Since mankind hide the truth because they are unjust, God's wrath is shown from heaven against all of their immorality. Because God has revealed to them everything, they can know about him, it is obvious to them. Since the beginning of time, his intangible qualities, namely, his everlasting power and divine nature, have been evident in the things that have been created. Thus, they have no justification. Because even though they were aware of God, they did not revere or express (...) gratitude to him; instead, their hearts became darkened and their thinking became pointless. Therefore, it is obviously incorrect to consider God's transcendence to be a sort of fog that obscures God from human perception. Indeed, verses in the Bible highlight God's mystery and incomprehensibility, such "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!" How inexplicable his methods and how unsearchable his judgements! Because no one has ever understood the Lord's thoughts or served as his counsellor. Or has someone given him a present for which he may receive payment? Because everything comes from him, through him, and to him. Glory eternally to him. Amen. His "immanence," not his "transcendence," is enigmatic in this line. Even if God's historical facts are unfathomable, Paul is nonetheless able to explain them in understandable terms. He informs the Roman church of what they are unaware of and the reason for it. "Known unknowns" are the unknowns. Furthermore, a mystery involving a God otherwise "clearly" understood is always a mystery. If God's transcendence does not impede our understanding of him or our ability to articulate him clearly, how should we describe it? "On high" or "in Heaven," as used in the Bible, consistently alludes to God's regal status. (shrink)

On 17 April 1962, Genera! de Gaulle's proposal to establish a political union between the six EC Member States, better known as the 'Fouchet Proposal', was vetoed by Belgium and The Netherlands who made their further support dependent on British participation in the negotiations on a political union.This article examines the position of Belgium, represented by its Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. P-H. Spaak and more particularly its evolution from a rather favourable position to a rejection of the project. The (...) contradictory Belgian demand for a more supranational political union at the same time as British membership can be considered in the light of Belgium's wish to promote both the process of European integration and the principle of Atlantic solidarity, the basis of its security. The article describes how the final deathblow to the negotiations was not given by Belgium and The Netherlands but by the French veto of British accession to the EC and the signing of the Franco-German Cooperation Treaty of Elysee in ]anuary 1963. (shrink)

In a recent judgment1 the Court of Protection was highly critical of health professionals for continuing to provide clinically-assisted nutrition and hydration in the face of disagreement about the patient’s best interests, without seeking to resolve the issue. This hearing had been set up specifically to consider whether GU’s dignity had been properly protected, and if not why not, given concerns raised by the Official Solicitor about what she considered to be “a complete abrogation of responsibility to consider properly or (...) at all, and to determine whether it was in GU’s best interests and therefore lawful to continue to give him an invasive medical treatment, CANH.” In April 2014, at 63 years old and living in Thailand, GU sustained severe injuries after suffering from an electrocution accident. He sustained a cardiorespiratory arrest with a significant delay before cardiopulmonary resuscitation was started and was unconscious and unresponsive. In September 2014 he was transferred to the UK. In August 2018, GU’s brother made a request for a best interests decision concerning the continuation of CANH. The family met to discuss this and all except GU’s son, agreed that continuing CANH was not in GU’s best interests. In view of the fact that there was not unanimity among the family, a decision was made that CANH should continue. Commenting on this decision, Mr Justice Hayden said ‘the apparent assumption that in the face of family disagreement ‘ therefore will continue to be cared for by nursing staff ” is a troubling non sequitur’ and stressed that ‘family dissent to a medical consensus should never stand in the way of an incapacitated patients’ best interests being properly identified’. He also made clear that the responsibility for ensuring that a best interests assessment is undertaken rests with the …. (shrink)

In February 2020, the British Medical Association will be surveying members for their views on what the BMA’s position on physician-assisted dying should be. The BMA is currently opposed to physician-assisted dying in all its forms, a position that was agreed in 2006 at the annual representative meeting, the Association’s policy-making conference.1 As previously reported in Ethics briefing,2 the decision to survey members follows a motion passed at last year’s ARM which called on the BMA to “carry out a poll (...) of members to ascertain their views on whether the BMA should adopt a neutral position with respect to a change in the law on assisted dying”. The results from the survey will not determine BMA policy. Rather, the results be published ahead of this year’s ARM and provided to those attending to inform a debate and discussion on the BMA’s policy position. More information about the survey, including a briefing pack of useful information, and information for BMA members on how to participate can be found online at www.bma.org.uk/PAD. ### High Court rejects Judicial reviews on assisted suicide The High Court has refused permission for two separate challenges to the law on assisted suicide in the UK to proceed to a full hearing. In the first case, Phil Newby, who has motor neuron disease, applied for judicial review of the law on assisted suicide and asked for the court to carry out a detailed examination of what he termed “legislative facts” – that is, an examination of the existing evidence on the “costs, risks and benefits” of regulating assisted suicide – including a cross-examination of relevant expert witnesses.1 Handing down the judgement, Lord Justice Irwin and Mrs Justice May, held that assisted dying …. (shrink)

