In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:86 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY he solved the problem of his own existence, this picture of an erudite scholar systematically and unemotionally peeling off the foibles of the learned world as the only solution for the perplexing problems of the life, seems credible and direct. Since the essay presenting it is brilliantly written, with some of Bayle's own penetrating analyses, we can be sure that it will have its day (...) in court. Is it out of place to announce with this review that the Soc/$tg Arigdoise des science, lettres, e$ arts has purchased the house where Bayle was born at Carla-Bayle, and plans to make it into a monument-museumhonoring the philosopher? The house is in bad repair and there is a great need for funds; gifts of any size may be sent to the Socigtd, C.C.P. Toulouse 114-19, France. I presume that they are deductible. JoH~ B. WOLF University o] Illinois, Chicago Circle Entretiens sur les sciences. By Bernard Lamy. Edition critique pr~sent~e par FranCois Girbal & Pierre Clair. (u 5 of the series Le mouvement des idJes au XVII ~ si~cle) (Paris, 1966.Pp. 448. F 36.--) Father Bernard Lamy, 1640-1715, an Oratorian who was a contemporary of Malebranche, wrote his Entreticns sur les sciences not for the savants but for young gentlemen of the time who might have wanted to enter into the intellectual world. The work was first written be= tween 1676-80, and published by 1684. It developed through three stages in Lamy's lifetime, and was a popular exposition of modem learning throughout the eighteenth century. (It was last published in French in 1768, and in Spanish in 1800.) Drs. Clair and Girbal have provided a most useful edition of this minor classic, giving the variants from the different versions done by Lamy. The editors, who know the Oratorian and Jansenist currents of the time well, have included lots of informative notes. In these they have stressed the possible influence of Lamy's text on two of its important readers, Montesquieu and Rousseau, providing many clues to be followed out. The editors have also republished in their introduction the original review of Lamy's work by Pierre Bayle from the Nouvells de la R$publique des Lettres of August, 1684. The Entretien8 should be of interest to anyone concerned with late seventeenth-century thought. Although Lamy was not a particularly original thinker, his presentation of what was known provides an important picture of the world of learning of his time. Lamy was a Malebranchist first of all, tremendously impressed by the metaphysics and epistemology of his colleague, by the relevance of this philosophy to mathematical and scientific studies, and by the religious orientation of Malebranche's scientific thought. Lamy was also a Cartesian with re= gard to method and logic, greatly influenced by Amauld's and Nicole's Port-Royal Logic. But Lamy was also an eclectic who saw merit in the empirical work of his time, admiring Gassendi's efforts as well as those of Galileo, Boyle and of the Royal Society. For Lamy there should be no conflict between science and religion. A good deal of the Entreticns is devoted to explaining what mathematics and the sciences are about, and how they should be studied. Lamy was a great advocate and popularizer of the 'new science', the mechanistic approach from Galileo down to Malebranche and Newton. For him scientific study should lead to a better understanding of the Divine World. "Nous lotions la Science... lots qu'elle est plac6es dans une gme qui aime Dieu, qui est la v6rit6, & par consequent le v6ritable objet de la Science" (p. 47). In a world in which it is alleged that science was at war with religion, Lamy along with his hero Malebranche, and the philosophical Jansenists, sought not only for a harmony of the 'new science' and a Christian world view, but for the religious use of this science in a religious understanding of the world. Lamy's presentation, in an unexciting dialogue form, reveals many interesting facets of both his own outlook as well as of that of his contemporaries. Lamy's Cartesian methodology clearly shows the... (shrink)

O'Donnell, J. R. Anton Charles Pegis on the occasion of his retirement.--Conlan, W. J. The definition of faith according to a question of MS. Assisi 138: study and edition of text.--Spade, P. V. Five logical tracts by Richard Lavenham.--Maurer, A. Henry of Harclay's disputed question on the plurality of forms.--Brown, V. Giovanni Argiropulo on the agent intellect: an edition of Ms. Magliabecchi V 42.--Synan, E. A. The Exortacio against Peter Abelard's Dialogus inter philosophum, Iudaeum et Christianum.--Fitzgerald, W. Nugae Hyginianae.--Sheehan, (...) M. M. Marriage and family in English conciliar and synodal legislation.--Shook, L. K. Riddles relating to the Anglo-Saxon scriptorium.--Boyle, L. E. The De regno and the two powers.--Colledge, E. A Middle English Christological poem.--Gough, M. R. E. Three forgotten martyrs of Anazarbus in Cilicia.--Häring, N. Chartres and Paris revisited.--Hayes, W. Greek recentiores, (Ps.) Basil, Adversus eunomium, IV-V.--Owens, J. The physical world of Parmenides. (shrink)

