This paper considers the maturation of the American Catholic tradition of social and economic thought in the seminal period between 1920 and 1940, particularly as encapsulated in the work of John A. Ryan. While different social ethical models emerged in the American Church during this time, the dominant school of thought was the liberal tradition associated with Ryan. This tradition, which Ryan described as "true economic liberalism," forged American political liberalism and papal critiques of secular modernity into a new social (...) ethical theory which became the capstone of prewar Catholic progressivism. True economic liberalism first manifested itself in critiques of the Supreme Court's description of "freedom" in Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923). It took positive form during the 1920s in the widespread Catholic embrace of industrial democracy as a moral alternative to laissez-faire capitalism It was during the 1930s, however, when the Church confronted the economic crisis of the Great Depression, that true economic liberalism became a more totalizing system of social thought. It was also during the 1930s that this theory revealed the difficulties Catholic liberals have had in defining their relationship to a market economy and the state. On one hand, true economic liberalism provoked the creative maturation of Catholic thought and established the Church as a leading progressive critic of capitalism. At the same time, true economic liberalism circumscribed the possible depths of the Catholic moral critique. American Catholics liberals were so committed to constructing a social ethic that upheld "the priceless goods of liberty, opportunity, and democracy," that they accepted a reformed capitalism, guarded and chastened by religion, as the most desirable outcome for a modern economy. As John P. Carroll revealingly wrote, "The remedy, then, for the social evils. . . does not lie in the destruction of the present social system. The way to clean a house is not to dynamite it." By accommodating the Church's social ethic to the ideals of American democracy, liberal Catholics rejected radical reforms in favor of moderate legislative schemes which one writer described in Commonweal as "sniping at capitalism." It was for this reason that so many Catholics fawningly embraced the New Deal and, indeed, found in Franklin Roosevelt the supreme advocate for the principles set forth in Pius XI’s 1931 Quadragesimo Anno. (shrink)

With Wrong Turnings, Geoffrey Hodgson has produced perhaps the most ambitious and comprehensive critique of major trends within the global Left—from within the Left—in recent memory. Engaging many...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World by Grace Y. Kao, and: Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction ed. by John Witte, Frank S. AlexanderZachary R. CaloGrounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World Grace Y. Kao Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011. 239pp. $28.45Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction Edited By John Witte and Frank S. Alexander New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 390pp. $29.38Grace Kao’s Grounding Human (...) Rights in a Pluralistic World and Christianity and Human Rights, edited by John Witte and Frank Alexander, both contribute to the growing and sophisticated literature addressing the relationship between religious traditions and human rights. Kao’s book opens by asking whether “the very idea of human rights [must] be premised upon a religious or metaphysical idea in order to be conceptually intelligible, sufficiently protected, or practically stable over time” (4). Kao proposes that this question has generally been answered in one of two ways: a “maximalist” response that identifies religion as a necessary foundation for human rights, and a “minimalist” response that rejects this turn to religion. A significant portion of the book is devoted to assessing representatives of these two approaches. Chapter 2 includes a discussion of maximalist thinkers Michael Perry, Max Stackhouse, Hans Küng, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Chapters 3 through 5 consider different forms of minimalism, including that found in the work of John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum.Kao’s organization of the debate into maximalism and minimalism imposes a useful typology over a diverse range of thought while also establishing interesting points of contact and contestation among various thinkers. At the same time, because the analysis occurs at a rather high level of abstraction, it will be most useful to those already familiar with the texts and thinkers discussed. This is not a text for those seeking a summary introduction. Those less familiar will still profit from the book, but perhaps more from the opening and closing chapters than those discussed here. [End Page 187]Following the discussion of maximalism and minimalism, the final chapter of Kao’s book presents a model for moving beyond the “extremes” of these two dominant approaches (8). At its most basic, human rights, Kao argues, must be grounded in a nonreligious moral realism. This “straddling” of the “minimalist-maximalist divide” is, in certain respects, a creative and bold proposal for reshaping debate about religion and human rights. It defends the universality of human rights as being necessarily grounded in objective values but does not narrowly locate these values in religious sources. Yet, while offering some intriguing insights, the themes of this final chapter never quite come together to form a comprehensive theory. Kao’s proposal is more a selective appropriation of insights from others than a totalizing alternative.Because Kao does not fully develop her model, it is difficult to assess the particular rights claims that follow from its premises. This is evident, for instance, in Kao’s discussion of the so-called marginal cases, where it remains unclear what specific principles and methods have been employed to develop normative positions (160–61). This disconnect between theory and application limits the book’s ability to have an impact on core disputes within human rights. The most significant fault lines within the contemporary human rights debate involve the content and expanse of human rights more than their theoretical grounding, and human rights language often serves as a way to legitimize preferred political goods. Kao not only needs to defend her approach to grounding human rights but also to establish how this particular grounding informs the norms of human rights.Witte and Alexander’s edited volume, Christianity and Human Rights, addresses the relationship between religion and human rights from a quite different perspective. Whereas Kao critically assesses religion’s role as a foundation for human rights, the essays in Witte and Alexander’s book largely explore the meaning of human rights from within a Christian framework. The book does not entirely bypass questions about the warranting role of religion as such, but its concern is not to justify the role of Christianity within human rights but to develop “the budding new human rights hermeneutic of... (shrink)

