A research project by the Schools of Theology and Psychology of Australia’s Charles Sturt University surveyed a large sample of Salvation Army officers. This article considers survey responses to two questions relating to end-of-life care: the use of pain medications that may shorten life, and the cessation of fluid and food intake. The results of the analyses are evaluated in terms of Michael Banner’s proposal that moral theology should more assiduously converse with ‘patient ethnographic study’, which the survey instantiates to (...) some extent. Banner’s proposal and the results of the survey are contrasted to Peter Singer’s analytical moral philosophical dictums on end-of-life care. The results are also compared to a metastudy by Andrea Rodríguez-Prat and Evert van Leeuwen of 14 ethnographic studies of those who wish to hasten death at the end of life. We conclude that respondents exemplify a form of moral reasoning that is embedded within Christian spirituality; counters the assumptions of Singer’s approach; contrasts the diminishment of ‘meaning’ at the end of life, as seen in Rodríguez-Prat and van Leeuwen; and deserves further respectful ethnographic study. (shrink)

In this brief commentary, I would like to discuss two reservations I have about the article by Bergner and Bunford. Before doing so let me make some preliminary remarks.Their hypothesis that the concept of disability unites the various mental disorder constructs that have been proposed over the centuries and across cultures is reasonable and accords well with common sense. The concept of disability does a lot of good work in helping us to understand mental disorders.With respect to the authors’ contrast (...) between the disability conception versus the behavioral conception of mental disorder, the notion that counting behaviors alone justifies diagnosing a psychiatric disorder is worth critiquing. Claiming that everyone... (shrink)

As a miniscule philosophical event, this essay proceeds in the liminal space between Deleuze studies and interality studies. Meant as just another “Go” move improvised in relation to previous moves and countermoves in a horizonless game of intellectual nomadism known as interality studies, it sketches out the contours of Deleuzean interology in the process of falsifying Platonist ontology.

In dieser zwischen 1135 und 1139 verfaßten Schrift, der er zwei Titel gab: Ethica oder Scito te ipsum, erörtert Abaelard die Frage nach dem Guten und dem Bösen, vor allem aber erstmals die Bedeutung des Gewissens für die Selbstbestimmung des Menschen. Er unterscheidet zwischen der Schwäche des Menschen, die durch Selbstbeherrschung überwunden werden kann, und der Sünde, die darin besteht, sich den eigenen Schwächen zu unterwerfen. Seine These, das Gewissen sei die oberste Instanz der Moral und die Moralität oder Verwerflichkeit (...) einer Handlung bestimme sich daher aus der Gesinnung des Handelnden, führte ihn zu der Folgerung, daß derjenige, der böse handelt, ohne es doch selbst zu wissen, dadurch noch nicht schuldig wird - sondern erst dann, wenn er entgegen besserer Einsicht, die ihm aufgegeben und möglich ist, das Böse wählt. Diese Behauptung stieß bei den Zeitgenossen und der Kirche auf Kritik und führte zur Verurteilung Abaelards auf dem Konzil von Sens ; wirkungsgeschichtlich gewann sie gleichwohl große Kraft und Bedeutung, da durch diesen Gedanken die überkommene Doxa, allein der Verstoß gegen moralisch geltende Regeln gebe den Maßstab dafür ab, ein Individuum der Sünde zu bezichtigen, dahingehend zu relativieren, daß nur der sich schuldig macht, der auch wußte, daß er eine Verfehlung begeht. Aus diesem Grund zählt die Schrift zu den bedeutendsten Werken der Weltliteratur. Die Ausgabe präsentiert sie erstmalig in einer vollständigen deutschen Übersetzung. Beigegeben sind der lateinische Text und eine kompetente Einleitung, die die besondere Stellung dieser Schrift im Gesamtwerk Abaelards prägnant vor Augen führt. (shrink)

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Tragedy plays a central role in Hegel's early writings on theology and politics. Hegel’s overarching aim in these texts is to determine the kind of mythology that would best complement religious and political freedom in modernity. Peter Wake claims that, for Hegel at this early stage, ancient Greek tragedy provided the model for such a mythology and suggested a way to oppose the rigid hierarchies and authoritarianism that characterized Europe of his day. Wake follows Hegel as he develops his (...) idea of the essence of Christianity and its relation to the distinctly tragic expression of beauty found in Greek mythology. (shrink)

