The origin in traces: diversity and universality in Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology of religion

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - At the heart of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology of religion one discovers a commitment to the diversity of religious expression....     

The development of children’s sympathy,moral emotion attributions,and moral reasoning in two cultures

The current study investigated the development of children’s sympathy, moral emotion attributions, and moral reasoning in two cultures: Chile and Switzerland. One hundred seventy-six children in two age groups (i.e., 6 and 9 years old) were asked to report their sympathy. Moral emotion attributions and moral reasoning were measured using two hypothetical moral transgressions (i.e., omitting a prosocial duty, stealing from another child). Younger Chilean children reported higher levels of sympathy than younger Swiss children. Across cultures, older children attributed more moral emotions than did younger children. Younger Swiss children used more moral reasoning following judgements about rule violations than did younger Chilean children. The findings are discussed from both a developmental and cross-cultural perspective.     

Intersections of spirituality,religion and gender in children’s literature

This paper explores the intersections of spirituality, religion and gender in contemporary children’s books published in the United States. Background for the discussion includes a history of religion in children’s literature and the history of women’s roles in the Christian tradition. Representative works of realistic fiction – historical and contemporary – and one work of science fiction are discussed.     

The ‘will to believe’ in science and religion

Conclusion The Will to Believe defines the religious question as forced, living and momentous, but even in this article James asserts that more objective factors are involved. The competing religious hypotheses must both be equally coherent and correspond to experimental data to an equal degree. Otherwise the option is not a live one. If I say to you Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan, it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. Analogously, in A Pluralistic Universe James is at pains to convince the reader that his own religious hypothesis is just as objective, makes just as much sense, etc. as alternative possibilities: the only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it [pluralistic pantheism] is a fully coordinate hypothesis with monism. This world may, in the last resort, be a block universe; but on the other hand, it may be a universe only strung along, not rounded in and closed. Reality may exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that possibility I do insist. Here, once again, before the will to believe can be employed, the objective factors of competing hypotheses, their equal coherence and correspondence, must be brought out.When reconstructed, James' overall outlook has a qausi Kuhnian taint to it- though obvious differences remain. Much of what goes on in evaluating competing scientific hypotheses is either not forced, or not living, or not momentous, but rather typical, dead, and avoidable, in short very normal. But there are moments in the history of science where the decision between hypotheses might well be forced, living and momentous, and sometimes James comes close to recognizing this.Analogously, a good deal of what goes on in religion is not forced, not living or not momentous - in short it is all too normal. In The Varieties of Religious Experience for example, James proposes to ignore the institutional branch of the religious domain and to concentrate on personal and psychological factors, his reason being that the institutional aspect concentrates on the routine, the normal. Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. and again The word religion, as ordinarily used, is equivocal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to organize themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing; so that when we hear the word religion nowadays, we think inevitably of some church or other.Clearly here religion has a normal, i.e. trivial side, just as does science. On the other hand, there are revolutionary moments in religion, such as that of choosing between theism and materialism in Pragmatism, or choosing among theism, monistic pantheism and pluralistic pantheism in A Pluralistic Universe. Such moments involve the will to believe and are clearly more personal than their counterparts in the domain of normal institutionalized religion. Going further, there are no doubt differences of degree between the will to believe decisions in science and the will to believe decisions in religion. These have been explicated in more specific terms by Ian Barbour in his article, Paradigms in Science and Religion. ...each of the subjective features of science... is more evident in the case of religion: (1) the influence of interpretation on data, (2) the resistance of comprehensive theories of falsification, and (3) the absence of rules for choice among paradigms. Each of the corresponding objective features of science is less evident in the case of religion: (1) the presence of common data on which disputants can agree, (2) the cumulative effect of evidence for or against a theory, and (3) the existence of criteria which are not paradigm-dependent. It is clear that in all three respects religion is a more subjective enterprise than science. But in each case there is a difference of degree - not an absolute contrast between an objective science and a subjective religion. Barbour correctly notes that the ...choice is not between religion and science, but between theism, pantheism, and naturalism, let us say, as each is expressed in a particular historical tradition. No basic beliefs are capable of demonstrable proof. James sometimes comes close to recognizing this but his oscillation on the status of the everyday world of common sense, or the perceptual world, causes him not to see the issue clearly. When the animated world of the perceptual is taken as the all inclusive really real, science is viewed as an abstract, second class citizen. But James offers what we would consider a more sophisticated and adequate perspective when he views the world of common sense, having become linguistified, as itself suspicious, and consequently views all three tiers - common sense, scholastic philosophy, and science - as regional ontologies, or language games in Wittgenstein's terminology - and opposes all three to a more primordial or prereflexive level. When James takes this second approach it is easier to see that the basic distinction he began to make in The Will to Believe was between the scientific and religious domain where the will to believe was to be employed, and the domain of ordinary religion and science. Finally this position anticipates his ultimate metaphysical outlook, viz. pure experience as approachable through language on a series of diverse regional levels, but nonetheless not completely describable within language.It is important to recall that in The Varieties of Religious Experience James distinguishes between the science of religions and what he calls living religion: [T] he science of religions may not be an equivalent for living religion; and if we turn to the inner difficulties of such a science, we see that a point comes when she must drop the purely theoretic attitude, and either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut by active faith. The study of religion, in short is not the activity of religion; the latter is animated, personal, and, we would argue, necessitates a commitment in terms of the will to believe. Once again, however, James hesitates over offering the same two-fold delineation in other areas of science. On the one hand he tells the reader that science-has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view. On the other hand, he offers the following comment a few pages later on in a footnote: ...the divorce between scientist facts and religious facts may not necessarily be as eternal as it at first sight seems, nor the personalism and romanticism of the world, as they appeared to primitive thinking, be matters so irrevocably outgrown. The final opinion may, in short, in some manner now impossible to forsee, revert to the more personal style, just as any path of progress may follow a spiral rather than a straight line. If this were so, the rigorously impersonal view of science might one day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity rather than the definitely triumphant position which the sectarian scientist at present so confidently announces it to be. The burden of this paper has been to indicate that when James' two-fold outlook on perception and/or common sense is properly reconstructed, the raproachment between science and religion is not so impossible to forsee.

