El presente trabajo describe los diferentes significados que la forma ychakat, en sus diversas combinatorias, tiene en la obra de Valdivia (1607) sobre la lengua allentiac. Más específicamente, se propone que esta forma puede: a) ocurrir postpuesta a (pro)nombres con significados intensificador y reflexivo; b) antepuesta a verbos con un significado reflexivo y c) sufijada a verbos con significados reflexivo y pasivo. A partir de la identificación de dichos significados, se propone una reconstrucción de dos procesos diacrónicos experimentado por esta (...) forma, examinando para dicha propuesta los diferentes caminos que se han propuesto en perspectiva tipológica sobre el tema. Finalmente, se propone que es posible que la tendencia de cambios hacia la sufijación tenga que ver con el contacto con otras lenguas del área andina; sin embargo, el camino semántico seguido es exclusivo del allentiac y no se comparte con otras lenguas del área, por lo que es probable que sea un cambio de naturaleza interna. (shrink)

In Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, Sartre highlights how emotions can transform our perspective on the world in ways that might make our situations more bearable when we cannot see an easy or happy way out. The point of this chapter is to spell out and discuss Sartre’s theory of emotion as presented in the Sketch with two aims in mind. The first is to show that although emotions have the power to transform our perspectives on the world (...) in ways described by Sartre, Sartre is mistaken to think emotions comprise the cognitive transformations in question. The second aim is to show why on one plausible way of thinking about the relationship holding between emotions and the cognitive transformations they help to bring about, emotions turn out to be the very sort of things that Sartre claims at the outset they are not, namely types of bodily feelings or sensations, a view of emotion that can be accredited to William James. (shrink)

The article deals with the polemical procedures in the constitution of the bourgeois-literary public sphere in the mid-18th century, exemplified by the work of the philosopher, literary critic and Lessing’s successor at the Berliner Literaturbriefe Thomas Abbt. His public-constitutive polemical practice is realized as theological polemics, as polemical classicism, as considerations about publicity and with a constant reflexive shift from strategic or ethical points of view. The theoretical basis of the study is a concept of polemics as a variable, non-dialogical (...) and public mode of speech with epistemic, aesthetic and political productivity and a strong reflexive tendency. (shrink)

Este artículo busca conocer las políticas que guían el quehacer institucional en dos grandes temáticas, participación de las mujeres y violencia doméstica, temas priorizados por las mujeres integrantes de las respectivas comunas. La investigación asume una perspectiva de género, y se propone detectar el grado de legitimación de dichas políticas sociales nacionales, e identificar los niveles de involucramiento de las mujeres en dichas políticas sociales. En sus conclusiones, aparecen constatadas diversas limitaciones en la implementación de dichas políticas.

In this paper, I challenge the popular belief shared by cognitive-minded theorists and therapists that the treatment of "inappropriate" or "dysfunctional" emotion should primarily be about challenging the eliciting cognitions. Although I acknowledge that sometimes therapy should proceed in this way, I point out that in some cases it is clearly the case that therapy should not proceed in this way—namely, in those cases where there are no eliciting cognitions, or in those cases where our concern lies with the kinds (...) of emotions that are being elicited, and not with the eliciting cognitions. I also consider, and reject, two responses that might be made to the arguments that I outline in the paper, and I conclude by describing what I believe to be some of the important practical or clinical implications of the arguments that I make. (shrink)

