This chapter contains sections titled: Warning: Plot Spoiler! Mediums: The Seen and the Felt Competing Messages: “Man was in the Forest” vs. “There is Another” Challenging Bambi Bambi's Counter‐Charge Re‐gifting Bambi Notes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hannah Arendt and Theology by John KiessGregory WilliamsHannah Arendt and Theology John Kiess NEW YORK: BLOOMSBURY T&T CLARK, 2016. XI 1 249 PP. $21.99Of the great secular Jewish thinkers of the mid-twentieth century, none has occasioned quite so much recent attention among Christian theologians as Hannah Arendt. Arendt's popularity is due to a number of factors, not least of which is the ongoing revival of Augustine's thought (...) in political theology, and it is unlikely to subside any time soon. This is why John Kiess's most recent volume, Hannah Arendt and Theology, is of importance to the field of Christian ethics.After providing an intellectual biography of Arendt, the bulk of Kiess's text is devoted to the key loci that theological authors have highlighted in her work, [End Page 210] specifically her concepts of evil, citizenship, action, and thinking. In writing about each of these, Kiess articulates the ways in which theologians have underestimated Arendt. For example, in defending Arendt vis-à-vis Eric Gregory, Kiess argues that "Arendt points to a kind of love that Augustine appears to have overlooked, one which, if falling short of the love of God and neighbor, reaches higher than the love of self to the good of what is common to all" (121).At the same time, Kiess also points out the places where Arendt underestimates Christian theology. Possibly his biggest critique is that, in arguing that the evils of totalitarianism not only transcend but completely "break" traditional definitions of evil, Arendt assumes tradition to be a static article passed on intact from one generation to the next. Against this view, Kiess holds up Alasdair MacIntyre's definition of a tradition as an ongoing argument and shows how Arendt's efforts actually demonstrate the way traditions operate dynamically in contexts of ongoing crisis.Both of these examples also point to broader metaethical questions. In particular, Kiess's statement that Augustine "overlooked" the existence of a nonsalvific love that still rises above the level of the lust for domination that constitutes the telos of the earthly city, or even the love of human glory that gives rise to its greatest virtues, seems to elide the fact that neither Augustine nor his contemporary interpreters have simply forgotten about such a possibility; rather, a chief insight of Augustinian political thought is to deny it. This is precisely why Augustine, as Kiess notes, "longed for a more transformative founding" than Arendt does in her stress on human natality (178). Kiess, it seems, wants to have it both ways on this point. Either the loves of the earthly city can amount to something more than an ethics domination or glory, in which case Augustine's doubts about the founding of political entities based on those loves is overly pessimistic, or the loves and the goods of the earthly and heavenly cities are incommensurable, in which case Arendt's amor mundi, however noble its outcomes, is not immune to the degradations of the earthly city as a whole and must be regarded as one more penultimate earthly virtue.This brings us back to the question of tradition. For all his emphasis on how Arendt exemplifies the dynamism and responsiveness of traditions, Kiess never actually specifies to which tradition Arendt belonged. To put it bluntly, he does not treat it as relevant that Arendt was not a Christian. While she is an extensive and extremely helpful commentator on the Christian theological tradition, she wrote as a critic and an outsider. We can expect certain basic differences between Arendt and her Christian interlocutors to remain irresolvable because that is the nature of interreligious difference. That does not mean, however, that dialogue is not fruitful, and it is because of this that Kiess's text is, and is likely to remain, extremely generative. [End Page 211]Gregory WilliamsDuke UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Gregory T. Doolan provides here the first detailed consideration of the divine ideas as causal principles. He examines Thomas Aquinas's philosophical doctrine of the divine ideas and convincingly argues that it is an essential element of his metaphysics. According to Thomas, the ideas in the mind of God are not only principles of his knowledge, but they are productive principles as well. In this role, God's ideas act as exemplars for things that he creates. As Doolan shows, this theory (...) of exemplarism is an integral part of Thomas's account of the existence and order of the created universe. It also accounts in part for the freedom of God's creative act. The volume begins with an introduction to Thomas's doctrine of exemplarism and then addresses his arguments for the existence of exemplar ideas within the mind of God. Having established the existence of divine ideas, Doolan considers how Thomas reconciles their multiplicity with God's simplicity. The work identifies the various things for which Thomas posits divine ideas. As Doolan is careful to show, Thomas does not consider all of these ideas to be exemplars because not all of them act as causal principles. After identifying the ideas that do act in this way, Doolan considers how such exemplars can be causes of natural things without compromising the causality of natural agents. The volume culminates with a consideration of the role that the divine ideas play within the structure of Thomas's theory of participation. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gregory T. Doolan, assistant professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, is a contributor to Wisdom's Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P., and Reassessing the Liberal State: Reading Maritain's Man and the State. This is his first book. (shrink)