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The global community, religion, and education: the modernity of Dewey’s social philosophy

As a starting point this paper takes Dewey’s nowadays often stressed modernity and examines his social philosophy against the background of the current debates on republicanism and communitarianism. Particularly, the anaysis of Dewey’sThe Public and its Problem (1927) concludes that the attention being paid to Dewey is problematic as specific religious assumptions — explicitly developed inA Common Faith (1934) -lie in the background of his social philosophy, and are hardly being recognized. However, as it shall be shown, without considering the religious basis, neither Dewey’s social philosophy nor his educational theory can be properly understood.     

The salience of a recipient’s alternatives: Inter- and intrapersonal comparison in ultimatum games

The social utility model suggests that in social decision-making, both inter- and intrapersonal comparisons are important in assessing the utility of a decision outcome. In the ultimatum game both these comparisons play a role. This is especially true for recipients reacting to an unfair offer. We propose that the relative weights inter- and intrapersonal comparisons receive in ultimatum games depend on the way the decision is structured. In three studies we show that presenting recipients with a straightforward choice instead of the usual accept/reject question makes recipients more inclined to accept unfair offers. Moreover, the existence of an alternative outcome, i.e., the fact that refusal of the offer also leads to a substantial outcome, similarly raises the level of acceptances in a standard ultimatum game. Results are discussed in relation to the joint/separate evaluation disparity and the distinction between occurrences and non-occurrences.     

Moral internalism and moral cognitivism in Hume’s metaethics

Most naturalists think that the belief/desire model from Hume is the best framework for making sense of motivation. As Smith has argued, given that the cognitive state (belief) and the conative state (desire) are separate on this model, if a moral judgment is cognitive, it could not also be motivating by itself. So, it looks as though Hume and Humeans cannot hold that moral judgments are states of belief (moral cognitivism) and internally motivating (moral internalism). My chief claim is that the details of Hume’s naturalistic philosophy of mind actually allow for a conjunction of these allegedly incompatible views. This thesis is significant, since readers typically have thought that Hume’s view that motivation is not produced by representations, coupled with his view that moral judgments motivate on their own, imply that moral judgments could never take the form of beliefs about, or representations of, the moral (virtue and vice).     

