OAKESHOTT ON SCIENCE AS A MODE OF EXPERIENCE

I offer a critical exposition and reconstruction of Michael Oakeshott's views on natural science. The principal aim is to enrich Oakeshott's modal schema by throwing light on it in terms of its internal consistency and by bringing to bear on it recent developments in philosophy in general and the philosophy of science in particular. The discussion brings out the special place reserved for philosophy, the crucial tenet of the separateness of these modes seen as Leibnizian monads as well as the special status allowed to science. It considers the possibility of combining one moment of philosophical thinking, namely ethics, with science in the midst of such modal separateness. I first offer a general introduction of how to approach Oakeshott's views on science. The next section stresses philosophy and its relation to science. This is followed by an elaboration of what the modes of experience are meant to be and how science is placed among them. An examination of Oakeshott's more particular views on science concludes the essay.     

RELIGION AND THE MODE OF PRACTICE IN MICHAEL OAKESHOTT

Michael Oakeshott's religious view of the world stands behind much of his political and philosophical writing. In this essay I first discuss Oakeshott's view of religion and the mode of practice in his own terms. I attempt next to illuminate his idea of religion by describing it in less technical language, drawing upon other thinkers such as Georg Simmel and George Santayana, who share similar views. I then evaluate Oakeshott's view as a whole, considering whether his ideas about religion can stand up to careful scrutiny and whether they have value for present-day reflection on religion.     

THE EXTENDED MIND

The extended mind is the thesis that some mental—typically cognitive—processes are partly composed of operations performed by cognizing organisms on the world around them. The operations in question are ones of manipulation, transformation, or exploitation of environmental structures. And the structures in question are ones that carry information pertinent to the success or efficacy of the cognitive process in question. This essay examines the thesis of the extended mind and evaluates the arguments for and against it.     

A Review of: “The Fundamentals of Brain Development: Integrating Nature and Nurture. By Joan Stiles.”

Reviews the book The Fundamentals of Brain Development: Integrating Nature and Nurture by Joan Stiles. This volume examines the complex interactions between inheritance and experience by detailing the hows and whys of brain development from conception through adolescence. Weaving together evidence from neuroscience, embryology, genetics, physiology, and psychology, Stiles presents a tour-de-force guide of the metamorphoses that take place in the creation of the mammalian brain—metamorphoses that are often overlooked or misunderstood by an analysis of behavior alone. Throughout, many surprising and counterintuitive findings are set forth. The volume provides a stunning, in-depth, biologically based way of thinking about innateness, learning, and experience for a broader psychology audience.     

A Review of: “Cooper,M., O'Hara,M., Schmid,P. F., & Wyatt,G. (2007). The Handbook of Person-Centered Psychotherapy and Counseling.”

Abstract

Consideration is given to our cognitive, volitional, and emotive functions as they are experienced in the I‐It and I‐Thou realms of our existence, focusing on our emotive function. Feelings in the I‐It realm are limited to the physical and psychical parts of ourselves. They are defensive and motivate our survival in the world. In the I‐Thou realm, they permeate our whole being, including that part of ourselves that is beyond phenomenological manifestation that lies at the ground of our being as potential awaiting actualization. Our ontology necessitates the experience of our primary feelings in our struggle to become what we are uniquely “created” to be. Dialogical psychotherapists consider this as crucial to our therapeutic endeavors.     

A Review of: “The Mask of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change,by Steven P. Hinshaw”

This case report describes the successful treatment of a 5-year-old girl who, subsequent to an accident in which she received burns covering 30% of her body, experienced nightmares and night terrors as often as 15-20 times every night. In addition to the night terrors, she developed a strong phobic reaction to a wide range of fire-related stimuli. Treatment involved multiple stages which included a response prevention procedure, extinction, and systematic desensitization.     

A CRITIQUE OF ISLAMIC ARGUMENTS ON HUMAN CLONING

Sunnism constitutes eighty percent of the Islamic world. The most academic and renowned religious seminary in the Sunni world is Al-Azhar University in Egypt, and it is from here that most verdicts on novel issues such as human cloning are decreed and disseminated throughout the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds. The perspective of this seminary and of other significant Sunni jurisprudential councils and figures are alluded to throughout this essay. I lay out the method of legal derivation employed by the Sunni clergy and scholars and then illustrate how they have arrived at their prohibition on human cloning. I demonstrate weaknesses of methodology employed by the major Sunni Muftis within the domain of jurisprudence.     

ROBERT J. RUSSELL'S ESCHATOLOGICAL THEOLOGY IN THE CONTEXT OF COSMOLOGY

The main title of Robert J. Russell's Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: The Creative Mutual Interaction of Theology and Science catches the substance of the essays; the subtitle his methodological vision. The mutualis modest as far as the influence from theology on science goes; in no way is Russell curtailing the pursuit of science. Driven by intellectual honesty, he holds that in the end religious convictions will have to stand the test of compatibility with scientific knowledge. And as a Christian he believes core beliefs of Christianity, reformulated as needed, will be able to stand this test. The essays address the origin and contingency of our universe in relation to belief in creation, and his proposal for noninterventionist objective divine action. For him a stumbling block is natural evil; the evolutionary intelligibility of evil falls short of what would be desirable theologically. As steps toward an adequate eschatology Russell seeks to develop a more complex understanding of temporality, and proposes to understand the resurrection of Jesus as the First Instantiation of a New Law of the New Creation. This area is more in tension with current science, but that could be expected when one moves from creation to redemption. Within his self-imposed boundaries, these essays are well informed and well argued, and together they provide a sincere and sustained research program.