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9 - Moral Values as Religious Absolutes
- Edited by Michael McGhee, University of Liverpool
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- Book:
- Spiritual Life
- Published online:
- 18 April 2024
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- 25 April 2024, pp 236-263
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Summary
Those who have had the benefit of a reasonably lengthy familiarity with the philosophy of religion, and more particularly with the God question, may be so kind to a speaker long in exile from philosophy and only recently returned, as to subscribe, initially at least, to the following rather enormous generalization: meaning and truth, which to most propositions are the twin forces by which they are maintained, turn out in the case of claims about God, to be the centrifugal forces by which they disintegrate. In simpler language, the greater the amount of intelligible meaning that can be given to the idea of God, the less grounds there would appear to be for assuming let alone asserting, that God exists, at least as a being distinguishable from all the things in this empirical world which are the source of the range of meanings available to us;
Prehospital Testing and Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2: A Special Report from the Sacramento (California USA) Mobile Integrated Health Unit
- Angela F. Jarman, James S. Ford, Matthew J. Maynard, Zena L. Simmons, Kevin E. Mackey, Bryn E. Mumma, John S. Rose
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- Journal:
- Prehospital and Disaster Medicine / Volume 37 / Issue 2 / April 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 11 February 2022, pp. 265-268
- Print publication:
- April 2022
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Introduction:
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has killed nearly 800,000 Americans since early 2020. The disease has disproportionately affected older Americans, men, persons of color, and those living in congregate living facilities. Sacramento County (California USA) has used a novel Mobile Integrated Health Unit (MIH) to test hundreds of patients who dwell in congregate living facilities, including skilled nursing facilities (SNF), residential care facilities (ie, assisted living facilities [ALF] and board and care facilities [BCF]), and inpatient psychiatric facilities (PSY), for SARS-CoV-2.
Methods:The MIH was authorized and rapidly created at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as a joint venture between the Sacramento County Department of Public Health (SCDPH) and several fire-based Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agencies within the county to perform SARS-CoV-2 testing and surveillance in a prehospital setting at a number of congregate living facilities. All adult patients (≥18 years) who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection by the MIH from March 31, 2020 through April 30, 2020 and lived in congregate living facilities were included in this retrospective descriptive cohort. Demographic and laboratory data were collected to describe the cohort of patients tested by the MIH.
Results:During the study period, the MIH tested a total of 323 patients from 15 facilities in Sacramento County. The median age of patients tested was 66 years and the majority were female (72%). Overall, 72 patients (22%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in congregate living settings, a higher rate of positivity than was measured across the county during the same time period.
Conclusion:The MIH was a novel method of epidemic surveillance that succeeded in delivering effective and efficient testing to patients who reside in congregate living facilities and was able to accurately identify pockets of infection within otherwise low prevalence areas. Cooperative prehospital models are an effective model to deliver out-of-hospital testing and disease surveillance that may serve as a blueprint for community-based care delivery for a number of disease states and future epidemics or pandemics.
Feasibility and Accuracy of a Wearable Biosensor Device for Vital Sign Monitoring in Septic Emergency Department Patients in Rwanda
- Stephanie Garbern, Gabin Mbanjumucyo, Christian Umuhoza, Vinay Sharma, James Mackey, Kyle Martin, Francois Twagirumukiza, Samantha Rosman, Natalie McCall, Stephan Wegerich, Adam Levine
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- Journal:
- Prehospital and Disaster Medicine / Volume 34 / Issue s1 / May 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 06 May 2019, pp. s85-s86
- Print publication:
- May 2019
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Introduction:
Low and middle-income countries (LMICs) bear a disproportionately high burden of sepsis, contributing to an estimated 90% of global sepsis-related deaths. Critical care capabilities needed for septic patients, such as continuous vital sign monitoring, are often unavailable in LMICs.
Aim:This study aimed to assess the feasibility and accuracy of using a small wireless, wearable biosensor device linked to a smartphone, and a cloud analytics platform for continuous vital sign monitoring in emergency department (ED) patients with suspected sepsis in Rwanda.
