In this collection, Stations on the Journey of Inquiry, David Burrell launches a revolutionary reinterpretation of how any inquiry proceeds, boldly critiquing presumptuous theories of knowledge, language, and ethics. While his later publications, Analogy and Philosophical Language (1973) and Aquinas: God and Action (1979), elucidate Aquinas's linguistic theology, these early writings show what often escapes articulation: how one comes to understanding and "takes" a judgment. Although Aquinas serves as an axial figure for Burrell's expansive corpus of scholarship spanning more than (...) fifty years, this selection of essays presents other positions and counterpositions to whom his own philosophical theology is beholden: Plato, Aristotle, Cajetan, Kant, Peirce, Moore, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Weiss, Ross, McInerny, and Lonergan. With renewed interest in philosophy of language by postmodern thinkers as well as in the wake of Mulhall's Stanton Lectures on Wittgenstein and "Grammatical Thomism," the publication of these formative writings proves timely for the academy at large. Burrell invites us to reconsider not only the way in which we conduct an inquiry, but what it is we take language to be and how we take responsibility for what we say. (shrink)

Stations: Listening to the Deep Earth is the essential listener's companion to Field Works' Stations album.

This paper compares the central theses of Edmund M. Pincoffs’s Quandaries and Virtues with those of F. H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies. Both Pincoffs and Bradley understand virtues and duties as functional in respect of the common good of the social order. Both reject the individualism of Kantian and utilitarian theories. Both believe that ordinary moral agents do not appeal to and do not need to appeal to the kinds of justification for action defended by such theories. It is argued that (...) the importance of these resemblances is partly disguised by the differences between Pincoffs’s and Bradley’s view. Pincoffs and Bradley are among those who, in the debates of modern moral philosophy, have recurrently defended an antitheoretical account against a variety of theorists. It is claimed that this debate is and must be inconclusive. (shrink)

This paper compares the central theses of Edmund M. Pincoffs’s Quandaries and Virtues with those of F. H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies. Both Pincoffs and Bradley understand virtues and duties as functional in respect of the common good of the social order. Both reject the individualism of Kantian and utilitarian theories. Both believe that ordinary moral agents do not appeal to and do not need to appeal to the kinds of justification for action defended by such theories. It is argued that (...) the importance of these resemblances is partly disguised by the differences between Pincoffs’s and Bradley’s view. Pincoffs and Bradley are among those who, in the debates of modern moral philosophy, have recurrently defended an antitheoretical account against a variety of theorists. It is claimed that this debate is and must be inconclusive. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick sought to interpret F.H. Bradley’s ethics, as presented in Ethical Studies, in fundamentally Aristotelian terms. Sidgwick “found it ‘natural’ to think of self-realization as the ‘realization or development into act of the potentialities constituting the definite formed character of an individual’.” In this paper, I want to demonstrate that, rather than giving the work of Bradley an Aristotelian interpretation, as Sidgwick sought to do, one should focus on studying the Hegelian influences on and the historicist aspects of Ethical (...) Studies. Bradley’s account of the self to be realized is far from approaching Aristotle’s account. First of all, Bradley never speaks in terms of actual and potential character, and he certainly would not accept Sidgwick’s claim that the potentialities constitute the definite formed character of an individual. There is nothing Aristotelian in Bradley’s talk of history and evolution, nor in his holistic doctrine of ethical relativism. (shrink)

To preach the LORD'S word is to administer God's relief for this world's cardiac sclerosis with the shock of healing grace.

Ce travail s’insère dans un projet intitulé « Le discours aux frontières du social », qui vise à analyser, dans des films documentaires, l’entrecroisement des différents matériaux en jeu dans ces productions. Pour comprendre comment se formule la critique sociale, j’ai choisi d’analyser deux documentaires ayant pour thème des conflits sociaux : Tereza (« Thérèse », qui met en scène la vie des détenus dans une prison de Campinas) et Boca de Lixo (« Décharge publique », qui présente la vie (...) de personnes qui habitent et travaillent dans les dépôts d’ordures). (shrink)

The long-awaited follow-up to Koller's bestselling chronicle of self-discovery An Unknown Woman outlines how Koller has used her personal philosophy to meet the challenges of everyday life and invites readers to make their own commitment to honest living. Topics include earning money, finding a home, mourning, and feeling good about living alone as well as with others.

