There has been much discussion of whether there could be objects A and B that are “individuatively vague” in the following way: object A and object B neither determinately stand in the relation of identity to one another, nor do they determinately fail to stand in this relation. If there are objects of this type, then we would have a genuine case of metaphysical vagueness, or “vagueness-in-the-world.” The possibility of vague objects in this sense strikes many as incoherent. The possibility’s (...) very description not only seems to talk of two objects but, much worse, it seems to point to a feature that distinguishes them: unlike object A, object B is not determinately identical to object A. This suspicion of incoherence is voiced in the famous arguments given against the possibility by Gareth Evans and Nathan Salmon. But the status of those arguments and others is uncertain. Here I present a new argument against vague objects — or more precisely, against the possibility of individuatively vague objects that satisfy an important and common additional condition that I will call “Democracy.” Since my argument turns on a connection between what is indeterminate and what is possible, I call it “the modal argument.”. (shrink)

This exploratory study of ethical decision making by individuals in organizations found moral intensity, as defined by Jones (1991), to significantly influence ethical decision making intentions of managers. Moral intensity explained 37% and 53% of the variance in ethical decision making in two decision-making scenarios. In part, the results of this research support our theoretical understanding of ethical/unethical decision-making and serve as a foundation for future research.

Those inclined to believe in the existence of propositions as traditionally conceived might seek to reduce them to some other type of entity. However, parsimonious propositionalists of this type are confronted with a choice of competing candidates – for example, sets of possible worlds, and various neo-Russellian and neo-Fregean constructions. It is argued that this choice is an arbitrary one, and that it closely resembles the type of problematic choice that, as Benacerraf pointed out, bedevils the attempt to reduce numbers (...) to sets – should the number 2 be identified with the set Ø or with the set Ø, Ø? An “argument from arbitrary identification” is formulated with the conclusion that propositions (and perhaps numbers) cannot be reduced away. Various responses to this argument are considered, but ultimately rejected. The paper concludes that the argument is sound: propositions, at least, are sui generis entities. (shrink)

In the Metaphysics Aristotle explicitly identifies first philosophy, the science of "being qua being," with theology . But the treatise never explains how theology could also be a universal science of being. This dissertation will attempt to provide such an explanation. Its procedure will differ from past approaches by attempting to understand the programmatic remarks of VI.1 in the light of Aristotle's actual conception of god, his theology proper. ;Chapter two examines Aristotle's notion of god as a self-thinker. It argues (...) that the god of Metaphysics XII is not narcissistically engaged in self-contemplation. Rather, Aristotle's statements that god "thinks himself" are meant to express the fact that he is an essentially active mind and therefore a pure actuality. ;Chapter three examines what it means for something to be a pure actuality, and in particular, a purely actual mind. It argues, based on a comparison between god and the fullest actuality of human thought, that the content of the divine thinking is just the principles of "being qua being." ;Chapter four addresses directly Aristotle's conception of first philosophy. It argues that the conception of theology as a universal science of being is grounded in the application of two kinds of priority relations. Substance is the focal meaning ) of being, while god is the first of the series of three kinds of substance. ;In concluding, I first review Aristotle's conception of substance in Metaphysics VII. Following Frede , I contend that Aristotle understands sensible substance in its primary sense to be form. Accordingly, there are two grounds on which Aristotle may consistently and intelligently identify metaphysics with theology. As a pure form god is the first kind of substance. He is therefore the best example of a being, knowledge of which is necessary to understand being in general. As an essentially self-thinking, and therefore purely actual mind, god possesses the most universal knowledge. He is therefore the most appropriate object for a science of being qua being, for one comes to have knowledge of god by coming to know the principles of being qua being. (shrink)

