Over the past 25 years, no religious institution in America has done more to explore the link between the environment and spirituality than the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Now, for the first time, a selection of the finest of the Cathedral's ecological sermons appears in a single volume.

This volume offers an English translation of John of St. Thomas's Cursus theologicus I, question I, disputation 2. In this particular text, the Dominican master raises questions concerning the scientific status and nature of theology. At issue, here, are a number of factors: namely, Christianity's continual coming to terms with the "Third Entry" of Aristotelian thought into Western Christian intellectual culture - specifically the Aristotelian notion of 'science' and sacra doctrina's satisfaction of those requirements - the Thomistic-commentary tradition, and (...) the larger backdrop of the Iberian Peninsula's flourishing "Second Scholasticism." In this latter context, John of St. Thomas applies the theological principles of Thomas Aquinas to the Scholastic disputes preoccupying Thomist, Franciscan, and Jesuit theologians, such as Cajetan, Bañez, Luis de Molina, Vazquez, Suárez - to name only a few - in a tour de force of theological thinking throughout the entire period of Scholasticism. In the process - and not insignificantly - the status quaestionis of theology's scientific character is clearly framed and answered according to John's satisfaction. Key to John of St. Thomas's resolution of the question is his understanding of the continuity of the power of human reason with the super-intelligibility of divine revelation spelled out in terms of what he calls "virtual revelation." This text presented in this volume is a quintessential example of the deep and abiding harmony that flourished between faith and reason as well as grace and nature within the golden era of Baroque Scholasticism. (shrink)

The problem of academic dishonesty is as old as it is widespread – dating back millennia and perpetrated by the majority of students. Attempts to promote academic integrity, by comparison, are relatively new and rare – stretching back only a few hundred years and implemented by a small fraction of schools and universities. However, the past decade has seen an increase in efforts among universities to promote academic integrity among students, particularly through the use of online courses or tutorials. Previous (...) research has found this type of instruction to be effective in increasing students’ knowledge of academic integrity and reducing their engagement in academic dishonesty. The present study contributes to this literature with a natural experiment on the effects of the Academic Integrity Course (AIC) at The University of Auckland, which became mandatory for all students in 2015. In 2012, a convenience sample of students (n= 780) had been asked to complete a survey on their perceptions of the University’s academic integrity polices and their engagement in several forms of academic dishonesty over the past year. In 2017, the same procedures and survey were used to collect data from second sample of students (n= 608). After establishing measurement invariance across the two samples on all latent factors, analysis of variance revealed mixed support for the studies hypotheses. Unexpectedly, students who completed the AIC (i.e., the 2017 sample) reported: (1) significantly lower (not higher) levels of understanding, support, and effectiveness with respect to the University’s academic integrity policies; (2) statistically equivalent (not higher) levels of peer disapproval of academic misconduct, and; (3) significantly higher (not lower) levels of peer engagement in academic misconduct. However, results related to participants’ personal engagement in academic misconduct offered partial support for hypotheses – those who completed the AIC reported significantly lower rates of engagement on three of the eight behaviors included in the study. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed as well as possible future directions for research. (shrink)

Most donated organs in the United States come from brain dead donors, while a small percentage come from patients who die in “controlled,” or expected, circumstances, typically after the family or surrogate makes a decision to withdraw life support. The number of organs available for transplant could be substantially if donations were permitted in “uncontrolled” circumstances–that is, from people who die unexpectedly, often outside the hospital. According to projections from the Institute of Medicine, establishing programs permitting “uncontrolled donation after circulatory (...) determination of death,” or uDCDD, throughout the United States has the potential to provide 22,000 more donation opportunities annually. In contrast, U.S. controlled donation after circulatory determination of death, or cDCDD, cases have increased progressively over the past decade from 87 to 848 donors, but currently account for only 10.6 percent of all deceased donors. Following the IOM recommendations, several projects exploring the feasibility of uDCDD were funded by the federal government, including a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration that supported a pilot project in New York City in which the authors of this article participated.A key feature of our protocol, and indeed of many uDCDD protocols, is the initiation of preservation methods such as chest compressions and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation shortly after death in order to perfuse and preserve the donor's organs. Critics of uDCDD argue that the means of determining death deviates from generally ascribed principles. They assert that reinstituting circulation in order to preserve organs has the effect of “undoing” the prior determination of death. The result is that cDCDD is widely accepted and practiced routinely even though it only marginally increases the number of organs available for transplantation, and uDCDD is widely considered unacceptable despite being ethically embraced and proven to significantly increase organ donation opportunities in other countries. This article explores the evolution of this counterintuitive state of affairs and calls for a policy that, in line with the IOM report, allows for both cDCDD and uDCDD protocols. (shrink)

