One of the most influential analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, William P. Alston is a leading light in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. In this volume, twelve leading philosophers critically discuss the central topics of his work in these areas, including perception, epistemic circularity, justification, the problem of religious diversity, and truth.

Patrick D Walsh; Open and Loaded Uses of ‘Education’—and objectivism, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 23–35, https://.

Extant attempts to incorporate _intensionality_ into the grammar either systematically over-generate, or systematically under-generate. In this paper, building on Keshet (Linguist and Philos 33(4):251–283, 2011), we aim to reconcile a scopal account of _de re_ with the possibility of _de re_ readings out of scope islands. By adapting compositional techniques for dealing with exceptionally scoping indefinites (Charlow, in On the semantics of exceptional scope, PhD thesis, Rutgers University, 2014; The scope of alternatives: indefiniteness and islands. Linguist and Philos 43(4):427–472, 2020), (...) we develop an intensional grammar in which exceptional _de re_ is achieved via _cyclic scope_. World-sensitive expressions are converted into scope-takers via a constrained inventory of type-flexible operators. Type flexibility _explains_ the possibility of apparently island-violating _de re_ by predicting the possibility of cyclic scope-taking. We argue that the resulting theory—which we dub the _flexible scope theory_—is sufficiently expressive to address the under-generation issues of current accounts, while still capturing constraints on _de re_ in an explanatory fashion. (shrink)

Allocating access to unapproved COVID-19 drugs available via Pre-Approval Access pathways or Emergency Use Authorization raises unique challenges at the intersection of clinical care and research....

Between people who unabashedly support eating meat and those who adopt moral vegetarianism, lie a number of people who are uncomfortably carnivorous and vaguely wish they could be vegetarians. Opposing animal suffering in principle, they can ignore it in practice, relying on the visual disconnect between supermarket meat and slaughterhouse practices not to trigger their moral emotions. But what if we could have the best of both worlds in reality—eat meat and not harm animals? The nascent biotechnology of tissue culture, (...) originally researched for medical applications, holds out just such a promise. Meat could be grown in vitro without killing animals. In fact, this technology may not just be an intriguing option, but might be our moral obligation to develop. (shrink)

In reexamining the "sex war" debates between radical feminists and lesbian feminist sadomasochists, I find that the actual practice of sadomasochism provides the basis for a philosophically more complex position than has been articulated. In response to the anti-SM radical perspective, I develop a distinction between simulation and replication of patriarchal dominant/submissive activities. In light of this important epistemological and ethical distinction, I claim that the radical feminist opposition to SM needs reassessment.

Beginning with a critique of the Enlightenment human/nature dualism, this essay argues for a new conception of human agency based on culturopoeia and an application of an ecofeminist dialogic method for analysing human-nature relationships, with the idea of volitional interdependence replacing ideas of free will and determinism. Further, it posits that we need to replace the alienational model of otherness based on a psychoanalytic model with a relational model of anotherness based on an ecological model, and concludes by encouraging attention (...) to developing bioregional natured cultures in place of nation states and multinational corporations. (shrink)

All worldviews have some sort of moral vision for why and how they pursue their goals, though these moral visions may be more or less explicitly stated. Transhumanism is no different, though sometimes people forget that transhumanism is not the alien dream of a posthuman mind but is instead a very human ideology driven by very human interests and moral ideals. In this paper, I lay out some of those ideals in very general terms, advocating a high-minded moral vision for (...) transhumanism that is born of and extends the desire for human flourishing. Though taken to new heights, transhumanism coheres with age-old views of ourselves as our own projects. What the end and direction and scope of those projects can be, however, is generated by, but not limited to, human nature. (shrink)

The distinction between “passive” and “active” euthanasia, though problematic and highly criticized, retains a certain intuitive appeal. When a patient is allowed to die, nature appears simply to be taking its course. Yet when a patient is killed by, say, a lethal injection, humans appear to be causing his or her death. Guilt seems to follow naturally from the latter act while not from the former. Yet this view only holds up if age‐old and vague ideasabout “nature” and “artifice” go (...) unscrutinized. Once examined more closely the functional relevance of particular machines to particular bodies becomes evident. And the innocence and guilt less clear. (shrink)

One of the most influential analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, William P. Alston is a leading light in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. In this volume, twelve leading philosophers critically discuss the central topics of his work in these areas, including perception, epistemic circularity, justification, the problem of religious diversity, and truth.