As sports fans, we often experience what seem to be strong garden-variety emotions—everything from joy and euphoria to anger, dread and despair. In self-description, in physiology and even in phenomenology, these reactions to sporting events present themselves as genuine emotions. But we don’t act on these ‘sporting emotions’ in the ways one might expect. This is because these reactions are not genuine emotions. Or so I argue. Johan Huizinga suggested that play has a pretend ‘set aside’ ‘extra-ordinary’ character. And Kendall (...) Walton has argued that make-believe is involved in our emotional responses to fiction, as well as to sport. Here I articulate and extend the idea that sporting emotions centrally involve pretense and make-believe in ways that can meet some forceful objections. These extensions draw on a ‘double-consciousness’ I claim to find in the pretense of play. I end by saying why the proper characterization of our sporting emotions is important. (shrink)

In 'A Puzzle about Belief' Saul Kripke appeals to a principle of disquotation that allows us to infer a person's beliefs from the sentences to which she assents (in certain conditions). Kripke relies on this principle in constructing some famous puzzle cases, which he uses to defend the Millian view that the sole semantic function of a proper name is to refer to its bearer. The examples are meant to undermine the anti-Millian objection, grounded in traditional Frege-cases, that truth-value is (...) not always maintained when co-referential names are intersubstituted in belief reports. I argue here that our disquotational practice is sensitive to certain shifts in conversational context, and it is only if we overlook these shifts - if we 'misdisquote' - that we can draw the conclusions Kripke wants to draw from his examples. In the wake of this conclusion, I provide a 'contextualist' treatment of Kripke's puzzle cases. I show how this treatment is motivated by certain norms of rationality, and I defend these norms against an intriguing 'anti-Cartesian' theory of mind. Throughout the paper, I develop the larger implications that my treatment of Kripke's argument has for the semantic theory of names and belief reports, and, more generally, for our picture of the relation between linguistic behaviour and our states of mind. (shrink)

“Perfect Day” by Lou Reed and “Village Ghetto Land” by Stevie Wonder are prime examples of “melic” irony in song—cases in which expressive irony is achieved through the interplay and tension between a song’s lyrics and its musical accompaniment. But how exactly can a song achieve this ironic effect, especially if, as formalists maintain, music on its own is incapable of meaning, much less communicative irony? In this paper, I illuminate this type of irony by applying a Gricean account of (...) verbal irony to song. I explore the complexities of this application, and suggest that, through ironic interplay with lyrics, the music of a song can acquire semantic capacities of its own. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Generative artificial intelligence is transforming the way we make, and think about, art. With prompting from human users, these generative systems now produce aesthetically compelling and seemingly creative works in a variety of artistic domains. In doing so, they challenge the ways we think about artistic credit, about creativity, and about the mechanism of legal copyright, which is meant to protect and promote creativity in a capitalist art market. All of this is currently at play in the courtroom, as (...) artists contest the ways in which their artworks can be rightfully fed into these artificial systems (“the problem of the inputs”), and other artists are challenged over whether they might be credited for the visual images these systems generate (“the problem of the outputs”). Here, we explore these problems as they arise in visual art. We argue that the contested legal landscape surrounding these artificial systems reflects the ways they challenge our received notions of artistic credit and creativity. And we suggest that clarifying or changing the application of copyright in light of their generative capacities will ultimately involve revising our conception of art. (shrink)

Joseph G. Ramsey argues that Richard Wright’s 1940 novella “Bright and Morning Star” has been consistently misunderstood. What has been almost universally read as a narrative of communist heroism stages instead a heroic mistake. “Bright and Morning Star” is not a story primarily about heroic individual sacrifice, but about the ways collective struggle can fail.

