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In their target article, Hutto and Satne eloquently articulate the failings of most current attempts to naturalize mental content. Furthermore, we think they are correct in their insistence that the only way forward is by drawing a distinction between two kinds of intentionality, one of which is considerably weaker than—and should be deployed to explain—the propositional variety most philosophers take for granted. The problem is that their own rendering of this weaker form of intentionality—contentless intentionality—is too weak. What’s needed is (...) a species of intentionality distinct from both the industrial-strength version beloved by philosophers and the intentionality lite recommended by Hutto and Satne. We briefly motivate and sketch this alternative, and say a few words about the account of cognition that it spawns. (shrink)

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Abstract In this essay, I critically discuss a theory of utterance content and de re communication that Anne Bezuidenhout has recently developed in a series of articles. This theory regards the significance of utterances as more pragmatic in nature than allowed by traditional accounts; further, it downplays logical considerations in explaining de re communication, choosing instead to emphasize its psychological character. Included among the implications of this approach is the rejection of what can be called ?common content?, or utterance content (...) that is held in common by speaker and listener. After describing this theory, I argue that Bezuidenhout does not supply a compelling reason to prefer her account of utterance content over more traditional alternatives that make room for elements of content held in common between speaker and listener. Further, I argue that her account of de re communication supplies even more reason to reject the view of content to which she subscribes. In the end, it will be clear that she has no principled reason for rejecting common content. (shrink)

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At the turn of the millennium, the problem of its further existence, of the realities of existence within the next millennium coordinate system, is of particular importance to man. It is becoming increasingly clear that the crisis experienced by modern culture is primarily the manifestation of anthropological crisis, a crisis of man and that type of consciousness based on its consumer attitude to the world and to other people. Awareness of this implies a change in ideological and value paradigm, which, (...) in turn, requires a thorough study of those traditions of philosophical, ethical and religious thought, which can become an important component of the formation of the spiritual and moral basis of national culture. (shrink)

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I argue that a class of recently-discovered cross-modal illusions gives reason to posit a dimension of content shared across perceptual modalities and to abandon the traditional view according to which perceptual content is exclusively constituted by discrete modality-specific contents.

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"Content and Comportment argues persuasively that the answer to some long-standing questions in epistemology and metaphysics lies in taking up the neglected question of the role of our bodily activity in establishing connections between representational states—knowledge and belief in particular—and their objects in the world. It takes up these ideas from both current mainstream analytic philosophy—Frege, Dummett, Davidson, Evans—and from mainstream continental work—Heidegger and his commentators and critics—and bings them together successfully in a way that should surprise only those who (...) persist in maintaining this barren dichotymization of the field.". (shrink)

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Growing evidence indicates that our higher rational capacities depend on social interaction—that only through engaging with others do we acquire the ability to evaluate beliefs as true or false, or to reflect on and evaluate the reasons that support our beliefs. Up to now, however, we have had little understanding of how this works. Here we argue that a uniquely human socio-linguistic phenomenon which we call ‘joint attention to mental content’ plays a key role. JAM is the ability to focus (...) together in conversation on the content of our mental states, such as beliefs and reasons. In such conversations it can be made clear that our attitudes to beliefs or reasons may conflict—that what I think is true, you might think is false, or that what I think is a good reason for believing something, you might think is a bad reason. We argue that through JAM, children discover that mental contents can be evaluated under various attitudes, and that this discovery transforms their mind-reading and reasoning abilities. (shrink)

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Discussion of J. Kevin O’Regan’s “Why Red Doesn’t Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the Feel of Consciousness” Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s13164-012-0090-7 Authors J. Kevin O’Regan, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS - Université Paris Descartes, Centre Biomédical des Saints Pères, 45 rue des Sts Pères, 75270 Paris cedex 06, France Ned Block, Departments of Philosophy, Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, 5 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA Journal Review of Philosophy and (...) Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158. (shrink)

