THE ROLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AS MEANING MAKER IN SCIENCE, CULTURE, AND RELIGION

Two hundred years ago, Friedrich Schleiermacher took critical issue with Immanuel Kant's intellectual notion of intuition as applied to human nature (Wellmon 2006). He found it necessary to modify—"hermeneutically," as he said—Kant's notion of anthropology by enabling it to include as human the new and strange human tribes Captain Cook found in the Pacific South Seas. A similar hermeneutic move is necessary if physics is to include the local contextual empirical syntheses of relativity and quantum physics. In this hermeneutical revision the synthesis is formed around the notion of a Hilbert Vector Space as the universal grammar of physics, adding to it the dynamic of the Schrödinger equation, and representing empirical "observables" by projection operators that map the subspaces of definite measurable values. Among the set of observable projection operators, some pairs share the same subspace, commute with one another, and share a common laboratory setting. Other pairs do not share this property and are described as being mutually complementary. Complementary symmetries introduce into the discursive language of physics the commonsense notion of contextuality. The new synthesis, proposed by Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and (in his own way) Paul Dirac, brought physics into the community of common language and established it as a work of general human achievement. ¹     

Militant atheism,pragmatism, and the God-shaped hole

This paper addresses recent examples of militant atheism. It considers the theistic reply that describes atheism as deriving from a “God-shaped hole” in the human soul. The paper will argue that American pragmatism offers a middle path that avoids militant atheism without suffering from this problem. The paper describes this middle path and considers the problem that is seen in Rorty’s recent work: how the pragmatist can remain critical of religious fundamentalism without succumbing to a militant version of atheism. The solution proposed is tolerant acceptance of religion along with melioristic criticism developed within shared norms of inquiry.     

Listening to God: Using Meta–Terminology to DescribeRevelation in a Comparative Theistic Context1

Abstract : Starting from the assertion that comparative theology is inherently dialogical in nature, this paper examines the use of non‐confessional meta‐terminology and its application in interfaith dialogue. In so doing, it examines potential meta‐terms for describing revelation as related in the Bhagavad‐Gita, the Qur’an, and the Gospel of John, and concludes that non‐confessional terms aid in the dismissal of normative viewpoints, leading to greater appreciation of commonality and meaning in the truth claims of other faiths and dialogue partners.     

Speaking to Pictures

A review of Peter Steele’s Plenty, a book in which each poem is faced by a colour plate of the painting or object which sparked it off. Hollander’s ecphrasis and Krieger’s ekphrasis are held in – possibly unresolvable – dialectic by Steele’s poems. The only resolution which one can find is one of wit rather than of philosophy.

Priorities of Global Justice

One-third of all human deaths are due to poverty-related causes, to malnutrition and to diseases that can be prevented or cured cheaply. Yet our politicians, academics, and mass media show little concern for how such poverty might be reduced. They are more interested in possible military interventions to stop human rights violations in developing countries, even though such interventions – at best – produce smaller benefits at greater cost. This Western priority may be rooted in self-interest. But it engenders, and is sustained by, a deeply flawed moral presentation of global economic cooperation. The new global economic order we impose aggravates global inequality and reproduces severe poverty on a massive scale. On any plausible understanding of our moral values, the prevention of such poverty is our foremost responsibility.     

The Journal of Analytical Psychology's Internet Discussion Forum

Jan Wiener 'Confidentiality and paradox: the location of ethical space'
Hester McFarland Solomon 'Origins of the ethical attitude'     

THE POLITICS OF YHWH: John Howard Yoder's Old Testament Narration and Its Implications for Social Ethics

The apparent tension between the moral codes of the Old and New Testaments constitutes a perennial problem for Christian ethics. Scholars who have taken this problem seriously have often done so in ways that presume sharp discontinuity between the Testaments. They then proceed to devise a system for identifying what is or is not relevant today, or what pertains to this or that particular social sphere. John Howard Yoder brings fresh perspectives to this perennial problem by refuting the presumption of intratestamental discontinuity. Throughout multiple scattered works on the Old Testament, Yoder offers a coherent and provocative narration that culminates in the way of Christ and establishes the ethical continuity of the entire biblical canon. This essay presents the basic parameters of Yoder's Old Testament narration, suggests points where revision is needed, and highlights several implications for social ethics.     

EVOLUTION AND SUBJECTIVITY

Evolutionary theory is becoming an all‐encompassing form of explanation in many branches of philosophy. However, emergence theory uses the concept of self‐organization to support yet alter traditional evolutionary explanation. Biologist Stuart Kauffman suggests that the new science will need to tell stories, not simply as a heuristic device but as part of its fundamental task. This claim is reminiscent of C. S. Peirce's criticism of the doctrine of necessity. Peirce's suggestions reference Hegel, and this essay draws out this Hegelian background, addressing the question of subjectivity and issuing some Hegelian reminders so that such evolutionary and emergent theories will consider the implication of this research program on philosophy of mind. The primary focus is on two post‐Kantian, neo‐Hegelian thinkers in contemporary philosophy who deal with this problem: John McDowell and Robert Brandom.     

RELIGIOUS REASONS AND POLITICAL ARGUMENTATION

In Evangelium Vitae Pope John Paul II calls for a renewal of culture to combat the culture of death. He criticizes various aspects of a pluralistic, liberal society—a type of society that he claims is based on moral relativism and a view of democracy that becomes a substitute for moral law. He maintains that such a view trivializes moral choice. In this essay I argue that John Rawls's notion of a liberal society as an overlapping consensus of comprehensive doctrines can avoid relativism while allowing for reasonable debate among opposed positions. While Rawls maintains that comprehensive doctrines, including religions, should employ a form of public reason that is not a unique feature of any one comprehensive doctrine, I argue that this requirement is too strong. One is often justified in appealing to features of comprehensive doctrines other than one's own, features that are unique to the doctrines themselves. Such an appeal does not pretend to be neutral as public reason would seem to be. In the final section of the paper I discuss some suggestions made by the Pope regarding actions in civil society that are independent of debates about legal change and suggest some ways in which they might contribute to desired cultural transformation.     

Measurement foundations for multiattribute psychophysical theories based on first order polynomials

The class of first order polynomial measurement representations is defined, and a method for proving the existence of such representations is described. The method is used to prove the existence of first order polynomial generalizations of expected utility theory, difference measurement, and additive conjoint measurement. It is then argued that first order polynomial representations provide a deep and far reaching characterization of psychological invariance for subjective magnitudes of multiattributed stimuli. To substantiate this point, two applications of first order polynomial representation theory to the foundations of psychophysics are described. First, Relation theory, a theory of subjective magnitude proposed by Shepard (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1981, 24, 21–57) and Krantz (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1972, 9, 168–199), is generalized to a theory of magnitude for multiattributed stimuli. The generalization is based on a postulate of context invariance for the constituent uniattribute magnitudes of a multiattribute magnitude. Second, the power law for subjective magnitude is generalized to a multiattribute version of the power law. Finally, it is argued that a common logical pattern underlies multiattribute generalizations of psychological theories to first order polynomial representations. This abstract pattern suggests a strategy for theory construction in multiattribute psychophysics.