This collection’s basic theme and thesis, explained by Curtis L. Hancock, “A Critique of Social Construct Theory” and “A Counterfeit Choice,” is that the seeds of contemporary relativism were sown by modern philosophy, primarily Descartes himself, its founder. Following a lead from Gilson, these authors pursue the benefits of classical realism and existential Thomism compared with the Cartesian legacy of subjectivism in modern philosophy. Indeed, Peter Redpath, “Why Descartes was not a Philosopher,” explains why Descartes may not be a philosopher (...) at all, if the significance of the term be properly considered as a love of wisdom and a search for true being. As Maritain coined the phrase, he is an “ideosopher,” in pursuit of the effective idea and rhetorical success, not the contemplation of being. Christopher Cullen, “Transcendental Thomism: Realism Rejected,” argues that the attempt by Karl Rahner, Joseph Donceel, and others to absorb the Cartesian and Kantian approach into Thomism has not proved successful. Robert Geis, “Descartes’s Res: An Interactionist Difficulty,” explains how the objectifying of mind as a thing sets up insoluble difficulties; he argues that a more adequate account is found in Aristotle. Donald DeMarco, “Descartes, Mathematics and Music,” traces out the effect in music when the physical is reduced to the mathematical. The imposition of a uniform method leads to a distortion of what musicians do. William J. Fossati, “Maximum Influence from Minimum Abilities: La Mettrie and Radical Materialism,” traces the Cartesian heritage of reductionism through Julien Offroy de Le Mettrie to the most contemporary attempts to explain human beings as mere biological organisms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RAHNER ON THE UNORIGINATE FATHER ROBERT WARNER St. Joseph's University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania I. Introduction Y ANY MEASURE, Karl Rahner was one of the principal architects of the renascence of trinitarian theology that has marked the last half of this century. Rahner found that in their pract:icail lives Christians were "a1most mere' monotheists'" 1 while :in speculative endeavors the treatise on the Trinity stood " isofoted in the structriwe of (...) dogmatic theology as a whoile," 2 and so he devoted himself toov ;ereoming both the priadicaJ irre~evance and the theoretical isolation of the doctrine. He p:mposeid as a methodologicaJ Grunda:dom the dictum that " the ' 1econom~c' Trinity is the 'immanent ' Trinity and the 'immanent ' Trinity is the 'economic ' Trinity," 3 in 011der to preclude any sharp disjunction between how God is in se and how God is ad extra, between theofogy and the,economy. He al:so developed a techn~cal concept of self-communication, inscribed it within the heart of his trinitarian theology, amd materiaily recast the traditional account of the Trinity to wccm~d with that notion. H1s account of the 1dentity and roil.e of God the Father is a striking, although littiie noted, feature of Rahner's thought. His trinitarian theofogy trumpets the primacy of God the Father: this is evident in his oft-stated resolve to begin the 1Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), p. 10. Hereafter cited as Trinity. 2" Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise 'De Trinitate '," in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations IV, trans. Kevin Smyth (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), p. 78. Hereafter cited as "Remarks." a Trinity, p. 22. 569 570 ROBERT WARNER ;theological entel'prise, in consort with Scripture and the Greeks, with God Father, rather than the one divine es-,senoe shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.4 And that primacy, in tum, is secured by an extra.ordinary emphasis on the urnoriginatedness trruditionaUy,ascribed to the Father. 'What unoriginatedness involves and how unoriginatedness and fatherhood bear on the identity of the Father become cmci.ail questions within Rahner's trinitarian theology. This is no bit of trinitarian arteana, no subtlety of interest only to a scholastic mindset, but an issue whose consequenee1 s reverberate throughout Rahner's Two e:mmples will suffice. Insofar as Rahner on the notion of self-communicatfon, he riegufar~y identifies the F1ather as the origin of the self-communication. Divinity is communicated rbo the Son 1:the HoJy Spi:cit. Issues regacvding the id.entity of the Father impinge, therefore, on questions the seH-communication p11eioise[y because upon the identity of the self that is communicated. In 1addition, Rahner works out the identification of being of God and the triune being of God in the person of Father. Thel'eby the question arbout ifhe :identity the Father becomes important in sett1ing the ontological status of immanent the sense in which God is 1anteoedently trinity se. This essay examine Rahner's rich and compfox a1C1count of the identity of Father. It be necessary, firis:t of all, to situate that teaching, to clarify Rahner means by un-.origina.tedness, and to determine how he understands unorigifatherhood to be interr1 elat1ed constituting the identity of the the essay will argue that Rahner's account not, fo fact, succeed and,this his theology. Rahne'l.''s position can thus: be seen a,s an attempt to identify a philosophically colJJceiv;ed,abyss the Father trinitarian doctrine by reworking the unoriginatedness tr:aditionaHy ascribed to the Father. 