INDIAN THOUGHT AND ITS DEVELOPMENT by ALBERT SCHWEITZER.Originally printed in 1936. PREFACE: I HAVE written this short account of Indian Thought and its Development in the hope that it may help people in Europe to become better ac quainted than they are at present with the ideas it stands for and the great personalities in whom these ideas are embodied. To gain an insight into Indian thought, and to analyse it and discuss our differences, must necessarily make European thought clearer (...) and richer. If we really want to understand the thought of India we must get clear about the problems it has to face and how it deals with them. What we have to do is to set forth and explain the process of develop ment it has passed through from the time of the Vedic hymns down to the present day. I am fully conscious of the difficulty of describing definite lines of development in a philosophy which possesses in so remarkable a degree the will and the ability not to perceive contrasts as such, and allows ideas of heterogeneous character to subsist side by side and even brings them into connection with each other. But I believe that we, the people of the West, shall only rightly comprehend what Indian thought really is and what is its significance for the thought of all mankind, if we succeed in gaining an insight into its processes. Like every European who studies Indian philo sophy, I am deeply indebted to the scholars who have published the texts and been responsible for the fundamental work of research. I am specially grateful to Professor Moriz Winternitz of Prague, not only for what I have learnt from his great work on Indian Literature, but also because he has allowed me a share in the wealth of his knowledge by giving me a fund of information in response to my questions. I have also found it a great advantage to have been able to discuss the problems of Indian thought with my friend Mr C. F. Andrews. I found Romain Hollands penetrating studies on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda very inspiring. And I have to thank my friend Mr A. B. Ashby for valuable help in connection with the English edition. Indian thought has greatly attracted me since in my youth I first became acquainted with it through reading the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. From the very beginning I was convinced that all thought is really concerned with the great problem of how man can attain to spiritual union with infinite Being. My attention was drawn to Indian thought because it is busied with this problem and because by its nature it is mysticism. What I liked about it also was that Indian ethics are concerned with the be haviour of man to all living beings and not merely with his attitude to his fellow-man and to human society. But the closer my acquaintance with the docu ments of Indian thought the more I was assailed by doubts as to whether the view made familiar to us Europeans by the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Paul Deussen and others the view namely that Preface vii Indian thought is completely governed by the idea of world and life negation is right. I was compelled to admit the fact that world and life affirmation is present at the back of this thought from the very dawn of its history, and that the existence and inter fusion within it of world and life negation and world and life affirmation constitute its special character istic and determine its development. I am not merely describing the thought of India, but at the same time I am making a critical examina tion of it... (shrink)

When The Absurd Hero in American Fiction was first released in 1966, Granville Hicks praised it in a lead article for the Saturday Review as a sensitive and definitive study of a new trend in postwar American literature. In the years that followed, David Galloway’s analysis of the writings of John Updike, William Styron, Saul Bellow, and J. D. Salinger became a standard critical work, an indispensable tool for readers concerned with contemporary American literature. The New York Times described the (...) book as “a seminal study of the modern literary imagination." David Galloway, himself an established novelist, later extensively revised The Absurd Hero to include authoritative discussions of more than a dozen novels which had appeared since the first revised edition was released in 1970. Among them are John Updike’s Couples, Rabbit Redux, and The Coup; William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice; and Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet and Humboldt’s Gift. Through detailed analyses of these works, Galloway demonstrates the continuing relevance of his own provocative concept of the absurd hero and provides important insights into the literary achievements of four of America’s most influential postwar novelists. (shrink)

This paper aims to better motivate the naturalization of metaphysics by identifying and criticizing a class of theories I call ’free range metaphysics’. I argue that free range metaphysics is epistemically inadequate because the constraints on its content—consistency, simplicity, intuitive plausibility, and explanatory power—are insufficiently robust and justificatory. However, since free range metaphysics yields clarity-conducive techniques, incubates science, and produces conceptual and formal tools useful for scientifically engaged philosophy, I do not recommend its discontinuation. I do recommend, however, ending the (...) discipline’s bad faith. That is, I urge that free range metaphysics not be taken to have fully satisfactory epistemic credentials over and above its pragmatic ones. (shrink)