With a few exceptions, the relation of modern science to medieval natural philosophy is a question that has been largely shunned in the Neothomistic era, in favor of a preoccupation with establishing a “realist metaphysics” that has no need for science in the modern sense nor, for that matter, any need for natural philosophy either. Fr. Ashley’s work confronts this narrow preoccupation head-on, arguing that, in the view of St. Thomas himself, there can be no human wisdom which leaves aside (...) scientific development. Ashley even goes so far as to point the way tothe possible development of philosophy beyond the terms of the realist / idealist framework in which Neothomism had its say. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Rembrandt BookProfessor Emeritus John Adkins RichardsonThe Rembrandt Book by Gary Schwartz. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2006, 384 pp. $40.95, cloth.This truly is the Rembrandt book. Substantial in every way, it is physically imposing, magnificently printed on heavy, glossy stock and profusely illustrated with splendid color reproductions of all the master’s major works and many sketches and preparatory drawings, as well as etchings and dry-point (...) engravings. Gary Schwartz, who studied art history at New York University and Johns Hopkins University, is now living in the Netherlands. The merits of his book are enormous. Not only is it filled with magnificent reproductions, there are tables and graphs detailing such things as the number of Rembrandt paintings in catalogues from 1836 to 1992; analyses of the artist’s borrowings and adaptations in five-year periods; key dates in the life of the man; Rembrandt’s relation to the forms of sale for paintings in the Dutch seventeenth century; and so on. There is even a computer rendering of the famous depiction of Captain Banning Cocq’s Company of Guards at the Gates of Amsterdam (popularly called The Night Watch), specifying the weapons shown and identifying all present, either by name and title or by a description, such as “girl in gold and blue,” “pikeman,” “musketeer,” etc.A sampling of the chapter headings and subcategories suggests just how comprehensive is Schwartz’s treatment: 1. Introduction, 2. A Dutch Artist’s Life, 3. Family, Loved Ones, Households, 4. Craft, 5. Earning and Spending, 6. Patrons, 7. Landscape, 8. Humankind, 9. Man and God. Just the specifics of the last chapter are remarkably capacious: Holy Family; Christ’s Ministry; Passion, Death and Afterlife; Divine Intervention; Holy People; Moral Examples from the Old Testament; The Man of God, Simeon; Afterlife; and Rembrandt as a Christian Rhetorician of the Brush. It’s hard to imagine a better reference for the lay reader than The Rembrandt Book.The book is also full of interesting contrasts of opinion as well as some surprising remarks. As for one of the latter, Schwartz writes that Rembrandt’s “portraits are said to be more ‘psychological’ than those of his contemporaries. What this might mean I frankly do not understand” (213). He goes on to note that the field of psychology did not exist in Rembrandt’s time. However, from long before its invention people spoke of Rembrandt’s ability to reveal the soul of the sitter. Indeed, the reason I was not surprised, although somewhat distressed, when the Rembrandt Research Project—a group of connoisseurs set up in 1969 with the explicit charge of authenticating all works ascribed to the master—announced in 1985 that The Man with a Golden Helmet in Berlin was not by the master at all, was that I had all along been troubled by this face that lacked the quality of animation in repose so [End Page 115] characteristic of Rembrandt portraits. Schwartz thinks the artist would have to have relied upon the ancient theory of the humors to do “characterological descriptions” of his sitters, and that in portraiture, “such characterizations would quickly resemble caricatures.” And, indeed, they do, but in profoundly subtle ways, much as someone like the popular illustrator Norman Rockwell employed tiny caricature-like distortions to project a kind of homely Americanism. I’m not comparing Rockwell to Rembrandt but choosing a realistic illustrator in whose work the trick is more apparent. Caricature can be as broad as it is in Jacques Callot, William Hogarth, or Honoré Daumier and yet be a feature of true art. Or so it seems to me, admittedly, a sometimes cartoonist as well as painter and engraver.Schwartz’s completeness of coverage leads him to include, in addition to superb drawings and prints, some that are so careless and hasty as to make one doubt their authenticity. One of the works of marginal quality is an etching of Six’s Bridge, which is said to have been created outdoors, hastily, on the site. This is a hotly debated issue. Rembrandt is known to have carried “varnished”—that is, grounded—copper etching plates, so there wouldn’t seem much reason to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 95 OCKHAM ON INTUITIVE COGNITION t In the first part of what follows, I try to locate Ockham's theory of intuitive cognition in the context of one set of philosophical problems rather than another. The device I use is to emphasize the major error Ockham wants to avoid: "platonism" rather than scepticism. In the second part, I try to show how difficulties raised by some recent (...) commentary result from the wrong orientation. This very limited project involves neither exposition nor assessment of Ockham's proposed solutions for the philosophical problems. But hopefully it will prove useful or at least suggestive for others working in this or related areas in Ockham. According to Ockham, 2 someone can be said to hold to or cognize a proposition evidently when he knows it to be true. The paradigm of knowing something to be true is seeing that it follows from the premisses in a demonstrative syllogism. However, first principles, or any proposition per se nota, can also be known to be true or cognized evidently. And, what is most important for our purposes, contingent propositions can be cognized evidently when, as one might say, they are known in experience. When someone is looking at a white wall, to ~se one of Ockham's examples, he can cognize evidently the proposition "The wall is white." 3 i Aside from a few quotations, I have given only the location of references in Ockham. Only very extensive quotations would make the article self-sufficient or, for that matter, even be helpful to the reader. My effort is both tentative and parasitic on earlier commentary and can, perhaps, be excused from providing logistic support that would far exceed its own weight. Moreover, I have tried to direct the reader to the most convenient materials, using fairly common or obvious abbreviations for Ockham's writings and the symbols given in the brackets for each of these sources. [Baudry] L Baudry, Lexique philosophique de Guillaume d'Ockham (Paris, 1958). [McKeon] R. McKeon, Selections /tom Medieval Philosophers, Vol. II (New York, 1929). This almost literal translation of selected Quodlibeta is sufficient for my present purposes. The Strasbourg edition of 1491, of course, is not more readily available m the reimpression from Louvain, Editions de la Biblioth~que Sd., 1962. [OPW] P. Boehner, Ockham: Philosophical Writings (New York, 1957). The page numbers given are from the Nelson edition, containing both Latin and English. The Library of Liberal Arts (Bobbs-Merrill) edition which consists only of the English text runs from one to sixteen pages ahead as a result of numbering the blank pages at the beginning of each section. [Ordinatio] Opera Philosophica et Theologica (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1967). Vol. I: Scripture in Librum Primum Sententiarum Ordinatio, Prologus et Distinctio Prima, edited by G. Gal and S. Brown. The lines referred to are given as superscripts to the page numbers. a Expos. Physicorum, Prologue ([OPW] pp. 4-5). See also [Baudry] under scire and evidens. a The issue of translation raises a host of problems of varying degrees of philosophical importance. I am not settled in my own mind about the best English equivalents for many important terms, and in my translations and commentary I have not tried for consistency. In principle, I prefer odd or quaint terms, since they bear their faults on their 96 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY At one point, Ockham gives this description: Whoever knows some proposition evidently cannot dissent from that proposition by the power of the will alone, but it is necessary that he be persuaded by an argument more strongly moving his intellect to dissent, or it is necessary that he have forgotten something evidently known.4 Let me call your attention to the un-Cartesian way in which Ockham removes the judgement of some contingent (and all necessary) propositions from the (total) dominion of the will. I may remain silent or talk of something else, or I may avail myself of questions and conditionals, but if I intend to deal head-on with equals added to equals or (while looking at the white wall) with walls and whiteness, I cannot but assert that equals added to equals are equal or... (shrink)

