For a better detection in Network information security monitoring system, the author proposes a method based on adaptive depth detection. A deep belief network was designed and implemented, and the intrusion detection system model was combined with a support vector machine. The data set adopts the NSL-KDD network communication data set, and this data set is authoritative in the security field. Redundant cleaning, data type conversion, normalization, and other processing operations are performed on the data set. Using the data conversion (...) method based on the probability mass function probability mass function coding, a standard data set with low redundancy and low dimensionality can be obtained. Research indicates that when the batch size reaches 64, the accuracy of the test set reaches its maximum value. As the batch size increases, the accuracy first increases and then decreases. When the batch size continues to increase, the model will inevitably fall into the local optimal state, resulting in the degradation of the detection performance of the system. In terms of the false alarm rate, the DBN-SVM model is also the highest; however, it is only 10.73%. Under the premise of increasing the detection rate, the false alarm rate is improved; for the overall detection performance of the model, it is within an acceptable range. In terms of accuracy, the DBN-SVM model also scored the highest. The accuracy rate is the ratio of normal and correct classification for intrusion detection. It can explain the detection ability of the model. In summary, the overall detection ability of the DBN-SVM model is the best. The good classification ability to use SVM is proved, and the classification of low-dimensional features is expected to increase the detection rate of the system. (shrink)

This paper explores the level of corporate social responsibility contributions disclosed by central public sector enterprises in India. This paper analyses the nature and quality of CSR disclosures made by CPSEs listed in India following the issue of CSR guidelines by the Department of Public Enterprises for CPSEs in March 2010. The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of CSR guidelines on the reporting practices of the CPSEs. A content analysis of annual reports across seven themes shows (...) that Human Resources and Community Development are the prime focus areas of CSR disclosures, whereas Carbon and Greenhouse Gas emissions are the least reported activity. The disclosures across all CSR themes are primarily narrative rather than quantitative or in monetary terms. The findings of the study may help policy makers in India to assess practices and devise detailed and specific CSRD requirements, rather than the current general mandatory requirements, to enhance the performance and quality of CSRDs by the CPSEs. (shrink)

This study provides evidence on the governance of CSR policies and activities by Indian central government-owned companies [i.e. Central Public Sector Enterprises ] within a unique mandatory regulatory setting. We utilise the multi-level ‘Logic of governance’ conceptual framework and draw upon interview data collected from 25 senior managers in 21 CPSEs to assess the dynamics of CSR implementation within CPSEs. Our findings indicate most managers believe that a mandatory policy has enhanced the accountability and commitment of governing boards and senior (...) management to CSR. However, CSR policy implementation within Indian CPSEs is still nascent, fraught with bureaucratic hurdles, insufficient human and knowledge resources, limited stakeholder analysis and over-emphasis on CSR budget utilisation as an outcome. Several key areas for improvements include the need for better translation of national CSR policy goals to firm-level strategies, more formal assessment of stakeholder needs, clearer communication lines with external service providers, such as NGOs and local government agencies, and the better evaluation of CSR outcomes. The findings of this study have implications for both theory and policy development. (shrink)

Media portrayal has a huge impact on young fashion and style preferences, driving both social and personal trends. This study investigates whether media portrayals, such as social media, television, and fashion businesses, influence young adults' fashion choices and self-image. The study investigates the influence of exposure to media on fashion preference formation through the analysis of collected datasets. The key findings show that fashion personalities and media channels have a significant impact on style acceptance. The study focuses on how brand (...) reputation and the variety of media content impact consumer behavior. It employs SPSS software to conduct statistical methods, such as Chi-Square tests, to examine the link between demographic factors and media influence. The findings underscore the dynamic nature of fashion trends influenced by media and emphasize the need to understand how media shapes the fashion choices of today's youth. (shrink)

Organizational operations have been modified by using the rise of digital innovation, which has increased consumer interaction, accelerated efficiency, and stimulated overall growth. But obstacles like converting organizational adoption charges and a quickly evolving era would possibly make it more difficult to generalize effects across of different sectors and ancient intervals. To overcome these constraints, a thorough examination of the impact of digital innovation on organizational growth is carried out in this study. This study investigates the connection among Digital infrastructure (...) (DI), Digital Innovation practices (DIP), Adoption of advanced digital technologies (ADT), Leadership support (LS), Organizational growth (OG), and Employee digital capabilities (EDS) utilizing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and CFA test. SEM is used to evaluate the causal pathways between constructs and the connections between latent variables and their indicators. CFA is a method used to validate the dimension model by examining the relationships between observed indicators and their underlying constructs. A systematic questionnaire with a Likert scale rating was used to collect data from 600 populations. The measurement model assessed the validity and reliability of latent constructs, while the structural model analyzed the relationship between constructs based on the proposed hypotheses. The structural model revealed that DI, LS, and ADT are positively connected to the DTP, and OG, between digital innovations on organizational growth. (β = 0.58,0.54,0.60 and 0.62,p < 0.05), providing well support for hypotheses 1, 2, 4, and 5. The SEM and CFA confirm the robustness of these relationships. The findings underscore the critical role of digital infrastructure and leadership in driving effective digital practices and fostering growth. (shrink)

Teacher perspectives on imagination and visualization in early childhood training perform an important part in molding the cognitive and emotional improvement of young learners. The study is based on instructors’ self-mentioned perspectives, which can be subjective and motivated through personal biases, experiences, and interpretations of imagination and visualization. In this study, the teacher's perspective on imagination and visualization in early childhood education was investigated. The study included 250 primary school teachers, demonstrating the quality of the findings and reflecting their opinions. (...) The study used SPSS version 28 software to analyse the teacher's opinion with the utilization of the chi-square test and confirmatory factor analysis test. The result of research indicates that elementary school pupils develop their imagination through fairy tales, character role plays, and language training that uses linguistic codes to transmit imagery. (shrink)

There is emerging evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of music based interventions for improving social functioning in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). While this evidence lends some support in favour of using song over spoken directives in facilitating engagement and receptive intervention in ASD, there has been little research that has investigated the efficacy of such stimuli on socio-communicative responsiveness measures. Here, we present preliminary results from a pilot study which tested whether sung instruction, as compared to spoken directives, (...) could elicit greater number of socio-communicative behaviours in young children with ASD. Using an adapted single-subject design, three children between the ages of 3 and 4 years, participated in a programme consisting of 18 sessions, of which 9 were delivered with spoken directives and 9 with sung. Sessions were counterbalanced and randomized for three play activities - block matching, picture matching and clay play. All sessions were video-recorded for post-hoc observational coding of three behavioural metrics which included performance, frequency of social gesture and eye contact. Analysis of the videos by two independent raters indicated increased socio-communicative responsiveness in terms of frequency of social gesture as well as eye contact during sung compared to spoken conditions across all participants. Our findings suggest that sung directives may play a useful role in engaging children with ASD and also serve as an effective interventional medium to enhance socio-communicative responsiveness. (shrink)

This lavishly illustrated book highlights the conservation importance of congregatory animals species--those which gather in vast groups. It also focuses on the irreplaceability of the congregation sites which are able to support such large gatherings of animals, fish, or birds.

