Modern Christians often polarize the otherwise inseparable realities of academic reading and personal reading of Scripture. While generally not declared outright, many Christians consider the two methods discontinuous. This article deems this bifurcation unnecessary and dangerous to the spiritual formation of individuals and the spiritual health of the church. It examines Bonaventure's insightful use of the quadriga in order to contribute to today's discussion of spiritual reading of Scripture. The article shall argue that Bonaventure's quadrigal method ought to be retrieved (...) today for the spiritual health of scholarship and the church. This thesis will be attained organically. It will first survey his proposed method of interpretation in his Breviloquium and Commentary on the Gospel of Luke; then, it will appeal to scriptural and pastoral support to show that his method is a helpful route for retrieval. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the propositional model of Divine revelation deserves renewed attention due to both criticisms stemming from misunderstanding and recent arguments in favor of the propositional model. I begin by clarifying what I mean by the propositional model of Divine revelation and by pointing out misunderstandings of the implications of this model. Subsequently, I offer a few arguments in favor of the propositional model of Divine revelation based on three assumptions that I take to be basic (...) elements of Christianity. Finally, I explain why I think the propositional model is doctrinally significant for the Christian Faith. (shrink)

In this paper we apply the popular Best System Account of laws to typical eternal worlds – both classical eternal worlds and eternal worlds of the kind posited by popular contemporary cosmological theories. We show that, according to the Best System Account, such worlds will have no laws that meaningfully constrain boundary conditions. It’s generally thought that lawful constraints on boundary conditions are required to avoid skeptical arguments. Thus the lack of such laws given the Best System Account may seem (...) like a severe problem for the view. We show, however, that at eternal worlds, lawful constraints on boundary conditions do little to help fend off skeptical worries. So with respect to handling these skeptical worries, the proponent of the Best System Account is no worse off than their competitors. (shrink)

What may seem astonishing is the near dismissal of the beatific vision doctrine in the last 50+ years of biblical and theological scholarship in contrast to the emphasis given to it throughout church history. The state of theological scholarship is changing. In what follows, we set forth a short survey of a theology of the beatific vision, while also introducing the rest of the volume on the beatific vision and theosis, of which we take to have an intimate and overlapping (...) relationship. The editorial article has four parts: it begins by (1) introducing some of the relevant biblical material on the vision, proceeding to (2) develop a theological interpretation of those passages, and then (3) offer a short historical survey of the doctrine, focusing on the relevant medieval and Reformed developments. It finally (4) introduces the articles of the issue. (shrink)

This article looks at Colossians 2-3:17 and John 17:13-26 as the base texts to see the commonalities between Johannine and Pauline conceptions of Theosis. First, the article looks at indwelling and participation as the methods of Theosis in the two traditions. Second, the role of mimesis is seen to be integral in these texts' concepts of Theosis. Third, the article looks at hope and glory that believers have and look forward to as indicative of their deification. The study begins by (...) defining the term Theosis and its cognate terms - deification and divinisation - properly, within an Orthodox Christian context. CONTRIBUTION: The goal is to see and detail the concept of Theosis in Pauline and Johannine literature, looking at Colossians 2-3:17 and John 17:13-26 specifically. As such, the present study will broaden the discussion the doctrine of Theosis as it appears in the Christian scriptures. (shrink)

The inclusion of engineering standards in US science education standards is potentially important because of how limited engineering education for K-12 learners is, despite the ubiquity of engineering in students’ lives. However, the majority of learners experience science education throughout their compulsory schooling. If improved engineering literacy is to be achieved, then its inclusion in science curricula is perhaps the most efficient means. One significant challenge that arises, however, is in the framing of engineering relative to science by both teachers (...) and curriculum. Science and engineering are both distinct and interdependent. The nature of the contributions of science and engineering to one another has been an area of some examination in philosophy of technology and engineering, but little framing of this relationship has been conducted with K-12 science and engineering education contexts in mind. Nature of science is a critical layer of scientific understanding that has been used to explicitly support literacy in K-16 science classrooms for decades. However, engineering cannot be authentically and appropriately supported by NOS framing. There is an immediate need for discourse on the nature of engineering knowledge but not in isolation of NOS. Given the increasing inclusion of engineering in science classrooms, relationships between NOS and NOEK are in need of explication and argument. Our purpose is to promote a discussion about NOS, engineering, and the relationship between them without misrepresenting engineering as a subdomain of science or as an oversimplification of itself. (shrink)

