On having bad persons as friends

Intuitively, one who counts a morally bad person as a friend has gone wrong somewhere. But it is far from obvious where exactly they have gone astray. Perhaps in cultivating a friendship with a bad person, one extends to them certain goods that they do not deserve. Or perhaps the failure lies elsewhere; one may be an abettor to moral transgressions. Yet another option is to identify the mistake as a species of imprudence—one may take on great personal risk in counting a bad person as a friend. In this paper, I argue that none of these intuitive explanations are entirely convincing; for many such proposals run contrary to widely accepted features of friendship. However, they do point us in the direction of a more satisfying explanation—one which concerns a person’s moral priorities. An individual who counts a morally bad person as a friend is, I propose, one who betrays a distinct kind of defect in her values.     

Aboutness in imagination

I present a formal theory of the logic and aboutness of imagination. Aboutness is understood as the relation between meaningful items and what they concern, as per Yablo and Fine’s works on the notion. Imagination is understood as per Chalmers’ positive conceivability: the intentional state of a subject who conceives that p by imagining a situation—a configuration of objects and properties—verifying p. So far aboutness theory has been developed mainly for linguistic representation, but it is natural to extend it to intentional states. The proposed framework combines a modal semantics with a mereology of contents: imagination operators are understood as variably strict quantifiers over worlds with a content-preservation constraint.     

Appropriate emotions and the metaphysics of time

Prior used our emotions to argue that tensed language cannot be translated by tenseless language. However, it is widely accepted that Mellor and MacBeath have shown that our emotions do not imply the existence of tensed facts. I criticise this orthodoxy. There is a natural and plausible view of the appropriateness of emotions which in combination with Prior’s argument implies the existence of tensed facts. The Mellor/MacBeath position does nothing to upset this natural view and therefore is not sufficient to block one drawing conclusions for the metaphysics of time from the nature of our emotions.     

A liberal theory of externalities?

Unlike exploitative exchanges, exchanges featuring externalities have never seemed to pose particular problems to liberal theories of justice. State interference with exchanges featuring externalities seems permissible, like it is for coercive or deceptive exchanges. This is because exchanges featuring negative externalities seem to be clear cases of the two exchanging parties harming a third one via the exchange—and thus of conduct violating the harm principle. This essay aims to put this idea into question. I will argue that exchanges featuring negative externalities are not unjust in this straightforward way, i.e. because they would constitute an instance of wrongfully causing or risking a bodily or material harm. In fact, unless we are subscribing to particularly demanding variants of liberalism—e.g. perfectionist liberalism—or unless we are exclusively focusing on borderline cases of externalities—i.e. of effects of exchanges hardly to be called externalities—there is no liberal theory of how exchanges featuring externalities are unjust.     

Me and mine

In this paper we articulate and diagnose a previously unrecognized problem for theories of entitlement, what we call the Claims Conundrum. It applies to all entitlements that are originally generated by some claim-generating action, such as laboring, promising, or contract-signing. The Conundrum is spurred by the very plausible thought that a later claim to the object to which one is entitled is a function of whether that original claim-generating action is attributable to one. This is further assumed to depend on one’s being identical to the person who performed the claim-generating action. But the right theory of personal identity for grounding these later claims proves quite elusive. In demonstrating both the Claims Conundrum and diagnosing its source, we begin with its (previously unobserved) instantiation in John Locke’s theories of personal identity and initial acquisition, and then we gradually expand its net to include both Lockean and non-Lockean theories of both, moving ultimately to show that this is a problem for most entitlements generally. We then diagnose the source of the trouble, showing that a basic assumption about the link between attributability and identity that most people take to be obvious is in fact false, clearing a path for future investigation into this overlooked but serious problem’s resolution.     

A Gift Grows in the Ghetto: Reimagining the Spiritual Diagnosis of Black Men

This essay explores the spiritual diagnosis of Black men in the American ghetto. The ghetto is viewed as a place of desolation, a place where nothing of value thrives—quite simply, a place where it is hard to grow. But is it also something more? By using the biblical story of Hagar and her son Ishmael being abandoned in the wilderness, the author argues that it is within deleterious environs, whether the wilderness or the ghetto, that one’s gift is discovered and then, through divine assistance, allowed to develop. This offers a useful tool in terms of spiritual diagnosis, especially for Black men, because one of the main criteria to be assessed becomes the person’s awareness of his gift and how the gift is being developed. In the end, Black men are encouraged to become more aware of their specific gift and the ways in which this gift, when properly cared for, develops—i.e., grows up—in such a way that it protects them, above all, in an uncaring environment.     