Methods:This was a prospective observational study of adult and pediatric patients (≥ 2 months) with suspected sepsis presenting to Kigali University Teaching Hospital ED. Biosensor devices were applied to patients’ chest walls and continuously recorded vital signs (including heart rate and respiratory rate) for the duration of their ED course. These vital signs were compared to intermittent, manually-collected vital signs performed by a research nurse every 6-8 hours. Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated over the study population to determine the correlation between the vital signs obtained from the biosensor device and those collected manually.
Results:42 patients (20 adults, 22 children) were enrolled. Mean duration of monitoring with the biosensor device was 34.4 hours. Biosensor and manual vital signs were strongly correlated for heart rate (r=0.87, p<0.001) and respiratory rate (r=0.74 p<0.001). Feasibility issues occurred in 9/42 (21%) patients, although were minor and included biosensor falling off (4.8%), technical/connectivity problems (7.1%), removal by a physician (2.4%), removal for a procedure (2.4%), and patient/parent desire to remove the device (4.8%).
Discussion:Wearable biosensor devices can be feasibly implemented and provide accurate continuous vital sign measurements in critically ill pediatric and adult patients with suspected sepsis in a resource-limited setting. Further prospective studies evaluating the impact of biosensor devices on improving clinical outcomes for septic patients are needed.
Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
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- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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Improving Signal to Noise in Labeled Biological Specimens Using Energy-Filtered TEM of Sections with a Drift Correction Strategy and a Direct Detection Device
- Ranjan Ramachandra, James C. Bouwer, Mason R. Mackey, Eric Bushong, Steven T. Peltier, Nguyen-Huu Xuong, Mark H. Ellisman
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- Journal:
- Microscopy and Microanalysis / Volume 20 / Issue 3 / June 2014
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 19 March 2014, pp. 706-714
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- June 2014
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Energy filtered transmission electron microscopy techniques are regularly used to build elemental maps of spatially distributed nanoparticles in materials and biological specimens. When working with thick biological sections, electron energy loss spectroscopy techniques involving core-loss electrons often require exposures exceeding several minutes to provide sufficient signal to noise. Image quality with these long exposures is often compromised by specimen drift, which results in blurring and reduced resolution. To mitigate drift artifacts, a series of short exposure images can be acquired, aligned, and merged to form a single image. For samples where the target elements have extremely low signal yields, the use of charge coupled device (CCD)-based detectors for this purpose can be problematic. At short acquisition times, the images produced by CCDs can be noisy and may contain fixed pattern artifacts that impact subsequent correlative alignment. Here we report on the use of direct electron detection devices (DDD’s) to increase the signal to noise as compared with CCD’s. A 3× improvement in signal is reported with a DDD versus a comparably formatted CCD, with equivalent dose on each detector. With the fast rolling-readout design of the DDD, the duty cycle provides a major benefit, as there is no dead time between successive frames.
BRIDGING THE GAP: Cognitive and Social Approaches to Research in Second Language Learning and Teaching
- Jan H. Hulstijn, Richard F. Young, Lourdes Ortega, Martha Bigelow, Robert DeKeyser, Nick C. Ellis, James P. Lantolf, Alison Mackey, Steven Talmy
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- Journal:
- Studies in Second Language Acquisition / Volume 36 / Issue 3 / September 2014
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 12 March 2014, pp. 361-421
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- September 2014
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For some, research in learning and teaching of a second language (L2) runs the risk of disintegrating into irreconcilable approaches to L2 learning and use. On the one side, we find researchers investigating linguistic-cognitive issues, often using quantitative research methods including inferential statistics; on the other side, we find researchers working on the basis of sociocultural or sociocognitive views, often using qualitative research methods including case studies and ethnography. Is there a gap in research in L2 learning and teaching? The present article developed from an invited colloquium at the 2013 meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Dallas, Texas. It comprises nine single-authored pieces, with an introduction and a conclusion by the coeditors. Our overarching goals are (a) to raise awareness of the limitations of addressing only the cognitive or only the social in research on L2 learning and teaching and (b) to explore ways of bridging and/or productively appreciating the cognitive-social gap in research. Collectively, the nine contributions advance the possibility that the approaches are not irreconcilable and that, in fact, cognitive researchers and social researchers will benefit by acknowledging insights and methods from one another.
