The Vulnerable and Transcendent God: The Postliberal Theology of William Placher

Abstract :  Between the extremes of fundamentalism and secularism, the postliberal Presbyterian theologian William Placher offers a dynamic middle way. This "Theology Update" summarizes Placher's work. Warning us against prematurely domesticating God's transcendence, Placher presents a picture of a God who is radically transcendent, and therefore recklessly immanent in creation. God is vulnerable in Christ, who saves us through solidarity, reconciliation and redemption.     

William James, Mind-Cure, and the Religion of Healthy-Mindedness

At the turn of the twentieth century, the mind-cure movement emphasized the healing power of positive emotions and beliefs. William James defended mind-cure during the Massachusetts legislature's debates on licensing physicians in 1894 and 1898. In The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) he used the movement's therapeutic claims to illustrate the typically American, practical turn of the religion of healthy-mindedness. Varieties sympathetically surveys mind-cure literature, but also criticizes healthy-minded religion for its limited range and refusal to confront tragedy and radical evil. Many of today's mind/body therapies continue the mind-cure tradition and retain the limitations that James noted.     

具身认知:身体主题在心身关系研究中的回归

上世纪80年代以来,随着经典认知研究的步履维艰,认知研究逐渐显示出具身化的特点。具身认知是第二代认知科学的代表,它强调身体在认知形成中的重要性,认为身体对认知有限制、分配和调节作用,并具有与经典认知不同的运动观。近年来研究者们以实验手段力求为具身认知的存在提供证据,着力考察认知与身体感知运动状态的相互影响。具身认知理论在认知构建、生态效度等方面具有自己的优势,但目前具身认知还是一个新兴的研究领域,有待进一步的深入探讨。     

The Indicative of Grace & The Imperative of Freedom: An Invitation to the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel

Abstract :  This essay offers a comprehensive introduction to German theologian Eberhard Jüngel's theology and philosophy of religion. It traces his intellectual development, beginning with his formation studies in New Testament with Ernst Fuchs, and ends with his controversial position in matters of church unity and ecumenism. Special attention is paid to his theological anthropology, and the potential contributions his theology could make in the North American context are assessed.     

Empathetic Computers: The Problem of Confusing Persons and Things

As computers become both more intelligent and ubiquitous we increasingly rely on them for forms of companionship. We are relational beings, instinctively drawn to those who relate back to us, an instinct that is rooted in our creation in the image of a triune, and thus relational, God. Relationships with computers, which necessarily displace relationships with other humans, have so far been shown to be dissatisfying. This dissatisfaction arises because a computer cannot be truly empathetic. It cannot feel emotion due to its lack of a body; it can only simulate emotion. This makes relationship with a computer similar to relationship with a sociopath and can isolate us from both others and our true selves.     

Beyond neurophenomenology: A review of Colombetti's The Feeling Body

I review The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind by Giovanna Colombetti (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2014, 288 pages, $40.00 hardcover). In this book Colombetti draws on the enactive theory of organismic embodiment and its key concept of sense-making in order to critically evaluate various aspects of mainstream affective science, including basic emotions and alternative constructionist approaches, as well as the cognitivist approach to emotion and appraisal theory. She defends and develops a dynamical systems approach to emotions and emphasizes the need for including more first-person methods of consciousness science in mainstream affective neuroscience. These are valuable contributions to affective science, and they also advance enactive theory. Colombetti's proposal goes further than standard neurophenomenology in that she appeals to the bodily basis of feeling, thereby requiring a new sort of neuro-physio-phenomenology. Even more radically, she allows that all living beings are essentially affective beings, even those without a nervous system, and that emotional forms could be co-constituted by more than one person.     

Natural Realism or Transactionalism: On the Relationships between Putnam and Two Pragmatists,James and Dewey

The relationships between Hilary Putnam and the pragmatists (especially William James and John Dewey) are obvious but subtle.To shed some light on this issue,the author will explore a key issue that not only stands as Putnam's main inheritance from the pragmatists,but that also illuminates the relationships between them more clearly than any other issues.This key issue is the understanding of perception and the philosophical position that arises from this understanding.The author argues that in adopting Dewey's transactionalism (or interactionalism),Putnam advances from James' insight to Dewey's,a shift that is particularly manifest in Putnam's attempt to add another layer of meaning to what he refers to as the second na(i)veté that he detects and appreciates in James' natural realism.     

Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility: The Flicker of Freedom

Some defenders of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) have responded to the challenge of Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs) to PAP by arguing that there remains a flicker of freedom -- that is, an alternative possibility for action -- left to the agent in FSCs. I argue that the flicker of freedom strategy is unsuccessful. The strategy requires the supposition that doing an act-on-one's-own is itself an action of sorts. I argue that either this supposition is confused and leads to counter-intuitive results; or, if the supposition is acceptable, then it is possible to use it to construct a FSC in which there is no flicker of freedom at all. Either way, the flicker of freedom strategy is ineffective against FSCs. Since the flicker of freedom strategy is arguably the best defense of PAP, I conclude that FSCs are successful in showing that PAP is false. An agent can act with moral responsibility without having alternative possibilities available to her.     

