Writing Autobiography as Desperate Spiritual Art: A Narrative Psychological Approach to Nick Flynn’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Another Bullshit Night in Suck City</Emphasis>

Nick Flynn’s memoir about his troubled relationship with his father is analyzed as an example of desperately practiced spiritual art using the narrative psychology of Michael White and David Epston. Reflections on the history of autobiography are combined with psychotherapeutic explorations into the significance of telling deeply troubling stories. White and Epston’s metaphors of externalizing conversations, noting exceptions, and recruiting an audience are implemented in the case of Flynn’s identification with his father’s alcoholism, his identification with his father’s writing aspirations, and his identification with his father’s body.     

On the alleged connection between moral evil and human freedom: A response to Trakakis’ second critique

In this essay, I answer Nick Trakakis’ second critique of my argument against the adequacy of traditional free will theodicy. I argue, first, that Trakakis errs in his implicit assertion that my argument relies upon our being strongly malevolent by nature. I argue, second, that Trakakis errs in thinking that our being weakly benevolent, morally bivalent, or weakly malevolent by nature is sufficient to refute my critique of the traditional freewill theodicy. I still maintain that the argument from freedom of the will offers an explanation of moral evil that is, in the final analysis, manifestly inadequate. I thank Nick Trakakis for his continuing interest in my essay, “On the Alleged Connection Between Moral Evil and Human Freedom.” The exchange of ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect is the very heart of philosophy and I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in such an exchange. I believe, as a consequence, that my thinking concerning the inadequacy of the traditional free will theodicy has become more fully articulated.     

Cinemusical meanings in motion pictures: commerce,art, and Brando loyalty … or … De Niro,My God,To Thee

• The theme of art‐versus‐commerce has surfaced in many motion pictures but serves here to juxtapose three otherwise disparate films that draw upon the power of jazz as a force toward the dramatic development of character, plot, central themes, and other cinemusical meanings. Specifically, via the significance of its ambi‐diegetic music, New York, New York (1977) shows the elevation of artistic integrity (Robert De Niro as Jimmy Doyle) over commercialism (Liza Minnelli as Francine Evans). In Heart Beat (1980), the raw honesty of a committed‐but‐doomed creative genius (Art Pepper) provides nondiegetic music that signifies the self‐destructive degradation of a key protagonist (Nick Nolte as Neal Cassady). Finally, in The Score (2001), the appealing nature of diegetic jazz in a cinemusically‐enriched nightclub environment helps to explain why a soon‐to‐be‐ reformed criminal (Robert De Niro, again, as Nick Wells) would risk everything in collaboration with two bizarre partners (Marlon Brando as Max Baron and Ed Norton as Jack Teller) in hopes of a payoff big enough to allow him to retire from a lucrative career in crime in order to run his legitimate jazz venue and to settle down with his true love (Angela Bassett as Diane Boesman).

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The history of a catatonic dog

This article is a condensed life-history of a dog (“V3”) born and reared in the Pavlovian Laboratory and studied until his death in 1961. A detailed study was made of his pathologic development, his relations to people, and the effects of drugs. Measurements recorded were heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, 24-hour activity, sexual reflexes, general behavior. Although early experiments were done chiefly for recording and were not considered noxious or traumatic, this dog’s general development and symptoms seem to have been “constitutionally” rather than environmentally determined. His external behavior was strikingly similar to that of a catatonic patient-flexibilitas cerea, general immobility. Of particular interest was the “Effect of Person”: in the presence of all humans who confronted him he showed catatonic postures, cardiovascular disorders (tachycardia up to 200 beats/min., bradycardia to 12 beats/min., drop of blood pressure from 150 to 75 mm Hg, arrest of heart-beat for as long as 8 seconds), moribund poses. His response to drugs illustrated the specificity to a definite “constitutional type”: sexual activity markedly increased by alcohol and rarely present except after administration of alcohol; no improvement after administration of tranquilizers, except alcohol and meprobamate, which made him act like a normal dog in behavior and in relations to people. His symptoms and reactions to both people and drugs were generally opposite to those of another dog, “Nick”, studied over his life span: Nick showed excessive activity in physiologic systems; hyperactivity (running); generally, improvement through “Effect of Person”; sexual inhibition with alcohol. Observations of the two dogs suggest that symptoms as well as reactions to drugs are the result of the “type” rather than the procedure used, that perhaps psychopathologic symptoms are due more to inborn constitution than to “conflict” (“collision”) between excitation and inhibition, and that neurotic or psychotic symptoms may not interfere with longevity-Nick lived to be 14 years old and died fighting; V3, who also spent most of his life in the laboratory, died at the age of 14.     

