In a recent article In Mind , called A Religious Way of Knowing , Mr. C. B. Martin considers the claim made by some theologians to know the existence of God on the basis of direct experience of God. His paper is, he says, “an attempt to indicate how statements concerning a certain alleged religious way of knowing betray a logic extraordinarily like that of statements concerning introspective and subjective ways of knowing. It is not my wish to go from (...) a correct suggestion that the logic is very, very like to the incorrect suggestion that the logic is just like.”. (shrink)

This is the second of five chapters on good, and starts by making the point that it is around the question of the intrinsically good that the chief controversies about the nature of goodness or value revolve, for most theories of value may be divided into those that treat it as a quality and those that treat it as a relation between that which has value and something else ; Ross says that it seems clear that any view that treats (...) goodness as a relation between that which is good and something else denies that anything is intrinsically good. The chapter first discusses R. B. Perry's relational view of value—in the sense of good, and other theories that also identify goodness with some relation, either as a relation between that which is good and some or all of its elements, or as a relation between some or all of its elements, or as a relation between it or some or all of its elements and something else. Next, the psychological theories of good are discussed; these, as a rule, hold that a thing being good means either that some person or persons have some feelings towards it, or some person or persons think it to be good; this is an objective view of good. The rest of the chapter looks at both R. B. Perry's and G. E. Moore's arguments on these theories, at Ross's own views, at badness as incompatible with goodness or as an element of a good thing, at W. M. Urban's work on the question of values, and at B. Croce's arguments on value judgements. Ross concludes that the arguments in favour of thinking of value as an objective are no more successful than those in favour of treating it as a relation, and presents a lengthy validation of his conclusion, based largely on discussion of beauty and goodness. (shrink)

1. Aim and Scope of this Paper.—In this paper I shall try to show that “duty” derives its significance from its relation to “interest,” and that the former concept cannot be understood when taken apart from its relation to the latter. Such a doctrine is, I am aware, rejected by some contemporary philosophers; and I shall, I trust, make it sufficiently clear in the sequel why I am unable to accept their view.I am not, however, concerned primarily with criticism of (...) other theories. This paper represents an attempt to interpret a particular province of “the common moral consciousness” and to elicit the principles there implied. I begin by accepting the view that, like natural science, ethics has its data, and that it is the business of ethics to interpret these data which are the contents of the “moral consciousness.” In Section A I discuss various methods which may be used for the discovery of the relevant data, and suggest that initial enquiries can most fruitfully be pursued in the field of law and custom. In Section B I undertake an analysis of the principles of the law relating to promise-keeping. As a result of what is there found, it becomes necessary, in Section C, to discuss the nature of rights and their relation to interests, and, in Section D, the nature of duties and their relation to rights. (shrink)

© 2016 Regents of the University of California.The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 3,062 new measurements from 721 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. All the particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We also give numerous (...) tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Among the 117 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised, including those on Pentaquarks and Inflation. The complete Review is published online in a journal and on the website of the Particle Data Group. The printed PDG Book contains the Summary Tables and all review articles but no longer includes the detailed tables from the Particle Listings. A Booklet with the Summary Tables and abbreviated versions of some of the review articles is also available. (shrink)

Sensation elicited by a skin stimulus was subjectively reported to feel stronger when followed by a stimulus to somatosensory cerebral cortex , even when C was delayed by up to 400 ms or more. This expands the potentiality for retroactive effects beyond that previously known as backward masking. It also demonstrates that the content of a sensory experience can be altered by another cerebral input introduced after the sensory signal arrives at the cortex. The long effective S-C intervals support the (...) thesis that a duration of cortical activity of up to 0.5 s is required before awareness of a sensory stimulus is developed. (shrink)

This article consisting of four points, shows the subject of multiple relationships between the realities of politics, ethics and the Catholic Church. The issue was presented on the basis of the writings and speeches of Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict XVI. Article begins with a presentation of the relationship between politics and ethics as seen in historical perspective. The second section presents the so-called „political ethics” of the first Christian communities in the light of the indications contained in some (...) of the New Testament writings (cf. 1 Thess; 1 Peter) being the basis for the Christian way of acting in the area of policy. The third section indicates some realities like: progress, science and freedom – considered sometimes as an unquestioned idols and that`s why named once by Ratzinger „myth of modernity” – as a threat to connectivity between politics and ethics. The fourth section discusses the teaching of the Catholic Church on politics and the need for its ethical practice. In addition it contains some concrete proposals of Ratzinger that can be used in contemporary debates on the fundamental values of a democratic state in contemporary pluralistic societies. It also refers to Pope Benedict XVI appeals for more ethics of politics. (shrink)

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better if we were immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Life, Death, and Meaning brings together key readings, primarily by English-speaking philosophers, on such 'big questions.'.

