This paper examines the role that religious belief plays in societies' treatment of nonhuman animals, first asking two questions. Does religious belief continue to play a role today in societies' treatment of nonhuman animals, and should it? The paper discusses the interaction of religion, secular ethics, and the law. As with a three-legged stool, each leg or component relies on the next for support. Religious values and claims, as features of the ethical framework by which many people live, have daily (...) implications for nonhuman animals. On a sliding scale, negative to positive, a religious point of view may affect other animals in different ways. Beliefs - religious in nature and origin - about other animals sometimes stand behind the claims and ethical formulations of avowedly nonreligious people and institutions and may be of some interest to philosophers and historians. The paper concludes that only through consideration and involvement of the three separate, yet inter-connected, components can animal abuse be effectively addressed. (shrink)

The mandala is a polysemantic term referring to several distinct yet interrelated architectural and imperial concepts. In addition to this com plexity, however, the mandala’s multivalency is further compounded by layers of nineteenth- and twentieth-century interpretations that have added reductionistic Jungian associations and/or anachronistic Orientalist expectations onto the image. This essay attempts to strip away such accretions and assumptions. It calls for the recognition of the variety and distinctiveness of early Japanese mandalas and aims to resuscitate the role of the (...) mandala in picturing, but not necessarily producing, enlightenment. As a result, this essay will attempt to return to basics and reconsider two key types of Japanese Buddhist mandalas on their own terms. Specifically, it will provide an iconographic and doctrinal analysis of the eighth-century Taima mandala of Amitābha/Amitāyus Buddha in his Pure Land of the Western Paradise. It will also examine the famous pair of ninth-century Two-World mandalas, which depict the Diamond and the Womb World aspects of Mahāvairocana Buddha, the cosmic buddha of great light who illumines all equally. The essay concludes with a final reflection on the Taima and Two-World mandalas, as both are unique examples and emblematic models for two distinct Japanese Buddhist worldviews. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Mystical Consciousness: Western Perspectives and Dialogue with Japanese ThinkersPamela D. WinfieldMystical Consciousness: Western Perspectives and Dialogue with Japanese Thinkers. By Louis Roy, O.P.Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. 229. Hardcover $62.50. Paper $20.95.Mystical Consciousness: Western Perspectives and Dialogue with Japanese Thinkers by Louis Roy presents a stimulating array of thinkers on the subject of consciousness, self-reflective consciousness, and mystical consciousness. Louis Roy's primary sources focus (...) on the somewhat standard canon of via negativa and Zeninfluenced thinkers and practitioners (Plotinus, Eckhardt, Schleiermacher, Nishitani, Hisamatsu, and Suzuki), but he also includes Bergson, Brentano, Heidegger, Hume, Husserl, Nietzsche, Nishida, Sartre, Schelling, and Tillich in his discussion. His secondary sources range widely, so the competing terminologies and conceptual schemes of Crosby, Forman, Granfield, Heiler, Helminiak, James, Johnston, Moore, Morelli, Price, Searle, and Tart can at times be confusing without an outline or chart. He aptly organizes his material into three sections, however: part 1 summarizes major Western philosophies of consciousness, part 2 presents three classic mystical writings from the Western canon, and part 3 compares Western views of the self and nothingness with those of Zen Buddhism. Roy's careful research and terse writing style, moreover, serve as an excellent introduction and basic starting point for further research into each one of these individual thinkers.Of all these sources however, it is evident that Roy favors the fourfold scheme of the Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan. As he states in his preface, Roy sets out "to develop an understanding of consciousness, mostly rooted in Bernard Lonergan's works and applied to the mystical life" (p. x). Lonergan traces the trajectory of human intentionality across four levels: (1) averting to an object, (2) knowing it, (3) [End Page 493] judging it to be true, and (4) appreciating its value. Following Lonergan's cue, Morelli has consequently claimed that "Being in love with God is the basic fulfillment of our conscious intentionality" (p. 32), and Michael Sharkey has characterized Lonergan's philosophy as a nondualistic "cognition by communion, and not encounter."1 Roy now articulates a threefold scheme to explicate the transition from everyday objectifying consciousness to this mystical, unitive consciousness.In order to accomplish this transition, Roy establishes a middle baseline B-consciousness that mediates between everyday and mystical consciousness. This analytic scheme can be outlined as follows.2(1) Consciousness C: "consciousness of" things. This everyday positional awareness engenders subject-object dualism.(2) Consciousness B: ordinary "consciousness in" that permeates all mental acts (noesis). This is a baseline non-positional consciousness that pervades and underlies all subject-object distinctions. In moments of self-reflection, this kind of "consciousness-in" can itself become C's object of awareness (what Plotinus calls antilepsis).(3) Consciousness A: mystical (as opposed to ordinary) "consciousness in." This is the same as consciousness B but is present in objectless states. Roy indicates that this highest or deepest consciousness refers to union with God, the divine, the sacred, or emptiness or nothingness in the Zen Buddhist sense. He argues that since consciousness C can become aware of B, then it can avert to, know, accurately judge, and appreciate A as well. Roy writes:Thanks to his [i.e. Lonergan's] efforts, we have come to realize that our conscious intentionality [what Roy calls consciousness-of, also called consciousness C] is able to develop an account of ordinary consciousness [consciousness B] and to employ this account analogically so as to make true judgments about mystical consciousness [consciousness A], without presuming that the latter can be fully comprehended.(p. 188)Throughout the volume, Roy provides ample evidence that we can become aware of our own noetic activity and noematic content (i.e., the act of thinking as well as our thoughts). He also surveys a wide range of apophatic mystics and philosophers who seem to indicate that this intentional process extends to becoming aware of consciousness A's "no-thinking" and "no-thought" as well (what Zen Buddhism terms munen-musō). But can our everyday objectifying awareness truly grasp the subjectless-objectless state of no-thingness so often described by mystics the world over? Can union with the Godhead or... (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on whether and to what extent we judge that people are responsible for the consequences of their forgetfulness. We ran a series of behavioral studies to measure judgments of responsibility for the consequences of forgetfulness. Our results show that we are disposed to hold others responsible for some of their forgetfulness. The level of stress that the forgetful agent is under modulates judgments of responsibility, though the level of care that the agent exhibits toward performing (...) the forgotten action does not. We argue that this result has important implications for a long-running debate about the nature of responsible agency. (shrink)