4 Trinity, p. Hl. RAHNER ON THE UNORIGINATE FATHER 571 II. 'O 8e6c; and the Father In an essay that appears early on in the Theological Investigations, "Theos in the New Testament", Rahner outlines the content of the New Testament conception of God under seveml heaidings.5 He notes, first of 1all, the New Testament's imperious claim that its God is the one true God, o 8e6c;. Rahner describes this as the New Testament"s doctrine of God',s uniqueness. Under a second rubric, God as person, Rmmer ranges several topics. Aocording to Rahner, as personal, God is (1) an agent who.wets (2) freely in (3... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:QUASI-FORMAL CAUSALITY AND ' CHANGE IN THE OTHER': A NOTE ON KARL RAHNER'S CHRISTOLOGY characteristic and prominent of the claims made by Karl Rahner about the incarnation are the following three. (1) Only the Logos, the second Person of the Trinity, and not the Father or the Holy Spirit, can be incarnated.1 (~) Granted there is to be a mission ad extra of the Logos, what comes to be (...) is the hypostatic union of the Logos with some created nature, and indeed, with a human nature and a human nature alone.2 (8) The Logos, immutable in himself because identical with the divine nature, is mutable in the " other" of the human nature which he assmnes hypostatically.3 I am concerned in this article with how these three claims are related to a fourth, more generally theological, claim of Fr. Rah...ner's, namely: (4) The supernatural self-communication of God to what is not God must be understood as a kind of quasi-formal causality exercised by God on the creature.4 1" Current Problems in Christology," Theological Investigations I, trans. Cornelius Ernst (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961), p. 183; "On the Theology of the Incarnation," TI IV, trans. Kevin Smyth (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966), pp. 106, 115; "Nature and Grace," TI IV, p. 176 "The Theology of the Symbol," TI IV, p. 236; The Trilnity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), pp. 29, 84, 86. 2" Current Problems," p. 197; "Theology of the Incarnation," p. 116; "Theology of the Symbol," pp. 237-238; 'Prinity, pp. 27, 32-33, 89-90. 3" Current Problems," pp. 175-182, esp. p. 181, note 3; "Theology of the Incarnation," pp. 112-115. 4 "Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace," TI I, pp. 329-333, 334ff.; "Nature and Grace," p. 175; Trinity, p. 36. 293 ~94 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. In Christology, this fourth claim means that the Logos is quasiformally related to the humanity of Jesus. More particularly, just as uncreated grace is qua~si-formally related to the just so that created sanctifying grace is its dispositive formal effect, really distinct from it 5, and just as the divine essence is quasiformally :related to the created and beatified intellect so that the lumen gloriae is its dispositive formal effect, :really distinct from it 6, so the divine esse of the Logos is quasi-formally related to the humanity of Jesus so that the esse secondarium of Christ spoken of by St. Thomas is its dispositive formal effect, really distinct from it.7 In all three cases, and in Maurice de la Taille's words, some created reality, though not informed by Uncreated Act, is actuated by it. In each case, some created actuation-sanctifying grace, the light of glory, the esse secondariumr -disposes created reality to quasi-formal union with Uncreated Act.8 Indeed, I am assuming the substantial identity of the positions of Fr. Rahner and Fr. de la Taille on the supernatural. This assumption is justified on two grounds, beyond Fr. Rahner's own recognition of the identity of his position with Fr. de la Taille's.9 First, like Fr. de la Taille, Fr. Rahner expressly distinguishes between a form and its actuation.10 Sec5 "Uncreated Grace," p. 341. s fbid., pp. 332-333. 1 Cf. Fr. Rahner's remarks as reported in the "Rapport Patfoort," in Problemes aotuels de ohristologie, edited by H. Bouesse and J.-J. Latour (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1965), pp. 414-415. For St. Thomas, cf. his disputed question De unione Ve1·bi inoai·nati, a. 4. s Cf. Maurice de la, Taille, S.J., The llypostatio Un·imi and Created Aotuation by Uncreated Aot ('West Baden, Indiana: West Baden College, 1952), esp. pp. 30, 32-35. This booklet contains a translation of de la Taille's "Actuation cree par acte incree_," which first appeared in 1928 in Recherches de science religieuse. 9 Rahner, "Uncreated Grace," p. 340. io Ibid., p. 331, note 1: "It is usual today to distinguish two senses of ' forma' by speaking of 'actus informans' and ' actus terminans ': thus, 'forma' (the determination) in the first sense is that which in itself arrives at reality and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS AND THE PRESENCE OF THE HUMAN RATIONAL SOUL IN THE EARLY EMBRYO STEPHEN J. HEANEY University of Saint Thomas Saint Paul, Minnesota FIRST IN RELATION to evolution and more recently in relation to abortion, there has been a recurrence of Thomas Aquinas's arguments for the thesis that the human rational soul is not present in the human body immediately upon conception. Since soul and body must be proportioned (...) to each other, it is argued, a rational soul cannot be present until the human body is formed enough to support it, i.e., until there are organs in place through which the rational soul can begin to exercise its proper powers. The