The media, perhaps more than any other slice of culture, influence what we think and talk about, what we take to be important, what we worry about. And this was especially true when news of Dolly hit the airwaves and newstands. Most Americans received training in the ethics of cloning before they knew what cloning was. Media coverage fixed the content and outline of the public moral debate, both revealing and creating the dominant public worries about cloning humans. The primary (...) characterization of cloning as an ethical issue centers around three connected concerns: the loss of human uniqueness and individuality, the pathological motivations of a cloner, and the fear of out‐of‐control scientists. (shrink)

The essay attempts to offer an alternative genealogy of aesthetics from the perspective of a post-colonial history. Here a painting from the Philippines, Juan Luna's Spoliarium (1884), is reworked to offer insights into this possible operation that exceeds the typical methods of relativization and the exclusively nationalist anti-colonial critique. It focuses on both art and the discourse about it, including the oration of the National Hero Jose Rizal, and how these intersect with the end of the colony and the compelling (...) emergence of the aesthetic in eccentric grounds. (shrink)

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the use of the term “hero” has been widespread. This is especially common in the context of healthcare workers and it is now unremarkable to see large banners on hospital exteriors that say “heroes work here”. There is more to be gleaned from the rhetoric of heroism than just awareness of public appreciation, however. Calling physicians and nurses heroes for treating sick people indicates something about the concept of medicine and medical professionals. In this essay, I (...) will examine three aspects of the social role of medicine exposed by the language of heroism. One, if a hero is someone who goes above and the call of duty, then does that mean exposing oneself to risk of infection is no longer a duty of physicians? If so, does that mean the “profession” of medicine is much like any other business? Two, physicians and nurses are not the only “heroes” this go-around. Anyone deemed essential to the US “infrastructure” is designated by the US government as having “special responsibilities” to remain at their posts for the public good, which explicitly puts physicians in the same category as sewage workers and grocery store cashiers. Three, what does it mean to belong to a profession that does have self-sacrifice and risk-taking as part of its mission—especially a profession that rarely gets called upon to practice these obligations? (shrink)

The starting point for thinking about divine command is the reality of God, the initiating and effecting word of God and the character of God, reflected in Scripture especially in regard to goodness and justice.The necessity of social interaction as context for divine command is reflected in several ways; among those mentioned here are the divine council, the covenant, and the incarnation, the word made flesh and living among us. The covenant is central to thinking about divine commands as they (...) are reflected in Scripture. It presumes a relationship between God and those commanded and is a voluntary association. Obedience to the divine commands results from the goodness of God and is only to the Lord. As such the ethic of command becomes also an ethic of response. Rather than being commands to be obeyed without reason or thought and only because they are commanded by God, the divine commands of Scripture and the law generally involve rationality and persuasion, teaching and interpretation. They chart a way of freedom. (shrink)

Many religious critics argue that biotechnology (such as cloning and genetic engineering) intrudes on God's domain, or plays God, or revolts against God. While some of these criticisms are standard complaints about human hubris, I argue that some of the recent criticism represents a “Promethean” concern, in which believers unreflectively seem to fear that science and technology are actually replicating or stealing God's special deity–defining powers. These criticisms backfire theologically, because they diminish God, portraying God as an anthropomorphic superbeing whose (...) relevance and special nature are increasingly rivaled by human power. (shrink)

The hymns of Israel stand in the service of the central theological claim of the Old Testament, that the Lord of Israel alone is God and requires the full devotion of all creation.

The words of Moses embodied in Deuteronomy gave Israel all that was needed for its life as a community under God, guided and blessed by him.

In the Decalogue, a foundation is laid for the order of the community, a foundation that continues in perpetuity to be the touchstone for all actions on the part of God's people as they seek to live in community and order their lives.

Two general approaches characterize current theories of sociocultural evolution. The "external selection" approach stresses the importance of intersocietal selection; the "adaptive change" approach, the importance of intrasocietal selection. This chapter identifies and critically evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and outlines strategies for integrating these divergent approaches into a single evolutionary perspective.

Ecofeminist philosophy and literary theory need mutually to enhance each other's critical praxis. Ecofeminism provides the grounding necessary to turn the Bakhtinian dialogic method into a critical theory applicable to all of one's lived experience, while dialogics provides a method for advancing the application of ecofeminist thought in terms of literature, the other as speaking subject, and the interanimation of human and nonhuman aspects of nature. In the first part of this paper the benefits of dialogics to feminism and ecofeminism (...) are explored; in the second part dialogics as method is detailed; in the third part literary examples are discussed from a dialogical ecofeminist perspective. (shrink)