This lavishly illustrated book establishes the towering influence of the scientist Victor Regnault in the earliest decades of photography, a period of experimentation ripe with artistic, commercial, and scientific possibility. Regnault has a double significance to the early history of photography, as the first leader of the Société Française de Photographie and as the maker of more than two hundred calotype portraits and landscapes. His photographic and scientific careers intersected a third field with his appointment in 1852 as director of (...) the Sèvres porcelain works. Readers are treated to Regnault's own beguiling pastoral, garden, and forest scenes; striking portraits of the scientists and artists in his circle of friends; quirky images of acoustic experiments; and an insider's view of the Sèvres porcelain works. Regnault's richly varied photographs also encompass perhaps the most extensive group of family portraits in early photography, and his romanticized landscapes reflect a moment when the rural outskirts of Paris were being aggressively suburbanized and industrialized. Occupying a unique and powerful position in the overlapping spheres of photography, science, industry, and art, Regnault was elected president of the newly formed S.F.P. in 1855. By examining his intertwined activities against the backdrop of French photography's nascent pursuit of institutional legitimacy, this book illuminates an important and overlooked body of images and the irregular cultural terrain of early photography. (shrink)

hugo grotius was lavishly praised by his successors in the protestant natural law tradition for having been the first to make “any great Progress in the Knowledge of the true fundamental Principles of the Law of Nature, and the right Method of explaining that Science.”1 Wildly influential in his own time, historians of philosophy have found it difficult to determine what, if anything, is innovative in Grotius’s moral theory.2 Scholarly assessments of Grotius’s place in the history of ethics have been (...) hampered by pervasive disagreement about what his views on natural law actually are.This article provides new ammunition to those who hold that Grotius was an innovative and systematic moral thinker in his... (shrink)

Philosophers of language have lavished attention on names and other singular referring expressions. But they have focused primarily on what might be called lexicalsemantic character of names and have largely ignored both what I call the lexicalsyntactic character of names and also what I call the pragmatic significance of the naming relation. Partly as a consequence, explanatory burdens have mistakenly been heaped upon semantics that properly belong elsewhere. This essay takes some steps toward correcting these twin lacunae. When we properly (...) distinguish that which belongs to the lexical-syntactic character of names, from that which belongs to the lexical semantic character of names, from that which rests on the pragmatics of the naming relation, we lay to rest many misbegotten claims about names and their presumed semantic behavior. For example, though many believe that Frege’s puzzle about the possibility of informative identity statements motivates a move away from a referentialist semantics for names, I argue that the very possibility of Frege cases has its source not in facts about the lexical-semantic character of names but in facts about the lexical-syntax of the naming relation. If I am right, Frege cases as such are insufficient to justify the introduction of the distinction between sense and reference. In a similar vein, I offer a new diagnosis of the widely misdiagnosed felt invalidity of the substitution of coreferring names within propositional attitude contexts. That felt invalidity has been taken 1 to justify the conclusion that an embedded referring expression must be playing some semantic role either different from or additional to its customary semantic role of standing for its reference. I argue, to the contrary, that failures of substitutivity have their source not in the peculiar semantic behavior of embedded expressions but entirely in certain pragmatic principles. (shrink)

What if sounds everywhere lavish divine generosity? Merging insights from Jean-Luc Marion with musical ingenuity from Pierre Boulez and John Cage's 4'33", Gerald C. Liu blends the phenomenological, theological, and musical to formulate a hypothesis that in all places, soundscapes instantiate divine giving without boundary. He aims to widen apprehension of holiness in the world, and privileges the ubiquity of sound as a limitless and easily accessible portal for discovering the inexhaustible magnitude of divine giving.

Philosophical questions about the arts go naturally with other kinds of questions about them. Art is sometimes said to be an historical concept. But where in our cultural and biological history did art begin? If art is related to play and imagination, do we find any signs of these things in our nonhuman relatives? Sometimes the other questions look like ones the philosopher of art has to answer. Anyone who thinks that interpretation in the arts is an activity that leaves (...) the intentions of the author behind needs to explain how and why this differs so fundamentally from ordinary conversational interpretation, where the only decent models we have are ones that depend crucially on the recovery of intention. Anyone who thinks that imaginative literature has anything to tell us about time had better have a position on how earlier and later relate to past and future. Anyone who thinks that empathy plays a role in literary engagement had better have a psychologically plausible account of what empathy is. Philosophical questions about the arts also go naturally with other kinds of philosophical questions: we can't think constructively about representation in art without thinking about representation; text, meaning, reference and existence get similarly drawn into the conversation. Some ideas that philosophers of art deal with emerge from other disciplines. In literary theory an enormous amount of attention has been lavished on tracing the sources of unreliability in narrative. Is the result adequate to the details of the particular works we call unreliable? Contemporary film theory is generally hostile to the fiction/documentary distinction. Are there in fact any grounds for this? This book of thirteen connected essays examines questions of all these kinds. It ranges from the semantics of proper names, through the pragmatics of literary and filmic interpretation, to the aesthetic function of stone age implements. Some of the essays have not been published before; some that have are here substantially revised. (shrink)

Ibn Bajja both lavishly praises Plato, and quietly alters his teaching. He develops a novel version of the Platonic city, taken partly from Alfarabi, which completely excludes non-philosophers from it, arguing that the gap between purely intellectual philosophy and mostly corporeal politics is simply too great. This allows Ibn Bajja to escape many of the problems associated with the exposition and implementation of the city of the Republic and Political Regime, but raises a new difficulty, namely, the relationship of the (...) small, weak city of the philosophers to the stronger, larger cities of human beings more generally, in the midst of which it must somehow flourish. Ibn Bajja’s solution, ironically, points to the frenetic political engagement for which his biography is known, and which he himself may eventually have come to regret. (shrink)

"The volume is lavishly illustrated with many photographs and line drawings. Historians of the Plains and the Rockies will find this work an interesting look into the social history of the area.