With precision and profundity born of 30 years of devoted study, John Boyle offers an essential introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas on Scripture, shedding helpful light on the goals, methods, and commitments that animate the Angelic Doctor's engagement with the sacred page. Because the genius of St. Thomas's approach to the Bible lies not so much in its novelty but rather in the fidelity and clarity with which he recapitulates the riches of the preceding interpretive Tradition, this initiation into (...) St. Thomas's vision of Scripture is itself an orientation to the Church's vision of Scripture, from the Fathers through and beyond the Middle Ages. St. Thomas's embeddedness within the Church's Tradition and his own historical context is integral to his approach to Scripture, yet it sets him at some distance from modern readers, for whom his interpretive vision may seem perplexing or even impenetrable. In this Primer, Boyle first provides an acclimation to this medieval context through a survey and explanation of pertinent technical terminology used by St. Thomas and characteristic of the scholastic theology of the time. With an eye to the medieval practice of considering Scripture according to the fourfold division of causes, Boyle builds on this initial foundation by exploring in turn St. Thomas's accounts of the end or use of Scripture (final cause), its divine and human authorship (efficient cause), its order and division (material cause), and its literary styles or genres (formal cause). Drawing on writings from across St. Thomas's corpus, but especially his work On the Commendation and Division of Sacred Scripture and the prologues to his biblical commentaries, Boyle masterfully elucidates both the hermeneutical principles and deep wisdom of the Angelic Doctor's approach to Scripture, imparting invaluable guidance not only for reading and understanding St. Thomas and other great masters of the Tradition, but also-and ultimately-for understanding Scripture in light of this Tradition and reading it with greater benefit and joy. (shrink)

