In Liberalism's Troubled Search for Equality, Robert P. Jones asks why these concerns were dismissed by liberal philosophers and argues that this contradiction exposes a blind spot within liberal political theory.

Lucretius believed that the gods were wholly perfect and self-sufficient, not vengeful and requiring appeasement. He believed contemplation of the gods allowed one to reach a similar state, as it clarified what was important for a successful human life. This article intends to examine how this theology affects Lucretius’s view of nonhuman-human interaction. It will reach the conclusion that Lucretian Epicureanism contains within it a deep appreciation of the value of life and so prohibits unnecessary disturbance to the lives of (...) others, including nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Taking a cue from the appalling incidents of September 2001, these essays explore the ostensible reasons behind the American war on terrorism, apologize for the pre-emptive nature of the war itself and address the concept of terrorism in the moral discourse of humanity.

Hendley argues that philosophers of edu­cation should reject their preoccupation of the past 25_ _years with defining terms and analyzing concepts and once again embrace the philosophical task of con­structing general theories of education. Exemplars of that tradition are John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, and Alfred North Whitehead, who formulated theo­ries of education that were tested. Dewey and Russell ran their own schools, and Whitehead served as a university admin­istrator and as a member of many com­mittees created to study education. After (...) providing a general introduction to the present state of educational phi­losophy, Hendley discusses in detail the educational philosophies of Dewey, Rus­sell, and Whitehead. He sees in these men excellent role models that contem­porary philosophers might well follow. Hendley believes that like these men­tors, philosophers should take a more ac­tive, practical role in education. (shrink)

Prominent Kantian scholars, such as Korsgaard and Waldron, claim that the very existence of juridical-political institutions is sufficient to render laws authoritative. Critics argue that this view is unpersuasive as it requires subjects to obey grossly unjust laws. Here, I identify two problems facing scholars who reject the absolutist view of political authority proffered by Korsgaard and Waldron. First, when there is reasonable disagreement regarding a law’s legitimacy the Principle of Right generates contradictory obligations as it commands both disobedience and (...) compliance. In clarifying this problem, I argue that individuals must disobey illegitimate laws where this requirement is co-extensive with the duty to leave the state of nature. However, disobedience amounts to domination when individuals are subjected to private judgments regarding the conditions of freedom. The Principle of Right cannot overcome this impasse as it does not offer reasons in favor of compliance that are distinct from those reasons legitimating the law. To address this issue, I supplement Kant’s account with Joseph Raz’s ‘service conception’ of authority to show that compliance can be rendered compatible with the Principle of Right. A second problem emerges when laws are blatantly illegitimate such that obedience cannot be justified. In these cases, the Principle of Right cannot guide legislative reform in an intuitively appealing way as it fails to address considerations of proportionality. Though this latter problem is not resolved here, identifying it helps to further clarify the relationship between Kant’s moral and political principles. (shrink)

Judicial independence is generally understood as requiring that judges must be insulated from political life. The central claim of this work is that far from standing apart from the political realm, judicial independence is a product of it. It is defined and protected through interactions between judges and politicians. In short, judicial independence is a political achievement. This is the main conclusion of a three-year research project on the major changes introduced by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, and the consequences (...) for judicial independence and accountability. The authors interviewed over 150 judges, politicians, civil servants and practitioners to understand the day-to-day processes of negotiation and interaction between politicians and judges. They conclude that the greatest threat to judicial independence in future may lie not from politicians actively seeking to undermine the courts, but rather from their increasing disengagement from the justice system and the judiciary. (shrink)

Extinct megafaunal mammals in the Americas are often linked to seed-dispersal mutualisms with large-fruiting tree species, but large-fruiting species in Europe and Asia have received far less attention. Several species of arboreal Maloideae (apples and pears) and Prunoideae (plums and peaches) evolved large fruits starting around nine million years ago, primarily in Eurasia. As evolutionary adaptations for seed dispersal by animals, the size, high sugar content, and bright colorful visual displays of ripeness suggest that mutualism with megafaunal mammals facilitated the (...) evolutionary change. There has been little discussion as to which animals were likely candidate(s) on the late Miocene landscape of Eurasia. We argue that several possible dispersers could have consumed the large fruits, with endozoochoric dispersal usually relying on guilds of species. During the Pleistocene and Holocene, the dispersal guild likely included ursids, equids, and elephantids. During the late Miocene, large primates were likely also among the members of this guild, and the potential of a long-held mutualism between the ape and apple clades merits further discussion. If primates were a driving factor in the evolution of this large-fruit seed-dispersal system, it would represent an example of seed-dispersal-based mutualism with hominids millions of years prior to crop domestication or the development of cultural practices, such as farming. (shrink)

