There are two main groups of essays in this volume. The first centres on Locke's theories of religion and their relation to contemporary scientific thought and the work of Descartes, Leibniz and Hume. The second group explores the relation between biology and physiology, and the science of man.

Will enable the ordinary person to discover his or her own unique life myth and live it from moment to moment.

The principle of "organism"—of intrinsic and dynamic unity—and the existence of "organized bodies"—of living things—in the physical world represented crucial preoccupations for philosophers of nature and experimental naturalists across the eighteenth century. How to make sense of these in a manner consistent with a unified scientific understanding of the physical world became the inevitable challenge that accompanied these recognitions. In just this theoretical enterprise, Leibniz emerges to historical scrutiny as an indispensable and pervasive influence. Thus, we are very fortunate to (...) have the body of scholarship that François Duchesneau has devoted to this topic over the course of his illustrious career. In this... (shrink)

Double effect reasoning is central to Catholic moral theology. It is the principle which enables it to maintain absolute moral standards while effectively handling morally difficult choices which entail bringing about some evil as well as the good. DER has been focused on the way in which it applies to human agents and their relation to bringing about evil as well as the good. According to DER, only the good can be brought about intentionally; evil can only be brought about (...) as the side effect of the good. It will be argued that DER also applies to God’s choices. It is our best resource for understanding God’s relation to evil in the world He creates. (shrink)

I told the workers they had to be prepared for the tortures of success. Success in our business, the trade union business, means getting workers to middle-class status. You succeed and Huelga is just going to be an exciting recollection. The guy who carried a banner in 1966—well, in five years you're going to have a hard time getting him to a union meeting: Revolutions become institutions, that's a truism of our business.

It is in the complex interplay of silence, speech, and action that Zumbrunnen teases out the meaning of democracy for Thucydides in both its domestic and international dimensions and shows how we may benefit from the Thucydidean text in ...

John Locke proposed a straightforward relationship between qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions: belief corresponds to a sufficiently high degree of confidence. Richard Foley has further developed this Lockean thesis and applied it to an analysis of the preface and lottery paradoxes. Following Foley's lead, we exploit various versions of these paradoxes to chart a precise relationship between belief and probabilistic degrees of confidence. The resolutions of these paradoxes emphasize distinct but complementary features of coherent belief. These features suggest principles (...) that tie together qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions. We show how these principles may be employed to construct a quantitative model - in terms of degrees of confidence - of an agent's qualitative doxastic state. This analysis fleshes out the Lockean thesis and provides the foundation for a logic of belief that is responsive to the logic of degrees of confidence. (shrink)

John R. Schneider explores the problem that animal suffering, caused by the inherent nature of Darwinian evolution, poses to belief in theism. Examining the aesthetic aspects of this moral problem, Schneider focuses on the three prevailing approaches to it: that the Fall caused animal suffering in nature (Lapsarian Theodicy), that Darwinian evolution was the only way for God to create an acceptably good and valuable world (Only-Way Theodicy), and that evolution is the source of major, God-justifying beauty (Aesthetic Theodicy). (...) He also uses canonical texts and doctrines from Judaism and Christianity - notably the book of Job, and the doctrines of the incarnation, atonement, and resurrection - to build on insights taken from the non-lapsarian alternative approaches. Schneider thus constructs an original, God-justifying account of God and the evolutionary suffering of animals. His book enables readers to see that the Darwinian configuration of animal suffering unveiled by scientists is not as implausible on Christian theism as commonly supposed. (shrink)

The book Time and Eternity , the English version of Zeit und Ewigkeit , by Antje Jackelén, contains scientific and theological treatments of these two topics, starting with the usage of such ideas in German, Swedish, and English hymns. This essay describes her work and explains how the scientific ideas provide a coherent framework for understanding the place of time.

ABSTRACT:Much has been written about the deplorable state of American health care, but rarely with the wealth of historical and political information packed into Peter Swenson’s Disorder: A History of Reform, Reaction, and Money in American Medicine (2021). In this meticulously researched and comprehensive study of the role of organized medicine, particularly the American Medical Association (AMA) and affiliated state and county medical societies, Swenson provides detailed insight into the AMA’s political evolution from a force advocating progressive reforms to a (...) protective guild backed by powerful economic and ideological interests. Swenson addresses the conflicts leading to and arising from these movements, always with an eye on the profession’s failure over the last century to fulfill its implicit social contract. Swenson describes the American medical disorder without fear or favor, including a public health system in disarray, defective government regulation of drugs, unchecked and concealed commercial influence on medical research, publications, and clinical guidelines. Swenson’s hope is clear: that a progressively reformed AMA—combined with a broad coalition of concerned citizens and legislators—will lead the medical profession back to its rightful mission. (shrink)

In the fifth of his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes offers a version of the ontological proof for the existence of God. As Caterus argues in the First Objections, however, it seems that if this argument were valid, then so also would be any number of absurd arguments, for insofar as Descartes infers that God exists from the fact that existence belongs to His essence, we should also be able to infer that other objects---the fictitious existing lion, say---exist on similar (...) grounds. Descartes's lone defense against this objection is to distinguish true and immutable essences from fictitious ones , a distinction that, in its details, seems to imply a realistic view of essences. Such a view of essences, though, conflicts with Descartes's explicit rejection of Platonism in the Principles of Philosophy , among other places. ;In this dissertation, I offer an interpretation of the Fifth Meditation that resolves this problem by treating true and immutable natures as nothing more than ideas, and I argue that, by a careful reading of several crucial yet rarely noticed texts, we can bring Descartes's cryptic and confusing Fifth Meditation claims under an anti-Platonic rubric. As an upshot of this interpretation, I propose an unusual reading of Descartes's ontological proof, one that draws it much closer to the proof of the Third Meditation and one that, in the end, forces us to reevaluate Descartes's connection to three great figures in the tradition of the ontological proof. St. Anselm, St. Thomas, and Kant. (shrink)

Volume 10, Issue 4, December 2019, Page 588-596.

Erving Goffman’s “Asylums” is a key text in the development of contemporary, community-orientated mental health practice. It has survived as a trenchant critique of the asylum as total institution, and its publication in 1961 in book form marked a further stage in the discrediting of the asylum model of mental health care. In this paper, some responses from a range of disciplines to this text, 50 years on, are presented. A consultant psychiatrist with a special interest in cultural psychiatry and (...) mental health legislation, two collaborating psychotherapists in adult and forensic mental health, a philosopher, and a recent medical graduate, present their varying responses to the text. The editors present these with the hope of encouraging further dialogue and debate from service users, carers, clinicians, and academics and researchers across a range of disciplines. (shrink)

Renegotiations of identities in a 21st century world and a resurgence of older loyalties are calling into question our shared sense of belonging and place. This results in the predicament of how and where to feel at home.