Le canon 812 du Code de droit canon de 1983 exige que ceux qui enseignent une discipline théologique dans une université catholique aient un mandatum de la part de l’autorité ecclésiastique compétente. Entre insistances et rappels à l’ordre romains, s’en suivirent aux Etats-Unis neuf ans de consultations, discussions et conflits qui impliquèrent évêques, présidents d’universités et théologiens. Il y a là un fait théologique et ecclésial dont les Eglises d’autres pays n’ont pas fait la même expérience. L’examen des enjeux ecclésiologiques (...) de ces péripéties constitue l’objet de ces réflexions qui représentent ainsi une sorte de lettre théologique des Etats-Unis. Pourquoi l’acuité de la question dans ce pays ? Comment comprendre le mandatum avec l’emploi du concept de communion ? Qu’est-ce que ce mandatum comme fait historique et comme institution ecclésiale ? Telles sont les questions auxquelles tente de répondre J.G. Mueller dans cet article.Canon 812 of the Code of Canon Law of 1983 requires that those who teach a theological discipline in a Catholic university have a mandatum from the competent church authority. In between Rome’s insistence and calls to order, there followed nine years of consultations, discussions, and conflicts in the United States involving bishops, university presidents, and theologians. This is a theological and ecclesial fact of which Churches in other countries have not had the same experience. An examination of the ecclesiological stakes of these vicissitudes constitutes the subject of these reflections, which represents a sort of theological letter from the United States. Why the acuity of the question in this country? How can we understand the mandatum by using the concept of communion? What is this mandatum as a historical fact and as an ecclesiastical institution? Such are the questions that J.G. Mueller attempts to answer in this article. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Marion proposes what he calls the “phenomenology of givenness” (phénoménologie de la donation) as the true “first philosophy.” In this paper I consider his critique of previous first philosophies and his argument for the phenomenology of givenness as their replacement. I note several problems with the phenomenology of givenness and conclude that it does not seem ready yet to assume the title of “first philosophy.”.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eternal Life and Human Happiness in Heaven: Philosophical Problems, Thomistic Solutions by Christopher M. BrownElizabeth C. Shaw and Staff*BROWN, Christopher M. Eternal Life and Human Happiness in Heaven: Philosophical Problems, Thomistic Solutions. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021. xiii + 487 pp. Cloth, $75.00The contents of the book are straightforwardly announced by the title. Christopher Brown entertains four apparent problems about eternal life in heaven (...) considered by contemporary philosophers and theologians and offers solutions to them from the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. The book consists of seventeen chapters together with an introduction and conclusion and is divided into four parts. In the first part Brown lays out the problems and the solutions to them proposed by contemporary philosophers and theologians. In the second part he explains St. Thomas's distinction between essential and accidental reward in heaven and goes on to treat of the former—which consists in the beatific vision, that is, our beholding of God—and its proper accidents—which are delight, joy, and charity. In the third part he then deals with the accidental reward, which has to do with the perfected condition of our glorified bodies, society with other persons, and so on. Finally, in the fourth part Brown, drawing on his expositions of St. Thomas's doctrine in the two previous parts, details Thomistic solutions to the four problems discussed in the first part and argues that these solutions are superior to those proposed by the contemporary philosophers and theologians he has engaged.So, what are the four problems that Brown addresses? Let's present them as questions. (1) Is heaven just a private communion between a human person and God, or is it a perfect community centered on God that also involves angels, other human persons, and other creatures? (2) Is heaven just a spiritual affair, or are our resurrected bodies a part of it? (3) Is heaven a static or dynamic reality? (4) Is heaven boring?The answers are as follows. Ad primum: Heaven is a perfect community centered on God that also involves angels, other human persons, and other creatures. Ad secundum: Heaven is a spiritual and physical affair that includes our souls and our resurrected bodies. Ad tertium: Heaven is a dynamic reality. Ad quartum: Heaven is not boring!I cannot cover here all of the specifics of the way Brown shows how St. Thomas arrives at these answers. People who know St. Thomas well, even if they have not reflected much on these problems before, probably will [End Page 135] not have great difficulty thinking through how he might get to the first and second answers, at least in general terms. But the third and fourth, I think, call for further comment. My comments will necessarily be brief.If I understand Brown correctly, he wants to say (and contends that St. Thomas holds) that heaven is dynamic insofar as in heaven we are in act. But we can be in act in two senses: We can be in act in an unchanging way or in a changing way. In heaven my capacities to know God and to love him are both fully perfected, that is, they are fully actualized and undergo no change. But in heaven we will enjoy our resurrected bodies as well, and our bodies will also be active and interacting with other bodies. This activity will entail change. So, either way we will be active in heaven and, therefore, heaven will be something dynamic.What, then, about the problem of boredom? Because we will be perfectly happy in heaven, argues Brown (interpreting St. Thomas), heaven won't be boring. But the matter doesn't end there. Brown points out that Brian Ribeiro, developing an idea of Bernard Williams, objects that a person who is perfectly happy in the way that we are supposed to be in heaven, cannot be personally identical with any person in this life because the conditions of the beatified person and the nonbeatified person are just too radically different for there to be continuity between the two. Brown replies that St. Thomas convincingly shows that God can, by grace, prepare persons in this... (shrink)

