefore comes through accepting and finding provisional fulfillment in each of our life stages. The [End Page 216] second perspective sees human freedom and reason as the fundamental characteristics of being human and so advocates expanding life expectancy and following wherever human creativity leads. The third observes that we are constrained by our biology and yet are also free, both bound and transcendent. This perspective, however, notes that what we truly desire is not an indefinite extension of life but something richer and fuller that transcends any possibility that humans can create. Our longing is not actually a desire for more but a desire for something other than what continued existence can provide.Meilaender’s engagement of the deeper questions presented by the scientific attempt to “cure” aging and extend life indefinitely is, finally, a powerful Christian apologetic that is nevertheless respectful of other positions. If the book has a limitation, it lies in the failure to engage non-Western traditions that perceive and address the issues from much different frameworks. It also does not address the possibility that perhaps being human is to live with the awareness and resignation that, while we have a deep desire for something qualitatively fuller and richer, this is a longing that can never be fulfilled.Charles L. Kammer IIIThe College of WoosterCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Lewis was not, and is not, very popular in the academy. I think there are three reasons.First, he did not stick to his subject, which was medieval and Renaissance literature. He wrote highly successful children's books, theological works, and articles accessible to nonspecialists, and was an acclaimed broadcaster. All this allowed his critics to suggest that he was not a proper academic, because proper academics do not throw their nets so wide.Second, he was good at everything he did (except perhaps (...) some areas of philosophy: he was famously bested by Elizabeth Anscombe when he ventured onto her home ground). This was perhaps the most infuriating thing about him. The justification for academic superspecialization is that one cannot do more than one thing really well. But Lewis did. He was a better Renaissance scholar than those who criticized him, moaned about him in the Oxford cloisters, and blackballed him for appointments. He is relentlessly readable; therefore (said his detractors) his scholarship must be shoddy.Lewis infuriates me too. Often, when I think I have had an original thought in some domain a million miles from Renaissance literature, I discover not only that Lewis had had that thought already, but had explicated it, seeing angles I never noticed, and more often than not he had exploded it, using a tenth of the words I used, and all in devastatingly simple prose that would entertain and illuminate the most uninterested plumber.And third, of course, he was a Christian, which was then becoming an unforgivable sin, as it remains now in the humanities (though not the physical sciences or mathematics). The usual (stated) objection to academic Christians is that their theological commitment precludes objectivity, but Lewis's academic writing (notably his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama [1954]) was so good that that indictment could not stick, and his opponents descended into incoherent fulmination about superannuated paradigms.These reasons help to explain the chilly reception (or, more often, nonreception) by self-billed “serious thinkers” of Lewis's “space trilogy”: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength (hereafter THS). In relation to THS there is another reason: the novel is about them. No, about us. Lewis's view of us is just too keen, his diagnosis too alarming.The main concerns of THS are dehumanization, the role of institutions in that dehumanization, and the desire of individuals to be part of an esoteric circle. More broadly, it concerns the nature of evil. Its debt to the Divine Comedy and to Charles Williams, Lewis's fellow Inkling, are clear.The central character is a young academic, Mark Studdock. We all know him. His education had been “neither scientific nor classical—merely ‘Modern.’ That left him pathetically manipulable. The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour.” Studdock was “a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge.” He stood for nothing; he weighed nothing.Humans are not supposed to be weightless. We will do anything to convince ourselves that we have mass. Many of our strategies are counterproductive. Some are disastrous and lead to dissolution. Studdock's strategy is one of the commonest and most catastrophic: he tries to get to the center of things—to the “Inner Ring” whose geography is described by Lewis in his 1944 lecture (and later essay) of that name. At some level, at least occasionally, Studdock knows the stupidity of this ambition, but he closes his eyes and his mind. And he begins to be used by forces far greater than any he had dreamed of.The book opens with a merciless (and horribly entertaining) account of academic politics. Read it and cringe in recognition: the mechanics of toadyism; the devices for getting your own way with a committee (put the real business in coded form at the end of an agenda, to be dealt with on a hot day after lunch); infuse everything with an appeal to self-interest, but never put it quite like that, for fear of awakening long-dormant altruism. Obfuscate: do not call the sale of an ancient woodland in which Merlin's body lies “the sale of Bragdon Wood” but the sale of “the area coloured pink on the plan.” Learn to talk like the bursar of Studdock's college, for each of his sentences was “a model of lucidity: and if his hearers found the gist of his whole statement less clear than the parts, that may have been their fault.” As a manual for getting your own way in institutions, The Prince is artless and benign beside THS.Studdock becomes a pawn in a big and diabolical game. A vast organization, the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments, known, of course, as “NICE” (never underestimate the importance of an acronym), which turns out to be the instrument of dark supernatural forces, is becoming a state within a state. It is unaccountable. That is its tagline, indeed: it will be free of the red tape that inhibits the research of more conventional institutions. And who can define with sufficient exactitude the difference in principle between tedious administrative red tape and moral stricture? If you are in with the NICE, anything goes.The NICE's project is the unmaking of everything that is quintessentially human and, eventually, everything that is biological. Life itself is just too unhygienic. Beauty is a joke. Sentiment a delusion. Love merely a result of chemical interactions in the brain. Nothing signifies.The NICE has a handful of opponents—a raggedy bunch (including a bear) under the direction of Ransom, who has traveled outside planet Earth in the previous two books in the trilogy. The company, it turns out, is the remnant of the old Arthurian kingdom of Logres, which has always been in tension, if not war, with the modern kingdom of Britain: “Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell: a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers: the home of Sidney—and of Cecil Rhodes.” They recruit Studdock's wife, Jane, who can spy clairvoyantly on the NICE, and then a revived Merlin comes from his tomb to their aid.THS is strong meat. Many will balk at its supernaturalism, and perhaps in particular its complementarian view of the relationship between the sexes. But hear Lewis out: you might not agree with him, but he is always interesting. When I read THS thirty years ago, I thought it a ripping yarn. It still is. But now I see it as prescient, prophetic, and profoundly important. It should be on every university reading list, for every subject, and no one should be allowed to hold any kind of public office until they have shown that they have assimilated its lessons. (shrink)

This is a case study of a program to address professionalism at the Universidad de la República in Uruguay. We describe a five-year ongoing international collaboration. Relevant characteristics of the context, the program components, activities, and results were analyzed. The expected outcomes were to introduce standards of professional practices in the curricula of medical students and residents and the implementation of a program that might lead to a significant change in the culture of medicine in the University. Traditional didactics, interactive (...) theater, and professional development workshops, issues such as teamwork and communication, professional behavior, and the culture of medicine, and physician wellness were addressed. A total of 359 faculty members, general practitioners, stakeholders, and other healthcare professionals participated in the intervention. The process led to specific achievements including new content in the curricula, the use of educational innovations to address issues of professionalism, a growing institutional culture of accountability, and the establishment of new rules and regulations. The strategies and interventions followed in the case of Uruguay can serve as a model to other developing countries to promote physician professionalism, wellness, and joy. (shrink)