In a provocative essay, philosopher Jeffrie G. Murphy asks: 'what would law be like if we organized it around the value of Christian love, and if we thought about and criticized law in terms of that value?'. This book brings together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to address that question. Scholars have given surprisingly little attention to assessing how the central Christian ethical category of love - agape - might impact the way we understand law. This book aims (...) to fill that gap by investigating the relationship between agape and law in Scripture, theology, and jurisprudence, as well as applying these insights to contemporary debates in criminal law, tort law, elder law, immigration law, corporate law, intellectual property, and international relations. At a time when the discourse between Christian and other world views is more likely to be filled with hate than love, the implications of agape for law are crucial. (shrink)

This study investigated whether key constructs in Coyne's (1976 Coyne, J. C. 1976. Toward an interactional description of depression. Psychiatry, 39: 28–40. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) interpersonal theory of depression, namely excessive reassurance seeking and social support, combine to confer risk for future depressive symptoms. Consistent with hypotheses, excessive reassurance seeking interacted with changes in perceived social support to predict the prospective development of depressive symptoms. Furthermore, the interaction of excessive reassurance seeking and changes (...) in perceived social support were specific to the development of depressive symptoms, but not anxious symptoms. The implications of these results for the interpersonal theories of depression are discussed. (shrink)

An original work of theory as well as a deft critical performance, Narrative Ethics also stakes a claim for itself as moral inquiry.

How can cradling, handling, or rubbing a text be said, ethically, to have made something happen? What, as readers or interpreters, may come off in our hands in as we maculate or mark the books we read? For Adam Zachary Newton, reading is anembodied practice wherein "ethics" becomes a matter of tact in the doubled sense of touch and regard. With the image of the book lying in the hands of its readers as insistent refrain, To Make the (...) Hands Impure cuts a provocative cross-disciplinary swath through classical Jewish texts, modern Jewish philosophy, film and performance, literature, translation, and the material text. Newton explores the ethics of reading through a range of texts, from the Talmud and Midrash to Conrad's Nostromo and Pascal's Le Mémorial, from works by Henry Darger and Martin Scorsese to the National September 11 Memorial and a synagogue in Havana, Cuba. In separate chapters, he conducts masterly treatments of Emmanuel Levinas, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Stanley Cavell by emphasizing their performances as readers a trebled orientation to Talmud, novel, and theater/film. To Make the Hands Impure stages the encounter of literary experience and scriptural traditions he difficult and the holy through an ambitious, singular, and innovative approach marked in equal measure by erudition and imaginative daring. (shrink)

According to a (once) venerable tradition, our knowledge of the external world is crucially dependent on divine favor: our ability to obtain knowledge of the world around us is made possible by God’s having so ordered things. I argue that this view, despite its unpopularity among con­temporary philosophers, is supported by a certain inference to the best explanation: namely, it provides an effective way of reconciling two widely held beliefs that, on the assumption of naturalism, appear incompatible: (1) that knowledge (...) is incompatible with the kind of luck present in Gettier sce­narios and (2) that arguments for external world skepticism can be effectively rebutted by “shifting” them in the style of G. E. Moore. (shrink)

