Mitte Oktober 1518 befand sich Luther in Augsburg, um sich einem Verhör durch den päpstlichen Sondergesandten Kardinal Thomas Cajetan (1469-1534) zu stellen. Die Zusammenkunft fand am Rande des gerade in der Reichsstadt tagenden Reichstags statt. Mit größtem Einsatz versuchte Luther, Cajetan von seiner Argumentation zu überzeugen, der Dominikaner lehnte eine inhaltliche Auseinandersetzung allerdings ab. Die katholische Kirche verfolgte mit dem Verhör einzig das Ziel, Luther zum Widerruf seiner Thesen zu bewegen, worauf dieser wiederum nicht einging. Die Augsburger Ereignisse fasste Luther (...) für die Öffentlichkeit Ende 1518 in den "Acta Fratris Martini Lutheri Augustiniani apud D Legatum Apostolicum Augustae", kurz "Acta Augustana", protokollartig zusammen. In das Dokument fügte er zusätzlich noch ein ursprünglich geheimes Schreiben Papst Leos X. (1513-1521) an Kardinal Cajetan ein. In dem Breve ermächtigte das Oberhaupt der katholischen Kirche Cajetan dazu, Luther zu verhaften und nach Rom bringen zu lassen, falls dieser in Augsburg weiter gegen die päpstliche Lehre anreden und seine Ansichten nicht revidieren sollte. Luther erfuhr von dem Brief und verließ Augsburg deshalb sofort nach dem letzten Verhör am Abend des 20. Oktober. // Autor: Matthias Bader // Datum: 2016. (shrink)

This paper examines the subversive role of statistics paleontology at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In particular, I will focus on German paleontology and its relationship with statistics. I argue that in paleontology, the quantitative method was questioned and strongly limited by the first decade of the 20th century because, as its opponents noted, when the fossil record is treated statistically, it was found to generate results openly in conflict with the Darwinian theory (...) of evolution. Essentially, statistics questions the gradual mode of evolution and the role of natural selection. The main objections to statistics were addressed during the meetings at the Kaiserlich-Königliche Geologische Reichsanstalt in Vienna in the 1880s. After having introduced the statistical treatment of the fossil record, I will use the works of Charles Léo Lesquereux, Joachim Barrande, and Henry Shaler Williams to compare the objections raised in Vienna with how the statistical treatment of the data worked in practice. Furthermore, I will discuss the criticisms of Melchior Neumayr, one of the leading German opponents of statistical paleontology, to show why, and to what extent, statistics were questioned in Vienna. The final part of this paper considers what paleontologists can derive from a statistical notion of data: the necessity of opening a discussion about the completeness and nature of the paleontological data. The Vienna discussion about which method paleontologists should follow offers an interesting case study in order to understand the epistemic tensions within paleontology surrounding Darwin’s theory as well as the variety of non-Darwinian alternatives that emerged from the statistical treatment of the fossil record at the end of the 19th century. (shrink)

The “default system” of the brain has been described as a set of regions which are ‘activated’ during rest and ‘deactivated’ during cognitively effortful tasks. To investigate the reliability of task-related deactivations, we performed a meta-analysis across 12 fMRI studies. Our results replicate previous findings by implicating medial frontal and parietal brain regions as part of the “default system”.However, the cognitive correlates of these deactivations remain unclear. In light of the importance of social cognitive abilities for human beings and their (...) propensity to engage in such activities, we relate our results to findings from neuroimaging studies of social cognition. This demonstrates a remarkable overlap between the brain regions typically involved in social cognitive processes and the “default system”.We, henceforth, suggest that the physiological ‘baseline’ of the brain is intimately linked to a psychological ‘baseline’: human beings have a predisposition for social cognition as the default mode of cognizing which is implemented in the robust pattern of intrinsic brain activity known as the “default system”. (shrink)

Philosophers often claim that forgiveness is a paradoxical phenomenon. I here examine two of the most widespread ways of dealing with the paradoxical nature of forgiveness. One of these ways, emblematized by Aurel Kolnai, seeks to resolve the paradox by appealing to the idea of repentance. Somehow, if a wrongdoer repents, then forgiving her is no longer paradoxical. I argue that this influential position faces more problems than it solves. The other way to approach the paradox, exemplified here by the (...) work of Jacques Derrida, is just too obscure to be by itself helpful. Yet, I argue that what I take to be its spirit is on the right track. I recommend distinguishing between the definition and the justification of forgiveness, and also between forgiveness understood as a mental phenomenon and an overt, communicative act. These distinctions are not given their due in the specialized literature, and I expose the nefarious consequences of this neglect. By focusing on forgiveness as a mental phenomenon I seek to analyze the root of the talk of paradoxes which surrounds the discussion of forgiveness. Finally, I present an analysis of forgiveness as a pure mental phenomenon, and argue that this analysis is the most important step in understanding forgiveness in any other sense. While my analysis reveals interesting aspects of forgiveness, it reveals, too, that forgiveness is not quite as paradoxical after all. (shrink)

' Here is Tolstoy's religion; and non-violence is at its heart. Simon Parke, author of The Beautiful Life.

