John Finnis is a pre-eminent legal, moral and political philosopher. This volume contains over 25 essays by leading international scholars of philosophy and law who critically engage with issues at the heart of Finnis's work.

John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is among the most important books in philosophy ever written. It is a difficult work dealing with many themes, including the origin of ideas; the extent and limits of human knowledge; the philosophy of perception; and religion and morality. This volume focuses on the last two topics and provides a clear and insightful survey of these overlooked aspects of Locke's best-known work. Four eminent Locke scholars present authoritative discussions of Locke's view on the (...) ethics of belief, personal identity, free will and moral theory. (shrink)

This collection of recent articles by leading scholars is designed to illuminate one of the greatest and most influential philosophical books of all time. It includes incisive commentary on every major theme and argument in the Meditations, and will be valuable not only to philosophers but to historians, theologians, literary scholars, and interested general readers.

BackgroundThe Public Health Service Increased Risk designation identified organ donors at increased risk of transmitting hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and human immunodeficiency virus. Despite clear data demonstrating a low absolute risk of disease transmission from these donors, patients are hesitant to consent to receiving organs from these donors. We hypothesize that patients who consent to receiving offers from these donors have decreased time to transplant and decreased waitlist mortality.MethodsWe performed a single-center retrospective review of all-comers waitlisted for liver transplant from (...) 2013 to 2019. The three competing risk events (transplant, death, and removal from transplant list) were analyzed. 1603 patients were included, of which 1244 (77.6%) consented to offers from increased risk donors.ResultsCompared to those who did not consent, those who did had 2.3 times the rate of transplant (SHR 2.29, 95% CI 1.88–2.79, p < 0.0001), with a median time to transplant of 11 months versus 14 months (p < 0.0001), as well as a 44% decrease in the rate of death on the waitlist (SHR 0.56, 95% CI 0.42–0.74, p < 0.0001). All findings remained significant after controlling for the recipient age, race, gender, blood type, and MELD. Of those who did not consent, 63/359 (17.5%) received a transplant, all of which were from standard criteria donors, and of those who did consent, 615/1244 (49.4%) received a transplant, of which 183/615 (29.8%) were from increased risk donors.ConclusionsThe findings of decreased rates of transplantation and increased risk of death on the waiting list by patients who were unwilling to accept risks of viral transmission of 1/300–1/1000 in the worst case scenarios suggests that this consent process may be harmful especially when involving “trigger” words such as HIV. The rigor of the consent process for the use of these organs was recently changed but a broader discussion about informed consent in similar situations is important. (shrink)

This volume gathers leading moral, legal, and political philosophers alongside theologians to examine John Finnis' work. The book offers the first sustained critical study of Finnis' contribution across the philosophy of rationality, legal and political philosophy, and theology. It includes a substantial response from Finnis himself in which he defends and develops his ideas.

This commentary challenges the conclusions reached by Franklin Miller and Robert Truog in their criticism of the President's Council's White Paper, "Controversies in the Determination of Death." I agree with much of Miller and Truog's criticism of the rationale offered by the President's Council for accepting neurological criteria for determining death but argue that they too quickly dismiss the alternative rationale of determining death by neurological criteria-i.e., the destruction of the psychophysical integrity of the human being that occurs when the (...) potential for consciousness and every other mental function is lost due to catastrophic injury to the brain. By focusing on the death of bodies instead of human beings, their view absurdly implies that decapitation would not necessarily result in one's death. Since total brain failure is a form of physiological decapitation, the neurological criterion coheres perfectly well with the ordinary understanding of decapitation as death. (shrink)

In this paper I show how what came to be known as “the double law of habit,” first formulated by Joseph Butler in a discussion of moral psychology in 1736, was taken up and developed by medical physiologists William Porterfield, Robert Whytt, and William Cullen as they disputed fundamental questions regarding the influence of the mind on the body, the possibility of unconscious mental processes, and the nature and extent of voluntary action. The paper shows, on a particular topic, the (...) overlap between eighteenth-century philosophical writings on the science of human nature on the one hand,and medical writings and lectures in physiology on the other. Other early modern writers discussed in the paper include René Descartes, Herman Boerhaave and David Hume. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In this article I contrast 17th and 18th explanations of hysteria including those of Sydenham and Willis with those given by Plato and pre-modern medicine. I show that beginning in the second decade of the 17th century the locus of the disorder was transferred to the nervous system and it was no longer connected with the womb as in Hippocrates and Galen; hysteria became identified with hypochondria, and was a disease contracted by men as well as women. I discuss the (...) purely mechanical explanation of hysteria given by Robert Boyle who attributed its cause to corporeal ideas as well as overly sensitive disposition of the nervous system. I relate this the mechanical theory of the nervous system prominent in Descartes' writings on physiology. The paper closes with a discussion of the contrast between early modern explanations of hysteria and the nature of man with those of Freud in the early 20th century. (shrink)