Decision-making capacity (DMC) is normally taken to include (1) understanding (and appreciation); (2) the ability to deliberate or weigh up; and (3) the ability to express a choice. In an article published recently in PPP, Jacinta Tan and her colleagues (2006) suggest that DMC requires also (4) the absence of 'pathological values' (i.e., values that arise from mental disorder). In this paper, I argue that although (1)–(3) might be necessary for DMC, (4) is not necessary (barring cases where pathological values (...) interfere with (1)–(3)). My argument will simply be that (4) fails to be supported by the empirical data provided by Tan et al., which I claim supports the view that people with pathological values do often have DMC. I also consider but reject the claim that pathological values entail incapacity because they are not 'authentic' to the person. I conclude that the absence of pathological values does not constitute an additional element of DMC and that we cannot justify compulsory treatment of people who have (1)–(3), but not (4), on the grounds they lack DMC. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Some More Reflections on Emotions, Thoughts, and TherapyDemian Whiting (bio)Keywordsdepression, pedophilia, phenomenology, noncognitive, treatmentThe primary objective of my paper was to show that where a person's representations of the world are eliciting the wrong emotions then treatment of those problems in emotion cannot be about treating the eliciting representations. And it is worth clarifying two points about my claim here. First, although I take my claim to apply to (...) cases where accurate representations are eliciting the wrong emotions, the same point does, I believe, just as well apply to cases where distorted representations are eliciting the wrong emotion. So, for instance, even if the pedophile mistakenly took an adult to be a child and was aroused by that perception, I think that we would still want to claim that there is here—in addition to a possible disturbance in cognition—a problem in emotion. This is because representations of young children should not elicit feelings of sexual arousal, however distorted those representations may themselves be. Second, it is important to emphasize that the kinds of cases that I have in mind are not cases where a person's emotions contradict the thoughts that the person has about the world. The pedophile's arousal at the thought of young children does not contradict any thoughts that the pedophile has about children. Neither does the person who has a propensity to feel anxious have any thoughts that contradict his anxiety. In fact, I believe that emotions cannot contradict our thoughts, because that would require emotion to have the representational character of thought, and emotions being affective states, or types of feelings, do not have that character of thought. Problems in emotion then have to be described in other ways, such as in terms of an emotion's violation of a moral norm or in terms of an emotion's likely adverse effects on the person's behavior or rationality, and certainly it was in these other ways that I intended the cases that I described to be taken.Now, there are to be found in my paper three ways in which someone may reply to my argument (although only two of these ways take the form of actual responses in the paper). To begin with, it might be claimed that amending problems in emotion must be about altering cognitions, as emotions themselves consist of cognitions. I describe in a note to my paper a number of reasons why I think we should reject cognitive accounts of emotions. I also state in the introduction that a purely affective (and, thereby, noncognitive) account of emotion successfully describes the phenomenology, or experience [End Page 255], of emotion. And I would also want to (therefore) resist David Pugmire's suggestion that sometimes a "person's portrayal of an emotionally charged situation is actually prefigured in their emotion"—if by that Pugmire means that emotions sometimes consist of such thoughts. "Black thoughts" may be "despair's footholds," but I would argue that this means nothing more than the fact that such thoughts often act as a nonconstitutive cause of depression. Finally, I should remark that I do not intend my claim that to evaluate oneself negatively may just consist in feeling low about oneself to be a concession to the cognitive theorist of emotion. This is because the purpose of that claim is not to (confusingly) suggest that our cognitive evaluations may consist of noncognitive emotions, but rather to suggest that it is a mistake to think of our evaluations as being cognitive in nature. According to the noncognitivist project in meta-ethics our evaluations are properly seen as being expressions of our noncognitive attitudes.The second way of responding to my argument is to concede that emotions are noncognitive in nature, but to argue that each particular emotion is triggered by its own special kind of thought (e.g., fear might be thought to be necessarily triggered by perceived dangers, anger by perceived slights). On the face of it, however, the claim that our emotions are necessarily triggered by certain kinds of thoughts looks simply false. Our own observation of how emotions originate, together with the empirical studies that I... (shrink)

The author outlines a number of reasons why morally inappropriate attitudes may give rise to concerns about fitness to practise. He argues that inappropriate attitudes may raise such concerns because they can lead to harmful behaviours , and because they are often themselves harmful . He also outlines some of the challenges that the cultivation and assessment of attitudes in students raise for medical educators and some of the ways in which those challenges may be approached and possibly overcome.