According to Thomas Aquinas, the ideas in the mind of God serve two distinct although interrelated roles: (1) as epistemological principles accounting for God’s knowledge of things other than himself, and (2) as ontological or causal principles involved in God’s creative activity. This article examines the causal role of the divine ideas by focusing on their relation to natural agents. Given Thomas’s observation that from God’s intellect “forms flow forth (effluunt) into all creatures,” the article considers whether the causality of (...) the divine ideas excludes that of natural agents, or whether both modes of causality can somehow produce one and the same effect. (shrink)

What I have attempted to show in the foregoing is that: (1) For any frequency adjective f, there is an element of meaning common to both the adverbial and the generic usage of f; this is a function f′ from propositions to truth-values such that f′(Φ)′ is true at an interval i iff Φ′ is true at subintervals of i distributed through i in a certain way. (2) In an adverbial use of f, f′ functions like the corresponding frequency adverb. (...) (3) In a generic use of f, f′ quantifies the times intervals which a specified object is realized by some stage. (4) In their adverbial usage, frequency adjectives are not regular attributive adjectives at the level at which interpretation takes place, but are perhaps determiners. And (5) in their generic usage, frequency adjectives are adjectives at the level at which interpretation takes place.More generally, I hope to have suggested something of the range of uses to which frequency is put in natural language. That we effortlessly grasp what is meants by Monday, the Columbus Dispatch, autumn, the Today Show, and so on, demonstrates our fluency in interpreting certain sequences of objects, events, or states of affairs as sequences of values of some function cycling on a time-axis. Much more must ultimately be told about the psychological and anthropological significance of frequency. (shrink)

In a number of texts throughout his career, Thomas Aquinas identifies different senses of the term ‘esse’. Most notably, he notes that according to one sense, the term signifies the act of existence (actus essendi), which he famously holds is really distinct from essence in all beings other than God. Perhaps surprisingly, he also notes on a number of occasions that according to another sense, the term ‘esse’ can signify that very principle that he says is distinct from the act (...) of existence, namely, essence. In light of Aquinas's semantic theory, this paper investigates how he coherently holds within his metaphysical system that this term ‘esse’ can signify in different ways both essence and the act of existence. More broadly, what it shows is how, for Aquinas, the metaphysician can look to the modes of signification (modi significandi) of terms and as well as their modes of predication (modi praedicandi) to draw careful conclusions about the modes of existence (modi essendi) of real beings. These considerations reveal that in Aquinas's view, although the grammarian and logician in their way are also concerned with these semantic modes, it is not their job to employ them to discern the various senses of the term ‘being’ or the fundamental modes of being. In the end, this is a task for the metaphysician. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Twenty years ago Leif Lewin made the case that altruistic motives are more common than selfish motives among voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. We propose that motives and beliefs emerge as reactions to immediate feedback from technical-causal, material-economic, and moral-social aspects of the political task environment. In the absence of certain kinds of technical-causal and material-economic feedback, moral-social feedback leads individuals to the altruism Lewin documents, but also to righteousness (moralized regard for the in-group and disregard for the out-group) and (...) myopia (disregard for distant consequences). The mix of altruism, righteousness, and myopia increases the focus on winning the next high-stakes election rather than on discovering or enforcing socially productive institutions. (shrink)

