"Lesbians, gay men, and their parents": a critique of LaSala and the prevailing clinical "wisdom"

This article challenges the popular assumption that coming out to family of origin is important for lesbians and gay men's mental health and couple relationships. First, I present theory emphasizing the unique position of lesbians/gays in families of origin and the significance of "families of choice." Second, I review the quantitative research on social support received by lesbians/gays from family of origin, friends, and other social network sources. Third, I demonstrate how the dominant clinical opinion about coming out to family is based on an unwarranted use of theory developed for heterosexuals and on overgeneralization of findings from studies of white, upper-middle-class, North American lesbians/gays. Fourth, I propose five determinants of lesbian/gay persons' decisions to come out to family-of-origin members. Fifth, I argue that such decisions are constrained by "realistic" costs/benefits in various sociocultural niches rather than being a simple function of individuals' levels of differentiation. Lastly, I offer an expanded contextual stance for the family therapist working with lesbian/gay clients.     

It's All About "Me" (Behold the Leader)

Abstract The group beholds its leader: a looming figure of fantasy, an emerging figure of reality. Psychic patterns that play out in group cohesion, culture, conflicts, and process are rooted in interaction with this combined object. I describe a two-day conference on relational group psychotherapy. An assemblage had beheld "me," a visitor with gifts of knowledge, initially welcomed with collective expectation. Rivalrous and acquisitive desire (Girard, 2004) set group process in motion, involving scapegoating and open conflict, but also, self discovery and mutual appreciation. Confronted with "me," the representative, messenger, even embodiment of truth, the group had to deal with feelings, fantasies, and thoughts that were "not nice." There were moments of fear for the safety and survival of our group, yet I did not comprehend the extent to which envy, in tooth and nail, with devouring hunger tore into every aspect of our mentalities. Under its catabolic force, I was captured and I could not articulate to myself the sense of what it was, until the group shifted and released me from envy's intersubjective captivity. In group, whatever is being talked about-whoever is reacting to whom or to what-the group's focal conflict, predominating basic assumption, developmental level or stage, its regressions and progressions, dyadic interactions, subgroupings, and so forth, I now assume that on one level, it is all about "me."     

ON "HUXLEYS EVOLUTION AND ETHICS IN SOCIOBIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE" BY GEORGE C. WILLIAMS

Abstract. I concur with Williams that improving human ethics requires full consideration of the biogenetic facts; but I argue that the understanding of biogenetic facts, and of ethics also, can be improved by a fuller view of nature's mechanism for selecting what is fit, a view recently generated by physical scientists. For me ethics necessarily must fit the evolved genotype, but ethics does not emerge until the rise of cultural evolution, where nature selects a culturetype symbiotic with the genotype. I outline my integrated dynamics of the relation of culturetypes to genotypes and to the laws governing physical systems. The biologist's finding that a living organism is of transient significance compared with its lines of heritage and their consequences, I argue, is constructively important for ethical and theological understanding.     

"LIKE CHEWING GRAVEL"

The researcher's role in creating knowledge and interpretations is of critical concern as new research methods are developed. Recent attention has been given to the "implications of difference" on the research process; however, the processes of analysis/interpretation and presentation of research remain to be illuminated. Seeking to address this, I present my experiences as a White researcher of middle socioeconomic status (SES) conducting qualitative research about childbearing with several pregnant Black American adolescents of lower SES. Although the research process was consistent with qualitative research methods, initial analyses of the data led to findings that seemed far afield from the participants' worlds. I subsequently reanalyzed the data with the principles of a feminist epistemology (Harding, 1991) in mind. The impact of using this epistemology on the processes of analysis and interpretation and my presentation of the data are presented. The results support the importance of developing feminist methodology and epistemology and provide new direction for further work.     