According to one recently popular “flicker of freedom” style response to Frankfurt-style arguments against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities—the “Triple O” flicker strategy—agents in Frankfurt-style cases are really or most fundamentally morally responsible for performing an action (A-ing) on their own, but not for A-ing simpliciter. This essay has two related aims. First, I offer an interpretation of the Triple O strategy which insulates it against an objection raised by Carolina Sartorio in “Flickers of Freedom and Moral Luck.” Second, I (...) argue that a sub-version of the strategy (“the inheritance view”) according to which agents in Frankfurt-style cases are derivatively responsible for A-ing simpliciter in virtue of A-ing on their own, for which they are basically responsible, is untenable. I show that “A-ing simpliciter” is not plausibly an outcome of “A-ing on one’s own” in the sense required for the transfer of responsibility. Several candidates for the generative relation via which responsibility might be transferred are canvassed, and it is found that none of these relations plausibly hold between an agent’s A-ing on his own and his A-ing simpliciter. Next, I identify the generative relation (if any) that does hold between these items and show that the direction of generation problematically conflicts with the direction of the inheritance view’s purported transfer of responsibility. (shrink)

In Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, R. Zachary Manis examines in detail the several facets of the problem of hell, considers the reasons why the usual responses to the problem are unsatisfying, and suggests how an adequate solution to the problem can be constructed.

According to one recently popular “flicker of freedom” style response to Frankfurt-style arguments against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities—the “Triple O” flicker strategy—agents in Frankfurt-style cases are really or most fundamentally morally responsible for performing an action (A-ing) on their own, but not for A-ing simpliciter. This essay has two related aims. First, I offer an interpretation of the Triple O strategy which insulates it against an objection raised by Carolina Sartorio in “Flickers of Freedom and Moral Luck.” Second, I (...) argue that a sub-version of the strategy (“the inheritance view”) according to which agents in Frankfurt-style cases are derivatively responsible for A-ing simpliciter in virtue of A-ing on their own, for which they are basically responsible, is untenable. I show that “A-ing simpliciter” is not plausibly an outcome of “A-ing on one’s own” in the sense required for the transfer of responsibility. Several candidates for the generative relation via which responsibility might be transferred are canvassed, and it is found that none of these relations plausibly hold between an agent’s A-ing on his own and his A-ing simpliciter. Next, I identify the generative relation (if any) that does hold between these items and show that the direction of generation problematically conflicts with the direction of the inheritance view’s purported transfer of responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend divine conceptualism against one prominent critique from William Lane Craig in his book God and Abstract Objects. Craig argues that the divine conceptualist’s only way out of the “bootstrapping objection” results in an unpalatable concession of defeat to the metaphysical anti-realist. Craig’s argument depends on an analysis whereby God is causally or logically prior to the divine concepts. As such, the conceptualist may resist it by adopting—following Ralph Cudworth—a version of divine conceptualism which does not (...) construe the relationship between God and His thoughts as one of either causal or logical priority. (shrink)

One important version of the problem of divine freedom is that, if God is essentially good, and if freedom logically requires being able to do otherwise, then God is not free with respect to willing the good, and thus He is not morally praiseworthy for His goodness. I develop and defend a broadly Molinist solution to this problem, which, I argue, provides the best way out of the difficulty for orthodox theists who are unwilling to relinquish the Principle of Alternate (...) Possibilities. The solution is that the divine essence includes the property of transworld goodness: i.e., for any possible morally significant choice that God could have faced, if God had actually faced it, God would have chosen to will the good. This view makes coherent the otherwise paradoxical theological intuition that it is within God’s power to do something evil, but He would not ever do such a thing. (shrink)

One of the most important recent developments in the discussion of Kierkegaard's ethics is an interpretation defended, in different forms, by Philip Quinn and Stephen Evans. Both argue that a divine-command theory of moral obligation (DCT) is to be found in "Works of Love". Against this view, I argue that, despite significant overlap between DCT and the view of moral obligation found in "Works of Love", there is at least one essential difference between the two: the former, but not the (...) latter, is committed to the claim that, necessarily, p is morally obligatory only if God commands that p. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2013 Heft: 1 Seiten: 107-130.