This study provides a formal framework for considering the so-called "Universalizability Principle" in morality and its relation to such metaphysical theses as "Leibnizianism". That these claims are thought to be ethical and metaphysical in import provides the point of the subtitle. In spite of this, however, Rabinowicz's study is less an examination of the arguments which may be given for or against these claims or the uses which may be made of them in morals or metaphysics, than an attempt on (...) a possible worlds model to frame them clearly and to explore their logical mesh. In the introductory chapter Rabinowicz is concerned first to make clear to us what principle it is which he wishes to designate as the Universalizability Principle and to distinguish it from certain others, e.g., the Golden Rule, Kant's Categorical Imperative, Singer's Generalization Principle, Hare's "thesis of universalizability," and principles of impartiality and fairness, with which it may be confused. Specifically, UP represents a claim that the moral properties of things are essentially independent of what might be called their "individual aspects." In terms of his framework, where w, v, u, and z are possible worlds, E represents an equivalence relation of some unspecified manner of sufficient similarity in non-individual aspects, and D is read as "is a deontic alternative to," UP has the following form: if wEv and wDu, then there is a z such that vDz and uEz. On this formulation we are enabled to see where the main problem with UP lies: E must be specified in such a way as to provide significance for UP, i.e., so as to provide us with a clear, non-trivial, non-vacuous formulation of UP which yet conforms to the intuitions of those ethicists who are "universalists." It is this problem and its proposed solution which constitutes the real theme of this book. For suppose that E is specified in terms of either of the two most intuitively obvious and appealing candidates, namely, "exact similarity" and "morally relevant similarity." Then, on Leibnizianism, the exact-similarity variant becomes trivial, whereas the relevant-similarity variant is, by virtue of the systematic unclarity of the notion of "relevance," confusing and useless. Because he accepts the possibility that Leibnizianism may be true, Rabinowicz conceives of his task as one of inquiring whether some third variant of UP can be framed which slips between the horns of this dilemma. (shrink)

New foreword written by HeritageMom, Amber O'Neal Johnston. "During a time when the United States needed to be reminded of the contributions Black people have made to its democracy, freedom, music, literature, and more, W.E.B. Du Bois took on the task of enumerating the gifts that we've provided to our country. "When I began reading The Gift of Black Folk...the story that unfolded was one that I had never anticipated. We the People of the United States, all of us, have (...) left our indelible mark on America the Beautiful." -Amber O'Neal Johnston In 1924, William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois (1868-1963) penned The Gift of Black Folk in response to systemic racism in the United States, showing that "...the American spirit is a new and interesting result of diverse threads of thought and feeling coming not only from America but from Europe and Asia and indeed from Africa." Du Bois was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and later became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University. In 1909 he co-founded the NAACP. Du Bois was a lifelong leader and proponent of civil rights. Amber O'Neal Johnston is a writer, speaker, and home educator who blends life-giving books with a culturally-rich environment for her four children and others. She's the author of A Place to Belong, a guide for families of all backgrounds to celebrate cultural heritage and embrace inclusivity in the home and beyond, and she's known for sharing literary "mirrors and windows" on HeritageMom.com. (shrink)

This paper examines whether a classical model could be translated into a PDP network using a standard connectionist training technique called extra output learning. In Study 1, standard machine learning techniques were used to create a decision tree that could be used to classify 8124 different mushrooms as being edible or poisonous on the basis of 21 different Features (Schlimmer, 1987). In Study 2, extra output learning was used to insert this decision tree into a PDP network being trained on (...) the identical problem. An interpretation of the trained network revealed a perfect mapping from its internal structure to the decision tree, representing a precise translation of the classical theory to the connectionist model. In Study 3, a second network was trained on the mushroom problem without using extra output learning. An interpretation of this second network revealed a different algorithm for solving the mushroom problem, demonstrating that the Study 2 network was indeed a proper theory translation. (shrink)

In nearly every modern society, patriotism, as a form of love related to one’s homeland, possesses its own specific semantic colours. This is so due to historical and cultural differences between nations. In recent debates about the condition of patriotism in Poland as well as political disputes, patriotism is often mentioned as, alongside with others, a civilian virtue. According to various research on public opinions, patriotism is recognised as one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Poles (beside religiousness and (...) resourcefulness). It is a virtue as well as an attitude which Poles manifest in various ways (from the so-called “football” patriotism to simple daily work solidly done with honesty and diligence for the good of one’s homeland). This paper presents a conception of patriotism from the Catholic Social Teaching viewpoint. This teaching, taking into account both Divine Revelation and past experiences of mankind (the socalled “hermeneutical arch” of Moral Theology, perceives the phenomenon of patriotism in a wider context such as nation, homeland, country and international community). The Church insists on upbringing and education of love towards one’s homeland, while distances its teaching clearly and decisively from racial prejudice and hypernationalism (cf. Ad Gentes, 15). (shrink)