This article employs a consideration of Peter Fitzpatrick’s early work in Papua New Guinea to reflect on legal and social developments in the country since his residence there during the independence period. In particular, Fitzpatrick’s concerns about the emergence of a Papua New Guinean bourgeois legality that would shape the postcolony are shown to have been prescient in some respects, and also to have had other outcomes unanticipated by the Marxist legal and anthropological imagination of the 1970s. Finally, I use (...) examples from the heterogeneous lawscape of Papua New Guinean cities to illustrate how the ‘true people’s law’ envisioned by Fitzpatrick is in the process of emerging in spaces outside of formal legislative or court processes. (shrink)

Abstract: The ‘feeling theory of emotion’ holds that emotions are to be identified with feelings. An objection commonly made to that theory of emotion has it that emotions cannot be feelings only, as emotions have intentional objects. Jack does not just feel fear, but he feels fear-of-something. To explain this property of emotion we will have to ascribe to emotion a representational structure, and feelings do not have the sought after representational structure. In this paper I seek to defend the (...) feeling theory of emotion against the challenge from the object-directed emotions. (shrink)

This book explores the role and implications of responsibility for anthropology, asking how responsibility is recognised and invoked in the world, what relations it draws upon, and how it comes to define notions of the person, institutional practices, ways of knowing and modes of evaluation. The category of responsibility has a long genealogy within the discipline of anthropology and it surfaces in contemporary debates as well as in anthropologists' collaboration with other disciplines, including when anthropology is applied in fields such (...) as development, medicine, and humanitarian response. As a category that unsettles, challenges and critically engages with political, ethical and epistemological questions, responsibility is central to anthropological theory, ethnographic practice, collaborative research, and applied engagement. With chapters focused on a variety of cultural contexts, this volume considers how anthropology can contribute to a better understanding of responsibility, including the 'responsibility of anthropology' and the responsibility of anthropologists to specific others. (shrink)

A number of emotion theorists hold that emotions are perceptions of value. In this paper I say why they are wrong. I claim that in the case of emotion there is nothing that can provide the perceptual modality that is needed if the perceptual theory is to succeed (where by ‘perceptual modality’ I mean the particular manner in which something is perceived). I argue that the five sensory modalities are not possible candidates for providing us with ‘emotional perception’. But I (...) also say why the usual candidate offered – namely feeling or affectivity – does not give us the sought-after perceptual modality. I conclude that as there seems to be nothing else that can provide the needed perceptual modality, we should reject the perceptual theory of emotion.1. (shrink)

In this paper I get clearer on the considerations that ought to inform the evaluation and development of medico-legal competency criteria—where this is taken to be a question regarding the abilities that ought to be needed for a patient to be found competent in medico-legal contexts. In the “Decisional Competency in Medico-Legal Contexts” section I explore how the question regarding the abilities that ought to be needed for decisional competence is to be interpreted. I begin by considering an interpretation that (...) takes the question to be asking about the abilities needed to satisfy an idealized view of competent decision-making, according to which decisional competency is a matter of possessing those abilities or attributes that are needed to engage in good or effective or, perhaps, substantially autonomous or rational decision-making. The view has some plausibility—it accords with the way decisional competency is understood in a number of everyday contexts—but fails as an interpretation of the question regarding the abilities that should be needed for decisional competence in medico-legal contexts. Nevertheless, consideration of why it is mistaken suggests a more accurate interpretation and points the way in which the question regarding the evaluation of medico-legal competency criteria is to be answered. Building on other scholarly work in the area, I outline in the “Primary and Secondary Requirements” section several requirements that decisional competence criteria ought to satisfy. Then, in the “Applying the Framework” section, I say something about the extent to which medico-legal competency criteria, as well as some models of decisional competency proposed in the academic literature, fulfil those requirements. (shrink)