question of this paper is : Given modern embryological knowledge, would Aquinas be likely to come to the same conclusion? In regards to such a question Rudolph Gerber has made the following observation: Some scholastic philosophers and theologians insist that it is simply impossible to determine exactly when rational animation occurs. This belief, however, has deterred few prophets in either camp from stating their positions with dogmatic certainty.1 The authors whose interpretations we will be encountering in this paper have generally been less than dogmatic, but they have been insistent on the rectitude of their respective positions. I will attempt to do likewise : I am in no position to be dogmatic (after all, how will we test the thesis?), but I believe I have good grounds for the conclusion I have reached. 1Rudolph Gerber, "When Is the Human Soul Infused?" Laval theologique et philosophique 22 (1966) : 235. 19 20 STEPHEN J. HEANEY We begin with certain positions which both sides in the debate agree upon : the human intellectual soul is produced immediately by God and not through another agency since, as immaterial, it cannot come from a change in matter; 2 further, the human soul is infused, that is, produced directly in a body as the body's natural perfection.8 As we shall see in the texts, Aquinas argues that this latter position requires that, while the embryo is alive, it is alive first through the power of a vegetative soul, then a sensitive soul, and finally, when the body is organized enough to be able to perform the functions demanded of it, by a rational soul, this ultimate form replacing the previous one. This theory of delayed animation--or, more to the point of this paper, the view that Aquinas would today still hold such a theory-has several contemporary proponents. The most prominent spokesman is Joseph Donceel, S.J. He has presented his arguments in a pair of articles' which we will now review. In the earlier article, Donceel blames a latent Cartesianism for the proliferation of supporters of immediate hominization. If you hold, with Descartes, that the soul and body are two separate substances, that the soul is not the form of the body, then there is " no longer any reason for rejecting the presence of a real human soul in a virtual human body," 5 i.e., in matter that has the potential to be a human body (with human shape) but is not one yet. Thus, the soul could act as the efficient cause of the body, molding the matter into the organs proper to human beings. This, however, is not Aquinas's view, Donceel argues; "he did not admit that an actual human sould could be coupled with a virtual human body," 6 because "a substantial form can exist only in and with a human body." 7 If we accept the Cartesian 2 S. Th. I, 90, 3, corp. s S. Th. I, 90, 4, corp. 'Joseph Donceel, S.J., "Abortion: Mediate v. Immediate Animation," Continuum 5 (1967): 167-71; "Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization," Theological Studies 31 (1970) : 76-105. B Donceel, "Abortion," p. 169. e Ibid., p. 168. T Ibid. THE HUMAN SOUL IN THE EARLY EMBRYO 21 explanation, we would be equating the soul with the architect or builders of a building. These, however, are not the building's form; that exists only in the finished building. Rather, Donceel says that the soul is related to the body as sphericity to a ball. An embryo is like... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM AND THE THOMISTIC TEXTS JOHN F. x. KNASAS Genter for Thomistic Studies Houston, Temas SOME THIRTY YEARS ago in the journal Thought, there appeared an article by Fr. Joseph Donceel, S.J., entitled " A Thomistic Misapprehension? " Its thesis is that American Thomism had seen too much of the a posteriori in Aquinas's noetic.1 In fact the interpretation was so a posteriori that it bordered on (...) empiricism and positivism. Donceel intends to balance the American understanding of Aquinas by spotlighting various Thomistic texts that speak of an a priori contribution of the intellect to human knowledge. Donceel is merely calling attention to something that some outstanding European Thomists, e.g., Defever, Marechal, and Rahner have known for some time. Donceel's " balanced" interpretation is what is called Transcendental Thomism. In sum, the position claims that the human intellect is not so complete a tabula rasa that it fails to make an a priori contribution to the data of sensation. This contribution is the intellect's very dynamism to Infinite Being. The dynamism has a constitutive role in human experience. Swept up within this intellectual torrent, the data of sensation stand before us in consciousness as finite and limited. So " objectified " the data are disposed for the traditional abstvactive account of the specific and generic natures. After the Second Vatican Council, Thomism generally fell into disrepute among American Catholic intellectuals. Phi1 Joseph Donceel, " A Thomistic Misapprehension?" Thought, 32 (1957) : 189. 