One way to work toward intercultural understanding is through interreligious dialogue, given the centrality that religion often has in a culture. David Burrell has suggested that Maimonides and Aquinas can offer us principles for interreligious dialogue. In particular, he argues that their negative theology shows us the impossibility of one tradition claiming a better understanding of God than those advanced by other traditions. This should lead religious traditions away fromcompetition and toward dialogue. In my paper, I propose a critique of (...) Burrell’s thesis, arguing for a different interpretation of Maimonides and Aquinas and adifferent understanding of interreligious dialogue. While it is true that Maimonides and Aquinas have a well-developed sense of the limits of our theological knowledge, they do not draw the conclusion that these limitations necessarily make all understandings of God equal. I think Maimonides and Aquinas show us instead that the firmest basis for interreligious dialogue is the recognition that some genuine knowledge of the divine is available to all, regardless of religious tradition. (shrink)

This article identifies and compares meanings of wildfire risk mitigation for stakeholders in the Front Range of Colorado, USA. We examine the case of a collaborative partnership sponsored by government agencies and directed to decrease hazardous fuels in interface areas. Data were collected by way of key informant interviews and focus groups. The analysis is guided by the Circuit of Culture model in communication research. We found both shared and differing meanings between members of this partnership (the ‘‘producers’’) and other (...) stakeholders not formally in the partnership (the ‘‘consumers’’). We conclude that those promoting the partnership’s project to mitigate risk are primarily aligned with a discourse of scientific management. Stakeholders outside the partnership follow a discourse of community. We argue that failure to recognize and account for differences in the way risk mitigation is framed and related power dynamics could hamper the communicational efforts of the collaborative partnership and impact goals for fuels reduction. We recommend ways that both groups can capitalize on shared meanings and how agency managers and decision makers can build better working relationships with interface communities and other external stakeholders. (shrink)

In this conceptual article, the authors explore the possibilities of another approach to examining the human dimensions of wildland fire. They argue that our understanding of this issue could be enhanced by considering a cultural studies construct known as the ‘‘circuit of culture.’’ This cross-disciplinary perspective provides increased analytic power by accounting for the meaningful role of 5 cultural processes in terms of their location and interrelation within social experience. The authors compare the circuit of culture approach with a body (...) of recent literature focused on wildland fire. The authors make the case that this research has moved in a positive direction since wildland fire first ignited social scientific interest in the 1980s, but it is still missing key cultural processes. Ultimately, following the circuit allows us to make more nuanced statements about meaning, something much needed in the face of the wicked problem of wildland fire. (shrink)

In this book, Joseph G. Morgan examines the career of Wesley Fishel, a political scientist who vigorously supported American intervention in the Vietnam War, which he deemed a "great, and tragic, American experiment." Morgan demonstrates how Fishel continued to champion the prospect of an independent South Vietnam, even when Vietnamese resistance and infighting among American and Vietnamese leaders undermined this effort. Morgan also analyzes how opponents of the war questioned Fishel's scholarly integrity and his academic collaboration with the US (...) government in implementing Cold War policies. (shrink)

