Introduction: symposium on Brooke Ackerly’s Just Responsibility: A Human Rights Theory of Global Justice

ABSTRACT

This symposium brings together normative and empirical scholars in dialogue on Brooke Ackerly’s innovative and compelling recent monograph, Just Responsibility. Contributors discuss the book’s distinctive grounded normative theory methodology, its arguments for how individuals can take appropriate responsibility for global structural injustices, and its potential for practical impact.     

Working psychodynamically and psychosocially with women who have been raped

In this paper, I analyse aspects of the experience of some female University students who have been raped drawing on a Kleinian psychoanalytic perspective and Layton’s concept of ‘normative unconscious processes’. I suggest that Klein’s writing provides a theoretical basis for thinking about the projective and introjective processes that may be at play between perpetrator and ‘victim’. Here, I focus upon Kleinian conceptualisations of castration anxiety, fragmentation, envy, greed and guilt. In terms of ‘normative unconscious processes’, I explore how castration anxiety (in a more symbolic sense of powerlessness), fragmentation, envy, greed and guilt may also operate within social discourses around sexual violence. Specifically, I draw upon Freyd’s concept of DARVO and Payne’s Rape Myth Acceptance Scale which both explain ‘victim blaming’ in terms of the social reversal of the positions of perpetrator and ‘victim’. I illustrate this social process with reference to representations of rape within the mainstream media. My hypothesis is that, although the ‘psychic’ and the ‘social’ are two contrasting positions theoretically, it is possible to draw on both of them to make sense of the experience of working with rape clinically.

The clinical context of this paper is my work as a psychodynamic counsellor at a modern London-based University. I draw on composite case studies of women who have been raped, drawing on both ‘psychic’ and ‘social’ perspectives. I seek to explore how the ‘psychic’ and the ‘social’ can be integrated in different ways depending upon the clinical situation. I suggest that they can be mutually enriching ways of working. Through approaching how the ‘psychic’ and the ‘social’ might interrelate from a clinical viewpoint, I conclude that the idea of ‘working psychosocially’ is of most use when approached as a flexible concept that different clinicians may draw on in different ways with different patients.     

Eudaimonism and the Ground of Normative Reasons

This essay develops an argument against eudaimonism in support of John Hare's earlier critique of eudaimonism. In contrast to Hare, who mounts a Kantian-Scotist objection to what he calls a single-source view of motivation in eudaimonism, my critique of eudaimonism focuses on the ground of normative reasons in eudaimonism while also taking a page from Scotus's ethics. I argue that the main issue with eudaimonism is with the ultimate end and manner of our willing, which fails to correspond to the right ordering of love based on the nature of goodness in the object.     

The relationship between anomalistic belief,misperception of chance and the base rate fallacy

Abstract

A poor understanding of probability may lead people to misinterpret every day coincidences and form anomalistic (e.g., paranormal) beliefs. We investigated the relationship between anomalistic belief (including type of belief) and misperception of chance and the base rate fallacy across both anomalistic and control (i.e., neutral) contexts. Greater anomalistic belief was associated with poorer performance for both types of items; however there were no significant interactions between belief and context. For misperception of chance items, only experiential (vs. theoretical) anomalistic beliefs predicted more errors. In contrast, overall anomalistic belief was positively related to the base rate fallacy but no specific subtype of anomalistic belief was a significant predictor. The results indicate misperception of chance may lead people to interpret coincidental events as having an anomalistic cause, and a poor understanding of base rates may make people more prone to forming anomalistic beliefs.     

Normative roles,conceptual variance,and ardent realism about normativity

ABSTRACT

In Choosing Normative Concepts, Eklund considers a “variance thesis” about our most fundamental (and seemingly most “authoritative”) normative concepts. This thesis raises the threat of an alarming symmetry between different sets of normative concepts. If this symmetry holds, it would be incompatible with “ardent realism” about normativity. Eklund argues that the ardent realist should appeal to the idea of “referential normativity” in response to this challenge. I argue that, even if Eklund is right in his core arguments on this front, many other important challenges for ardent realism remain that also stem from the issues about possible variance in normative concepts that he considers. Following this, I introduce further issues about conceptual variance. These are issues that arise within the context of the framework that Eklund proposes the ardent realist use to confront the variance theses he considers. In particular, the issues concern what normative role as such is, as well as, relatedly, which roles associated with a concept (or predicate) get to count as part of its normative role. The upshot is that issues about conceptual variance in normative domains might be even more challenging for the ardent realist to deal with than Eklund argues.     

Rethinking Human Rights A Review Essay on Religion, Relativism, and Other Matters

In reviewing five edited collections and one monograph from the 1990s, the article summarizes the present status of the "human rights revolution" that was signaled by the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . It goes on to elaborate and evaluate some of the attempts contained in these books to deal with theoretical and practical controversies surrounding the subject of human rights, particularly the discussion of what to make of "cultural relativism" as far as human rights are concerned. Finally, the article summarizes some recent thinking and research on a neglected area, namely compliance with human rights standards protecting "freedom of religion or belief."