Liberalism, Fundamentalism and Truth

abstract   One way in which we may be tempted to understand the distinction we make in practice between liberals and fundamentalists is via the issue of truth. Liberals are generally more sceptical about truth while fundamentalists tend to be more objectivist, believing not only that objective truth exists but also that they know it. I call this interpretation the 'truth interpretation'. In this paper I attempt to undermine the 'truth interpretation' by showing that it does not map on adequately to the sorts of distinctions that we actually make in practice. We will see that thinking that the distinction between liberals and fundamentalists revolves around the philosophical issue of truth, such that the 'good guys' are sceptics and the 'bad guys' objectivists, fails to connect with our practical distinctions. The second half of the paper then addresses the question of what role, if any, truth does play in distinguishing between liberals and fundamentalists, arguing that if truth does play a role we should see it as a very narrow and political, rather, than philosophical one.     

Fundamentalism, Gender and Family Therapy

Adherence to religiously and culturally defined communities is a complex affair, likely to be misconstrued by those perceiving such communities from the 'outside'. This is a major reason why multiculturalism has failed to deal with the threat posed by religious fundamentalism. In particular, dissenting voices within these communities are marginalized. Fundamentalism is understood here as a specific anti-modern movement, a response to the crisis of rationality that draws on the same emotional forces as do postmodernism and feminism but to different ends. It is characterized by acceptance of the existence of absolute authority, militancy and anti-humanism. It casts women as both 'ideal' (as mothers and bearers of the culture) and 'other' (as sexual subjects). It embodies a failure of the imaginative capacity to tolerate difference and otherness, linking it with other narcissistic responses to the tensions of modernity. Challenging fundamentalism, in therapy and in politics, requires a more subtle understanding of the dynamics of dissent within cultural and religious communities too conveniently characterized by outsiders as homogeneous.     

Like father,like son: Toward a developmental model for the transmission of male deviance across generations

This study examined two competing developmental models for social mechanisms linking father?–?son deviance in two-parent families. Assessment of family management, father antisocial behaviour, and sons' antisocial behaviour at age nine used multiple measurement methods. At age 13?–?14, boys were observed interacting with friends on videotape; at age 23?–?24, they were followed and assessed, looking at arrest records, self-reported delinquency, and substance use. SEM was used to test competing models of the influence of fathers on sons' antisocial behaviour in young adulthood. Analyses supported a model linking fathers' childhood antisocial behaviour directly to sons' observed early adolescent deviant friendship interactions, and indirectly to young-adult problem behaviour. Although early parenting practices correlated with fathers' antisocial behaviour and boys' antisocial behaviour in childhood, they were not predictive of late association with deviant peers, once controlling for fathers' antisocial behaviour. Findings are discussed relative to possible biological and social mechanisms of cross-generation transmission of antisocial behaviour, as well as to prevention theory.     

Authoritarianism,Religious Fundamentalism,Quest, and Prejudice

Five studies of university students and their parents were carried out to investigate the relationships among right-wing authoritarianism, various indices of religious orientation, and prejudice. Measures of religious fundamentalism, and religious quest, developed for this research, proved to be psychometrically sound, and were good discriminators between prejudiced and unprejudiced persons, across a variety of different measures of prejudice and authoritarian aggression. Scores on both Religious Fundamentalism and Religious Quest scales also were correlated strongly with right-wing authoritarianism and the Christian Orthodoxy scale, although orthodoxy itself tended not to be correlated with prejudice. Apparently, religious fundamentalism and nonquesting are linked with authoritarianism and prejudice toward a wide variety of minority groups. Possible explanations for these relationships are discussed.     

Religious Fundamentalism and Terror Management

The study reported herein tested the following hypothesis: Religious fundamentalism can serve a protective function against existential anxiety, such that the need to engage in secular worldview defense when mortality is made salient is reduced for high fundamentalists. The results showed that high fundamentalists engaged in less worldview defense after thinking about their own death versus a control topic. Low fundamentalists, however, engaged in more worldview defense after thinking about their deaths versus a control topic. Exploratory analyses revealed that high fundamentalists' writings about death had a more positive emotional tone and that reactions to the death salience manipulation moderated the impact of fundamentalism on worldview defense. Fundamentalists who saw their deaths in terms of peace and acceptance appeared most protected against terror management concerns.     

Religious Fundamentalism and Gender Differences

The role of religious fundamentalism and its relationship to shame and guilt was evaluated in 107 students who attend a church-sponsored university. A number of personality measures were given and gender differences were analyzed. The role of externalization was similar for males in this sample to that of earlier studies. However, it was found that females showed positive correlations between externalization and both shame and guilt. For females, more fundamentalistic religious training may help to contribute to an external orientation at the expense of identifying with a personal religion, and appropriate guilt.     

Religious Fundamentalism,Religious Coping,and Preference for Psychological and Religious Treatment

Religion may not be simply another variable in the assessment of treatment-seeking but an alternative worldview about the nature of suffering and its appropriate treatment. This study examines the relation of religious fundamentalism and religious coping on relative preference for psychological or religious help-seeking in 142 undergraduate students. Higher levels of religious fundamentalism and deferred religious coping were found to be associated with greater preference for religious rather than psychological help-seeking. The results suggest that religious issues need to be included in the investigation of help-seeking.     

Fundamentalism and Paranoia in Groups and Society

This paper will examine the concepts of fundamentalism and paranoia to contribute understanding to how extremist positions have developed. Fundamentalism is a rigid, dogmatic, and skewed view that dismisses other competing and conflicting viewpoints. Extreme feelings can only lead to extremist behavior. Fears in our inner selves will only fuel the fires of paranoia, encourage fundamentalist behavior, and lead to group conflicts. We will examine this on micro (group) and macro (society) levels.     

Son and father

I have traced in my deliberations the mutual influence of drive and ego development throughout the male child's dyadic and triadic father relatedness as it proceeds within a changing soma and social surround during the first two decades of life. I have made the effort to conceptualize the normal developmental progression in male personality formation with explicit reference to the fate of the boy's dyadic father relationship as well as his negative Oedipus complex in general. These considerations, restricted as they are in scope and gender, assign to the dyadic father complex a nuclear role in neurosogenesis as well as recognize in it an etiological factor in relation to specific forms of psychopathology throughout the male life cycle.     

Misinformation,subjectivism, and the rational criticizability of desire

Philosophical Studies - Orthodox Humeans about normative reasons for action believe that there are no rational principles governing the substantive content of desire. But they also believe that...