Psychobiography has been a topical area and an applied research specialty in psychology since Freud’s (1910/1989) influential psychoanalytic psychobiography of Leonardo da Vinci. Throughout the last century, psychobiographers have emphasized the importance of anchoring interpretations of life histories in established psychological theories and rigorous historiographic research methods. One topical area receiving less attention in psychobiography is the critical relationship between the psychobiographer and her or his subject as it relates to the process of psychobiographical writing. The present article explores the (...) phenomenology and challenges of this relationship in order to ultimately propose practical strategies for navigating countertransference issues throughout the subject selection, research and publication phases of psychobiography. Freud’s psychobiography of Leonardo da Vinci is used as a model of the stages of psychobiography, the evolution of the psychobiographer-subject relationship, and the challenges of countertransference. (shrink)

In a seemingly offhand, often overlooked comment, Karl Marx deemed 'human corporeal organisation' the 'first fact of human history'. Following Marx's corporeal turn and pursuing the radical implications of his corporeal insight, this book undertakes a reconstruction of the corporeal foundations of historical materialism. Part I exposes the corporeal roots of Marx's materialist conception of history and historical-materialist Wissenschaft. Part II attempts a historical-materialist mapping of human corporeal organisation. Suggesting how to approach human histories up from their corporeal foundations, Part (...) III elaborates historical-materialism as 'corporeal semiotics'. Part IV, a case study of Marx's critique of capitalist socio-economic and cultural forms, reveals the corporeal foundations of that critique and the corporeal depth of his vision of human freedom and dignity. (shrink)

Many decisions involve multiple stages of choices and events, and these decisions can be represented graphically as decision trees. Optimal decision strategies for decision trees are commonly determined by a backward induction analysis that demands adherence to three fundamental consistency principles: dynamic, consequential, and strategic. Previous research found that decision-makers tend to exhibit violations of dynamic and strategic consistency at rates significantly higher than choice inconsistency across various levels of potential reward. The current research extends these findings under new conditions; (...) specifically, it explores the extent to which these principles are violated as a function of the planning horizon length of the decision tree. Results from two experiments suggest that dynamic inconsistency increases as tree length increases; these results are explained within a dynamic approach–avoidance framework. (shrink)

BackgroundAn analysis of the position statements of secular US medical and surgical professional societies on physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia have not been published recently. Available statements were evaluated for position, content, and sentiment.MethodsIn order to create a comprehensive list of secular medical and surgical societies, the results of a systematic search using Google were cross-referenced with a list of societies that have a seat on the American Medical Association House of Delegates. Societies with position statements were identified. These statements (...) were divided into 5 categories: opposed to PAS and/or euthanasia, studied neutrality, supportive, acknowledgement without statement, and no statement. Linguistic analysis was performed using RapidMinder in order to determine word frequency and sentiment respective to individual statements. To ensure accuracy, only statements with word counts > 100 were analyzed. A 2-tailed independentttest was used to test for variance among sentiment scores of opposing and studied neutrality statements.ResultsOf 150 societies, only 12 (8%) have position statements on PAS and euthanasia: 11 for PAS (5 opposing and 4 studied neutrality) and 9 for euthanasia (6 opposing and 2 studied neutrality). Although the most popular words used in opposing and studied neutrality statements are similar, notable exceptions exist (suicide,medicine, andtreatmentappear frequently in opposing statements, but not in studied neutrality statements, whereaspsychologists,law, andindividualsappear frequently in studied neutrality statements, but not in opposing statements). Sentiment scores for opposing and studied neutrality statements do not differ (mean, 0.094 vs. 0.104;P = 0.90).ConclusionsFew US medical and surgical societies have position statements on PAS and euthanasia. Among them, opposing and studied neutrality statements share similar linguistic sentiment. Opposing and studied neutrality statements have clear differences, but share recommendations. Both opposing and studied neutrality statements cite potential risks of PAS legalization and suggest that good palliative care might diminish a patient’s desire for PAS. (shrink)