Based primarily on his 1981-1982 course, The Hermeneutics of the Subject , I contend that Michel Foucault’s robust treatment of ancient models for self-salvation answers his systematic problem of a lost spiritual art of living primarily through a sustained dichotomy between the Hellenistic-Roman and Christian models of conversion. In this way his intended recovery of an aesthetic-ascetic spiritual “resistance” is accomplished through a methodology of resistance. He relies on an accelerating arrangement of polarities between the aim and practice of immanent (...) self-return and what he takes to be the coercive discourses of transcendent self-renunciation. Though such historiography may raise questions for some readers, my aim is simply to show how, for Foucault, the dichotomizing is necessary for grounding his own understanding of the art of ”conversion.”. (shrink)

Biological field stations proliferated in the Rocky Mountains region of the western United States during the early decades of the twentieth century. This essay examines these Rocky Mountain field stations as hybrid lab-field sites from the perspective of the field side of the dichotomy: as field sites with raised walls rather than as laboratories whose walls with the natural world have been lowered. Not only were these field stations transformed to be more like laboratories, but they were also embedded within (...) the particular regional environmental and institutional context of the Rocky Mountains. Using the University of Colorado’s Mountain Laboratory at Tolland and other contemporaneous sites as examples, this essay analyzes key features of these sites, including their location within transportation networks, buildings, equipment, personnel, scheduling, recreational and social activities, and other material and social practices on the ground. Considering both the distinctive and shared characteristics of the Rocky Mountain field stations in comparison to other types of field stations provides a more complete picture of the diversity and range of lab-field hybrid sites in the biological sciences in the early twentieth-century United States. (shrink)

Every July, when new resident physicians arrive at our teaching hospital, a colleague reminds them that “You now work in the train station of the gods. People coming and going all the time. You’ll need to ask spiritual questions.” He can offer this counsel annually because—whether it arrives early, as expected, or in error—every one of us is awaiting her departing train. Every few years, an experienced physician-writer offers counsel on what it means to work in these train stations, (...) to tend to people as they die in contemporary hospitals. The physician-writer often describes the equivalent of train wrecks—harried and heedless deaths—and sounds a call for reform. The call is answered, in part, by... (shrink)

Alexander Maconochie, the originator of the “Mark System”, is a major figure in the history of penal discipline and is best known for his attempt to implement it at the Norfolk Island penal station from 1840 to 1844. Among Maconochie’s many works is the eight-page “Comparison Between Mr. Bentham’s Views on Punishment, and Those Advocated in Connexion with the Mark System”, in which Maconochie rejected Bentham’s critique of transportation, as well as fundamental elements of his theory of punishment. Maconochie (...) concluded that mainstream thinking on penal discipline was dominated by “mistakes” that either “in great measure originat[ed] with Mr. Bentham”, or had been “at least sanctioned by his high authority”.This paper questions whether Maconochie’s rejection of Bentham’s views is entirely convincing, since his penal practices, as well as an earlier and lesser-cited work, indicate that Maconochie was, at times, considerably closer to Bentham’s position on punishment than “Comparison” suggests. Section I will provide some brief biographical background. Section II will explore Maconochie’s attempt to implement his reformative system at Norfolk Island, at the heart of which was surveillance and extensive record-keeping to monitor individual behaviour and progress, and in which there are echoes of Bentham’s panopticon scheme. Section III will examine Maconochie’s changing views on criminal transportation, from his adherence to the Benthamite anti-transportation line in 1818, to his qualified support for transportation from 1838 onwards. Finally, Section IV will examine the Mark System and Maconochie’s criticism of Bentham in more detail. (shrink)

