Teaching Peace in a Time of War

It is difficult to distinguish a time of war from a time of peace in America, because the Bush administration prosecutes its war on terrorism with an ongoing supporting economy. "Teaching Peace" means analyzing realistically the vested interests in perpetuating a state of war.     

“Our Fellow Creatures”

This paper defends “moral individualism” against various arguments that have been intended to show that membership in the human species or participation in our distinctively human form of life is a sufficient basis for a moral status higher than that of any animal. Among the arguments criticized are the “nature-of-the-kind argument,” which claims that it is the nature of all human beings to have certain higher psychological capacities, even if, contingently, some human beings lack them, and various versions of the idea that there is a special form of life that all human beings share but of which no animal can be a full participant. The paper concludes that none of these arguments succeeds in demonstrating that there are moral reasons to permit animals to be treated less well than members of our own species whose psychological capacities and potential are no higher than those of the animals.     

Forgiveness,the Gift,and Ecclesiology

Abstract: This article responds to the work of George Lindbeck and John Milbank while putting forth a new position on the theology of gift and forgiveness. Saarinen constructs a rudimentary theological anthropology, focusing on God and human beings as givers. As an example of applying this “giver‐oriented perspective” he outlines a fourfold typology of forgiveness as (1) negative giving, forgetting; (2) negative and positive giving, forgetting; (3) negative giving, forgetting and remembering; (4) negative and positive giving, forgetting and remembering.     

The watershed years of 1958-1962 in the Harvard Pigeon Lab

During the years 1958-1962, the final years of support by the National Science Foundation for B. F. Skinner's Pigeon Lab in Memorial Hall at Harvard University, 20 or so pigeon experiments (plus some with other organisms) ran concurrently 7 days a week. The research style emphasized experimental analyses, exploratory procedures, and the parametric exploration of variables. This reminiscence describes some features of the laboratory, the context within which it operated, and the activities of some of those who participated in it.     

Proclaiming and cultivating ‘childlikeness’: a subversive thread in Christian anthropology

If contemporary public discourse struggles with truncated notions of what it means to be human, nowhere is this more obvious than in our discussion and treatment of children. By and large, in our public discourse, we treat children as ‘little adults’ – as consumers, objects of beauty and fashion, career aspirants and sometimes even as sexual beings. By contrast, Jesus put children – as children – at the centre of his project in proclaiming the kingdom of God. He preserved a special place for children in his ministry, and in all three synoptics, he called his followers to ‘childlikeness’. This paper examines a subversive thread in historic theological anthropology. The nature of ‘childlikeness’ is explored and possible ways to cultivate childlikeness for adults are discussed. The notion of childlikeness has been rediscovered in recent times by the ‘Child Theology Movement’, but, in this paper, I wish to examine three linked authors who wrote on ‘childlikeness’ in the 19th and 20th centuries, predating the Child Theology Movement by some decades: George MacDonald, Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Gwendolen Greene.     

Reactions of African American Students to the George Zimmerman Trial: Co-Rumination and Thought Intrusions as Mediators

We document how prior experiences with racism, sequentially mediated by co-rumination about racial problems with a friend and thought intrusions, are associated with negative reactions to a racially charged event—the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman and the subsequent trial and acquittal of Mr. Zimmerman. African Americans’ prior experiences with racial discrimination predicted more co-rumination about racial problems with a friend. In turn, co-rumination was associated with more thought intrusions about the trial, leading to more negative affect and less forgiveness for Zimmerman. Co-rumination about racism and worrisome thinking about high-profile race-related events may amplify concern about racism for a frequent target of racial discrimination, lowering the threshold for negative psychological reactions to racist acts (including acts of violence) that may happen to other African Americans or to oneself.     

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.     

Berkeley’s Contingent Necessities

The paper provides an account of necessary truths in Berkeley based upon his divine language model. If the thesis of the paper is correct, not all Berkeleian necessary truths can be known a priori.

H. Richard Niebuhr's Reading of George Herbert Mead: Correcting,Completing, and Looking Ahead

In this essay, I reconstruct H. Richard Niebuhr's interpretation of George Herbert Mead's account of the social constitution of the self. Specifically, I correct Niebuhr's interpretation, because it mischaracterizes Mead's understanding of social constitution as more dialogical than ecological. I also argue that Niebuhr's interpretation needs completing because it fails to engage one of Mead's more significant notions, the I/me distinction within the self. By reconstructing Niebuhr's account of faith and responsibility as theologically self‐constitutive through Mead's I/me distinction, I demonstrate Niebuhr's deep yet unacknowledged agreement with Mead: the self is constituted by its participation in multiple communities, but responds to them creatively by enduring the moral perplexity of competing communal claims. I conclude by initiating a constructive account of conscience that follows from this agreement. Conscience is more ecological than dialogical because it regards our creative participation in multiple ecologies of social roles oriented by patterns of responsive relations.     

Theology and Science within a Lakatosian Program

The writings of Ian Barbour and Arthur Peacocke can be construed as initial contributions to a Lakatosian research program on the relation between theology and science, the core theory of which is the thesis that theology belongs at the top of a nonreducible hierarchy of sciences. The positive heuristic of this program involves showing that theology and the sciences have enough in common epistemologically to be so related and arguing for nonreducibility. The author in this essay "rationally reconstructs" some of her philosophical work as a contribution to these tasks.