This article appeals to Thomas Aquinas in order to offer a construal of the nature of reason arguably preferable to that prominent in the Enlightenment. Thomas’s account neither espouses the notion that reason is devoid of any appetitive influence nor so conflates reason and will as to suggest that thinking becomes essentially a form of willing. His view does respect that the activity of willing is of fundamental import for the life of reason. Since the ultimate object of the will (...) is union with God, it follows that the virtue that specifically promotes the attainment of this end—the virtue of religion—has particular import because it aims at rectifying the will and is the most excellent among the moral virtues. In brief, this virtue promotes the optimal intellectual and moral flourishing of individuals as well as the realization of justice in society. (shrink)

Owen Barfield: a conversation with Shirley Sugerman -- To Owen Barfield -- Cecil Harwood: Owen Barfield -- Norman O. Brown: on interpretation -- Howard Nemerov: exceptions and rules -- Studies in polarity -- David Bohm: imagination, fancy, insight, and reason in the process of thought -- R.H. Barfield: darwinism -- Richard A. Hocks: "novelty" in polarity to "the most admitted truths" : tradition and the individual talent in S.T. Coleridge and T.S. Eliot -- Robert O. Preyer: the burden of (...) culture and the dialectic of literature -- R.K. Meiners: on modern poetry, poetic consciousness, and the madness of poets -- Paul Piehler: Milton's iconoclasm -- Colin Hardie: two descents into the underworld -- Lionel Adey: enjoyment, contemplation, and hierarchy in Hamlet -- G.B. Tennyson: etymology and meaning -- R.J. Reilly: a note on Barfield, romanticism, and time -- Shirley Sugerman: an "essay" on Coleridge on imagination -- Clyde S. Kilby: the ugly and the evil -- Mary Caroline Richards: the vessel and the fire -- The works of Owen Barfield -- G.B. Tennyson: a bibliography of the works of Owen Barfield. (shrink)

This paper surveys ontological modeling of rhetorical concepts, developed for use in argument mining and other applications of computational rhetoric, projecting their future directions. We include ontological models of argument schemes applying Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST); the RhetFig proposal for modeling; the related RetFig Ontology of Rhetorical Figures for Serbian (developed by two of the authors); and the Lassoing Rhetoric project (developed by another of the authors). The Lassoing Rhetoric venture is interesting for its multifaceted approach to linguistic devices, prominently (...) including rhetorical figures, but also RST relations and stylistic models, like the use of historic present. This application takes a natural language text input and uses syntactic parsing tools to produce a knowledge base of linguistic entities using references to an OWL ontological framework, locating these devices using Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) logic rules. The paper also reports on a similar approach in research into detecting ironic tweets in a Serbian twitter corpus. The rhetorical schemes used for argument mining are also presented, as well as some suggestions for novel argument schemes based on the ontological approach to rhetorical figuration. (shrink)

This paper is a response to and discussion of Maddalena Bonelli’s “Women philosophers in antiquity: Open questions and some results.” It also aims to advance the general discussion of the issues Bonelli raises. In it I contextualise Bonelli’s discussion, and take up three of her questions: What is the status of the work of restoring ancient women to the philosophical canon? What criteria ought we to use to decide who counts as a philosopher? What sort of philosophy did women practice (...) in antiquity, and in what ways might the restoration of ancient women thinkers to the canon change the way we conceive of ancient philosophy itself? I consider the way in which Bonelli’s paper advances the discussion of each question, raise some worries about the discussions, and provide suggestions for how we might think about these issues further. I maintain that the reshaping of the philosophical canon that takes place when we integrate ancient women involves a reshaping of the discipline, and of our methods for accessing it. This is a result I argue we ought to embrace rather than resist. I conclude with a summary of the main contributions of Bonelli’s paper. (shrink)

With a few exceptions, Thomists have by and large failed to engage with the historical and hermeneutical turns in philosophy and theology. This article offers an account of what the beginnings of a Thomistic engagement with recent hermeneutical philosophy might look like. In order to develop such an account, the author turns to arguably the most important contemporary hermeneutical philosopher, namely Hans-Georg Gadamer, as a dialogue partner. Despite claims to the contrary, this article argues that Gadamer does not successfully deal (...) with the specter of relativism. It goes on to show how that the thought of Thomas Aquinas can ably deal with this specter. There are two central elements in the argument put forward. Firstly, the author argues that the human being exists in between God as First Efficient Cause of all that exists and God as Final Cause of all that exists. This existence between God as First Efficient Cause of all that exists and God as Final Cause of all that exists furnishes the connatural context in which human knowing and willing unfolds. Secondly, he considers the dynamics of “interinvolvement” between intellect and will. The upshot of these arguments is a construal of reason that is at once capable of universal truth and hermeneutical in nature. Indeed, the universal range of reason and its hermeneutical dimension are in no way opposed to each other: they are rather dual aspects of one and the same reality. (shrink)