This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, (...) Georgetown University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

This volume centers on debates about how far moral judgments bind across traditions and epochs. Nowadays such debates appear especially volatile, both in popular culture and intellectual discourse: although there is increasing agreement that the moral and political criteria invoked in human rights documents possess cross-cultural force, many modern and postmodern developments erode confidence in moral appeals that go beyond a local consensus or apply outside a particular community. Often the point of departure for discussion is the Enlightenment paradigm of (...) a common morality, in which it is assumed that certain unchanging beliefs inhere in the structure of human reason. Whereas some thinkers continue to defend this paradigm, others modify it in diverse ways without abandoning entirely the attempt to address a universal audience, and still others jettison virtually all of its distinguishing features. Exhibiting a range of positions Western participants take in these debates, this volume seeks to advance the substance of the debates themselves without prejudging the outcome. Rival assessments of the Enlightenment paradigm are offered from various philosophical and theological points of view. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Robert Merrihew Adams, Annette C. Baier, Alan Donagan, Margaret A. Farley, Alan Gewirth, David Little, Richard Rorty, Jeffrey Stout, and Lee H. Yearley. (shrink)

This volume centers on debates about how far moral judgments bind across traditions and epochs. Nowadays such debates appear especially volatile, both in popular culture and intellectual discourse: although there is increasing agreement that the moral and political criteria invoked in human rights documents possess cross-cultural force, many modern and postmodern developments erode confidence in moral appeals that go beyond a local consensus or apply outside a particular community. Often the point of departure for discussion is the Enlightenment paradigm of (...) a common morality, in which it is assumed that certain unchanging beliefs inhere in the structure of human reason. Whereas some thinkers continue to defend this paradigm, others modify it in diverse ways without abandoning entirely the attempt to address a universal audience, and still others jettison virtually all of its distinguishing features. Exhibiting a range of positions Western participants take in these debates, this volume seeks to advance the substance of the debates themselves without prejudging the outcome. Rival assessments of the Enlightenment paradigm are offered from various philosophical and theological points of view. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Robert Merrihew Adams, Annette C. Baier, Alan Donagan, Margaret A. Farley, Alan Gewirth, David Little, Richard Rorty, Jeffrey Stout, and Lee H. Yearley. (shrink)

The proceedings of the Seventh Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference at the University of Nottinghamin April 1997. Contents: Material culture abd the question of social continuity in Roman Britain ( M. Grahame ); Motivation and ideologies of Romanization ( R. Haussler ); The Romanization of Italy: global accluaturation or cultural bricolage? ( N. Terrenato ); Social change and architectural diversity in Roman period Britain ( S. Clarke ); Reflections in the archaeological record of social developements of Lepcis Magna, Tripolitania ( F. (...) Condron ); Theoretical influences on two reports of Romano-British land division ( J. W. M. Peterson ); Phenoemological perspectives on roads in the landscape ( P. Rush ); The ancient monument in Romano-British ritual practices ( C. Forcey ); The sequence of ritual in cremation burials of the Roman period ( J. Pearce ); Burial and gender in alte and sub-Roman Britain ( D. Petts ); Brooches and identity in 1st century AD Britain ( S. Jundi and J. D. Hill ); A persional view of archaeology and equal opportunities' ( E. Scott ); Clavus annalis, defixiones and minski ( D. Dungworth ); Pottery and paradigms in the early western empire ( J. W. J. Hawthorne ). (shrink)