"Reflexive Embodied Empathy": A Phenomenology of Participant-Researcher Intersubjectivity

In this article, I advocate a research process that involves engaging, reflexively, with the embodied intersubjective relationship researchers have with participants. I call this practice reflexive embodied empathy. First, I explicate the concept of empathy through exploring ideas from the philosophical phenomenological literature. I then apply this theory to practice and offer examples of reflexive analysis of embodied empathy taken from various hermeneutic phenomenological research projects. Three interpenetrating layers of reflexivity are described, each involving different but coexisting dimensions of embodied intersubjectivity. The 1st layer-connecting-of-demonstrates how people can tune into another's bodily way of being through using their own embodied reactions. The 2nd layer-acting-into-focuses on empathy as imaginative self-transposal and calls attention to the way existences (beings) are intertwined in a dynamic of doubling and mirroring. The 3rd layer-merging-with-involves a "reciprocal insertion and intertwining" of others in oneself and of one in them (Merleau-Ponty, 1964/1968, p. 138), where self-understanding and other-understanding unite in mutual transformation. Through different examples of reflexive analysis from my research, I have tried to show how intersubjective corporeal commonality enables the possibility of empathy and how, in turn, empathy enables understanding of the Other and self-understanding. I discuss how the coexisting layers of empathy and the resultant understandings can be enabled through hermeneutic reflection and collaborative research methods.     

"Let Us Be Saints if We Can"

Stanley Hauerwas's Gifford Lectures are, at least in part, an interpretation of the Giffords that came before him. As a contribution to intellectual and theological history, however, I wish Hauerwas had given witness to Santayana's Hermes the hermeneut, along with the considerable, indeed considerate, witness he does give to his own Christian faith. Hauerwas seems to dislike Reinhold Niebuhr and, by my account, misreads William James. Thus I have to conclude that With the Grain of the Universe does not measure up to his own more capacious and incisive works.     

"Two Concepts of Liberty" Through African Eyes

In "Two Concepts of Liberty" Berlin notes the protean nature of the word "freedom" and then systematically proceeds to narrow its range of meanings. In the process, Berlin eliminates much of what most people, in everyday communication, regard as freedom, believing that this is in the best interest of intellectual clarity. As he puts it:
[N]othing is gained by a confusion of terms. To avoid glaring inequality or widespread misery I am ready to sacrifice some, or all, of my freedom: I may do so willingly and freely: but it is freedom that I am giving up for the sake of justice or equality or the love of my fellow men. I should be guilt-stricken, and rightly so, if I were not, in some circumstances, ready to make this sacrifice. But a sacrifice is not an increase in what is being sacrificed, namely freedom, however great the moral need or the compensation for it. Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience. (Emphasis added).
Berlin's other, perhaps overarching, aim is to show how inattention to the specificity of the meanings of concepts might have potentially dangerous political repercussions. He implicitly argues that the intellectuals who promoted the idea of positive freedom as opposed to that of negative freedom contributed to the emergence of totalitarianism and fascism in Europe.     

The role of the clinical ethics consultant in "unsettled" cases

In this article I take up a central question posed by the article jointly authored with Bill Winslade in this issue of JCE: What should be the role of clinical ethics consultants (CECs) in (what we call) an unsettled case: that is, a situation in which the range of allowable choices, among which the parties to a bioethical disagreement must select, cannot be clearly or completely specified? I argue here that CECs should, in such cases, guide the parties by presenting their own reasoned conclusions about what the scope of allowable choices should be taken to include. Since this position challenges the received view that CECs must not express their own moral positions or conclusions in their role as ethicists, I try to defend my view of the CEC's role in unsettled cases against several objections.     

On the "Gray's Elegy" Argument and its Bearing on Frege's Theory of Sense

In his recent book, The Metaphysicians of Meaning (2000), Gideon Makin argues that in the so-called "Gray's Elegy " argument (the GEA) in "On Denoting", Russell provides decisive arguments against not only his own theory of denoting concepts but also Frege's theory of sense. I argue that by failing to recognize fundamental differences between the two theories, Makin fails to recognize that the GEA has less force against Frege's theory than against Russell's own earlier theory. While I agree with many aspects of Makin's interpretation of the GEA, I differ with him regarding some significant details and present an interpretation according to which the GEA emerges as simpler, stronger, and more integrated.     