The scholarly attention lavished on William James’ case study in the “Sick Soul” lecture in The Varieties of Religious Experience of a man disturbed by the vision of an epileptic patient has generally not approached this case as a religious experience. To deepen our understanding of religious experience, I show that this case study can be understood as religious using elements of the theory of religion expounded throughout James’ text. I argue that it can be understood as a stage in (...) the process of conversion James lays out. The omission of a subsequent stage highlights James’ reasons for rejecting healthy-mindedness as a philosophically adequate perspective and illustrates his claim that the strivings of the conscious mind can stunt the conversion process. Drawing on other philosophical, psychological, and literary texts, I argue that the content of the vision James describes points to solitude as a source of religious disquiet. (shrink)

Tacitus gives lavish treatment to the mutiny of the German legions in the aftermath of Augustus' death in a.d. 14 and provides an excellent centrepiece in a speech by Germanicus to the troops of the Lower German army at Ara Ubiorum . After the harsh treatment of a delegation from Rome, Germanicus responded to requests that he send Agrippina and Caligula to safety. As the family was leaving the camp the troops surrounded Germanicus, who moved them to repentance by (...) his speech. Previous writers have already discussed particular debts to Livy and to Virgil, but none has, I think, pointed to the most likely source for Germanicus' opening remarks: ‘Non mihi uxor aut filius patre et re publica cariores sunt…’. Goodyear dismisses the sentiment as a variety of the ‘commonplace’. that the state was more important than the individual and refers the reader to Béranger. However, none of these passages is as close or as pointed as the examples I consider below. (shrink)

As opposed to overdemanding principles which ask individuals to sacrifice too much, there are overpermissive principles which ask individuals to sacrifice too little. Determining the extent to which one should sacrifice often comes with the need of understanding what is of moral significance. By analysing different readings of moral significance, and singling out one specific interpretation of moral significance which links moral significance to gaining or losing a considerable amount of welfare, I demonstrate that one of the well-known principles of (...) Peter Singer, the Weaker Principle of Sacrifice, is overpermissive as it exempts deliberately cultivated morally significant lavish pursuits from the domain of sacrifice. Overpermissiveness not only renders moral principles unreasonably broad but also causes burdens to be distributed unjustifiably in a comparative sense, where some parties are assigned a moral obligation whereas others are not. (shrink)

In many cases of criminality within large corporations, senior management does not commit the operative offense—or conspire or assist in it—but nonetheless bears serious responsibility for the crime. That responsibility can derive from, among other things, management’s role in cultivating corporate culture, in failing to police effectively within the firm, and in accepting lavish compensation for taking the firm’s reins. Criminal law does not include any doctrinal means for transposing that form of responsibility into punishment. Arguments for expanding doctrine—including (...) broadening of the presently narrow “responsible corporate officer” doctrine—so as to authorize such punishment do not fare well under the justificatory demands of criminal law theory. The principal obstacle to such arguments is the large industrial corporation itself, which necessarily entails kinds and degrees of delegation and risk-taking that do not fit well with settled concepts about mens rea and omission liability. Even the most egregious and harmful management failures must be addressed through design and regulation of the corporation rather than imposition of individual criminal liability. (shrink)

The Essay concerning Human Understanding was published at the end of 1689.1 It sold well, and within three years Locke was planning revisions for a second edition. Among those whose “advice and assistance” he sought was the Irish scientist William Molyneux. Locke had begun a correspondence with Molyneux a few months before, after the latter had lavishly praised the Essay and its author in the Epistle Dedicatory of his own Dioptrica Nova, published early in 1692. Here was a man, Locke (...) concluded, whose judgment one could trust. He returned Molyneux’s compliment in the Essay’s new edition, calling him “that very Ingenious and Studious promoter of real Knowledge, ... whom I am proud to call my friend”. (shrink)

Philosophy of mind is, and for a long while has been, 99% metaphysics and 1% epistemology. Attention is lavished on the question of the nature of mind, but questions concerning how we know about minds are discussed much less thoroughly. University courses in philosophy of mind routinely devote a lot of time to dualism, logical behaviourism, the mind/brain identity theory, and functionalism. But what gets said about the kinds of evidence that help one determine what mental states, if any, an (...) individual occupies? Well, Skinner's puritanical disdain for postulating mental states gets raked over the coals, the problem of other minds gets solved by a perfunctory invocation of the principle of inference to the best explanation, and the Turing test gets discussed, mainly in order to emphasize that it can lead to mistaken answers. (shrink)

Institutional review boards and investigators are used to talking about risks of harm. Both low risks of great harm and high risks of small harm must be disclosed to prospective subjects and should be explained and categorized in ways that help potential subjects to understand and weigh them appropriately. Everyone on an IRB has probably spent time at meetings arguing over whether a three-page bulleted list of risk description is helpful or overkill for prospective subjects. Yet only a small fraction (...) of all the time and attention lavished on risk disclosure has been devoted to discussing whether and when potential benefit to subjects can reasonably be claimed and, if so, how it should be described in the consent form and process.Traditionally, IRBs and regulators have worked to ensure that clear lines can be drawn between research that, by definition, carries no potential for direct benefit — because it uses healthy volunteers or because it is not foreseeably focused on the development of treatments — and research that does have the development of effective treatments as its goal. (shrink)

Spinoza's writing style has been judged, by various commentators, alternatively as excessively dry or lavishly rich, depending on the precise text that these scholars had in mind when making such judgments. This chapter offers an overview of a selected list of Scholastic debates intersecting the CM. It highlights how Spinoza consciously intervenes in them, showing a certain awareness of the intricacies of Scholastic discourse. Spinoza opens the CM with a discussion of the term “being,” claiming that “being is badly divided (...) into real being and being of reason”. The chapter focuses on how Spinoza can be interpreted as responding to the canonical thought of Francisco Suárez, since the Leiden Scholastics interacted especially with the Escuela de Salamanca. One of Spinoza's main piéces de résistance is the doctrine of the inseparability between the will and intellect of God. Spinoza has a much stronger thesis regarding the “external” identity of God's intellect, power, and will. (shrink)

The troubling ethics and politics of philanthropy Is philanthropy, by its very nature, a threat to today’s democracy? Though we may laud wealthy individuals who give away their money for society’s benefit, Just Giving shows how such generosity not only isn’t the unassailable good we think it to be but might also undermine democratic values and set back aspirations of justice. Big philanthropy is often an exercise of power, the conversion of private assets into public influence. And it is a (...) form of power that is largely unaccountable, often perpetual, and lavishly tax-advantaged. The affluent—and their foundations—reap vast benefits even as they influence policy without accountability. And small philanthropy, or ordinary charitable giving, can be problematic as well. Charity, it turns out, does surprisingly little to provide for those in need and sometimes worsens inequality. These outcomes are shaped by the policies that define and structure philanthropy. When, how much, and to whom people give is influenced by laws governing everything from the creation of foundations and nonprofits to generous tax exemptions for donations of money and property. Rob Reich asks: What attitude and what policies should democracies have concerning individuals who give money away for public purposes? Philanthropy currently fails democracy in many ways, but Reich argues that it can be redeemed. Differentiating between individual philanthropy and private foundations, the aims of mass giving should be the decentralization of power in the production of public goods, such as the arts, education, and science. For foundations, the goal should be what Reich terms “discovery,” or long-time-horizon innovations that enhance democratic experimentalism. Philanthropy, when properly structured, can play a crucial role in supporting a strong liberal democracy. Just Giving investigates the ethical and political dimensions of philanthropy and considers how giving might better support democratic values and promote justice. (shrink)