As readers of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics undoubtedly know, edited books can be highly uneven in their quality, with some chapters excelling in content, depth, and readability while others languish in mediocrity. Volumes in an annually issued series run an even greater risk of suffering the plague of inferiority, especially after many years of fame and success. End-of-Life Ethics: A Case Study Approach clearly overcomes these maladies and provides readers with an excellent collection of well-written, thought-provoking essays.The Hospice Foundation of (...) America launched its annual bereavement teleconference two decades ago, publishing a book each year to accompany that educational event. Dubbed the “Living with Grief” series, every volume includes chapters written by a diversity of clinicians and scholars in the care of the dying and bereaved. The series has been unique in its approach to bridge scholarly understandings with practical clinical application.This volume takes a unique .. (shrink)

A new understanding of political philosophy from one of its leading thinkers What is political philosophy? What are its fundamental problems? And how should it be distinguished from moral philosophy? In this book, Charles Larmore redefines the distinctive aims of political philosophy, reformulating in this light the basis of a liberal understanding of politics. Because political life is characterized by deep and enduring conflict between rival interests and differing moral ideals, the core problems of political philosophy are the regulation (...) of conflict and the conditions under which the members of society may thus be made subject to political authority. We cannot assume that reason will lead to unanimity about these matters because individuals hold different moral convictions. Larmore therefore analyzes the concept of reasonable disagreement and investigates the ways we can adjudicate conflicts among people who reasonably disagree about the nature of the human good and the proper basis of political society. Challenging both the classical liberalism of Locke, Kant, and Mill, and more recent theories of political realism proposed by Bernard Williams and others, Larmore argues for a version of political liberalism that is centered on political legitimacy rather than on social justice, and that aims to be well suited to our times rather than universally valid. Forceful and thorough yet concise, What Is Political Philosophy? proposes a new definition of political philosophy and demonstrates the profound implications of that definition. The result is a compelling and distinctive intervention from a major political philosopher. (shrink)

Institutional review board delays may hinder the successful completion of federally funded research in the U.S. military. When this happens, time-sensitive, mission-relevant questions go unanswered. Research participants face unnecessary burdens and risks if delays squeeze recruitment timelines, resulting in inadequate sample sizes for definitive analyses. More broadly, military members are exposed to untested or undertested interventions, implemented by well-intentioned leaders who bypass the research process altogether. To illustrate, we offer two case examples. We posit that IRB delays often appear in (...) the service of managing institutional risk, rather than protecting research participants. Regulators may see more risk associated with moving quickly than risk related to delay, choosing to err on the side of bureaucracy. The authors of this article, all of whom are military-funded researchers, government stakeholders, and/or human subject protection experts, offer feasible recommendations to improv... (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume all explore the problem of the relation between moral philosophy and modernity. Charles Larmore addresses this problem by attempting to define the way distinctive forms of modern experience should orientate our moral thinking. Charles Larmore wonders whether the dominant forms of modern philosophy have not become blind to important dimensions of the moral life. The book argues against recent attempts to return to the virtue-centered perspective of ancient Greek ethics. As well as (...) exploring the differences between ancient and modern ethics, the author examines such topics as the roles of reason and history in our moral understanding, the inadequacy of philsophical naturalism, and the foundations of modern liberalism. There are also extended discussions of a number of leading contemporary philosophers: Rawls, Habermas, Williams and Rorty. (shrink)

George Santayana published The Realm of Matter and The Genteel Tradition at Bay. He continued work on Book Three of Realms of Being, The Realm of Truth, and on his novel, The Last Puritan. Citing his commitment to his writing and his intention to retire from academia, he declined offers from Harvard University for the Norton Chair of Poetry and for a position as William James Professor of Philosophy, as well as offers for positions at the New School for (...) Social Research and Brown University. The deaths of his half sisters, Susan Sturgis de Sastre and Josephine Sturgis, in 1928 and 1930, respectively, were extremely distressing to him. Santayana and Charles Strong continued their epistolary debate over the nature and perception of reality and the problem of knowledge. The book also includes letters to Robert Bridges, Cyril Clemens, Morris R. Cohen, Curt John Ducasse, Sydney Hook, Horace Meyer Kallen, Walter Lippmann, Ralph Barton Perry, William Lyon Phelps, and Herbert W. Schneider. Santayana sent many letters with articles and reviews to journalists Wendell T. Bush, Henry Seidel Canby, Wilbur Cross, and John Middleton Murry. Discussion of his novel and continuing work on Realms of Being took place with Otto Kyllmann and John Hall Wheelock, his editors at Constable and Scribner's. Although Santayana now made the Hotel Bristol in Rome his permanent residence, he continued to travel in England, France, and Italy. (shrink)

There are deep and pervasive disagreements today in universities and colleges, and popular culture in general, over the credibility and value of belief in God. This has given rise to an urgent need for a balanced, comprehensive, accessible resource book that can inform the public and scholarly debate over theism. While scholars with as diverse interests as Daniel Dennett, Terry Eagleton, Richard Dawkins, Jürgen Habermas, and Rowan Williams have recently contributed books to this debate, "theism" as a concept remains poorly (...) understood and requires a more thorough and systematic analysis than it has so far received in any single volume. _The Routledge Companion to Theism_ addresses this need by investigating theism's history as well as its relationship to inquiry in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and to its wider cultural contexts. The contents are not confined within the philosophy of religion or even within the more expansive borders of philosophy. Rather, _The Routledge Companion to Theism_ investigates its subject through the lens of a wide variety of disciplines and explores the ramifications of theism considered as a way of life as well as an intellectual conviction. The five parts of the volume indicate its inclusive scope: I. What is Theism?; II. Theism and Inquiry; III. Theism and the Socio-Political Realm; IV. Theism and Culture; V. Theism as a Way of Life. The result is a well ordered and thorough collection that should provide a wide spectrum of readers with a better understanding of a subject that's much discussed, but frequently misunderstood. As the editors note in their Introduction, while stimulating and informing the contemporary debate, a key aim of the volume is to open new avenues of inquiry into theism and thereby to encourage further research into this vital topic. Comprised of 54 essays by leading scholars in philosophy, history, theology, religious studies, political science, education and sociology, _The Routledge Companion to Theism_ promises to be the most useful, comprehensive resource on an emerging subject of interest for students and scholars. (shrink)

We defend the guise of the good thesis in a tradition going back to Socrates and Plato, according to which persons act on the basis of what appears to them as good or the least bad or evil act available to them. This seems contrary to moral experience, but we defend the thesis against plausible counter-examples in life as well as fiction. We contend that the thesis makes wrong-doing and vice intelligible, but still wrong, dysfunctional and horrific.