The beatific vision is a subject of considerable importance both in the Christian Scriptures and in the history of Christian dogmatics. In it, humans experience and see the perfect immaterial God, which represents the final end for the saints. However, this doctrine has received less attention in the contemporary theological literature, arguably, due in part to the growing trend toward materialism and the sole emphasis on bodily resurrection in Reformed eschatology. As a piece of retrieval by drawing from the Scriptures, (...) Medieval Christianity, and Reformed Christianity, we motivate a case for the Reformed emphasis on the immaterial and intellectual aspects of human personal eschatology and offer some constructive thoughts on how to link it to the contemporary emphasis of the body. We draw a link between the soul and the body in the vision with the help of Christology as reflected in the theology of John Calvin, and, to a greater extent, the theology of both John Owen and Jonathan Edwards. (shrink)

Ludwig Feuerbach's work is often too easily dovetailed with the works of Hegel and Marx and therefore read teleologically as an intermediary step between the two “major” figures. By re-interpreting Feuerbach more as a system critic than as a system builder, this article attempts to elucidate his relationships to the other two. It will also point up the gendered articulation of his critiques of religion and philosophy. The article will show how Feuerbach's use of gender, though remaining fixed within a (...) predictably hierarchical binary, is more than simply symptomatic of its context and offers significant resources for critical re-readings of nineteenth-century German philosophy. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a recently articulated, emergentist conception of ethical naturalism and its commitment to causal efficacy, or the idea that moral properties have causal powers, along with its supporting commitment to moral causation. After I reconstruct the theory, I explain how it offers some interesting theoretical benefits to moral realists in virtue of its commitment to causal efficacy. Then, after locating some examples of moral causation in support of this commitment, I present and respond to five objections to (...) such causation, which all threaten to undermine this support. Lastly, I consider a very serious problem that the theory faces in virtue of positing emergent moral properties as responsible for moral causation – namely, the problem of downward moral causation. I describe this problem in detail and argue that, as it stands, it does not spell doom for the theory. (shrink)

It is widely held that agent-neutral consequentialism is incompatible with deontic constraints. Recently, Kieran Setiya has challenged this orthodoxy by presenting a form of agent-neutral consequentialism that he claims can capture deontic constraints. In this reply, we argue against Setiya's proposal by pointing to features of deontic constraints that his account fails to capture.

What is love? In this paper I argue that love is a psychological syndrome, or an enormously complex cluster of psychological attitudes and dispositions that’s accompanied by a corresponding set of symptoms that flow from it. More specifically, I argue that love is an affectionate loyalty that takes different shapes across cases and that manifests itself in some set of behavioral and emotional expressions, where this set of expressions also varies across cases. After laying down three theoretical constraints that viable (...) theories of love must satisfy, I sketch my syndrome theory of love in detail and then defend it. First, I argue that it has a strong yet defeasible claim to satisfying the three theoretical constraints. Then I defend my theory against two objections that target its extensional adequacy. I conclude that we have good grounds for being optimistic about the theory even though it calls for further development and scrutiny. (shrink)

There is a critical need to establish a space to engage in careful deliberation amid exciting, important, necessary, and groundbreaking technological and clinical advances in pediatric medicine. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is one such technology that began in pediatric settings nearly 50 years ago. And while not void of medical and ethical examination, both the symbolic progression of medicine that ECMO embodies and its multidimensional challenges to patient care require more than an intellectual exercise. What we illustrate, then, is a (...) person-centered framework that incorporates the philosophy and practice of palliative care and care-based ethical approaches. This person-centered framework is valuable for identifying and understanding challenges central to ECMO, guides collaborative decision-making, and recognizes the value of relationships within and between patients, families, healthcare teams, and others who impact and are impacted by ECMO. Specifically, this person-centered approach enables caregivers to provide compassionate and effective support in critical, and often urgent, situations where conflicts may emerge among healthcare team members, families, and other decision makers. By reflecting on three cases based on actual situations, we apply our person-centered framework and identify those aspects that were utilized in and informed this project. We aim to fill a current gap in the pediatric ECMO literature by presenting a person-centered framework that promotes caregiving relationships among hospitalized critically ill children, families, and the healthcare team and is supported through the philosophy and practice of palliative care and clinical ethics. (shrink)