Although Marcuse has been lavishly praised and severely condemned, he has been almost totally neglected by academic philosophers. One would have thought that MacIntyre was the ideal philosopher to write an intelligent critique of Marcuse. MacIntyre's own interests in Freud, Marx, and social theory center about the issues that have preoccupied Marcuse. Despite the claim to present Marcuse's views and then to criticize them, MacIntyre has written a stinging polemic. Marcuse is charged with being mistaken in all his key positions. (...) He fails to understand Hegel, Marx, Freud. His account of the ills of contemporary technological society is misguided. His positive program is contemptuous and dangerous. He is guilty of furthering the corruption of our language. Typical of MacIntyre's prose is his final sentence, "The philosophy of the Young Hegelians, fragments of Marxism and revised chunks of Freud's metapsychology: out of these materials Marcuse has produced a theory that, like so many of its predecessors, invokes the great names of freedom and reason while betraying their substance at every important point." On the basis of MacIntyre's reading of Marcuse it is hard to imagine that he is anything more than a bungling idiot. There is plenty to criticize in Marcuse, but MacIntyre's polemic backfires. The best and most effective critique is based on understanding, but despite appearances there is little attempt here to take Marcuse seriously. This is a pity because both Marcuse's thought and MacIntyre's important criticisms tend to get lost in all this lively prose.--R. J. B. (shrink)

: Commercial academic-industry relationships (AIRs) are widespread in biotechnology and have resulted in a wide array of restrictions on academic research. Objections to such restrictions have centered on the charge that they violate academic freedom. I argue that these objections are almost invariably unsuccessful. On a consequentialist understanding of the value of academic freedom, they rely on unfounded empirical claims about the overall effects that AIRs have on academic research. And on a rights-based understanding of the value of academic freedom, (...) they rely on excessively lavish assumptions about the kinds of activities that academic freedom protects. (shrink)

Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the question. Dennett (1991) is, perhaps, the most famous proponent of the view that the self is narratively constructed, but there are others, such as Velleman (2006), who have followed his lead and developed the view much further. Indeed, the importance of narrative to understanding the mind and the self is currently being lavished with attention across the cognitive sciences (Dautenhahn, 2001; Hutto, 2007; Nelson, 2003). Emerging from (...) this work, there appear to be a variety of ways in which we can think of the narrative construction of the self and the relationship between the narrative self and the embodied agent. I wish to examine two such ways in this paper. The first I shall call the abstract narrative account, this is because its proponents take the narrative self to be an abstraction (Dennett, 1991; Velleman, 2006). Dennett, for example, refers to the self as a centre of narrative gravity, to be thought of as analogous to a mathematical conception of the centre of gravity of an object. The second I shall call the embodied narrative account and this is the view that the self is constituted both by an embodied consciousness whose experiences are available for narration and narratives themselves, which can play a variety of roles in the agent’s psychological life. (shrink)

Aristotle's doctrine of the mean states that a virtue is the mean state between two vices: a deficient and an excessive one. The Corporate Ethical Virtues Model defines the mean and the corresponding deficient vice for each of its seven virtues. This paper defines for each of these virtues the corresponding excessive vice and explores why organizations characterized by these excessive vices increase the likelihood that their employees will behave unethically. The excessive vices are patronization, pompousness, lavishness, zealotry, overexposure, talkativeness, (...) and oppressiveness. (shrink)

This research delved into the dynamics between pride, sustainability detectability, and product consciousness through three experimental studies conducted among Chinese millennials focusing on lavish brand. Grounded in the positive emotions theory, this study sought to discern the circumstances in which individuals with materialistic tendencies exhibit willingness to engage with sustainable luxury brands. The results of this meticulous experimental design indicate a positive relationship between materialism and the intention to purchase sustainable luxury brands, with pride identified as a mediating factor, (...) and discussed the involvement of high conspicuousness of the product in the context of detectability of the brand's sustainability. Furthermore, this study offers insights through the positive emotion theory and examining the impact of self-conscious emotions on buyer preferences regarding sustainable luxury brands. The findings from this theoretical research provide valuable insights for brand managers, scholars, and policymakers aiming to develop sustainable brands that resonate with the sentiments and values of conscientious consumers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE CONCEPT OF POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS'S CONTRA IMPUGNANTES DE/ CULTUM ET RELIGIONEM JOHN D. ]ONES Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin MEDIEVAL CONCEPTIONS of poverty have been given ongoing and serious attention by scholars during this century. The extensive literature on the nature and practice of poverty among the Franciscans bears witness to this. Serious investigation of St. Thomas Aquinas's understanding of poverty, however, is virtually nonexistent. Except for (...) a very recent book by Ulrich Horst,' there are, so far as I know, no monographs or dissertations treating this aspect of Aquinas's thought. The most thorough discussion in English, which falls far short of sustained textual or critical analysis, is given by Philip Mulhern.2 Apart from an article by Silvana Spirito, which primarily focuses on historical issues, one finds only scattered references and notes in other works.3 1 Ulrich Horst, Evangelische Annut und Kirche: Thomas van Aquin und die Annutskontroversen des 13. und beginnenden 14. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992). This work was published after the present article was completed. : Philip Mulhern, Dedicated Poverty (Staten Island: Alba House, 1973), 116-31. "II problema della poverta e deIla perfezione religiosa nell'ambito delie polemiche tra clero secolare e ordini mendicanti," Atti Del Congresso Internazionale, ed. Congresso internazionale Tommaso d'Aquino (Napoli: Edizioni domenicane italiane, 1974), 49-57. Worthy of mention is Scott Swenson's concise, but detailed, note on poverty in the Contra impugnantes (Emerging Concepts of Jurisdiction, Sacramental Orders and Property Rights Among Dominican Thinkers From Thomas Aquinas to Hervaeus Natalis [Ph.D. Diss., Cornell University, 1988], 265, n.159). For a brief discussion of poverty in 409 410 JOHN D. JONES The absence of scholarship in this area stands in marked contrast to the lavish philosophical and theological attention given to many other aspects of Aquinas's thought. If Thomas gave only a cursory nod to the subject of poverty, this absence might be understandable. Over the course of his career, however, Thomas composed several extended discussions and numerous shorter notes pertaining to poverty, concentrating particularly on the nature and practice of poverty in religious life. In addition to the Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, a relatively early work devoted to a defense of the mendicant orders and mendicant poverty, there are extended discussions of poverty in the Contra pestiferam doctrinam retrahentium homines a religionis ingressu, cc. 14-16, the Summa contra gentiles, bk. III, c.131-35, and the Summa theologiae (51), II-II, q. 184, a. 7, q. 186, aa. 3&6, q. 188, a. 7, etc. There are also brief discussions and references to poverty (paupertas) and the poor (pauper) in nearly thirty other works ranging from the In Sententiarum to various Scripture commentaries.4 My purpose in this paper is to present a close, but by no means comprehensive, textual and critical analysis of Thomas's treatment of poverty in the Contra impugnantes, concentrating on the crucial sixth chapter.5 I am interested in Thomas's conception of Summa theologiae, 11-11, q. 188, a. 7, see John D. Jones, Poverty and the Human Condition (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 317-320. Also see Jones, "Poverty and Subsistence: St. Thomas and the Definition of Poverty," Gregorianum 75 (1994): 135-49. 4 The Contra impugnantes dei cultum et religionem and Contra pestiferam doctrinam retrahentes homines a religionis ingressu are contained in the Leonine Opera Omnia, vol. XLI (Rome: St. Thomas Aquinas Foundation, 1970) and in Opuscula theologica, vol. 2, ed. RM. Spiazzi (Turin: Marietti, 1954). An English translation of both works is contained in An Apologyfor the Religious Orders, ed. John Procter (London: Sands and Co., 1902), 50-376 and 377-479 respectively. I am using the Blackfrairs edition of the Summa theologiae (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964-81). By and large, I have followed existing translations of Thomas's works, although for the sake of accuracy, I have occasionally modified them, especially Proctor's translations of the Contra impugnantes and Contra retrahentes. 5 The discussion of poverty is contained chiefly in chapter 6 (cited in the Marietti edition as 2.5[6]). All citations in my paper will be to this chapter unless otherwise noted. Following typical form, the chapter contains... (shrink)