Book Three of George Santayana's letters covers a period of intense intellectual activity in Santayana's life, and the correspondence reflects the establishment of his mature philosophy. Santayana becomes more permanently established in Italy, but continues to travel in France, Spain, and England. The year 1927 marks the beginning of his long friendship with Daniel Cory, who became his literary secretary and eventually his literary executor. Also, with the death of Santayana's half-brother Robert, George Sturgis, Robert's son, becomes an important part (...) of Santayana's life and letters as his financial manager. Santayana continues to write to his sister Susana, as well as to numerous friends and fellow philosophers, including Bernard Berenson, Robert Seymour Bridges, Curt John Ducasse, John Erskine, Horace Meyer Kaller, Lewis Mumford, George Herbert Palmer, John Francis Stanley Russell, Herbert Wallace Schneider, Charles Augustus Strong, Paul Weiss, and Harry Austryn Wolfson. Other correspondents include Wendell T. Bush, Alys Gregory, Marianne Moore, John Middleton Murray, and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge. (shrink)

Much current theorizing about literature involves efforts to renew our sense of aesthetic values in reading. Such is the case with new formalism as well as recent appeals to the notion of “surface reading.” While sympathetic to these efforts, Charles Altieri believes they ultimately fall short because too often they fail to account for the values that engage literary texts in the social world. In Reckoning with the Imagination, Altieri argues for a reconsideration of the Kantian tradition of Idealist (...) ethics, which he believes can restore much of the power of the arguments for the role of aesthetics in art. Altieri finds a perspective for that restoration in a reading of Wittgenstein’s later work that stresses Wittgenstein’s parallel criticisms of the spirit of empiricism. Altieri begins by offering a phenomenology of imagination, because we cannot fully honor art if we do not link it to a distinctive, socially productive force. That force emerges in two quite different but equally powerful realizations in his reading of John Ashbery’s “Instruction Manual,” which explicitly establishes a model for a postromantic view of imagination, and William Butler Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan.” He then turns to Wittgenstein with chapters on the role of display as critique of Enlightenment thinking, the honoring of qualities like sensitivity and the ability to attune to the actions of others, the role of expression in the building of models, and the contrast between ethical and confessional modes of judgment. Finally, Altieri produces his own model of aesthetic experience as participatory valuation and makes an extended argument for the social significance of appreciation as a way to escape the patterns of resentment fundamental to our current mode of politics. A masterful work by one of our foremost literary and philosophical theorists, Reckoning with the Imagination will breathe new life into ongoing debates over the value of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Inference That Makes Science. By ERNAN McMULLIN. The Aquinas Lecture, 1992. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1992. Pp. iv +112. In this ambitious lecture Father Ernan McMullin recapitulates and refines a thesis that has guided his thought for the past forty years. In essence the thesis is this: precisely how science is made has eluded the best minds for centuries, and only in the work of (...) class='Hi'>Charles Sanders Peirce, suitably emended by McMullin, has the puzzle finally been solved. " Retroduction " is the inference that makes science. Once this is understood, errors on what constitutes scientific method-those of Aristotle, Aquinas, Galileo, Newton, Bacon, Hume, et al.-can be rectified and one can see science for what it truly is: a complex process of theory appraisal that yields, not definitive truth, but well-established results to which assent can be given with at best "practical certainty," whatever that might be (pp. 91-96). Why McMullin should have chosen such a theme for an Aquinas Lecture is a question that defies reasonable answer. Surely one does not have to he so negative about the thought of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Galileo to advance one's ideas about science in the present day. What McMullin could easily have done, and he hints at this in the last two paragraphs of his lecture (pp. 97-98), is show how retroduction is itself simply a relaxed version of the demonstrative regress, the method actually endorsed by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Galileo. Such a retroductive version, fair enough, yields knowledge of a probable cause, the type of knowledge most typical of modern science. McMullin did not have to embark on the dangerous course of trying to prove that proof and certainty are forever beyond the grasp of science, or that never in the history of science has anyone established a definitive truth. That, in effect, is what McMullin has tried to do, and in the attempt to make the point he fumbles at almost every juncture throughout a very long lecture. To set the record straight more than a review is being re--·quested; perhaps a book, and even that might not suffice for those whose minds are made up. To understand the import of the lecture one must appreciate that it is hut a brief episode in a debate over demonstration in science that has been going on since McMullin first came to the University of Notre Dame in 1954. I myself have published many hooks and articles that engage the very point of his lecture and provide the contra evidence to 131 132 BOOK REVIEWS show elements of continuity in scientific method from Aristotle to the present. My last two volumes, in press at the same time as McMullin's Aquinas Lecture, answer in detail the aporiai he there raises.1 I need 1 Galileo's Logic of Discovery and Proof. The Backgrnund, Content, and Use of His Appropriated Treatises on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 137. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992, xxiii + 323 pp.; Galileo's Logical Treatises. A Translation, with Notes and Commentary, of His Appropriated Questions on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 138. DordrechtBoston -London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992, xix + 239 pp. only refer the interested reader to them for an extended and documented reply to his arguments. Some idea of the flavor of our debate, however, can be gained from the following. To support his thesis, McMullin has to maintain that Aristotle's proof that the moon is a sphere (from its having phases) and that Galileo's proofs that there are mountains on the moon, that Jupiter has satellites, and that Venus circles the sun (all based on telescopic observations) are not strictly demonstrative, that is, they do not yield true and certain conclusions. He declines to answer a query I have often tendered whether he personally is certain on the basis of pre-spacecraft evidence that the moon is a sphere, that there are mountains on it, that Jupiter has satellites, and so on. Instead he offers the categorical response "that planetary science is not an apodictic science, indeed that no natural science is... (shrink)

A barrier to the development and refinement of ethics education in and across health professional schools is that there is not an agreed upon instrument or method for assessment in ethics education. The most widely used ethics education assessment instrument is the Defining Issues Test (DIT) I & II. This instrument is not specific to the health professions. But it has been modified for use in, and influenced the development of other instruments in, the health professions. The DIT contains certain (...) philosophical assumptions (“Kohlbergian” or “neo-Kohlbergian”) that have been criticized in recent years. It is also expensive for large institutions to use. The purpose of this article is to offer a rubric—which the authors have named the Health Professional Ethics Rubric—for the assessment of several learning outcomes related to ethics education in health science centers. This rubric is not open to the same philosophical critiques as the DIT and other such instruments. This rubric is also practical to use. This article includes the rubric being advocated, which was developed by faculty and administrators at a large academic health science center as a part of a campus-wide ethics education initiative. The process of developing the rubric is described, as well as certain limitations and plans for revision. (shrink)

Listen to the interview with Brian Kemple... and learn to appreciate the diachronic trajectory of semiotics. *** Live interview with Brian Kemple, Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute, to discuss the legacy and influence of John Deely (1942-2017), the thinker most responsible for developing semiotics into the 21st century. This interview, conducted by William Passarini (Mansarda Acesa) and Tim Troutman (Lyceum Institute), is part of the preliminary activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John (...) Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project. Brian Kemple holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St. Thomas, in Houston TX, where he wrote his dissertation under the inimitable John Deely. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute (https://lyceum.institute). Philosophical interests and areas of study include: Thomas Aquinas, John Poinsot, Charles Peirce, Martin Heidegger, the history and importance of semiotics, scholasticism, phenomenology; as well as ancillary interests in the liberal arts, technology, and education as a moral habit. He has published two scholarly books— 'Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition' (Brill: 2017) and 'The Intersections of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue' (De Gruyter: 2019), as well as a number of scholarly articles, popular articles, and his own 'Introduction to Philosophical Principles: Logic, Physics, and the Human Person' (2019) and the forthcoming 'Linguistic Signification: A Classical Course in Grammar and Composition' (2021). In addition to being the Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute, he is the Executive Editor of 'Reality: a Journal for Philosophical Discourse' (https://realityjournal.org/). *** Technical support was assured by Robert Junqueira and the cover image for the video was designed by Zahra Soltani. (shrink)

