Narrative and Metaphysical Ambition: On Being “in Christ”

This article addresses some of the confusion regarding the role of metaphysical claims in narrative theology. Proponents and critics of narrative theology alike wonder at the ambiguous place of metaphysical speech about God as an objective reality. This essay enters the conversation through the side door of soteriology. Rather than focusing on the relationship between narrative and metaphysics or narrative and analogy or narrative and first‐order theological claims, I examine what sort of metaphysical statements are required to make the Christian claim that human beings are “in Christ” intelligible as a soteriological reality. I argue that the Christian grammar itself assumes a Christology with a certain kind of metaphysical ambition without which Christianity lapses into incoherence. To make this case, I show that David Kelsey's “narrative identity” Christology in Eccentric Existence lacks the metaphysical statements necessary to uphold his conviction that human beings are “in Christ.” A comparison with T. F. Torrance and the Book of Hebrews reveals that when narrative circumvents metaphysical statements about the incarnate Son, soteriological claims lack coherence and the biblical narrative itself is distorted by a false metaphysic. Thus, metaphysical claims internal to the narrative of Jesus are necessary to tell the story of God faithfully. In this way, narrative is the expression of a theological metaphysics.     

Role of the area postrema in three putative measures of motion sickness in the rat

After thermal cauterization of the area postrema in rats the absence of conditioned taste aversion to sucrose paired with lithium chloride (0.15 M, 3.3 ml/kg) was used as a pharmacologic/behavioral index of area postrema damage. In a subsequent experiment the effects of area postrema lesions on three measures proposed as species-relevant measures of motion sickness were studied, using off-vertical rotation at 150 degrees/s for either 30 or 90 min. Lesions of area postrema did not alter postrotational suppression of drinking or amount of defecation during motion. The initial acquisition of conditioned taste aversion to a novel cider vinegar solution paired with motion was not affected by lesioning of the area postrema, but these taste aversions extinguished more slowly in lesioned rats than in sham-operates or intact controls. Results are discussed in terms of proposed humoral factors which may induce motion sickness and in light of recent data on the role of the area postrema in similar measures in species possessing the complete emetic reflex.     

Ambiguity and rationality

Recently, several theories of decision making and probability judgment have been proposed that take into account ambiguity (Einhorn and Hogarth, 1985; Gardenfors and Sahlin, 1982). However, none of these theories explains exactly what the psychological causes of ambiguity are or addresses the issue of whether ambiguity effects are rational. In this paper, we define ambiguity as the subjective experience of missing information relevant to a prediction. We show how this definition can explain why ambiguity affects decisions in the ways it does. We argue that there are a variety of rational reasons ambiguity affects probability judgments and choices in the ways it does. However, we argue that the ambiguity effect does not cast doubt on the claim that utility theory is a standard of rational choice. Rather, we suggest that the effect of ambiguity on decisions highlights the fact that utility theory, like any normative model of decision making only prescribes the optimal decision, given what one knows.