Beyond sympathy: Smith’s rejection of Hume’s moral theory

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) has long been recognized as importantly influenced by, and in part responding to, David Hume’s earlier ethical theory. With regard to Smith’s account of the foundations of morals in particular, recent scholarly attention has focused on Smith’s differences with Hume over the question of sympathy. Whilst this is certainly important, disagreement over sympathy in fact represents only the starting point of Smith’s engagement with – and eventual attempted rejection of – Hume’s core moral theory. We can see this by recognizing the TMS’s account of moral foundations as predicated upon a rejection of Hume’s distinction between the natural and artificial virtues. Smith is in turn revealed as generating a major break with Hume – a break which, if based on a superior theory of moral foundations (as Smith thought it to be) has important consequences for how we treat Smith and Hume in both the history of philosophy and contemporary moral theory.     

Narrative responsibility and moral dilemma: A case study of a family’s decision about a brain-dead daughter

A brain death case is presented and reinterpreted using the narrative approach. In the case, two Japanese parents face a dilemma about whether to respect their daughter’s desire to donate organs even though, for them, it would mean literally killing their daughter. We argue that the ethical dilemma occurred because the parents were confronted with two conflicting narratives to which they felt a “narrative responsibility,” namely, the responsibility that drives us to tell, retell, and coauthor the (often unfinished) narratives of loved ones. We suggest that moral dilemmas arise not only from conflicts between moral justifications but also from conflicts between narratives and human relationships.     

‘Belonging to a global religion’: The sociological dimensions of international elements in Sahaja Yoga

The paper introduces a contemporary Hindu‐based sect, Sahaja Yoga, and outlines the extent to which the beliefs and rituals of the group foster its internal perception of itself as a global movement. The network of contacts maintained between British members and the international ‘collective’ of disciples which also go towards supporting this view are highlighted. The paper then describes the extent to which there is international cultural conformity within Sahaja Yoga. The final section draws on Rajneeshism for a comparative discussion of issues raised. It explores the factors behind the differing global configurations of religious groups, the advantages and disadvantages of having a global ethos and some of the ways in which New Religious Movements mirror aspects of the contemporary process of globalisation.     

Putnam’s account of apriority and scientific change: its historical and contemporary interest

In the 1960s and 1970s, Hilary Putnam articulated a notion of relativized apriority that was motivated to address the problem of scientific change. This paper examines Putnam’s account in its historical context and in relation to contemporary views. I begin by locating Putnam’s analysis in the historical context of Quine’s rejection of apriority, presenting Putnam as a sympathetic commentator on Quine. Subsequently, I explicate Putnam’s positive account of apriority, focusing on his analysis of the history of physics and geometry. In the remainder of the paper, I explore connections between Putnam’s account of relativized a priori principles and contemporary views. In particular, I situate Putnam’s account in relation to analyses advanced by Michael Friedman, David Stump, and William Wimsatt. From this comparison, I address issues concerning whether a priori scientific principles are appropriately characterized as “constitutive” or “entrenched”. I argue that these two features need to be clearly distinguished, and that only the constitutive function is essential to apriority. By way of conclusion, I explore the relationship between the constitutive function a priori principles and entrenchment.     

‘The teachers put effort into teaching us about life,and what’s right and what’s wrong’: values and moral education in publicly-managed schools in Ireland

In light of cultural and demographic changes in the Republic of Ireland, there is an important and urgent need for research on the articulation of values education in Irish publicly-managed schools. This article reports the findings from a research project on the moral, religious and spiritual values and traditions of staff and students in publicly-managed schools. Data was collected from 18 second-level schools throughout the country, using a mixed methods approach involving the named values of participants’ school, as well as the policies and practices employed within the schools to support these named values. Findings show that both teachers and students identify positive values such as respect and well-being, equality and inclusion, and describe values education in practice. However, some differences emerging in the findings highlight the vacuum left by the lack of sectoral guidance. The implications of this vacuum are discussed, as it provides an opportunity for dialogue and consensus-building on values, and also for schools to develop their own context-relevant set of values.     

The Promise and Pitfalls of Facebook Advertising: a Genetic Counselor’s Perspective

Facebook advertising is a powerful tool for increasing the outreach and recruitment of research participants. We describe our experience as genetic counselors within the context of an internet-based research study, recruiting subjects for a Parkinson disease (PD) biomarker study.