“The object of this book,” writes William C. Dowling in his preface, “is to make the key concepts of Paul Ricoeur’s _Time and Narrative_ available to readers who might have felt bewildered by the twists and turns of its argument.” The sources of puzzlement are, he notes, many. For some, it is Ricoeur’s famously indirect style of presentation, in which the polarities of argument and exegesis seem so often and so suddenly to have reversed themselves. For others, it is (...) the extraordinary intellectual range of Ricoeur’s argument, drawing on traditions as distant from each other as Heideggerian existentialism, French structuralism, and Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Yet beneath the labyrinthian surface of Ricoeur’s _Temps et récit_, Dowling reveals a single extended argument that, though developed unsystematically, is meant to be understood in systematic terms. __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative_ _presents that argument in clear and concise terms, in a way that will be enlightening both to readers new to Ricoeur and those who may have felt themselves adrift in the complexities of _Temps et récit,_ Ricoeur’s last major philosophical work. Dowling divides his discussion into six chapters, all closely involved with specific arguments in _Temps et récit_: on mimesis, time, narrativity, semantics of action, poetics of history, and poetics of fiction. Additionally, Dowling provides a preface that lays out the French intellectual context of Ricoeur's philosophical method. An appendix presents his English translation of a personal interview in which Ricoeur, having completed _Time and Narrative, _looks back over his long career as an internationally renowned philosopher. __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative___ _communicates to readers the intellectual excitement of following Ricoeur’s dismantling of established theories and arguments—Aristotle and Augustine and Husserl on time, Frye and Greimas on narrative structure, Arthur Danto and Louis O. Mink on the nature of historical explanation—while coming to see how, under the pressure of Ricoeur’s analysis, these ideas are reconstituted and revealed in a new set of relations to one another. "The scholarship in William C. Dowling's __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative____ __is impeccable; Dowling knows Ricoeur inside out. He highlights Ricoeur's most important arguments, presents them in a limpid, concise language, and links them to the relevant nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophical developments. Dowling's book provides us with a lucid, intelligible version of Ricoeur's major work, one that will be of considerable significance to philosophers, historians, and literary theorists." —_Thomas Pavel, Gordon J. Laing Distinguished Service Professor of French Literature, and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago_ "William C. Dowling's __Ricoeur on Time and Narrative___ _is a subtle and remarkably well-sustained piece of work. It provides a detailed introduction to a major work of philosophy and narrative theory—already a considerable achievement, given the difficulty of Ricoeur's text. However, Dowling also shows us, sometimes explicitly, sometimes simply through the way he conducts his argument, why we should bother with Ricoeur—what we have to gain from knowing him better than we do, however well we may think we know him." —_Michael Wood, Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University _. (shrink)

Recently, the nature of science (NOS) has become recognized as an important element within the K-12 science curriculum. Despite differences in the ultimate lists of recommended aspects, a consensus is emerging on what specific NOS elements should be the focus of science instruction and inform textbook writers and curriculum developers. In this article, we suggest a contextualized, explicit approach addressing one core NOS aspect: the human aspects of science that include the domains of creativity, social influences and subjectivity. To illustrate (...) these ideas, we have focused on Charles Darwin, a scientist whose life, work and thought processes were particularly well recorded at the time and analyzed by scholars in the succeeding years. Historical facts are discussed and linked to core NOS ideas. Creativity is illustrated through the analogies between the struggle for existence in human societies and in nature, between artificial and natural selection, and between the division of labor in human societies and in nature. Social influences are represented by Darwin’s aversion of criticism of various kinds and by his response to the methodological requirements of the science of that time. Finally, subjectivity is discussed through Darwin’s development of a unique but incorrect source for the origin of variations within species. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging by Gilbert MeilaenderCharles L. Kammer IIIShould We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging Gilbert Meilaender grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2013. 135 pp. $18.00.Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging provides a helpful focus on both aging and research being done to extend human life expectancy. As Gilbert Meilaender notes, human beings have always longed for an (...) extended as well as a more generative life span. He raises the question, however, of whether these two desires stand in opposition. Built into our very biology is the “survival instinct,” along with the imaginative ability to transcend our biological limits. Together they generate a religious legacy of imagining life after death. But Meilaender believes we have moved into a different time. Citing John Gray, he asserts that “the hope of life after death has been replaced by the faith that death can be defeated” (xi).Meilaender presents scientific research on antiaging while observing that there is little cultural reflection on its impacts or desirability. This book steps in to provide a reflection on these larger questions from the perspective of the virtues, or what constitutes a truly “good and human” life. As the author notes, our reflections on aging and immortality are tied to our assumptions of what it means to be human. This is evident, for example, among members of the transhumanist movement, which envisions a human brain freed from dependence on a biological body. He surmises that our scientific quest for immortality may have its roots in the human quest to overcome contingency and its associated anxiety; it is in many ways the embodiment of our wish to be “gods” who have total control over our destinies.Meilaender uses classic and modern Western philosophers and theologians (including Aristotle, Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karl Barth) as well as the work of life-stage theorists (Erik Erikson and Bernard Williams) who contribute to the discussion of what constitutes a “fully human life.” Would biological immortality make a life more fully human, or is it rooted in a crass form of narcissism that makes our own survival more important than the needs and perhaps even the possibility of future generations?The book closes with a brief conversation between three friends who represent different perspectives, a useful discussion tool for raising the deeper issues presented in the book. According to the first view, we are biological organisms with prescribed natural limits; fulfillment therefore comes through accepting and finding provisional fulfillment in each of our life stages. The [End Page 216] second perspective sees human freedom and reason as the fundamental characteristics of being human and so advocates expanding life expectancy and following wherever human creativity leads. The third observes that we are constrained by our biology and yet are also free, both bound and transcendent. This perspective, however, notes that what we truly desire is not an indefinite extension of life but something richer and fuller that transcends any possibility that humans can create. Our longing is not actually a desire for more but a desire for something other than what continued existence can provide.Meilaender’s engagement of the deeper questions presented by the scientific attempt to “cure” aging and extend life indefinitely is, finally, a powerful Christian apologetic that is nevertheless respectful of other positions. If the book has a limitation, it lies in the failure to engage non-Western traditions that perceive and address the issues from much different frameworks. It also does not address the possibility that perhaps being human is to live with the awareness and resignation that, while we have a deep desire for something qualitatively fuller and richer, this is a longing that can never be fulfilled.Charles L. Kammer IIIThe College of WoosterCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

My intention in this essay is to open up a question I cannot fully resolve: the relationship between democracy and value pluralism. By “value pluralism” I mean the view propounded so memorably by the late Isaiah Berlin and developed in various ways by thinkers including Stuart Hampshire, Steven Lukes, Thomas Nagel, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Stocker, Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, John Kekes, and John Gray, among others. I shall define and discuss this view in some detail in Section III. For (...) now, suffice it to say that value pluralism is the view that what we (rightly) value in our lives turns out to be multiple, heterogeneous, not reducible to a common measure, and not hierarchically ordered with a single dominant value or set of values binding on all persons in all circumstances. I use the phrase “value pluralism” rather than “moral pluralism” to indicate that this view encompasses nonmoral as well as moral goods. (shrink)