Mr. Nahm has addressed us on the subject of human freedom in the fashioning of a work of art. It is a noble theme: there is no philosophical inquiry which can more lavishly enhance the nature of man as an imagining creature. This book should, I think, be regarded as the most competent description we yet possess of the character of freedom in art. That it tends unswervingly, through the range of its scholarship, to become legislative upon this question of (...) freedom is an inevitable circumstance. Mr. Nahm is Aristotelian: he insists upon the pre-eminence of the categories and the logic of aesthetic measurement and he sees the process of art as making. The freedom which he would claim for the artist is freedom of choice, freedom through the act of the individual will to put into a work of art the stuff of a deliberated intention. It follows that a second freedom is for Mr. Nahm equally desirable: the release of the critic into a potential realm of mastery as he perceives and studies the work of art. The critic is thus freed to a pure intelligibility. His choice of postulate assures his advantage. (shrink)

During the 1970s, Dinu Adamesteanu uncovered a small sacred place within the chora of Heraklea. It is an open-air sanctuary, constituted by an area bounded by a temenos wall, with an altar and a small naiskos inside. A votive deposit was located within the temenos, which was filled with a large quantity of ritual and votive material, placed in the hole when the sacred place was abandoned. The architectural structures and a selection of the finds were first published by Dinu (...) Adamesteanu himself. He identified this small sacred place with Chalcas’ heroon, which is recorded in Lycophron’s famous passage. The subject of this contribution is a comprehensive re-examination of this sacred place – architectural structures as well as published and un-published finds – which allows us to present a different scenario from that first proposed by Adamesteanu. Most of the Black-Glaze vases pertain to the practice of the symposium, while the common wares suggest that food was usually prepared in order to be given as a gift to deities. The Red-Figure vases present interesting figural depictions, which tend to refer to Dionysian subjects and to the theme of weddings. With regard to coroplastic objects, three fragmentary life-size terracotta statues have been found. At least two of these represent young, beautiful women, seated on thrones and wearing lavish clothes. A number of small terracotta figurines show diverse iconographies, which pertain to the spheres of kourotropheia and sanatio, but there are also “erotic” subjects, referring to the Aphrodisian sphere, and votive clay fruits, which suggest the chthonian aspect of this cult. In light of this comprehensive analysis of archaeological data, a clearer and more detailed picture emerges of the Contrada Petrulla sanctuary. The sacred area was probably dedicated to feminine deities, who can be identified with the Nymphs, peripheral figures of Aphrodite’s circle. These feminine deities who have chthonian characteristics, personify water (generally a water spring), oversee the passage from a virginal condition to the status of nymphai, have a kourotrophic nature, and are ultimately associated with the Dionysian world. Therefore, the life-size seated statues found in the votive deposit can be considered as cult statues (depictions of the Nymphs themselves?). Previously, the statues had been located in the small naiskos, which was placed within the temenos wall and was open to the altar. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Classical Art: A Life History DAVID CAST This is a wonderful book, rich in its purposes, wide in its range and, thanks to the author’s home institution, Christ’s College, Cambridge, lavishly illustrated with images of objects, many familiar, some less so. And it is written with an elegance and clarity that belies the depths of scholarship in its history. The first letter of the subtitle suggests the tenor (...) of Vout’s account, that since every age has conjured up a different idea of the classical, what is here is yet one more such history, a modest if particular account of what was and is still there in the records made of the Greek and Roman past. The basic metaphor Vout uses to define the focus of this history is that of conversation, whether such conversing is seen to exist between the objects themselves or between the past and the present, between those objects that have outgrown their intended functions to become part of a canon that has dictated taste over the ages, as she puts it, shaping culture and culture’s questions. Thus conversation is here, plus also what Vout is not afraid, when necessary, to call the misappropriations and translocations of the Greek and Roman objects she takes note of. Yet another contribution she adds to the idea of the classical comes from what she calls, perhaps a little awkwardly, the long durée approach to its subjects, seen first when these objects were produced, then as they survived Christianity and the fall of Rome and Byzantium, the French Revolution, modernism and fascism, to live Caroline Vout, Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present, Princeton University Press, 2018. xi + 376 pages; 80 color + 132 b/w illustrations. $39.50. ISBN 9780691177038; E-book ISBN9781400890279. arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 on in galleries and auction rooms, making the heart soar and the blood boil, as Vout claims, even today. It is a complex story she has to tell, difficult yet valuable, and its method is nicely exemplified by the first example considered, the two statues, known as the Tyrannicides, dated to 477–476 BCE, and located now in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, attributed on the museum caption to the sculptors Kritios and Nesiotes, and dated to 477–476 BCE. The details here are crucial for, on investigation, it is clear these are not the statues that were erected in the Athenian agora to honor the men, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who, by tradition, had killed the tyrant’s brother Hipparchus. Yet even this second group, as she notes, had been a stand-in, since the first piece to honor these men, made by the sculptor Antenor, had been stolen by the Persians in the sack of Athens in 480–479 BCE. Nor is this group here the actual second group but rather a copy, made by an unknown copyist working under the Roman Empire. What we have here are what might be called pretenders—yet ones, despite doubts about their authenticity, that have long been taken to mark a particular moment in the formal history of Greek art, the advent of the so-called Severe style in Athens and the birth of the classical moment of sculpture. Any full account of these statues depends then on a rich history, plus a range of other events; the existence of ancient casts of the Tyrannicides during the Roman Empire, marking out such statues as art, rather than having still their first meaning; the prior history in the Renaissance of the acquisition of ancient sculpture as a sign of power; the sight of the figure of Aristogeiton, then in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, by Johann Joachim Winckelmann; the building up of these statues from fragments of other statues; in 1859 the identification of these figures as the Tyrannicides; and finally a reading of classical texts, those of Pausanias, Pliny and Lucian, that spoke, even if in contradictory ways, of all the actors here, Antenor, Kritios and Aristogeiton. To which should be added the recent accounts of these pieces, provided by schol172 classical art: a life history ars of classical art like Brunilde Ridgway, R. T... (shrink)