Thanks to the kind cooperation of Mrs. Elise Harding-Davis, director of the North American Black Historical Museum and Cultural Centre, we are able to reproduce the score of this famous melody which features so prominently in Sartre's Nausea. This museum is located in Amherstburg, Ontario, some thirty kilometers southwest of the Ambassador Bridge which links Detroit, Michigan with Windsor, Ontario. Shelton Brooks, who composed the melody in 1910, was a descendent of black slaves who made their way to freedom by (...) way of "the underground railway" and settled in Southwestern Ontario. He was born in Amherstburg; toured widely in Canada, the United States and Europe and he finally settled in Fontana, California where he died in 1975 at age 86. In the conclusion of Nausea Roquentin identifies him incorrectly as a New York Jew and refers to the singer as black. In fact the composer was an Afro-Canadian while the singer was New Yorker Sophie Tucker, who was Jewish. (shrink)

A naturalistic impulse has taken speculative analytic metaphysics in its critical sights. Importantly, the claim that it is desirable or requisite to give metaphysics scientific moorings rests on underlying epistemological assumptions or principles. If the naturalistic impulse toward metaphysics is to be well-founded and its prescriptions to have normative force, those assumptions or principles should be spelled out and justified. In short, advocates of naturalized or scientific metaphysics require epistemic infrastructure. This paper begins to supply it. The author first sketches (...) her conception of suitably naturalized or scientific metaphysics. She then lays out a number of candidate epistemic principles centring around the notion of theoretical constraint. The author offers several arguments for the principles, based on statistical likeliness, agreement, falsity avoidance, and methodological efficiency and inefficiency. Finally, she shows how scientific metaphysics satisfies the epistemic principles and is therefore preferable to its traditional rivals. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently highlighted substantial affinities between causation and grounding, which has inclined some to import the conceptual and formal resources of causal interventionism into the metaphysics of grounding. The prospect of grounding interventionism raises two important questions: exactly what are grounding interventions, and why should we think they enable knowledge of grounding? This paper will approach these questions by examining how causal interventionists have addressed (or might address) analogous questions and then comparing the available options for grounding interventionism. I (...) argue that grounding interventions must be understood in worldly terms, as adding something to or deleting something from the roster of entities, or making some fact obtain or fail to obtain. I consider three bases for counterfactual assessment: imagination, structural equation models, and background theory. I conclude that grounding interventionism requires firmer epistemological foundations, without which the interventionist's epistemology of grounding is incomplete and ineffectually rationalist. (shrink)

This paper surveys some of the grounding literature searching for points of contact between theories of ground and science. I find that there are some places where a would-be naturalistic grounding theorist can draw inspiration. I synthesize a list of recommendations for how science may be put to use in theories of ground. I conclude that the prospects for naturalizing the metaphysics of ground are bright.

The word ‘naturalism’ has a bewildering array of uses in philosophy. Roughly speaking, it connotes pro-scientific attitudes and approaches. This article introduces the subject of naturalism by sketching a history of pro-scientific attitudes and approaches in philosophy, from their origins in the early modern period through to the present day. It then distinguishes a number of distinct families of naturalism: metaphysical, logico-linguistic, epistemological, and methodological. The resulting taxonomy encompasses a plurality of loosely related views rather than a number of variations (...) on a single clear and unified theme. (shrink)

Unethical pro-organizational behaviors are unethical, but prosocially-motivated, acts intended to benefit one’s organization. This study examines the extent to which employees are willing to perform UPB to benefit a liked leader. Based on social exchange theory, we hypothesized that LMX would mediate the association of interpersonal justice with UPB willingness. Moral identity and positive reciprocity beliefs were examined as moderators. Higher LMX was significantly and positively related to UPB willingness, and the indirect effect of interpersonal justice on UPB via LMX (...) was significant and positive. These findings suggest that LMX and interpersonal justice could have a previously-unexplored dark side. Moral identity had a negative direct relationship with UPB, but it did not moderate the relationship of LMX with UPB. Thus, LMX facilitates UPB willingness even when employees are high in moral identity. LMX is associated with many positive outcomes, but our results show that high LMX may also increase willingness to perform unethical behaviors to benefit one’s leader. These results contribute to the literature by identifying a potential negative outcome associated with high LMX. (shrink)