The title of this book, __Leibniz's Mill__, is taken from Leibniz's famous metaphor in support of a dualism between the mind, or self, and the body. Given that Descartes constructed the most famous defense of mind/body dualism, the first chapter is a basic exposition and defense of Descartes' arguments, as well as Leibniz's supporting argument. Charles Landesman's basic claim, argued with clarity and philosophical precision, is that dualism is to be preferred to materialism; namely, the self is not reducible (...) to the body, mental processes are not reducible to brain processes, and the idea that the self is a mental substance constitutes the best understanding of all the facts of mental life. Landesman takes up the central philosophical topics on the nature of the self and the mind in arguing that dualism is a defensible position, even if our mental life is dependent in some respects on the body. Dependency is not the same as identity. Nor should one deny that many bodily events are dependent upon states of mind. He examines our knowledge of other minds, the mind's knowledge of itself, and Descartes' famous argument "I think, therefore I am"; efforts by philosophers such as Hume, Nietzsche, William James, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger to deny the reality of a substantial ego; the mind's way of knowing of the physical world, with its "great deception of sense"; and finally, the teleological structure of human action and the problem of free will. Landesman argues that the dualism of mind and body is perfectly compatible with modern science and that, contrary to the claims of many philosophers, there is no reason to hold that science presupposes a naturalistic or materialistic framework. "Charles Landesman shows that Cartesian mind-body dualism is alive and well and more plausible than its naturalistic and materialistic competitors. This is a first-rate piece of work that will be of real interest to philosophers and educated readers with interests in the philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, and epistemology. It should find a large readership among those who are looking for an alternative to the physicalist perspective that has long dominated the academy." --_Stewart Goetz, Ursinus College_ "Charles Landesman writes effortlessly, conveying to readers a rich alternative to today's mainline forms of materialism. This is a book that is comparable to Richard Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_ or Roderick M. Chisholm's _Person and Object: A Metaphysical Study_. Like the former, it is historical and substantial, like the latter it is unapologetic in advancing with clear arguments an under-represented position." --_Charles Taliaferro, St. Olaf College _. (shrink)