In September the last settlement freeze ended, leading the Palestinians to cease direct talks with Israel. Now the Obama administration, desperate to lure Israel into a new freeze and thus revive the talks, is grasping at invisible straws -- and lavishing gifts on a far right Israeli government.

Landscapes are a favorite of both hobbyists and professional photographers. This collection features e-books on all three, lavishly illustrated with photos by renowned photographer Harold Davis.

Opera is a paradoxical genre. For it seems self-defeating to create an illusion of reality by means of the theatrical apparatus if the art form’s central mode of expression, lavish singing in all kinds of circumstances, defies realism anyway. A solution to the paradox is implied by the 18th century turn of European philosophy of art from mimēsis to aisthēsis. In terms of aesthetics, reality is no longer an object of imitation but rather the impact upon and presence for (...) a consciousness – that are actually heightened by singing. Of course we remain aware that to deal with everything in the mode of singing is in a way surreal. But then the simultaneous production and suspension of illusion turns out to be not a fault of art; rather it features as one of its peculiar achievements. (shrink)

Two translations into English of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature have appeared in the same year a century after the other parts of the Encyclopaedia—the Logic and the Philosophy of Mind—had been translated. The Victorian translator passed by the Philosophy of Nature, unconscious that to omit the middle part of a systematic work must certainly conceal the sense of the whole. He finds it a sufficient explanation that “for nearly half a century the study of nature has passed almost completely out (...) of the hands of the philosophers into the care of the specialists of science.” Revived for a few years by Schelling and then Hegel, Philosophy of Nature only recalled “a time of hasty enthusiasms and over-grasping ambition of thought which, in its eagerness to understand the mystery of the universe, jumped to conclusions on insufficient grounds, trusted to bold but fantastic analogies, and lavished an unwise contempt on the plodding industry of the mere hodman of facts and experiments.” This modest retreat of philosophy before the specialists is not thought to need explanation, even though it was not only from the seeming extravagance of Schelling and Hegel but from the general preoccupation of philosophers since Bacon and Descartes with natural philosophy. (shrink)

For your students, celebrating this day is a source of rare and pure joy. The only way we can be adequate to this occasion is to let the gratitude that we owe you become the fundamental mood suffusing everything from beginning to end. In keeping with a beautiful tradition, today on this celebratory occasion we offer you as our gift this slender volume of a few short essays. In no way could this ever be an adequate return for all that (...) you, our teacher, have lavished upon us, and awakened and nourished in us. In the coming days many will try to survey your work in philosophy and to evaluate its impact and effect on various scales. In so doing, they will bring to mind many things that we should not forget. However, that way of parceling out a person's intellectual impact and of calculating the influence of his writings fails to grasp the essential matter for which we owe you our thanks. That essential element will not be found by considering how fruitful your teaching career has been. Surely such effectiveness will continue to be the prerogative and good fortune of every professor as long as German university escapes the doom of getting turned into a mind-numbing trade school. No, the essence of your leadership consists in something else, namely that the content and style of your questioning immediately forces each of us into an intense, critical dialogue, and it demands that we always be ready to reverse or even abandon our position. There is no guarantee, of course, that any of us will find our way to the one thing that, so unpretentously, your work sought to lead us to: that releasement in which one is seasoned and ready for the problems.2 So too the works we present to you are mere witnesses to the fact that we wanted to follow your guidance, not proof that we succeeded in becoming your disciples.3 But there is one thing we will retain as a lasting possession: Each of us who had the privilege of following in your footsteps was confronted by you, our esteemed teacher, with the option either of becoming the steward of essential matters or of working against them. On this celebratory occasion, as we view your philosophical existence in this light, we also acquire secure points of reference for giving a true assessment of the value of your work in philosophy. Does it consist in the fact that some decades ago a new movement emerged in philosophy and gained influence among the then-dominant trends? Or that a new method was added to the list of previous ones? Or that long-forgotten problem-areas got reworked.. (shrink)

Opening Chicagoscapes places the reader amid the breathtaking grandeur and warm humanity of one of the world's great cities, a metropolis both lavish with its pleasures and as hard as weathered steel, a prairie-bound Oz that demands commitment from those seeking its truths. Larry Kanfer and native Chicagoan Alaina Kanfer have captured authentic moments that invite the viewer into pocket universes achieved in collaboration between an acclaimed photographic artist and the living world. From the deep blues of Lake Michigan (...) to imposing winter cityscapes, from awe-inspiring skyscrapers to corner hot dog joints, and from the lakefront chess obsessives to Maxwell Street's indefatigable vendors, Larry Kanfer brings the mesmerizing sensibility acclaimed in his collections Prairiescapes and On Firm Ground to illuminate the subtleties of mood and forces of nature that make Chicago a city unlike any other. (shrink)

Qi (also spelled as Chi or Ki) is the universal energy or life force that permeates all beings. An understanding of Qi, a fundamental concept in traditional Chinese philosophy, is crucial to success in the practice of all East Asian healing and martial arts, from Tai Chi to Taekwondo and Reiki. But Qi has far broader and deeper applications: its proper understanding and utilization can bring harmony and balance to our modern lives. The power and focus it generates can be (...) put to use in the myriad tasks in which we engage daily, such as cooking, writing a book, designing a house, or preparing a business strategy. Reflections on Qi progresses from an explanation of what Qi is and how it is manifested throughout the universe to a description of how positive Qi can be introduced into the home, garden, workplace, and relationships. This is followed by an introduction to the various means of expressing and interpreting Qi in such pursuits as calligraphy, gardening, painting, and music. Lavishly illustrated, this book is the perfect reference for anyone interested in Eastern thought and wanting to incorporate its key beneficial elements into a Western lifestyle. (shrink)