Informal logic is an attempt to develop a logic that can assess and analyze the arguments that occur in natural language discourse. Discussions in the field may address instances of scientific, legal, and other technical forms of reasoning, but the overriding aim has been a comprehensive account of argument that can explain and evaluate the arguments found in discussion, debate and disagreement as they manifest themselves in daily life — in social and political commentary; in news reports and editorials in (...) the mass media ; in advertising and corporate and governmental communications; and in personal exchange. (shrink)

The present paper elaborates a deductivist account of natural language argu-ment in the context of pragma-dialectics. It reviews earlier debates, criticizes some standard misconceptions in the literature, and argues that the identification and analysis of deductive argument schemes can be the basis of a compelling theory of argumentative discourse.

Combating and overcoming corruption in business and in political affairs is one of the most important issues facing business and professional ethics in the 21st century. That corruption exists is a fact. That corruption is widespread and spreading is a commonperception. Many believe that corruption is culturally induced. Some believe corruption to be so much a part of the fabric of some societies as to be unquestioned and unassailable. Or, is it simply a myth that corruption is a matter of (...) culture? (shrink)

Why does the law spurn win-win transactions? -- Things we can't consent to, though no one knows why -- A parable -- Lessons -- The social choice connection -- Why is the law so full of loopholes? -- The irresistible wrong answer -- What is wrong with the irresistible answer? -- The voting analogy -- Turning the analogy into an identity -- Intentional fouls -- Why is the law so either/or? -- The proverbial rigidity of the law -- Line drawing (...) as a matter of life and death -- Why don't we punish all we condemn? -- The undercriminalization problem -- Multicriterial ranking and the undercriminalization problem -- Final thoughts. (shrink)

This paper responds to two aspects of Ralph Johnson's Manifest Rationality (2000). The first is his critique of deductivism. The second is his failure to make room for some species of argument (e.g., visual and kisceral arguments) proposed by recent commentators. In the first case, Johnson holds that argumentation theorists have adopted a notion of argument which is too narrow. In the second, that they have adopted one which is too broad. I discuss the case Johnson makes for both claims, (...) and possible objections to his analysis. (shrink)

Professor Eric A. Havelock in his book The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics approaches classical political philosophy from the positivistic point of view. The doctrine to which he adheres is however a somewhat obsolete version of positivism. Positivist study of society, as he understands it, is "descriptive" and opposed to "judgmental evaluation" but this does not prevent his siding with those who understand "History as Progress." The social scientist cannot speak of progress unless value judgments can be objective. The up-to-date (...) or consistent positivist will therefore refrain from speaking of progress and instead speak of change. Similarly Havelock appears to accept the distinction between primitive men or savages and civilized men, whereas the consistent positivist will speak not of savages but of pre-literate men and assert that preliterate men have "civilizations" or "cultures" neither superior nor inferior to those of literate men. It would be wrong to believe that the up-to-date positivist is entirely consistent or that his careful avoidance of "evaluative" terms is entirely due to his methodological puritanism; his heart tells him that once one admits the inequality of "cultures," one may not be able to condemn colonialism on moral grounds. Havelock is therefore perhaps only more intelligent or more frank than the consistent positivists when he describes his position as liberal rather than as positivist. Yet this does not entirely dispose of the difficulty. "For the liberals man is to be taken as you find him and therefore his present political institutions are to be taken as given also." This means that here and now the liberals will take American democracy as given and will then "concentrate empirically and descriptively on this kind of political mechanism." This is a fair description of positivistic political science at its best. Yet Havelock praises the same liberals for writing "in defence of democracy". What then is a liberal? Was a German social scientist who in 1939 took "the present political institutions as given" and subjected them to "empirical analysis" for this reason by itself a liberal? If so then a liberal is not a man of strong moral or political convictions, and this does not seem to agree with the common meaning of the word. Yet from Havelock's Preface it appears that the liberal regards all political and moral convictions as "negotiable" because he is extremely tolerant. Havelock applies the implicit maxim of conduct to the relations between the United States and Soviet Russia today. For all one can know from his book, he would have given the same advice during the conflict between the Western democracies and the Fascist regimes at the time of the Munich conference. At any rate he does not seem to have given thought to the question of whether Tolerance can remain tolerant when confronted with unqualified Intolerance or whether one must not fall back in the end on "moral convictions" which are not "negotiable." In almost all these points Havelock is liberal in the sense in which the word is commonly used here and now. (shrink)

Methods facilitating noetic ascent -- Contraction as an ontological concept -- Contraction and noesis -- Contraction and memory -- Physiologically induced contraction -- The scholastic tradition of contraction -- Cusanus and the scholastic tradition of contraction.