Is the history of philosophy primarily a contribution to PHILOSOPHY or primarily a contribution to HISTORY? This paper is primarily contribution to history (specifically the history of New Zealand) but although the history of philosophy has been big in New Zealand, most NZ philosophers with a historical bent are primarily interested in the history of philosophy as a contribution to philosophy. My essay focuses on two questions: 1) How did New Zealand philosophy get to be so good? And why, given (...) that is so good (a point I am at pains to establish), has it apparently had so slight a cultural impact within New Zealand itself? Did we get the wrong Anderson – the uninspiring William, who was Professor at Auckland, rather than his talented younger brother John, who had such a huge cultural influence as Professor of Philosophy at Sydney? Perhaps but that can only be part of the story since we managed to attract even bigger stars, (notably Karl Popper) as well as breeding bigger talents of our own (Prior, Baier, Bennett, Mulgan, Hursthouse, Waldron and many more). Do we export our best talent? Sometimes – but the stars that stay and the stars who arrive don’t seem to have much impact in New Zealand itself however brightly they shine in the international philosophical firmament. Is it too esoteric? Perhaps, but esoteric philosophy can still have a cultural impact, witness, Moore, Popper and the younger Anderson. Is it, like many of New Zealand’s cultural products (from romance novels to movies), primarily intended for an international audience? That’s a large part of the answer but only a part. Another part of the answer is that philosophy HAS had a cultural impact but that impact is not readily apparent. For NZ philosophers have been less keen to push their ideological barrows and more keen to produce critical thinkers, and critical thinkers don’t all think alike. The logician George Hughes was apparently a life-changing teacher not because he had a nostrum but because he taught people to think. As one of his students said ‘the only ism you believe in is the syllogism’. On the whole the history of New Zealand Philosphy is a ‘From Log Cabin to White House’ tale, ‘From colonial obscurity through struggle and adversity to philosophical excellence’. But there are shadows in the picture. Some departments have nearly come to grief through bureaucratic and political misadventures, and it is hard to resist the suspicion that there is often an element of hostility to philosophers on the part of both university bureaucrats and fellow-academics. I speculate as to why this is the case (we are too argumentative and don’t confine our argumentative tendencies to the cloister) but conclude with some upbeat reflections. on the future of New Zealand Philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL USES OF DISCOURSE IN THE REPRESENTATION OF GOD IN HIS SEMINAL work on the theory of signs, Charles Morris affirms that human beings are " the dominant sign-using animals" and that" the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs-if indeed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning." 1 By means of acculturation we learn to use and interpret signs, both linguistic (...) and non-linguistic; and by virtue of these capacities we can appropriately designate the human animal as homo symbolicus, homo loquens, and homo sapiens. Indeed, all forms of human culture presuppose the ability to use and interpret signs, including that form of human culture which leads us to speak of ourselves as homo religious. Over the years I have come to understand and speak of religion as a community with its cultus. There is the community, be it triba1, national, or universal with its polity or structure and ongoing history; and there is the cultus with its organic system of linguistic and nonlinguistic signs, encompassing ·such elements as stories, creeds, scriptures, doctrines, theologies, confessions, prayers, chants, songs, rites, rituals, sacraments, artifacts, etc. Like any other cultural system, scheme or network of signs one can characterize a religious cultus as an inter -subjective set of signs whose usage is determined by the implicit or explicit rules that govern the relations of signs to each other; the relations of the signs to the objects which the signs designate or denote, or stand for in some way; and the relations of signs to the users or interpreters of these signs and to those who are affected by these signs in some way. 1 Charles W. Morris, FoundatioJi of the Theory of Signs, in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, No. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), p. L 6~7 628 WILLIAM L. POWER: Given this understanding of community and cultus, one can describe a religion as an organized group of socially interdependent human beings which uses or employs ·a system of linguistic and nonlinguistic signs to represent reality in its various modalities and mixtures of good and evil and to affect human ways of life on the basis of that representation. Altering the terminology somewhat, one could say that a religious community uses its cultus to proclaim, enact, and display a comprehensive worldview.and to form and tr:msform the ethospathos of human beings in their solidarity and solitude. Expressed semiotically, there is the system of signs of a particular community, the intended signification of these signs, and the significance of these signs for those who use and are affected by them. What distinguishes a religion from other forms of human culture is that a rel·igious cultuml sy•stem or a religious community with its cultus is primarily concerned with ultimate or supreme reality or with that which is divine, holy, or sacred and that reality's bearing on and relevance for human life and well-being. In short, a religion is a cultural system which functions to map the whole of re.ality and to acculturate in desirable ways or to civilize. If a religion is a cultural system, then one can identify three distinct yet inseparably related dimensions of every religion. There is 1) the cultural dimension consisting of the interrelruted signs, symbols and expressions of a cultus; 2) the reality and value dimension consisting of the ontological and axiological purport of the cultus; and 3) the experiential dimension consisting of the existential import of the cultus. It is this thioo dimension which has led many in the past and in the present to speak of religion as piety, consciousness of things divine, ultimate concern, religiousness, etc. In the tradition of Peircian semiotics, one can speak of these three dimensions as the syntactic, semantic, and praigmatic dimensions of a religion; and they can be analyzed and studied with the aid of syntactics or syntax, semantics, and pr:agmatics, which as a unity LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL USES OF DISCOURSE 629 constitute the discipline of semiotics. As Peirce recognized, modem semiotics is continuous with the Medieval trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric-the semiotics of almost a millennium a;go... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 155 Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later. By JANET SMITH. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. xvi + 425. $42.95 hardcover; $17.95 paper. This is an ambitious and important study. I will first offer an overview of the volume to indicate its scope and note some of its major features. I will then respond briefly to some of the major criticisms Smith makes of (...) the argument against contraception advanced by Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and myself. The work contains 8 chapters and 4 appendices. Chapters 3 and 4, as Smith says, "provide an analysis of Humanae Vitae itself and thus constitute the heart of the hook" (p. xi). Since this is so I will first summarize briefly Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 and then center atten· tion on the two central chapters and the four appendices. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the context for Humanae Vitae. The first chapter is devoted largely to an account of the so-called " Minority " and "Majority" documents of the Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth Rate, while the second seeks to summarize Catholic teaching on Christian marriage prior to the encyclical. This summary draws principally from Pius XI's Casti Connubii and from nn. 47-52 of Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes. Smith takes up in some detail the issue of the" primacy" of procreation, concluding that Gaudium et Spes " seems to sidestep " this issue which, in her judgment, is irrelevant to the question of contraception. She thinks that this central document of Vatican II sent " mixed signals " on the question of contraception, although she believes that several passages " can very plausibly he read to support the position that contraception is portrayed as a violation not only of the procreative good of marriage hut also of the values of conjugal love" (p. 66). Chapter 5 deals with a wide range of theological issues: the biblical foundations for the teaching found in Humanae Vitae, the relevance of the concept of munus for this teaching, the possibility of acting " in good conscience " in a way contrary to its teaching, and the infallibility of the teaching. Of special value is the extended discussion of the con· cept expressed by the Latin term munus. Smith examines the rich meaning of this term in several magisterial documents, including Gaudium et Spes as well as Humanae Vitae. While a munus implies duties, it is essentially a noble, honor-bringing "gift" or "reward," signifying a vocation and sublime honor. Paul VI, in developing the integral vision of marriage in his encyclical, uses this concept to show that God, in giving to spouses the munus of handing on new life, has conferred on them the honor of sharing with him in the work of bring· 156 BOOK REVIEWS ing new life into the world. Smith shows beautifully how the rich theological meaning of this term helps " illuminate and enrich " the teaching of the encyclical. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate the arguments presented by dissenting theologians after Humanae Vitae to justify their repudiation of its teaching. In Chapter 6 Smith considers the views of Charles Curran and Bernard Haering, while in Chapter 7 she examines the proportionalist approach to moral issues developed by Joseph Fuchs, Richard McCormick and others. She provides intelligent criticism both of Curran and Haering and of proportionalist thought, focusing on the repudiation of specific moral absolutes. In Chapter 8 Smith provides a very helpful summary of Pope John Paul II's understanding of the human person, human sexuality and marriage. In particular, she takes up his notion that in marriage and in the act proper rto it man and woman make a " gift " of themselves to one another. Simultaneously to choose to give themselves to each other in the marital act and to contracept is then seen to involve an inner contradiction, a falsification of the " language of the body " (pp. 230258 ). Smith also takes up some of the major criticisms levelled against John Paul II's thought, in particular Lisa Sowle Cahill's, which charges him with an overromantic view of love and a failure to recognize that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Existence and the Good: Metaphysical Necessity in Morals and Politics by Franklin I. GamwellWilliam MeyerExistence and the Good: Metaphysical Necessity in Morals and Politics FRANKLIN I. GAMWELL Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011. 219 pp. $24.95In the current era, a few prominent philosophers have called into question the antiteleological tendencies of modern thought. For instance, Thomas Nagel argues that we should reject the antiteleology of science (...) and its “comprehensive, speculative world picture” of “reductive materialism” (Mind and Cosmos, Oxford 2012, 4). As a nontheist, Nagel proposes a “natural teleology” as a secular alternative to theism and to the nonteleology of science as a way to offer a more intelligible and holistic understanding of existence; yet he admits at one point: “Without God, it is unclear what we should aspire to harmony with” (Secular Philosophy & the Religious Temperament, Oxford 2010, 6). With less notoriety but with greater insight, Franklin Gamwell challenges not only modernity’s nonteleology but also its postmetaphysical outlook. By developing a neoclassical or process form of metaphysical theism informed by the works of Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead, Gamwell spells out with thoughtful clarity what we should aspire to harmonize with in our individual and collective lives.Focusing on moral and political theory, Gamwell demonstrates that a coherent understanding of ethics (The Divine Good: Modern Moral Theory and the Necessity of God, HarperSanFrancisco, 1990) and politics (Democracy on Purpose: Justice and the Reality of God, Georgetown University Press, 2000) presupposes a neoclassical metaphysical teleology. Here, in Existence and the Good, he offers [End Page 228] a more concise, refined, and integrated formulation of these previous arguments as well as new engagements with important thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and Jeffrey Stout.Gamwell pursues metaphysics in both a “strict” and a “broad” sense: the former refers to critical reflection on the most general characteristics of existence as such, while the latter refers to reflection on the necessary conditions of existence with understanding (17–19). Beginning with the former, he argues that metaphysics properly conceived––in terms of becoming rather than being––is a valid and essential enterprise because “something exists” is necessarily true while “nothing exists” cannot possibly be true (25). He then seeks to show that metaphysics in a broad sense includes metaphysics in the strict sense because existence with understanding necessarily presupposes a metaphysical telos. Toward this end, he engages Heidegger on the metaphysics of subjectivity (chap. 2). Whereas the later Heidegger maintains that all understandings of totality are wholly dependent upon some lifeworld, Gamwell counters that “totality is prior to meaning” because “exemplifications of subjectivity are constituted by prior or nonconscious relations to an order of actualities and possibilities” (49).In chapter 3 Gamwell explicates his neoclassical theism by arguing that the metaphysical telos must be an all-inclusive divine individual. Distinct from Hartshorne, he posits that God does not relate to the world merely in terms of an integration of all past actualities but rather “cooccupies the locus of all contemporaries.” Thus, all “worldly enactment localizes the divine” (90). Gamwell offers here a metaphysical version of incarnation: “Localization of the divine means relation to a becoming that cooccupies one’s place in the world and, therefore, means a communion unlike any other, so that God, we may say, is ‘closer than hands or feet.’ As the metaphysical individual, God is literally the one ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’” (92).Gamwell concludes by engaging Stout on the underlying necessity of metaphysics for democracy. Whereas Stout offers an “ethics without metaphysics” in the form of a “specific pragmatism,” which holds that citizens can coordinate actions on the basis of “moral norms [that] are entirely creatures of historically located social practices” (134), Gamwell maintains that democracy requires “a metaphysical pragmatism,” because “the practice of democratic discourse itself, as all human practices, implies the necessary principle or principles of morality” (146). The key distinction here is between implicit and explicit: Gamwell submits that democracy implicitly presupposes the divine metaphysical telos because that telos is rooted in the very character of reality as such. However, this does not mean that citizens must explicitly recognize or hold... (shrink)

