Religious Reasons and Public Healthcare Deliberations

This paper critically explores the path of some of the controversiesover public reason and religion through four distinct steps.The first part of this article considers the engagement of JohnFinnis and Robert P. George with John Rawls over the natureof public reason. The second part moves to the question of religionby looking at the engagement of Nicholas Wolterstorff with Rawls,Robert Audi, and others. Here the question turns specificallyto religious reasons, and their permissible use by citizensin public debate and discourse. The third part engages JürgenHabermas's argument that while citizens must be free to makereligious arguments, still, there is an obligation of translation,and a motivational constraint on lawmakers. The final sectionargues that even though Habermas's proposal fails, neverthelesshe recognizes a key difficulty for religious citizens in contemporaryliberal polities. Restoration of a full role for religiouslygrounded justificatory reasons in public debate is one partof an adequate solution to this problem, but a second plankmust be added to the solution: recognition that religious reasonscan enter into public deliberation not just as first-order justificationsof particular policies, but as second-order reasons, to be consideredby any polity that respects its religious citizens and, morebroadly, the good of religion.     

Recognizing Terrorism

It has been claimed that most of the world’s preventable suffering and death are caused not by terrorism but by poverty. That claim, if true, could be hard to substantiate. For most terrorism is not publicly recognized as such, and it is far commoner than paradigms of the usual suspects suggest. Everyday lives under oppressive regimes, in racist environments, and of women, children, and elders everywhere who suffer violence in their homes offer instances of terrorisms that seldom capture public attention. Or so this essay argues, through exploring two models of terrorism and the points of view highlighted by each.     

Abolishing Morality

Moral anti-realism comes in two forms – noncognitivism and the error theory. The noncognitivist says that when we make moral judgments we aren’t even trying to state moral facts. The error theorist says that when we make moral judgments we are making statements about what is objectively good, bad, right, or wrong but, since there are no moral facts, our moral judgments are uniformly false. This development of moral anti-realism was first seriously defended by John Mackie. In this paper I explore a dispute among moral error theorists about how to deal with false moral judgments. The advice of the moral abolitionist is to stop making moral judgments, but the contrary advice of the moral fictionalist is to retain moral language and moral thinking. After clarifying the choice that arises for the moral error theorist, I argue that moral abolitionism has much to recommend it. I discuss Mackie’s defense of moral fictionalism as well as a recent version of the same position offered by Daniel Nolan, Greg Restall, and Caroline West. Then I second some remarks Ian Hinckfuss made in his defense of moral abolitionism and his criticism of “the moral society.” One of the worst things about moral fictionalism is that it undermines our epistemology by promoting a culture of deception. To deal with this problem Richard Joyce offers a “non-assertive” version of moral fictionalism as perhaps the last option for an error theorist who hopes to avoid moral abolitionism. I discuss some of the problems facing that form of moral fictionalism, offer some further reasons for adopting moral abolitionism in our personal lives, and conclude with reasons for thinking that abolishing morality may be an essential step in achieving the goals well-meaning moralists and moral fictionalists have always cherished.

Time,space, and process in Anne Conway

ABSTRACT

Many scholars have drawn attention to the way that elements of Anne Conway’s system anticipate ideas found in Leibniz. This paper explores the relationship between Conway and Leibniz’s work with regard to time, space, and process. It argues – against existing scholarship – that Conway is not a proto-Leibnizian relationist about time or space, and in fact her views lie much closer to those of Henry More; yet Conway and Leibniz agree on the primacy of process. This exploration advances our understanding of Conway’s system, and the intellectual relationships between Conway, More, and Leibniz.     

Enkratic Agency

An enkratic agent is someone who intends to do A because she believes she should do A. Being enkratic is usually understood as something rationality requires of you. However, we must distinguish between different conceptions of enkratic rationality. According to a fairly common view, enkratic rationality is solely a normative requirement on agency: it tells us how agents should think and act. However, I shall argue that this normativist conception of enkratic rationality faces serious difficulties: it makes it a mystery how an agent's thinking and acting can be guided by the enkratic requirement, which, as I shall further argue, is something that an adequate conception of enkratic rationality must be able to explain. This, I suggest, motivates exploring a different account of enkratic rationality. On this view, enkratic rationality is primarily a constitutive requirement on agency: it is a standard internal to agency, i.e., a standard that partly spells out what it is to exercise one's agential powers well.     