81 82 JOHN F. X. KNASAS losophy departments " pluralized." Their members represented analytic, existential, and process philosophy.2 If Thomism remained vibrant, it was in the a priori strain. Both on the philosophical and theological levels, it was at home with the pluralism tha.t marked the time.3 The current emphasis on political activism, however, ha:s caused even Transcendental Thomism to suffer an eclipse. In the heat of political struggle, Transcendental Thomism, too, appears decadent and bourgeois. The case can be made, though, that the uncovering of the intellect's a priori dynamism to the Infinite was a crucial move for liberationists. Gutierrez notes 4 that the Transcendental Thomist understanding of the human intellect posits a single finality for human nature. The traditional distinction between the temporal and eternal planes loses meaning. Human history becomes salvation history. In this way, then, Transcendental Thomism continues to exercise its influence. This paper investigates the purported Thomistic texts expressing an apriorism. The texts cited by Donceel are all found in Marechal's Cahier V.5 There MarechaI mentions many others besides. Hence, my paper will use the Marechalian collection. My treatment focuses upon the texts that are seemingly most a priori. I. A central text for Marechal is De Veritate, q.l, a.4, ad 5m (first set). Aquinas remarks: 2 See "Is a 'Catholic' Philosophy Department Possible? " by the Committee on Research (Thomas I.angan, K. I,. Schmitz, Jude P. Dougherty) of the ACPA (HJ78). 3 On Transcendental Thomism's capacity to admit a theological pluralism without falling into a relativism, see Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Gent1.ry (New York: The Seab1iry Pres8, 1977), pp. 258-9. 4 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), p. 69. 5 Oahier V is a volume in Jl.riarechal's monumenfal Le point de depart de la metaphysique. Subsequent references to Oahier V are from Donceel's substantive translation A J,[wrechal Reader (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970). TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM AND THE TEXTS 83 The truth by which the soul passes judgment on all things is the first truth; for, just as from the truth of the divine intellect there flow into the angelic intellects those: intelligible species by which angels know all things, so does the truth of the first principles by which we judge everything proceed from the truth of the divine intellect as from its exemplary cause. Since we can judge by means of the truth of these first principles only insofar as this truth is a likeness of the first truth, we are said to judge everything according to the first truth.6 The text illustrates a " dynamic exemplarism " in Aquinas... (shrink)

Developmental systems theory is a general theoretical perspective on development, heredity and evolution. It is intended to facilitate the study of interactions between the many factors that influence development without reviving `dichotomous' debates over nature or nurture, gene or environment, biology or culture. Several recent papers have addressed the relationship between DST and the thriving new discipline of evolutionary developmental biology. The contributions to this literature by evolutionary developmental biologists contain three important misunderstandings of DST.

Given a physical system, one knows that there is a logical duality between its properties and its states. In this paper, we choose its states as the undefined notions of our axiomatic construction. In fact, by means of well-motivated assumptions expressed in terms of a transition probability function defined on the set of all pure states of the system, we construct a system of elementary propositions, i.e., a complete orthomodular atomic lattice satisfying the covering law. We also study in this (...) framework the important notion of compatibility of propositions, and we define the superpositions and the mixtures of the states of the physical system. (shrink)

The desire to see a sign phenomenon in different ways always has a reason to interpret it in an unbiased, panoramic way, and in some places - even allowing for contradictions in its understanding by different participants in the interpretative process. For modern humanities, this disposition is quite understandable, since it follows from its very postmodern nature, thereby defining the semantic semantic fields of the leading humanities. True, it is not so wide-spread, but instead, it is evident that Ukrainian religious (...) thinkers of the Middle Ages and Baroque have interpreted the iconic phenomena more deeply. In the story of Petro Mohyla "On the Wonderful Elder Grigory Mezhyhirsky" the metropolitan Mohyla clearly expresses the need to build before the thinking gaze of the reader his own, immanently religious-philosophical conception of the Divine, which every time would present him not just as an act of manifestation, otherwise he appears before the person, while remaining alone. The contemporary study of this issue in order to integrate its leading concepts in the religious-philosophical and general cultural discourse of the postmodern era has largely determined the relevance of the proposed article. The study of the phenomenon of "leaving" by itself in changing forms of the phenomenon of the Divine is also one of the key ones in the proposed studio, because it expresses the very meaning of the Divine as a religious, and therefore a cultural phenomenon. (shrink)

‘To Gödel via Babel’, MIND, July 1966.In (1), the last clause should read: ‘then the GN of the resulting P-sentence is x100.y’ In (21), the expression in Roman numerals should read: ‘$$Y.\frac{\hbox{ L }Y}{\hbox{ XIX }}$$’ In (25) and (27), the expression in Roman numerals should read: ‘$${(\hbox{ C }}^{\hbox{ XVII }}.\hbox{ D })\hbox{ . }\frac{\hbox{ L }\left({\hbox{ C }}^{\hbox{ XVII }}.\hbox{ D }\right)}{\hbox{ XIX }}$$’.

