Yeshayahu Leibowitz's Axiology

This essay explicates and assesses Yeshayahu Leibowitz's axiology, and its relation to the value he claims halakhic (Jewish legal) practice instantiates: service of God. It argues that, while Leibowitz often affirms a relativist “polytheism of values,” he sometimes implies that the religious value is the “most valuable value.” However, this is not due to its material content, because serving God is objectively best; rather it is because, consonant with his negative theology, it most fully instantiates the formal properties of a value. The essay concludes by assessing the tenability of Leibowitz's metaethics as well as the argument for positing this contentless value as an intention and reason for halakhic practice.     

New Perspectives on Agency in Early Modern Philosophy

ABSTRACT

This introductory article outlines the themes and aims of this special issue, which offers new perspectives on early modern debates about agency in two ways: First, it recovers writings on agency and liberty that have been widely neglected or that have received insufficient attention, including writings by Anne Conway, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, William King, Gabrielle Suchon, Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet, Mary Astell, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Second, it reveals the richness of early modern debates about agency and liberty.     

Finding Empathy: How Neuroscientific Measures,Evidence and Conceptualizations Interact

ABSTRACT

Questions about how empathy should be conceptualized have long been a preoccupation of the field of empathy research. There are numerous definitions of empathy that have been proposed and that often overlap with other concepts such as sympathy and compassion. This makes communication between research groups or across disciplines difficult. Many researchers seem to see the diversity of definitions as a problem rather than a form of benign pluralism. Within this debate about conceptualization, researchers sometimes suggest that more neuroscientific evidence will make the problem go away – that uncovering the processes underlying empathy will thereby also sort out conceptual difficulties. In this paper, I challenge this assumption by examining how neuroscientists studying empathy use concepts in practice – both in the development of their measures and in the interpretation of their data. I argue that this neuroscientific literature demonstrates that continuity and stability comes from the use of certain established measures, while progress comes from expansion upon those measures and the flexibility of stated concepts. We do not ‘find’ empathy through increased neuroscientific evidence but we do get closer to understanding empathic processes, flexibly understood.     

Psychology of Science/Theology of Science: Reaching Out or Narrowing?

Formalizing a “psychology of science” today will constrain intellectual freedom in ways more likely stultifying than liberating. We should be more improvisational in seeking ideas from academic psychology to develop a more comprehensive purview. I suggest that a psychology of science should look at systematic theology and empirical theology. Liberal theologians have long experience trying to distill from religion those structural aspects that affirm openness in a search for truth. Science, as well as religion, has its myths and rituals, but theologians are more experienced than scientists at a large mythohistorical scale. There are distortions in the extreme degree to which psychological science has traditionally emphasized empiricism, positivism, hypothesis testing, and falsifiability. I argue for less critical reduction and more creative augmentation. This could include looking outside academia at cognitive competencies of people in trades. Exaggerated parsimony is an old story. This is illustrated by the opposition to David Hartley's 1749 theory of neural oscillations. There is an inexorable “margin of uncertainty” where scientific prediction and control can never outstrip the new uses to which human beings put ideas. Facts and values interact in this margin; theology has long made a home there, but scientists sometimes have been excessive in rejecting the “naturalistic fallacy.” There is also often a degree of disingenuousness in psychology's reluctance to take subjective phenomena seriously; here there may be lessons in how empirical theology has handled subjectivity, as well as in taking an honest look at the way much of the methodology of experimental psychology incorporates subjective assessments. Feist's book is a start, but these things need more thought before codifying a psychology of science.     

Cornell College: Program in Science and Religion

Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, has established a new interdisciplinary program in science and religion. One of the features of this program is an undergraduate major in science and religion that requires substantial course work in at least one of the natural sciences as well as course work in philosophy, religion, and history. As a result of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Cornell College will offer a special course, God and Physics: From Aquinas to Quantum Mechanics (April 1998), and will sponsor an international symposium on creation and contemporary cosmology (April 1999). Opportunities exist for interested scholars to come to Cornell as Templeton Visiting Fellows in order to participate in these activities.     

Prescriptions: Autonomy,Humanism and the Purpose of Health Technology

My purpose is to examine two of the foundations of medical ethics: the principle of autonomy and the concept of the human. I also investigate the extent to which health technology makes autonomy and humanness possible. I begin by underlining Illich's point that the same health technology designed to promote health and autonomy also is pathogenic. I proceed to analyse the Kantian concept of autonomy, a concept which is closely associated with health and which continues to determine current ethical thinking. In so doing, I uncover an unexpected ontological function of health technology, a function described in Heidegger's work on technology. Based on this discovery, I suggest that calls for Kantian autonomy may often be self-defeating or even sometimes harmful. I conclude by calling for continued ethical vigilance, but also for a questioning of the hitherto virtually unquestionable concepts of ethics and humanness which may themselves play a role in our era's greatest problems.     

Culture,Contexts, and Directions in Russian Post-Soviet Philosophy

Studies in East European Thought - The author examines, historically and theoretically, issues related to the state and current tendencies of post-Soviet Russian philosophy. The accent falls on the...     

New Philosophies of Science in North America – Twenty Years Later

This survey of major developments in North American philosophy of science begins with the mid-1960s consolidation of the disciplinary synthesis of internalist history and philosophy of science (HPS) as a response to criticisms of logical empiricism. These developments are grouped for discussion under the following headings: historical metamethodologies, scientific realisms, philosophies of the special sciences, revivals of empiricism, cognitivist naturalisms, social epistemologies, feminist theories of science, studies of experiment and the disunity of science, and studies of science as practice and culture. A unifying theme of the survey is the relation between historical metamethodologists and scientific realists, which dominated philosophical work in the late 1970s. I argue that many of the alternative cognitive naturalisms, social epistemologies, and feminist theories that have been proposed can be understood as analogues to the differences between metamethodological theories of scientific rationality and realist accounts of successful reference to real causal processes. Recent work on experiment, scientific practice, and the culture of science may, however, challenge the underlying conception of the field according to which realism and historical rationalism (or their descendants) are the important alternatives available, and thus may take philosophy of science in new directions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

MIND WITHIN MATTER: SCIENCE,THE OCCULT,AND THE (META)PHYSICS OF ETHER AND AKASHA

The intersection between quantum theory, metaphysical spirituality, and Indian‐inspired philosophy has an established place in speculative scientific and alternative religious communities alike. There is one term that has historically bridged these two worlds: “Akasha,” often translated as “ether.” Akasha appears both in metaphysical spiritual contexts, most often in ones influenced by Theosophy, and in the speculative scientific discourse that has historically demonstrated a strong affinity for the brand of monistic metaphysics that Indian‐derived spiritualities tend to foster. This article traces the relationship between these groups with special attention to the role of Indian concepts and terminology. More specifically, it argues that Akasha‐as‐ether comes to operate in a manner that bridges gross matter (of which the individual mind is part and parcel) with the notion of a subtle material and transpersonal mind—a version of panpsychism allowing for a coherent quantum monism.     

SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: A PERSONAL VIEW ON THE CONTEMPORARY SCENE

This article considers the current state of the science–religion debate in the United Kingdom. It discusses the societies, groups, and individual scholars that shape that debate, including the dialogue between theology and physics, biology, and psychology. Attention is also given to theology's engagement with ecological issues. The article also reflects on the loss of influence of denominational Christianity within British society, and the impact both on the character of the debate and the role of the churches. Finally, some promising trajectories of development for the future are outlined.