SEARCH FOR BELIEFS TO LIVE BY CONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE

Abstract. Instead of separating religion and science into "mutually incompatible realms," the new macromental paradigm of behavioral science permits integration of the two within a single consistent worldview. A new form of causal determinism combines conventional "bottom-up" with emergent "top-down" causation. Traditional materialist tenets are overturned, along with the science-values dichotomy, clearing the way for a science-based value/belief system. Intrinsic ethicomoral directives emerge in which a revised sense of the sacred would help protect the evolving quality of the biosphere, and the rights and welfare of future generations. Subsequent versions of today's changing worldview raise questions of which interpretation to believe. An analysis of "New Age" thinking is called for, and a brief attempt at such analysis is included.     

我国食管癌进一步研究的思路

为进一步探讨食管癌的发病机制和寻求食管癌的防治新策略,本文回顾了现代科学技术革命和食管癌研究的发展史,借鉴现代科学技术革命的成功经验,提出将整体的有关调节因素与食管癌发病机制相结合,拓宽综合性和多学科合作的研究思路,可能会发现攻克食管癌防治研究的突破点,同时,创新研究技术和加强实验室建设是加速食管癌研究取得新进展的有效途径。     

Act Without Denial: Slavoj Žižek on Totalitarianism,Revolution and Political Act

iek's thinking departs from the Lacanian claim that we live in a symbolic order, not a real world, and that the Real is what we desire, but can never know or grasp. There is a fundamental virtuality of reality that points to the lie in every truth-claim, and there are two ways of dealing with this:repression and denial. An ideology, a system or a regime becomes totalitarian when it denies the virtual character of both its world and its subject (democracy represses truth's basic lie, which makes it possible for the repressed to return). iek's analysis of totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, shows how a totalitarian system denies its subject, which, being desire for the Real, cannot act in the name of truth but must acknowledge the contingency of its action (a political act can fail to reach its goal), whereas an established system can no longer fail and has to deny its flaws. Any political act disrupts the (evolution of) the symbolic order and thus is revolutionary, creating an event ex nihilo. An act is a jump into the inconsistency of the symbolic order, i.e. into das Ding, a jump both into and out of the nihil in which our world is grounded. Politics therefore can never be Realpolitik. The realization that politics is a symbolic phenomenon, supported not by the real, but by signifiers, is the Lacanian foundation of iek's political theory.     

Undecidable Decisions: Rationality Limits and Decision-making Heuristics

In this article the theoretic evolution and the empirical-experimental efforts that have led to the affirmation of the bounded/procedural rationality paradigm are discussed. Moreover, the debate on supporters of the “optimization” approach and supporters of the “bounded/procedural rationality” approach is traced, highlighting the irreconcilability of these two approaches and, in retort, a solid defense against a merely “reductionist” attempt of the innovative context of the Simonian theory. Critically going over the debate on decision dynamics, it becomes clear how, due to the uncertain nature of rational processes, it is impossible to establish the decision-making best way. The imperfect character of individual choice is explained by how the decider identifies a solution that appears satisfying in that moment due to cognitive and temporal limits.     

Comment by Arvind Sharma

Comments on:
JRE Focus on The 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights, Journal of Religious Ethics 26.2 (Fall 1998)
"Rethinking Human Rights: A Review Essay on Religion, Relativism, and Other Matters" by David Little, Journal of Religious Ethics 27.1 (Spring 1999)     

Development of a Career Stress Scale for Hospital Nurses: Implications for Workplace Counseling

The author performed 3 studies to investigate the construct validation and applicability of a Career Stress Scale for hospital nurses. After conducting an exploratory factor analysis on a sample of 141 nurses in the 1st study, the author examined divergent and convergent validity in the 2nd study, and performed a confirmatory factor analysis to test the hypothesized model on a sample of 284 teaching hospital nurses. The final study aimed to expand the findings, and the author used multigroup structural equation modeling to examine the measurement invariance of the Career Stress Scale for a district hospital, in a sample of 166 nurses. Recommendations for future studies and workplace counseling are discussed.     

Just War Moralities

This essay discusses four recent books on the Western, and one book on the classical Chinese, traditions of just war. It concentrates on the jus ad bellum moral criteria (legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention), giving attention to the centrality of the state in just war morality, to some challenges in reconceptualizing the jus ad bellum in the context of non‐state agents, and to controversies over a “presumption against war.”     

Fanon and Marx Revisited

ABSTRACT

On this 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, what can we learn from Fanon’s turn to Marx over 60 years ago? This paper reviews Fanon’s active engagements with Marx throughout his work from Black Skin, White Masks to The Wretched of the Earth; from the importance of Marx’s 18th Brumaire in Fanon’s thinking, to what he calls stretching Marxian concepts. In this moment of crisis and retrogression, what can we learn from Fanon’s creative use of Marxian categories?     

Eternity’s Death in Modernity: A Case of Murder? Of Resurrection?

ABSTRACT

The death of God and the death of eternity stand at the portals of modernity. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which Kojève called the modern counterpart to the Bible, concludes with the death of God. Despite Hegel having shown that everything, even God, has a time nucleus, at the level of ‘Absolute Knowing’, he takes eternity back into play, conceiving it as a structure of time, rather than a realm outside time. Thus, he wrenches a concept of eternity from time itself. Even though Hegel and Nietzsche are philosophical antipodes in many senses, we notice an ambivalent relation in Nietzsche’s works towards eternity as well. Nietzsche, the author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the other ‘anti-Bible’ of modernity, proclaims eternity to be dead, while at the same time conceiving of an eternal recurrence, that of a dynamic eternity. First, it is argued that for both, eternity is essentially related to action and deed. Second, both highlight the importance of the past in reaching an adequate understanding of time and with it of eternity. Consequently, it is argued that modernity does not offer a vision of the future but a vibrant and often painful consciousness of the past.