What is the Accordion Effect?

In "Action and Responsibility,' Joel Feinberg pointed to an important idea to which he gave the label "the accordion effect.' Feinberg's discussion of this idea is of interest on its own, but it is also of interest because of its interaction with his critique, in his "Causing Voluntary Actions,' of a much discussed view of H. L. A. Hart and A. M. Honoré that Feinberg labels the "voluntary intervention principle.' In this essay I reflect on what the accordion effect is supposed by Feinberg to be, on differences between Feinberg's understanding of this idea and that of Donald Davidson, and on the interaction between Feinberg's discussion of the accordion effect and his critique of the voluntary intervention principle.     

James Astor in conversation with Warren Colman

In this interview with Warren Colman, James Astor speaks about his development as a Jungian analyst from his own experience of personal analysis in the 1960s to his recent retirement from clinical practice. The discussion covers his long association with Michael Fordham, the child analytic training at the SAP, the infant observation seminars with Fordham and Gianna Henry through which Fordham was able to make new discoveries about infant development, his experience of supervision with Donald Meltzer and the development of his own thinking through a series of papers on the analytic process, supervision and the relation between language and truth. The interview concludes with reflections about the legacy of Michael Fordham and the future of analytic work.     

Rorty's Debt to Sellarsian Metaphysics

Rorty regards himself as furthering the project of the Enlightenment by separating Enlightenment liberalism from Enlightenment rationalism. To do so, he rejects the very need for explicit metaphysical theorizing. Yet his commitments to naturalism, nominalism, and the irreducibility of the normative come from the metaphysics of Wilfrid Sellars. Rorty's debt to Sellars is concealed by his use of Davidsonian arguments against the scheme/content distinction and the nonsemantic concept of truth. The Davidsonian arguments are used for Deweyan ends: to advance secularization and anti‐authoritarianism. However, Rorty's conflation of theology and metaphysics conceals the possibility of post‐theological metaphysics. The key distinction lies between “metaphysics” and “Metaphysics.” The former provisionally models the relations between different vocabularies; the latter continues theology by other means. Sellars shows how to do metaphysics without Metaphysics. This approach complements Rorty's prioritization of cultural politics over ontology and his vision of Enlightenment liberalism without Enlightenment rationalism.     

THE FUTURE OF THE BUDDHIST PAST: A RESPONSE TO THE READERS

I respond to comments offered by Peter Harrison and Thupten Jinpa on my book Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (2008). I report briefly on the reception of the book thus far and provide a summary of its contents before responding individually to the essays of Harrison and Jinpa.     

RELIGIOUS NATURALISM—WHERE DOES IT LEAD?

I respond to the four symposiasts who commented on my recent book Religion Is Not About God (2005)—religious studies scholars Donald Braxton and David Klemm, philosopher William Rottschaefer, and cognitive scientist Leslie Marsh. Various general and specific points relative to the nature of religion and the future of religion are either clarified or defended. Among the issues that receive attention are (1) the status and adequacy of my proposals for religious naturalism: Can it motivate wholeness, and is it finally a form of pantheism? (2) ritual practices, particularly those of Christianity, reinterpreted within the framework of religious naturalism; and (3) the adequacy of any naturalistic position to account for subjective properties of consciousness.     

The Book of Job and Male Melancholia: A Bizarre Story about Hating Mother God and the Maternal Jesus,Featuring Mel Gibson

This article tells, or advocates, a bizarre story about male revenge. By drawing from literature in the psychology of religion that deals with the Book of Job and by assuming the standpoint of “cultural hermeneutics” in biblical studies, the author playfully takes up an issue identified by Donald Capps: the issue of repressed rage in male melancholia. The author takes his cue from a recent doctoral dissertation from Princeton Theological Seminary. Jacobus Hamman (2000) applies a Winnicottian analysis to the Book of Job and argues that the Book of Job can be a useful pastoral resource today in a number of ways, including his proposal for believers to direct their aggression toward God. Implicit in Hamman’s Winnicottian analysis, but never explicitly stated, is the fact that God is Mother. The plot here is how the Book of Job might lead contemporary American men to hate Mother God and the maternal Jesus, thereby aiding them in externalizing their repressed and self-directed rage. Mel Gibson stars, if only briefly, in this childish story that presses the limits of Christian theology.     

Triangulation,Untranslatability, and Reconciliation

Donald Davidson used triangulation to do everything from explicate psychological and semantic externalism, to attack relativism and skepticism, to propose conditions necessary for thought and talk. At one point Davidson tried to bring order to these remarks by identifying three kinds of triangulation, each operative in a different situation. Here I take seriously Davidson’s talk of triangular situations and extend it. I start by describing Davidson’s situations. Next I establish the surprising result that considerations from one situation entail the possibility that at any one time one language is partially untranslatable into another. Because the possibility is time-indexed, it need not conflict with Davidson’s own argument against the possibility of untranslatability. I derive the result, not to indict Davidson, but to propose a new kind of triangulation, the reconciliation of untranslatability, which I investigate. Insofar as triangulation is central to Davidson’s views, getting a handle on his various triangular situations is key to getting a handle on his contributions to philosophy. Insofar as those contributions have enriched our understanding of how language, thought, and reality interrelate, extending Davidson’s model promises to extend our understanding too.

Belief similarity and attitude similarity as determinants of interpersonal attraction

It was predicted that attraction would be a function of both attitude similarity and belief similarity, but that attitude similarity would have the greater influence. In Expt I, 60 subjects were presented with strangers that were either similar or dissimilar on attitude and on belief. Attraction was a positive function of both attitude similarity (p < .05) and belief similarity (p < .01). Experiment II replicated and extended Expt I with the addition of a 50% similar group for both attitude and belief. Attraction was a positive linear function of both attitude similarity (p < .001) and belief similarity (p < .02); departure from linearity was not significant. Attitude similarity also had greater effects on other aspects of interpersonal evaluation than belief similarity. The results were discussed in terms of the locus of reinforcement of attitude similarity and of belief similarity.     

Eleven-year career stability and change as reflected in Project Talent data through the Flanagan,Holland, and Roe occupational classification systems

The vocational psychologist seeks classifications of occupations which maximize career stability as occupations change from time to time in the life. This study investigates the extent of career stability and the patterns of career change which have occurred in the lives of Project TALENT twelfth grade students in the 11 yr elapsing since they were tested. “Career” plans in the last year of high school and at 1, 5, and 11 yr after testing were classified by the Flanagan, Holland, and Roe occupational classification systems in order to study the career stability and patterning within each system and to contrast both among systems. Career stability proved to be about the same in all three classification systems but decreased in all cases as the interval over which it was measured increased. Career stability increased as subjects grew older, proving to be the greatest from 5 to 11 yr after high school. Patterns of change mildly conformed to the circular patterns claimed by Holland and Roe for their systems and the linear pattern hypothesized for the Flanagan system. Generally, the direction of “career” flow was away from intellectual careers to careers in business and sales but each system had unique results as well.