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Sociology of religion in the West is a field of knowledge with at least 100 years of history. As a science and as a discipline, the sociology of religion has been developing in most Western universities since the late nineteenth century, having established traditions, forming well-known schools, areas related to the names of famous scholars. The total number of researchers of religion abroad has never been counted, but there are more than a thousand different centers, universities, colleges where religion is (...) taught and studied. If we assume that each of them has an average of 10 religious scholars, theologians, then the army of scholars of religion is amazing. Most of them are united in representative associations of researchers of religion, which have a clear sociological color. Among them are the most famous International Society for the Sociology of Religion and the Society for Scientific Study of Religion. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Báñezian Grounding for Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom:A Response to James Dominic Rooney, O.P.Taylor Patrick O'NeillIntroductionIn a recently published article, James Rooney, O.P., critiques a fundamental aspect of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange's articulation of the relation between divine causality and creaturely freedom, which I also defended in my recent book.1 Specifically, Rooney argues that at least some of what Garrigou-Lagrange holds is rooted in a Molinist rather than Báñezian understanding of (...) human freedom and divine causality. The aim of this paper is to articulate the basic objections raised by Rooney and to show why the objections fail. We shall not provide an exegetical or textual analysis of Báñez himself, but rather will establish a speculative grounding and agreement between basic principles of Báñezianism and Garrigou-Lagrange's articulation, ultimately affirming the necessity of positing creaturely counterfactuals for Báñezianism.Rooney makes two distinct (but related) objections to Garrigou-Lagrange's treatment. First, he claims that Báñezianism as a system rejects the notion of "alternative possibilities" when considering the creaturely will and its relation to divine causality, especially in regard to physical premotion. I shall argue that this is incorrect, and indeed misses one of the constitutive elements of Báñezianism—in fact the very grounding for its claim that infallibly moved actions remain free. Second, Rooney claims that Garrigou-Lagrange posits [End Page 651] a circular argument regarding the reality of sin. Garrigou-Lagrange's argument would be circular if it corresponded to a single order of causality or if counterfactuals of creaturely freedom were incompatible with Báñezianism. But we shall argue that they are not. As such, the argument is not only not circular, but rather elucidates a constitutive element of the Báñezian system, thereby refuting the objection. In short, Garrigou-Lagrange's articulation of Báñezian premotion admits of counterfactuals without relying upon divine passivity, and it remains internally coherent.Rooney's Critique of the So-called "Garrigou Manoeuvre"Rooney begins the essay by outlining a few of the major differences between a Molinist and Báñezian view of human freedom. Rooney's argument is that there is a potential "grounding problem" for Báñezianism, or at least for Báñezianism as articulated by Garrigou-Lagrange. As Rooney notes, Báñezianism posits that God's efficacious grace is ontologically antecedent to our good actions (and his permission of sin is ontologically antecedent to our sin). But how does this position retain free choice, if divine causation or permission is infallibly determinative and antecedent to creaturely choice? Rooney says:The Banezians need to account for how it is possible that a creature can do otherwise in the special case when God moves the creature to act through grace. Specifically, what grounds the truth of the claim that, even when God determines human free choices from eternity such that a human being has only one course of action open to them, those human beings are morally responsible for their actions? If the Banezian view entails that human beings, acting under grace, strictly lack any ability to do otherwise, then the view is incoherent.2As such, we can see that "the ability to do otherwise" is an essential, grounding element for defending Báñezianism against radically compatibilist or double-predestinarian views of human freedom, which have been condemned by the Church at Trent and in subsequent condemnations of Jansenism.3 Of course, the phrase "ability to do otherwise" is metaphysically [End Page 652] ambiguous, which Rooney admits. Various articulations of a more metaphysically precise grounding for the preservation of free choice under the influence of efficacious grace (or while efficacious grace is withheld) have been put forth, and Rooney focuses on a particular "strategy" which he associates with Garrigou-Lagrange and myself.4 He terms this strategy the "Garrigou Manoeuvre."Rooney notes that "Garrigou-Lagrange claims that there is something in virtue of which God denies someone efficacious grace, and that this is in the control of the sinner."5 He quotes Garrigou-Lagrange as saying that a person "is deprived of efficacious grace because by sinning he resists sufficient grace.... [Therefore,] God... (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:From Passion to Paschal Mystery: A Recent Magisterial Development concerning the Christological Foundation of the Sacraments by Dominic M. Langevin, O.PGuy Mansini O.S.B.From Passion to Paschal Mystery: A Recent Magisterial Development concerning the Christological Foundation of the Sacraments. By Dominic M. Langevin, O.P. Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2015. Pp. x + 403. 69,00 CHF (paper). ISBN 978-3-7278-1728-3.The “magisterial development” of the title of this monograph consists of the (...) move from binding the efficacy of the Mass and sacraments exclusively to the Passion of Christ to the recognition of the efficacy and exemplarity of the Lord’s Resurrection as well. Langevin also traces the increasing recognition of the Mass and sacraments not only as empowered by but also as signifying the paschal mystery of Good Friday and Easter and memoralizing both.Part 1 is a long series of readings of strategically chosen texts from Pius XII’s Mediator Dei (1947), from the Second Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), and from John Paul II’s Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997) on the Mass and sacraments and liturgy. These texts are very closely read, and the reading is a sort of model of how the inquiring theologian should approach magisterial sources. The first chapter of part 2 charts the soteriological effects of both the Passion and the Resurrection according as they are extended to us in baptism and the Eucharist. The second and last [End Page 467] chapter of part 2 does two things. First, it explains the motion charted in part 1 by adducing some of its historical causes. Second, it provides systematic insight into the term of the motion.Mediator Dei appreciates Christ especially as offering sacrifice and the Mass especially as the memorial and application of that sacrifice. As Christ’s sacrifice is an exercise of the virtue of religion, so also is our participation in that sacrifice: we render the debt of justice we owe God, and in the way exclusive to rendering a debt to God, by way of sacrifice. Salvation is configuration to Christ—to his Passion. However, while the very sacrifice of Christ is made present, it must be the risen Christ who acts now in the Mass, and communion is reception of the Body and Blood of the risen Christ, though the encyclical rather emphasizes that the signification of the Mass is the signification of the passion. Generally, “for Pius, the Passion is more important and active than the Resurrection in the sacramental economy.” The encyclical’s discussion of the liturgical year is more expansive, however, since the year renders all the mysteries and not just the Passion present and in their saving effects. The encyclical is thus open to a further reflection on the Resurrection that it itself does not take up.Sacrosanctum Concilium teaches that baptism gives us to participate in the entire paschal mystery. Its insistence that the Mass is principally to be understood in a sacrificial key follows Pius, but it is more open to seeing the Mass and the sacraments as also memorializing the Resurrection and bringing it to bear on our salvation. For one thing, it drops the framework according to which the liturgy is understood first and foremost as an exercise of the virtue of religion, which allows other aspects more easily to come to the fore. Thus the Mass and the sacraments are seen in relation to the entire paschal mystery, now appreciated in its unity, and not only to the meritorious work of the Passion and sacrifice of the Lord, for it is the entire paschal mystery that works salvation, going beyond the mode of merit that is exclusive to the Passion. Even in SC 47, the principal text on the Mass, which came to assert the sacrificial nature of the Mass at the insistence of many council fathers, there is an express connection of the Mass with the Resurrection such that the relation of the Mass to the entire paschal mystery comes to expression. The text states that the Lord instituted the Eucharist “in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross... and even more to entrust to His beloved... (shrink)

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In Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology, Horgan and Tienson (1996) argue that cognitive processes, pace classicism, are not governed by exceptionless, “representation-level” rules; they are instead the work of defeasible cognitive tendencies subserved by the non-linear dynamics of the brain’s neural networks. Many theorists are sympathetic with the dynamical characterisation of connectionism and the general (re)conception of cognition that it affords. But in all the excitement surrounding the connectionist revolution in cognitive science, it has largely gone unnoticed that connectionism (...) adds to the traditional focus on computational processes, a new focus – one on the vehicles of mental representation, on the entities that carry content through the mind. Indeed, if Horgan and Tienson’s dynamical characterisation of connectionism is on the right track, then so intimate is the relationship between computational processes and representational vehicles, that connectionist cognitive science is committed to a resemblance theory of mental content. (shrink)

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How is it that we think and refer in the first-person way? For most philosophers in the analytic tradition, the problem is essentially this: how two apparently conflicting kinds of properties can be reconciled and united as properties of the same entity. What is special about the first person has to be reconciled with what is ordinary about it. The range of responses reduces to four basic options. The orthodox view is optimistic: there really is a way of reconciling these (...) apparently contradictory properties as contained within the same thing. The heretical views are pessimistic and content to be so: there is no such way, and that is because there is simply nothing to reconcile – because there is really nothing special about what is in question; or there is really nothing ordinary about it; or there is really nothing …. (shrink)

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For the Enlightenment, science represented an ideal of rational argument, behaviour and community against which could be judged the arbitrary power and authority of other spheres of human practice. This Enlightenment ideal runs through much liberal and socialist theory. However, the Enlightenment picture of science has appeared to many to be increasingly uncompelling. What explains the apparent decline of the Enlightenment vision? This book explores one neglected answer originally proposed by Husserl, that its decline is rooted in formalism, in the (...) view that all there is to theoretical science is the construction and mastery of formal systems. O'Neill demonstrates formalist accounts of mathematics and natural science to be inadequate, and then considers and rejects Husserl's views on the origin of the formalization of the sciences. The book concludes by arguing that the rise of a formalist view of the sciences is founded in the professionalization of modern science, and discusses the significance of this professionalization for the fate of the Enlightenment view of science. Worlds Without Content: Against Formalism tackles an important set of issues which have been neglected in recent philosophy of science, and in so doing highlights themes in Husserl's later works which have been ignored by most commentators. It will be of particular interest for philosophers of mathematics, science and social theory, and for historians of mathematics and philosophy. (shrink)

