Lgbt Catholics: a paradigmatic case of intra-confessional pluralism

ABSTRACT

I will reflect on the reconciliation between “subjective” life and “objective” doctrine experienced by Catholic lgbt couples. Even though their particular experience cannot be considered as universal it can nevertheless constitute a case study for theological reflection. I will propose a theological model for the integration of lgbt Catholics into Christian communities. The case of lgbt Catholics also helps us address the theoretical difficulties of religious pluralism. Their experience of faith is an example of “lived pluralism”. In the lexicon of religious pluralism, this experience is an intra-system or intra-theistic diversity, but it also touches upon the meta-theological issue of the model of reason that is to be applied to every system. I believe that every possible case of pluralism is worth considering if we want to theorize this concept. This may lead us to consider pluralism as a premise from which to start, articulated at different levels.     

Epistemic Responsibility and Critical Thinking

Should we always engage in critical thinking about issues of public policy, such as health care, gun control, and LGBT rights? Michael Huemer (2005) has argued for the claim that in some cases it is not epistemically responsible to engage in critical thinking on these issues. His argument is based on a reliabilist conception of the value of critical thinking. This article analyzes Huemer's argument against the epistemic responsibility of critical thinking by engaging it critically. It presents an alternative account of the value of critical thinking that is tied to the notion of forming and deploying a critical identity. And it develops an account of our epistemic responsibility to engage in critical thinking that is not dependent on reliability considerations alone. The primary purpose of the article is to provide critical thinking students, or those that wish to reflect on the value of critical thinking, with an opportunity to think metacritically about critical thinking by examining an argument that engages the question of whether it is epistemically responsible for one to engage in critical thinking.     

Epistemic comparative conditionals

The interest of epistemic comparative conditionals comes from the fact that they represent genuine ‘comparative epistemic relations’ between propositions, situations, evidences, abilities, interests, etc. This paper argues that various types of epistemic comparative conditionals uniformly represent comparative epistemic relations via the comparison of epistemic positions rather than the comparison of epistemic standards. This consequence is considered as a general constraint on a theory of knowledge attribution, and then further used to argue against the contextualist thesis that, in some cases, considering a new counter- possibility can raise the epistemic standard of knowledge attribution. Instead, the paper shows that considering a new counter-possibility can only lower the epistemic position of a putative knower. Moreover, since the comparison, by the nature of conditionals, is free from any commitment to the truth-values of specific knowledge attributions, my conclusion is free from the debate between contextualism and invariantism on whether the truth-value of a knowledge attribution can actually vary with context.     

Public and private communication are different: results on relative expressivity

Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) is the study of how to reason about knowledge, belief, and communication. This paper studies the relative expressivity of certain fragments of the DEL language for public and private communication. It is shown that the language of public communication with common knowledge and the language of private communication with common knowledge are expressively incomparable for the class of all pointed Kripke models, which provides a formal proof that public and private communication are fundamentally different in the presence of common knowledge. It is also shown that single-recipient private communication does not add expressive power to the language of modal logic with common knowledge for any class of transitive pointed Kripke models. The latter result provides a sense in which positive introspection—believing our own beliefs—induces a kind of self-dialog.     

Perry's Legacy: Models of Epistemological Development

This paper compares the different ways that intellectual development has been described by W. Perry (1970) and M. Belenky, B. Clinchy, N. Goldberger, and J. Tarule (1986); M. Baxter Magolda (1992); and P. King and K. Kitchener (1994). The similarities are summarized into a comprehensive, gender-neutral 4-stage model (E. J. West, 1996). The nature of the stages is discussed from both a constructivist-developmental perspective (H. G. Furth, 1981; A. Colby & L. Kohlberg, 1987) and using skill-complexity theory (M. L. Commons, E. J. Trudeau, S. A. Stein, F. A. Richards, & S. R. Krause, 1998; M. L. Commons, D. Danaher-Gilpin, P. M. Miller, & E. A. Goodheart, 2002). Educational implications are proposed.     

Logical Positivism, Analytic Method, and Criticisms of Ethnophilosophy

Abstract: I argue that the analytic method has been circularly used to analyze the concept of “philosophy,” and that the result of this analysis has also been used to criticize African ethnophilosophy as nonphilosophical. I critically examine the criticism that ethnophilosophy implies cognitive relativism and the criticism that it implies authoritarianism. I defend ethnophilosophy against these criticisms, arguing that they are rooted in logical positivism, the view that philosophy essentially involves the use of the methods of science and logical analysis. I argue that such analysis and criticisms, given their pedigree, do not provide an adequate or accurate picture of the nature of philosophy.     

Skeptical Parasitism and the Continuity Argument

Abstract: Recent literature on skepticism has raised a nearly univocal voice in condemning skeptical argumentation on the grounds that such argumentation necessarily involves our adopting some nonordinary or unnatural perspective. Were this really so, then skeptical conclusions would not speak to us in the way in which skeptics think they do; we would be “insulated” from any such conclusions. I argue that skeptical argumentation need not rely on any nonordinary or unnatural standards. Rather, the skeptic's procedure is to offer a critique from within. Having given my argument for this claim (which I call the Continuity Argument), I consider and respond to two important objections. I conclude that the skeptic has a powerful meta‐argument to be deployed in defending the legitimacy of his skeptical conclusions against the slings and arrows of (those I call) the half‐true theorists.     

The Pursuit of Epistemic Good

Pace Zagzebski, there is no route from the value of knowledge to a non–reliabilist virtue–theoretic epistemology. Her discussion of the value problem is marred by an uncritical and confused employment of the notion of a "state" of knowledge, an uncritical acceptance of a "knowledge–belief" identity thesis, and an incoherent presumption that the widely held thought that knowledge is more valuable than true belief amounts to the view that knowledge is a state of true belief having an intrinsic property which a state of 'mere" true belief lacks. Her arguments against a "machine–product" conception of knowledge are undermined by these flaws, while the alternative "agent–act" model she recommends is unattractive, at odds with the knowledge–belief identity thesis she favours, and no solution to the problem of the value of knowledge she poses. I end with the observation that her version of virtue–theoretic epistemology points in the direction of cognitive decision–theoretic norms, and I briefly discuss the bearing of this fact upon her viewpoint.     

The History of Sexual Anatomy and Self-Referential Philosophy of Science

This essay is a case study of the self‐destruction that occurs in the work of a social‐constructionist historian of science who embraces a radical philosophy of science. It focuses on Thomas Laqueur's Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud in arguing that a history of science committed to the social construction of science and to the central theses of Kuhnian, Duhemian, and Quinean philosophy of science is incoherent through self‐reference. Laqueur's text is examined in detail in order to make the main point; a similar phenomenon in the work of the feminist historian of science Evelyn Fox Keller is then briefly discussed.