Creating in Our Own Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Image of God

There is remarkable convergence between twentieth-century interpretations of the image of God ( imago Dei ), what it means for human beings to be created in God's image, and approaches toward creating in our own image in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Both fields have viewed the intersection between God and humanity or humanity and computers in terms of either (1) a property or set of properties such as intelligence, (2) the functions we engage in or are capable of, or (3) the relationships we establish and maintain. Each of these three approaches reflects a different understanding of what stands at the core of our humanity. Functional and relational approaches were common in the late twentieth century, with a functional understanding the one most accepted by society at large. A relational view, however, gives new insights into human dignity in a computer age as well as new approaches to AI research.     

揭示大脑奥秘的新途径:还原论与整合论的有机融合

脑科学研究经历了简单的整合论,到简单的还原论,发展到成熟的还原论,以及成熟的整合论,最终认知神经科学的延生标志着还原论与整合论的有机融合进入新阶段.认知神经科学强调多学科、多层次、多水平的交叉,研究的层次包括分子、突触、神经元、网络、脑区、系统、全脑及整体行为乃至环境、社会等.     

Bridging the Void: New Interpretations of Christian Mysticism and Mystical Theology

There is currently a welcome intensification of interest in the contemporary theological significance of both historical traditions of mystical theology and twentieth‐century theories of mysticism. This review article surveys and evaluates the stimulating range of approaches to these two issues contained in the essays in these volumes. It suggests that the volumes make evident the difficulty of attempting to uncover an underlying conceptual unity in these two historically entangled but deeply different forms of thought. The historical and philosophical sophistication with which many of these essays reflect on these tensions, however, points towards fruitful lines of future enquiry.     

Christian Engagement with Public Bioethics in Britain: The Case of Human Admixed Embryos

This paper offers an assessment of the prospects for Christianengagement with public bioethical debates in a contemporaryBritish context. One recent example, the debate provoked byproposed legislation for research involving human admixed embryos,is examined briefly. It is argued that this debate has someproblematic features that are characteristic of public ethicaldebates in this context. Next, a proposal is offered as to howsuch bioethical questions may be approached from within a Christiantheological tradition (specifically, a Reformed Protestant tradition).This proposed approach makes use of four "diagnostic questions"to assess whether technological proposals and practices suchas the creation of human admixed embryos can be consistent withthe distinctive Christian narrative of creation, sin, salvationthrough Christ, and promised future hope. The final sectionoffers some reflections on how Christians and churches mightengage, on the basis of this theological approach, with publicethical debates such as the one about admixed embryos.     

Rethinking priming in social psychology: Insight from James' notions of habits and instincts

Research on priming is commonly taken to establish that much of human behavior is automatic and caused by largely subconscious processes. This research has recently come under increased scrutiny as some classic studies have proved difficult to replicate. In this essay, we bring the views of William James to bear on priming. Though James leaves room for instinct and habit, he rejects the view that human psychology is ultimately mechanistic on the grounds that it is naïvely simplistic. James is also able to explain why priming studies are bound to face replicability issues: human behavior unfolds in a dynamic multifarious constellation of interrelationships among people, consciousness, and the world. To offer researchers a productive direction for studying cognition, we conclude by briefly introducing an approach known as enactivism – an approach that resonates with the ideas James puts forth.     

The Body as the Ground of Religion, Science, and Self

The human body is both religious subject and scientific object, the manifest locus of both religious gnosis and secular cognition. Embodiment provides the basis for a rich cross–fertilization between cognitive science and comparative religion, but cognitive studies must return to their empiricist scientific roots by reembodying subjectivity, thus spanning the natural bridge between the two fields. Referencing the ritual centrality and cognitive content of the body, I suggest a materialist but nonreductionist construct of the self as a substantial cognitive embodiment that embraces not just perception and cognition, mind and spirit, but the forceful physicality of the moving body. Proprioception of the body's moving mass constitutes a mode of knowing that resonates strongly with the experience of self, not only across religious traditions but also within the physical sciences. By way of illustration, two directions are suggested in which a construct of the self as a substantial cognitive embodiment might lead us: first, a body–based interpretation of the Islamic myth of Adam and Iblis that reveals an internal substantiality as constitutive of the divinely imaged Self, and second, a new, religious direction for human evolutionary theory based on the implications of an embodied intentionality.     

Fruits of Health; Roots of Despair: William James, Medical Materialism and the Evaluation of Religious Experience

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James introduces the term “medical materialism” to describe the fallacious attempt by some scientists to argue against the value of spiritual ideas. Two literary case studies will be considered for purposes of better understanding James’ idea. What’s more, it will be shown that, in addition to James’ three criteria for the appropriate evaluation of religious experience, there is another factor not made explicit, namely that of hopefulness. This factor serves to distinguish ordinary from pathological morbid-mindedness, the latter of which has no religious significance.Tadd Ruetenik teaches philosophy at Penn State Altoona. He received his Ph.D. from the English and Philosophy program at Purdue University. Correspondence to Tadd Ruetenik, tlr18@psu.edu.     

The Mind and the Book: A Long Look at Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

This immense field can be summarized by recognizing that the psychoanalytic critic must address one or more of three minds: the author's, the reader's, or a mind derived from the text. The critic can then address them from any theoretical point of view. The future of psychoanalytic criticism, and indeed of psychoanalysis, lies in integrating the discoveries of brain and cognitive science with those of psychoanalysis. In the present, psychoanalytic critics need to recognize that their function is to delight and enlighten. Hence, no more pathography, no more id-analysis, no more symbol-mongering, no more jargon. Only that way, will psychoanalytic critics keep open psychoanalysis' royal road into the human possibilities offered by great literature.