Electromechanical Response of Multilayered Polymer Films for High Energy Density Capacitors
- Mason A. Wolak, James S. Shirk, Matt Mackey, Joel Carr, Ann Hiltner, Eric Baer
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- Journal:
- MRS Online Proceedings Library Archive / Volume 1312 / 2011
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 17 June 2011, mrsf10-1312-hh02-04
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- 2011
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Multilayered films comprising alternating layers of polycarbonate (PC) and poly(vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene) (P[VDF-HFP]) show an enhanced dielectric strength (EB> 750 kV/mm) and an increased energy storage density (Ud ~ 13.5 J/cm3) compared to monolithic PC and P[VDF-HFP] films. Here the role of electromechanical effects in the breakdown of multilayer films is explored both by imaging the changes in the layer structure caused by electrical fields below the breakdown field and by a direct measurement of the strain in multilayer PC/ P[VDF-HFP] films subjected to similar fields. Focused Ion Beam (FIB)/ Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images of the layer structure in films subjected to repeated cycles at near-breakdown fields showed local changes in the thickness of individual layers, suggesting that mechanical forces arising from field-induced compression may play a role in the steps preceding the breakdown. The directly measured field induced strain showed evidence for both an elastic and a flow component to the strain. The mechanical responses of films with ≤ 50 vol% P[VDF-HFP] were modeled as simply the sum of an elastic and viscous flow. The observed electromechanical properties vary with the layer structure. This suggests that multilayering polymers may provide a means to mitigate deleterious electromechanical effects in low modulus, high dielectric materials.
Chapter 1 - The status quo: genesis
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- The Critique of Theological Reason
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
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- 12 October 2000, pp 8-51
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Summary
CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY TODAY
The most common assessment of the legacy of Descartes is that he left us with a picture of mind–body dualism more clearly drawn and more deeply and widely influential than Plato had produced, or Plato's less sophisticated followers had managed in the centuries between. Two examples of such an assessment must suffice. The first is from a piece on neurophysiology by Peter Fenwick. ‘Descartes, in the seventeenth century, maintained that there are two radically different kinds of substance, the res extensa – the extended substance, that which has length, breadth and depth, and can therefore be measured and divided; and a thinking substance, the res cogitans, which is unextended and indivisible. The external world of which the human body is part belongs to the first category, while the internal world of the mind belongs to the second.’
Fenwick goes on from this general account of Descartes's legacy to a brief survey of the philosophies of mind that dominate the current scene. At one extreme he places Dennett's neurophilosophy: consciousness and subjective experience are just the functions of neural nets, and nothing is required to explain these except a detailed knowledge of neural nets. At the other extreme stands Nagel: subjective experience is not available to scientific method, as it is not in the third person and cannot be validated in the public domain.
Frontmatter
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- The Critique of Theological Reason
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- 22 September 2009
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- 12 October 2000, pp i-iv
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Chapter 3 - Beginnings: old and new
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- The Critique of Theological Reason
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- 22 September 2009
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- 12 October 2000, pp 120-174
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Summary
However momentarily deluded one might be while in the powerful grip of nostalgia, it is never really possible to reinstate past forms effectively in present circumstances, and that is as true of philosophy as it is of any other form of life. Yet, as the search commences for new beginnings in contemporary thought that take with the fullest initial seriousness the material world and human flesh – if not indeed also the palpable devils – it is surely worth casting a quick look backwards to the origins of Western philosophy some two and a half millennia ago; to the so-called ‘physicists’ of Asia Minor with whom that philosophy is deemed to have begun. This is not simply because the appeal to antiquity which wielded such authority in the ancient world still today seems to play its role – notice the number of atheistic or agnostic humanists who appeal to Aristotle, or Confucius – but because growth in philosophical wisdom, like growth in other forms of knowledge, does reveal a certain cumulative aspect, despite all the quantum leaps, relatively successful or relatively failed, that regularly break the lines of smooth traditional developments.
