A certain objection to belief in God is based on the intrinsic incoherence of the concept of Divine Being or God. In particular, it questions the major traditional characteristic, notably omniscience, and its relation to omnipotence, moral unassailability, and absence of embodiment on the part of the Divine Being. In this paper, an attempt is made to counter this objection by an appeal, not to natural theology, but rather to physicalism in its application to human beings, and by extension to (...) the possible consistency of God’s omniscience with the other divine attributes, which philosophers such as Michael Martin have found to be mutually inconsistent and therefore wanting. (shrink)

In the last 10 years, several authors including Griffiths and Matthen have employed classificatory principles from biology to argue for a radical revision in the way that we individuate psychological traits. Arguing that the fundamental basis for classification of traits in biology is that of ‘homology’ (similarity due to common descent) rather than ‘analogy’, or ‘shared function’, and that psychological traits are a special case of biological traits, they maintain that psychological categories should be individuated primarily by relations of homology (...) rather than in terms of shared function. This poses a direct challenge to the dominant philosophical view of how to define psychological categories, viz., ‘functionalism’. Although the implications of this position extend to all psychological traits, the debate has centered around ‘emotion’ as an example of a psychological category ripe for reinterpretation within this new framework of classification. I address arguments by Griffiths that emotions should be divided into at least two distinct classes, basic emotions and higher cognitive emotions, and that these two classes require radically different theories to explain them. Griffiths argues that while basic emotions in humans are homologous to the corresponding states in other animals, higher cognitive emotions are dependent on mental capacities unique to humans, and are therefore not homologous to basic emotions. Using the example of shame, I argue that (a) many emotions that are commonly classified as being higher cognitive emotions actually correspond to certain basic emotions, and that (b) the “higher cognitive forms” of these emotions are best seen as being homologous to their basic forms. (shrink)

This paper argues that several communitarian critiques of Rawls' original position miss the mark by attacking a straw man of Rawls' view of the self under political liberalism.

US citizens perceive their society to be one of the most diverse and religiously tolerant in the world today. Yet seemingly intractable religious intolerance and moral conflict abound throughout contemporary US public life - from abortion law battles, same-sex marriage, post-9/11 Islamophobia, public school curriculum controversies, to moral and religious dimensions of the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements, and Tea Party populism. Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society develops an approach to democratic discourse and coalition-building across deep (...) moral and religious divisions. Drawing on conflict transformation in peace studies, recent American pragmatist thought, and models of agonistic democracy, Jason Springs argues that, in circumstances riven with conflict between strong religious identities and deep moral and political commitments, productive engagement may depend on thinking creatively about how to constructively utilize conflict and intolerance. The result is an approach oriented by the recognition of conflict as a constituent and life-giving feature of social and political relationships. (shrink)

From many Aboriginal elders, such as Tjangika Napaltjani, Bob Williams and Djiniyini Gondarra, to painters, such as Arthur Boyd, Pro Hart and John Forrester-Clack, from historians, such as Manning Clark, and poets, such as Maureen Watson, Francis Webb and Henry Lawson, to celebrated novelists, such as Joseph Furphy, Patrick White and Tim Winton, the figure of Jesus has occupied an endearing and idiosyncratic place in the Australian imagination. It is evidence enough that 'Australians have been anticlerical and antichurch, but rarely (...) antiJesus'. But which Jesus? In what follows, I seek to listen to what some Australians make of Jesus, and to consider some theological implications of their contributions for the enduring quest for an Australian Jesus. (shrink)

Scientists, their allies, and opponents engage in struggles not just over what is true, but who may validate, access, and engage contentious knowledge. Viewed through the metaphor of theater, science is always performed for an audience, and that audience is constructed strategically and with consequence. Insights from theater studies, the public understanding of science, and literature on boundary work and framing contribute to a proposal for a framework to explore the construction of audiences during scientific controversy, consisting of three parameters: (...) history, composition, and role. Applying this framework to the controversy over the presence of genetically modified maize in Mexico demonstrates how multiple and contested audiences form during a scientific controversy. Different scientific ?productions? construct distinct or overlapping audiences; audiences constructed at one time become ?easy recruits? for later stages of the controversy; and the various roles cast for different audiences showcase strategies for building scientific power and reflect assumptions about the capacity for publics to participate in the governance and production of science. (shrink)