Vocal affect is a subcomponent of emotion programs that coordinate a variety of physiological and psychological systems. Emotional vocalizations comprise a suite of vocal behaviors shaped by evolution to solve adaptive social communication problems. The acoustic forms of vocal emotions are often explicable with reference to the communicative functions they serve. An adaptationist approach to vocal emotions requires that we distinguish between evolved signals and byproduct cues, and understand vocal affect as a collection of multiple strategic communicative systems subject to (...) the evolutionary dynamics described by signaling theory. We should expect variability across disparate societies in vocal emotion according to culturally evolved pragmatic rules, and universals in vocal production and perception to the extent that form–function relationships are present. (shrink)

There exists substantial cultural variation in how emotions are expressed, but there is also considerable evidence for universal properties in facial and vocal affective expressions. This is the first empirical effort examining the perception of vocal emotional expressions across cultures with little common exposure to sources of emotion stimuli, such as mass media. Shuar hunter-horticulturalists from Amazonian Ecuador were able to reliably identify happy, angry, fearful and sad vocalizations produced by American native English speakers by matching emotional spoken utterances to (...) emotional expressions portrayed in pictured faces. The Shuar performed similarly to English speakers who heard the same utterances in a content-filtered condition. These data support the hypothesis that vocal emotional expressions of basic affective categories manifest themselves in similar ways across quite disparate cultures. (shrink)

Cet article s’inscrit dans la lignée de précédents travaux visant à rapprocher l’entrepreneur schumpétérien et le surhumain nietzschéen. Les deux partagent une créativité pouvant s’interpréter comme l’extériorisation d’un surcroît de force qui, dans l’optique nietzschéenne, s’assimile à la source extra-morale de l’accroissement de la vie. Reste à savoir si le cadre dans lequel ils évoluent est le même. Au-delà d’une approche historique du cycle de la conjoncture, notre hypothèse est que l’approche philosophique d’un cycle du devenir s’avère être féconde pour (...) une interprétation enrichie du cycle de la conjoncture, complétant et prolongeant ainsi notre interprétation du surhumain et de l’entrepreneur. (shrink)

Life has evolved; and so must have consciousness, or subjective experience, as found in living beings, Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg contend. In their target article, which summarises the main theses of their seminal book The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul, the authors put forward an evolutionary account of consciousness that builds upon the intimate connection between consciousness and life without, however, equating the two. Instead, according to Jablonka & Ginsburg, there was life before there was consciousness, and there are (...) still living beings without consciousness. Here I offer some metaphysical considerations in favour of a more inclusive notion of consciousness than Jablonka & Ginsburg’s. These considerations turn on the role played by metabolism and agency in the processual constitution of living beings as well as on the continuum between sensation and perception. Rather than postulating a mindless inwardness in presumably non-conscious organisms, we ought to recognise the constitutive experiential nature of life, rooted in its intrinsic purposiveness. (shrink)

Verbal irony constitutes a rough class of indirect intentional communication involving a complex interaction of language-specific and communication-general phenomena. Conversationalists use verbal irony in conjunction with paralinguistic signals such as speech prosody. Researchers examining acoustic features of speech communication usually focus on how prosodic information relates to the surface structure of utterances, and often ignore prosodic phenomena associated with implied meaning. In the case of verbal irony, there exists some debate concerning how these prosodic features manifest themselves in conversation. A (...) form-function approach can provide a valuable tool for understanding speakers' varied vocal strategies in this domain. Here I describe several ways conversationalists employ prosodic contrasts, laughter, and other speech characteristics in their attempts to communicate effectively and efficiently. The presented examples, culled from spontaneous conversation recordings, reveal just a small sample of the enormous variation in delivery styles speakers adopt when communicating with ironic language. (shrink)

Tragic moral conflicts are situations from within which whatever one does—including abstaining from action—will be seriously wrong; even the overall right decision involves violating a moral responsibility. This article offers an account of recovery predicaments, a particular kind of tragic conflict that characterizes the current extinction crisis. Recovery predicaments occur when the human-caused extinction of a species or population cannot be prevented without breaching moral responsibilities to animals by doing violence to or otherwise severely dominating them. Recognizing the harm of (...) acting from within recovery conflicts adds force to appeals for interrogating and dismantling the systems of thinking, valuing, and acting that bring species to the brink of extinction. (shrink)