In the West, humans tend to separate themselves from nature, valuing nature only as a means of meeting their own needs and happiness. This domination of nature often fosters human oppression instead of freedom and progress, as those who ignore abuses of nature tend to disregard human injustice as well. Peter S. Wenz argues that this oppression involves such destructive forces as sexism, ethnic strife, and political repression, including repression of the nuclear power industry's victims. Catastrophes like the Holocaust (...) and the Gulf War are the result. In contrast to the destructive "separate from nature" attitude, Wenz looks to various indigenous peoples as an example of societies where human beings revere nature for itself--societies where human beings flourish as individuals, in families, and in communities. Unlike societies dependent on commerce and industry, many indigenous peoples consider themselves part of a circle of life, reaping benefits far greater than the technological advances of the West. Wenz considers how to adopt the perspective of some indigenous cultures and how to make it work in our fast-food world. Additionally, he uses a trip to the World Uranium Hearings in Salzburg as a vehicle for understanding complex philosophical issues from consumerism to anthropocentrism. In the series _Ethics and Action_, edited by Tom Regan. (shrink)

The paper discusses al-Kindī's response to doctrines held by contemporary theologians of the Mu‘tazilite school: divine attributes, creation, and freedom. In the first section it is argued that, despite his broadly negative theology, al-Kindī recognizes a special kind of “essential” positive attribute belonging to God. The second section argues that al-Kindī agreed with the Mu‘tazila in holding that something may not yet exist but still be an object of God's knowledge and power. Also it presents a new parallel between al-Kindī (...) and John Philoponus. The third section gives an interpretation of al-Kindī as a compatibilist, in other words as holding that humans may be free even though their actions are necessitated. In all three cases, it is argued, al-Kindī is close to the Mu‘tazilite point of view, though he departs from them in the arguments he gives for that point of view. (shrink)

Psychological Metaphysics is an exploration of the most basic and important assumptions in the psychological construction of reality, with the aim of showing what they are, how they originate, and what they are there for. Peter White proposes that people basically understand causation in terms of stable, special powers of things operating to produce effects under suitable conditions. This underpins an analysis of people's understanding of causal processes in the physical world, and of human action. In making a radical (...) break with the Heiderian tradition, Psychological Metaphysics suggests that causal attribution is in the service of the person's practical concerns and any interest in accuracy or understanding is subservient to this. Indeed, a notion of regularity in the world is of no more than minor importance, and social cognition is not a matter of cognitive mechanisms or processes but of cultural ways of thinking imposed upon tacit, unquestioned, universalassumptions. Incorporating not only research and theory in social cognition and developmental psychology, but also philosophy and the history of ideas, Psychological Metaphysics will be challenging to everyone interested in how we try to understand the world. (shrink)

This book is a follow-up to _Inside Schools_. It reviews the position of ethnography in educational research in the light of current issues and of the author's own research over the past ten years. Starting from an analysis of teaching as science and as art, Peter Woods goes on to review the general interactionist framework in which his own work is situated, and how this relates to postmodernist trends in qualitative research. The approach is illustrated through reference to the (...) author's own personal history and research career, and his recent research on creative teaching, critical events, and his teachers reactions to school inspections. How to represent such research is a central feature, and includes a consideration of the tools used in that task and how they relate to the ethnographer's self, whatever forms of representation are selected, however, the audiences' own concerns will guide them in their interpretation of the work. Prominent themes include: * the person of the ethnographer in research * the art of teaching and new ways of representing it, while not forgetting the science of teaching and of research * research for educational use, and the uses of educational research * collaborative work between researchers and teachers The issues covered include such matters as research purposes, research design, research careers, access, data collection, data analysis, truth criteria, the relationship between theory and research methods, writing-up, and dissemination. (shrink)

A historical perspective on the future of the car Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9479-z Authors Peter D. Norton, Department of Science, Technology and Society, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4744, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

In this article, I begin by saying something about what metacognition is and why it is desirable within education. I then outline how Plato anticipates this concept in his dialogue Meno. This is not just a historical point; by dividing the cognitive self into a three-in-one—a ‘learner’, a ‘teacher’ and an ‘evaluator’—Plato affords us a neat metaphorical framework for understanding metacognition that, I contend, is valuable today. In addition to aiding our understanding of this concept, Plato’s model of metacognition not (...) only provides us with a practical, pedagogical method for developing a metacognitive attitude, but also for doing so through doing philosophy. I conclude by making a case for philosophy’s inclusion in our school systems by appeal to those aspects of philosophy that are metacognitive or that are conducive to developing metacognition, as revealed by the insights afforded us by Plato’s Meno and Theaetetus. (shrink)