Ecological validity is key in science and laboratory experiments alone cannot fully explain complex real-world phenomena. Yet the three flaws Cesario proposes do not characterize the field and are not “methodological trickery,” designed to intentionally mislead practitioners. In school discipline alone, these alleged flaws are indeed addressed and laboratory experimentation has contributed to mitigation of a real-world problem.

This article explores the possibility of moving beyond the apparent incapacity of Karl Barth's theological anthropology to accommodate gender equality. Barth's theological anthropology is read by critics and appreciative readers alike as confining the basic form of humanity to a binary opposition from which he then derives a gender‐specific, hierarchical account of man and woman, and finally, of husband and wife as a paradigmatic ethical relationship. I first forward a close reading of Barth's account of I and Thou in order (...) to explicate the nature of the normative form that is basic to his account of human being‐in‐relation. I apply this reading as a lens through which to re‐read and re‐orient his account of Man and Woman/Husband and Wife. I argue that the inequalities that appear intrinsic to Barth's formal ordering of Man and Woman/Husband and Wife owing to the absence of a standard concept of “equal regard” might be re‐oriented, and limitations of his account surpassed, by grasping with greater precision and enunciating the orientational implications of Barth's christologically‐anchored conception of freedom as the “root and crown” of human being‐in‐relation generally, and gendered relationship in particular. (shrink)

This essay begins by offering some observations about how holiness was comprehended and expressed in Victorian and Edwardian England. In addition to the 'sensibility' and 'sentiment' that characterised society, notions of holiness were shaped by, and developed in reaction to, dominant philosophical movements; notably, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. It then considers how these notions found varying religious expression in four Protestant traditions - the Oxford Movement, Calvinism, Wesleyanism, and the Early Keswick movement. In juxtaposition to what was most often considered (...) to be a negative expression of holiness associated primarily with anthropocentric and anthroposocial behaviour as evidenced in these traditions, the essay concludes by examining one - namely, P.T. Forsyth - whose voice called from within the ecclesial community for a radical requisition of holiness language as a fundamentally positive reality describing the divine life and divine activity. The relevance of a study of the Church's understanding of holiness and how it sought to develop its doctrine while engaging with larger social and philosophical shifts endure with us still. (shrink)

Contemporary art can be a powerful pedagogical tool in the health humanities. Students in an undergraduate course in the health humanities explore the subjective experience of illness and develop their empathy by studying three artists in the context of the AIDS epidemic: Keith Haring, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Using assignments based in narrative pedagogy, students expand their empathic response to pain and suffering. The role of visual art in health humanities pedagogy is discussed.

ABSTRACT The phrase “ambiguous utopia” was coined by Ursula K. Le Guin in the subtitle of her novel, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. That work appeared when utopian narratives had been displaced by dystopian imaginaries. This article embarks on a comparative analysis of three short stories: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, Angélica Gorodischer’s “Of Navigators”, and N. K. Jemisin’s “The Ones Who Stay and Fight”. Each author installs ambiguity at the center of their open-ended (...) utopian imaginaries as a way to challenge dogma, pessimism, and complacency. Le Guin interrogates the boundary between belief and knowledge to hold the threat of authoritarianism at bay. Gorodischer, a friend and contemporary of Le Guin, is considered a central figure of Argentine science fiction and fantasy. Her story imagines the discovery of a second Earth set in 1492 and highlights the need for utopianism to challenge the legacy of colonization. Finally, Jemisin’s story is a critical homage to “Omelas.” Jemisin shares the decolonial impetus of Gorodischer’s fiction, and she constructs Um-Helat on an explicitly antiracist foundation. Instead of walking away, her characters actively fight the creeping threat of intolerance while working toward that better place. (shrink)