The background and purpose of this paper require some explanation. It is not the product of a New Testament scholar, able to weigh and balance theories as to date, origin and doctrinal background of the text attributed to St John, nor to assess the identification of its author with the beloved Disciple elsewhere mentioned or with the author of the Apocalypse, nor to consider his relationship to Gnostics or Stoics or Essenes or other influences in the contemporary Jewish or (...) Christian ambience. It is only the effort of one who recognizes in St John's Gospel, if read with an appropriate hermeneutic, a supreme mystico-religious document which can provide guidance at every turn of the spiritual life, but which, if read in another manner, becomes only the expression of a hard-line particularism, which is not less unacceptable in that it acclaims a particular standing in a special relation to another particular on which we all depend for our existence and for all our properties. Conceive of God, or the supreme object of worship, as a particular among particulars, and as much other than ourselves as other things and persons are other, and religious reverence becomes a repugnant form of heteronomous idolatry, wrought up, moreover, with the blind acceptance of a large number of historic and cosmic myths. But conceive of God as being something beyond category-differences, and which as much transcends particularity as it transcends any form of abstract universality, and which incorporates in strict identity all those values of Truth, Love, Beauty, Justice, etc. which are all simply universality in action, and which, moreover, as much transcends personality and personal relationships as it also may have in them its supreme expression, and religion and worship at once acquire a perfect sense and reference. (shrink)

Over the past 40 years, scholars and practitioners of public relations have often cast public relations workers in the role of the public relations-person-as-corporate-conscience. This work, however, maintains that this construct is so problematic that invoking it is of negligible use in addressing ethical issues that emerge during a crisis. In fact, a complex crisis, such as the Jahi McMath “brain death” case at Children’s Hospital Oakland, demonstrates the need to abandon the PRPaCC construct to better engage affected stakeholders, including (...) “outsiders” to the organization, who often determine whether an organization is facing a crisis. Through an examination of both the concept of the PRPaCC and the McMath crisis, this work makes the case for moving beyond the PRPaCC construct in favor of a more modest role for the public relations person: facilitating widespread ethical deliberation and discussion throughout an organization, potentially helping the organization alleviate concerns that contribute to crises. (shrink)

A number of ways of taxonomizing human learning have been proposed. We examine the evidence for one such proposal, namely, that there exist independent explicit and implicit learning systems. This combines two further distinctions, (1) between learning that takes place with versus without concurrent awareness, and (2) between learning that involves the encoding of instances (or fragments) versus the induction of abstract rules or hypotheses. Implicit learning is assumed to involve unconscious rule learning. We examine the evidence for implicit learning (...) derived from subliminal learning, conditioning, artificial grammar learning, instrumental learning, and reaction times in sequence learning. We conclude that unconscious learning has not been satisfactorily established in any of these areas. The assumption that learning in some of these tasks (e.g., artificial grammar learning) is predominantly based on rule abstraction is questionable. When subjects cannot report the rules that govern stimulus selection, this is often because their knowledge consists of instances or fragments of the training stimuli rather than rules. In contrast to the distinction between conscious and unconscious learning, the distinction between instance and rule learning is a sound and meaningful way of taxonomizing human learning. We discuss various computational models of these two forms of learning. (shrink)