Review of <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">William L. Rowe on Philosophy of Religion: Selected Writings</Emphasis>, edited by Nick Trakakis

‘William L. Rowe on Philosophy of Religion’ edited by Nick Trakakis, collects 30 papers of William Rowe's important work in the philosophy of religion. I review this collection, and offer an objection of one of Rowe's arguments.     

Why Richard Swinburne Won’t ‘Rot in Hell’: A Defense of Tough-minded Theodicy

In his recent paper in Sophia, ‘Theodicy: The Solution to the Problem of Evil, or Part of the Problem?’ Nick Trakakis endorses the position that theodicy, whether intellectually successful or not, is a morally obnoxious enterprise. My aim in this paper is to defend theodicy from this accusation. I concede that God the Creator is a moral monster by human standards and neither to be likened to a loving parent nor imitated. Nonetheless, God is morally perfect. What is abhorrent is not tough-minded theodicy but the hubris of imitating God. I further claim that it is no accident that the same sort of objection is made to act utilitarianism as to tough-minded theodicy if the latter is misinterpreted as implying a guide for human action.     

Slave,Sister, Sexborg,Sphinx: Feminine Figurations in Nick Land's Philosophy

Given that Nick Land is one of the central influences on certain strands of accelerationism, xenofeminism, and inhumanism, it is important to understand how he himself first developed and deployed the concepts of acceleration, the feminine, and the inhuman, which others would go on to appropriate for their own purposes. This article will trace the four feminine figures throughout Land's philosophical trajectory, which he sees as agents for accelerating the transcendental critique of both anthropocentrism and phallocentrism: the slave turned lesbian; the sister; the sexborg; and the Sphinx. Having elucidated the importance of these figures for Land's thought, this article will conclude by drawing upon the younger Land's feminist resources to immanently critique the disappearance of women from his more recent neoreactionary philosophy in favor of concessions to patriarchal traditionalists.     

Painting with light by Rob and Nick Carter: dramatic failures of colour constancy in articulated scenes

Recent work by British artists Rob and Nick Carter uses kinetic lights illuminating abstract photographic prints to induce dramatic failures of colour constancy.     

Notes toward “a user's guide to the quantum connection”

Nick Herbert is an experimental physicist living in California whose recent book, Quantum Reality: Beyoad the New Pbysics, has been highly regarded as a lucid introduction to the many alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics that are currently being debated among professional physicists. In this playful article, he treads the fine line between science, fact, and fantasy to give us a metaphorical glimpse into some future possibilities about quantum dynamics in everyday life.

Dr. Herbert will be a speaker and panelist at our upcoming Fall 1988 conference on “Cod, Consciousness, and the New Quantum Psychologies” where he will present his most recent views on the reconstruction of a physics that includes consciousness and observer-created realities on many levels.     

The politics of the gaze: Between Foucault and Merleau-Ponty

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Theory and Society seminars, University of Sheffield, England, on 7th February 1992. Thanks are due to all participants for their helpful comments, especially Nick Stevenson. Thanks also to Maurice Roche and Michele Davies for their help and comments.     

Information,Bodies, and Heidegger: Tracing Visions of the Posthuman

Discussion of the posthuman has emerged in a wide set of fields through a diverse set of thinkers including Donna Haraway, Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, N. Katherine Hayles, and Francis Fukuyama, just to name a few. Despite his extensive critique of technology, commentators have not explored the fruitfulness of Heidegger's work for deciphering the various strands of posthumanism recently formulated in response to contemporary technological developments. Here, I employ Heidegger's critique of technology to trace opposing visions of the posthuman, visions that are both tied intimately to new information technologies. For those seeking to extend humanist ideals, information technologies are employed to extend the vision of an ultra-humanist view of a ‘scientific posthuman’ that dangerously understands the body to be a forfeitable nuisance, rather than an inherent aspect of being human. Along Heideggerian lines, thinkers such as N. Katherine Hayles and Thomas Carlson have developed an alternative trajectory related to Dasein's Being-in-the-world. This trajectory posits the self as constituted by a lack or abyss, enabling the formulation of a ‘mystical posthuman,’ celebrating, rather than forfeiting, humanity's embodied existence.     