Juan Huarte de San Juan (1529–88) was a physician of the Spanish Renaissance. He wrote the Examen de Ingenios para las Ciencias, translated as The Trial of Men’s Wits (1989[1575–94]), a book that has been acknowledged as a precursor of educational psychology, organizational psychology, behaviorism, neuropsychology and psychiatry. Huarte suggested that before beginning a course of study, students’ intellectual capabilities (i.e. ingenio) should be matched up with the professional studies that best suit their aptitudes. His book had a great impact (...) in Europe from the late 16th century to the mid-18th century. The influence of the Trial spread throughout many areas including philosophy, politics, linguistics and literature. Although there has been a growing interest in Huarte’s work in recent years, biographical studies have been rare; as a result, the information about Huarte’s life is currently incomplete, scattered and sometimes inaccurate. This study presents a systematic archival research on Spanish original sources. We present a reconstruction of Huarte’s life-story based on 32 original documents (1549–c.1650), some of them first discovered during the present survey. Documents are described according to the General International Standard of Archival Description, ISAD(G). The documents uncovered allow for a reappraisal of Huarte’s biography. (shrink)

The work of Michèle Le Dœuff creatively disrupts established notions of what philosophy might be. Far from being a discipline about the leader and the disciple, a hierarchy of knowledge and paternalism, Le Dœuff proposes a philosophy of dialogue and friendship. The conversations in this book explore how this philosophy can be enacted and explored, and show how openness and generosity can be the starting point of truly rigorous thinking. Introduced and curated by the late philosopher, Pamela Sue Anderson, (...) In Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff explores themes like contemporary feminism, joy in philosophy, memory, the significance of friendship to thinking and a key Le Dœuffian concept, the imaginary. Le Dœuff's interlocutors, including Penelope Deutscher, Elizabeth Fallaize and Meenda Dhanda, are some of the most significant thinkers in the fields of feminism and continental thought and provide insights and ways into considering philosophy as a profoundly dialogical exercise. (shrink)