Real causal systems are complicated. Despite this, causal learning research has traditionally emphasized how causal relations can be induced on the basis of idealized events, i.e. those that have been mapped to binary variables and abstracted from time. For example, participants may be asked to assess the efficacy of a headache-relief pill on the basis of multiple patients who take the pill (or not) and find their headache relieved (or not). In contrast, the current study examines learning via interactions with (...) continuous dynamic systems, systems that include continuous variables that interact over time (and that can be continuously observed in real time by the learner). To explore such systems, we develop a new framework that represents a causal system as a network of stationary Gauss--Markov (``\OU'') processes and show how such \textit{OU networks} can express complex dynamic phenomena such as feedback loops and oscillations. To assess adult's abilities to learn such systems, we conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to identify the causal relationships of a number of OU networks, potentially carrying out multiple, temporally-extended interventions. We compared their judgments to a normative model for learning OU networks as well as a range of alternative and heuristic learning models from the literature. We found that, although participants exhibited substantial learning of such systems, they committed certain systematic errors. These successes and failures were best accounted for by a model that describes people as focusing on pairs of variables, rather than evaluating the evidence with respect to the full space of possible structural models. We argue that our approach provides both a principled framework for exploring the space of dynamic learning environments as well as new algorithmic insights into how people interact successfully with a continuous causal world. (shrink)

The Christian tradition teaches that some people will suffer eternally in hell. But why? Doesn't an all-powerful God have the ability to prevent this from happening to anyone? Wouldn't a perfectly good and loving God want to prevent it? And doesn't the traditional teaching about hell function as a threat, coercing those who truly believe it? These questions convey the problem of hell, the most disturbing of all theological problems and one of the most difficult to solve. Thinking Through the (...) Problem of Hell is a rigorous yet accessible treatment of the issue. The solution that it develops, called the divine presence model, is that heaven and hell are the various ways that the righteous and the wicked experience the presence of God after the final judgment. In its fully developed form, the divine presence model addresses a whole host of theological issues: the purpose of suffering, the meaning of salvation, the nature of free will and self-deception, and the reason that God remains partially hidden in this life, even to those who earnestly seek Him. This is a book for those who refuse pat, simplistic answers to the hardest questions of the Christian faith. (shrink)

A significant challenge faces any ethic that endorses the view that divine commands are sufficient to impose moral obligations; in this paper, I focus on Kierkegaard's ethic, in particular. The challenge to be addressed is the "modernized" problem of Abraham, popularized especially by Fear and Trembling: the dilemma that an agent faces when a being claiming to be God issues a command to the agent that, by the agent's own lights, seems not to be the kind of command that a (...) loving God would issue. Against a solution to this problem proposed by C. Stephen Evans in Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love, I argue that Kierkegaard regards this scenario as never actually resulting in a fully responsible agent's performance of some horrendous action on account of her non-culpable misinterpretation of God's will and/or failure to discern correctly whether a perceived moral imperative truly is divine in origin. (shrink)

Though Kierkegaard's ethic in "Works of Love" frequently has been a target of harsh — and often uncharitable — criticism, a number of recent treatments have sought to defend both its viability and its relevance to the contemporary discussion. Increasingly, the literature is replete with interpretations that situate it within the traditions of virtue ethics and/or divine command theory. I evaluate these readings, focusing primarily on the issue of moral obligation in Kierkegaard's writings. I argue that both the virtue and (...) divine command interpretations are deficient, though Kierkegaard's ethic indeed shares significant points of contact with both traditions. I explicate and defend an alternative account of moral obligation that seems to me most to warrant the label, "Kierkegaardian," and attempt to expand the view, taking Kierkegaard's ethic as a foundation upon which to build a theoretically rigorous account of moral obligation. The resulting view, I argue, captures the best of both virtue ethics and divine command theory, while avoiding the most serious problems of each. (shrink)

The effective provision of psychotherapy services to individuals with intellectual disability requires consideration of ethical issues related to clinical competence, access to services, obligations to multiple parties, guardianship, and appropriate assessment practices. This article provides an overview of major ethical considerations with guidance for clarifying and resolving common ethical concerns. Psychologists are encouraged to expand access to psychotherapy services for this population while maintaining awareness of potential modifications, training needs, and boundaries of professional competence. The authors provide recommendations and resources (...) for effective and ethical treatment of psychotherapy clients with intellectual disabilities. (shrink)

