Joseph Ransdell posted the following draft of an introduction to a work in progress to the peirce-l email list on September 22, 2000. The post triggered a long thread of discussion in which he participated quite actively. At least one later and much longer version of the introduction exists. Still, this draft will give a concentrated “taste” of a side of Ransdell more familiar perhaps to long-time peirce-l subscribers than to those who have read only his published works. In (...) the message containing the draft, Ransdell characterized the draft as follows: “What follows below is an introductory section to some work that has actually been in progress for some five years or more now, which began as an explication of.. (shrink)

In a post to peirce-l on May 23, 2003, Ransdell included the following chapter from an unpublished work in progress, The Meanings in Things (also sometimes called The Meaning in Things). In the chapter, he attempts to answer how it is that an object determines the sign that represents it. The material for the above abstract is from his not quite formal prefatory remarks sent with an earlier version to peirce-l on May 8, 2001. The chapter is a good illustration (...) of Ransdell’s careful argumentation through an extended example, in this case an amusing one involving the counting of chairs.Semiotic is phenomenologically based and thus does not involve any assumptions or presuppositions about the existence or reality of.. (shrink)

Joseph Morton Ransdell left a record of experimentation with the communicational process of philosophy from 1992 to his passing in 2010. This record includes the Arisbe website and the peirce-l e-forum and its archives, of which the earliest are not on the Internet, but may yet be recovered and made available. Philosophy’s communication process, and the possibility of creating and developing a telecommunity, as Ransdell called it, were among his chief theoretical and practical interests. Such interests were focused in (...) terms of the ideas of Charles S. Peirce, including fallibilism, pragmaticism, and semiotic, in particular the sign’s determination by the represented object, and iconicity in relation especially to.. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Transcendental Arguments The Linguistic Turn Differences From Apel.

This study surveys the internal audit department of a large financial services organization. Respondents were challenged to recognize and evaluate ethical and unethical situations often encountered in practice. Four key demographic variables were investigated: gender, age, years of employment and peer group influence. For the most part, respondents view themselves as more ethical than their peers. There does appear to be a gender effect suggesting females' ability to identify ethical behavior better than their male counterparts. This study contributes to the (...) extant literature in that it has explored a previously unexplored profession, namely, the internal auditing profession. (shrink)

The Bush administration's military war on terrorism is a blunt, ineffective, and unjust response to the threat posed to innocent civilians by terrorism. Decentralized terrorist networks can only be effectively fought by international cooperation among police and intelligence agencies representing diverse nation‐states, including ones with predominantly Islamic populations. The Bush administration's allegations of a global Islamist terrorist threat to the national interests of the United States misread the decentralized and complex nature of Islamist politics. Undoubtedly there exists a “combat fundamentalist” (...) element within Islamism. But the threat posed to U.S. citizens by Islamist terrorism neither necessitates nor justifies as a response massive military invasions of other nations. Not only does the Bush administration's war on alleged “terrorist states” violate the doctrine of just war, but in addition these wars arise from a new, unilateral, imperial foreign‐policy doctrine of “preventive wars.” Such a doctrine will isolate the United States from international institutions and long‐standing allies. The weakening of these institutions and alliances will only weaken the ability of the international community to deter terrorism. (shrink)

Recent research in moral psychology highlights the role of emotion and intuition in moral judgment. In the wake of these findings, the role and significance of moral reasoning remain uncertain. In this article, we distinguish among different kinds of moral reasoning and review evidence suggesting that at least some kinds of moral reasoning play significant roles in moral judgment, including roles in abandoning moral intuitions in the absence of justifying reasons, applying both deontological and utilitarian moral principles, and counteracting automatic (...) tendencies toward bias that would otherwise dominate behavior. We argue that little is known about the psychology of moral reasoning and that it may yet prove to be a potent social force. (shrink)

The European People's Party - with its 11 Members in 7 countries - represents, according to the latest legislative elections in the member countries of the EEC, about 40 million voters, and 28 % of the totalEEC electorate. Presenting itself as multi-classis! and open to individual adhesions, it refers also directly to the traditional values of Christian Democracy.Signs of heterogeneity can be seen, however, on three main levels - «ideological», political and economical -, which give the EPP a bipolar aspect (...) : on the one hand, the traditional Christian-Democrat Parties of Italy and the Benelux, all playing a major role in their respective countries, and all backed by strong trade-unions; on the other hand, the German CDU/CSU and the French CDS, less concentrated onconfessional options, and more «right-wing». Between the two, the Fine Gail, only party to have joined the Christian-Democrat Group after the first enlargement.This heterogeneity is, however, compensated by strong pro-European options, which make the EPP the best organized political family on the European level, and enable its leaders to express strong hopes for the election in June. (shrink)