Known to produce out-of-body states and profound changes in sensory perception, mood, and thought, DMT is a potent short-lasting tryptamine that has experienced growing appeal in the last decade, independent from ayahuasca, the Amazonian visionary brew in which it is an integral ingredient. Investigating user reports available online as well as a variety of other sources consulted in extended cultural research, this article focuses on the “breakthrough” event commonly associated with the DMT trance. The DMT breakthrough event coincides with significant (...) revelatory outcomes associated with perceived contact with “entities” and the transmission of information often in the form of visual language. Examination of the breakthrough event offers insight on the liminal phenomenology of DMT and other tryptamines, a liminality that is given primary expression in reported travels in “hyperspace.” The article examines user reports of DMT “hyperspace” observing a transitional process that, unlike conventional passage rites, is private, individualized, internal, and “ritual like.” As an exploratory discussion of an under-researched phenomenon, the article enters this virtual terrain through a discussion of the gnostic, therapeutic, and recreational modalities of DMT use, before exploring ritual-like modes of transmission and concluding with comments on the ontological significance of the DMT trance. (shrink)

In this book of the world's greatest architects explores the original aims and principles of modern architecture.

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls devised the method of reflective equilibrium in an attempt to broker consensus between ethical approaches emphasising individual moral judgements, and those emphasising moral principles, expanding this method in the later paper; “The Independence of Moral Theory”, to produce wide reflective equilibrium. In a number of essays compiled in Justice and Justification, Norman Daniels articulated a more comprehensive version of Rawls's methodology in response to something of a similar struggle within contemporary bioethics, between (...) those bioethical approaches emphasising individual moral judgements, those emphasising bioethical principles and those emphasising bioethical theory; the casuists, the principlists and the descriptivists respectively. In addition to the level of considered moral judgements and that of moral principles that comprise Rawls's reflective equilibrium, Daniels's model proposes a third level of interconnecting background theories in order to incorporate the three dominant strands of contemporary bioethics, to broker consensus between those whose considered moral judgements are in conflict, and to guard against the endpoint of the reflective equilibrium being overly determined by these judgements. However, it is unclear whether his method aids the objectives he set, or whether it in fact hinders them. (shrink)

Australian legislation at both state and federal levels has been passed in the last two years enabling the creation and use of cloned embryos up until their fourteenth day of development. Yet for this fourteen-day threshold to carry moral weight it must be shown that an embryo may be plausibly attributed some kind of moral standing after this point that it cannot be accorded before it Moral standing may be conferred using Steven Buckle’s account of potential to become (after one (...) problem with his account is dealt with) but such standing has often been withheld from the embryo prior to the fourteenth day due to the possibility of monozygotic twinning and the violation of numerical continuity this represents. This article discusses the influential argument regarding monozygotic twinning articulated by Peter Singer and Helga Kuhse, and finds it insufficient to negate either the ‘identity thesis’ they describe or Buckle’s account of potential to become. (shrink)

What do we mean when we say we want to put children at the centre of policy? What are the moral justifications for this approach? Has it become harder for us to understand this concept, when in practice paid work has been at the centre? In part confusion arises because the unpaid work of caring for children is invisible until it is marketized. In turn, the underlying problem is that we have forgotten our traditions of egalitarianism and adopted a powerful (...) mindset that is proving to be paralyzing. Exploring New Zealand family policies such as paid parental leave, early childhood education, child tax credits suggests that there is much room for improvement if the needs of children are to come first. But first and foremost we must have a very different, child-centric, colour-blind, non-judgmental change of heart. (shrink)

Written by an emigrant French aristocrat turned farmer, the Letters from an American Farmer posed the famous question `What, then, is the American, this new man?', as the new nation took shape before the eyes of the world. Addressing some of American literature's most pressing concerns and issues of identity, the Letters celebrates personal determination, freedom from institutional oppression and the largeness and fertility of the land, and also raises darker and more symbolic elements, particularly slavery. This is the only (...) critical edition available of what is regarded as the first ever work of American literature. (shrink)