A distinction is made between the function of ethics in clinical medicine, which is to guide the clinician in his/her practice, and the role of the ethicist. It suggests that ethicists can help by clarifying values expressed in various clinical behaviours. The author proposes that certain ethical positions, such as patient advocacy, have compromised the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship and created a potential for ethical leverage through financial-legal consequences they did not intend or foresee.

The understanding of emergent, self-organizing phenomena has been immensely deepened in recent years on the basis of simulation-based theoretical research. We discuss these new ideas, and illustrate them using examples from several fields. Our discussion serves to introduce equivalent self-organized phenomena in social interaction. Interaction systems appear to be structured partly by virtue of such emergents. These appear under specific conditions: When cognitive buffering is inadequate relative to the levels of stress persons are subjected to, anxiety-spreading has the potential of (...) pushing their interaction into nonlinear conditions. Arousal in these conditions produces effects on behavior arising from biological sources-indeed, behavior can come under the control of reflex patterns. When this occurs, psychological activity no longer screens off biological controls over behavior. As the direct effects of biological activity spill into interaction, attachment behavior introduced into an interaction system can produce effects that are transmitted beyond dyads to produce global social patterns. These effects illustrate how strong interactions based in biological activity can produce an architecture for social systems. (shrink)

The national opioid epidemic is severely impacting Indian Country. In this article, we draw upon data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to describe the contours of this crisis among Native Americans. While these data are subject to significant limitations, we show that Native American opioid overdose mortality rates have grown substantially over the last seventeen years. We further find that this increase appears to at least parallel increases seen among non-Hispanic whites, who are often thought to be (...) uniquely affected by this crisis. We then profile tribal medical and legal responses to the opioid epidemic, ranging from tribally-operated medication-assisted therapy to drug diversion courts rooted in traditional tribal cultures. (shrink)

This volume is a tribute to Fr. John F. Wippel. Following the philosophical order that Aquinas might have adopted "had he chosen to write a Summa metaphysicae"—an order that Wippel himself lays out in his Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas—these essays unfold new research on some of the most intriguing topics in Aquinas’s metaphysics, from the most recent generation of scholars formed by Wippel’s pioneering work. -/- The contributors address the discovery of being qua being via separation (Gregory T. (...) Doolan), propter quid metaphysical demonstrations (Philip Neri Reese), the origins of the controversies about the real distinction between essence and esse (Mark Gossiaux), a defense of essence-realism as a key to the real distinction (David Twetten), the relationship of likeness and agency (Therese Scarpelli Cory), created form as act and potency (Stephen Brock), the variation of accidental forms (Gloria Frost), the possibility of angelic judgment (Francis Feingold), argumentation for the existence of God (Gaven Kerr), the propriety of " Qui Est" as a Divine Name (Brian Carl), ‘Beauty’ as a Divine Name (Michael Rubin), and God’s application of creaturely powers to action (Jason Mitchell). (shrink)

Written in a highly personal style, Spinoza's "Ethics" presents to readers anordered vision of the universe as a unified whole--not as a lifeless world ofinnumerable separate entities. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The media attention and subsequent scientific backlash engendered by the claim, announced by spokespeople for the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements project, that 80% of the human genome has a “biochemical function” highlights the need for a clearer understanding of function concepts in biology. This article provides an overview of two major function concepts that have been developed in the philosophy of science – the “causal role” concept and the “selected effects” concept – and their relevance to ENCODE. Unlike some previous (...) critiques, the ENCODE project is not considered problematic because it employed a causal role definition of function, but because of how this concept was misused. In addition, several unique challenges that arise when dealing with transposable elements, but which were ignored by ENCODE, are highlighted. These include issues surrounding TE-level versus organism-level selection, the origins versus the persistence of elements, and accidental versus functional organism-level benefits. Finally, some key questions are presented that should be addressed in any studies aiming to ascribe functions to major portions of large eukaryotic genomes, the majority of which is made up of transposable elements. (shrink)