Engaging in environmental stewardship is critical for sustainability. Understanding individual differences and engagement is an important gap in present scholarship and addressing it is necessary to understand individual factors that relate to the types of activities engaged in, motivations and barriers to environmental stewardship. We surveyed 637 Canadian and American adults via Amazon Mechanical Turk, querying a range of demographic, psychological and environmental perceptions factors as well as motivations and barriers to stewardship activities. Respondents were ultimately grouped into Non-Stewards, Home-Oriented (...) Stewards and Community-Oriented Stewards. Few differences were found among these groups. However, Home-Oriented Stewards and Community-Oriented Stewards exhibited very different initial and ongoing motivations to engage in environmental stewardship. Accordingly, we identify stewardship motivations as a potential leverage point and as one of several promising avenues for future research related to enhancing engagement in environmental stewardship for the sustainability of the planet. (shrink)

This is Not a Seminar is a multidisciplinary forum established in 2012 at Edith Cowan University in Australia to support practice-led and practice-based Higher Degree by Research students. The Faculty of Education and Arts at ECU includes cohorts of postgraduate research students in, for example, performance, design, writing and visual arts. We established the TINAS programme to assist postgraduate research students in connecting their creative practices to methodological, theoretical and conceptual approaches whilst fostering an atmosphere of rapport across creative disciplines. (...) The pilot programme conducted for six months in 2012 comprised dialogues with experienced creative researchers; critical reading sessions on practice-led theory; and workshops in journaling, ethics and copyright. This article is a reflection on the strengths and limitations of TINAS and future projections. More than an additional teaching and learning service, the programme has become a vital forum for creative dialogue. (shrink)

Intellectual Dependability is the first research monograph devoted to addressing the question of what it is to be an intellectually dependable person--the sort of person on whom one's fellow inquirers can depend in their pursuit of epistemic goods. While neglected in recent scholarship, this question is an important one for both epistemology--how we should conceptualize the ideal inquirer--and education--how we can enable developing learners to grow toward this ideal. The book defends a virtue theory according to which being an intellectually (...) dependable person is distinctively a matter of possessing a suite of neglected virtues called "the virtues of intellectual dependability" that are themselves distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others' inquiries. After defending the existence and educational significance of these virtues as a group, the book turns toward the project of identifying and conceptualizing several specific instances of these virtues in detail. Virtues discussed include intellectual benevolence, intellectual transparency, communicative clarity, audience sensitivity, and epistemic guidance. In each case, an interdisciplinary treatment of the nature of the virtue and its relationship to other virtues, vices, and personality features is offered, drawing especially on relevant research in Philosophy and Psychology. The book concludes with a chapter devoted to identifying distinctive ways these virtues of intellectual dependability are manifested when it is inquiring communities, rather than individuals, that occupy the position of intellectual dependence. By directing attention to the ideal of intellectual dependability, the book marks a novel turn of scholarly interest explicitly toward a neglected dimension of the ideal inquirer that will inform both epistemological theorizing and educational practice. (shrink)

Shareholder activism has become a dynamic institutional force, and its associated, rapidly increasing body of scholarly literature affects numerous disciplineswithin the organizational science academy. Despite growing shareholder empowerment, the impact of shareholder activism on corporate outcomes remains equivocal. The heterogeneity of factors in shareholder activism, such as environmental, firm, proponent, and issue characteristics; the variety of activism methods and processes; and varying outcomes provides a plethora of theoretical and methodological challenges for activism researchers. Furthermore, the separation of prior research on (...) financial and social activism has left unanswered questions critical for both the scholarly discourse on shareholder activism and the normative debate on shareholder empowerment. Our multidisciplinary review integrates both the financial and social activism streams and explores shareholder activism controversies, seeking to provide an impetus for more cohesive conceptual and empirical work in the field. (shrink)