This review focuses on Pekka Hämäläinen’s characterization and analysis of the Comanche empire as a spatial category in The Comanche Empire and discusses how this work relates to broader discussions about space and power in borderlands and imperial histories. Although empires have long been central actors in borderlands histories, “empire” has not necessarily been a category of spatial organization and analysis and certainly not one used to describe spaces controlled by Native peoples. By contrast, while Hämäläinen emphasizes the imperial characteristics (...) of the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of Comanche history , he also uses “empire” to characterize Comanche dominance spatially. Hämäläinen helps us to rethink the spatial dynamics that both shaped and were produced by the encounters between Comanches and Spaniards, French, Mexicans, Americans, and other Native peoples in the Great Plains during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By analyzing how Comanches came to control vast stretches of the southern plains, The Comanche Empire challenges our assumptions about how Native polities and imperial powers thought about territorial claims and how they employed more nuanced spatial strategies to assert their authority, extend their cultural influence, and control trade and resources. (shrink)

Why would a successful physician who has undergone seven years of rigorous medical training take the trouble to seek out and learn to practice alternative methods of healing such as homeopathy and Chinese medicine? From Doctor to Healer answers this question as it traces the transformational journeys of physicians who move across the philosophical spectrum of American medicine from doctor to healer. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Gloria St. John conducted extensive interviews to discover how and why physicians make the move (...) to alternative medicine, what sparks this shift, and what beliefs they abandon or embrace in the process. After outlining the basic models of American health care-the technocratic, humanistic, and holistic-the authors follow the thoughts and experiences of forty physicians as they expand their horizons in order to offer effective patient care. The book focuses on the radical shift from one end of the spectrum to the other-from the technocratic approach to holism-made by most of the interviewees. Because many American physicians find such a drastic change too threatening, the authors also address the less radical transition to humanism-a movement toward compassionate care arising from within the medical system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:St. Thomas Aquinas's Appeal to St. John the Baptist as a Benchmark of Spiritual GreatnessJohn Baptist Ku, O.P.When we think of sources of St. Thomas Aquinas's speculative theology, we rightly recall teachings given in Scripture—such as that sin came into the world through one man (Rom 5:12) or that all that the Father has belongs also to the Son (John 16:15)—as well as teachings, based on Scripture, (...) imparted by Church councils or Fathers, such as that Christ is one person with two natures1 or that the human nature of Christ is an instrument of his divinity.2 In the project of faith seeking understanding, these teachings lead expeditiously to distinctions and clarifications concerning person and nature, habit and action, primary and instrumental causality, intellect and will, faith and reason, and the like. However, the saints themselves too serve as a source for Aquinas's speculative theological reflection. Though they admittedly constitute a less abundant source than scriptural, conciliar, or patristic teaching, the saints' contribution to Aquinas's theology merits our attention.For instance, in "Jean-Baptiste: figure du prêcheur chez Thomas d'Aquin," Jean-Pierre Torrell observes that Aquinas's research into the Fathers of the Church for the Catena aurea bore considerable influence on his subsequent works, and Torrell documents how Aquinas's treatment of John the Baptist is a precise case that shows this influence.3 More recent [End Page 1119] scholarship has, fortunately, taken note of the saints' contribution to Aquinas's theology—in the figures of St. Benedict and the virgin martyrs.4This article will therefore examine St. John the Baptist as just such a source of Aquinas's speculative theology. Aquinas appeals to St. John as a benchmark of spiritual greatness against which to situate other figures: Christ, angels, Mary, apostles, prophets, evangelists, priests, and the people of God. By examining these cases, we will not only observe the Angelic Doctor's appreciation of the saints as our teachers, as examples to be imitated, and as proofs of God's love in transformative grace; we will also witness aspects of the Dominican master's theological method, that is, in his manner of interpreting Scripture and his application of reason to scriptural data to make arguments and draw conclusions.5 For instance, in his treatment of the least in the kingdom of heaven, Scripture will definitively confirm what theological reasoning can determine concerning the knowledge of those with the beatific vision. Furthermore, his exposition on the Blessed Virgin will reveal that he reads the Bible as a whole with one divine author, in support of traditional interpretations.6 However, he is not naive about diverse human authorship and the literal versus the spiritual senses [End Page 1120] of Scripture,7 and his methodology unveils his explicit conviction that Scripture must be the basis of theological claims.8My presentation will unfold in five sections. After (1) a glance at some of Aquinas's comments on the authority of various sources of theology so as to situate our conversation about the saints as a source of theology, I will review Aquinas's enlistment of John the Baptist as a standard by which to establish: (2) three simple points about Christians and Christ—that all of the articles of faith must be accepted, that prepubescent children can enter religious life, and that Christ's baptism manifests divine power—(3) the superiority of angels to wayfarers, among whom John the Baptist is the greatest, followed by apostles, prophets, and evangelists; (4) the eminence of John the Baptist and a ranking, in order, of God, angels, John the Baptist, prophets, priests, and then God's people; and (5) the holiness of Mary the Mother of God.The Authority of Various Sources of TheologyIn just a few lines in the Summa theologiae, Aquinas identifies the roles of reason and authority in theology. On one hand, "it is most proper" to theology to offer "proofs from authority," since theology's "principles are known through revelation"—making theological arguments dependent on "the authority of those making the revelation." But on the other hand, theology "also uses human reason, not to... (shrink)

