Teleology,Deontology, and the Priority of the Right: On Some Unappreciated Distinctions

The paper analyses Rawls’s teleology/deontology distinction, and his concept of priority of the right. The first part of the paper aims both 1) to clarify what is distinctive about Rawls’s deontology/teleology distinction (thus sorting out some existing confusion in the literature, especially regarding the conflation of such distinction with that between consequentialism and nonconsequentialism); and 2) to cash out the rich taxonomy of moral theories that such a distinction helpfully allows us to develop. The second part of the paper examines the concept of priority of the right. It argues that such a concept should not be identified with that of deontology—indeed, deontological theories do not necessarily assign priority to the right over the good. However, it contends that the concept of priority of the right is essential to explaining what specific kind of deontological theory “justice as fairness” is. Justice as fairness is a deontological theory which assigns priority to the right as a consequence of its commitment to a neutral position with respect to different accounts of what is ultimately valuable and good.     

The Spirit,Creaturehood and Sanctification: On Avoiding Theological Overcompensation

Talk of the Spirit's work of sanctification often leads to a number of different conclusions, ones that often appear mutually exclusive. Under such conditions, their espousers often make cases for their views in overcompensatory ways by highlighting their approaches over and against other views that may be complementary in their own way. This article contends that behind this diversity are often competing claims within different domains of inquiry surrounding the Creator–creation interface. These commitments lurk in the background of these debates, and their exposure may help in the ongoing task of speaking of the Spirit's endeavoring in and among creatures.     

基督教关于成圣的思想及方法

基督教义中有关“成圣”的思想及其方法是指导基督徒意识形态的基本要素。“成圣”与终极关怀密切相关。本文阐述了新旧约圣经有关成圣的内容及多位有重要影响的神学家的观点,从而总结出基督教成圣的思想及成圣方法,继而找出基督教关于人生终极关怀(成圣)的路向。     

Christ Existing in Ordinary: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sanctification

One task of any doctrine of sanctification is to attend to a theological rationale for the significance of a habitual and developing Christian life within a broader salvific economy. This article introduces the problem of claiming ‘ordinary’ life as the arena and instrument of God and distils three elements of Bonhoeffer's early theology that might be employed to articulate a theology of sanctification as the counterpoint of justification: the realization of a new humanity in Christ that constitutes an ontology of justification; Christian devotion as the act of this new humanity in the Spirit; and the dynamic integrity accorded to historical existence.     

Clarifying Construct Validity: Definitions,Processes, and Models

Despite definitions in standard sources, personnel managers, psychologists, and psychometricians persistently encounter problems that are best referred to as the ambiguous nature of validity. The purpose of this article is to pro- vide an overview of construct validity and personnel testing, to demonstrate its practical utility, and to clarify with concrete examples certain theories and models, as well as to illustrate the meaning of the terminology used by com- mentators on the topic. A brief historical overview of testing and validation is presented; the progress of construct validity and its acceptance by various sec- tors of society is discussed parsimoniously in the section The Seven Wonders of Personnel Psychology. In the past, personnel psychologists have not done a very good job of understanding the constructs that underlie test perform- ance. Some new approaches can help to correct this. A process should be rou- tinely used on all tests in order to develop an understanding of the constructs that underlie performance on an employment test; only by knowing the cor- rect criterion and method of measuring it can we ascertain the intrinsic valid- ity of our measures.     

Not All Partial Grounds Partly Ground: Some Useful Distinctions in the Theory of Grounding

The aim of this paper is to argue for some useful distinctions in the theory of grounding. I do so by first introducing the notion of grounding, discussing some of its features, and arguing that grounds must play some role in bringing about what they ground (sec.1). I then argue that there are various distinct roles a fact may play in bringing about another, and more particularly that we should distinguish between three such roles; enablers, partial grounds, and facts that partly ground (sec. 2). Finally, I present two theoretical advantages to incorporating these distinctions into our theory of grounding. Namely, that it reframes, and arguably dissolves, the contingentist-necessitarian debate (sec. 3), and that it helps to elegantly deal with the purported counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding and thus maintain the plausible elements of the assumption that grounding is a transitive relation (sec.4).     

Body Sanctification and Sleep in Adolescents with Cystic Fibrosis: A Pilot Study

Journal of Religion and Health - Imbuing one’s body with divine significance is associated with health-protective behaviors. The purpose of this study was to determine whether adolescents...     

Distinctions between emotion and mood

Most academics agree that emotions and moods are related but distinct phenomena. The present study assessed emotion-mood distinctions among a non-academic population and compared these views with distinctions proposed in the literature. Content analysis of responses from 106 participants identified 16 themes, with cause (65% of respondents), duration (40%), control (25%), experience (15%), and consequences (14%) the most frequently cited distinctions. Among 65 contributions to the academic literature, eight themes were proposed, with duration (62% of authors), intentionality (41%), cause (31percnt;), consequences (31%), and function (18%) the most frequently cited. When the eight themes cited by both academics and non-academics were rank ordered, approximately 60% overlap in opinion was evident. A data-derived summary of emotion-mood distinctions is provided. These data should prove useful to investigators interested in developing a clearer scientific distinction between emotion and mood than is currently available.     