Abstract Medical futility is commonly understood as treatment that would not provide for any meaningful benefit for the patient. While the medical facts will help to determine what is medically appropriate, it is often difficult for patients, families, surrogate decision-makers and healthcare providers to navigate these difficult situations. Often communication breaks down between those involved or reaches an impasse. This paper presents a set of practical strategies for dealing with cases of perceived medical futility at a major cancer center. Content (...) Type Journal Article Pages 1-8 DOI 10.1007/s10730-011-9168-3 Authors Colleen M. Gallagher, Section for Integrated Ethics in Cancer Care, Unit 1430, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, P.O. Box 301402, Houston, TX 77230-1402, USA Ryan F. Holmes, St. Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA Journal HEC Forum Online ISSN 1572-8498 Print ISSN 0956-2737. (shrink)

All three corporate governance systems in North America are currently embroiled in fundamental transformations. Most of Mexico’s corporations are run by a small group of controlling shareholders and operate in an economic system rife with corruption. Recent political reforms and a desire to tap global equity markets have heightened their interest in improving corporate governance structures. United States corporations face a dispersed ownership base that has tended toward inattentiveness, allowing such infamous scandals as Enron to rock the global investing community. (...) A backlash against the ensuing, restrictive Sarbanes-Oxley legislation is now underway. Like Mexico’s, Canada’s major corporations are led by a handful of controlling shareholders, but corruption is uncommon. New corporate governance guidelines are under debate, and the Ontario Securities Commission is wresting control from the Toronto Stock Exchange. Although these three corporate governance systems vary in terms of ownership dispersion, level of corruption, and legislative intervention, they currently share a common focus on fundamental reform. (shrink)

This paper examines the broad social purpose of US climate science, which has benefitted from a public investment of more than $30 billion over the last 20 years. A public values analysis identifies five core public values that underpin the interagency program. Drawing from interviews, meeting observations, and document analysis, I examine the decision processes and institutional structures that lead to the implementation of climate science policy, and identify a variety of public values failures accommodated by this system. In contrast (...) to other cases which find market values frameworks (the profit as progress assumption) at the root of public values failures, this case shows how science values ( knowledge as progress ) may serve as an inadequate or inappropriate basis for achieving broader public values. For both institutions and individual decision makers, the logic linking science to societal benefit is generally incomplete, incoherent, and tends to conflate intrinsic and instrumental values. I argue that to be successful with respect to its motivating public values, the US climate science enterprise must avoid the assumption that any advance in knowledge is inherently good, and offer a clearer account of the kinds of research and knowledge advance likely to generate desirable social outcomes. (shrink)

How does anthoethnography contribute to the development of understandings of aesthetic experiences of wild plants and wildflower tourism? As exemplified by the quintessentially aesthetic industry of wildflower tourism, the culture of flora represents diverse engagements between people and plants. Such complex engagements offer further avenues for research. The critical methodology of anthoethnography has been one such approach to circumscribing the values, practices and rhetoric of wildflower tourism. Interviews have revealed perceptual phenomena such as the orchid and everlasting effects as two (...) counterpoised examples of the differences between visual aesthetic values occurring in the region. For appreciators such as Tinker, botanical science substantiates visual experience by showing the functional role of plants within habitats. However, the taxonomic eye is not the only judge of the value and significance of flowering plants. As underscored by Nannup, Aboriginal perspectives offer complex cultural modes of engagement and rich directions for wildflower tourism based in bodily experience. An anthoethnographic approach produces accounts of the spectrum of human perceptions of wildflowers in order to proffer potential directions for wildflower tourism of the future. Through a participatory aesthetics of flora in contemporary Australian landscapes, appreciative interactions with plants will occur not only through visual values, but also through the smell, taste, sound, or feel of plants and how one moves through communities of flora. Scientific knowledge can amplify visual and embodied modes. However, as an anthoethnographic lens has shown, wildflower tourism in the Southwest is weighted towards visual experience. Indeed, the history and contemporary practices of wildflower tourism encode ocular values that can posit a separation between post‐colonial cultures and native flora. A promising direction is towards participatory relationships beyond the aestheticisation of the surface qualities of flora and beyond the ‘conquest of the world as picture’. In an era of rapid species loss, wildflower tourism will increasingly embrace concepts of conservation, Aboriginal knowledges and the recognition of spiritual heritages, and the appreciation of plants beyond their visual impact. The expression of human sensory capacities for plants joined to an ethos of botanical conservation, drawing from scientific thought, can better ensure the longevity of flowers through the evolution of the culture of flora in the region. (shrink)