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Taste metaphors provide a rich vocabulary for describing emotional experience, potentially serving as an adaptive mechanism for conveying abstract emotional concepts using concrete verbal references to our shared experience. We theorized that the popularity of these expressions results from the close association with hedonic valence shared by these two domains of experience. To explore the possibility that this affective quality underlies the semantic similarity of these domains, we used a behavioral “odd-one-out” task in an online (...) sample of 1059 participants in order to examine the semantic similarity of concepts related to emotion, taste, and color, another rich source of sensory metaphors. We found that the semantic similarity of emotion and taste concepts was greater than that of emotion and color concepts. Importantly, the similarity of taste and emotion concepts was strongly related to their similarity in hedonic valence, a relationship which was also significantly greater than that present between color and emotion. These results suggest that the common core of valence between taste and emotion concepts allows us to bridge the conceptual divide between our shared sensory environment and our internal emotional experience. (shrink)

This essay responds to four critical essays by Rosemary Kellison, Ebrahim Moosa, Joseph Winters, and Martin Kavka on the author’s recent book, Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society: From Enemy to Adversary (Cambridge, 2018). Parts I and II work in tandem to further develop my accounts of strategic empathy and agonistic political friendship. I defend against criticisms that my argument for moral imagination obligates oppressed people to empathize with their oppressors. I argue, further, that healthy conflict can be motivated by (...) a kind of “secular” love. This enables my position to immanently criticize and mediate the claims that one must either love (agapically) one’s opponent in order to engage them in “healthy conflict,” on one hand, or that one must vanquish, exclude, or “cancel” one’s opponent, on the other. In Part III, I demonstrate how my account mediates the challenge of an alleged standing opposition between moral imagination and socio-theoretical critique. I defend a methodologically pragmatist account of immanent prophetic criticism, resistance, and conflict transformation. Finally, I respond to one critic’s vindication of a strong enemy/adversary opposition that takes up the case of white supremacist violence in the U.S. I argue that the time horizon for healthy conflict must be simultaneously immediate and also long-term, provided that such engagements remain socio-critically self-reflexive and seek to cultivate transformational responses. (shrink)

In this work, I argue for the overall explanatory superiority of philosophical naturalism to a theistic worldview. Pursuant to that, this piece develops and defends a functionalist theory of explanation, which is then used in addressing several particular topics in the philosophy of religion: the law-governed nature of the world, the intelligibility of the world, alleged "fine-tuning", reports of religious experiences and the occurrence of evils. In each case, I argue that a naturalistic explanation is as good or superior to (...) a theistic worldview in helping us to understand such phenomena. Some original parts of the work include developing out a naturalistic explanation of religious experiences grounded in normal human perceptual and cognitive fallacies, an explanatory critique of several traditional theodicies, and a rebuttal of contemporary fine-tuning arguments on the basis of their reliance on unestablished assumptions that add no explanatory improvement. (shrink)

This essay aims to morally evaluate psychotherapy as it is currently practiced through the lens of sales/exchange ethics. The main focus of the essay is on psychotherapists’ claims to special expertise at diagnosing and treating mental illness. I review the research evidence relevant to these claims and conclude that these claims are not supported by the available evidence. Psychotherapists do not appear to be any better than actuarial tests at diagnosing mental illnesses, and meta-analyses of psychotherapy outcome studies casts serious (...) doubt on the existence of treatment expertise. Given that the expertise that psychotherapists claim to have is lacking, those seeking psychotherapy are not adequately informed about the quality of the product that they are seeking. Using Holley’s principles of sales ethics as a springboard, I argue that this situation is morally unacceptable; thus the current practice of psychotherapy is morally impermissible. I provide and evaluate some suggestions for rectifying this problem. The most important of these is Dawes’s suggestion that psychotherapists be licensed according to their use of experimentally confirmed diagnostic and treatment methods. (shrink)