"The physician as poet" review of: Pereira, Peter Saying the World

Peter Pereira is a family physician and a poet. I weave excerpts from Dr. Pereira's poems into a brief history of medicine's mythological and historical roots, beginning with the Egyptian god Thoth, and the Greek physician Hippocrates. Along the way, I touch on the European Middle Ages and the Islamic World. Finally, I quote poet-critic T.S. Eliot, who was an early influence on Dr. Pereira's decision to become a poet, and contemporary physician-poets Rafael Campo and William Carlos Williams. I end by placing Dr. Pereira, whose practice is oriented toward immigrant families, in his indigenous Pacific Northwest, arguing that being both physician and poet helps Pereira to live in a world that is both intimately human and naturally impersonal.     

Sellars and the "Myth of the Given"

Sellars is well known for his critique of the "myth of the given" in his "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind". That text does not make it unambiguous just how he understands the "myth". Here I take it that whatever else may be involved, his critique is incompatible with the view that there is a nonconceptual mode of "presentation" or "givenness" of particulars that is the heart of sense perception and what is most distinctive of perception as a type of cognition. A critical examination of Sellars' arguments, particularly those directed at the Theory of Appearing, results in the conclusion that he has failed to eliminate the above view of perception. Moreover, though Sellars is clearly opposed to the view that perceptual experience cannot provide justification for beliefs about perceived objects, I argue that Sellars has failed to shake the intuitive plausibility of that view.     

"Fatal practices": a feminist analysis of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia

In this essay, I examine the arguments against physician-assisted suicide (PAS) Susan Wolf offers in her essay, “Gender, Feminism, and Death: Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.” I argue that Wolf's analysis of PAS, while timely and instructive in many ways, does not require that feminists reject policy approaches that might permit PAS. The essay concludes with reflections on the relationship between feminism and questions of agency, especially women's agency.     

Naturalism Need Not Be "Made Safe": A Response to William Rottschaefer's Misunderstandings

In this article, I respond to William Rottschaefer's analysis of my writings on religion and science, especially my Religion, Science and Naturalism (1996). I show that I am not trying "to make naturalism safe," as Rottschaefer contends, but rather attempting to explore options available when one endorses naturalistic approaches. I also explain why I object to the label "supernaturalistic naturalism" used by Rottschaefer. Possible limitations to naturalistic projects are discussed, not as limitations imposed but rather as features uncovered.     

PEIRCE'S "ARCHITECTURE OF THEORIES" AND THE PROBLEM OF PRAGMATISM

The paper begins as a response to Tom Rockmore's thesis that contemporary pragmatism is a healthy “confusion” of disparate views. While Rockmore sees the need of some of today's pragmatists to provide a motivation for what he calls “epistemic optimism,” I contend that the crucial question of pragmatism, the problem of pragmatism, is the ontological status of pragmatic meaning. Thus rather than a mere “epistemic optimism,” I call upon pragmatists to assert a fallible yet unabashedly metaphysical optimism. The argument supporting this claim is made in the context of Peirce's “The Architecture of Theories.” In “The Architecture of Theories” Peirce opens the door to a pragmatic metaphysics while at the same time committing the error of subordinating truths and reality to “the long run of inquiry.” Rockmore suggest that the solution may lie in a return to Kant's notion of the “powers of the mind.” However, it is my contention that a solution to this problem cannot be found within Kant at all. I shall argue here that until contemporary pragmatism decisively extracts itself from the Kantian paradigm, the pragmatic philosophic value of pragmatic meaning will always be qualified, conditional and ontologically subordinated, having the same effect upon the standing of pragmatism as a philosophy as well. Moreover, I shall endeavor to show that when the Kantian paradigm is finally abandoned, pragmatism's classic difficulties with realism and what Peircc called “the long run” of scientific inquiry can also be resolved. Kantian “powers of the mind” and constructivist “epistemological optimism” would then be transformed into what I shall call unrestricted pragmatism. On the other hand if the Kantian impediment is not overcome, these difficulties will continue to form the basis of a more sceptical and traditionally restricted pragmatism, one which lacks the confidence desired by both Rockmore and myself.     