Index
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- The Critique of Theological Reason
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- 22 September 2009
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- 12 October 2000, pp 331-333
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Chapter 4 - Morality and metaphysics
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- The Critique of Theological Reason
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- 22 September 2009
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- 12 October 2000, pp 182-220
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Summary
Modern philosophy from its inception with Descartes has been characterised by a dominant interest in knowledge itself, in epistemology, phenomenology, semiology, linguistic analysis. An adequate theory of the nature of knowledge and of its role in the continuously creative fabric of reality must understand and explain the knower and the known, for it is by their interaction that knowledge is produced, if not constituted. This insight points towards pragmatism in general or the practicalist theory of knowledge. And it simultaneously suggests a moral dimension to all knowing (and a corresponding cognitivist–realist dimension to all moral valuing). This is certainly so in so far as some of the interactive agents involved are capable of some creativity, and hence some degree of freedom from strict determinacy. But such freedom from strict determinacy is precisely what the theory of emergence guarantees. Provided only that emergence is properly evidenced, as increasingly it appears to be, and that it is fully outlined and understood, so that it coincides with the key evolutionary concept of continuous mutual adaptation of individuals, of species, and of the different defined levels in the fabric of reality.
Emergence was defined above in terms of aspects or features which ‘emerge’ at certain levels of the continuous fabric of reality, and which then can be seen to exercise a non-derivative influence upon other levels.
Chapter 6 - Revelation, religion and theology
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- Book:
- The Critique of Theological Reason
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 12 October 2000, pp 265-322
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Summary
It is not necessary to offer a critical survey of Christian theology in the modern era of Western history, not even as potted a survey as has been offered in Part One for Western philosophy. This is partly because the centrepiece of any theology, the concept of God, has continued to figure in such a variety of ways throughout the course of modern philosophy; and partly because there is a shorter route to our imminent goal. This is through a brief survey of the modern Christian theology of revelation, at the centre of which inevitably appears the alleged existence and nature of the divinity operative and revealed. For this final approach, apart from keeping the continuity with a concept which has become dominant in the analysis and argument at this point, enables the critique to come to more immediate grips with the prospects of the reaches of reason (logos) in conversation with a living faith; more immediate, that is to say, than if one had to work through a survey of the history of whole theologies in order to see how reason in its various modes – artistic, ethical, scientific–philosophical – appeared and operated within them.
Prologue
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- The Critique of Theological Reason
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- 22 September 2009
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- 12 October 2000, pp 177-181
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Summary
The prologue to Part One ended with the prospect held out of wedding the best of what postmodernism has inherited and promoted to the best that current scientific questers after truth have found, so as to come to as clear a view as possible of the nature, function and truth value, in short, of the prospects of theology today; for that is the end goal of this essay.
Now, of course postmodernism inherited a great deal that is good. The product of an eventual coming together of the two main streams of modern philosophy, the phenomenological and the ‘Marxist’, it inherited the best features, as well as the worst, of its parents. And as for that which postmodernism itself then distinctively promotes, there is also in this respect much that is good, and some that is bad. Indubitably the best example of the worst that postmodernism has distinctively produced is found in that scene from Derrida in which writing (like knowledge, and language, its bearer) is stranded between a ‘disappeared’ subject and a ‘disappeared’ reality. This left language as a play of signifiers amongst themselves, with a simple mutual negating, or what Sartre called nihilating, dominating the relationships between these ever dominant signifiers. So that meaning was permanently deconstructed, and truth infinitely postponed.
Prologue
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- The Critique of Theological Reason
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 12 October 2000, pp 3-7
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Summary
This essay on the nature, function and truth value of theology, and on the very prospects for theology in this very self-confidently proclaimed postmodernist era, is based upon two assumptions, and it makes use of a particular investigative hypothesis; and each of these had better be declared openly at the outset.