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This paper reports on an investigation of issues surrounding the use of ethical codes/codes of conduct in Irish based companies. Using a comprehensive questionnaire survey, the paper examines the incidence, content and enforcement of codes of conduct among a sample of the top 1000 companies based in Ireland. The main findings indicate that the overall usage of codes of conduct amongst indigenous Irish companies has increased significantly from 1995 to 2000. However, in line with prior research, these codes focus primarily (...) on issues surrounding company and employee protection as opposed to society protection. Almost half of all codes are written by company personnel or provided by head office. Revisions of codes are common but formal ongoing methods of instructing new staff about codes are not prevalent. Less than one-third of companies with codes have formal channels for reporting violations but a high percentage have formal disciplinary procedures in place for breaches of codes. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 142-154 [Access article in PDF] Critical Discussions The Fortunes of Avant-Garde Poetry Mary Anne O'Neil Invisible Fences. Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature, by Steven Monte; xii & 298 pp. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, $50.00. Modern Visual Poetry, by Willard Bohn; 321 pp. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000, $47.00. The situation of French poetry at the turn (...) of the twenty-first century is far different from what it was during the last fin de siècle. In 1900, poetry was a booming art, and France was home to numerous poets of varied inspiration and expression. The religious verse of Claudel and Péguy shared the attention of the reading public with the philosophical poetry of Valéry and the futuristic celebrations of Paris and modern life found in Apollinaire's Alcools and Calligrammes. Long poems, short poems, poems written in standard verse, free verse, prose, and even published as drawings, suggested that the golden age of poetry begun in the early nineteenth century by the Romantics and continued after 1850 by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé, would not soon come to an end. This indeed proved to be the case, for the heirs of the Symbolist tradition of the first decade of the twentieth century were soon followed by the Surrealist revolutionaries of the 1920s and 1930s, many of whom directed their talents to the composition of political verse at the time of the Second World War. Political poetry by and large disappeared from France after 1950, only to be [End Page 142] succeeded over the next two decades by two very different types of verse. On the one hand, writers like St. John Perse and Pierre Jean Jouve produced difficult works whose appeal was limited to a sophisticated audience, while lyricists, such as Jacques Prévert and even the songwriter Georges Brassens, made poetry more accessible to the general public, often through popular songs. The fact that, during the days of May 1968, students scrawled verses of the Surrealist-Communist poet Paul Eluard on the walls of the Sorbonne to encourage efforts to bring down the social order attests to the power exerted by poetry on the intellectual life of France well into the second half of the twentieth century. Such, however, is no longer the case today. There are only two well-known living French poets, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. While reviews dedicated to original poetry do still exist, especially in the south of France where the poetic arm of the French Resistance was most active in the 1940s, poetry attracts many fewer readers--and fewer writers--than it did even fifty years ago.Such a radical change merits some reflection. What has happened to French poetry since the mid-twentieth century? In a sense, all good things must come to an end sometime, and a century and a half of inventiveness and poetic energy may simply have run its natural course. French publishing houses, well aware that prose sells better than verse, have done little to encourage young poets. However, certain trends in the subject matter and form of contemporary French poetry have probably contributed to the current lack of interest. Since the end of the Second World War, French poets have concerned themselves almost uniquely with everyday life--common objects, geographical locales, and ordinary people. This obsession with the ordinary has produced some excellent poetry, especially René Char's evocations of Provençal landscapes and Yves Bonnefoy's treatments of childhood. Yet, this concentration on everyday life has severed poetry from the traditional subjects that have sustained it ever since classical antiquity, such as the celebration of heroic figures and heroic deeds, philosophical and religious inquiry, love, loss, prophetic vision. This very narrow range of subject risks consigning poetry to the status of a minor art. At the turn of the twenty-first century, French poetry also finds itself at the end of a very long period of formal experimentation that began in the second half of the nineteenth century and which includes... (shrink)

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Prior research shows mixed findings regarding individuals’ belief-revision strategies. The current research is aimed to test (a) whether individuals’ reasoning across abstract vs real-world content shows similarity, and (b) whether individuals’ syllogistic reasoning predicts their belief-revision strategies. Experiment 1, testing 76 participants (50 females), provides evidence for the similarity in reasoning across abstract and real-world content (p.05). Individuals seem to revise the conditional statement in the AC and DA inferences, especially when the content poses a threat. In contrast, individuals prefer (...) to revise the categorical premise in the MT inferences, especially when the content poses a threat. These findings suggest that in the face of inconsistency individuals’ decision about which of their prior beliefs they should revise is influenced by the structure and content of the belief-contravening problem rather than their reasoning ability. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:This volume collects seven articles of Carlo Paolazzi, O.F.M., previously published in journals and congress proceedings between 1996 and 2004, each of them dealing with the Writings of Francis. The essays are not arranged chronologically but move from more general to more specific studies on the Writings of Francis of Assisi. The titles of the essays included are: 1) The Birth of the Writings and Constitution of the Canon (...) ; 2) Francis, Theology and the Letter to brother Anthony ; 3) Anthony cites Francis: the Epilogue of the Sunday Sermons and the Early Rule XVI ; 4) The Writings between Francis and his secretaries: a Knot to be Untied ; 5) Concerning the Autographs of brother Francis: Doubts, Verifications and Confirmations ; 6) Concerning the Authenticity of the Writings of Francis to the "Poor Ladies" ; 7) The Lesser Brothers and Books: Concerning the Exegesis of "the books necessary to fulfill their office" and "Those who do not know how to read" . Each of the essays displays a careful methodology and appreciation for the evangelical content of the texts.The first essay deals with the establishment of the "canon" of Francis's writings in which the author demonstrates that the writings are born and develop from Francis's relationship with the Word of God. In this context, "writing" takes on the character of an "essential moment" in Francis's relationship with the Word , with God and with the brotherhood. This explains for Paolazzi, the passion with which Francis recommends the writings to those to whom they are addressed.The second and third essays are related to Anthony of Padua and the writings. The second essay deals with the content and authenticity of the Letter to Anthony, included by Kajetan Esser in the canon of Francis's writings. Paolazzi argues that the expression, "Brother Anthony my bishop" goes back to Francis himself. He suggests that Anthony's request for permission to teach reflects the concern of the novice who had permission from his minister to have a breviary, but was uncomfortable and needed Francis's explicit permission , a characteristic of the tension in the brotherhood upon Francis's return from Egypt in 1220. The conditions Francis places on the teaching of Anthony reflect Francis's concern that the Word of God not be approached purely from an intellectual perspective, but rather as a Word which must transform life. The third essay attempts to demonstrate that the Epilogue to Anthony's Sunday Sermons integrates sections of chapter 17 of the Early Rule. Paolazzi concludes this careful lexical study with the affirmation that Anthony had the Early Rule's exhortation to preachers in chapter 17 before his eyes as he concluded his Opus Evangeliorum .In the fourth essay Paolazzi tackles the question of the role played by secretaries in the production of the Writings of Francis. Scholars, including Esser, have suggested that because of his health and/or because of his status as "illiterate," Francis depended on secretaries to put his thoughts on paper. Paolazzi approaches the question by citing a saying attributed to Francis from the Mirror of Perfection . That this saying goes back to the historical Francis Paolazzi concludes based on both the content and the fact that it reflects Francis's literal approach to the Gospel. The saying states that Francis wanted no one to call him good, father or master because of the teaching of Christ in the Gospel who said that only God should be addressed with these titles . He then studies the usage and appearance of these three terms in the Writings of Francis, which confirm a consistent usage in accord with this saying. This demonstrates that the Writings reflect the "speech" of Francis and not simply his conceptual thought. Paolazzi considers that "in the Writings religious thought and the verbal lexicon of evangelical inspiration respond one to.. (shrink)