Conscientious objections (CO) can be disruptive in a variety of ways and may disadvantage patients and colleagues who must step-in to assume care. Nevertheless, nurses have a right and responsibility to object to participation in interventions that would seriously harm their sense of integrity. This is an ethical problem of balancing risks and responsibilities related to patient care. Here we explore the problem and propose a nonlinear framework for exploring the authenticity of a claim of CO from the perspective of (...) the nurse and of those who must evaluate such claims. We synthesized the framework using Rest’s Four Component Model of moral reasoning along with tenets of the International Council of Nursing’s (ICN) Code of Ethics for Nurses and insights from relevant ethics and nursing ethics literature. The resulting framework facilitates evaluating potential consequences of a given CO for all involved. We propose that the framework can also serve as an aid for nurse educators as they prepare students for practice. Gaining clarity about the sense in which the concept of conscience provides a defensible foundation for objecting to legally, or otherwise ethically, permissible actions, in any given case is critical to arriving at an ethical and reasonable plan of action. (shrink)

This chapter gives an elaboration of the will and addresses the question of whether there is an entity called “free will” or not. It looks at various cases that are seen from the perspectives of cultural anthropology. This chapter uses a literary example that takes a look at the significant consequences of using free will and shows how the cosmological dimension implicates the will of the spirits, in relation to the willed actions of people.

Moral foundations research suggests that liberals care about moral values related to individual rights such as harm and fairness, while conservatives care about those foundations in addition to caring more about group rights such as loyalty, authority, and purity. However, the question remains about how conservatives and liberals differ in relation to group-level moral principles. We used two versions of the moral foundations questionnaire with the target group being either abstract or specific ingroups or outgroups. Across three studies, we observed (...) that liberals showed more endorsement of Individualizing foundations with an outgroup target, while conservatives showed more endorsement of Binding foundations with an ingroup target. This general pattern was found when the framed, target-group was abstract and when target groups were specified about a general British-ingroup and an immigrant-outgroup. In Studies 2 and 3, both Individualizing-Ingroup Preference and Binding-Ingroup Preference scores predicted more Attitude Bias and more Negative Attitude Bias toward immigrants, more Implicit Bias, and more Perceived Threat from immigrants. We also demonstrated that increasing liberalism was associated with less Attitude Bias and less Negative Bias toward immigrants, less Implicit Bias, and less Perceived Threat from immigrants. Outgroup-individualizing foundations and Ingroup-Binding foundations showed different patterns of mediation of these effects. (shrink)

The concept of noman in Hagen encompasses a local theory of consciousness, agency, and morality. Interview materials are given to illustrate notions of how the noman works. The Hageners recognize a kind of duality between mind and body but no fundamental split between them. Their theory of consciousness is also a theory of morality and ethics, as well as a recognition of creative agency in life. Key words: Mount Hagen, person, gender, body/mind.

This book draws on the thought of Thomas Aquinas to provide an innovative approach to the ethics of lying and truthfulness. It offers a definitive interpretation of Aquinas's thought on the morality of lying, and it makes a novel contribution to theological ethics.

Dr. Stewart identifies nausea as the central metaphor of Zarathustra, a nausea that accompanies a contempt for mediocrity, for democratic systems, indeed for bourgeois existence in general; but it is a nausea that more centrally accompanies Nietzsche's perspectivism. Thus, it is the nausea that occurs in the face of the chaotic and indeterminate character of the universe and of human existence.

We are pleased to present the following Review Forum of Harvey Whitehouse’s book, Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 204 pages. ISBN 0-19- 823414-7 (cloth); 0-19-823415-5 (paper). We have given the contributors and the book’s author sufficient space to discuss its themes carefully and thus make a significant contribution to the further analysis of religion and ritual generally.

