The primary objective was to review pediatric ethics consultations at a large academic health center over a nine year period, assessing demographics, ethical issues, and consultant intervention. The secondary objective was to describe the evolution of PECs at our institution. This was a retrospective review of Consultation Summary Sheets compiled for PECs at our Academic Health Center between January 2008 and April 2017. There were 165 PECs reviewed during the study period. Most consult requests came from the inpatient setting, with (...) the Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Units being the highest utilizers. Consultation utilization increased over the study period. The most common patient age was less than one year. Physicians were most likely to request consultation. Patient Best Interest, Withholding/Withdrawing of Life Sustaining Therapy, and Provider Moral Distress were ethical issues most commonly identified by the consultants. Making recommendations was the most common consultant intervention. The ethics consultation process evolved over time from informal provider discussions, to a hospital infant care review committee, to a pediatric only consultation service, to a combined adult/pediatric consultation service, with variable levels of salary support for consultants. Ethics consultation requests are growing at our institution. Similarities in identified ethical issues exist between our findings and existing literature, however meaningful comparisons remains elusive secondary to variability in approaches to investigation and reporting. A combined paid/volunteer/trainee ethics consultation service model appears sustainable and real time ethics consultation is feasible using this approach. (shrink)

This paper describes a practice innovation: the addition of formal weekly discussions of patients with prolonged PICU stay to reduce healthcare providers’ moral distress and decrease length of stay for patients with life-threatening illnesses. We evaluated the innovation using a pre/post intervention design measuring provider moral distress and comparing patient outcomes using retrospective historical controls. Physicians and nurses on staff in our pediatric intensive care unit in a quaternary care children's hospital participated in the evaluation. There were 60 patients in (...) the interventional group and 66 patients in the historical control group. We evaluated the impact of weekly meetings to establish goals of care for patients with longer than 10 days length of stay in the ICU for a year. Moral distress was measured intermittently and reported moral distress thermometer scores fluctuated. "Clinical situations" represented the most frequent contributing factor to moral distress. Post intervention, overall moral distress scores, measured on the moral distress scale revised, were lower for respondents in all categories, and on three specific items. Patient outcomes before and after PEACE intervention showed a statistically significant decrease in PRISM indexed LOS, a statistically significant increase in both code status changes DNR, and in-hospital death, with no change in patient 30 or 365 day mortality. The addition of a clinical ethicist and senior intensivist to weekly inter-professional team meetings facilitated difficult conversations regarding realistic goals of care. The study demonstrated that the PEACE intervention had a positive impact on some factors that contribute to moral distress and can shorten PICU length of stay for some patients. (shrink)