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Analysis of the relation of form and content in the parable of the wedding feast shows its distinctiveness alongside the true narrative parables and uncovers an emphasis, not so much on the consequences of the Kingdom coming as on the power of the divine to dispose of the human.

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Central to Sellars’ account of human cognition was a clear distinction, expressed in varying terminology in his different works, “between conceptual and nonconceptual representations.” Those who have come to be known as ‘left-wing Sellarsians’, such as Richard Rorty, Robert Brandom, and John McDowell, have tended to reject Sellars’ appeals to nonconceptual sensory representations. So-called ‘right-wing Sellarsians’ such as Ruth Millikan and Jay Rosenberg, on the other hand, have embraced and developed aspects of Sellars’ account, in particular the central underlying idea (...) that human perceptual cognition involves a certain naturalistic ‘mapping’ correspondence or structural ‘picturing’ isomorphism between internal mental representations and the layout and behavior of objects in the surrounding environment. Sellars, despite his defenses of nonconceptual representational content throughout his career, has with no small irony come to be cited as one of the “founding fathers of conceptualism.” While recognizing the strong conceptualist elements in Sellars’ Kantian account of perceptual cognition, I argue that a central core of Sellars’ account of nonconceptual sensory contents does not by itself fall afoul of the philosophical worries raised by the left-leaning Sellarsians, and that in fact it has significant merits in its own right. (shrink)

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There is a huge number of publications devoted to civil society. Nevertheless this theme is inexhaustible, because the very subject of it is multidimensional and changing along with the evolution of society. Alongside this, one of the key problems of the civil society theory is a problem of its perception in our mind. Answering these questions, the author, at first, stresses the necessity to differ three historical types of civil society: ancient classical polis, civil communities of the Modern History and (...) contemporary civil society. They all are substantially different inter se from the axiological point of view. That is a reason not to use the ideological and methodological curves developed for historically previous types of civil society for the analysis of contemporary one. Secondly, the author focuses attention upon epistemological aspect of the civil society theory, in particular he proposes to rethink the concept of “totality” not in a formal logic way but in the “logic” of living systems in order to be able by means of this concept to express the unity of the diversity of social system. Thirdly, the author treats the concept of “citizen” in informal sense, stresses its existential, personal content and contemplates it through the dialectical relation of “totality-peculiarity-individuality.” Fourthly, the author researches the phenomenon of contemporary civil society as a counterpart of a state in the complex society the main features of which are the diversity and individuality. He comes to the conclusion that the civil society is not a society in common sense, but rather is some kind of “soil structure,” so called “social mycelium” that fertilizes social system with new opportunities. In the final part of the article author gives the example of one of the approaches to estimate the degree of maturation of civil society, proposed by the world-wide international organization “Civicus.” He stresses that the logic of power distribution in contemporary society presupposes cooperation of different actors, and one of the most influential of them is the civil society. (shrink)

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The connectionist vehicle theory of phenomenal experience in the target article identifies consciousness with the brain’s explicit representation of information in the form of stable patterns of neural activity. Commentators raise concerns about both the conceptual and empirical adequacy of this proposal. On the former front they worry about our reliance on vehicles, on representation, on stable patterns of activity, and on our identity claim. On the latter front their concerns range from the general plausibility of a vehicle theory to (...) our specific attempts to deal with the dissociation studies. We address these concerns, and then finish by considering whether the vehicle theory we have defended has a coherent story to tell about the active, unified subject to whom conscious experiences belong. (shrink)

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This essay examines some stereotypes of bisexuals held by some lesbians. I argue that the decision that a lesbian makes not to become involved with a bisexual woman because she is bisexual can recenter men in lesbian desire, a consequence many lesbians would find deeply problematic. The acceptance of these stereotypes also results in sex becoming the defining characteristic of one's sexual orientation, thus privileging sex over any emotional, affectional, and political commitments to women.

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O Banquete de Platão serve-se de recursos dramáticos diversos, tais como a história-moldura, a organização dos discursos e o ensino de Diotima enquanto meios de orientação do leitor pela mensagem filosófica subjacente, a qual inclui um exame do sistema socrático de educação. Os discípulos de Sócrates demonstram notável entusiasmo pela filosofia, mas parecem incapazes de distinguir o amor por Sócrates do amor pela sabedoria. Agatão ocupa posição de destaque: devido a um trocadilho com o seu nome, a jornada do jantar (...) em sua casa se tornará na ascensão em direção ao Bem. Além disso, ele representa a educação sofística e poética, assim como cada um dos oradores representa algum tipo particular de conhecimento, o que implica que não se deveria simplesmente impingir pedantismo a Eurixímaco, ou tomar o discurso de Aristófanes enquanto um interlúdio cômico. Eles formam, antes, uma complexa rede intertextual. Alcibíades exibe as fraquezas de um homem inábil ou relutante em seguir a totalidade do ensino socrático. Sua solicitação de ser conduzido por Agatão simboliza a incapacidade de encontrar o próprio caminho do Bem, ao passo que a interrupção da ordem bem organizada do banquete pelos boêmios lembra a atitude dos tiranos e de outros homens hostis à filosofia. Apesar dessa crítica aos estudantes de Sócrates, o Banquete finaliza com uma nota positiva. As ações finais de Sócrates ocupam-se das outras pessoas – uma crítica implícita a quem sustenta que a filosofia subverte os laços sociais. (shrink)

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Cet ouvrage est une critique sévère de la philosophie politique d'Aristote. Sans entrer dans les détails (il faut le lire pour se faire sa propre idée), ce qui est très significatif, c'est précisément qu'on a choisi de l'ignorer du côté des études aristotéliciennes: tel est le sort réservé aux critiques qui ne se contentent pas de soulever des problèmes d'interprétation en circuit fermé, et qui osent soulever des problèmes fondamentaux remettant en cause la pensée d'Aristote.