A common reading of the Cyrenaics is that they are a school of extreme hedonist presentists, recognising only the pleasure of the present moment, and advising against turning our attention to past or future pleasure or pain. Yet they have some strange advice which tells followers to anticipate future harms in order to lessen the unexpectedness of them when they occur. It’s a puzzle, then, how they can consistently hold the attitude they do to our concern with our present selves, (...) and yet endorse the practise of dwelling on possible future painful scenarios. To establish that this is a puzzle, though, we must first be convinced that the report is true. Cicero is our only clear source for the Cyrenaic advice, and scholars have noted reasons to be suspicious of the reliability of his report. I discuss these doubts, and why they ultimately fail to undermine Cicero’s testimony as a source. Defending Cicero as a source for Cyrenaic thought removes a barrier to taking seriously an aspect of Cyrenaic psychology which could radically alter our understanding of their views. (shrink)

This paper reviews the fate of the central ideas behind the complementary learning systems (CLS) framework as originally articulated in McClelland, McNaughton, and O’Reilly (1995). This framework explains why the brain requires two differentially specialized learning and memory systems, and it nicely specifies their central properties (i.e., the hippocampus as a sparse, pattern-separated system for rapidly learning episodic memories, and the neocortex as a distributed, overlapping system for gradually integrating across episodes to extract latent semantic structure). We review the application (...) of the CLS framework to a range of important topics, including the following: the basic neural processes of hippocampal memory encoding and recall, conjunctive encoding, human recognition memory, consolidation of initial hippocampal learning in cortex, dynamic modulation of encoding versus recall, and the synergistic interactions between hippocampus and neocortex. Overall, the CLS framework remains a vital theoretical force in the field, with the empirical data over the past 15 years generally confirming its key principles. (shrink)

Research consent processes must provide potential participants with the necessary information to help them decide if they wish to join a study. On the Oxford ‘A’ Research Ethics Committee we’ve found that current research proposals mostly provide adequate detail (even if not in an easily comprehensible format), but often fail to support decision making, a view supported by published evidence. In a previous paper, we described how consent might be structured, and here we develop the concept of an Information and (...) Decision Aid (IDA) that can support decision making and be used to guide the dialogue between researcher and potential participant. Our proposal requires limited changes to current processes or paperwork and would provide an easily accessible document for others that the potential participant might approach for advice. It could later be integrated with the Informed Consent Form to ensure all matters of concern to the individual participant have been addressed before consent is formally signed off. (shrink)

The specialist field of intellectual disability nursing has been subjected to a number of changes since the move towards deinstitutionalisation from the 1970s. Government policies sought to change the nature of the disability workforce from what was labelled as a medicalised approach, towards a more socially oriented model of support. Decades on however, many nurses who specialise in the care of people with intellectual disability are still employed. In Australia, the advent of the National Disability Insurance Scheme offers an apt (...) moment to reflect upon these decades of specialised nursing care as the context of this nursing care will continue to evolve. A review of the published literature was conducted to explore what has shaped the field in the past and how this might inform the future of this speciality area under new policy and service contexts. People with intellectual disability have specific health and support needs that require a specialised workforce. Specialist nurses continue to be needed for people with intellectual disability. (shrink)

This article examines discourse practices surrounding children’s participation, non-participation, and the ‘moral order’ of the family in the setting of family therapy consultations. The analysis focuses on two central issues. First, the relationship between therapists’ questions, the speaker selection techniques built into those questions, and the responses produced by family members. Second, the relationship between turn-taking and the linguistic features of person deixis in disputes that emerge around children’s orientation to implicit accusations in the talk of other participants about them. (...) The findings reveal how a familial ‘moral order’ is often at the root of how children’s competence as participants is managed by the parents, the therapist, and the children themselves. (shrink)