So-called grand or paradigmatic theories—structural functionalism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, rational-choice theory—provide their proponents with a conceptual vocabulary and syntax that allows for the classification and configuring of wide ranges of phenomena. Advocates for any particular “analytical grammar” are accordingly prone to conflating the internal coherence of their paradigm—its integrated complex of definitions, axioms, and inferences—with a corresponding capacity for representational verisimilitude. The distinction between Theory-as-heuristic and Theory-as-imposition is of course difficult to negotiate in practice, given that empirical observation and measurement are (...) not entirely “theory neutral” or independent of prior analytical conceptualization. Nonetheless, the scientific cogency of any theory is ultimately evaluated by the substantive realism of its foundational assumptions and categorical designations; that is, the accuracy with which it identifies and tracks the determinant properties and processes of the phenomena to be explicated. The paradigm of sociocultural evolutionism—despite extensive revamping by contemporary proponents—does not carry warrant in this regard, as its recourse to an analytical grammar fashioned and derived from another discipline raises doubts about its empirical veridicality. This article revisits the contentious issue of remodeling social phenomena in accordance with biological categories and offers both a theoretical and a substantive critique of the “selectionist” paradigm. The transdisciplinary program of historical social science is affirmed by way of counterpoint. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 517 she does on these issues; this is hardly the case. And lastly she fails to discern that some feminist christology does not spring from a love for Jesus and what he has done through his cross and resurrection; rather, Jesus is merely used (and thus abused) to further a theological and political agenda. [Men obviously are not immune from this either.] Despite my disagreements with some (...) of Johnson's arguments and conclusions, and despite my disappointment at the way she addresses the feminist issues, I found this hook to he a basically reliable and clear summary of the christology of the last forty years. Whether it has all been true development, as Johnson maintains, is a debatable question. Nonetheless, this book does elaborate the contemporary issues and possible answers that confront christology today, and for this makes it a book well worth reading. Mother of God Community Washington. D.C. THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M. Cap. The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus. By ALLAN B. WOLTER, O.F.M. Ed. Marilyn McCord Adams. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990. Pp. ix+ 356. $47.50. Duns Scotus was a brilliant light that flashed a brief time across the medieval sky hut was destined ultimately to he outshone by other luminaries immediately preceding him (Aquinas) and following him (Ockham). Perhaps no individual in the past half century has done more to illuminate the Subtle Doctor's thought and times than Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. Both his editing and his translating of primary sources as well as his detailed readings and expositions of Scotus's theories have put medieval scholars in his debt. The present volume is a collection of thirteen essays on particular aspects of Scotus's work, preceded by an introduction. Ten of the essays have been previously published in other sources ranging from.the late 1940s to the present. But as editor Marilyn McCord Adams points out in her forward, many of these can be found only with difficulty in often inaccessible journals and books. Thus the value of this single volume. The essays are grouped under three headings: metaphysics and epistemology, action theory and ethics, and philosophical theology. As is often true with any volume spanning a number of topics and years, the quality of exposition and analysis is uneven. Obviously, in a limited space, I cannot hope to treat all subjects in a volume as comprehensive 518 BOOK REVIEWS as Wolter's. Permit me, however, to begin by making some general comments and then to narrow my remarks to one particular issue. Wolter's introduction to the volume is as clear and concise an overview of Scotus's ideas as one is likely to find anywhere in the literature. In general, the essays in the first part of the book on matters meta· physical and epistemological are quite solid. Here we find explicated many of the concepts which have become identified with Scotus: the formal distinction, univocity of being, the common nature and the hraecceity that constitutes distinct individuals. Wolter does justice to the subtlety and brilliance of Scotus's thinking and allows readers both old and new to Scotus to acknowledge him as a metaphysician for the ages. The author is particularly adept at explicating with helpful analogies some of the Subtle Doctor's most difficult concepts. I benefitted from his thought-provoking comparison between the formal distinction and a spotlight on a stage which can illuminate different and distinguishable aspects of the same reality. The next section on action rtheory and ethics draws in part on Wolter's work which culminated in the 1986 publication of Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Wolter has been in the forefront of those who urge that Scotus's description of an innate affection for justice in the will is crucial in understanding the freedom Scotus thought proper to humans. What remains unclear to me is how this strand in Scotus's writing relates to others which clearly imply a libertarian view of free• dom emphasizing the will's utter self-determination. The problem I see is this: if the will truly is self-determining, then an innate affectio justitiae seems to... (shrink)

