Beyond the Sociobiological Dilemma: Social Emotions and the Evolution of Morality

Is morality biologically altruistic? Does it imply a disadvantage in the struggle for existence? A positive answer puts morality at odds with natural selection, unless natural selection operates at the level of groups. In this case, a trait that is good for groups though bad (reproductively) for individuals can evolve. Sociobiologists reject group selection and have adopted one of two horns of a dilemma. Either morality is based on an egoistic calculus, compatible with natural selection; or morality continues tied to psychological and biological altruism but not as a product of natural selection. The dilemma denies a third possibility—that psychological altruism evolves as a biologically selfish trait. I discuss the classical treatments of the paradox by Charles Darwin ([1871] 1989) and Robert Trivers (1971), focusing on the role they attribute to social emotions. The upshot is that both Darwin and Trivers sketch a natural‐selection process relying on innate emotional mechanisms that render morality adaptive for individuals as well as for groups. I give additional reasons for viewing it as a form of natural, instead of only cultural, selection.     

The Proclamation of Charles H. Long in the Time of Black Lives Matter,Standing Rock,and COVID-19

Revisiting Charles H. Long's 1991 proclamation of a modern crisis of materiality, this essay examines Long's theorization of the fetish-commodity legacies, that recreated African persons into objects and commodities, as a means of understanding our present tripartite pandemic of systemic racism, environmental destruction, and COVID-19. Examining the period of, what Long elsewhere terms, the “second creation,” I interrogate what this crisis means for the study of religion and for our society today. Building on Long's conception of “soul stuff” and yet moving beyond notions of human exceptionalism, I argue that to move beyond fetish and colonial legacies and realize a “third creation” (or, in other words, a (re-)re-creation), both scholars and the public must craft a new materialism that honors the ontological reality and value of all existence.     

Re‐embedding Moral Agency

The connection between ethics and theological vision has become increasingly important for ethics as we better appreciate how the moral agent is embedded in a framework that affectively and intellectually shapes her moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is always reasoning within (that is, within a moral framework, a religious worldview, and/or a set of ideological commitments). A similar framing occurs in literature, which I refer to as its “horizon.” A literary text's horizon comprises the theological and metaphysical commitments that are implied by the text and that the reader relies on to make sense of it. I suggest that there is a parallel between how moral frameworks and literary horizons operate in that both shape moral judgment. I argue that in using literature as a resource for ethics, the same contemporary currents that have led us to appreciate the embeddedness of moral reasoning should also encourage us to give more careful attention to the theological or metaphysical vision implied by a text. Such a “theo‐ethical” reading of literature provides a richer understanding of particular moral goods and the interplay between those goods and ethical themes like agency, hope, and redemption. I substantiate this claim with a reading of William Blake's Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion.     

Secular and religious: the intrinsic doubleness of analytical psychology and the hegemony of naturalism in the social sciences

In recent years a number of prominent social theorists, including Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, have voiced concern about the hegemony of naturalistic, secular assumptions in the social sciences, and in their different ways have sought to address this by establishing greater parity between secular and religious perspectives. This paper suggests that C.G. Jung's analytical psychology, which hitherto has been largely ignored by social theory, may have something to contribute on this issue as it can be understood coherently both empirically, without reference to transcendent reality, and metaphysically, with reference to transcendent reality. It is argued that, despite his denials of any metaphysical intent, Jung does in fact engage in metaphysics and that together the empirical and metaphysical vectors of his thought result in a rich and distinctive double perspective. This dual secular and religious perspective can be seen as part of Jung's own critique of the hegemony of naturalism and secularism, which for Jung has profound social as well as clinical relevance. The concern and approach that Habermas and Taylor share with Jung on this issue may provide some grounds for increased dialogue between analytical psychology and the social sciences.     

PROBLEMS BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY IN THE COURSE OF THEIR MODERN HISTORY

Abstract. It is misleading to speak of warfare between science and Christian theology, as Andrew White did in 1896. White also was mistaken in exaggerating the conflict between the church and Galileo and Copernicus. The more important issue between science and theology has to do with the mechanistic interpretation of nature. When he introduced the principle of inertia in his natural philosophy, René Descartes insisted that God's immutability renders it impossible for God to intervene in the creation. He reduced the idea of God to a deistic notion by speaking of motion exclusively as a property of bodies. Even though Isaac Newton offered a different view, the Cartesian view dominated subsequent thinking. This made dialogue with theology difficult. Michael Faraday, followed by Albert Einstein, introduced the idea of field; bodily phenomena were subordinated as manifestations of fields. The precursor of the idea of field is the Stoic idea of spirit, which is close to the biblical concept of spirit. Thomas Torrance and I have taken this concept of field as an occasion to reopen dialogue. Mechanistic thinking accounts for the tension between Darwinian thought and theology. In principle the tension can be resolved, because the Bible itself asserts that all living things were brought from the earth—that is, organic life emerged from inorganic matter. Thus, emergence, contingency, and novelty are consistent with Darwinian evolutionary thinking. Contingency can be related conceptually to the activity of God in creation.     

The effect of pretraining and feedback on the reasoning of young children

Three experiments are reported in which kindergarten and first-grade children were given one-trial multidimensional reasoning tasks that were modifications of those used by T. C. Toppino (1980, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 30, 496–512). In the first two experiments, the nature of the stimulus compounds (partitioned or unitary) was varied in a series of tasks of increasing complexity. First-grade children (Experiment 1) and kindergarten children (Experiment 2) performed extremely well on all of the tasks presented. Experiment 3 was designed to identify factors that contribute to these high levels of performance, relative to those obtained under the conditions used by Toppino (1980). The results indicated that a combination of feedback information and preliminary experience with simple forms of the tasks are sufficient to produce the high performance levels, and that the verbal labeling of stimulus components is not an essential constituent of the training.     

The linkage of work achievement to self-esteem,career maturity,and college achievement

This study tested whether self-esteem and mature career attitudes related to one another and complemented one another in predicting academic and work achievement for 174 college students. Analysis showed both constructs related to achievement and supported the thesis that self-esteem facilitates development of mature career attitudes, which in turn promote academic and work achievement. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theory and practice.     

Interpretation and use of the Luria-Nebraska battery

In a recent article, T. V. Akhutina and L. S. Tsvetkova (1983, Brain and Cognition 2, 129-134) presented an analysis of the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery. Along with their generally positive review, they raised questions regarding the importance of the qualitative aspects of patients' performance in the interpretation of the battery. We agree with the authors that any interpretation of the battery which does not consider qualitative performance can limit the power and applicability of the battery. The procedures of item analysis and qualitative analysis are discussed as essential to a comprehensive interpretation of the battery. Also discussed are comments on additional scaling for the battery and the development of a standardized qualitative scoring system.