General preface -- Preface to the second edition -- What is philosophy of religion? -- Philosophy of religion and other disciplines -- Philosophy of religion and philosophy -- Can thinking about religion be neutral? -- Fideism -- Neutralism -- Critical dialogue -- The theistic God : the project of natural theology -- Concepts of God -- The theistic concept of God -- A case study : divine foreknowledge and human freedom -- The problem of religious language -- Natural theology -- (...) Proofs of God's existence -- Classical arguments for God's existence -- Ontological arguments -- Cosmological arguments -- Teleological arguments -- Moral arguments -- Conclusions: The value of theistic argument -- Religious experience -- Types of religious experience -- Models for understanding experience -- Experience of God as direct and mediated -- Are religious experiences veridical? -- Checking experiential claims -- Special acts of God : revelation and miracles -- Special acts -- Theories of revelation -- Is the traditional view defensible? -- What is a miracle? -- Is it reasonable to believe in miracles? -- Can a revelation have special authority? -- Religion, modernity, and science -- Modernity and religious belief -- Naturalism -- Do the natural sciences undermine religious belief? -- Objections from the social sciences -- Religious uses of modern atheism -- The problem of evil -- Types of evil, versions of the problem, and types of response -- The logical form of the problem -- The evidential form of the problem -- Horrendous evils and the problem of hell -- Divine hiddenness -- Faith(s) and reason -- Faith : subjectivity in religious arguments -- The evidentialist challenge to religious belief -- Reformed epistemology -- The place of subjectivity in forming beliefs -- Interpretive judgments and the nature of a cumulative case -- Can faith be certain? -- Faith and doubt : can religious faith be tested? -- What is faith? -- Could one religion be true? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Parenting Adults with ASD: Lessons for Researchers and CliniciansCassandra R. Newsom, Amy S. Weitlauf, Cora M. Taylor, and Zachary E. WarrenRecent reviews of treatments for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) reveal how little we still know about how to help adolescents with ASD and their families successfully transition into adulthood (Shattuck et al., 2012b; Taylor et al., 2012a). Shattuck and colleagues found that services in the United (...) States for adults with ASD were marked by high unemployment rates, a reliance on families to provide care across the lifespan, high turnover rates in front-line service providers, insufficient transition planning for high school students, and generally insufficient services to meet current needs. In a recent Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Comparative Effectiveness Review, the authors similarly found that there is very little evidence available to pinpoint specific intervention approaches for adolescents and young adults with ASD due to a lack of good quality studies. This was especially true for evidence-based approaches to support the transition of youth with ASD to adulthood (Taylor et al., 2012a).For the last decade, with dramatic increases in both ASD awareness and estimates of ASD prevalence, our field has understandably focused intensely on improving early detection and treatment of ASD. Our diagnostic tools and understanding of ASD presentation in very young children has improved tremendously. Different from many of the young adults in these stories, who were often diagnosed in their early teens, we now aim to identify children well before their third birthdays. Research has consistently shown that early and intense ASD-specific intervention can dramatically enhance outcomes for children with ASD. As such, there has been heavy investment in attempting to take full advantage of this early window of neuro-plasticity. However, as these stories illustrate, these children grow up. Their needs change, and our systems are often poorly equipped to help them live fulfilling lives, capitalize on their talents, and obtain independence and equal access, while still providing a safe, supportive environment. Without readily accessible and understandable coordinated systems of care, parents are forced to adopt the multiple roles of case manager, teacher, therapist, community educator, advocate, job coach, housing specialist, financial planner, and often, lifelong caregiver. These stories eloquently illustrate those struggles and successes.Grief and Joy: Opposite Sides of the Same Parenting CoinThe idea of grieving a diagnosis is controversial. Many of the writers seemed to feel conflicted about their grief responses and the validity of their feelings. Research shows that many families view the diagnostic process as extremely stressful (Siklos & [End Page 199] Kerns, 2005; Heiman, 2002). Feelings of sadness, anxiety, and depression are common at the point of diagnosis and may reemerge as milestones pass unmet. Families must modify the futures they imagined for their children and begin to envision new goals and dreams. Anonymous Three described this process when she wrote:Most children grow up, go to school, get jobs, move out of their parents’ home, etc. My husband and I have had to seriously consider how much of these are even possible for a young man with autism, even one who has a good number of functional life skills.Tasks of adolescence and adulthood such as starting high school, driving a car, and moving out of the house may be delayed and hard won if met. Raising a child with ASD appears to have particular challenges. Throughout this process, families begin to redefine what “success” means. Rather than ascribing to societal standards, they find joy in personal milestones. McDonald described the triumph of teaching his nephew to shake women’s hands instead of touching their hair, an important safety goal that took three months to accomplish. Each family thereby creates its own path.People outside of the family often do not understand the complicated interplay of love and obligation as well as the frustration and fulfillment that families experience. Just like any family, the parents of children with ASD describe many joys in addition to their struggles. They see their children’s strengths in a world that too often focuses on their weaknesses. Gifted with the everyday experience of their child’s development, they see past the necessity of a... (shrink)