Considerable variation exists not only in the kinds of transposable elements (TEs) occurring within the genomes of different species, but also in their abundance and distribution. Noting a similarity to the assortment of organisms among ecosystems, some researchers have called for an ecological approach to the study of transposon dynamics. However, there are several ways to adopt such an approach, and it is sometimes unclear what an ecological perspective will add to the existing co-evolutionary framework for explaining transposon-host interactions. This (...) review aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of transposon ecology in order to evaluate its explanatory prospects. We begin by identifying three unanswered questions regarding the abundance and distribution of TEs that potentially call for an ecological explanation. We then offer an operational distinction between evolutionary and ecological approaches to these questions. By determining the amount of variance in transposon abundance and distribution that is explained by ecological and evolutionary factors, respectively, it is possible empirically to assess the prospects for each of these explanatory frameworks. To illustrate how this methodology applies to a concrete example, we analyzed whole-genome data for one set of distantly related mammals and another more closely related group of arthropods. Our expectation was that ecological factors are most informative for explaining differences among individual TE lineages, rather than TE families, and for explaining their distribution among closely related as opposed to distantly related host genomes. We found that, in these data sets, ecological factors do in fact explain most of the variation in TE abundance and distribution among TE lineages across less distantly related host organisms. Evolutionary factors were not significant at these levels. However, the explanatory roles of evolution and ecology become inverted at the level of TE families or among more distantly related genomes. Not only does this example demonstrate the utility of our distinction between ecological and evolutionary perspectives, it further suggests an appropriate explanatory domain for the burgeoning discipline of transposon ecology. The fact that ecological processes appear to be impacting TE lineages over relatively short time scales further raises the possibility that transposons might serve as useful model systems for testing more general hypotheses in ecology. (shrink)

There exists substantial cultural variation in how emotions are expressed, but there is also considerable evidence for universal properties in facial and vocal affective expressions. This is the first empirical effort examining the perception of vocal emotional expressions across cultures with little common exposure to sources of emotion stimuli, such as mass media. Shuar hunter-horticulturalists from Amazonian Ecuador were able to reliably identify happy, angry, fearful and sad vocalizations produced by American native English speakers by matching emotional spoken utterances to (...) emotional expressions portrayed in pictured faces. The Shuar performed similarly to English speakers who heard the same utterances in a content-filtered condition. These data support the hypothesis that vocal emotional expressions of basic affective categories manifest themselves in similar ways across quite disparate cultures. (shrink)

A promising recent development in molecular biology involves viewing the genome as a miniecosystem, where genetic elements are compared to organisms and the surrounding cellular and genomic structures are regarded as the local environment. Here we critically evaluate the prospects of Ecological Neutral Theory, a popular model in ecology, as it applies at the genomic level. This assessment requires an overview of the controversy surrounding neutral models in community ecology. In particular, we discuss the limitations of using ENT both as (...) an explanation of community dynamics and as a null hypothesis. We then analyze a case study in which ENT has been applied to genomic data. Our central finding is that genetic elements do not conform to the requirements of ENT once its assumptions and limitations are made explicit. We further compare this genome-level application of ENT to two other, more familiar approaches in genomics that rely on neutral mechanisms: Kimura’s Molecular Neutral Theory and Lynch’s Mutational Hazard Model. Interestingly, this comparison reveals that there are two distinct concepts of neutrality associated with these models which we dub ‘fitness-neutrality’ and ‘competitive neutrality’. This distinction helps to clarify the various roles for neutral models in genomics, for example, in explaining the evolution of genome size. (shrink)