In “Unity of Action in a Latin Social Model of the Trinity,” I objected to William Hasker’s Social Model of the Trinity on the grounds that it does not secure the necessary agreement between the divine persons. Further, I developed a Latin Social model of the Trinity. Hasker has responded by defending his Social Model and by raising seven objections against my Latin Social Model. Here I raise a new objection against Hasker on the grounds that it is inconsistent with (...) Conciliar Trinitarianism, and I respond to the seven objections and in so doing further develop the Latin Social Model. (shrink)

: This study investigates the changes in the body image that occurred in the crucial cultural transformations that took place at the outset of Western rational thought in the transition from Archaic age to Classical age Greece. It does so from the delimited perspective that is offered by the group of medical writings known as the Hippocratic Corpus (specifically works on prognostics, dietetics, and surgery) that were contemporary with the early Classical age, but it also suggests parallel changes occurring in (...) other cultural realms. The body images for that period are found to be diverse but yet all colored by the general transition from a ritual and praxis based experience of the world to one tempered by contemplative and dogmatic speculation. General observations are also made upon the use of the "body image" as a means of historical analysis in periods of cultural transformation. (shrink)

In “Early High Christology and Contemporary Pro-Nicene Theology,” Steven Nemes raises a dilemma. Either one may affirm what the New Testament teaches about the Word “through” whom all things were created, or one may affirm that the Father and Son are consubstantial (as the Nicene Creed teaches), but not both. I show that Nemes’s argument begs the question and that Nemes fails to represent how pro-Nicene theologians interpreted such prepositions (for example, “through”) in the New Testament. Contrary to what Nemes (...) contends, there is no inconsistency in believing what John 1:3 teaches and that the divine persons are consubstantial. (shrink)

Evil remains a primary source of inquiry in contemporary literature of French expression, even among its most secular writers. In considering French-speaking authors from France, Belgium, the United States, the Maghreb, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this collection delineates a rich international perspective on some of the most disturbing events of our time. Each essay testifies to the urgency expressed in works of fiction to give an account of human catastrophes, from the Shoah and the Rwandan genocide to the terrorist attacks of (...) September 11, and the ongoing oppression of women in Islamic nations. Themes underlying this volume include an investigation into the origins of evil, its representations in writing, and the ethical responsibilities of authors who write on human suffering. Contemporary fiction on evil confronts us with fundamental questions: Can evil be attributed to intentionality, is evil "subconscious," or is it the result of impersonal forces? Which styles of writing are ethically appropriate or effective for depicting evil? Can we speak of a veritable "poetics of evil" shared by contemporary authors? When does a literary text on evil become "evil"? In providing informed and nuanced answers to these important questions, the scholars engage in crucial theories of psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and post-modernism, address a number of issues raised by trauma and genocide studies, and draw from critical frameworks in literary theory on testimony, the limits of representing the extreme, and "transgressive" writing. (shrink)

Recent progress in the study of short‐distance (cell‐to‐cell) movement of plant virus, facilitated by ‘movement proteins’, has led to a resurgence of interest in long‐distance virus transport in the phloem. Relatively little is known about phloem‐specific barriers to virus movement or about the form in which virus enters, travels within and exits this tissue. Progress in understanding virus and photoassimilate transport is limited by a paucity of information on the substructure and properties of plasmodesmata at specific interfaces. The direction of (...) virus movement, once it has entered the phloem, can be understood by following photoassimilate translocation, a complex and dynamic process influenced by plant growth, development and vascular topology. (shrink)

I develop a Latin Social model of the Trinity that is an extension of my previous article on indexicals and the Trinity. I focus on the theological desideratum of the necessity of the divine persons’ unity of action. After giving my account of this, I compare it with Swinburne’s and Hasker’s social models and Leftow’s non-social model. I argue that their accounts of the divine persons’ unity of action are theologically unsatisfactory and that this unsatisfactoriness derives from a modern conception (...) of personhood according to which distinct and incommunicable intellectual acts and volitional acts are necessary conditions for one’s being a person. I argue that the Latin Social model is preferable to the modern-personhood models because it is simpler in explanatory economy with regard to securing the necessity of the divine persons’ unity of action. (shrink)