After yeast cells commit to the cell cycle in a process called START, genes required for DNA synthesis are expressed in late G1. Periodicity is mediated by a hexameric sequence, known as a MCB element, present in all DNA synthesis gene promoters. A complex that specifically binds MCBs has been identified. One polypeptide in the MCB complex is Swi6, a transcription factor that together with Swi4 also binds G1 cyclin promoters and participates in a positive feedback loop at START. The (...) finding that Swi6 is directly involved in both START and DNA synthesis gene control suggest a model in which Swi6, activated through its participation in START, serves as the central transcription factor in coordinating late G1 gene expression. The mechanism may be conserved in all eukaryotic cells. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 301-312 [Access article in PDF] Kant on Property: The Problem of Permissive Law Brian Tierney In a pathbreaking article published in 1982 Reinhold Brandt called attention to the significance of the concept of permissive natural law in Kant's political philosophy. Brandt noted that Kant's "rightful concept of practical reason" or "permissive law of practical reason" was of fundamental importance for (...) understanding the whole theory of the Rechtslehre, and he complained that the issue had been virtually ignored in the recent secondary literature. 1 Since then others have taken up the theme, but it remains relatively neglected in the vast modern literature on Kant. In the work of Brandt and in some other recent explorations of this question a primary concern has been to relate Kant's doctrine to other aspects of his critical theory. Brandt himself, for instance, compared the "provisional" and "peremptory" rights mentioned in the Doctrine of Right with the "problematic" and "assertoric" judgments of the Critique of Pure Reason. The problem that I want to consider is rather different. In the following study I want to consider primarily the internal structure of the Doctrine of Right and specifically to ask whether Kant's appeal to permissive natural law served a constructive purpose in the theory of property that he presented in that work or whether it was perhaps subversive of the argument that he developed. 2 This will require [End Page 301] some discussion of the other usages of the idea of permissive law that we find scattered in Kant's later writings. In pursuing such an inquiry we encounter various difficulties and apparent anomalies in Kant's teaching. I want finally to suggest that we might understand those difficulties better if we were to situate Kant's work in a broader historical context than those that have previously been considered, bearing in mind that the concept of permissive natural law had been discussed by jurists and political philosophers for several centuries before Kant took up the argument. Kant on Property When approaching Kant's Doctrine of Right it may be salutary to recall a remark of Mary Gregor, the translator of the work and a sympathetic reader of it. "Kant has never been accused of underestimating his readers," Gregor wrote, "but he seldom treats them so harshly." 3 The difficulty of the work is compounded by the fact that the text as we have it is apparently in a mutilated condition, with some passages transposed from their original contexts. Any reading of such a text will be open to dispute; but it seems necessary to attempt at least an outline of Kant's doctrine and to mention some of its complexities if we are to understand the function of permissive natural law in the argument presented.Kant's purpose was to formulate a doctrine of property based on reason alone, a doctrine in which "abstraction is made from all spatial and temporal conditions." 4 The principles he deduced were intended to apply to anyone "merely because and insofar as he is free and has practical reason." 5 The whole subsequent argument revolved around these concepts of practical reason and human freedom. Kant began by presenting some basic propositions and definitions. Obligation, he wrote, was "the necessity of a free action under a categorical imperative of reason." And an action was permitted or licit when it was not contrary to obligation. This freedom of action was called a moral faculty (facultas moralis). 6 According to Kant, the only innate right inhering in all persons was a right to freedom (defined as "independence from being coerced by another's [End Page 302] choice") insofar as this freedom could coexist with the freedom of all others. 7 A corresponding universal law of Right established the rule: "[S]o act externally that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law." 8External laws imposed by another evidently did hinder one's freedom. Kant therefore held that a person was... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 381-399 [Access article in PDF] Permissive Natural Law and Property: Gratian to Kant Brian Tierney In his Doctrine of Right Kant set out to formulate a theory of property that would be based on purely rational argumentation, that would abstract "from all spatial and temporal conditions," and that would be applicable to any person, "merely because and insofar as he (...) is free and has practical reason." But from the time when the work first appeared Kant scholars have found many difficulties in the teaching that he presented. Many of them relate to the idea of permissive natural law that Kant introduced at a key point to his argument.In a previous, complementary article I discussed in detail various apparent aporias that arose in Kant's treatment of this concept and suggested that we might understand his problems better by setting them in a broader historical context than those considered in standard works like those of Reinhard Brandt and Wolfgang Kersting. 1 This is the theme that I want to explore further in the present paper.To sum up briefly some of the difficulties in the Doctrine of Right: A central problem for Kant was to explain how rightful possession of individual property could emerge from a hypothetical state of nature where everything was common to all, where everyone had a right to everything. His argument was grounded on a concept of freedom understood as "a pure rational concept." Kant maintained that every person had an innate right to freedom and from this he deduced a universal law of Right: "[S]o act externally that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone." 2 But the person who first seized for himself what had been common to all evidently did encroach on the freedom of others (their freedom to use the property that had been taken). [End Page 381]To address this problem Kant formulated a "postulate of practical reason" concerning property. Citing the Roman law doctrine of res nullius he argued that external things could in principle be acquired. 3 Then he restated the postulate as a permissive law that obliged others to respect the claim of a first occupant. "This postulate can be called a permissive law (lex permissiva) of practical reason which gives us an authorization... to put all others under an obligation, which they would not otherwise have...." 4 But to put others under an obligation is to encroach on their freedom, which would be a violation of the universal law of Right. For Kant, laws that could be discerned by reason alone without promulgation by a legislator, were understood to be natural laws. 5 The universal law of Right and the permissive law of practical reason were both laws of this kind. It seems therefore that natural law contradicted itself. It prohibited and permitted an action at the same time.Other difficulties arose as the argument proceeded. Kant repeatedly asserted that rightful possession must depend on consent expressed in "a collective general (common) and powerful will," "a will that is united originally and a priori"; 6 but he acknowledged that such a general will would not exist in a state of nature before the institution of civil society and that an act of original acquisition would necessarily proceed from a unilateral will. "But the will that a thing is to be mine... can be only unilateral." 7 And yet Kant also wrote, "By my unilateral choice I cannot bind another to refrain from using a thing, an obligation he would not otherwise have." 8 Kant never did explain how a permissive law, allowing a person to act unilaterally, could impose an obligation on others.In my earlier discussion of Kant's work I indicated that it might be fruitful to approach these difficulties by investigating some previous ways of using the language of permissive natural law, especially as it related to the origin of property rights. There is indeed a whole earlier tradition of thought to be considered. An investigation of this material... (shrink)