One of the explicit objectives of Darwin's Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex was to explain cultural differences seen in human beings. Such an explanation, Darwin believed, was to rest upon an understanding of sexual selection. I examine the role that the beautiful plays within the mechanism of sexual selection as it works to differentiate isolated groups. It is suggested that an examination of the relationship between sexual selection and artificial selection — a relationship mediated by the (...) beautiful — will illuminate key issues of the Descent as well as contemporary debates regarding the relationship between evolution and ethics. The beautiful, originally rooted in sexual selection, can become de-coupled from sexual selection and utilized in some selective process which is conscious. (shrink)

An exploration of the connections between law, science, and truth, this paper argues that ‘truth’ is an evolving, rather than fixed, concept. It is a human creation, and the processes, or standards, by which it has been evaluated have changed over time. Currently knowledge production is anchored in the natural sciences but reproduced and validated by philosophical rationalisation. There are two problems with this technique of knowledge verification (or ‘veridiction’). First, the natural sciences are not, in fact, practiced according to (...) their ideal forms; and second, the Queen of Sciences, physics, underwent two fundamental paradigm shifts in the early nineteenth century. General relativity and quantum theory entered the scene, sending ripples throughout science, and the social sciences. These changes too have been slowly absorbed by philosophy, giving rise in part to the postmodernist and deconstructivist movements. I chart this gradual evolution of truth and knowledge production in physics and in law and analyse the resistance it has faced from both classical law and classical physics. Finally I argue that this resistance could be overcome, if legal theory, and especially legal positivism, would embrace a more accurate and up-to-date understanding of the science it purports to examine and emulate. (shrink)

Tracy, Shariff, and Cheng (2010) propose that human pride has two facets (hubristic pride [HP] and authentic pride [AP]) which, despite their similarities, diverge in important ways, including their evolutionary histories and functions. Put simplistically, AP emerged from HP. While AP and HP are thus homologous, HP continues to exist in humans, alongside AP. This is problematic on the most common interpretation of homology, in which an ancestral trait transforms into a derived trait, but does not remain present independently. I (...) suggest that construing HP and AP as serial homologues (duplicated but varying traits within single organisms) solves this problem, and also resolves some of the other tensions in their account of pride as a “single” emotion with “two” facets. (shrink)

Amidst the return of military personnel from post-9/11 conflicts, a construct describing the readjustment challenges of some has received increasing attention: moral injury. This term has been variably defined with mental health professionals more recently conceiving of it as a transgression of moral beliefs and expectations that are witnessed, perpetrated, or allowed by the individual. To the extent that morality is a system of conceptualizing right and wrong, individuals’ moral systems are in large measure developmentally and socially derived and interpreted. (...) Thus, in seeking to provide care and aid in reintegration for combat veterans, it is necessary to consider communities that have contributed to an individual’s formation and that might have participated in the interpretation of his/her suffering. This can take many forms, but given that morality is often complexly intertwined with issues of religion, faith, and spirituality for many individuals, and recognizing that much of the current focus on moral injury is emanating out of healthcare contexts, we devote particular attention to how chaplains might be more intentionally engaged in healthcare systems such as the Veterans Health Administration to provide non-judgmental, person-centered, culturally-relevant care rooted in communities of practice to veterans with moral injury. (shrink)

Recently, many critics have argued that disgust is a morally harmful emotion, and that it should play no role in our moral and legal reasoning. Here we defend disgust as a morally beneficial moral capacity. We believe that a variety of liberal norms have been inappropriately imported into both moral psychology and ethical studies of disgust: disgust has been associated with conservative authors, values, value systems, and modes of moral reasoning that are seen as inferior to the values and moral (...) emotions that are endorsed by liberal critics. Here we argue that the meta-ethical assumptions employed by the critics of disgust are highly contentious and in some cases culture bound. Given this, we should avoid adopting simplified meta-ethical positions in experimental moral psychology, as these can skew the design and interpretation of experiments, and blind us to the potential value of moral disgust harnessed in the service of liberal ends. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between love, law, and human nature in the thought of McCabe and Aquinas. The article puts McCabe and Aquinas into conversation in order to illuminateMcCabe's estimation of the natural law as an “insufficient ethic” and a feature of ethics that sheds a “great deal of light” on the matter of human morality. The article seeks to articulate the integrity of natural morality as a feature of the Divine Wisdom that ultimately perfects natural morality via the (...) incarnation of the Son. (shrink)

Climate change poses real and immediate impacts to the public health of populations around the globe. Adverse impacts are expected to continue throughout the century. Emphasizing co-benefits of climate action for health, combining adaptation and mitigation efforts, and increasing interagency coordination can effectively address both public health and climate change challenges.