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 533 Le Cristologie contemporanee e le loro posizioni fondamentali al vaglio della dottrina di S. Tommaso. By DANIEL 0Ls, O.P., Studi Tomi· stici, 39. Citta Del Vaticano: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1991. Pp. 198 + 13. 25,000 Lire. The author's purpose in this compact but highly informative volume is to confront some of the more fundamental positions of current chris· tology with the christology of Aquinas, with the (...) further intention of deepening our appreciation of St. Thomas's thought (pp. 6 and 193). Ols is aware that, in speaking generically of " contemporary christology," he is entering into discussion with a large number of authors whose viewpoints often differ significantly from one another. He cites writers as diverse as Rahner, Schillebeeckx, Sobrino, and Duquoc, for example. Cognizant of the differences among them, he nonetheless sees points of convergence. There is, he says, a certain " negative unity " among them in that each holds himself at a certain distance from the doctrine of Chalcedon and from the " christology from above " which traditionally has been taken as proceeding from the Chalcedonian defi· nition of faith. (One of the reasons for using St. Thomas as interlocutor with the modern christologies is Aquinas's own development of such a "christology from above.") Along with this negative unity, there is another aspect that links the disparate modern christologies. Ols is aware that, in speaking generically of " contemporary christain anthropological focus which sees as normative " not the revealed message, but the ones to whom the message is directed" (p. 8). In developing his thesis, Ols in fact leaves to one side most of the major modern writers on christology and limits himself to a systematic analysis of the christologies of Rahner (especially as found in Foundations of Christian Faith and in A New Christology, which Rahner wrote with William Thiising) and Schillebeeckx. In five chapters (pp. 15-76) Ols examines the relevant points of the theology of each man and then separately contrasts the results with the theology of Aquinas. The examination of Rahner's thought is done not without a certain sympathy. Ols notes points of convergence between the transcendental Thomism of Rahner and the actual thought of Aquinas. There is a certain a priori methodology in both men, and there are similarities between Rahner's transcendental approach and Thomas's thought on the " natural desire" for the Beatific Vision. The harmonies, however, are often more apparent than real, says Ols; this is especially so in a point central to the Rahnerian anthropology: Rahner's a priori definition of man as the being capable of union with the deity. This capability Rahner equates with the Scholastic notion of potentia obedientalis. In fact, claims Ols, Rahncr is using the terminology in an equivocal sense 534 BOOK REVIEWS and means something quite different from what Aquinas meant by it. For Rahner, the obediential potency "is objectively identical with the essence of man" (p. 30, quoting from Rahner's Foundations); for Aquinas the obediential potency is nature's openness to being used by the Creator as He wills. As a result of the differences, the Incarnation, for Rahner, can be deduced as a possibility from the very nature of man; for Thomas, even the possibility can only be known retrospectively once the Incarnation has happened. The different starting points reflect different epistemologies: the one starts from man's potentialities and moves out toward the world and God; the other works from the world and God to understand man's possibilities. Thus, for the Thomist " a posteriori reflection on the convenience " of the Incarnation there is substituted the Rahnerian " a priori reflection on the deducibility of the Incarnation " (p. 53). Without going deeply into a philosophical critique of Rahner-Cornelio Fabro has already done that-Ols con· tends that this difference is due to the fact that Rahner's theology " is radically dependent on an idealistic thought-pattern which represents a mortal danger for theology" (p. 56). E. Schillebeeckx's thought likewise suffers, says Ols, from the influence of philosophical idealism. What is central to Schillebeeckx's christology is the " concrete experience of the primitive Christian community " (p. 71, quoting Schillebeeckx's Jesus). Consequently, what we find in... (shrink)

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Schellenberg's capacitism maintains that perceptual capacities ground representational content because perceptual capacities can be exercised unsuccessfully. This paper argues against the claim that exercise conditions differ from success conditions such that the relevant perceptual capacities can be exercised unsuccessfully in the way needed to ground representational content.

