(2000). Listening to the Wilderness: The Life and Work of Sigurd F. Olson. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 323-329.

This volume explores whether the concept of the common good might be retrieved and become central in contemporary religious social thought. Contributors include: Charles C. West, John J. Collins, Ralph McInerny; J. Philip Wogaman, Charles E. Curran, Richard John Neuhaus, Dennis P. McCann, Ernest Bartell, Michael Novak, Charles K. Wilber, John W. Cooper, Gar Alperovitz, Richard T. DeGeorge, Gerald Cavanagh, William J. Cunningham, Peter Mann, Bette Jean Bullert and David Vogel. Co-published with the Notre Dame Center for Ethics (...) and Religious Values in Business. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:176 BOOK REVIEWS tianity came into being. To take one example: God's involvement with and reaction to genuine novelties introduced into the world as a result of the initiatives of human freedom, rightly renders suspect the conception of God as immutable. But what immutability really claimed was not anything like inertia or unconcern, but only that God was not mutable in any of the ways characteristic of finite realities (...) striving to transcend their limitations. Immutability was predicated as a property of deity whose essence was Pure Actuality-the consummation of all mutation. What this meant to preclude from God was only change that amounted to some sort of further perfecting of his intrinsic being-leaving the way clear for the possibility at least of relational change vis-a-vis a world of creatures. There is no reason why contemporary experiences of God's saving activity in Christ must be articulated only in the conceptual and linguistic categories of the past. But seemingly there ought to be some means of showing that such newer articulations do not repudiate truths achieved in the past and handed on in authentic living tradition. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. WILLIAM J. HILL, 0.P. The Church: Communion, Sacrament, Communication. By ROBERT KRESS. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. Pp. iv + 217. $9.95. One of the results of the recent synod is certain to be more attention to deepening our understanding of the church as communion. Robert Kress's fine volume cannot help but be a useful contribution to that discussion. As he succinctly states, "the Church is the communion of believers who exist as the sacrament of Christ, who is the sacrament of God, who is the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (p. 59). For Kress any ecclesiology that does not root the church in the triune, perichoretic (a favored word) life of God is a radically truncated one. As a theandric (another favored word) reality, the Church must mirror its ground or source. If that ground is a dynamic, joyous unity-in-diversity, this should be reflected in the life and structures of the ecclesial community. Such is the context in which the author reflects on a variety of themes that are reflective of the post-Vatican II agenda: the relationship among local, regional, and universal churches; the understanding of the church as sacrament; the tension between holiness and office; the meaning of leadership in a community best understood as a perichoretic communion of gifted members. To each of these topics Kress brings a grasp of the BOOK REVIEWS 177 tradition, a wide acquaintance with the relevant theological literature, and a willingness to make provocative judgments ("yes" to the ordination of women; " no " to the new egalitarianism-a church conceived without administrative, pastoral authority.) Kress particularly cherishes the church as "the memory and tradition of Christ." His commitment to this tradition has both rooted him and freed him. He draws knowledgeably on Aquinas and Augustine, Rahner and Heidegger, von Balthasar and the Shepherd of Hermas. Lawrence Cunningham is correct: this book is radically conservative. There is one area where I felt that there was a certain lack. Kress's treatment of the church as sacrament and of the seven sacraments contained much that was valuable: his stress on the sacramentality of ecclesial life as such, his historical analysis of "sacrament", his phenomenolog·y of the nature of Christian worship. Yet all of this seemed strangely abstracted from the liturgical praxis of the Christian community. This lack is especially visible in his admittedly tentative salvation-historical correlation of the sacraments with our sharing in the religious experience of Jesus (pp. 147-148). To make that correlation, especially in the case of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist, without an exp1icit reference to the initiatory, communal dimension of these sacraments is certainly problematic. I would like to make a final comment, not on the substance of the book, but on its editing and proofing. There are a number of errors, the most obvious of which is the elimination of the umlaut from Heribert Miihlen's name. (There is a curious inconsistency, too, in the use of the umlaut. It is used in... (shrink)

Chapter INTRODUCTION i. The Problem Why suppose that sense perception is, by and large, an accurate source of information about the physical environment? ...

" In a book that seeks to shift the ground of debate within theory of knowledge, William P. Alston finds that the century-lo.

In this clear and provocative account of the epistemology of religious experience, William P. Alston argues that the perception of God—his term for direct experiential awareness of God—makes a major contribution to the grounds of religious belief. Surveying the variety of reported direct experiences of God, Alston demonstrates that a person can be justified in holding certain beliefs about God on the basis of mystical experience.