Thomas Hobbes often includes powers and abilities in his descriptions of the world. Meanwhile, Hobbes’s philosophical picture of the world appears quite reductive, and he seems sometimes to say that nothing exists but bodies in motion. In more extreme versions of such a picture, there would be no room for powers. Hobbes is not an eliminativist about powers, but his view does tend toward ontological minimalism. It would be good to have an account of what Hobbes thinks powers are, and (...) how they fit into his understanding of the world. In this chapter, I investigate Hobbes’s account of the metaphysics of powers and abilities. Section 1 considers three important aspects of Hobbes’s account of powers: the connection between powers and causes; the modal aspects of powers; and the connection between powers and motions. Sections 2 and 3 then consider interpretive arguments about whether Hobbes identifies powers with underlying corporeal features. (shrink)

This article summarizes a virtual live‐streamed panel event that occurred in August 2020 and was cosponsored by the International Philosophy of Nursing Society (IPONS) and the University of California, Irvine's Center for Nursing Philosophy. The event consisted of a series of three self‐contained panel discussions focusing on the past, present and future of IPONS and was moderated by the current Chair of IPONS, Catherine Green. The first panel discussion explored the history of IPONS and the journal Nursing Philosophy. The second (...) panel involved a reflection on the challenges of doing nursing philosophy in a research‐intensive context of a Canadian university and the history and current movements in nursing philosophy in the Nordic countries. The final panel involved presentations on the future potential for philosophy in/and for nursing, the critical connections between nursing philosophy and nursing theory, dismantling racism in nursing and the potential for process philosophy to help explore nursing's unique efficacy in creating possibilities for health. The panels were followed by a lively Q&A session with participants, of which there were 252 registrants from across the globe. The event underscored the wide and diverse interests of nurses in philosophical discussion and the need for more virtual events and other connective modalities bringing nurses together to discuss and analyze the value and potential of philosophy to better understand and advance nursing theory and practice. (shrink)