In the Ukrainian reality of the twenty-first century. The search for the dominant spiritual and national identity is one of the leading places. The dialogue between Catholicism, which is represented by the spiritual phenomenon of the Vatican, and by Ukraine, one of the countries not only of the Greek Catholic, but also of the Orthodox tradition, with a distinct national-cultural specificity, is, in our opinion, the semiosphere where the answers to many challenges of the present and the future. But such (...) answers are difficult to find if the sine era et studio does not analyze the key trends in the development of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by examining it, without looking back at the stereotypes of the identification of Ukrainian spiritual thinking and being with the imperially secular tradition. The most suitable method for this task is the comparative methodology, which examines the basic ideological characteristics of the ideological world of Orthodox thinkers - from Ivan Vyshensky and to thinkers and spiritual prophets of the Second Cathedral of the UAOC. (shrink)

Actuality of the usage of the food safety knowledge-based technologies is shown. The food safety stakeholders and information objects are presented. The set of ontologies and context areas which are described decision –making tasks and processes are shown. The basic ontology is presented as a means of conceptual representation of the field of food safety. The usage of decision-making is considered. Modern food processing technologies, food safety requirements, food safety requirements etc. are characterized by the need for complex and rational (...) solutions. It is necessary to consider different aspects of decision-making in food safety, which can be based not only on the knowledge of a particular subject area. The use of information and knowledge is a key task in any problem area related to the production and dissemination of knowledge, especially new types of unique content that are useful and accessible. The paper aim is to conceptually present an ontological system based on the use of context and ontologies and aimed at supporting decision making in the food safety management system. Food safety knowledge, which used in decision-making processes, is considered as the context knowledge and the knowledge that describes the content. The paper presents food safety stakeholders and provides information objects. The information and knowledge includes various aspects such as knowledge and information on the production and processing industry; and the food safety aspects. For this purpose, an interconnected set of ontologies is used, which is a multilevel associative structure: meta-ontology; basic ontology; context ontology; set of domain ontologies; realization ontology; user presentation and interaction ontology; model of inference machine. Implementation of food safety processes and integration of the components of decision-making is based on the presentation of the multi-level system of management and decision-making in it through a model of a context. The context framework takes into account different context domains, such as: purpose/result, actor, process/action, object, environment, facility, tools, presentation, location, and time. The ontology implementation builds an inter connected system of preparation and choice of solutions, both for the given problem and for interaction with other complexes of problems and tasks, allows to make decisions taking into account the consequences of their implementation. (shrink)

The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page. Citation: Kail, P. J. E. . 'Naturalism, method and genealogy in Beyond Selflessness', European Journal of Philosophy, 17, 113-120. Copyright © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

We apply an online optimization process based on machine learning to the production of Bose-Einstein condensates. BEC is typically created with an exponential evaporation ramp that is optimal for ergodic dynamics with two-body s-wave interactions and no other loss rates, but likely sub-optimal for real experiments. Through repeated machine-controlled scientific experimentation and observations our ’learner’ discovers an optimal evaporation ramp for BEC production. In contrast to previous work, our learner uses a Gaussian process to develop a statistical model of the (...) relationship between the parameters it controls and the quality of the BEC produced. We demonstrate that the Gaussian process machine learner is able to discover a ramp that produces high quality BECs in 10 times fewer iterations than a previously used online optimization technique. Furthermore, we show the internal model developed can be used to determine which parameters are essential in BEC creation and which are unimportant, providing insight into the optimization process of the system. (shrink)