Brian Fay - The Ethics of History - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 677-678 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Brian Fay Wesleyan University David Carr, Thomas R. Flynn, and Rudolf A. Makkreel, editors. The Ethics of History. Northwestern University Topics in Historical Philosophy. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2004. Pp xvi + 263. Paper, $29.95. It is rare that every essay in a collection is well worth (...) reading, but that is the case in this illuminating and stimulating volume. Perhaps this should not be surprising, since its contributors comprise a virtual "Who's Who" of philosophers and intellectual historians who have contributed.. (shrink)

BRIAN LEITER; Is There An ‘American’ Jurisprudence?, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 17, Issue 2, 1 July 1997, Pages 367–387, https://doi.org/10.1093/oj.

Is debate on issues related to faith and reason still possible when dialogue between believers and non-believers has collapsed? Taking God Seriously not only proves that it is possible, but also demonstrates that such dialogue produces fruitful results. Here, Brian Davies, a Dominican priest and leading scholar of Thomas Aquinas, and Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science and well-known non-believer, offer an extended discussion on the nature and plausibility of belief in God and Christianity. They explore key topics in (...) the study of religion, notably the nature of faith, the place of reason in discussions about religion, proofs for the existence of God, the problem of evil, and the problem of multiple competing religious systems, as well as the core concepts of Christian belief including the Trinity and the justification of morality. Written in a jargon-free manner, avoiding the extremes of evangelical literalism and New Atheism prejudice, Taking God Seriously does not compromise integrity or shy from discussing important or difficult issues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What is Fantasy?Brian Laetz and Joshua J. JohnstonWizards, elves, dragons, and trolls—this is certainly the stuff of fantasy, populating the fictions of such giants as Tolkien, no less than the juvenilia of many aspiring writers. However, it is much easier to identify typical elements of fantasy, than it is to understand the category of fantasy itself. There can be little doubt that, in practice, the genre is pretty (...) well defined, concretely manifesting itself in the shelves reserved for it in video shops and bookstores. But stating why a work belongs on these shelves, rather than those in the near vicinity, such as horror and science fiction, or those more remote, like plain old fiction, presents a real challenge. Certainly, a mere few feet could separate fantasy from the other shelves, but the conceptual distance those feet represent appears great indeed. What, if anything, distinguishes this genre from other categories of mass art. In other words, what is fantasy?To begin, fantasy is a transmedia genre, since there are fantasy novels and movies, for instance, as is illustrated by J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga and its recent cinematic adaptation. It is interesting to note that fantasy includes works from other media as well, such as paintings, which often accompany fantasy narratives, like Frank Frazetta's recognizable illustrations for Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories. Forms of entertainment are also affiliated with the genre, such as role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, though one might balk at considering such things even forms of mass art? Nonetheless, despite the variety of media and entertainments associated with fantasy, [End Page 161] narratives occupy a fundamental place within the genre. For paintings, drawings, and the like are only recognizably fantastic given some narrative background that tells us what wizards, trolls, and dragons look like.1 Plausibly, it is what allows us to see that a drawing depicts an elf, for example, rather than a child with odd pointy ears. Thus, even if some works of fantasy are, strictly speaking, non-narrative, fantastic narratives remain fundamental, since these other works would not be classified as fantasy without them. This warrants initially setting aside things like fantasy games and paintings to focus on narratives. What, precisely, makes a narrative fantastic?First, fantastic narratives are essentially fictional. For regardless of how one ultimately understands the nature of fiction, the notion of true fantasy seems patently incoherent, quite unlike, say, true crime. And it must be stressed that this point should be compatible with any theory of fiction. Second, the sort of things that can make a work fantastic, like wizards and dragons, must be prominent in the work—they cannot be minor details. For example, had there been a two-minute scene in Spartacus in which someone cast a spell, the scene would have been fantastic, but ultimately the movie would not be classified any differently; you would still find it on the drama shelf. Moreover, this condition is not peculiar to fantasy.2 For instance, no one who has suffered through a Steven Seagal film would seriously classify it as romance or even action-romance, simply because it has a minor romantic subplot. Fantasy is no different from any other genre in this regard: whatever features define