Robustness has long been recognized as an important parameter for evaluating game-theoretic results, but talk of ‘robustness’ generally remains vague. What we offer here is a graphic measure for a particular kind of robustness (‘matrix robustness’), using a three-dimensional display of the universe of 2 × 2 game theory. In such a measure specific games appear as specific volumes (Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, etc.), allowing a graphic image of the extent of particular game-theoretic effects in terms of those games. The (...) measure also allows for an easy comparison between different effects in terms of matrix robustness. Here we use the measure to compare the robustness of Tit for Tat’s well-known success in spatialized games (Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation . New York: Basic Books; Grim, P. et al. (1998). The philosophical computer: Exploratory essays in philosophical computer modeling . Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press) with the robustness of a recent game-theoretic model of the contact hypothesis regarding prejudice reduction (Grim et al. 2005. Public Affairs Quarterly, 19 , 95–125). (shrink)

While naturalism is used in positive senses by the tradition of analytical philosophy, with Ludwig Wittgenstein its best example, and by the tradition of phenomenology, with Maurice Merleau-Ponty its best exemplar, it also has an extremely negative sense on both of these fronts. Hence, both Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein in their basic thrusts adamantly reject reductionistic naturalism. Although Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology rejects the naturalism Husserl rejects, he early on found a place for the “truth of naturalism.” In a parallel way, Wittgenstein accepts (...) a certain positive sense of naturalism, while rejecting Quine’s kind of naturalism. It is the aim of this paper to investigate the common ground in the views of Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty regarding the naturalism that they each espouse and that which they each reject. (shrink)

The contributors to The Moral of the Story, all preeminent political theorists, are unified by their concern with the instructive power of great literature. This thought-provoking combination of essays explores the polyvalent moral and political impact of classic world literatures on public ethics through the study of some of its major figures-including Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Robert Penn Warren, and Dostoevsky. Positing the uniqueness of literature's ability to promote dialogue on salient moral and intellectual virtues, (...) editor Henry T. Edmonson III has culled together a wide-ranging exploration of such fundamental concerns as the abuse of authority, the nature of good leadership, the significance of "middle class virtues" and the needs of adolescents. This collection reinvigorates the study of classic literature as an endeavor that is not only personally intellectually satisfying, but also an inimitable and unique way to enrich public discourse. (shrink)

We apply Benacerraf’s distinction between mathematical ontology and mathematical practice to examine contrasting interpretations of infinitesimal mathematics of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, in the work of Bos, Ferraro, Laugwitz, and others. We detect Weierstrass’s ghost behind some of the received historiography on Euler’s infinitesimal mathematics, as when Ferraro proposes to understand Euler in terms of a Weierstrassian notion of limit and Fraser declares classical analysis to be a “primary point of reference for understanding the eighteenth-century theories.” Meanwhile, scholars like (...) Bos and Laugwitz seek to explore Eulerian methodology, practice, and procedures in a way more faithful to Euler’s own. Euler’s use of infinite integers and the associated infinite products are analyzed in the context of his infinite product decomposition for the sine function. Euler’s principle of cancellation is compared to the Leibnizian transcendental law of homogeneity. The Leibnizian law of continuity similarly finds echoes in Euler. We argue that Ferraro’s assumption that Euler worked with a classical notion of quantity is symptomatic of a post-Weierstrassian placement of Euler in the Archimedean track for the development of analysis, as well as a blurring of the distinction between the dual tracks noted by Bos. Interpreting Euler in an Archimedean conceptual framework obscures important aspects of Euler’s work. Such a framework is profitably replaced by a syntactically more versatile modern infinitesimal framework that provides better proxies for his inferential moves. (shrink)

Random-excitation granule cells are likely to overwhelm spatiotemporal sequences described as in Braitenberg et al.'s target article. A mechanism is proposed involving the Golgi cells to reinforce tidal waves against noise. The recurrent inhibition by the Golgi calls can recruit random excitations of granule cells in phase with sequences of mossy fiber input.