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Purpose. Research of the phenomenon of human destructiveness in the context of metaphysical images and violence practices of late Modernism. Theoretical basis. The problem is that the philosophical reflection of violence as objectified, realized destructiveness of man is usually contextual in nature and is on the periphery of understanding its external manifestations. Accordingly, anthropological crisis remains behind the scenes, as evidenced by the devaluation of the humanistic potential of modern culture. That is why one should turn the focus from the (...) obvious, objectively conditioned incarnations of violence in the XXI century to the internal factors that are in the realm of existential. The departure from the consideration of violence as an abstract, faceless or ideologically colored evil allowed us to focus on man, his way of thinking, life and social orientations, feelings and internal contradictions, which find their expression in one or another form of destructiveness. Originality. Based on the works of M. Scheler and E. Fromm defining for philosophical anthropology and psychoanalysis, for the first time the conceptualization of positive and negative forms of manifestation of human destructiveness against the background of sociocultural transformations of late Modernism was carried out. It has been proved that its ontological principles are rooted in specifically human existence and relations with other members of society, while anthropological ones are directly connected with the endless struggle of the life, the vital with the spirit in man. Conclusions. Violence is a tool and a product of man’s transition to more mature and complex forms of existence. The interdependence of the violence and nonviolence practices ensures the progressive movement of humanity towards society humanization. This progress is accompanied by a natural internal conflict of personality, which can be both progressive and regressive. At the metaphysical level, destructiveness appears as a connection between the entropy of world existence as a whole and the instability of human existence itself, which is a complexly organized and open to the world system. Self-transcendence as an anthropological prerequisite for human destructiveness has a dual nature and combines negative and positive characteristics, the content and significance of which were revealed in the study. The authors are convinced that there is no other way to overcome the negative, malignant destructiveness, except for the incessant, daily gathering of life meanings around them and their development. After all, the loss of such core structures of the existence as the meaning, purpose and value of life has become a truly global problem for the modern world. Emphasis is placed on the need to keep in harmony the trinity of body-soul-spirit, which will allow a person in any social transformation to preserve and increase his integrity. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Vergil's Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary DiscourseJames J. O'HaraYasmin Syed. Vergil's Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary Discourse. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005. x + 277 pp. Cloth, $65.This book, which "began as a PhD dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley" (1997), tackles a timely, large, and difficult topic, possibly a topic too difficult to (...) be handled in a satisfactory way in a dissertation and first book. In sum, it makes a decent but flawed contribution on a topic that needs much more work, and in some ways, much more careful work.Two introductory chapters describe the importance of the Aeneid in imperial culture and the role of manipulation of the emotions in ancient theories of rhetoric. In a section called "The Reader's Subject Position," two chapters (both largely on Aeneas and Dido) treat "The Gaze" and "The Spectacle of Emotions." In the next section, on "Gender and Ethnicity," four chapters treat "Gendered Emotions" (before Allecto's visit, Amata is worried, but Turnus is calm; "frenzy, then, is female," 122), "Gendered Ethnicity" (Dido's characterization as Punic "is hard to detect because it is blended with her lover's persona," but it is still significant, 145), "Cleopatra and the Politics of Gendered Ethnicity" ("Augustan representations of Cleopatra form the birth of the Western discourse of orientalism," 177, somewhat overstated, but with interesting ideas about the connection between Cleopatra and Dido), and "Romanitas" (Greek stereotypes, and others, define Romans but are characterized by a "fundamental ambivalence," 203). A brief conclusion ends the book.The interesting argument that Syed makes in the first few chapters is "that the Aeneid used its visuality and its sublime style to appeal to the readers' emotions, and that it created a fictional space for an internal reader within the poem for [End Page 317] 316 whom the poem could articulate an identity by creating various fictional characters as figures of identification" (35). Both these and later chapters offer a mix of the new, the familiar, and, at times, the unconvincing. Two of the book's flaws are actually signaled in the surprising final paragraph, which declares that the book's "most glaring omission has been that of considering more Italian characters and generally of giving more attention to the second half of the poem" (227). Syed says that this "focus" on other aspects of the poem "has been a personal decision on my part," but it is hard to imagine thinking about "subject and nation" in the Aeneid without discussing the relationship between Rome and Italy both in the poem and in Vergil's world; see C. Ando, "Vergil's Italy: ethnography and politics in first-century Rome," pp. 123–42 in D. S. Levene and D. Nelis, eds., Clio and the Poets (Leiden, 2002), whose date is probably too close to Syed's publication date. Presumably there will be a full discussion of Rome and Italy in Alessandro Barchiesi's forthcoming The Geopoetics of Vergil's Aeneid.The lack of attention to Books 7–12 is also a problem, because often the arguments Syed makes about the parts of the Aeneid that she does treat are less convincing when we think about passages in the second half of the poem. The claims that Aeneas has a special ability "to control his emotional responses to the world" (70) and that "in contrast to Aeneas, whose emotions are carefully controlled, many characters in the poem give free rein to their emotions" (87), surely cry out for a consideration of Aeneas' rampage after the death of Pallas in Book 10 and the rage with which he kills Turnus in the poem's final lines. The discussion of Dido's wounds and of Lavinia's association, through allusive simile, with the wound of Menelaus (125–35) is fairly good. But Syed does not mention that Turnus at the start of Aeneid 12 is compared to a wounded deer, or that right before the Lavinia scene Vergil says Turnus "grows sicker with the attempt to heal" (aegrescitque medendo, 45). Lavinia is indeed associated with Menelaus by allusion, but Aeneas... (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning in Dramatic and Virtual Worlds:What Do Students Say About Complementarity and Future Directions?John O'Toole (bio) and Julie Dunn (bio)A top financial backer has arrived to determine which team of computer interaction designers has developed the most exciting and innovative proposal for the Everest component of the Virtually Impossible Computer Company's Conquerors of the World Series. Tension is high as the presentations begin, but this tension soon turns to (...) outright conflict as some proposals suggest George Mallory as the conqueror, and the financial backer will have none of him. The backer, it seems, has her own agenda and is determined to allow for only one view of history—the one that records Sir Edmund Hillary as a New Zealand hero and the only real conqueror of the tallest mountain on earth. The designers become more and more agitated until suddenly someone bangs their hand on the table and calls out, "Hang on... just because you've got the money doesn't mean... kids need to learn about both these men... they need to learn about history." With that the drama is cut by the teacher. The deep understandings about "history's purchased page" that can be generated when drama and computers are brought together for learning have been made explicit... but could these same outcomes have been achieved using just one of these approaches?IntroductionThe research explored within this article was generated as part of the Media Station, a project funded by the Australasian Collaborative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID), with an overall mission to investigate the potential of massively multiplayer online games for learning. This particular subproject, History's Purchased Page, saw researchers from interaction design [End Page 89] and drama education come together with a group of young learners to investigate their perceptions of the complementarity of computers and live classroom drama and to brainstorm future possibilities for applying computer-based technologies to drama-based learning. We sought to discover the following:• What do young learners say about how they experience and value learning in a context involving a combination of drama and computers?• What ideas do these young learners have about how future technologies might enrich the complementarity of this combination?As the drama researchers involved in this project, we had been experimenting with this perhaps slightly unusual combination for over a decade by incorporating computers into a number of our drama units within our primary textbook Pretending to Learn.1 Our goal in these experimentations had always been to enrich the classroom drama experience by taking advantage of the information capacity of the Internet and other computer-based resources, including databases. For example, we had used The First Fleet Database2 to support a drama unit where the learners take on the role of convicts arriving in Australia in 1788. We discovered that this material, combined with other documentation and historical materials available via the Internet, greatly enhanced not only the historical accuracy of the work but also the level of engagement experienced by the learners when in role. Therefore, we were very keen to extend this work by exploring new possibilities and were especially keen to develop a better understanding of what the learners made of this interactivity.In recent years the partnering of these two quite different approaches to learning has developed quite a research following, and a number of drama teachers and researchers have become interested in the complementarity of these ways of learning.3 At the same time, researchers and designers from the field of computer-assisted learning have also noted these connections. This goes back to the work of Brenda Laurel, who first drew attention to the intriguing links between computers and theatre in her now famous text Computers as Theatre.4 With the rapid growth of interactive learning tools such as 3-D immersive worlds, blogs, and online voice and text chat spaces, the opportunities for exploration of these connections have also grown, with each of these offering exciting new possibilities when used in conjunction with the highly interactive and engaging strategies of process drama.Process drama is a way of group learning, through whole-class improvised drama, with students (and sometimes the... (shrink)

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The discovery of America was one of the major events that determined the establishment of the world-historical process. However, for a long time this large-scale and all-important phenomenon, as well as the concept itself, was interpreted strictly in accordance with the Eurocentric attitudes and assessments of history. The European outlook tended to review the ambiguous, heterogeneous in its content, and accompanied by contradictions phenomenon in narrow geographical, political, economic, and epistemological perspectives. The usual interpretation lacked the cultural-historical, philosophical, and cultural (...) meanings. The author of the article attempts to fill the lost meanings and to expand the very meaning of the concept of “the discovery of America” by changing perspectives - from the European to the American one, in which the concept reaches a new interpretative level by having defined the continent-wide culture-forming strategy, and is able to absorb many meanings of self-identification of the subject involved in the global historical process. (shrink)