Durante mucho tiempo el cosmos se entendió como algo eterno. Las tradiciones Abrahamicas trajeron al debate no solo la idea de creación sino también la idea de fin del mundo, eschaton, sin embargo, nadie sabía el día ni la hora. Durante el proceso de secularización, esta promesa que encontramos en el Apocalipsis tiene impacto en el discurso político fomentando una perspectiva optimista sobre el futuro. Sin embargo, durante el siglo XX la física y la astronomía descubren que el cosmos no (...) podrá seguir alojando más vida en le futuro, y esto fue visto por varios autores como una confirmación de que la vida no tiene sentido. Sin embargo, prestando mayora atención a la relación entre la idea de eschaton y telos podemos comprender que existe una diferencia entre ambas nociones. A pesar de que la Astronomía afirme que en un futuro lejano habrá un fin, ¿es esta la última respuesta a la pregunta por el sentido de la vida? Este artículo es una aproximación a la distinción entre sentido de la idea de fin dado por la cosmología y el sentido de fin que encontramos en la filosofía. (shrink)

This study elicits a concern to show forth those elements in the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas that can menaingfully engage with those trends in contemporary hermeneutical philosophy and theology that highlight the conditioned nature of human understanding. The main point of reference in this regard os the hermeneutical philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. At the heart of this hermeneutical enterprise is Thomas's construal of the relationship between intellect and will, a relationship that can be described as one of dynamic reciprocity. (...) A dynamic interaction between intellect and will obtains in both their natural and graced operations. Hence, the title of this book, The Hermeneutics of Knowing and Willing in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Some might be concerned that the notion of hermeneutics will import the spectre of relativism into Thomas's thought. By guiding the reader through Thomas's doctrine of man as made to the image of the Trinity, his Trinitarian theology, his Christology, and his treatment of grace, the theological virtues of faith and charity, and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the author shows how Thomas in fact offers us resources for a theological hermeneutics of objectivity. The criteria for this objectivity, so the author argues, are Trinitarian, Christological, Pneumatological, ecclesial, and Scriptural. It is to be hoped that this book will be read not only by those who have a particular interest in Thomas's theology but also by theologians outside of the Thomistic tradition, particularly those interested in hermeneutics. (shrink)

This is the first in a series of ‘diary reflections’ written, initially, from Vietnam where I work as an adviser to the Vietnam-Sweden Mountain Rural Development Programme (MRDP).1 This instalment will give the background to my work and highlight some of the areas I will cover in later entries. In doing so I will reflect on how my own philosophical work informs and is informed by my work on the practical management of natural resources and community development. The process will, (...) I hope, take in issues around the practical application of philosophical thinking — mainly to the environment and development. This reflection takes place in the context of work that involves a high degree of exchange across cultures, mainly Vietnamese (Kinh and several ethnic minorities), Swedish and British. The questions and challenges raised in this instalment may (or may not) be resolved over the remaining phase of my work with MRDP during 2001. In doing so I hope to provoke debate. Many of the issues raised within this programme are not unique but often occur within donor funded aid programmes in the natural resource and poverty alleviation arena. Later instalments will outline some practical matters and the theoretical issues raised by them. (shrink)

This instalment is a reworking of the paper I gave at the meeting in Oxford in 2002 to a very small audience who I thank heartily for their patience and comments. I tried there to muse upon some ideas precipitated by reading two books by Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher whose work I find succeeds in being interesting and accessible without sacrificing technical content. I first came across his work whilst working on my PhD and was fascinated by his approach (...) and learning — even when I did not understand or agree with him. In one paper he made a point that struck a very important chord with me in relation to questions of participation within development:Philosophers who talk about rights should pay much more attention than they do to the processes by which decisions are taken in a community under circumstances of disagreement. Theories of rights need to be complemented by theories of authority, whose function it is to determine how decisions are to be taken when the members of a community disagree about what decision is right.I would like to suggest that within the Development Industry it is not only philosophers who need to pay more attention to these issues, but also development professionals who work with issues of governance as well as participation at the grass roots. This is not an obvious linkage, I admit, but one which I hope thisdiary entry will make clear.I will try to show that acknowledging disagreement within the legislative and judicial fields might actually be a positive move. And, as Waldron also indicates, that there is something dynamic and positive about the participation of people in processes. I will examine some current thinking on participation in development projects and ask whether current practices may be hindering the 'freedom to disagree'. I conclude that the failure to address some aspects of development practice relating to power and the possibility of disagreement is an issue. I highlight some factors which inhibit participation and suggest they flow from failures to develop strategies that foster local participation in contexts where local people often lack the formal' knowledge they need if they are to negotiate successfully with what James C Scott has called 'institutional privilege.'. (shrink)