This longitudinal study examines changes in the moral identity of 48 emerging-adult U.S. college graduates in media-related fields from their first year after college to three years later as they progressed into early work life. Results from four moral psychology survey instruments reflect significant shifts in moral reasoning, relativistic thinking and idealism, coupled with stability in personality traits and character strengths. A fifth instrument found largely positive assessments of workplace ethical climate. The findings suggest that emerging adulthood is an important (...) time for the development of a robust professional moral self that is characterized by growing maturity in moral judgment that intersects with a foundation of character developed through a variety of influences before, during and after college. Findings have significant implications for young practitioners entering the workplace, media managers working with them, and media pedagogy. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of contemporary discourses that reconsider the relationship of democracy as a political ideology and American ideal and education as the foundation of preparing democratic citizens in America.

In the history of Western philosophy, dialetheism – the view that some sentences are both true and false – has been unpopular. This paper recovers a previously overlooked episode in the history of dialetheism. Specifically, it reconstructs a section of Robert Greville's The Nature of Truth (1640) in order to show that he was a dialetheist. Greville's consideration of the view that evil is a privation led him to endorse the claim that sinful acts are contradictory; they are the subjects (...) of both being and non‐being. The paper also explores responses to Greville from John Wallis and Nathaniel Culverwell. (shrink)

This collection of original essays pays tribute to the man by exploring topics that have interested him through a long and productive career.

: A number of critics have argued that Berkeley's metaphysics can offer no tenable account of human agency. In this paper I argue that Berkeley does have a coherent account of action. The paper addresses arguments by C.C. W. Taylor, Robert Imlay, and Jonathan Bennett. The paper attempts to show that Berkeley can offer a theory of action, maintain many of our common intuitions about action, and provide a defensible solution to the problem of evil.

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

Robert Coover’s Novel, The Public Buming, merges fantasy, history, and popular myth to respond to the American Cold War culture surrounding the trial of Ethal and Julius Rosenberg. While serving as a postmodern response to, and rewrite of, the Cold War ideological narratives, Coover’s novel also raises theoretical and practical questions concerning the author’s agency in the twentieth century. This article makes use of the language theories of Bruce Andrews, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Charles Peirce to consider how Coover’s fiction addresses (...) the conflict between the public and private self, authorial discourse and collective ideological discourse. Coover’s novel reflects on these tensions, foregrounding the erosion of an autonomous concept of self and a Romantic notion of autotelic creation. At the same time, it employs a range of strategies (recovery of alternative voices, dismantling of polarities, rewriting) as a form of resistance against the monologic narratives of the Cold War.Le roman de Robert Coover, The Public Buming, combine I’imaginaire, I’histoire, et le mythe populaire pour repondre ala culture de la guerre froide américaine dans laquelle baigne le procès d’Ethal et de Julius Rosenberg. Bien qu’il serve de reponse aux narrations ideologiques de la guerre froide et de réécriture de celles-ci, le roman de Coover soulève aussi des questions théoriques et pratiques relativement à I’action de I’auteur au vingtième siècle. Le présent article utilise les théories du langage de Bruce Andrews, Mikhail Bakhtin, et Charles Peirce afin d’analyser la façon dont le roman-fiction de Coover aborde le conflit entre le soi public et privé et entre le discours de I’auteur et le discours idéologique collectif. Le roman de Coover médite sur ces tensions en mettant I’accent sur I’erosion du concept autonome de soi et de la notion romantique de création autotélique. À la même occasion, il emploie un éventail de stratégies (recouvrement de contre-voix, démantèlement des polarités, réécriture) en tant que résistances aux narrations monoloqigues de la guerre froide. (shrink)