We explored the differential impact of auditory information and written contextual information on the recognition of verbal irony in spontaneous speech. Based on relevance theory, we predicted that speakers would provide acoustic disambiguation cues when speaking in situations that lack other sources of information, such as a visual channel. We further predicted that listeners would use this information, in addition to context, when interpreting the utterances. People were presented with spontaneously produced ironic and nonironic utterances from radio talk shows in (...) written or auditory form, with or without written contextual information. When the utterances were read without written contextual information, all utterances were rated as equally ironic. But when they were heard as opposed to read, or when they were presented in irony-biasing contexts, originally ironic utterances were rated as more sarcastic than originally nonironic utterances. This evidence suggests both acoustic and contextual information are used when inferring ironic intent in spontaneous speech, and validates previous manipulations of intonation in studies of irony understanding. (shrink)

We explored the frequency with which typical adults make Theory of Mind attributions, and under what circumstances these attributions occur. We used an experience sampling method to query 30 typical adults about their everyday thoughts. Participants carried a Personal Data Assistant that prompted them to categorize their thoughts as Action, Mental State, or Miscellaneous at approximately 30 pseudo-random times during a continuous 10-h period. Additionally, participants noted the direction of their thought and degree of socializing at the time of inquiry. (...) We were interested in the relative frequency of ToM and how prominent they were in immediate social exchanges. Analyses of multiple choice answers suggest that typical adults: spend more time thinking about actions than mental states and miscellaneous things, exhibit a higher degree of own- versus other-directed thought when alone, and make mental state attributions more frequently when not interacting than while interacting with others . A significant 3-way interaction between thought type, direction of thought, and socializing emerged because action but not mental state thoughts about others occurred more frequently when participants were interacting with people versus when alone; whereas there was an increase in the frequency of both action and mental state attributions about the self when participants were alone as opposed to socializing. A secondary analysis of coded free text responses supports findings 1–3. The results of this study help to create a more naturalistic picture of ToM use in everyday life and the method shows promise for future study of typical and atypical thought processes. (shrink)

Initial evidence suggests that suppressing a thought prior to sleep results in subsequent dreaming of that thought. The present research examined the influence of cognitive load on dreaming following suppression. In Experiment 1, 100 participants received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for an intrusive thought prior to sleep, and subsequently completed a dream diary. Participants instructed to suppress reported dreaming about the target thought more than controls; dream rebound was predicted by poorer performance on a working memory task. (...) In Experiment 2, 126 participants received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for an intrusive thought prior to sleep, and half of participants also had cognitive load of learning a 9-digit number. Participants receiving the suppression instruction under cognitive load reported greater dream rebound than other participants. These findings indicate that thought suppression prior to sleep leads to dream rebound, and this effect is enhanced by cognitive load. (shrink)

RésuméDans cet article, nous examinons le projet d'une critique de la raison historique mené par Wilhelm Dilthey et l'accusation d'historicisme portée contre lui par Heinrich Rickert. En comparant leurs tentatives respectives d'offrir un fondement philosophique aux sciences humaines, nous montrons que Dilthey et Rickert, en dépit de leurs divergences, convergent vers une réinterprétation productive de l'historicisme et conduisent à une reconfiguration de la relation entre philosophie et histoire. Cet article analyse trois implications théoriques et pratiques de l'historicisme : la mise (...) en valeur du particulier, le caractère historiquement situé du sujet connaissant et la primauté de la conscience historique. (shrink)

In this monograph, I systematically analyse the debate in recent analytic metaphysics, with a special focus on recent biologically inspired (so-called animalist) theories of personal identity. I argue that the debate is stuck in a dilemma which is neither harmless nor new: the modern antagonism between the reductionist elimination of personal identity on the one hand and its non-reductionist mystification on the other rather repeats the antagonism between rationalist dogmatism and empirical scepticism in the 18th century’s debates on the soul. (...) This latter antagonism has been extensively examined by Kant who also sought for ways to overcome the dilemma. The systematic analysis of the modern ‘analytic’ debate is therefore followed by a presentation and critical discussion of the constructive approaches taken by Kant and post-Kantian ‘continental’ philosophers. From a Kantian perspective, what we are confronted with is a fundamental dialectic, originating in the very structure of human reason and threatening to turn metaphysics altogether into an arena of fruitless battles. The possibility of a satisfactory metaphysical account of transtemporal personal identity reveals itself to be contingent on the possibility of a ‘good’ metaphysics able to overcome that dialectic. (shrink)