This paper considers the implications of precautionary restrictions against technologies, in the context of the potential for creating and sustaining rumours. It focuses on the restriction against mobile phone use at petrol stations, based on the rumour that a spark might cause an explosion. Rumours have been substantiated by precautionary usage warnings from mobile phone manufacturers, petrol station usage restrictions, and a general lack of technical understanding. Petrol station employees have themselves spread the rumour about alleged incidents, filling (...) the information gap about the basis for the restriction. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley’s early essay “My Station and Its Duties” might as well have been entitled “The Philosopher’s Station and Its Duties.” The philosopher takes a god’s-eye view of man as finally realizing himself only in the philosophical consciousness of the Whole. Thus it is the philosopher’s duty to remind man qua man of this Whole as the ultimate determinant of all Duty. But, said Bradley, some-where between this ultimate on the one hand and the very local thing (...) called the family on the other is a man’s profession. This too is an ethereal or spiritual ‘organism’ within the all-inclusive one, with internal requirements of its own more special sort. I focus on this partial thing, attributing more autonomy to it than Bradley’s totalitarian view would tolerate. And the profession I select for anxious consideration is the teacher’s. It is the teacher’s station and its duties that are here my ultimate concern. What these duties have become is a serious matter, owing especially to recent techno-logical developments and what this is doing to people and to the things they live with, in our time. But the panacea I am going to recommend in this connection is rather the opposite of the one suggested by the numerous thinkers who are worried about this. (shrink)

I argue that, according to F. H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies, duties of our station are not morally obligatory unless they are required from an ideal point of view. I support my interpretation by showing that Bradley places the ideal point of view higher than the social and requires that what society demands from us is evaluated from that higher point of view. My argument relies on a detailed analysis of “my station and its duties”. The phrase must be (...) understood as a category that refers to different concepts throughout Ethical Studies, and embraces several theses, each involving a number of claims, only a few of which Bradley accepts. I argue that Bradley rejects the normative thesis of MSID theory that identifies moral obligation with social requirements because he finds bottom-up idealization unsatisfactory. Bradley’s inclusion of “my station and its duties” in the moral ideal must be understood as amounting to the claim that a positional duty is morally obligatory only when it is justified by the norms governing pre-institutionalised relationships. (shrink)

The shift from a welfarist to a retributivist perspective on crime, which is one of the themes of David Garland?s book, has brought with it a renewed emphasis on the victims of crime and their rights. This shift in emphasis, I suggest, raises questions about the way we think of the relationship between individual citizens and between citizens and the state. Different political theories will produce different accounts of this relationship and hence different ways of characterising the status and role (...) of victims in the criminal process. In this paper then I sketch a roughly communitarian view of the citizen relationship as a context for an account of the status of victims. Thus, I argue, we need to consider not just the expectations that victims rightly have that they have rights which should to be recognised in the criminal process but also their duties as participants. Duties which require them to bear witness in calling offenders to account. This gives victims an active role in the criminal process but one that may come at a price since it might require victims to be subjected to greater scrutiny in the process of a criminal trial than they might find bearable. (shrink)

This major publication is a history of the semantic tradition in philosophy from the early nineteenth century through its incarnation in the work of the Vienna Circle, the group of logical positivists that emerged in the years 1925-1935 in Vienna who were characterised by a strong commitment to empiricism, a high regard for science, and a conviction that modern logic is the primary tool of analytic philosophy. In the first part of the book, Alberto Coffa traces the roots of logical (...) positivism in a semantic tradition that arose in opposition to Kant's theory that a priori knowledge is based on pure intuition and the constitutive powers of the mind. In Part II, Coffa chronicles the development of this tradition by members and associates of the Vienna Circle. Much of Coffa's analysis draws on the unpublished notes and correspondence of many philosophers. The book, however, is not merely a history of the semantic tradition from Kant 'to the Vienna Station'. Coffa also critically reassesses the role of semantic notions in understanding the ground of a priori knowledge and its relation to empirical knowledge and questions the turn the tradition has taken since Vienna. (shrink)