During the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, preclinical and clinical research were sped up and scaled up in both the public and private sectors and in partnerships between them. This resulted in some extraordinary advances, but it also raised a range of issues regarding the ethics, rigour, and integrity of scientific research, academic publication, and public communication. Many of the failures of scientific rigour and integrity that occurred during the pandemic were exacerbated by the rush to generate, disseminate, and (...) implement research findings, which not only created opportunities for unscrupulous actors but also compromised the methodological, peer review, and advisory processes that would usually identify sub-standard research and prevent compromised clinical or policy-level decisions. While it would be tempting to attribute these failures of science and its translation solely to the “unprecedented” circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the reality is that they preceded the pandemic and will continue to arise once it is over. Existing strategies for promoting scientific rigour and integrity need to be made more rigorous, better integrated into research training and institutional cultures, and made more sophisticated. They might also need to be modified or supplemented with other strategies that are fit for purpose not only in public health emergencies but in any research that is sped-up and scaled up to address urgent unmet medical needs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Searching for a Universal Ethic: Multidisciplinary, Ecumenical, and Interfaith Responses to the Catholic Natural Law Tradition ed. by John Berkman and William C. Mattison IIIStewart D. ClemSearching for a Universal Ethic: Multidisciplinary, Ecumenical, and Interfaith Responses to the Catholic Natural Law Tradition Edited by John Berkman and William C. Mattison III GRAND RAPIDS, MI: EERDMANS, 2014. 339 PP. $35.00Despite its generalist title, this book is the result of (...) a very specific and multilayered textual history. The core of the volume is the official English translation of the International Theological Commission (ITC) document In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at the Natural Law, which alone composes nearly a quarter of the book's text. Following five years of work, the commission first published the document in 2009. The following year, a special session at the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics was convened for the purpose of discussing the document, and this session served as the impetus for the present volume. Along with Berkman and Mattison's introductory chapter, the remainder of the book is composed of responses to the document from no less than twenty-two scholars representing a broad range of religious and philosophical commitments.If there is anything approaching a consensus among the volume's diverse respondents, it is a nearly unanimous verdict that the ITC document offers a more winsome portrayal of natural law theorizing than anything that has been promulgated in official Church documents during the last several decades. As Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP (one of the document's coauthors), explains, the commission endeavored to situate the doctrine of natural law within "a larger theological framework that is both Christological and Trinitarian" (98). Many respondents praise the document's more nuanced and open-ended analysis of the natural law—one that accommodates a wide variety of sociocultural contexts—as well as the document's clarity and boldness in articulating a Christian (and specifically Christological) interpretation of the natural law tradition.The high level of admiration bestowed on the document does not mean that it is without its detractors, however. Some of the more critical respondents maintain that, in spite of the commission's "new look" at the natural law, many of the classical objections to the doctrine still hold. Gilbert Meilaender, for example, lauds the document's Christological commitments but worries that it fails to explain how this facet of the Catholic natural law tradition can help us to develop a universal ethic on which all can agree (226). Others express doubts precisely about what is "new" in this new look at the natural law. This [End Page 202] is perhaps best reflected by Jennifer Herdt's remark that "the note of epistemological modesty repeatedly sounded by In Search of a Universal Ethic seems to ring hollow" (210). In other words, the move toward less specificity regarding moral norms may in fact render the natural law inadequate as a framework for dialogue across cultures.Given the perennial subject matter of this volume, the editors have done an excellent job of balancing a vast range of perspectives and approaches to the natural law, rendering it useful to a wide audience. The sheer number of authors could easily have resulted in a collection that reflected breadth at the expense of depth. Thankfully, however, the presence of the ITC text as the locus of discussion helps to ground the conversation in such a way that all of the authors are fruitfully engaging the same set of questions. For this reason, it is among the best volumes currently available for those who wish to engage the most creative and rigorous thinking within the natural law tradition.Stewart D. ClemUniversity of Notre DameCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person’s life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent’s intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively “direct” or (...) “personal”. Here we integrate these two classes of findings. Two experiments examine a novel personalness/directness factor that we call personal force, present when the force that directly impacts the victim is generated by the agent’s muscles (e.g., in pushing). Experiments 1a and b demonstrate the influence of personal force on moral judgment, distinguishing it from physical contact and spatial proximity. Experiments 2a and b demonstrate an interaction between personal force and intention, whereby the effect of personal force depends entirely on intention. These studies also introduce a method for controlling for people’s real-world expectations in decisions involving potentially unrealistic hypothetical dilemmas. (shrink)

Robust technology infrastructure is needed to enable learning health care systems to improve quality, access, and cost. Such infrastructure relies on the trust and confidence of individuals to share their health data for healthcare and research. Few studies have addressed consumers’ views on electronic data sharing and fewer still have explored the dual purposes of healthcare and research together. The objective of the study is to explore factors that affect consumers’ willingness to share electronic health information for healthcare and research. (...) This study involved a random-digit dial telephone survey of 800 adult Californians conducted in English and Spanish. Logistic regression was performed using backward selection to test for significant associations of each explanatory variable with the outcome variable. The odds of consent for electronic data sharing for healthcare decreased as Likert scale ratings for EHR impact on privacy worsened, odds ratio = 0.74, 95% CI [0.60, 0.90]; security, OR = 0.80, 95% CI [0.66, 0.98]; and quality, OR = 0.59, 95% CI [0.46–0.75]. The odds of consent for sharing for research was greater for those who think EHR will improve research quality, OR = 11.26, 95% CI [4.13, 30.73]; those who value research benefit over privacy OR = 2.72, 95% CI [1.55, 4.78]; and those who value control over research benefit OR = 0.49, 95% CI [0.26, 0.94]. Consumers’ choices about electronically sharing health information are affected by their attitudes toward EHRs as well as beliefs about research benefit and individual control. Design of person-centered interventions utilizing electronically collected health information, and policies regarding data sharing should address these values of importance to people. Understanding of these perspectives is critical for leveraging health data to support learning health care systems. (shrink)