Introduction As the title indicates, the chief focus of this book is epistemic justification. But just what is epistemic justification and what is its place ...

Divine Nature and Human Language is a collection of twelve essays in philosophical theology by William P. Alston, one of the leading figures in the current renaissance in the philosophy of religion. Using the equipment of contemporary analytical philosophy, Alston explores, partly refashions, and defends a largely traditional conception of God and His work in the world a conception that finds its origins in medieval philosophical theology. These essays fall into two groups: those concerned with theological language and those (...) that deal with the nature, status, and activity of God. In Part 1, Alston develops a conceptual scheme for discussing the topic of theological language. He also argues that there is a core of literal talk about God and even a core of predicates univocally applicable to God and creatures. Furthermore, he shows that God can be referred to directly as well as descriptively. In Parts II and III, the author sketches out a middle way between a classical conception of God exemplified by Aquinas and the more recent “process” or “panentheist” conception exemplified by Hartshorne. Alston argues that such a God can act so as to have real effects in the world and can enter into genuine dialogue and otherwise interact with human beings. In addition, he defends the idea that God provides a foundation for morality. The first collection of Alston's ground breaking work in the philosophy of religion, Divine Nature and Human Language will be welcomed by scholars and students of the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, theology, and religious studies. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes and interrelates a number of respects in which persons have been thought to be in a specially favorable epistemic position vis-A-Vis their own mental states. The most important distinction is a six-Fold one between infallibility, Omniscience, Indubitability, Incorrigibility, Truth-Sufficiency, And self-Warrant. Each of these varieties can then be sub-Divided as the kind of modality, If any, Involved. It is also argued that discussions of self-Knowledge have been hampered by a failure to recognize these distinctions.

1. The Naturalistic Turn in Philosophy of Science 2. The Framework of Mechanistic Explanation: Parts, Operations, and Organization 3. Representing and Reasoning About Mechanisms 4. Mental Mechanisms: Mechanisms that Process Information 5. Discovering Mental Mechanisms 6 . Summary.

William P. Alston. difference in the scope of the rule reflects the fact that I-rules exist for the sake of making communication possible. Whereas their cousins are enacted and enforced for other reasons. We could distinguish I-rules just by this ...

Immediate knowledge is here construed as true belief that does not owe its status as knowledge to support by other knowledge (or justified belief) of the same subject. The bulk of the paper is devoted to a criticism of attempts to show the impossibility of immediate knowledge. I concentrate on attempts by Wilfrid Sellars and Laurence Bonjour to show that putative immediate knowledge really depends on higher-level knowledge or justified belief about the status of the beliefs involved in the putative (...) immediate knowledge. It is concluded that their arguments are lacking in cogency. (shrink)

It is no part of my purpose in this paper to advocate Minimal Foundationalism. In fact I believe there to be strong objections to any form of foundationalism, and I feel that some kind of coherence or contextualist theory will provide a more adequate general orientation in epistemology. Will and Lehrer are to be commended for providing, in their different ways, important insights into some possible ways of developing a nonfoundationalist epistemology. Nevertheless if foundationalism is to be successfully disposed of (...) it must be attacked in its most defensible, not in its most vulnerable, form. Although Will and Lehrer reveal weaknesses in historically important forms of foundationalism, it has been my aim in this paper to show that their arguments leave untouched the more modest and less vulnerable form I have called ‘Minimal Foundationalism’, a form approximated to by the most prominent contemporary versions of the position. It is to be hoped that those who are interested in clearing the decks for an epistemology without foundations will turn their critical weapons against such modest and careful foundationalists as Chisholm, Danto, and Quinton. (shrink)

What is it about art that can be so captivating? How is it that we find value in the often odd and abstract objects and events we call artworks? William P. Seeley proposes that artworks are attentional engines. They are artifacts that have been intentionally designed to direct attention to critical stylistic features that reveal their point, purpose, or meaning. In developing this view, Seeley argues that there is a lot we can learn about the value of art from (...) interdisciplinary research focused on our perceptual engagement with artworks. Recent breakthroughs in cognitive science and behavioral science can explain how we recognize artworks and how we differentiate them from more quotidian artifacts. Seeley pushes this line of reasoning, showing how cognitive science can help reveal the way artworks function as a unique source of value. Cognitive systems integrate this information into our experience of art, guiding attention and shaping what we perceive. Our understanding and appreciation of artworks is therefore carried in our perceptual experience of them. -/- Attentional Engines explores the pitfalls and potential of this interdisciplinary strategy for understanding art. It articulates a cognitivist theory of art grounded in perceptual psychology and neuroscience and demonstrates its application to a range of puzzles in the philosophy of the arts. This includes questions about the nature of depiction, the role played by metakinesis in dance appreciation, the nature of musical expression, and the power of movies. The provocative interdisciplinary theories Seeley presents will appeal to scholars and students interested in aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of art, cognitive science, and anyone with a burning curiosity about how artworks work. (shrink)