This paper constitutes a defence of an affective account of emotion. I begin by outlining the case for thinking that emotions are just feelings. I also suggest that emotional feelings are not reducible to other kinds of feelings, but rather form a distinct class of feeling state. I then consider a number of common objections that have been raised against affective accounts of emotion, including: (1) the objection that emotion cannot always consist only of feeling because some emotions - for (...) example, indignation and regret - necessarily have a cognitive component (say, the perception of a lost opportunity in the case of regret); (2) the objection that emotion cannot consist only of feeling because in order to explain how emotions have intentional objects we will have to recognise that emotion consists of cognition; and (3) the objection that emotion cannot consist only of feeling because emotion, but not feeling, can be variously assessed or evaluated. However, I demonstrate how an affective account of emotion might be successfully defended against all of the objections that are cited. (shrink)

According to what I will call the “appearance-is-reality doctrine of mind,” conscious mental states are identical to how they subjectively appear or present themselves to us in our experience of them. The doctrine has had a number of supporters but to date has not received from its proponents the comprehensive and systematic treatment that might be expected. In this paper I outline the key features of the appearance-is-reality doctrine along with the case for thinking that doctrine to be true. I (...) also defend the doctrine from some objections. Finally, I spell out the important metaphysical and epistemological implications of the appearance-is-reality doctrine of mind. (shrink)

Daniel Ott and I are reenacting and extending a debate that took place in the early 1980s between the third-generation Chicago schoolers Bernard Loomer and Bernard Meland.1 Their quarrel concerned the “size” of God and the accompanying question of divine ambiguity.After a brief examination of the Loomer-Meland debate, this article explores and commends the religious qualities of pantheistic God metaphors—what I will call “the spirituality of size.” Clearly, then, I tend to side with Loomer in “the battle of the Bernards.” (...) Be that as it may, I end up holding out for a polytheistic pantheism that effectively merges a Loomerian aesthetics with a Melandian axiology, a pantheist metaphysics of ultimacy with a pluralist... (shrink)

This book defends the much-disputed view that emotions are what Hume referred to as ‘original existences’: feeling states that have no intentional or representational properties of their own. In doing so, the book serves as a valuable counterbalance to the now mainstream view that emotions are representational mental states. Beginning with a defence of a feeling theory of emotion, Whiting opens up a whole new way of thinking about the role and centrality of emotion in our lives, showing how emotion (...) is key to a proper understanding of human motivation and the self. Whiting establishes that emotions as types of bodily feelings serve as the categorical bases for our behavioural dispositions, including those associated with moral thought, virtue, and vice. The book concludes by advancing the idea that emotions make up our intrinsic nature - the characterisation of what we are like in and of ourselves, when considered apart from how we are disposed to behave. The conclusion additionally draws out the implications of the claims made throughout the book in relation to our understanding of mental illness and the treatment of emotional disorders. (shrink)

In eighteen chapters of the third book of his writings named The Book of the Art of Trade (1458) Croatian Renaissance philosopher Benedetto Cotrugli (c. 1416–1469) presented a list of ethical virtues a perfect merchant should possess. His ethical teaching was largely influenced by Aristotle’s thought. Hence, Cotrugli’s list of ethical virtues resembles the list Aristotle made in the seventh chapter of the second book of his Nicomachean Ethics. In this paper, their lists of ethical virtues were examined and compared, (...) thus providing insight into their differences and similarities, consequently revealing the extent of their accordance. Previous research has shown that Cotrugli and Aristotle had a corresponding understanding of the virtue of justice. However, the paper proves that another six out of thirteen ethical virtues (confidence, astuteness, integrity, liberality, modesty, and temperance) on Cotrugli’s list have their foundation in Aristotle’s ethics. (shrink)

A great irony abounds in much of the current literature on historicism.1 As William Dean began to detect over two decades ago, a good majority of historicists, although placing an ontological and epistemological premium on historicity, promulgates a historicism that ignores most of history, the history of nature. In particular, today’s historicist theologies, especially those of the postmodern and postliberal variety, are so fixated on human histories—and, even more narrowly, on the socially, linguistically, and narrativally constituted particularities of very localized (...) religiocultural histories—that they remain disconnected from, irrelevant to, and unconstrained by what we know about the history of humanity as a .. (shrink)