a genre must be prominent in a work in order for it to belong to the relevant genre. Third, the sort of content that can make a work fantastic must not solely be viewed as symbols for things that are not fantastic. In other words, these elements cannot just be taken as allegorical.3 This alone would seem to disqualify George Orwell's Animal Farm from the genre, since most read the intelligent animals as merely symbols portraying various factions in communist Russia. It should be noted that the actual intentions of the author probably matter little here. For example, even if scholars discovered that Tolkien merely intended the Middle Earth saga as an elaborate allegory, it would remain fantasy; few would be tempted to move the books to another shelf. Fourth, the relevant content must not solely be mocked or lampooned within the work.4 This is necessary... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fiction and Theory of MindBrian BoydWhy We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, by Lisa Zunshine; 198 pp. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006. $59.95Lisa Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction aims "to put the cognitive-evolutionary concept of the Theory of Mind on the map of contemporary literary studies" (p. 84). Any literary critic who has stumbled upon this active research program in recent clinical, cognitive, comparative, developmental (...) and evolutionary psychology will have realized that Theory of Mind (ToM)—our intuitive systems for understanding the minds of others—must be relevant to literature. As someone who has long deplored its neglect in literary studies (often on the very pages of this journal) I regret to report that as a cartographer of this new terrain Zunshine has an unsteady hand.As its title suggests, her book makes a large claim: that we read fiction in order to give ourselves a cognitive workout, to exercise our capacity for ToM. We normally understand readily four levels of embedded intentionality (you doubt that Brian accepts that Lisa knows what Robin says), but we find it rapidly more difficult to handle further levels. Fiction often pushes "our ability to process embedded intentionalities beyond our cognitive zone of comfort" (p. 130). Why We Read Fiction also makes a second, implicit but no less central, claim: that analyzing fiction in terms of ToM offers criticism greater explanatory power, precision, and clarity. [End Page 590]Zunshine's explicit claim seems unlikely. All peoples tell and attend to fictions, but as Zunshine sometimes concedes not all these fictions push the boundaries of ToM. Many individuals and groups, perhaps most, especially enjoy fiction that does not involve high-level ToM, such as myth, fairy tale, and action adventure stories from epics to Westerns or martial arts movies. Children already engage in pretend play and enjoy stories compulsively long before they attain a uniquely human, yet still imperfectly developed, level of ToM in their fifth year. How can fiction be explained in terms of setting stiff challenges to our capacity for ToM, when so many children and adults enjoy fiction that makes no exceptional demands?Fiction can experiment with ToM, with, for instance, multiple levels of embedded intentionality. Barth's virtuoso exercise "Menelaiad" (1968) involves seven degrees of embedding, but the story feels, and is meant to feel, comically overloaded. Less flamboyant but more searching experiment with our capacity to comprehend minds, like Tolstoy's in Anna Karenina, may involve at its most original only one, two or three levels of intentionality: Stiva's thoughts alone, brilliantly evoked in the opening chapter, or his thoughts about Dolly's feelings or his own thoughts, or his thoughts about Dolly's thoughts about his feelings.Zunshine acknowledges that fiction places varied emphases on ToM, but dwells only on examples that support her case, and ignores many kinds of fiction that do not. More damaging still, the examples she does draw on fail to provide the support she thinks they do, thus undermining both her first claim, that fiction provides an intense ToM workout, and her second, that analyzing fiction through ToM sharpens and strengthens criticism. Interpreting fiction with an explicit awareness of ToM can have this effect, but Zunshine inadvertently reveals dangers rather than opportunities.Since texts are the hard evidence in literary study, we need to see in detail how Zunshine handles them. Her first display example comes from Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. She cites:And Miss Brush [Lady Bruton's secretary] went out, came back; laid papers on the table; and Hugh produced his fountain pen; his silver fountain pen, which had done twenty years' service, he said, unscrewing the cap. It was still in perfect order; he had shown it to the makers; there was no reason, they said, why it should ever wear out; which was somehow to Hugh's credit, and to the credit of the sentiments which his pen expressed (so Richard Dalloway felt) as Hugh began carefully writing capital letters with rings [End Page 591] around them in the margin, and thus marvelously reduced Lady Bruton's tangles to sense, to grammar such as the editor of the Times... (shrink)

In his article ???A New Euthyphro??? , pp. 65???83, Glenn Peoples constructs a new version of the famous Euthyphro dialogue, in which Euthyphro, rather than Socrates, prevails.