pt. 1. Actus Del.--pt. 2. A finite universe.

Von Hippel & Trivers (VH&T) propose that self-deception has evolved to facilitate the deception of others. However, they ignore the subjective moral costs of deception and the crucial issue of credibility in self-deceptive speech. A self-signaling interpretation can account for the ritualistic quality of some self-deceptive affirmations and for the often-noted gap between what self-deceivers say and what they truly believe.

Herbaria principally host and study collections of dried vegetal specimens, and the curators and researchers employed there are mainly systematic botanists working on plant taxonomy. Twenty years ago, a textographic investigation of the University of Michigan Herbarium was conducted as part of a larger study. In this follow-up inquiry, we investigate what sort of changes have – or have not – occurred over the intervening period. Two of the five original Herbarium informants are still working there, and mainly through text-based (...) interviews and discourse analysis we trace their subsequent careers and research outputs. We find that there has been considerable technological change since the 1990s, such as the growth of molecular studies, the digitization of specimens, and the use of the web, which has greatly impacted the processes of scholarly textual production. However, technological effects on the highly distinctive genres of systematic botany turn out to be more moderate. This genre set, comprising monograph, flora, treatment, and protologue, remains little known to those who study the more general discourses of the academic and research worlds. (shrink)

Parental refusal of a recommended treatment is not an uncommon scenario in the neonatal intensive care unit. These refusals may be based upon the parents’ perceptions of their child’s projected quality of life. The inherent subjectivity of quality of life assessments, however, can exacerbate disagreement between parents and healthcare providers. We present a case of parental refusal of surgical intervention for necrotizing enterocolitis in an infant with Bartter syndrome and develop an ethical framework in which to consider the appropriateness of (...) parental refusal based upon an infant’s projected quality of life. (shrink)

sirIn a scholarly and thought-provoking paper, Clarke sets out to debunk the concept of “rational suicide” as nonsensical.1 His motivation in this is to undermine any support that the notion of rational suicide might give to a “categorical right to suicide”. If his enterprise were successful, however, it would go far beyond the “rights issue” and would have a profound impact on all arguments raised in support of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.Clarke's major thrust might be termed the argument from posthumous (...) ignorance. He begins with a claim that the process of making a rational decision involves the process of “gaining all possible facts and `imagining' all possible consequences”. He goes on to say that making a rational decision “in the consideration of life or death . . . would seem to be impossible”. It is “impossible” …. (shrink)

Today’s educational system is in a quandary. On the one hand, colleges produce deep thinkers who possess skills necessary to adapt to an ever-changing world, but are less committed to the cause of resisting inequalities. On the other, there are students who have the passion for social reform, but are less concerned with higher order thinking skills. This investigation proposes a compromise by connecting the problem-posing method of Paolo Freire and the philosophy of education of John Dewey. This study uses (...) the neo-pragmatic approach of Richard Rorty to open a space that seeks to overturn elitist school systems. It is argued that there is no necessary tension since critical pedagogy and liberal education are actually against institutional oppression and the authoritarian ways of elitist or dominant educational paradigms that emphasize the instrumental rather than the humanist purpose of learning. The right approach can be found in the belief that each person has a transcendental value. The freedom of every man makes manifest the vital role of liberal education in emancipating society from unjust and unequal systems through inclusivity and pluralism. (shrink)