Spiritualität und spirituelle Übungen haben eine Bedeutung für religiöse und theologische Verstehensprozesse und prägen daher auch die im Zuge dieser Prozesse gewonnenen Erkenntnisse. Kurz gesagt: Spiritualität kommt eine epistemologische Relevanz zu. Das hat Auswirkungen auf das Verständnis von christlicher Offenbarung. Teresa Peter zeigt in ihrer Studie, wie die Verbindung von Inhalt und Prozess, von Verstehen und Lebensvollzug neu zu denken ist. Dabei greift sie zurück auf die klassische Lehre von den geistlichen Sinnen ebenso wie auf Zeugnisse der christlich-ignatianischen und (...) der buddhistischen vipassanā Tradition. So entsteht ein epistemologischer Entwurf mit weitreichenden Konsequenzen für Theologie und Pastoral, um den christlichen Glauben vor dem Horizont spätmodernen Denkens neu zu verstehen zu suchen. (shrink)

As part of an article symposium on Partha Dasgupta and Sanjeev Goyal’s “Narrow Identities”, Peter Finke offers a critical anthropological perspective on the concept of social identity and its modeling in economics.

Science is a process of inquiry: a process of asking and answering questions. However, a good question is more than an interrogatory, and a good answer is more than information: there are logical constraints that dictate when a question is answerable and what qualifies as an answer. This paper will provide an understanding of when a question is answerable, when a question is not ready to be asked, when a question is trivial, what is required for a response to be (...) an answer, and what sequence of inquiry is required to identify an answer. Equipped with this understanding, a scientist can better determine an appropriate sequence of study for a research program as well as identify the necessary arguments to warrant claims of understanding, funding, and the publication of research findings. (shrink)

The paper considers the legacy of Empedocles as it bears upon the difficulty confronted by Hölderlin in his Death of Empedocles: how are we to understand Hölderlin’s failure to complete this ‘mourning play’ despite his continued and repeated efforts? This difficulty is elaborated through a reading of Hölderlin’s own understanding of “elemental tragedy” as it is presented and developed in the three dense so-called Homburg essays on tragedy. It is evident that the understanding of tragedy that emerges here entails a (...) dramatic poetry that would break with the prevailing tradition and its determination of poetry according to a mimetic operation. Aristotle’s own account of Empedocles and his apparent refusal to consider Empedocles as a poet is considered alongside other ancient accounts of Empedoclean poetry, notably those provided by Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and Lucretius. In this context, Nietzsche’s account of the end of tragedy through his interpretation of another philosophical death, that of Socrates, is introduced as a counterpoint to help elucidate the difficulties faced by Hölderlin. This Nietzschean account of ‘the image of the dying Socrates’ also proves to be related to Nietzsche’s own brief but provocative statements concerning what is eclipsed with the loss of Empedoclean tragic philosophy and emergence of Socratism. The paper concludes by returning to Hölderlin’s letters to Böhlendorff as these letters make thematic an ‘elemental’ difference in the impossible recovery of the tragic in our time. (shrink)

The paper revisits the discussion of freedom in the Phenomenology of Perception and considers how according to Merleau-Ponty a phenomenology of freedom must challenge the tradition that attempts to account for experience and appearance through the filter of reflective consciousness. The paper begins by posing this problem in broad historical terms, as a distinctly modern predicament, and briefly considers Schelling’s philosophical engagement with negative philosophy as a provocation and historical precedent for reading the phenomenological work of Merleau-Ponty. It is noted (...) that Schelling’s criticism of the formal freedom of Kant prefi gures Merleau-Ponty’s polemic against Sartrean freedom, although the claim is also made that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of freedom remains irreducible to the terms established by this polemic, since what appears is a freedom no longer determined by consciousness and reflection. Before turning to the reading of the Phenomenology of Perception, a single passage is also adduced from The Visible and Invisible in order to demonstrate how the concern elaborated in the Phenomenology runs throughout Merleau-Ponty’s work, namely, that a phenomenological interrogation of experience must break down the boundaries of what is properly one’s own as this would be defined in and by the reflective act. The reading of the Phenomenology then proceeds by showing how the entire work is framed by the possibility of transforming philosophical practice through an overturning of the dominant paradigm of reflection. The paper interrogates in this light the Preface, the chapter on Descartes’ cogito and the concluding chapter on freedom. A connection is drawn between the appearance of the “tacit” cogito and the elaboration of freedom that ends by insisting upon the necessity of silence. (shrink)