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This essay connects the mystical concept of “supernothing” with Bergson’s notion of the image of nothingness as a movement in the making. I do this also with respect to the film The Empty Man (David Prior, 2020) – which explicitly cites Gorgias’s four-part embargo on nothing (it exists, it cannot be known, communicated, or understood): nothingness is re-rendered as movement, in particular, the transmission and reception of images in the brain. Indeed, this is precisely Bergson’s theory of the brain too (...) – as the receiver and transmitter of images, a communication of movements. This “nihilistic” approach to the brain (it does not store images, it has no positive content) is not a valorisation of the ego as void à la Metzinger, but the real, processual rethinking of what nothingness and nihilism might mean – with a full, moving “supernothing” at its heart. Though there is a mystical and a film-philosophical account referenced in this renewal of nothingness, it will not lead to any exotic or hyperbolic excess (the brain as supernatural agent), but rather a very “ordinary” account that we will describe in terms of “supernormalisation”: an “unlearning” or mundanising of the supernatural: an extraction of the supernatural by natural means. (shrink)

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Video streaming has become very popular among game enthusiasts. Live streams of computer games, where there is the possibility of communi­cation, are developing as community meeting places; a number of social scientists are calling this a trend towards new online “third places”. To­day’s debate draws attention to the reproduction of a participation culture trough streaming, in the space of which everyone can express themselves creatively, share their opinion, experiences, and information. At the same time, there is a tendency towards the (...) capitalist appropriation of streaming by media businesspersons who stimulate the monetization of participation. Investigating the “sociality of streaming”, the authors highlight the supplementation of the “Let’s Play” discourse with topics from the current agenda, understanding live streams as public media arenas. In the public arenas of computer game live streams, the dramatization and selection of global or local news information in a specific media format takes place. The article demonstrates this phenomenon using the example of the corona­virus, the most prominent topic of spring 2020. The pandemic vocabulary appears in different sections of Twitch game streams, such as titles, audio/ video content, and the chat. Banter and obscene vocabulary are charac­teristic of the game stream space, however, this is combined with charity fund-raising broadcasts in support of doctors. ­. (shrink)

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The humanitarian idea underlying this article is to attempt an epidemiological interpretation of the classic Hippocratic triad "Medicine consists of three elements: the disease, the patient and the doctor". In the XIII century, the Syrian doctor Abul-Faraj in his saying: "Look, there are three of us – you, me, and the disease. If you are on my side, it will be easier for the two of us to defeat her. But, if you go over to her side, I alone will (...) not be able to defeat you both" deciphered the magical meaning of these words. For centuries, the fundamental integrity of this formula has been an ethical and professional guarantee of the success of each patient's treatment and the prospect of building a personalized healthcare system. In this particular article, we have searched for new content of three key elements of the textbook aphorism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. An understanding of the role of the doctor – "I" as the whole complex of efforts aimed at fighting the pandemic. Patient status "You" means the whole society during a pandemic, and even is as a long-term message for the physical, mental, social and geopolitical health of future generations. The meaning of "Disease" should be understood from the perspective of the problems of the entire health system and logistical ignorance, which has become an obstacle to achieving ethical integrity in managing epidemic challenges. The paper shows how adherence to the ethical principles of social responsibility, trust, and solidarity should become the moral accompaniment of the entire complex of sanitary, anti-epidemic, economic, legal, and social technologies that can ensure success in the fight against the pandemic and prevent the development of unjustified risks. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Political Theology of Climate Change by Michael S. Northcott, and: Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration by Gretel Van WierenKevin J. O’BrienA Political Theology of Climate Change Michael S. Northcott grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2013. 335 pp. $30.00Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration Gretel Van Wieren washington, dc: georgetown university press, 2013. 208 pp. $29.95These two excellent books, A Political Theology (...) of Climate Change by Michael S. Northcott and Restored to Earth by Gretel Van Wieren, offer distinct directions for Christian environmental ethics: Northcott develops a rigorous analysis of climate change as a failure of enlightenment rationality and politics, while Van Wieren argues that those who care about the earth can connect with it through the practice of ecological restoration. Northcott theologically defines a complex global problem; Van Wieren theologically engages a community-based solution. Each book advances Christian environmental ethics in important ways; considered together, they have much to teach about the content and methods of the field.Northcott’s A Political Theology of Climate Change argues that climate change is a “cosmopolitical crisis” and that Christians should embrace a more ecological and theological politics in response. Theologians and ethicists have long argued that environmental degradation has cosmological roots: The belief that human beings are separate from nature makes global-scale degradation and pollution acceptable. Northcott adds a nuanced political analysis, noting that modern politics is based on a denial “that the weather is political, or that politics influences the climate” (46). Enlightenment thinkers who laid the groundwork for contemporary political structures insisted that storms and floods were not divine responses to human behavior, so modern nation-states are premised on an ideological separation from nature. Climate change reveals the failure of such thinking, so the facts of climate change pose an inherently political challenge.Thus, failures to act on climate change are political failures. Mainstream politics cannot consider that economic growth is unsustainable because it is premised on ignorance about nature. Nations cannot collaborate to solve the problem because they have no common moral agreement “about the ends and goals of human life” (245). Any response to climate change that simply extends [End Page 198] the enlightenment project—by ascribing “rights” to the natural world, or by trusting existing secular political structures—is doomed to failure. Instead, climate change calls for a different cosmology and a different politics.Northcott argues that both can be found in the Christian tradition. Natural law thinking respects the relationship between human beings and external moral standards “set into the structure of the cosmos,” demanding careful accounting for the atmospheric consequences of human action (246). Virtue ethics teaches the ideal of politics as a “community of friendship and love,” nurturing practices of participation in the good life, lived with less consumption and less destructive energy (200).Northcott hopes that small-scale communities inspired by Christian cosmology and Christian politics will transition away from destructive practices and thereby demonstrate a new way of life to the world. His book concludes by reasserting that because climate change is a political problem, it is fundamentally a theological problem, calling human communities to “re-create the historic and customary connections between nature and culture, land and life, love for neighbour and nature which are central to the Jewish and Christian messianism of empire-challenging love” (316).In contrast to Northcott’s focus on political and philosophical failures, Gretel Van Wieren’s Restored to Earth seeks a “more positive, solution-oriented” approach to Christian ethics (viii). The book is about reconnecting humans with the natural world through ecological restoration, “the science and art of repairing ecosystems that have been damaged by human activities” (2), and it argues that restoration models moral life by creating physical, intellectual, emotional, communal, and spiritual connections with the natural world.Van Wieren begins with an interdisciplinary definition of ecological restoration and argues that views on the practice depend upon varied definitions of nature. She then moves to a nuanced account of restoration ecology as a spiritual practice (chapter 3) of community formation (chapter 4). Evocatively recounting a controlled prairie burn in Illinois on Maundy Thursday, Van Wieren... (shrink)