For decades now some Christian theologians, and some philosophers of religion, have labored at distinguishing Social Trinitarianism and non-Social Trinitarianism. Many have revised their models of the Trinity in light of counter-arguments or counter-evidence. For Christian theologians, or philosophers of religion, what counts as a good counter-argument or counter-evidence may (but need not) depend on respected theological authorities. Recently, some focus has been paid to what is called Conciliar Trinitarianism, which is the name for whatever is endorsed by, or rejected (...) by, the first seven ecumenical councils regarding the Trinity. For those who respect these ecumenical councils as authoritative (to some extent), it would be useful to get a clearer understanding of Conciliar Trinitarianism in order to assist in evaluating contemporary models of the Trinity. In what follows I argue that the Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople III, in 680-681ce) made important contributions, and clarifications (for the contemporary reader), to Conciliar Trinitarianism. Surprisingly, there is no secondary literature regarding these contributions. So, the historical evidence given in this article is evidence that almost nobody has been aware of - apart from the editors of the critical edition of the Acts of Constantinople III. After having made the historical case, I discuss the implications of Constantinople III for (i) our understanding of the place of the Pseudo-Athanasian creed in Trinitarian speculation, (ii) standard narratives about the division between Greek and Latin Trinitarian theology, and (iii) contemporary models of the Trinity. (shrink)

Tampering with the judicial system has long been regarded as an unethical and illegal standard of corporate behavior. Advances in behavioral research have recently, however, skirted the letter of the law by applying consumer research techniques to the sampling universe from which prospective jurors are selected. This practice has resulted in an unfair and measurable advantage which offsets any balance of ethics and justice.This article adopts a protagonistic perspective to demonstrate research illustrating jury evaluation techniques. Because the legal system, which (...) is based on jurisprudence, does not have the ability or resources to monitor or regulate these practices, the question must be addressed within the domain of business ethics. ... Where does the balance of ethical justice lie? Is the sole objective to win and protect the bottom line of the corporate income statement, or does a code of business ethics apply? (shrink)

This book uses the tools of analytic philosophy of disability (and Disability Studies more generally) and close readings of medieval Christian philosophical and theological texts in order to survey what these thinkers said about what today we call “disability.” The chapters also compare what these medieval authors say with modern and contemporary philosophers and theologians of disability. This dual approach enriches our understanding of the history of disability in medieval Christian philosophy and theology and opens up new avenues of research (...) for contemporary scholars working on disability. The volume is divided into three parts. Part I addresses theoretical frameworks regarding disability, particularly on questions about the definition(s) of “disability” and how disability relates to well-being. The chapters are then divided into two further parts in order to reflect ways that medieval philosophers and theologians theorized about disability. Part II is on disability in this life, and Part III is on disability in the afterlife. Taken as a whole, these chapters support two general observations. First, these philosophical theologians sometimes resist Greco-Roman ableist views by means of theological and philosophical anti-ableist arguments and counterexamples. Here we find some surprising disability-positive perspectives that are built into different accounts of a happy human life. We also find equal dignity of all human beings no matter ability or disability. Second, some of the seeds for modern and contemporary ableist views were developed in medieval Christian philosophy and theology, especially with regard to personhood and rationality, an intellectualist interpretation of the imago Dei, and the identification of human dignity with the use of reason. This volume surveys disability across a wide range of medieval Christian writers from the time of Augustine up to Francisco Suarez. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in medieval philosophy and theology or disability studies. (shrink)