When I say ‘pain’, it is clearly a singular phenomenon. Yet if I ask for an example, you can provide many varying instances that confound the idea of its singularity. How can a pinprick be of the same thing as depression or grief? This study maintains the singularity of pain by exploring the process and structure of its experience to account for its variance and its subjectivity. Heidegger’s Being and Time provides the pathway to achieving this, where we comprehend how (...) pain’s myriad manifestations, and their inherent subjectivity, relate to our way of Being – the meaningful horizon through which we encounter pain. The study comes to tie the process of encountering pain with a structure that suffering provides, which explains both the variance and the subjectivity of the pain experience. This can then be mapped onto individual experiences of a singular phenomenon to understand how they arose and what has conditioned them. (shrink)

THE SAME PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS often become the object of extremely diverse opinions. When Leibniz presented his idea of "possible worlds," Voltaire used the occasion for an ironic comment on "metaphysico-theologo-cosmology," whereas for P. L. M. de Maupertuis it was an idea that inspired his important discoveries in the domain of mathematical analysis of dynamic systems. Similar differences of opinion appear today in discussions on the so-called Anthropic Principle. Unequivalent variants of this principle state the existence of close links between the (...) appearance of carbon-based life and the cosmological structure of the universe, between the laws of cosmic evolution and values of physical constants. Many authors question the philosophical significance of the Anthropic Principle, regarding the principle as the product of arbitrary speculations. Their philosophical opponents try to show that certain versions of the principle, which do not go beyond generalization of empirical data, provide grounds for solid teleological assertions claiming that the appearance of the human observer is the goal of cosmic evolution. (shrink)

Why have radical political theorists, whose thinking inspired mass movements for democracy, been so suspicious of political plurality? According to Joseph Schwartz, their doubts were involved with an effort to transcend politics. Mistakenly equating all social difference with the harmful way in which particular interests dominated marketplace societies, radical thinkers sought a comprehensive set of "true human interests" that would completely abolish political strife. In extensive analyses of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and Arendt, Schwartz seeks to mediate the radical (...) critique of democratic capitalist societies with the concern for pluralism evidenced in both liberal and postmodern thought. He thus escapes the authoritarian potential of the radical position, while appropriating its more democratic implications. In Schwartz's view, a reconstructed radical democratic theory of politics must sustain liberalism's defense of individual rights and social pluralism, while redressing the liberal failure to question structural inequalities. In proposing such a theory, he criticizes communitarianism for its premodern longing for a monolithic, virtuous society, and challenges the "politics of difference" for its failure to question the undemocratic terrain of power on which "difference" is constructed. In conclusion, he maintains that an equitable distribution of power and resources among social groups necessitates not the transcendence of politics but its democratic expansion. (shrink)

Ce texte présente le contexte politico-symbolique qui a imprégné la jeunesse de l’auteur au Liban et qui a vu naître sa passion des mathématiques. Il décrit la révolution de ses modes de représentations provoquée par l’éclatement de la guerre civile libanaise, et cela, au contact du milieu intellectuel et politique français. Cela donna corps à son engagement dans un domaine particulier des mathématiques, la « théorie des jeux ». Il introduit brièvement le cadre conceptuel de cette théorie en vue de (...) l’analyse du conflit, et la façon dont il fut étendu pour y inclure les configurations politiques instables. Il livre enfin des lignes directrices pour une modélisation applicable à la condition particulière du Liban et à la récurrence de ses crises structurelles. (shrink)

In 1981 S. W. Hawking and J. Hartle presented a quantum mechanical description of the early stages of possible cosmological evolution. Their proposal was interpreted by many authors as a pattern of cosmic creation from nothing in which no divine Creator is needed. In this approach, physically defined “nothing” was identified both with the empty set of set theory and with metaphysical nothingness. After defining philosophical presuppositions implicitly assumed in Hawking's paper, one discovers that this alleged nothingness has all properties (...) of the philosophically conceived Logos accepted by Hellenic philosophers of the Neoplatonic tradition. Consequently, Hawking's theory of creation remains consistent with Christian theism, and its only theological opponents can be found among defenders of Samuel Clark's God of scientific gaps. (shrink)

In these learned essays, Joseph M. Levine shows how the idea and method of modern history first began to develop during the Renaissance, when a clear distinction between history and fiction was first proposed. The new claims for history were met by a new skepticism in a debate that still echoes today. Levine's first three essays discuss Thomas More's preoccupation with the distinction between history and fiction Erasmus's biblical criticism and the contribution of Renaissance philology to critical method and (...) the way in which Renaissance rhetoric, as in Thomas Elyot's Book of the Governor, continued to inhibit the autonomy of history. He then shows how these issues persisted into the eighteenth century, even as critical method developed. He concludes with a close description of the great controversy that culminated in Edward Gibbon's day over the authenticity of a biblical text that had been used for centuries to defend the Trinity but which turned out to be a forgery. Levine shows how by then all sides were ready to concede the autonomy of history. (shrink)