All known structural extensions of the substructural logic $\textbf{FL}_{\textbf{e}}$, the Full Lambek calculus with exchange/commutativity (corresponding to subvarieties of commutative residuated lattices axiomatized by $\{\vee, \cdot, 1\}$ -equations), have decidable theoremhood; in particular all the ones defined by knotted axioms enjoy strong decidability properties (such as the finite embeddability property). We provide infinitely many such extensions that have undecidable theoremhood, by encoding machines with undecidable halting problem. An even bigger class of extensions is shown to have undecidable deducibility problem (the (...) corresponding varieties of residuated lattices have undecidable word problem); actually with very few exceptions, such as the knotted axioms and the other prespinal axioms, we prove that undecidability is ubiquitous. Known undecidability results for non-commutative extensions use an encoding that fails in the presence of commutativity, so and-branching counter machines are employed. Even these machines provide encodings that fail to capture proper extensions of commutativity, therefore we introduce a new variant that works on an exponential scale. The correctness of the encoding is established by employing the theory of residuated frames. (shrink)

This volume offers an English translation of John of St. Thomas's Cursus theologicus I, question I, disputation 2. In this particular text, the Dominican master raises questions concerning the scientific status and nature of theology. At issue, here, are a number of factors: namely, Christianity's continual coming to terms with the "Third Entry" of Aristotelian thought into Western Christian intellectual culture - specifically the Aristotelian notion of 'science' and sacra doctrina's satisfaction of those requirements - the Thomistic-commentary tradition, and (...) the larger backdrop of the Iberian Peninsula's flourishing "Second Scholasticism." In this latter context, John of St. Thomas applies the theological principles of Thomas Aquinas to the Scholastic disputes preoccupying Thomist, Franciscan, and Jesuit theologians, such as Cajetan, Bañez, Luis de Molina, Vazquez, Suárez - to name only a few - in a tour de force of theological thinking throughout the entire period of Scholasticism. In the process - and not insignificantly - the status quaestionis of theology's scientific character is clearly framed and answered according to John's satisfaction. Key to John of St. Thomas's resolution of the question is his understanding of the continuity of the power of human reason with the super-intelligibility of divine revelation spelled out in terms of what he calls "virtual revelation." This text presented in this volume is a quintessential example of the deep and abiding harmony that flourished between faith and reason as well as grace and nature within the golden era of Baroque Scholasticism. (shrink)

Physical activity, and likely the motivation for it, varies throughout the day. The aim of this investigation was to create a short assessment (CRAVE: Cravings for Rest and Volitional Energy Expenditure) to measure motivation states (wants, desires, urges) for physical activity and sedentary behaviors. Five studies were conducted to develop and evaluate the construct validity and reliability of the scale, with 1,035 participants completing the scale a total of 1,697 times. In Study 1, 402 university students completed a questionnaire inquiring (...) about the want or desire to perform behaviors “at the present moment (right now).” Items related to physical activity (e.g., “move my body”) and sedentary behaviors (e.g., “do nothing active”). An exploratory structural equation model (ESEM) revealed that 10 items should be retained, loading onto two factors (5 each for Move and Rest). In Study 2, an independent sample (n= 444) confirmed these results and found that Move and Rest desires were associated with stage-of-change for exercise behavior. In Study 3, 127 community-residing participants completed the CRAVE at 6-month intervals over two years- two times each session. Across-session interclass correlations (ICC) for Move (ICC = 0.72–0.95) and Rest (ICC = 0.69–0.88) were higher than when they were measured across 24-months (Move: ICC = 0.53; Rest: ICC = 0.49), indicating wants/desires have state-like qualities. In Study 4, a maximal treadmill test was completed by 21 university students. The CRAVE was completed immediately pre and post. Move desires decreased 26% and Rest increased 74%. Changes in Move and Rest desires were moderately associated with changes in perceived physical fatigue and energy. In Study 5, 41 university students sat quietly during a 50-min lecture. They completed the CRAVE at 3 time points. Move increased 19.6% and Rest decreased 16.7%. Small correlations were detected between move and both perceived energy and tiredness, but not calmness or tension. In conclusion, the CRAVE scale has good psychometric properties. These data also support tenets of the WANT model of motivation states for movement and rest (Stults-Kolehmainen et al., 2020a). Future studies need to explore how desires to move/rest relate to dynamic changes in physical activity and sedentarism. (shrink)