This major publication is a history of the semantic tradition in philosophy from the early nineteenth century through its incarnation in the work of the Vienna Circle, the group of logical positivists that emerged in the years 1925–1935 in Vienna who were characterised by a strong commitment to empiricism, a high regard for science, and a conviction that modern logic is the primary tool of analytic philosophy. In the first part of the book, Alberto Coffa traces the roots of logical (...) positivism in a semantic tradition that arose in opposition to Kant's theory that a priori knowledge is based on pure intuition and the constitutive powers of the mind. In Part II, Coffa chronicles the development of this tradition by members and associates of the Vienna Circle. Much of Coffa's analysis draws on the unpublished notes and correspondence of many philosophers. The book, however, is not merely a history of the semantic tradition from Kant 'to the Vienna Station'. Coffa also critically reassesses the role of semantic notions in understanding the ground of a priori knowledge and its relation to empirical knowledge and questions the turn the tradition has taken since Vienna. (shrink)

The findings of the Archbishop's Council in their 2004 report, to the effect that traditional forms of church in Britain are under threat because of changing cultural patterns, emphasise the need to re-think church for our contemporary contexts. The 'Fresh Expressions of church' movement is one such initiative identified and approved of by the Archbishop's Council. This article reports on research undertaken in a practical theological interpretation of The Filling Station, a Christian ministry that has grown significantly in its (...) 10-year history and was formed as a missional endeavour in recognition of declining church attendance in traditional churches in Britain. This work explores whether The Filling Station is a Fresh Expression of church and whether it meets the values of authentic missional churches. In examining whether The Filling Station ought to be considered for import into appropriate local congregational contexts, it enquires whether it satisfactorily addresses prevailing social trends affecting churches, including consumerism and the need for identity. (shrink)

In the Stoics we find a combination of two perspectives which are commonly thought to conflict: the embedded perspective from within one's social context, and the universal perspective of the member of the moral community of rational beings. I argue that the Stoics do have a unified theory, one which avoids problems that trouble some modern theories which try to unite these perspectives.

More recently, grammaticalization theorists have become increasingly aware of the role of collocations in grammatical development. One of these roles is to define phonetic reductions and fusion in frequent collocations as constructionalization. Based on frequency of occurrences, the present study explores the implications of high-frequency collocations in Turkish Sign Language for grammaticalization and offers a novel account of constructional change of değİl ‘not’ on usage-based grounds. Specifically, the study suggests that (i) the chunking process is not language-specific within the spoken (...) modality, as noted previously in the literature, (ii) the frequency of collocations is strongly correlated with phonetic reduction and duration, (iii) the fusional characteristics of [sign + değİl] collocations can be classified under four reduced constructional schemas, (iv) the monosyllabicity of a scheme appears to be criterion for it to be productive in signed modality and (v) the semantic changes of frequent [sign + değİl] collocations are related to the notion of subjectification in TİD. (shrink)

In eukaryotes, the messenger RNA (mRNA), the blueprint of a protein‐coding gene, is processed and packaged into a messenger ribonucleoprotein particle (mRNP) by mRNA‐binding proteins in the nucleus. The steps of mRNP formation – transcription, processing, packaging, and the orchestrated release of the export‐competent mRNP from the site of transcription for nuclear mRNA export – are tightly coupled to ensure a highly efficient and regulated process. The importance of highly accurate nuclear mRNP formation is illustrated by the fact that mutations (...) in components of this pathway lead to cellular inviability or to severe diseases in metazoans. We hypothesize that efficient mRNP formation is realized by a molecular mRNP packaging station, which is built by several recruitment platforms and coordinates the individual steps of mRNP formation. (shrink)