The arma virumque theme that this article identifies in the Punica is an important avenue through which to understand the meaning of Silius Italicus’ poem and its author’s relationship with Vergil. The text frequently uses combinations of the Aeneid ’s first two words, arma and vir, to suggest a common literary inheritance from Aeneas among its characters, large and small, Roman and Carthaginian. By pervasively characterizing most participants in the Second Punic War as versions, or poetic refractions, of Aeneas, the (...) poet recasts Rome’s glorious foreign war as a kind of civil war producing criminal corpses. More specifically, characters vie not for national dominance of the Mediterranean but for personal prestige as the most worthy heir to Aeneas. This process reconsiders the Republic’s history, aligns the text with the developments of 69 c.e., and comments critically on the Roman principate and its foundational literary text, the Aeneid. (shrink)

Let us agree, to begin with, that we are not shown [in Last Judgment], as Life Magazine long ago phrased it, a Saint Bartholomew who "holds his own mortal skin, in which Michelangelo whimsically painted a distorted portrait of himself.”1 The face was sloughed with the rest of the skin and goes with it. What we see is a Saint Bartholomew with another's integument in his hand. We next consider an aspect of the self-portrait which even La Cava left out (...) of account - its relative siting. This has to matter since the portrait lies in the path of Christ's imminent action. More than that, it lies on a diagonal that traverses the fresco like a heraldic bend chief to base - from left top to right bottom. The twofold competence thus assumed by the self-portrait - in its concrete location and in the range of its influence - is something to marvel at. A hangdog face flops to one side, helpless and limp. But the tilt of its axis projected upward across the field strikes the apex of the left-hand lunette, the uppermost point of the fresco. And if, departing once again from the skin's facial axis, we project its course netherward, we discover the line produced to aim straight at the fresco's lower right corner. Such results do not come by chance. To put it literally, letting metaphor fall where it may: it is the extension of the self's axis that strings the continuum of heaven and hell. · 1. Life Magazine, 6 December 1949, p. 45. So also Redig de Campos speaks of the lifeless Apostle's own skin, "dove il Buonarroti ha nascoto un singolare autoritratto..in caricatura tragica della sua 'infinita miseria'" . Tolnay sees the matter correctly: "It is the artist's empty skin which the saint holds in his hand" Leo Steinberg is Benjamin Franklin Professor and University Professor of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art, Michelangelo's Last Paintings, Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, as well as studies of Leonardo, Pontormo, Velazquez, and Picasso. (shrink)

Arthur O. Lovejoy made rather grand methodological statements about the nature of history of ideas in his Great Chain of Being (1936). These statements were, it is argued, rhetorical declarations, intended to produce the conviction in the minds of his readers that history of ideas was distinct from history of philosophy and thus deserved institutional independence; they were not adequate descriptions of the method actually practiced. Instead, Lovejoy's historiographical practice can be contextualized within nineteenth-century general histories of philosophy. His studies (...) on Giordano Bruno, dating from 1904 and 1936 respectively, illustrate this historiographical continuity. (shrink)

David Eso and Kay Burns edition of philosopher Leo Ferraris previously unpublished 1973 manuscript brings to light a long forgotten satirical work, which, in an age of fake news, possesses renewed relevance. The editors contextualize The Earth is Flat! for the reader with a scholarly introduction and a humorous Forewarning. Author, Leo Ferrari, draws on his extensive knowledge of classical thought and its key figures to present a history of ideas that is sometimes accurate, sometimes speculative. Speculative or alternative aspects (...) of this history support his Flat Earth theme, as do a number of scientific experiments outlined, which the reader is encouraged to try. He traces the conflict between Globularist and Planoterrestrial beliefs from antiquity to his contemporary moment of the early 1970s, marked by space exploration. Later chapters chart the activities and philosophies of the Flat Earth Society of Canada, including Ferraris experience on the lecture circuit and in media platforms. The authors method is to blur the line between seriousness and humour and to show that intellectual work can also be good fun. He uses the idea of a spinning, spherical planet to symbolically represent the alienating effects of technological modernity. (shrink)