In this book, William P. George examines both the morality of mining – what’s good and not so good about resource extraction – and the mining of morality, thereby bringing mining closer to the center of personal and collective moral consciousness.

It is no secret that scientists argue. They argue about theories. But even more, they argue about the evidence for theories. Is the evidence itself trustworthy? This is a bit surprising from the perspective of traditional empiricist accounts of scientific methodology according to which the evidence for scientific theories stems from observation, especially observation with the naked eye. These accounts portray the testing of scientific theories as a matter of comparing the predictions of the theory with the data generated by (...) these observations, which are taken to provide an objective link to reality. (shrink)

On the critical side it is argued that, contrary to a widespread view, the explanation of particular facts does not play a central role in pure science and hence that philosophers of science are misguided in supposing that the understanding of such explanations is one of the central tasks of the philosophy of science. It is suggested that the view being attacked may stem in part from an impression that the establishing of a general law is tantamount to the explanation (...) of particular facts that "fall under" the law. This suggestion effects a bridge to the more positive part of the paper, which consists of an exploration of the complexities exhibited by the relation between the two activities. More specifically, I point out a number of disabilities, any one of which could prevent us from being able to explain particular facts that fall under a given law even after having established the law. Some of these have to do with the form of the law, and some have to do with our powers of detection vis-a-vis the particular facts in question. The former sort have to do with the ways in which laws may deviate from the strict-necessary-and-sufficient-condition ideal. The latter include the following points. (1) The individual explanatory factors may lie beyond our present powers of detection. (2) The complexity of such factors may be too great for us to be able to interrelate them. (3) We may be unable to apply concepts used in the law to facts in this area (although they are in fact applicable). (shrink)

P. T. Geach, notoriously, holds the Relative Identity Thesis, according to which a meaningful judgment of identity is always, implicitly or explicitly, relative to some general term. ‘The same’ is a fragmentary expression, and has no significance unless we say or mean ‘the same X’, where ‘X’ represents a general term (what Frege calls a Begriffswort or Begriffsausdruck). (P. T. Geach, Mental Acts (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), p. 69. I maintain that it makes no sense to judge whether (...) things are ‘the same’, or remain ‘the same’, unless we add or understand some general term - ‘the same F’. (P. T. Geach, Reference and Generality, third Edition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 63f. I am arguing for the thesis that identity is relative. When one says ‘x is identical with y’, this, I hold, is an incomplete expression; it is short for ‘x is the same A as y’, where ‘A’ represents some count noun understood from the context of utterance - or else, it is just a vague expression of a half-formed thought. (P. T. Geach, ‘Identity,’ Review of Metaphysics 21 (1967-8), p. 3.) One of the ways Geach seeks to support this is by tying it to the well nigh universally admired Fregean thesis about cardinality. (shrink)

Since the publication of Gilbert Ryle's book, The Concept of Mind, the distinction between dispositions and occurrences has loomed large in the philosophy of mind. In that enormously influential book Ryle set out to show that much of what passes as mental is best construed as dispositional in character rather than, as traditionally supposed, being made up of private “ghostly” occurrences, ‘happenings, or “episodes.” Many philosophers, including some of Ryle's ablest critics, have accepted the terms of Ryle's contentions. They have (...) either agreed, with respect to certain kinds of mental states, that they are not occurrent because dispositional, or have undertaken to vindicate their occurrent status by showing Ryle's dispositional account to be inadequate. Thus U. T. Place in his essay, “The Concept of Heed,” while agreeing with Ryle's dispositional account of belief; memory, intention, and desire, rejects a similar account of heeding, attention, and consciousness, and defends the traditional account according to which they are construed as distinctive sorts of internal activity. And Terence Penelhum, in “The Logic of Pleasure,” defends an “episode-view” of pleasure as against Ryle's dispositional account. (shrink)

From the author of the New York Times bestselling novels The Shack, Cross Roads, and Eve comes a compelling, conversational exploration of the wrong-headed ideas we sometimes have and share about God. Now available in Spanish.