This article undertakes an exploration of Reinhart Koselleck’s ideas concerning historical knowledge and moral judgment. Koselleck’s position is exemplified by the maxim “knowing is better than knowing better,” declaimed throughout his career. I argue that Koselleck’s separation of knowledge and judgment was unstable, with the prescription to know repeatedly folded into the proscription against knowing better. This article begins with an analysis of Koselleck’s maxim and the underlying theoretical position that sustained it. I show how the separation resulted from Koselleck’s (...) attempts to delegitimate utopian philosophies of history and to maintain a plurality of possible histories. I also demonstrate how Koselleck’s maxim reveals the centrality of philosophical-historical schemata in current debates about the meaning and utility of the past, and how recognizing the tension between knowledge and judgment can reshape concerns about history and moral judgment. Throughout, I illuminate how Koselleck’s knowledge/judgment problematic is germane to the philosophy of history by reading him alongside R.G. Collingwood and Joan Scott. (shrink)

Review of Hazard Adams, The Offense of Poetry. For the Comparative Literature Edition of MLN (2009).

There is a constant tension that exists within each individual. This is the struggle between the hidden ideologies and fixed ideas which enslave the individual and the need to rid themselves of them. It is through these that implicit religion forms. We require, in order to counteract this, a new theology, a secular theology – one which emphasizes the individual. In order to bring about a new theology, it is necessary to reconsider the philosophies of Adam Weishaupt, Louis Althusser, (...) and Max Stirner and bring them into the modern discussion of implicit religion. This paper aims to bring together these understudied philosophers as well as contemporary leaders in political theology in order to reimagine the potential of the individual to rid themselves from fixed ideas and to realize their potential. (shrink)

This article defends deterrence as an aim of punishment. Specifically, I contend that a system of punishment aimed at deterrence (with constraints to prohibit punishing the innocent or excessively punishing the guilty) is consistent with the liberal principle of respect for offenders as autonomous moral persons. I consider three versions of the objection that deterrent punishment fails to respect offenders. The first version, raised by Jeffrie Murphy and others, charges that deterrent punishment uses offenders as mere means to securing the (...) social good of crime reduction. The second and third are developed by R.A. Duff. The second holds that deterrent punishment inappropriately excludes offenders from the moral community. The third charges that deterrent punishment offers community members the wrong sorts of reasons to comply with the law. I conclude that each of these objections fails. A system of punishment aimed at deterrence (suitably constrained) is consistent with respect for offenders as moral persons. (shrink)

In the recent book The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, E. V. R. Kojonen argues that a biological design inference is still possible in light of mainstream evolutionary theory and that evolution and design need not be in explanatory tension. This collection of essays is the product of a symposium held in March 2022, which interacted with the claims of the book. Contributors come from diverse academic backgrounds across philosophy, science, and theology, and both critique and extend Kojonen's argument. Here, (...) each contribution is introduced along with some important connections between them and key questions which remain open. (shrink)

An often-overlooked characteristic of the human mind is its propensity to wander. Despite growing interest in the science of mind-wandering, most studies operationalize mind-wandering by its task-unrelated contents. But these contents may be orthogonal to the processes that determine how thoughts unfold over time, remaining stable or wandering from one topic to another. In this chapter, we emphasize the importance of incorporating such processes into current definitions of mind-wandering, and propose that mind-wandering and other forms of spontaneous thought (such as (...) dreaming and creativity) are mental states that arise and transition relatively freely due to an absence of constraints on cognition. We review existing psychological, philosophical and neuroscientific research on spontaneous thought through the lens of this framework, and call for additional research into the dynamic properties of the mind and brain. (shrink)

We respond to a Letter to the Editor regarding "Principlism and contemporary ethical considerations for providers of transgender health care." We address criticisms by Castle & Klein (2024) of blatant fatphobia related to the ethical elements concerning BMI restrictions for gender-affirming surgery. Our response corrects several mischaracterizations of the article and clarifies our position. My co-authors and I remain focused on advocating for patient-centered, ethically sound, evidence-based, and equitable healthcare policies.