In an article published recently in this journal Daniel Hill argues that it is unacceptable that British law allows doctors to refuse to terminate non-emergency pregnancies but not to refuse to refer given that many doctors who are opposed to non-emergency abortion will be opposed also to any action that aids non-emergency abortion, including the action of referral. In this reply, I argue that Hill’s argument fails to describe properly the correct function of the law, which has never been about (...) ensuring people can exercise moral consistency in their behaviours. (shrink)

It is well documented that people with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) can undergo personality changes, including becoming more impulsive in terms of how they behave. Legal guidance and academic commentary support the view that impulsiveness can render someone decisionally incompetent as defined by English and Welsh law. However, impulsiveness is a trait found within the healthy population. Arguably, impulsiveness is also a trait that gives rise to behaviours that should normally be tolerated even when they cause harm to the (...) person enacting the behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to show why both of these considerations present as significant challenges to the law in England and Wales. (shrink)

I offer and develop an original answer to the question of whether emotion plays an important role in the formation of moral thought. In a nutshell, my answer will be that if motivational internalism provides us with a correct description of the nature of moral thought, then emotion plays an important role because emotion is required to explain or ground the behavioral dispositions that are involved in moral thought.

In this paper I aim to provide a characterisation of emotional disorder. I begin by criticising the thought that an agent can be judged to be experiencing an emotional disorder if his emotion causes him some type of harm. This then leads me to develop the claim that emotional disorder relates to sufficiently inappropriate emotion, where (sufficiently) inappropriate emotion relates to emotion that fails to be (sufficiently) responsive to the agent's beliefs and/or desires. Finally, I conclude the paper by suggesting (...) that if an essentially non‐cognitivist conception of emotion is accepted then – on the characterisation of emotional disorder that I defend – there may exist strong grounds for thinking that cognitive therapy will be an inappropriate form of treatment in cases of emotional disorder.1. (shrink)

The General Medical Council instructs doctors not to allow their personal beliefs to interfere with their practice. But if attitudes can threaten to impact negatively on a doctor's practice then the question arises: should doctors ever be professionally required to change their attitudes? In this paper I suggest that doctors should be required to amend their attitudes if two conditions are met, namely: (1) the doctor has an attitude that if neglected by the doctor will (or is very likely to) (...) compromise his or her fitness to practise; and (2) the only way in which the doctor can prevent that attitude from compromising his or her fitness to practise is by changing the attitude. I also answer three objections that might be raised against the position that I advance. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that doctors who are found guilty of serious professional misconduct should be required to apologize as a condition of their registration. I argue that such a requirement is to be justified on the basis of the need to protect patients, maintain public confidence in the profession, and declare and uphold proper standards of conduct and behaviour. I also answer an objection that might be made to the position I defend. Finally, I consider whether there should (...) be any exceptions to the demand for an apology from doctors who have been found guilty of serious professional misconduct. (shrink)

Robert Corrington likes to delineate “ecstatic naturalism” by comparing and contrasting it with three other naturalistic philosophies. The first is descriptive naturalism, which conceives of nature as nonconscious, utterly vast, resistant to categorial reduction, and indifferent to human needs and desires. Descriptive naturalists, from John Dewey, George Santayana, and Justus Buchler to Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, espouse a form of materialism that mitigates or repudiates religious sensibilities, puts a methodological premium on scientific inquiry, and grants material and efficient causality (...) explanatory priority. The second mode of naturalism, the honorific, views nature differently, even oppositely.. (shrink)

Kenneth Rose's Pluralism: The Future of Religion is one of the most important works to appear in the theology of religions in nearly two decades. Evocatively written, rhetorically effective, deftly argued, remarkably lucid, theologically nuanced, and even spiritually discerning, the book launches a full-scale attack on exclusivistic and inclusivistic versions of "particularism," the view that one particular religion is absolute, universal, unsurpassable, and superior to all the others. Against both exclusivism and inclusivism, Rose builds a fresh and vigorous case for (...) pluralism, which "holds that no contextually shaped body of religious teachings can justify a claim that it is final... (shrink)