A full-color guide to taking stunning wedding photos from "America's Most Popular Photo Expert" —Rick Sammon Wedding photography has grown into a major industry with droves of digital photographers in the field, all looking for a competitive edge. Whether you're new to the field or you're looking for some fresh new ideas, this full-color guide is packed with more than 200 tips, tricks, and secrets for taking stunning and memorable digital wedding photos. Top photographer and Canon Explorer of Light Rick (...) Sammon explores the wedding photography market from the angles of both novice and experienced digital photographers and offers guidance for choosing and using digital camera equipment, accessories, software, and printing options. "America's Most Popular Photo Expert" Rick Sammon shows you how to set up the scene for an incredible wedding shot—both posed and candid Shows how to prepare for a variety of conditions in all types of settings, including exotic locales Demonstrates best practices for post-shoot digital darkroom workflow Explains how to manipulate photos to include impressive effects Brimming with lavish inspirational color photos, this is the must-have book if you're looking to bring a unique style to your wedding photography skills. (shrink)

THERE IS MUCH TALK THESE DAYS OF RIGHTS: Civil rights, legal rights, natural rights, human rights, women's rights, reproductive rights, children's rights. A great deal of it--if not all of it--is confused and confusing. Indeed, it is safe to say that no politically relevant concept more needs clarification than this one. Furthermore, because we are lavishly spending our political capital, it will soon happen that neither the incantation of familiar phrases nor the public expression of sentimental pieties will keep us (...) from destroying our community. The conflict between property rights and civil rights, so prominent in the 1960s, is only one example of the sort of tensions which we will undergo in the future. Unless adequate categories through which these conflicts may be resolved are accepted, any one solution can only prefigure larger conflicts whose features are ominous indeed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd Reviews 179 THE EARLY “IRON CURTAIN” Michael D. Stevenson Schulich School of Business, York U. / Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. Toronto, on m3j 1p3 / Hamilton, on l8s 4l6, Canada stevenm@mcmaster.ca Patrick Wright. Iron Curtain: from Stage to Cold War. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2007. Pp. xvii, 488. isbn 978-0-19-923150-8. £18.99 (hb); £12.99 (pb). In his famous Westminster College (...) address on 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill Wred one of the opening salvos of the Cold War by proclaiming that from “Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain” had been lowered across Europe. Patrick Wright’s intriguing and provocative book does not examine the phrase “iron curtain” in its popular Cold War context. Instead, he maintains that many characteristics of this metaphor, “including the pronounced sense of theatricality it would bring to international politics, were inherited from the period before the Second World War” (p. 18). Wright divides Iron Curtain into two primary chronological sections, the Wrst covering the period from 1914 to 1920. An iron curtain originally referred to the steel safety screen that descended in English theatres, beginning in the lateeighteenth century, to separate the audience from the often catastrophic Wres that broke out on the stage. The phrase entered the lexicon of international relations in January 1915 when British author and paciWst Violet Page (writing under the pseudonym Vernon Lee) published an article lamenting that “War’s cruelties and recriminations, War’s monstrous iron curtain” (p. 80) had alienated European nations such as England and Germany sharing a common cultural heritage. But the barrier quickly moved east in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution and “took the form not just of exaggerated political rhetoric, but of an economic blockade enforced by naval power” (p. 171), as the Allies sought to contain the infection of Bolshevism. Wright devotes most attention in this section to documenting the 1920 visit to Russia by the British delegation jointly sponsored by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, which sought to penetrate the dense fog of Allied anti-Bolshevik propaganda and validate the delegation members’ own preconceived views about the nascent socialist utopia in Russia. British delegates witnessed images both of progress carefully stagemanaged by their hosts and of terrible economic dislocation and poverty caused by the Allied blockade and the civil war, which allowed the majority of them to return home to lavish praise on the Soviet experiment that would, in their minds, inevitably fulWl its potential once the Bolshevik government became stable. February 19, 2011 (11:48 am) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3002\russell 30,2 040 red.wpd 180 Reviews 1 “The Future of Europe”, European AVairsz 1, no. 1 (April 1949): 3. The second section of Wright’s book examines Western reports of life behind the iron curtain between 1920 and 1939. Here, the author focuses heavily on the theatrical nature of Soviet attempts to create modern-day Potemkin villages that werez—zwith a limited number of exceptionsz—zaccepted as reality by an endless parade of left-wing visitors. A second British Trades Union Congress delegation in 1924, for example, received a dramatically embellished picture of Soviet economic progress that included a train journey past a long-abandoned factory belching smoke created by burning wet straw frantically provided by Russian peasants; the resulting report of the delegation “repeatedly collapsed into the most abject conformity with the Soviet view of reality” (p. 245). The most tragic examples of Western visitors’ blindness to the truth occurred during the 1930s famine deliberately induced by Stalin, and Wright exposes a wide cast of characters who adopted a blinkered view of conditions in the ussr. Among intellectuals, Wright documents the 1931 visit of George Bernard Shaw, who cavalierly dismissed reports of widespread food shortages while dining sumptuously in Moscow’s Hotel Metropole. Among journalists, Wright develops the case of Walter Duranty, the New York Timesz correspondent who knuckled under to demands of Soviet censors to produce sanitized accounts denying or ignoring the famine in order to protect his privileged place in that... (shrink)

A celebration of a distinctly American form of commercial architecture The only comprehensive history of America's 5-&-10-cent stores It was where you went to browse the latest issues of Life and Photoplay, where the folks bought reading glasses, and where your mom took you for a hot dog and a malted. It was the local 5-&-10-cent store, and it was an integral part of everyday life. In this lavishly illustrated homage to the 5-&-10-cent store, architectural historian Bernice Thomas looks at (...) the architectural achievements of the Kress Company. Devoted to bringing outstanding design to Main Street America, Kress supported an architectural division of more than 100 architects and draftsmen. The over 200 stores these people designed and built between 1900 and 1950 set a new standard in commercial architecture. Thomas takes us on an illustrated tour of sites across the United States —from New Orleans to Honolulu, Albuquerque to New York. She introduces us to the architects and how they deftly balanced sound merchandising principles with aesthetics. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine intergenerational differences in emic interpretations of various types of ritual references in the religious culture of the Podhale region (Poland), which is known for its lavish celebrations of Catholic holidays and rites of passage. Drawing on Roy Rappaport’s theory of ritual communication, particularly the distinction between self-referential and canonical messages, I analyze Podhale highlanders’ attitudes toward the self-referential messages communicated by ritual participants. The analysis of my respondents’ narratives revealed that a change in attitude (...) toward ritual messages considering individual social status correlates with a change in the conceptualization of the ritual’s reference to its transcendent object. This paper presents this phenomenon through the lens of the basic concepts of Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of semiosis and demonstrates that some changes in the religious culture of Podhale can be interpreted as changes in the dynamics between the components of the sign. (shrink)