The first assumption concerns an intrinsic and essential link that binds theology to philosophy. This link can be explained and expressed from a variety of perspectives. From the perspective of the genesis of Western philosophy, explained as a move from mythos to logos, where logos named the rational investigation of the physis ton onton (the nature or dynamic centre of the things that are), theology was simply the name for that same rational investigation of all reality, at the point where it managed to meet the deepest entity that seemed to be the central source of all the moving universe. At that point, whenever and however it was thought to be reached, philosophy, without break in its nature or process, became the logos of theos; and by Plato's time had actually been named theology. From the perspective of those Fathers of Western Christian theology who borrowed not merely the method but so much of the content of this earlier Greek theology and put it at the service of the teaching of their own faith, we have this remark of Augustine about the Platonists: ‘change a few words and propositions and they might be Christians’.
Part One - HISTORICAL—CRITICAL
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- Book:
- The Critique of Theological Reason
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
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- 12 October 2000, pp 1-2
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Chapter 2 - The status quo: current affairs
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- Book:
- The Critique of Theological Reason
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 12 October 2000, pp 52-119
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Summary
‘“Mind” and “reality” have for too long been four-letter words in philosophy,’ complained the colourful Umberto Eco in a newspaper interview. ‘Serious philosophers were thus forced to engage in selfcontained, system-oriented approaches that had no need of these concepts. But’, he immediately went on to assure us, ‘a recent cognitive revolution is now changing things for the better.’ It is of course that latter prospect that this essay hopes to investigate; perhaps even to contribute in some small way to it. But it is necessary, before it can be made good, to gain further insight into the nature and extent of that loss. Mind and reality gone missing from recent philosophy? One is tempted to paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to lose one of this primordial pair, to lose one's mind, might be passed off as a tragedy of sorts; to lose both, to lose reality as well, must surely raise the charge of carelessness.
From the brief preceding investigation of the modern origins of contemporary philosophy the surviving features which came to comprise the current mind-scape, or rather mindless-scape, can be clearly seen. The attack by Marx upon such priority of mind in the account of reality as would, in his view of Hegel, reduce non-mental reality to at best a transient phase in the history of being, gradually gave rise amongst his self-proclaimed successors to the view of reality as an evolutionary, indeed historical, process without a subject.
Chapter 5 - Art and the role of revelation
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- Book:
- The Critique of Theological Reason
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
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- 12 October 2000, pp 221-264
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Summary
The centrality of knowing how to knowing that or, more revealingly, the coincidence of knowing and valuing, of seeing and envisioning, led simultaneously to the cognitivist status of moral discourse, and to the sense of the universe as, in part at least, a moral enterprise. The recovery of the sense of formed (e)motion as the universal engine of evolving, ever creative being, and as the concomitant knowing, the mutual in-formation and continuous re-formation that binds all the entities in the universe together – this, then raised the question as to the full extent to which reality as a whole, as a universe, is a moral enterprise.
Traditional theological metaphysics in the West answered that latter question most fulsomely. A personal God creatively at work throughout the whole universe and all of its history, in cooperation of course with the other moral agents that we know of, made of it all a wholly moral enterprise. And the same theological metaphysics simultaneously secured the fullest objectivity of moral value. More recently, however, the educated observer of contemporary Anglophone moral philosophy, and particularly one who has in mind our current question concerning the extent to which reality as a whole is a moral enterprise, cannot but notice the following two features of that philosophy.
Contents
- James P. Mackey, University of Edinburgh
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- Book:
- The Critique of Theological Reason
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 12 October 2000, pp v-vi
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The Critique of Theological Reason
- James P. Mackey
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- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 12 October 2000
-
Far from merely reinvigorating relativism, postmodernism has detected and expressed in our time a powerful nihilating process of which truth and reality itself are the final casualties; and with these morality and religion. Beginning from the theological reaches of philosophy, this book argues that gods played a crucial part in modern philosophy, even when it was most critical of them; that the dominant nihilism of Derrida is really an excessive and misleading outcome of a contemporary philosophy which could otherwise resonate with all that is best in our evolutionary image of the universe; that moralists who turn to art in order to overcome the fact–value version of this deadly dualism do not thereby rule out religion; and that a Christian theology which recognises the evolutionary and historical conditions of faith and revelation is once again producing a theology that builds upon the best of contemporary philosophy and science.