Introduction: -/- It is likely that Boethius (480-524ce) inaugurates, in Latin Christian theology, the consideration of personhood as such. In the Treatise Against Eutyches and Nestorius Boethius gives a well-known definition of personhood according to genus and difference(s): a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Personhood is predicated only of individual rational substances. This chapter situates Boethius in relation to significant Christian theologians before and after him, and the way in which his definition of personhood is a (...) particular answer to the question, “Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, but is one what?” Among Greek (and Syriac) speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘hypostasis’. Among Latin speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘persona’. It is Boethius’s definition of ‘persona’ that inaugurates personhood as such in Latin speaking theology. Although the Greek and Syriac theologians that I survey come close to a concept of personhood as a distinct category, they do not have such a concept and did not need it for their theological purposes. I show that Rusticus the Deacon is an early witness to this Latin theological invention, and also show that for later Latin theologians, the rationality condition for personhood does very little metaphysical work for their Trinitarian theology or Christology. -/- Further, this chapter surveys Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians’ answers to the question, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are one God, but each is one what?” The same replies as above are typically given by Christian theologians. These two theological questions frame the discussion about personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) and put a boundary around what a satisfying account of personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) would be. -/- In contemporary philosophy, there is a lot of attention paid to the rationality condition for personhood. But if we look at the text in which Boethius defines a person, we do not find any precise criteria for it. In other texts, he says that a rational being is one compatible with (capable of) thought and free choice of the will. What we find is that detailed discussion of personhood shows up in theological questions about the Trinity and Incarnation, but not in e.g., applied ethics. The intrusion of personhood into contemporary applied ethics with a focus on detailed and disputed criteria for rationality as a condition for personhood seems to be a modern development. From a Patristic and Medieval Christian theology point of view, trying to find just the right detailed criteria for rationality in order to define personhood is a wild goose chase. This chapter makes clear another contribution that Christian theology had for personhood. Given the theological issues at play in developing a notion of personhood, Christian theologians came to posit that e.g., an individual human is a person contingently (i.e. not essentially), but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each a person essentially. The contingency for created persons is not based on whether e.g., an individual human has conscious acts (as might be the case for John Locke) but on the possibility of a divine person’s assuming e.g., an individual human nature. -/- This sampling of Christian intellectual history spans over one thousand years. I make no claim of being exhaustive. The chapter consists of six sections, where each section covers significant historical conversation partners who together represent the sorts of things that Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians where concerned with in theorizing about ‘persona’ or ‘hypostasis’. -/- 1. Origen of Alexandria and the Cappadocians: Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa 2. Miaphysites: Severus of Antioch, John Philoponus, and Peter of Callinicum 3. Boethius and Rusticus the Deacon: Rationality, Subsistence, and the Invention of Personhood 4. Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Leontius of Byzantium 5. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (I): Gilbert of Poitiers, Richard of St. Victor, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ware 6. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham . (shrink)

Offering the first general introductory text to this subject, the timely _Introduction to_ _Evolutionary Ethics_ reflects the most up-to-date research and current issues being debated in both psychology and philosophy. The book presents students to the areas of cognitive psychology, normative ethics, and metaethics. The first general introduction to evolutionary ethics Provides a comprehensive survey of work in three distinct areas of research: cognitive psychology, normative ethics, and metaethics Presents the most up-to-date research available in both psychology and philosophy Written (...) in an engaging and accessible style for undergraduates and the interested general reader Discusses the evolution of morality, broadening its relevance to those studying psychology. (shrink)

Cover -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One: Writing against Theodicy: Secularization in Baudelaire's Poetry and Critical Essays -- Chapter Two: The Mourning of God and the Ironies of Secularization in Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris -- Chapter Three: Sublimation and Conversion in Zola and Huysmans -- Chapter Four: The Staging of Doubt: Zola and Huysmans on Lourdes -- Chapter Five: Religious and Secular Conversions: Transformations in Céline's Medical Perspective on Evil -- Conclusion -- (...) Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Book. (shrink)

In his early lecture courses, Martin Heidegger exhibited an abiding interest in human life. He believed that human life has philosophical import while it is actually being lived; language has philosophical import while it is being spoken. In this book, Scott Campbell traces the development of Heidegger's ideas about factical life through his interest in Greek thought and its concern with Being. He contends that Heidegger's existential concerns about human life and his ontological concerns about the meaning of Being (...) crystallize in the notion of Dasein as the Being of factical human life. Emphasizing the positive aspects of everydayness, Campbell explores the contexts of meaning embedded within life; the intensity of average, everyday life; the temporal immediacy of life in early Christianity; the hermeneutic pursuit of life's self-alienation; factical spatiality; the temporalizing of history within life; the richness of the world; and the facticity of speaking in Plato and Aristotle. He shows how Heidegger presents a way of grasping human life as riddled with deception but also charged with meaning and open to revelation and insight. (shrink)