Cultural evolution, producing group‐level adaptations, is more problematic than the cultural evolution of individually confirmable skills, but it probably has occurred. The “conformist transmission,” described by Boyd and Richerson (1985), leads local social units to become homogeneous in anadaptive, as well as adaptive, beliefs. The resulting intragroup homogeneity and inter‐group heterogeneity makes possible a cultural selection of adaptive group ideologies.All archaic urban, division‐of‐labor social organizations had to overcome aspects of human nature produced by biological evolution, due to the predicament of (...) genetic competition among the cooperators. The universal norms found in archaic moral systems are seen as curbs to this human nature, reinforced by beliefs in invisible sanction systems and rewarding and punishing afterlives (as in heaven or reincarnation). Perhaps the ubiquity of lavishly wasteful royal funerals is to be explained as contributing to this function. (shrink)

Let us say that a normative conflict is a situation in which an agent ought to perform an action A, and also ought to perform an action B, but in which it is impossible for the agent to perform both A and B. Not all normative conflicts are moral conflicts, of course. It may be that the agent ought to perform the action A for reasons of personal generosity, but ought to perform the action B for reasons of prudence: perhaps (...) A involves buying a lavish gift for a friend, while B involves depositing a certain amount of money in the bank. In general, our practical deliberation is shaped by a concern with a variety of morally neutral goods—not just generosity and prudence, but any number of others, such as etiquette, aesthetics, fun—many of which are capable of providing conflicting reasons for action. I mention these ancillary values in the present setting, however, only to put them aside. We will be concerned here, not with normative conflicts more generally, but precisely with moral conflicts—situations in which, even when our attention is restricted entirely to moral reasons for action, it is nevertheless true that an agent ought to do A and ought to do B, where it is impossible to do both. (shrink)

I’ve been both fascinated and distressed by the arguments raging over how best to respond to the covid-19 pandemic. In particular, I’ve been struck by the way people claim scientific authority for their confident assurances of what needs to be done. And I’m especially intrigued by the scorn they often lavish on those who hold differing views on what science is telling us. The heat generated by the resulting debates is strikingly similar to the heat generated by debates over (...) the science connected with human-caused climate change. And in both cases, the disputants too often presuppose indefensibly naïve views about scientific authority and certitude, apparently unaware that even the allegedly most obvious logical truths lack the certainty attributed to scientific authority in these debates. As a rule, I dislike re-circulating my Editorials, but I think it’s time to resurrect one (modestly tweaked) from a few years ago, addressing precisely this issue (Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 379–386, 2017). …………………………………… “Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.” --Oscar Wilde I’ve often noticed how debates within the SSE community sometimes parallel debates in the political arena, perhaps especially with respect to the passion they elicit and the intolerance and condescension sometimes lavished on members of the “opposition.” Occasionally, of course, the debates in the SSE are nearly indistinguishable from those in the political arena—say, over the evidence for human-caused climate change. But what I find most striking is how the passion, intolerance, etc.—perhaps most often displayed by those defending whatever the “received” view happens to be—betrays either a surprising ignorance or else a seemingly convenient lapse of memory, one that probably wouldn’t appear in less emotionally-charged contexts. What impassioned partisans tend to ignore or forget concerns (a) the tentative nature of both scientific pronouncements and knowledge claims generally (including matters ostensibly much more secure than those under debate), as well as (b) the extensive network of assumptions on which every knowledge claim rests. So I’d like to offer what I hope will be a perspective-enhancer, concerning how even our allegedly most secure and fundamental pieces of a priori knowledge are themselves open to reasonable debate. A widespread, but naïve, view of logic is that no rational person could doubt its elementary laws. But that bit of popular “wisdom” is demonstrably false. And if that’s the case, then so much the worse for the degree of certitude we can expect in more controversial arenas. Let me illustrate with a few examples.[1] [1] I’m indebted to Aune, 1970 for much of what follows. (shrink)

Samuel George Morton’s Crania Americana (1839) is most often read as a foundational work for the ‘American school’ of nineteenth-century ethnography. In this article, I challenge such a reading by demonstrating how transatlantic connections shaped both the publication and the reception of Morton’s atlas. In this lavish folio volume, complete with over seventy lithographic plates, Morton divides mankind into five races on the basis of skull configuration. However, to date, there have been no histories which consider the relevance of (...) Morton’s extensive correspondence with physicians, naturalists, and phrenologists in Europe. Furthermore, there have been no studies which consider how Morton managed the reception of Crania Americana across the Atlantic Ocean. This article resituates American ethnology within this transatlantic world, drawing on archival collections in both Britain and the United States. More broadly, it demonstrates how the history of the book can be developed as we move beyond national contexts. (shrink)

Aesthetics is a normative domain. We evaluate artworks as better or worse, good or bad, great or grim. I will refer to a positive appraisal of an artwork as an aesthetic appreciation of that work, and I refer to a negative appraisal as aesthetic depreciation. (I will often drop the word “aesthetic.”) There has been considerable amount of work on what makes an artwork worthy of appreciation, and less, it seems, on the nature of appreciation itself. These two topics are (...) related, of course, because they nature of appreciation may bear on what things are worthy of that response, or at least on what things are likely to elicit it. So I will have some things to say about the latter. But I want to focus in this discussion on appreciation itself. When we praise a work of art, when we say it has aesthetic value, what does our praise consist in? This is a question about aesthetic psychology. I am interested in what kind of mental state appreciation is. What kind of state are we expressing when we say a work of art is “good”? This question has parallels in other areas of value theory. In ethics, most notably, there has been much attention lavished on the question of what people express when they refer to an action as “morally good.” One popular class of theories, associated with the British moralists and their followers, posits a link between moral valuation and emotion. To call an act morally good is to express an emotion toward that act. I think this approach to morality is right on target (Prinz, 2007). Here I want to argue that an emotional account of aesthetic valuation is equally promising. There are important differences between the two domains, but both have an affective foundation. I suspect that valuing of all kinds involves the emotions. Here I will inquire into the role of emotions in aesthetic valuing. I will not claim that artworks express emotions or even that they necessarily evoke emotions.. (shrink)