In this article, I present a case for a kind of existential theology which would be philosophical and metaphysical, though not broadly Platonic and classical, and biblical though not illogical. What I present will be an attempt to clarify and justify what I call "existential hayatological theism". In so doing I will draw on insights from what Edmond La B Cherbonnier and Claude Tresmontant designated as "biblical philosophy" and "biblical metaphysics" as well as from the neo-classical philosophies of Charles (...) Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead, especially that of Whitehead. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Latin Aristotle Commentaries, V: Bibliography of Secondary Literature, and: Latin Aristotle Commentaries, I.2: Medieval Authors M–ZWilliam J. CourtenayCharles H. Lohr. Latin Aristotle Commentaries, V: Bibliography of Secondary Literature. Unione Accademica Nazionale, Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi, Subsidia XV. Florence: SISMEL–Editioni del Galluzzo, 2005. Pp. xiv + 567. Cloth, €90.00.Charles H. Lohr. Latin Aristotle Commentaries, I.2: Medieval Authors M–Z. Unione Accademica Nazionale, Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi, Subsidia XVIII. Florence: (...) SISMEL–Editioni del Galluzzo, 2010. Pp. xiii + 208. Cloth, €95.00.These two books are part of a series of volumes that will bring into final publication form one of the most significant scholarly achievements of the last half-century, Charles Lohr's inventory of the authors and manuscripts of Latin commentaries on the works of Aristotle up to 1650. The project began in the 1960s, and the initial results for the Middle Ages were published sequentially as articles in Traditio between 1967 and 1974, and the inventory for the period from 1500 to 1650 appeared in Studies in the Renaissance and Renaissance Quarterly between 1974 and 1981. The project was modeled along the lines of two great research tools achieved earlier in the twentieth century at Freiburg by Friedrich Stegmüller, namely his Repertorium Commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi (1947) and his Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi (1940–). Now, through the Unione Accademica Nazionale and SISMEL, both of Lohr's inventories in revised and expanded form are being published as stand-alone volumes. The first two that appeared were Latin Aristotle Commentaries, II: Renaissance Authors (Subsidia VI, 1988), followed by Latin Aristotle Commentaries, III: Index initiorum—index finium (Subsidia X, 1995). The two volumes being reviewed here are the next two installments.The first of these, the Bibliography of Secondary Literature, is a much-expanded version of Lohr's Commentateurs d'Aristote au moyen-âge latin: Bibliographie de la littérature secondaire récente, Vestigia 2 (Fribourg-Paris, 1988). The intent of that volume was, as the title indicates, to provide a list of the scholarly literature on Aristotelian commentaries since the publication of the articles in Traditio, as well as some older literature that had not been included earlier in the entries for each author. The present version of this work is more than twice as large as the 1988 version, adding books and articles that were missed in the earlier bibliographies as well as publications since 1986 (the cutoff date for the earlier edition). Moreover, the Commentateurs d'Aristote provided a bibliography only for medieval commentaries, while the new Bibliography of Secondary Literature begins with a section covering literature about translations of the works of Aristotle and their Wirkungsgeschichte, then [End Page 141] the section for the literature on medieval authors, and finally the section for bibliography on Renaissance authors.The organization of the bibliography for authors that have generated extensive literature is more complex than for the others. The longer bibliographies are divided into works concerned with biographical information and manuscripts; general accounts; and, depending on the contributions of a specific author, sections on logic, metaphysics, natural philosophy, and practical philosophy. Within each of these sections the literature is arranged by date of publication, moving from the older to the most recent (limited, of course, by the cutoff date at which this volume was prepared for publication, apparently around 2003). The principle of inclusion was broad, citing works that relate tangentially to the subject areas of Aristotelian philosophy mentioned. And although bibliographies of this kind should be made available on the Internet, where they can be continually expanded and updated, it is useful and pleasurable to have such a volume on the shelf at one's fingertips, particularly for those of us still attuned to a print culture.The other volume, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, I.2: M–Z, published in 2010, is the second half of the revised edition of medieval authors and their commentaries on Aristotle's works. Some bibliography is included here in the individual entries, but only what relates to the manuscripts. The entries consist of a brief biographical sketch of the author, followed by the list of commentaries (both extant and lost), each one with an... (shrink)

Be aware... and you will be mindful of a notable ambiguity in semiotics as well as of those who have masterfully strived to transcend it. This event, commented on by Elize Bisanz (Texas Tech University) and chaired by William Passarini (Institute for Philosophical Studies), is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty (...) of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project. *** Ionut Untea is currently a fellow-in-residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, in Stuttgart, where he is researching on the semioethic and aesthetic coordinates of the “social compact” and intercorporeal relationships. In 2021, he has taught a course entitled “Intercultural Philosophy: Semiotic Approaches and Aesthetic Themes” as a Visiting Professor at Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro. Since 2016, he has been teaching History of Western Philosophy and Semiotics at Southeast University, Nanjing. He previously taught at the University of La Rochelle, and was a postdoctoral fellow of the Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue (FIIRD) at the University of Geneva. He obtained his doctorate in 2013 at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), in Paris. He holds Romanian citizenship, having obtained his first degrees in philosophy and theology at the University of Bucharest. His focus is on the modern and contemporary intersections between semiotic, moral, political and religious thought. He has published recently “Peircean and Confucian Interpretations of Self-Development: Semiotic, Normative and Aesthetic Aspects,” Philosophy East and West 72.1: January 2022: 188–209. His recent work has appeared in academic journals such as The American Journal of Semiotics (2021), Semiotica (2021), Ethical Perspectives (2021, 2019), Philosophical Forum (2019), Journal of Aesthetic Education (2020), Politics and Religion (2019), The Monist (2018). *** Dr. Bisanz's education includes an MA (Philosophy) from the University of Lüneburg in Germany; Graduate Studies in Jacques Derrida's philosophy Seminars at l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; a Ph.D. (History of Communication Sciences) from the Technische University of Berlin; and a post-doc Habilitation Degree (Image Studies), from the University of Lüneburg. Bisanz has published several interdisciplinary books reflecting her educational background; these include a major European edition of Peirce's writings The Logic of Interdisciplinarity: Charles S. Peirce, The Monist Series (Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 2009), which was realized with the aid of research and publication grants from State and private endowments; Prolegomena to a Science of Reasoning: Phaneroscopy, Semeiotic, Logic, which is a collection of manuscripts by Peirce on reasoning (Peter Lang Publishers, Berlin, 2016); Overcoming the Iconic Turn: Cultural Concepts of Images [in German: Die Überwindung des Ikonischen: Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven der Bildwissenschaft] (transcript Verlag, Hamburg, 2010). Bisanz is a member of the advising board of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Semiotik and chair of the society's subdivision for Cultural Studies. Since her Fulbright scholarship in 2006 at Texas Tech University, Bisanz has been an active member of the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism. She has organized several international congresses dedicated to Peirce and interdisciplinary research. *** Homepage: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s Auditorium: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s/auditorium *** Technical support assured by Robert Junqueira. The cover image for the video was designed by Zahra Soltani. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a major revival of interest in the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Thinkers have looked to Kant's theories about knowledge, history, the moral self and autonomy, and nature and aesthetics to seek the foundations of their own political philosophy. This volume, written by established authorities on Kant as well as by new scholars in the field, illuminates the ways in which contemporary thinkers differ regarding Kantian philosophy and Kant's legacy to political and ethical theory. (...) The book contains essays by Patrick Riley, Lewis White Beck, Mary Gregor, and Richard L. Velkley that place Kant in the tradition of political philosophy; chapters by Dieter Henrich, Susan Shell, Michael W. Doyle, and Joseph M. Knippenberg that examine Kantian perspectives on history and politics; contributions by William A. Galston, Bernard Yack, William James Booth, and Ronald Beiner that judge the Kantian legacy; and classic discussions by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Hans-Georg Gadamer that present different perspectives on contemporary debates about Kant. (shrink)