Introspective disputes deflated: the case for phenomenal variation

Sceptics vis-à-vis introspection often base their scepticism on ‘phenomenological disputes’, ‘introspective disagreement’, or ‘introspective disputes’ (ID) (see Kriegel in Phenomenol CognSci 6(1):115–136, 2007; Bayne and Spener in Philos Issues 20(1):1–22, 2010; Schwitzgebel in Perplexities of consciousness, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2011): introspectors massively diverge in their opinions about experiences, and there seems to be no method to resolve these issues. Sceptics take this to show that introspection lacks any epistemic merit. Here, I provide a list of paradigmatic examples, distill necessary and sufficient conditions for IDs, present the sceptical argument encouraged by IDs, and review the two main strategies (resolution and containment) to reject such a scepticism. However, both types of strategies are unsatisfactory. In order to save introspection from the looming sceptical threat, I advocate a deflationary strategy, based on either an ‘Argument from Perceptual Kinship’ or an ‘Argument from Ownership’. In the end, there cannot be any genuine IDs, for nothing can fulfil the reasonable conditions for IDs. What looks like IDs may instead be indicators of phenomenal variation. Debates that look like IDs may then arise even if introspection were a perfect method to know one’s mind. Thus, scepticism vis-à-vis introspection based on IDs rests on shaky grounds.     

Shadowboxing with Integrity

In 1979, Pastoral Psychology published the author’s first autobiographical case study: the story of a near-fatal automobile accident, collateral damage of a high-speed police chase in downtown Chicago. Five other articles have relied on this type of narrative history, focusing directly on the threatened author as a subject for analysis. Such non-risk-free projects could be a fitting requirement for a DMin thesis in pastoral counseling. The author provides practical writing suggestions as a modus operandi. Theologically, the hub of these accounts often reveal evidence of Providence. The clustering of coincidences is an initial clue of high probability. For 40 years, the author has effectively used this type of research or detection to better understand events such as a homicide, a burglary, a flatline, the Ku Klux Klan, and the death of my best friend. The current piece collectively draws on several years of pastoral care for a homeless veteran, a personal injury lawsuit, and an encounter with the Devil.     

You Are My Friends: Pastoral Care with Young Mexican Men

In this article, the author discusses the significance of friendship in caring for and counseling with young men. Following Seward Hiltner, he affirms the distinction between friendliness (or friendly disposition) and friendship. Insofar as friendliness implies warmth and genuine concern, caregiving and counseling relationships can benefit from the minister’s friendly disposition. The author argues that ministers can effectively counsel with young Mexican men who are both their parishioners and their friends. To illustrate this point, he presents and discusses the case of a Mexican minister (Pastor Garza) and a young Mexican man (Alonso). By reflecting on the friendship motif in the Gospel of John, he concludes the article with the idea that friendship and counseling can coexist despite the power differential and imperfect mutuality between the minister and the care seeker.     

Representing the Good: Pastoral Care in a Secular Age

In ‘a secular age’ (Taylor 2007), pastoral care is no longer exclusively associated with specific religious traditions and communities. Pastoral caregivers who work in secular institutions provide care to religious and nonreligious people alike, and in several Western societies the term pastoral care is used in relation to nonreligious (humanist) care. In secular contexts, the term ‘pastoral care’ is often replaced by the term ‘spiritual care.’ Spiritual care, however, is provided by various professionals, so pastoral caregivers face the challenge of developing adequate and convincing language to explain what is distinctive about their work. In this article, the authors turn to philosophical language in order to develop a conceptual understanding of pastoral care that does not depend on the specific worldview—religious or nonreligious—of either pastoral caregivers or receivers of pastoral care. Using the work of Taylor (1989, 2007) and Murdoch (1970), we explain pastoral care as engaging with people’s attempts to orient in ‘moral space’ and the distinctive quality of pastoral care as ‘representing the Good.’ Murdoch associates ‘the Good’ with a secular idea of transcendence that is both a movement beyond the ego and an engagement with the reality of human vulnerability, suffering, and evil. We argue that pastoral caregivers who ‘represent the Good’ have the task not only of supporting the existential and spiritual processes of individuals but also of promoting dialogue and social justice and of critiquing dehumanizing practices in the organizations in which they work and in society at large.