This article makes a case for the capacity of "social practice" accounts of agency and freedom to criticize, resist, and transform systemic forms of power and domination from within the context of religious and political practices and institutions. I first examine criticisms that Michel Foucault's analysis of systemic power results in normative aimlessness, and then I contrast that account with the description of agency and innovative practice that pragmatist philosopher Robert Brandom identifies as "expressive freedom." I argue that Brandom can (...) provide a normative trajectory for Foucault's diagnoses of power and domination, helping to resolve its apparent lack of ethical direction. I demonstrate that Foucault, in turn, presents Brandom with insights that might overcome the charges of abstraction and conservatism that his pragmatic inferentialism frequently encounters. The result is a vindication of social practice as an analytical lens for social criticism that is at once both immanent and radical. (shrink)

This report provides an overview of training individuals in public health law. This report is designed to broadly outline the issues in order to facilitate discussion at the November 2007 PHLA meeting in Washington, D.C. I found that attorneys and public health practitioners have different approaches to training and practice. Materials and programs that seek to train individuals must be designed to fit within the professional culture of the targeted group. The differences between the two professional cultures can be a (...) barrier to training if not acknowledged in the design of training programs and materials.In a selected overview of materials and programs available, I found that there is an unmet need for responsive materials and programs. I also found that networking and conference opportunities can play an important role in training that should be explored. I also discuss joint degree programs. The report concludes with a series of future recommendations to facilitate discussion. (shrink)

Do free markets teach us how to construct humane social relations or do they impede us from doing so? We discuss social scientific evidence on the nature of commercialization and its consequences for moral formation. From a virtue ethics perspective, people face a need to learn and practice the good. When interactions transition into the market sphere, we argue commercialization can fundamentally alter the nature of relationships, particularly for those relations formerly based on gift, sacrifice, and obligation. While modern social (...) scientists accurately identify problems resulting from commercialization, we argue for the importance of theological social ethics, which can offer a penetrating analysis of the habits of gift and communal responsibility. Catholic social teaching in particular outlines the set of principles and institutions which foster sacrificial gift‐giving among individuals and organizations within society, providing a bulwark against the threat commercialization poses to many social relations. (shrink)

In this article, we analyze the practices of requesting participation in telephone survey interviews. Recent conversation analytic work on requests has focused on the interactional functions of request formats and their relationship to abstractly defined institutional and ordinary contexts. We add to this line of inquiry by demonstrating that the design features of the requests in our collection are largely shaped by and responsive to specific details of the sequences of talk in which they are embedded. We identify two types (...) of request formats – high contingency and low contingency – and show that requests are built in such a way that addresses features of the local sequential environment. High contingency requests that present the recipient with the option of doing the interview ‘now’ or doing it ‘later’ recognize that when an interview is done may be a contingent issue and as such are produced with greater frequency in discouraging interactional environments, whereas requests that embed the single option of doing an interview ‘now’ presume a lack of contingencies and are produced less frequently in discouraging environments. (shrink)

Childhood obesity is in important respects a result of legal policies that influence both dietary intake and physical activity. The law must shift focus away from individual risk factors alone and seek instead to promote situational and environmental influences that create an atmosphere conducive to health. To attain this goal, advocates should embrace a population-wide model of public health, and policymakers must critically examine the fashionable rhetoric of consumer choice.

Strohminger (2014) criticizes McGinn for his lack of attention to recent scientific findings, and for ignoring common sense. This commentary deepens both of these criticisms via an exploration of McGinn’s account of the evolution of disgust.