Prologue 1. To begin with, the first principle from Whom all illumination descends as from the Father of Light, by Whom are given all the best and perfect gifts, the eternal Father do I call upon through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, that by the intercession of the most holy Virgin Mary, mother of God Himself and of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and of the blessed Francis, our father and leader, He may enlighten the eyes of our mind to (...) guide our feet into the way of that peace "which surpasses all understanding", which peace our Lord Jesus Christ has announced and given to us; which lesson our father Francis always taught, in all of whose preaching was the annunciation of peace both in the beginning and in the end, wishing for peace in every greeting, yearning for ecstatic peace in every moment of contemplation, as a citizen of that Jerusalem of which that man of peace said, with those that hated peace he was peaceable, "Pray ye for the things that are for the peace of Jerusalem". For he knew that the throne of Solomon was nowise save in peace, since it is written, "His place is in peace and His abode in Sion". 2. Since, then, following the example of the most blessed father Francis, I breathlessly sought this peace, I, a sinner, who have succeeded to the place of that most blessed father after his death, the seventh Minister General of the brothers, though in all ways unworthy--it happened that by the divine will in the thirty-third year after the death of that blessed man I ascended to Mount Alverna as to a quiet place, with the desire of seeking spiritual peace; and staying there, while I meditated on the ascent of the mind to God, amongst other things there occurred that miracle which happened in the same place to the blessed Francis himself, the vision namely of the winged Seraph in the likeness of the Crucified. While looking upon this vision, I immediately saw that it signified the suspension of our father himself in contemplation and the way by which he came to it. 3. For by those six wings are rightly to be understood the six stages of illumination by which the soul, as if by steps or progressive movements, was disposed to pass into peace by ecstatic elevations of Christian wisdom. The way, however, is only through the most burning love of the Crucified, Who so transformed Paul, "caught up into the third heaven", into Christ, that he said, "With Christ I am nailed to the cross, yet I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me" ; who therefore so absorbed the mind of Francis that his soul was manifest in his flesh and he bore the most holy stigmata of the Passion in his body for two years before his death. Therefore the symbol of the six-winged Seraph signifies the six stages of illumination, which begin with God's creatures and lead up to God, to Whom no one can enter properly save through the Crucified. For he who does not enter by the door but otherwise, he is a thief and a robber. But if anyone does enter by this door, he shall go in and go out and shall find pastures. Because of this John says in his Apocalypse, "Blessed are they that wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb, that they may have a right to the Tree of Life and may enter in by the gates into the City"; as if he were to say that one cannot enter into the heavenly Jerusalem through contemplation unless one enter through the blood of the Lamb as through a gate. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with those commentators of Heidegger's philosophy whose point of entry into his thinking is the inherited prejudices of others. It demonstrates that if prior judgments are suspended, so that Heidegger's texts are permitted to speak for themselves, the truth of his `position', more a wege than a static motionless point, gradually and inexorably begins to emerge. I take Pope Benedict's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, to draw the theological contours of a truly post-modern ethic. I then (...) hold up Heidegger's philosophy, as this is characterized principally though not exclusively in his lecture Der Satz Der Identität, to consider possible symmetries. Finally I offer an answer to the question: does Heidegger's thought have ethical consequences? (shrink)

In the original target article (Shanks & St. John 1994), one of our principal conclusions was that there is almost no evidence that learning can occur outside awareness. The continuing commentaries raise some interesting questions, especially about the definition of learning, but do not lead us to abandon our conclusion.