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Creativity of Ivan Vyshensky is one of the outstanding ideological and artistic phenomena of the end of XVI - beginning of XVII century. Closely linked to the events of the time, she witnessed the arrival in the Ukrainian spiritual culture of the artist, who put all her talent in defense of Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Although, to be more specific, Ivan Vyshensky's person would be more right to recognize the apologist of the foundations of ancient Ukrainian Orthodoxy, whose spokesmen strongly opposed the (...) measures connected with the preparation, proclamation and implementation of the Orthodox-Catholic Union in the territory of the Commonwealth. The problem, it is known, turned out to be so significant and complex that it divided the Ukrainian ethnic group at the time of its active national self-awareness into two denominationally opposing camps. In such circumstances, the "Russian faith" and the Orthodox Church as a whole became the subject of special affection, the most touching place, its national banner and slogan, "or, as A. Richinsky noted, signs of nationality. It is understandable that dignitaries, including church and religious ones, also had denominators of Orthodox Catholic unification. Therefore, the attempt to objectify the view of the need for church-religious union within the framework of the Commonwealth, as well as to improve the understanding of those initial principles, which were guided by Ivan Vyshensky, requires an expansion and deepening of thematic expositions. In this sense, the task of the proposed article we would like to reduce to a brief analysis of the polemical works of anti-union content of the late XVI - early XVII centuries, that is, the time when Ivan Vyshensky lived and created, and which in one way or another will help them to comprehend their congruence or contradiction artist's credo. (shrink)

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Purpose. The research is based on the analysis of the cult of Dionysus: the introspection of the irrational content of the "Dionysian states", in the symbolism of which an alternative scenario of gender relations is codified, based on autonomy and non-destructive interdependence. The achievement of this goal involves, firstly, the "archeology" of telestic madness and orgasm as the liberating states the comprehension of their semantic potential for the outlook of the Dionysian neophyte, and secondly, to identify the features that are (...) likened to the cult community of Dionysus to an autonomous gender and, thirdly, to characterize the metamorphosis of the Dionysian imagery in the postmodern consciousness. Theoretical basis. The study of the symbolism of Dionysus and its Genesis in the processes of the mass consciousness is important to clarify trends in gender distancing as in antiquity and in the modern era. Specific sensory and mental qualities encoded in the images of Dionysian madness, vakhtnag of violence and the eternal alien, the awareness of which is determined by the Dionysian thematizes in the cultural consciousness of post-modernism, the research literature presented in fragments. The phenomenological dimension "exempt States" Dionysian elements, activated the process of social distancing up to the formation of Autonomous gender, are poorly known and basically are reduced to manifestations of marginality and asocial. However, the specifics of the cult of Dionysus, the authors see the origins of ideas about a purely female and male and the dynamics of the transmutations of his imagery is proposed to understand how the successive stages of their formation, not the symptoms of the cultural crisis and deviant behavior. Originality. The article examines the phenomenology of the practice of personality transformation as the psycho-psychological basis of ideas about gender identity. Conclusions. The article highlights the socio-cultural and intrapsychic dimension of the study of the cult of Dionysus. It was established that the perception of a cult alien to ancient consciousness occurred during the crisis of the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, since its meaning associated with the idea of liberation through personality transformation corresponded to the mental state generated by social isolation of women and had a therapeutic effect. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Not by Nature but by Grace: Forming Families through Adoption by Gilbert C. MeilaenderThomas O'BrienNot by Nature but by Grace: Forming Families through Adoption Gilbert C. Meilaender notre dame, in: university of notre dame press, 2016. 136 pp. $25.00I was adopted as an infant through a Catholic Charities office in 1961, and just three years ago, thanks to an online DNA analysis service, I met both of my (...) biological parents, with whom I have an ongoing, loving relationship. So my keen interest in this book and its topic is more than just theological [End Page 209] curiosity. It includes personal and emotional dimensions, as I'm sure it will for many readers.This book is an attempt to understand modern adoptive practices from a primarily Christian/Catholic perspective, with helpful allusions to the beliefs and practices of the other Abrahamic faiths. Overall, I believe the book succeeds in presenting a solid theological foundation for adoption in general and, more specifically, for its current mainstream manifestation in the developed world. The author doesn't shy away from the various controversies related to adoption—like assisted reproduction, LGBTQ adoption, embryo adoption—and he takes on other authors who make claims about adoption that he believes distract or obscure the central purpose of adoption, which is to provide a child a "needed place of belonging" within the network of loving relationships that is the ideal of the family (38).My reservations about the book are two. The first has to do with the inconsistent tone of the book, which tends to swing, abruptly at times, from a theological and analytical tone to one that feels more popular and homiletic—even to the point of being maudlin. As stated earlier, I have high regard for most of the analytical sections and find the overarching thesis convincing. Generally, in these sections, the method begins with the lived experience of adoptees and their parents and works through scripture, tradition, and critical reflection to arrive at a reasonable conclusion. However, occasionally the book drifts into uncritical and merely emotive territory, and this is especially the case in the sections called "interludes," where the author presents letters to adoptees from their parents reprinted from the Christian Century magazine. These seem out of place and even distracting. Of even greater concern is the concluding chapter, where the author should be summarizing and highlighting the strengths of his thesis. Instead he chose to draw homiletic lessons from Anne of Green Gables (110).My second reservation is not so much a critique of this book but of the state of contemporary Catholic sexual ethics, which forms a backdrop for the entire book. The book accurately reflects a mainstream position in Catholic sexual ethics, which abandoned a narrow focus on procreation decades ago in favor of one highlighting the unitive and relational aspects of human intimacy. This move away from a strictly deontological framework stressing the duty to procreate and toward a teleological ethic stressing the need to model human relationships after divine ones has been celebrated for good reasons, but it has not come without costs. Like all teleological ideals, this sexual ethic is attractive to purveyors of high philosophy but tends to be thoroughly abstract and almost entirely incapable of offering concrete, practical guidance. Because it is so abstract, its application to specific moral issues can seem arbitrary and at the whim of the author. Such is the case in this book, for instance, when this teleological ideal is wielded to shed doubt on LGBTQ adoption. It is particularly telling [End Page 210] that the author neglects to consult lived experience in this section, ignoring the mountains of evidence readily available that LGBTQ families can be just as loving and nurturing as those of traditional families. Ultimately, a second Renaissance would benefit Catholic sexual ethics—one that balances deontological and teleological elements by introducing practical, consequential, and proportional methods.Thomas O'BrienDePaul UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

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