ExtractIn this dialogue, two college students, Katie and Dennis, discuss some of the positions taken by Sam Harris in his recent work The Moral Landscape. They discover that, first, theories of ethics based on human well-being are nothing new; they also question whether Harris has truly closed the door on moral subjectivism. Next, while remaining sympathetic to Harris, they question how much he has really accomplished by equating human well-being with specific brain states, and wonder if blissful brain states based (...) on delusion can really be associated with a life well lived.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.SAM HARRIS, THE MORAL LANDSCAPE, AND SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONSVolume 12, Issue 33Brian VromanDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000267Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle email.@free.kindle.com@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. SAM HARRIS, THE MORAL LANDSCAPE, AND SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONSVolume 12, Issue 33Brian VromanDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000267Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. SAM HARRIS, THE MORAL LANDSCAPE, AND SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONSVolume 12, Issue 33Brian VromanDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000267Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

Forty years ago Amartya Sen delivered his Tanner Lecture, 'Equality of What?', in which he introduced to the world a novel approach to the idea of equality by way of the notion of 'basic capability' as 'a morally relevant dimension'. We can now see with hindsight that Sen's argument - that we should focus upon equality of basic capabilities ('a person being able to do certain basic things') - launched what has become an academic armada now proceeding under the flag (...) of 'the capability approach'. While that flag has ventured far and wide and engaged many area of inquiry, this volume of essays is the first to explore how the capability approach (the CA) might shed light upon labour law. Three dimensions of the CA's potential for illuminating labour law are examined. Part I enquires into the nature of the basic relationship between CA and labour law - do they share common ground or disagree about what is important? Can the CA provide a normative 'foundation' for labour law? Part II goes further by examining the relationship of the CA and other well-established perspectives on labour law, including economics, history, critical theory, restorative justice, and human rights. Part III examines the possible relevance of the CA to a range of specific labour law issues, such as freedom of association, age discrimination in the workplace, trade, employment policy, and sweatshop goods. (shrink)

This article provides an explanation of Anselm’s understanding of necessity. Anselm did not write much about modality, and what he did write is puzzling. The dominant readings of Anselm see him as having two concepts of necessity, one merely physical or causal, the other logical or “alethic.” This article argues that Anselm has just one concept of necessity, which corresponds best to what is now called broadly logical or absolute necessity, but whose metaphysics is in terms of powers and lacks (...) of power. The rival interpretations of A. D. Smith, Thomas Williams, and Sandra Visser are discussed and criticized in detail. (shrink)

Iphigenia in Aulis ( IA ) raises important doubts about popular authority by dramatizing the Achaean army’s imposition of parthenic sacrifice. The numerous vacillations of the elites represented in IA ’s dialogue provide an axis along which the distribution of power in Aulis can be assessed, and the play’s many reversals serve to highlight their lack of agency and their forced participation in troubling ritual violence. In the context of this dramatic formulation of power, the play’s aristocratic personae must either (...) yield grudgingly to the army’s demands or, like Iphigenia, construct a new political subjectivity that affirms and is complicit in the army’s assertion of power. (shrink)

The current study investigated the relationship of the Dark Triad with peer reporting, which occurs when an employee informs management that another coworker has engaged in counterproductive work behavior (CWB). We hypothesized that low organizational commitment would strengthen the negative relationships between each Dark Triad trait and peer reporting. Data from 281 employees suggested that low organizational commitment indeed strengthened the negative relationships between (a) narcissism and the base rate of peer reporting CWBs and (b) psychopathy and the base rate (...) of peer reporting CWBs. Our findings thus extended Dark Triad research to the topic of peer reporting. (shrink)

I argue that the account of the epistemic modalities developed by Kripke and Putnam is incomplete since it does not make use of the possible worlds machinery that is indispensable to their analysis of the metaphysical modalities. It would have been simpler and more elegant if they had used the concept of 'possible world' to explain both modalities. Instead, they provide an explication of the epistemic modalities in terms of the vague concepts of conceivability and revisability. I show that logical (...) omniscience as a consequence of a possible worlds analysis of the epistemic modalities can be made palatable. (shrink)