Hawking’s fear of an alien invasion may explain the Fermi Paradox

The fear of annihilation by an advanced civilization may not be limited to Earth, and it may help explain the silence of the cosmos.     

John Nash's Predelusional Phase: A Case of Acute Identity Confusion

This article uses Erik H. Erikson's concept of acute identity confusion to provide a psychoanalytic explanation for why John Nash, the mathematical genius, experienced a mental breakdown at age thirty. Particular emphasis is given to the problem of intimacy, a central feature of identity confusion, especially as this manifested itself in bisexual confusion. Special note is taken of the traditional psychoanalytic emphasis on the regressive pull in cases of preschizophrenic illness, together with Erikson's own emphasis on commitment pressures and consequent psychosocial and psychosexual foreclosures.     

Sin and suffering in a Catholic understanding of medical ethics.

Drawing chiefly on recent sources, in Part One I sketch an untraditional way of articulating what I claim to be central elements of traditional Catholic morality, treating it as based in virtues, focused on the recipients ("patients") of our attention and concern, and centered in certain person-to-person role-relationships. I show the limited and derivative places of "natural law," and therefore of sin, within that framework. I also sketch out some possible implications for medical ethics of this approach to moral theory, and briefly contrast these with the influential alternative offered by the "principlism" of Beauchamp and Childress. In Part Two, I turn to a Catholic understanding of the nature and meaning of human suffering, drawing especially on writings and addresses of the late Pope John Paul II. He reminds us that physical and mental suffering can provide an opportunity to share in Christ's salvific sacrifice, better to see the nature of our earthly vocation, and to reflect on the dependence that inheres in human existence. At various places, and especially in my conclusion, I suggest a few ways in which this can inform bioethical reflection on morally appropriate responses to those afflicted by physical or mental pain, disability, mental impairment, disease, illness, and poor health prospects. My general point is that mercy must be informed by appreciation of the person's dignity and status. Throughout, my approach is philosophical rather than theological.     

Making a Political Statement or Refusing to Grow Up—Reflections on the Situation of the Academic Youth in Postwar British Literature

The author attempts to apply the psychoanalytic concept of “prolonged adolescence” to two literary works, both of which are embedded in England’s postwar social and political climate. The discussion of John Wain’s Hurry on Down ([1953] 1979) and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger ([1956] 1989), by necessity, involves a look at those factors responsible for shaping the cultural “mood” in those days. However, the author’s primary concern lies with how two particular (fictional) individuals, or antiheroes, deal with the frustration, which, although generally felt among contemporary academia, in their cases seems to hide a much deeper layer of mental insecurity and instability. In fact, we come to feel that the characters have not achieved a proper sense of identity (“self”) and are, from the point of view of maturity, delayed and, hence, “unfitted” to cope adequately with the external world. Having long achieved formal adulthood, they seem to have gotten “stuck” somewhere along the passage of growing up. Essential papers by Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna, as well as a very early paper on the topic by Siegfried Bernfeld, are, among others, taken into account, as is the profound research done by Peter Blos on the subject in question.     

NATURALISM AND THE CATEGORIES “SCIENCE” AND “RELIGION”: A RESPONSE TO JOSH REEVES

This article is a response to Josh Reeve's “A Defense of Science and Religion.” I begin with the disclaimer that this was not solely my project but a joint enterprise. A common commitment of participants was to make the disciplines of history and theology central to the discussion and explore what new possibilities follows for the field of science and religion. I then address Reeves's two central concerns: first that I am too dismissive of the categories “science” and “religion.” In fact I have not advocated dispensing with these categories, but have insisted than we employ them critically and with a sense of their history. The second concern is that my position on naturalism seems to place me perilously close to advocates of ID or scientific creationism. I deny this, but point out that more work needs to be done, beyond simply invoking methodological naturalism, to clarify the differences between naturalistic and theological approaches to the world.