Gascoigne, Robert In October 1962, the world was at imminent risk of nuclear war. In response to the failed CIA backed 'Bay of Pigs' invasion, Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev had authorized the stationing of nuclear missiles in Cuba, only ninety miles from the coast of Florida. In response, President John F. Kennedy had ordered a blockade of Cuba, which the Soviet Union regarded as an act of war. In fact, the world came much closer to a nuclear exchange than has (...) long been realized. On October 27th 1962 the Soviet submarine B59 was tracked by a group of United States warships, made up of eleven destroyers and an aircraft carrier, which were using non-lethal practice depth-charges in an attempt to bring the submarine to the surface. The submarine had lost radio contact with Moscow, which-as we will see-had very shortly beforehand ordered the freighters carrying nuclear missiles to return home. Under the intense pressure of the situation, the captain of the submarine-who thought that war may already have broken out-was determined not to allow Russia to be humiliated by the capture of his submarine, and was prepared to fire a nuclear torpedo at the surrounding American warships. Three officers had to give permission for a nuclear missile to be launched-the captain himself, the political officer, and Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, who, although second-in-command of submarine B59, was commander of the flotilla of submarines to which it belonged. Arkhipov overruled his brother officers and refused to authorize the launch of the torpedo. The world owes a great debt of gratitude to this Soviet sailor who may have prevented a nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States. My father once told me how an American priest had recounted to him that, during the height of the Cuban missile crisis, the queues for confession at New York's St Patrick's cathedral stretched all the way down the nave and out onto Fifth Avenue. Given the penitential practices and beliefs of the time, and the actual state of events, there was indeed good reason for that! (shrink)

This latest volume of _The Philosopher's Annual_ presents the ten best articles published in the field during 2001. No limitations are placed on the articles' sources, subject matter or mode of treatment, providing for a diverse collection of engaging, high-caliber work that stands as a valuable sample of contemporary philosophy. This year's volume includes papers by Robert Bernasconi, Hans Halvorson, Christopher Hitchcock, Ignacio Jane, Brian Leiter, Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, Joel Pust, Alison Simmons, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson, and (...) Crispin Wright. (shrink)

Although the second and third University Discourses in Newman’s Idea of a University are well known for according theology a place in a university education by showing the relationship of theology to the other sciences, this essay points out that Newman was also arguing against the “natural theology” of British thinkers like William Paley, Lord Brougham, Sir Robert Peel, and Bishop Edward Maltby, who maintained that the study of the natural sciences would necessarily lead to religion; Newman objected that this (...) kind of “natural theology” could easily lead to deism or pantheism. (shrink)

What are the preferred subjects of mass photography? We will not go far wrong if we hazard this reply: the Self and the Other. The popular practice of photography does not much go in for nuance: it has taken as its watchword the distinction between gens de Soi and gens de l'Autre which Robert Jaulin once used as the title of one of his books on ethnology. The self, that is, one's own, those close to one, familial space and the (...) familiar space of identity and recognition. The other, in other words, strangers, the space of distant parts, and the space of displacement where tourism increasingly frequently leads the inhabitants of richer countries. Here, in the first space, one is among one's own kind, “among ourselves”, part of the same family through kinship or part of the same community through lifestyle and nationality; here, connivance rules, the unspoken word and the wink with the photographer who is “one of us”, and so one does not generally hesitate to expose oneself, that is, open up to their lens. There, in the second space, one is in a foreign country, amongst others, whose costumes and customs are photographed; there, the more polite rule of the smile and the presentation of the self for others holds sway, one is more engaged in the process of representation and adopts a pose for the photographer rather than exposing oneself to their lens. The most widely disseminated version of this dual polarity of popular photography is the souvenir photos of the family album, on the one hand, and the holiday photos brought back by tourists from their various excursions abroad, on the other; a version which illustrates one of the most spontaneously practised photographic montages, consisting of having oneself photographed in a distant country against a typical scenic background or emblematic monument of the country visited. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish two kinds of predictivism, 'timeless' and 'historicized'. The former is the conventional understanding of predictivism. However, I argue that its defense in the works of John Worrall and Patrick Maher is wanting. Alternatively, I promote an historicized predictivism, and briefly defend such a predictivism at the end of the paper.