Sanctification of life and health: insights from the landmark spirituality and health survey

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between sanctification of life and health. Sanctification is defined as a process through which aspects of life are perceived as having divine character and significance. A latent variable model was created to test the following hypotheses that link sanctification with health: (1) people who attend worship services more often are more likely to develop a sanctified view of life; (2) individuals who develop a sanctified view of life are likely to be more compassionate, (3) people who are more compassionate will provide more emotional support to others, (4) providing more support to others will be associated with a greater sense of meaning in life, and (5) people who have derived a deeper sense of meaning in life will enjoy better health. Data from a new cross-sectional nationwide survey (N?=?2932) provide support for each of these hypotheses.     

Intersubjective Distinctions: Subjects and Persons,Recognitions and Breakdowns: Commentary on Paper by Gerhardt,Sweetnam, and Borton

This paper on Bollas is part 2 of a series presenting the work of three contemporary theorists whose ideas are associated with the intersubjective turn in psychoanalysis. Part 1, on Benjamin, appeared in an earlier issue of Psychoanalytic Dialogues (Vol. 10, No. 1); Part 3, on Ehrenberg, will appear in a subsequent issue. The present paper presents the work of Christopher Bollas and attempts to show how his ideas have evolved in a more intersubjective direction over time without losing touch with what is paradigmatically psychoanalytic. Although our own authorial positioning is never quite declared, as our intention was to write a representational text characterizing Bollas's thinking regarding the issue of intersubjectivity, we have come to realize the unannounced selectivity of our interpretive position or biases—biases that never quite speak their name yet, as in all unnamed/disclaimed actions, exert their influence throughout. Not surprising for a paper on the intersubjective turn. Nevertheless, it should be noted that our intent was to foreground Bollas's theorizing as related to the intersubjective turn in its own right—indeed, to get lost in the dense foliage of his rich and generous theoretical-clinical thinking, as he in turn gets lost in the underground maze of his patient's inner world. What should be stated from the outset is that the tradition of cosmopolitan humanistic learning can be heard like the overtones of a gorgeous chord throughout all of Bollas's deeply thoughtful work and illustrates the layerings of self resounding in the conscious-unconscious psyche. Indeed, Bollas serves as one of the most creative interlocutors of unconscious processes, superbly adequate to the task of sleuthing the twists and turns of the unconscious as lived out through the self's idiomatic ways of being in the world.     

The New Trolley Problem: Driverless Cars and Deontological Distinctions

Discussion of the ethics of driverless cars has often focused on supposed real-life versions of the famous trolley problem. In these cases, a driverless car is in a position where crashing is unavoidable and all possible crashes risk harm: for example, it can either continue on its current path and crash into five pedestrians or swerve and crash into one pedestrian. There are significant disanalogies between the human versions of the trolley problem and situations faced by driverless cars which affect the application and moral significance of key deontological distinctions, such as the distinction between doing and allowing harm. The application and moral significance of the doing/allowing distinction in the context of the behaviour of driverless cars depend on (a) our conception of the behaviour of driverless cars; (b) the forms of driverless cars that are developed and used; (c) the background expectations of programmers/manufacturers/owners of driverless cars and the conditions of being able to put those cars on the roads. These are as yet unsettled – and may even be undetermined. Nonetheless, trolley problems may still be useful in thinking about the ethics of driverless cars.     

Protestant and Catholic Distinctions in Secularization

Differences between Protestants and Catholics in religious beliefs and behavior are revisited in the light of growing theoretical and empirical evidence for stages of secularization and a remaining religious core in Western societies. To what extent are remaining Protestants more religious than before and compared with remaining Catholics? Analyzing repeated cross-sectional survey data from 1985 to 2012 in the US, Canada, and Great Britain, we find that, in most cases, Protestant affiliation has declined more significantly than Catholic affiliation. Yet, individuals who declare themselves as belonging to a Protestant denomination have higher rates of regular service attendance, prayer, and Christian beliefs than those previously. They have also surpassed these same rates among Catholics in both the US and Canada and are on track to do so in Britain in the coming years.     

Distinctions that mystify: Technology versus economy and other fragmentations

The separation of technological and economic science has maintained the illusion that knowledge itself, when applied to nature, can generate industrialization. The implicit equation “TECHNOLOGY=NATURE plus KNOWLEDGE” ignores the social component of (UNEQUALO EXCHANGE. A global, thermodynamic perspective reveals that world market prices are an intrinsic aspect of the reproduction of industrial technomass. Global exchange rates have to guarantee a net transfer of “exergy” (free energy) to industrial sectors, and industrial technology, as the art of managing these thermodynamic profits, thus remains confined to a restricted social space. The accelerating destruction of the biosphere can only be checked by breaking the entropy-rewarding logic of general-purpose money. The ideas on which this article is based have grown out of a research project sponsored by the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSFR).     

The Twofold Assumption: A Response to Cole-Turner,Moritz, Peters and Peterson

Abstract

The article discusses points and perspectives offered by the four respondents to the R.J. Russell Fellow Lectures for 2013/14. Joshua M. Moritz and Ron Cole-Turner bring in new material from biblical and patristic traditions relevant for the proposal of deep incarnation. How does the concept of deep incarnation fare in relation to tradition and science? Ted Peters and Daniel J. Peterson raise questions about the compatibility between a compatibilist view of divine action and creaturely freedom on the one hand, and ideas of kenosis on the other. Which models of kenosis models are workable, and which forms of compatibilism?