GLOBAL JUSTICE AFTER THE FALL Christian Realism and the "Law of Peoples"

In The Law of Peoples John Rawls casts his proposals as an argument against what he calls “political realism.” Here, I contend that a certain version of “Christian political realism” survives Rawls's polemic against political realism sans phrase and that Rawls overstates his case against political realism writ large. Specifically, I argue that Rawls's dismissal of “empirical political realism” is underdetermined by the evidence he marshals in support of the dismissal and that his rejection of “normative political realism” is in tension with his own normative concessions to political reality as expressed in The Law of Peoples. That is, I contend that Rawls, himself, needs some form of political realism to render persuasive the full range of normative claims constituting the argument of that work.     

The emotional symbolism of two English e-sounds: /i/ as in "cheap" is pleasant and /I/ as in "chip" active

This article aligns the symbolism of the long (/i/) and short (/I/) e sounds in English with the two dimensions of emotional space-Pleasantness and Activation. On the basis of this alignment, the four quadrants of emotional space are labelled Cheerful (high /i/, high /I/), Cheerless (low /i/, low /I/), Tough (low /i/, high /I/), and Tender (high /i/, low /I/). In four phases, data from over 50 samples (mainly, poetry, song lyrics, and names) were plotted and compared in terms of their use of the two e sounds. Significant and meaningful differences among samples were discovered in all phases. The placement of samples in quadrants was additionally informative. Data samples including many long e sounds (/i/) tended to be more Pleasant and those including many short e sounds (/I/) tended to be more Active.     

Euthanasia and John Paul II's "silent language of profound sharing of affection:" why Christians should care about Peter Singer.

Peter Singer's recent appointment to Princeton University created considerable controversy, most of it focused on his proposal for active euthanasia of disabled infants. Singer articulates utilitarian ideas that often appear in public discussions of euthanasia. Drawing on Pope John Paul II's work on ethics and suffering, I argue that Singer's utilitarian theory of value is impoverished. After introducing the Pope's ethic based on the imago dei, I discuss love as self-gift. I show how this concept supports a theory of value in which spiritual goods are preeminent over material goods. I then describe how suffering reveals spiritual goods, discussing how participation in Christ's suffering can alter our perception of value. I also consider how communal responses to suffering provide opportunities for self-giving. Third, I consider Singer's proposal for killing infants with hemophilia, arguing that it arbitrarily ignores spiritual goods. I then discuss proposals to kill anencephalic infants, discussing how parental responses to their suffering can demonstrate an extraordinary love in seemingly hopeless circumstances. I conclude by calling for a more sustained social response to euthanasia initiatives.     

Reconsidering "evidence" for fast-and-frugal heuristics

In several recent reviews, authors have argued for the pervasive use of fast-and-frugal heuristics in human judgment. They have provided an overview of heuristics and have reiterated findings corroborating that such heuristics can be very valid strategies leading to high accuracy. They also have reviewed previous work that implies that simple heuristics are actually used by decision makers. Unfortunately, concerning the latter point, these reviews appear to be somewhat incomplete. More important, previous conclusions have been derived from investigations that bear some noteworthy methodological limitations. I demonstrate these by proposing a new heuristic and provide some novel critical findings. Also, I review some of the relevant literature often not—or only partially—considered. Overall, although some fast-and-frugal heuristics indeed seem to predict behavior at times, there is little to no evidence for others. More generally, the empirical evidence available does not warrant the conclusion that heuristics are pervasively used.