A growing number of political and legal theorists deny that there is a widespread duty to obey the law. This has lent a sense of urgency to recent disagreements about whether a state’s legitimacy depends upon its ‘subjects” having a duty to obey the law. On one side of the disagreement, John Simmons, Robert Paul Wolff, David Copp, Hannah Pitkin, Leslie Green, George Klosko, and Joseph Raz hold that a state could only be legitimate if the vast majority of its (...) subjects have a duty to obey the law. On the other side, M.B.E. Smith, Jeffrey Reiman, Kent Greenawalt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 136-146MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]The Christian Bain de Diane, or the Stakes of an Ambiguous ParatextPatrick AmstutzTranslated by Gerald MooreUpon its publication, Le bain de Diane elicited few reactions on the part of criticism. Klossowski's name was still a secret and, despite its note among writers such as Bataille, Beauvoir, Camus, Parain, and Sartre and their public following, the number of readers to have read this (...) fifth work remained confined to those already familiar with Klossow-ski the essayist (Sade mon prochain, Méditations bibliques de Hamann), or the novelist (La vocation suspendue, Roberte, ce soir). The discreet silence that characterized the first reception of Le bain de Diane would last until the end of the seventies, despite a reedition in 1972 by the same publisher. During this time three important moments made Le bain de Diane resurface at the heart of the literary world: first, in fictional form, thanks to a subtle but explicit homage paid by Henri Thomas [Le promontoire]; second, in the form of a penetrating commentary article by Michel Foucault ["La prose d'Actéon"], and finally, at the hands of René Micha and Catherine Backès-Clément, key contributors to the issue that the review L'Arc dedicated to the writer. The reedition of Le bain de Diane by Gallimard1 would significantly relaunch interest in this work which, one comes increasingly to realize, is a major text in the Klossowskian oeuvre: offering a reflection on the image and writing, it was Gilles Quinsat who would open this new period of critical reception.An Uncertain IdentityQuinsat emphasizes the "series of 'tableaux' that glazes Le Bain de Diane" in accordance with a "circular" descriptive movement, he says, "from vision to commentary, attributed to the deferral without end of signs, and which feeds the entire work of Pierre Klossowski" [95]. And if he borrows the term "exegesis" from Foucault to describe the genre of the work, he immediately associates it with that of "narrative." A quarter of a century earlier, a commentary in the new Nouvelle revue française had already underlined the "disconcerting" character of Klossowski's book, by accentuating not only the strangeness of its thematic, but also the difficulties posed by the uncertainty of its generic belonging (which is echoed by the absent mention of a paratext): the critic, hesitating, suggested somewhat confusedly a typological kinship with philosophical commentary, theological scholasticism, prose poetry, series of paintings, historical narrative and even the analysis of myths [Amer 144]. In fact, this mythological "reverie," neither an essay nor a narrative, is, from this point of view, a typically Klossowskian [End Page 136] book, as Ian James has more recently reminded us [143]. Le bain de Diane mixes erudite commentary and narrative discourse so well that it entices its commentators into the traps of scholarly, historical, and philological annotation. Yet this would be to forget, as Maurice Blanchot has observed [92–94], that the written oeuvre of Klossowski belongs fully to the field of literature, even more so than to those of philosophy, theology, or psychoanalysis.When it comes to discerning the literariness of this literary object, which the different paratextual and intertextual stakes and levels underline, the principal difficulty consists in not losing oneself in a mythological labyrinth and innumerable variants of the cult of Artemis, which was one of the most significant, oldest, and popular cults of the Greco-Roman era and which plunges into a world on whose complexity historians and philologists have insisted on many occasions. The study of Klossowski's sources could lead one through multiple disciplines (philology, mythography, psychoanalysis, the history of religions, history of art, French literature—all centuries cobbled together, and so on) to overly vast inquiries: the goddess "of a thousand names" assumes a properly vertiginous semiotic richness, and the cult of Artemis, before being linked to that of Apollo, stretches back to time immemorial where, behind Artemis, can be glimpsed the Asiatic figure of a Great Mother Goddess, whose... (shrink)

