Law, Theology, and Morality: Conceptions of the Rights to Relief of the Poor in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

This article presents an analysis of certain ways of thinking about law and its relationship to the poor, in particular the rights and entitlements of the poor to the basic necessities of life and the obligations of society to provide those necessities. It focuses on the works of Peter the Chanter and his “circle” at Paris in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Significant in their writings on the quandary between respect for private property and the need to allow those in need to take a share of this private property in order to survive is their negotiation of the intellectual boundaries and understandings between law, theology, and morality. In addition, an understanding of their discussions in light of canonistic and theological works of the time reveal a hitherto under-appreciated contribution to the “subjective rights” language in Peter the Chanter.

Is the relationship between sensory-processing sensitivity and negative affect mediated by emotional regulation?

© 2015 Australian Psychological Society. Objective: Sensory-processing sensitivity refers to a trait-like difference in the extent to which individuals strongly and deeply process a variety of stimuli in the environment. While being highly sensitive has been linked to increased experiences of distress, the reasons for this are not well known. One potential mediator of this effect is emotional regulation-the set of processes influencing which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express them. This study therefore aimed to investigate whether sensory processing sensitivity is linked to negative affect via emotional regulation processes. Method: N=157 participants (n=118 females) completed online questionnaires assessing negative affect, sensory-processing sensitivity, along with two multidimensional emotional regulation measures. Results: An individual's lack of access to emotional regulation strategies, greater awareness of emotion, and lack of acceptance towards feeling distressed, acted as partial mediators between sensory-processing sensitivity and symptoms of depression. Combinations of these variables also partially mediated the relationship between sensory-processing sensitivity and symptoms of anxiety and stress. Conclusions: It is suggested that repeatedly experiencing aversive sensory-states among those with increased sensory-processing sensitivity impacts on their general awareness and acceptance of internal states and the confidence that one can regulate them. This in turn leads to the experience of negative affective states. Limitations of the present study and implications for therapeutic interventions are discussed.

Husserl and the problem of abstract objects

One major difficulty confronting attempts to clarify the epistemological and ontological status of abstract objects is determining the sense, if any, in which such entities may be characterised as mind and language independent. Our contention is that the tolerant reductionist position of Michael Dummett can be strengthened by drawing on Husserl's mature account of the constitution of ideal objects and mathematical objectivity. According to the Husserlian position we advocate, abstract singular terms pick out weakly mind-independent sedimented meaning-contents. These meaning-contents serve as the 'thin' referents of abstract singular terms, but are ultimately founded in prior acts of meaning-constitution.