This study is a reading of Lonergan on "system and history," a topic central to his thought. The study begins by establishing two preliminary contexts. First, it constructs an overview of the problematic in chapter one. Second, it establishes a further context in chapter two by analyzing his writings on the topic in 1959, the year he gave a graduate seminar on "System and History." Subsequent chapters trace the emergence in the history of Lonergan's thought of historical heuristics, of historical (...) maieutics, and of the relation of both in his theory and philosophy of history. ;The study largely prescinds, however, from Lonergan's theory of the dialectic of history. Instead, it draws attention to the role of the emergence of an adequate human science in what Lonergan calls "the challenge of history," that is, the challenge of decreasing the role of mere chance and fate in history while increasing the role of conscious grasp and deliberate choice. Meeting that challenge requires, as Lonergan insists, "a human science that is concerned, to adapt a phrase from Marx, not only with knowing history but also with directing it." Lonergan considered the needed human science at once a possible project and "a vastly ambitious task." The needed human science involves "a critique of history" in the service of the "intelligent direction of history," and Lonergan holds some combination of the two central to a practical theory of history. Those two components emerge first in historical and economic manuscripts Lonergan wrote in the 1930s as examined in chapter three of the study. Chapter four examines those topics in Insight, together with Lonergan's view that emergent probability generically determines the course of human history. Chapter five examines the relation of historical scholarship to the need for an upper blade of historical heuristics in the period between Insight and Method. Finally, chapter six explores how the themes of historical heuristics and historical maieutics meet, albeit in subtle ways, in Lonergan's Method in Theology. (shrink)

Patrick D Walsh; Education: one concept in many uses, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 167–180, https://doi.org/10.111.

One of the most influential analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, William P. Alston is a leading light in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. In this volume, twelve leading philosophers critically discuss the central topics of his work in these areas, including perception, epistemic circularity, justification, the problem of religious diversity, and truth.

The abortion controversy as a cultural phenomenon is itself socially troublesome. However, current biotechnology research programs point to a possible technological fix. If we could harmlessly remove fetuses from women’s bodies and transfer them to other women, cryonic suspension, or ectogenetic devices, this might mitigate the controversy. Pro-lifers’ apparent minimal requirement would be met—fetuses would not be killed. Pro-choicers’ apparent minimal requirement would be met—women could end pregnancies and control their bodies. This option has been optimistically anticipated by some ethicists, (...) but some people reject this fix because they are averse to being genetically related to a child they are not raising, insisting on the right to destroy the fetus as well as have it removed. Inthis paper I examine these issues, asking what the real issues in abortion rights are, whether technology can help, what the scope of reproductive autonomy is, and how technology will change the abortion debate. (shrink)

It is not surprising that when we get down to the basics about policies, laws, permissions, and restrictions on biotechnological enhancement, the question is quickly framed this way: Do we have a fundamental right to biotechnologically enhance ourselves? We live in a culture – largely worldwide – whose moral deliberations are dominated by the modern discourse of rights. This was not always the case and it does not have to be the case now.

Melinda Vadas rejects my claim that there are morally relevant differences between simulations of unjust events and actual unjust events on the ground that I overlook the connection between simulations and that which they simulate. I argue that this purported moral connection can only be understood as either the result of a necessary psychological disposition or as a "magical," metaphysical attachment, neither of which is defensible or satisfactory.

An illuminating and often unsettling picture of the ethical, moral, and legal issues that shape experience, culture, and identity in the late twentieth century emerges from this thought-provoking collection.

Random-excitation granule cells are likely to overwhelm spatiotemporal sequences described as in Braitenberg et al.'s target article. A mechanism is proposed involving the Golgi cells to reinforce tidal waves against noise. The recurrent inhibition by the Golgi calls can recruit random excitations of granule cells in phase with sequences of mossy fiber input.

In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Mélanie Terrasse, Moti Gorin, and Dominic Sisti respond to recent efforts to address the “digital attention crisis,” arguing that “[b]ioethicists should make their voices heard in the debate on the responsibilities of social media companies toward their consumers and society at large.” I strongly agree. I have frequently been asked by my colleagues why I spend time on social media professionally, on top of all the competing demands associated with my work as (...) a bioethicist and medical educator. There is sometimes a dismissive tone in these questions, a sense that attention to social media is beneath a bioethicist’s proper intellectual pursuits. Such perspectives overlook the extraordinary opportunities of social media and the important role for bioethics, as a field, in examining them. (shrink)

Government whistleblowers are those who disclose classified government documents in violation of the law but do so to bring to light serious government wrongdoing. Scholarly debates have identified...

The typically vivid and vague way in which the Old Testament prayers of lament describe the predicament of the one who prays is both a problem and an opportunity for their interpreter.