This collection’s basic theme and thesis, explained by Curtis L. Hancock, “A Critique of Social Construct Theory” and “A Counterfeit Choice,” is that the seeds of contemporary relativism were sown by modern philosophy, primarily Descartes himself, its founder. Following a lead from Gilson, these authors pursue the benefits of classical realism and existential Thomism compared with the Cartesian legacy of subjectivism in modern philosophy. Indeed, Peter Redpath, “Why Descartes was not a Philosopher,” explains why Descartes may not be a philosopher (...) at all, if the significance of the term be properly considered as a love of wisdom and a search for true being. As Maritain coined the phrase, he is an “ideosopher,” in pursuit of the effective idea and rhetorical success, not the contemplation of being. Christopher Cullen, “Transcendental Thomism: Realism Rejected,” argues that the attempt by Karl Rahner, Joseph Donceel, and others to absorb the Cartesian and Kantian approach into Thomism has not proved successful. Robert Geis, “Descartes’s Res: An Interactionist Difficulty,” explains how the objectifying of mind as a thing sets up insoluble difficulties; he argues that a more adequate account is found in Aristotle. Donald DeMarco, “Descartes, Mathematics and Music,” traces out the effect in music when the physical is reduced to the mathematical. The imposition of a uniform method leads to a distortion of what musicians do. William J. Fossati, “Maximum Influence from Minimum Abilities: La Mettrie and Radical Materialism,” traces the Cartesian heritage of reductionism through Julien Offroy de Le Mettrie to the most contemporary attempts to explain human beings as mere biological organisms. (shrink)

Is it the case that God, human beings, and air all share the same capacity for cognition, differing only in the degree to which they engage in cognitive acts? Robert Pasnau has recently argued that according to St. Thomas Aquinas they do, a conclusion that for Pasnau follows straightforwardly from Aquinas’s discussion of God’s cognition in the first part of the Summa theologiae. Further, Pasnau holds that Aquinas’s relation to contemporary cognitive theory should be understood in light of the discussion (...) of God. This essay argues that Pasnau’s analysis is mistaken. It begins by explaining Pasnau’s position. It then considers the problems this reading introduces into Aquinas’s discussion of God’s cognition, as well as those it faces when addressed to air and other cognitive media. Finally, it shows the role that Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy plays in understanding how “cognition” is said of human beings, how it is said of God, and how it is not said in the case of air and other cognitive media. It concludes by suggesting that the logic of analogy is Aquinas’s most crucial contribution to contemporary discussions of mind and cognition. (shrink)

Is it the case that God, human beings, and air all share the same capacity for cognition, differing only in the degree to which they engage in cognitive acts? Robert Pasnau has recently argued that according to St. Thomas Aquinas they do, a conclusion that for Pasnau follows straightforwardly from Aquinas’s discussion of God’s cognition in the first part of the Summa theologiae. Further, Pasnau holds that Aquinas’s relation to contemporary cognitive theory should be understood in light of the discussion (...) of God. This essay argues that Pasnau’s analysis is mistaken. It begins by explaining Pasnau’s position. It then considers the problems this reading introduces into Aquinas’s discussion of God’s cognition, as well as those it faces when addressed to air and other cognitive media. Finally, it shows the role that Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy plays in understanding how “cognition” is said of human beings, how it is said of God, and how it is not said in the case of air and other cognitive media. It concludes by suggesting that the logic of analogy is Aquinas’s most crucial contribution to contemporary discussions of mind and cognition. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Valuing Life. By John Kleinig.

With this issue we initiate the policy of expanding the scope of Tulane Studies in Philosophy to include, in addition to the work of members of the department, contributions from philosophers who have earned advanced degrees from Tulane and who are now teaching in other colleges and universities. The Editor THE LOGIC OF OUR LANGUAGE ROBERT L. ARRINGTON Wittgenstein wrote in the Tractatus that "logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. " 1 In line (...) with his suggestion that a proposition is a 'picture', Wittgenstein argued that propositions 'show' the logical structure of the real. He was insistent, however, that "the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one. " 2 As a result of this we can misunderstand the structure of fact. Philosophical problems arise just when "the logic of our language is mis understood. " 3 It is common knowledge that much of this view of logic was rejected by Wittgenstein himself in the Philosophical Investi gations. There we are told that language has no ideal or sublime 4 logic which mirrors the structure of the extra-linguistic world. Consequently, inferences from the structure of language to the structure of that extra-linguistic world are invalid. Reality can be 'cut up' in any of a number of ways by language. Wittgenstein adopted a view of philosophy which would render that discipline a non-explanatory, non-critical study of the multiple ways in which language can be used. (shrink)

For forty years, Harvey Mansfield has been worth reading. Whether plumbing the depths of MachiavelliOs Discourses or explaining what was at stake in Bill ClintonOs impeachment, MansfieldOs work in political philosophy and political science has set the standard. In Educating the Prince, twenty-one of his students, themselves distinguished scholars, try to live up to that standard. Their essays offer penetrating analyses of Machiavellianism, liberalism, and America., all of them informed by MansfieldOs own work. The volume also includes a bibliography of (...) MansfieldOs writings. (shrink)