In a recent article on Reid’s theory of single and double vision, James Van Cleve considers an argument against direct realism presented by Hume. Hume argues for the mind-dependent nature of the objects of our perception from the phenomenon of double vision. Reid does not address this particular argument, but Van Cleve considers possible answers Reid might have given to Hume. He finds fault with all these answers. Against Van Cleve, I argue that both appearances in double vision could be (...) considered visible figures of the object, and show how this solution might preserve Reid’s direct realism. However, this solution is not compatible with the single appearance of an object predicted by Reid’s theory of single and double vision. This consequence will appear evident once we consider the critique of Reid’s theory of single and double vision formulated by William Charles Wells (1757-1817). Wells argues that Reid’s theory is either incomplete or incompatible with other claims made by Reid. It is incomplete since it fails to specify the unique direction in which we the object in single vision; if it not incomplete and is compatible with the law of monocular direction given by Reid, then it is incompatible with Reid’s claim that we do not perceive immediately distance by sight. (shrink)

Henry Nelson Wieman’s most distinctive philosophical contributions are his identification of creative interchange as the ultimate process in human experience through which people and their institutions are able to create, sustain, improve, and cor­rect their value perspectives and, equally important, his description of creative inter­change in psychological, sociological, histor­ical, religious, and institutional contexts as subject inquiry and the experimental test of consequences. This massive collection, thirty-three orig­inal essays with an appendix and index, rep­resents the first formal attempt to consider fully (...) the interdisciplinary implications of creative interchange. Following an introduc­tion, the book is structured into six sections, beginning with historical studies on the de­velopment of Wieman’s philosophy of creativity. With this information as a base the subsequent five sections treat: _ _his metaphysics and theory of knowledge; _ _his the­ory of value; _ _creative interchange in the context of rhetoric and literary criticism; _ _creative interchange as a guide for social phi­losophy; and creative interchange as re­lated to current philosophic trends. The essayists include prominent philosophers, such as Charles Hartshorne, Lewis E._ _Hahn, and S. Morris Eames, as well as emerging scholars who have responded to Wieman’s conception of creative interchange. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:542 BOOK REVIEWS Forty years later, Pope Pius XI realized the atfaimpts of some writers to attribute the Church's social teaching on property to spurious sources when he wrote: Let this be noted particularly by those seekers after novelties who launch against the Church the odious calumny that she has allowed a pagan concept of ownership to creep into the teachings of her theologians and that another concept must (...) be substituted, which in their astounding ignorance they call ' Christian ' (Quadragesimo Anno 46). Benedictine College.Atchison, Kansas MATTHEW HABIGER, 0.S.B. Gods and the One God. By ROBERT M. GRANT. Vol. 1 of the Library of Early Christianity (Wayne A. Meeks, General Editor). Philadelphia : Westminster Press, 1986. Pp. 211. $18.95. No one is more qualified that Robert M. Grant to discuss the relations between early Christianity and ifa classieal environment. As, the author of two important introductions to the New Testament,.Augustus to Constantine, The Early Christian Doctrine of God, Early Christianity and Society, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, and much more, Grant brings the fruits of a lifetime of scholarship to his task. It is cause for special rejoicing that he has produced a book which the beginning student as well as the specialized scholar can read. In this review I want to raise some questions and make some criticisms, but let it be clear a,t the outset that this is an important and valuable book. Beginning with a discussion of the references to pagan religion in the Book of Acts, Grant then surveys how, around the time of Christ, many gods were moving from the East to Rome. A third chapter looks at attacks on idolatry in the New Testament and other early Christian texts. That analysis leads into discussions of the functions and myths of various classical deities and the philosophical views of God in the ancient world. Finally, a series of chapters begins with the Christian doctrine of God and then traces the dev,elopment of Christology from its beginnings through several centuries (with special emphasis on how that development took shape in Antioch) to the culminating formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Grant has always written in a spare, clean style most scholars can only envy; this is one of the reasons for the popularity in the classroom of his BOOK REVIEWS 548 introductions to the New Testament. That style makes this work suitable even for beginning s.tudents, though attention to such an audience's background seems uneven. For example, Justin Martyr gets clearly introduced: " The first significant Christian apologist was Justin Martyr, who wrote at Rome around the year 150" (p. 87). But two pages earlier we were suddenly reading about Philo without any sueh introduction, without even locating him in Alexandria. Again, one passage concludes with the statement that, "in the second and third centuries, all ran the risk of dynamistic or modalistic l\fonarchianism " (p. 111), and another refers to " a Spanish Priscillianist" (p. 151), but such terms are never defined. Theologically oriented readers may grow impatient with some chapters. Grant has the hisforian's passion for the clearly established fact. Thus his second chapter sets out at some length the evidence for the date of the first worship in or near Rome of the Baal of Sarepta, Asclepius, the Great Mother, Isis, Serapis, Dionysius, Mithras, and the God of Israel. Later on (pp. 114ff), Grant shows how many deities, not just Zeus, could take on the attributes of cosmic creator-the case is made for Apollo, Athena, Dionysius, Hermes, and Isis. In both cases, examples seem multiplied past the point where we learn anything of more than antiquarian importance. On the other hand, the survey of Greek philosophy begins with the pre-Socratics and then puzzlingly skips to the pseudo-Aristotelian On the Heavens and the writings of the middle Platonists. Appeals by others to Plato appear again and again in later chapters, but no.t an account of Plato's own views. Greek philosophy without Plato and Aristotle does seem a bit like Hamlet without the prince of Denmark. Useful as Grant's surveys are, moreover, the early chapters lack the overarching vision of Charles Cochrane... (shrink)

"Charles "Teenie" Harris photographed the events and daily life of African Americans for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation's most influential Black newspapers. From the 1930s to 1970s, Harris created a richly detailed record of public personalities, historic events, and the lives of average people. In 2001, Carnegie Museum of Art purchased Harris's archive of nearly 80,000 photographic negatives, few of which are titled and dated; the archive is considered one of the most important documentations of 20th?century African (...) American life. The book will serve as the definitive publication on the life and work of Teenie Harris, consisting of three significant essays: Cheryl Finley, assistant professor in the history of art at Cornell University, offers the first thorough analysis of Harris as an artist, situating him within the history of 20th?century African American art as well as American documentary and vernacular photography; Larry Glasco, associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, draws on new research to present a detailed biography of the photographer; and Joe Trotter, professor of history and social justice at Carnegie Mellon University, explores the social and historical context of Harris's photographs. The book will also include a foreword by Deborah Willis, professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. In addition to comparative illustrations within the essays, the book includes 100 plates of Harris's signature work and a complete bibliography and chronology"--. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the (...) works of Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1925 edition.

These two long essays make up, with "The Descent of the Dove," Williams' principal theological writing. With these books and with "The Figure of Beatrice" the reader is fully equipped for studying the religious thought of this brilliant poet, novelist, essayist and historian.

Discusses heaven, the Creation, forgiveness, vanity, the theology of romantic love, responsibility, and the life of Jesus.