David Lewis’s property-centered account of belief falls prey to the problem of egocentric omniscience: In self-ascribing the property of being an eye doctor, an agent is thereby self-ascribing the property of being an oculist. It is argued that the problem of egocentric omniscience can be made palatable for Lewis’s property-centered account of belief, at least for the case of linguistic beliefs. Roughly, my solution is as follows: An agent can believe that he or she has the property of being an (...) eye doctor/oculist under the description ‘eye doctor’ without believing that he or she has this property under the description ‘oculist’. Believing that one has a property P under a description D involves the additional self-ascription of the propositional property of inhabiting a world with respect to which that description denotes the property P. This is not the same sort of solution as the one proposed for singular beliefs by Nathan Salmon. Unlike Salmon’s account, belief on the account I am defending is regarded as a two place-relation rather than a three-place relation. Since, on Lewis’s account, self-ascriptive belief subsumes de dicto belief, my solution also sheds light on the problem of logical omniscience. (shrink)

Within the context of Carruthers’ general analysis of the relation between language and thought, I present a specific hypothesis about how grammar uses perspective flow to unify disparate cognitions. This perspective hypothesis allows us to understand the neolithic burst in creativity as a cultural advance in methods for knitting together thoughts.

Our current planetary emergency is one in which we are facing significant global warming as a result of human-driven climate change. This is having and will continue to have catastrophic results for the earth’s ecosystems and for life as we know it. The Christian tradition often works actively against the seriousness of these challenges due to its eschatological outlook. Process theology, as one stream within the Christian tradition, embraces a different vision of the future that fosters engagement in current concerns (...) rather than an escapist approach. A process theological proposal is therefore offered that calls for an embodied ethic that embraces the acronym SHE. SHE stands for Sustainability, Health, and Ethics. It provides a dietary grid as a way to embody ethics to bring about societal change in light of environmental challenges. SHE is proposed against a background that argues for Christian engagement in our current global crisis. The idea of “small turnings” as a conceptual idea is adopted to help frame how the SHE grid might be understood. (shrink)

R. M. Cook has recently pointed out that the transport of warships across the Isthmus of Corinth was not the normal use of the diolkos since there was no regular need for such transport. Rather, the diolkos from its inception served a commercial function and its use provided the Corinthian state with a source of revenue.

The Ozark Highlands’ karst topography of caves and hollows has provided refuge and escape for myriad peoples seeking to evade mainstream society throughout history, ranging from displaced Native Americans to counter-cultural back-to-the-landers. This ethnographic and ethnohistorical research moves beyond the popular misconception that the back-to-the-land movement merely represented an offshoot of the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and situates it within a deeper historical context. In this paper, I present the Arcadian evocations in various Ozark-related media and how (...) they relate to homesteading in the region, and demonstrate the shared agrarian values among diverse waves of agrarian Ozark homesteaders, recent and historical. (shrink)

Philosophy has sometimes been described as the discipline in which you can never be wrong, as the reserve of absentminded professors, aloof academics and purveyors of obscure ideas or interesting opinions. Quite the contrary. Philosophy answers the hard questions: Does everything happen by chance? Is there anything more than matter in the universe? Are humans in the same class as animals? Is there a God? Can we know the correct answer to these questions? The answers to these questions matter. We (...) are all philosophers even though we are not aware of the fact. We each have a set of ultimate priorities and principles, answers to these questions, a big picture that determines our everyday thoughts, decisions, and actions. In this book Brian Cronin uses the ideas of Bernard Lonergan's Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, to argue methodically towards a correct, critical, comprehensive worldview, an answer to those big questions which is the precise task of first philosophy. This book is an accessible and readable presentation of Lonergan's metaphysics, a somewhat neglected topic. Science and philosophy are complementary. Scientists answer the concrete, detailed questions about everything around us: the parts. Philosophy integrates all these into a correct worldview of the whole: of everything. (shrink)

This paper examines and critiques the ethical issues in postmortem sperm retrieval and the use of postmortem sperm to create new life. The article was occasioned by the recent request of the parents of a West Point cadet who died in a skiing accident at the Academy to retrieve and use his sperm to honor his memory and perpetuate the family name. The request occasioned national media attention. A trial court judge in New York in a two-page order authorized both (...) the retrieval and use of the postmortem sperm. (shrink)

In, it was argued that Professor David Kaplan's model of S-explanation could be formulated so as to provide a unified framework for three types of explanation, viz., potential, rationally acceptable, and true. In this note I correct an error in the statement of the conditions for a potential direct S-explanans, show that the corrected version leads to a further simplification in the conditions of the model, and propose a fourth type of explanation which the framework of S-explanation can accommodate.