The present essay takes up matters discussed by Robert Pasnau in his response to our previous criticism of his account of Aquinas's view of when a foetus acquires a human soul. We are mainly concerned with metaphysical and biological issues and argue that the kind of organization required for ensoulment is that sufficient for the full development of a human being, and that this is present from conception. We contend that in his criticisms of our account Pasnau fails clearly to (...) distinguish first, between a passive potentiality and an active capacity; second, between having a power intrinsically and being an instrumental agent of that which has it intrinsically; third, between per accidens and per se causal series; and fourth, between sense cognition and conceptual thought. We conclude that philosophy and embryology support the position that human beings exist from the point of conception. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Another Look at Silence and Knowledge of God in Ignatius's Letter to the EphesiansRyan Patrick Budd"The man whose delight is in the Lord's teaching knows the art of sitting still in the right place."—Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical PoetryIn this essay, I attempt to supplement the better analyses of St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Ephesians (Ign. Eph.) 14.1 through 15.3 with structural insights. The main (...) fruit of the analysis will be to affirm the "mystical" meaning of Ignatius's concept of "hearing Christ's silence": the mature believer, who truly understands Christ's word, will be able to hear the silence of Christ—meaning, to understand Christ's hidden and mysterious Godhead—because Christ dwells within the believer as in a temple. The essay will proceed in three sections: First, a review of the more substantive commentaries on "silence" in Ign. Eph. 14–15; second, a presentation of a potential structure of the passage and a commentary on what that structure, if correct, would yield; and third, a very brief confirmation of the findings by reference to themes in St. Paul's own Epistle to the Ephesians.Scholarly Commentary on Ignatius and "Silence"In discussing Ign. Eph. 14–15, scholars have come to a wide variety of views, for almost as many reasons, as to what Ignatius means when he says the following: [End Page 451]It is better to be silent and to be, than to speak and not be. Teaching is good, if the one speaking should do. There is, then, one Teacher, who "spoke and it came to be," and even the things he has done silently are worthy of the Father. The one truly hearing the word of Jesus can also hear his [Jesus's] silence, that he might be fully made, that he might act through what he says and be understood through his (the believer's) silence.(15.1–2)1There are, however, two predominant camps into which one could group the different scholarly opinions: the first camp holds that Ignatius merely is speaking about integrity, the correspondence between words and deeds;2 the second camp holds that he is enunciating a kind of Christian mysticism.3 Two prominent members of the second camp, Virginia Corwin and Gregory Vall, though quite distinct in their views of the bishop of Antioch, provide reasoning that I find decisive in favor of recognizing that Ignatius—while certainly emphasizing a true correspondence between words and deeds—carries the point further than simple moralizing.Virginia Corwin's "Reserve of Deity" and the Believer's Knowledge of ChristCorwin, in her analysis of the passage, points toward a "reserve" existing "behind" the visible works of Christ, which is to be identified with his invisible, and thus "silent," Godhead, which one who truly hears his word can also "hear." She acknowledges, however, that Ignatius first recognizes Christ as an example of a truly effective teacher due to the absolute [End Page 452] correspondence between his words and his acts. She writes, "Christ... is a teacher unlike most, since there is no contrast at all between his profession and his actions.... He has an absolute clarity and a complete lack of any hypocrisy."4 The result of this recognition is not to stress ethical integrity, however important: it is to argue that, because of the correspondence between Christ's words and his silent acts and his even more silent person, the one who knows his words can come to a deep, profound, and infallible knowledge of who he is, himself.Corwin argues that there is something more about this Teacher than the mere—though impressive—integrity of his message:But it is not only the integrity of the teacher that distinguishes him, but his unique power: "He spoke and it came to pass"; at these words to the minds of both the writer and the hearers of the letter must have occurred the image of the mighty acts of creation.... It is precisely because the words of Jesus are in a sense mighty acts that they must be seen in the larger perspective.5Which "larger perspective" she means... (shrink)

Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief contains fourteen original essays by philosophers, theologians, and social scientists on challenges to moral and religious belief from disagreement and evolution. Three main questions are addressed: Can one reasonably maintain one's moral and religious beliefs in the face of interpersonal disagreement with intellectual peers? Does disagreement about morality between a religious belief source, such as a sacred text, and a non-religious belief source, such as a society's moral intuitions, make it irrational to continue trusting (...) one or both of those belief sources? Should evolutionary accounts of the origins of our moral beliefs and our religious beliefs undermine our confidence in their veracity? This volume places challenges to moral belief side-by-side with challenges to religious belief, sets evolution-based challenges alongside disagreement-based challenges, and includes philosophical perspectives together with theological and social science perspectives, with the aim of cultivating insights and lines of inquiry that are easily missed within a single discipline or when these topics are treated in isolation. The result is a collection of essays--representing both skeptical and non-skeptical positions about morality and religion--that move these discussions forward in new and illuminating directions. -/- Contributors: Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame; Michael Bergmann, Purdue University; Sarah Brosnan, Georgia State University; William FitzPatrick, University of Rochester; John Hare, Yale University; Timothy P. Jackson, Emory University; Patrick Kain, Purdue University; Jordan Kiper, University of Connecticut; Dustin Locke, Claremont McKenna College; Charles Mathewes, University of Virginia; Mark C. Murphy, Georgetown University; John Pittard, Yale Divinity School; Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Duke University; Richard Sosis, University of Connecticut; Sharon Street, New York University; Joshua Thurow, University of Texas at San Antonio; Ralph Wedgwood, University of Southern California. (shrink)

Gascoigne, Robert A quick rollcall of Australian political life demonstrates a remarkable presence of Catholics in leadership positions, including the Governor-General, Sir Peter Cosgrove; the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott; the Leader of the Federal Opposition, Bill Shorten; the two immediate past premiers of New South Wales, Barry O'Farrell and Kristina Keneally; the previous Governor of New South Wales, Dame Marie Bashir; and the Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney, Clover Moore; among others. Indeed, in the immediate past Federal Labor (...) Cabinet, there were three members from just one Catholic school, St Patrick's Christian Brothers College, Strathfield, Sydney, just as there are four old boys of Jesuit colleges in the current Coalition Cabinet. It is noteworthy that there have been relatively few attempts in public commentary and debate to draw attention to this strong cross-party presence. I believe that this is essentially because it is clear that these Catholic political leaders do not represent any kind of ecclesial or communal political bloc, but are manifestly divergent in their political stances and allegiances. Previous linkages between Catholic religious identity and political allegiance have now become obsolete. Our current situation has positive aspects demonstrating a willingness by many Australian Catholics to take up political responsibilities within a context of political pluralism against a background of democratic consensus. Yet it also raises a number of questions about ecclesial identity and formation: What is the political - and ethical - presence and character of the Catholic ecclesial community in Australia, given the considerable divergence of political stances? To what extent does Catholic social teaching function as an agreed resource and inspiration? What is the character of shared membership of the church in the context of vigorously contested and divergent political allegiances? (shrink)

This thesis develops a hermeneutic philosophy of science to provide insights into physics education. -/- Modernity cloaks the authentic character of modern physics whenever discoveries entertain us or we judge theory by its use. Those who justify physics education through an appeal to its utility, or who reject truth as an aspect of physics, relativists and constructivists, misunderstand the nature of physics. Demonstrations, not experiments, reveal the essence of physics as two characteristic engagements with truth. First, truth in its guise (...) as correspondence enables a human being to prepare for the distinctive event of physics. -/- Second, the event of physics occurs in human perception when someone forces a hidden reality to disclose an aspect of itself. Thus, the ground of physics is our human involvement with reality achieved by way of truth. -/- To support this account of physics, the thesis reports phenomenological investigations into Isaac Newton’s involvement with optics and a secondary school physics laboratory. These involve interpretations of Heidegger’s theory of beings, schema and signification. The project draws upon, and contributes to, the hermeneutic phenomenology of modern physics, a tradition in continental philosophy that begins with Immanuel Kant, and advances particularly from Martin Heidegger to Patrick Heelan. -/- The thesis advocates an ontological pedagogy for modern physics which has as its purpose each individual student’s engagement with reality and truth. Students may achieve this through demonstrations of phenomena that will enable them to dwell with physics, an experience that contrasts with their embroilment in modernity, and which perpetuates nature’s own science. (shrink)