Extensionality, underdetermination and indeterminacy

I am grateful to Burton Dreben, Warren Goldfarb, Don Gustafson, Jim Higginbotham, Jerrold Katz, Joe Levine, Ted Morris, Nick Pappas, Hilary Putnam, Georges Rey and Bob Richardson for helpful discussions and comments on the issues discussed in this paper. Also I thank an anonymous reviewer for Erkenntnis for helpful comments.     

Scotland: religion,culture and national identity

In this initial article of the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church's special issue on Perspectives on the Church in Scotland, as well as offering a wider context for the contributions that follow, I want to explore what connections in general might be said to exist between Scottish identity and Christianity, and then, more particularly, the impact of religion on the country's artistic culture, written as well as visual. Even those whose interest in the Scottish dimension may be marginal at best may find the discussion of broader relevance, since all nations now face to varying degrees the problem of how to relate their present pluriform identity to a narrower past. England, for instance, is ethnically much more diverse than its near neighbour and so struggles to find an appropriate contemporary self-definition. This can be seen reflected in the way in which politicians, in speaking of ‘British core values’, often merely reiterate what are universals in the western world, such as democracy, equal respect before the law, gender equality and so on, as with Nick Clegg's recent list on the Today programme on Radio 4 (10 June 2014) in which Gordon Brown's similar list during his premiership was simply reiterated. Others, though, continue to wrestle with what appeal to England's past history might mean and even with whether the established Church might have some continuing role within it, with the philosopher Roger Scruton offering a particularly intriguing instance in his Our Church: A Personal History of the Church of England (2012).     

DOOMSDAY,BISHOP USSHER AND SIMULATED WORLDS

This paper attempts three tasks in relation to Carter and Leslie's Doomsday Argument. First, it criticises Timothy Chambers' ‘Ussherian Corollary’, a striking but unsuccessful objection to standard Doomsday arguments. Second, it reformulates the Ussherian Corollary as an objection to Bradley Monton's variant Doomsday and Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument. Finally, it tries to diagnose the epistemic/metaphysical problems facing Doomsday‐related arguments. 1     

Review Essay: Theology as Talking About a God Who Talks

By placing divine speech acts at the center of philosophical theology in Divine discourse: Philosophical reflections on the claim that God speaks , Nick Wolterstorff joins in the task of overcoming onto-theology and calling theology, including philosophical theology, back from Athens to its home in Jerusalem. His creative accounts of indirect discourse illumine ways in which God can be said to speak through the Bible. There are important but undeveloped political implications to the notion that God is a member of the speech community to which we also belong.     

Moral Response-dependence, Ideal Observers, and the Motive of Duty: Responding to Zangwill

Moral response-dependent metaethical theories characterize moral properties in terms of the reactions of certain classes of individuals. Nick Zangwill has argued that such theories are flawed: they are unable to accommodate the motive of duty. That is, they are unable to provide a suitable reason for anyone to perform morally right actions simply because they are morally right. I argue that Zangwill ignores significant differences between various approvals, and various individuals, and that moral response-dependent theories can accommodate the motive of duty.     

Book Reviews

Human Resource Management — Key Concepts and Skills by P.B. Beaumont Practical Employment Law: A guide for Human Resource Managers by Paul Lewis Top Class Management by Richard Graham and Edwin Singer View from the Bridge edited by Geoff Armstrong. The Japanization of British Industry — New Developments for the 1990s by Nick Oliver and Barry Wilkinson     

Why do True Beliefs Differ in Epistemic Value?

Veritism claims that only true beliefs are of basic epistemic value. Michael DePaul argues that veritism is false because it entails the implausible view that all true beliefs are of equal epistemic value. In this paper, I discuss two recent replies to DePaul's argument: one offered by Nick Treanor and the other by Kristoffer Ahlstrom‐Vij and Stephen Grimm. I argue that neither of the two replies is successful. I propose a new response to DePaul's argument and defend my response against a possible objection. 1     

W. H. R. Rivers and the war neuroses.

W. H. R. Rivers was the most famous member of the Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Strait. At the time, he was a physician and had an international reputation as a researcher in physiological psychology. The expedition signaled the beginning of his career in social anthropology, but also a long hiatus in his activities in medicine. His clinical interests revived during World War I. As an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), Rivers became a leading proponent of "psychological medicine." Today, his war-time psychiatry is remembered mainly in association with his patient, Siegfried Sassoon. This article focuses on his wartime activities, his clinical practices, and his theories concerning the war neuroses and the unconscious. The currently popular view of Rivers as a quasi-Freudian humanist is challenged.