This chapter is about personhood in relation to ethics and to conciliar Christian theology, and how concepts of personhood may discriminate against profoundly cognitively disabled human beings. (By ‘conciliar Christian theology’ I mean the Christian theology that is articulated in, or endorsed by, the first seven ecumenical councils.) -/- I believe we can learn several things about personhood by looking at these two topics together. By examining ancient and medieval concepts of personhood and some modern conceptions of personhood we gain (...) a better grasp of the variety of concepts and what substantive work they were intended to do. By becoming familiar with (part of) the history of concepts of personhood we are better situated to appreciate and judge the theoretical work that these concepts were intended to do and what consequences they have in ethical and theological theorizing. -/- In the first section I tell a select history of moral philosophers theorizing about personhood and discuss these in relation to human beings with profound cognitive disability. I focus on John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Mary Anne Warren. In the “When Personhood Is Discriminatory” section I argue that concepts of personhood, especially modern concepts of personhood, are typically used in a manner that discriminates against human beings with profound cognitive disabilities. I give two arguments against discriminatory uses of personhood, the Moral Shift Argument and the Argument against Exclusive Personhood. Although the Moral Shift Argument is deductively valid, it probably has little persuasive power over those who do not share the moral belief that profoundly cognitively disabled human beings are equal members of the moral community. However, the Argument against Exclusive Personhood has more argumentative force because it denies the claims that personhood is “self-evident” and that it is “obvious” to everyone. In the following section I survey a select history of concepts of personhood in order to establish the claims that concepts of personhood are not self-evident and are not obvious to everyone. This history of personhood goes back to ancient and medieval Christian theorizing and debating about personhood. It shows that concepts of personhood are not “self-evident” but rather are theoretical posits that are posited in theory construction in order to explain certain putative theological facts. Given that personhood is a theoretical posit and is not “self-evident,” moral philosophers who aim to determine the extent of the moral community on the basis of a supposedly “self-evident” concept of personhood are not justified in doing so. Moreover, given the Argument against Exclusive Personhood, philosophical theologians who wish to articulate models of the Trinity or Incarnation that are consistent with the seven ecumenical councils will find that they, like moral philosophers, are not justified to assume, or to insist on, modern personhood for their models of the Trinity or Incarnation. My overall conclusion, then, is that modern personhood is bad for ethics and unnecessary for conciliar ecumenical Christian theology. (shrink)

In recent analytic literature on the Trinity we have seen a variety of "social" models of the Trinity. By contrast there are few "non-­‐social" models. One prominent "non-­‐social" view is Brian Leftow's "Latin Trinity." I argue that the name of Leftow's model is not sufficiently descriptive in light of diverse models within Latin speaking theology. Next, I develop a new "non-­‐social" model that is inspired by Richard of St. Victor's description of a person in conjunction with my appropriating insights about (...) indexicals from David Kaplan and John Perry. I point out that the copula in tokens of statements like, "I am the Father," is an ambiguous term and when used by a certain divine person a different proposition is affirmed. Central to this model is the claim that the copula bears the "is of identity" and the "is of numerical sameness without identity." Further, I show that Leftow's model employs two concepts of "person," a Lockean one and a Boethian one, and mine employs Richard of St. Victor's. I describe Leftow's model as a "hard non-­‐social" model and mine as a "soft non-­‐social" model that is nearer to some social models. I conclude that Leftow's model is not the lone candidate among "non-­‐social" models and that the variety of "non-­‐social" models has yet to be exhausted. (shrink)

Duties of beneficence are not well understood. Peter Singer has argued that the scope of beneficence should not be restricted to those who are, in some sense, near us. According to Singer, refusing to contribute to humanitarian relief efforts is just as wrong as refusing to rescue a child drowning before you. Most people do not seem convinced by Singer’s arguments, yet no one has offered a plausible justification for restricting the scope of beneficence that doesn’t produce counterintuitive results elsewhere. (...) I offer a defence of this restricted scope by introducing the notion of unique dependence, a notion that is both intuitively attractive and theoretically grounded. It explains why your reason to rescue the drowning child is more stringent than your reason to contribute to humanitarian relief, while blocking the conclusion that we have no reason at all to aid distant sufferers . (shrink)

Within the past ten years, the discussion of the nature of folk psychology and its role in explaining behavior and thought has become central to the philosophy of mind. However, no comprehensive account of the contemporary debate or collection of the works that make up this debate has yet been available. Intending to fill this gap, this volume begins with the crucial background for the contemporary debate and proceeds with a broad range of responses to and developments of these works (...) -- from those who argue that "folk theory" is a misnomer to those who regard folk theory as legitimately explanatory and necessary for any adequate account of human behavior. Intended for courses in the philosophy of mind, psychology, and science, as well as anthropology and social psychology, this anthology is also of great value in courses focusing on folk models, eliminative materialism, explanation, psychological theory, and -- in particular -- intentional psychology. It is accessible to both graduate students and upper-division undergraduate students of philosophy and psychology as well as researchers. As an aid to students, a thorough discussion of the field and the articles in the anthology is provided in the introduction; as an aid to researchers, a complete bibliography is also provided. (shrink)

This thesis will argue that Plato's influential philosophical puzzle known as the Meno Paradox and the related Problem of False Belief are a more serious threat to Plato's philosophical programme than many interpreters recognize. Furthermore, Plato's most obvious candidate for a solution to these problems, the Theory of Recollection, is not sufficient to explain how the Paradox misunderstands the epistemic processes of learning which it treats. ;This failure of Plato's account motivates a close consideration of Aristotle's sophisticated attempt to resolve (...) the difficulties Plato raises. I will argue that a proper understanding of Aristotle's philosophy of mind and the forms of cognition through which he thinks humans progress yields the key to a powerful and heretofore unrecognized Aristotelian solution to the Meno Paradox and the Problem of False Belief. (shrink)

In 1963, Edmund Gettier wrote a short paper that appeared in the journal Analysis where he demonstrated that justified, true belief defined as knowledge does not obtain. Formally, the argument is that it is not the case that: S knows that P iff P is true, S believes that P, and S is justified in believing that P.1 S knows that P iffP is true,S believes that P, andS is justified in believing that P.1The critique of the definition has to (...) do with counterexamples from scenarios where an agent can have JTB but not knowledge. In Gettier's paper, for example, Smith has strong evidence for believing that Jones will get a promotion and for believing that Jones has ten coins in his pocket: "the... (shrink)

Most of us would feel awful if we discovered that our beloved had been unfaithful. But the hedonist, I argue, cannot consistently claim: that a betrayal that goes undetected does not make your life worse off for you; and, at the same time, that one ought to feel bad if one happens to discover that one has been betrayed. To claim that one ought to feel bad requires adducing reasons for that reaction, but the hedonist either can adduce no such (...) reasons or cannot make sense of the reasons we intuitively think we have. For it only makes sense to feel bad about things that make your life go worse for you, but a betrayal that went undetected did not make your life go worse for you, so feeling about bad about it makes no sense. The hedonist, one might have thought, has a variety of replies at her disposal. But I show that none of these responses is satisfactory. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the Roman Catholic tradition the nature of the ordinary/extraordinary means distinction is best understood in light of its historical development. The moralist tradition that reared and nurtured this distinction implicitly developed a set of general criteria to distinguish the extraordinary from the ordinary. These criteria, conjoined with the context within which they were understood, can play an important role in refereeing the contemporary debate over the agressiveness of medical treatment and the extent of one's moral obligation.

The levers of natural selection are random genetic mutation, fitness for survival, and reproductive success. Defenders of the evolutionary debunking account (EDA) hold that such mechanisms aren’t likely to produce cognitive faculties that reliably form true moral beliefs. So, according to EDA, given that our cognitive faculties are a product of unguided natural selection, we should be in doubt about the reliability of our moral cognition. Let the term ‘sanspsychism’ describe the view that no supramundane consciousness exists. In arguing against (...) theism, some sanspsychists advance a normative claim about the moral significance of phenomena like sentient suffering. But if no supramundane consciousness exists, our cognitive faculties are a product of unguided natural selection. It follows that if EDA is correct, the sanspsychist should not think that our moral cognition is reliable. So unless the sanspsychist has a defeater for EDA, she should not think herself justified in appealing to normative reasons for denying the existence of God. (shrink)

Marilyn Adams rightly pointed out that there are many kinds of evil, some of which are horrendous. I claim that one species of horrendous evil is what I call horrendous-difference disabilities. I distinguish two subspecies of horrendous-difference disabilities based in part on the temporal relation between one’s rational moral wishing for a certain human function F and its being thwarted by intrinsic and extrinsic conditions. Next, I offer a theodicy for each subspecies of horrendous-difference disability. Although I appeal to some (...) claims made by Marilyn Adams for this theodicy, I reject one particular claim. I deny that one must be aware that one participates in a horrendous evil when the horrific event occurs. To develop this point and its relevance for a theodicy for horrendous-difference disabilities, I engage with Andrew Chignell’s work on infant suffering. In doing so, I show that what partly motivates the claim is a time-bias, i.e., near-bias. By rejecting this time-bias, I show how it is possible, given post-mortem life, for persons with profound cognitive disabilities to participate in horrendous evils and how these might be defeated by God. (shrink)