What follows is a continuation of a debate that dates back to at least John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius but took on its naturalistic guise in the third generation of the Chicago school between Bernard Loomer and Bernard Meland. Basically, the argument pertains to whether God is to be associated with everything that is, including suffering and evil, or whether God is more rightly associated with what we take to be good or redemptive. Loomer defended the former position. Late in (...) life, he came to embrace pantheism, arguing that God and nature are identical. The thesis of his 1987 essay, “The Size of God,” was that the divine is to be equated with the world in its ambiguous and mysterious entirety—with the “Whole... (shrink)

Due to COVID-19 pandemic caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, in the spring of 2020 Republic of Croatia imposed a lockdown, which included a measure of transferring the educational process on all educational levels from classroom to distance education. Characteristics of learning in higher education during the lockdown were identical to those pertaining to online learning. Aiming to determine the attitudes of students of Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek towards online learning and the factors affecting their attitudes, we have conducted (...) a quantitative research. In so doing, we have collected the data using the surveying method on a convenient sample via Internet. The results have shown that students have a slightly negative attitude towards online learning, provided that students who have used online learning tools more frequently before the pandemic have a more positive attitude towards it. By applying the technology acceptance model, we have confirmed the indirect correlation between the perceived ease of use of online learning tools and the attitude towards online learning with a strong mediation effect of perceived usefulness of online learning. (shrink)

Zbog pandemije bolesti COVID-19 uzrokovane virusom SARS-CoV-2, u proljeće 2020. godine u Republici Hrvatskoj nastupilo je potpuno zatvaranje koje je uključivalo i mjeru obaveze prelaska nastavnog procesa na svim razinama obrazovanja iz učioničke nastave u nastavu na daljinu. Obilježja koja je učenje u visokom obrazovanju poprimilo tijekom potpunog zatvaranja odgovaraju obilježjima karakterističnima za online učenje. S ciljem utvrđivanja stavova studenata Sveučilišta Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku prema online učenju i čimbenika tih stavova, proveli smo kvantitativno istraživanje. Podatke smo pritom prikupljali (...) metodom ankete na prigodnom uzorku putem interneta. Rezultati su pokazali da studenti imaju blago negativan stav prema online učenju, s tim da su pozitivnijeg stava bili studenti koji su se prije epidemije učestalije koristili alatima za online učenje. Primjenom modela prihvaćanja tehnologije potvrdili smo indirektnu povezanost percipirane lakoće korištenja alatima za online učenje i stava prema online učenju s jakim efektom medijacije percipirane korisnosti online učenja. Due to COVID-19 pandemic caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, in the spring of 2020 Republic of Croatia imposed a lockdown, which included a measure of transferring the educational process on all educational levels from classroom to distance education. Characteristics of learning in higher education during the lockdown were identical to those pertaining to online learning. Aiming to determine the attitudes of students of Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek towards online learning and the factors affecting their attitudes, we have conducted a quantitative research. In so doing, we have collected the data using the surveying method on a convenient sample via Internet. The results have shown that students have a slightly negative attitude towards online learning, provided that students who have used online learning tools more frequently before the pandemic have a more positive attitude towards it. By applying the technology acceptance model, we have confirmed the indirect correlation between the perceived ease of use of online learning tools and the attitude towards online learning with a strong mediation effect of perceived usefulness of online learning. (shrink)

Los años 80 han atraido, en los últimos tiempos, una serie de miradas nostálgicas, sobre todo hacia su música. Lejos de esa atmósfera está “ El Canto Nuevo de Chile. Un Legado Musical ”, de Patricia Díaz-Inostroza.Por el contrario, se trata de una investigación que, si bien está centrada en el movimiento llamado Canto Nuevo, abarca mucho más que eso, dejando en claro las profundas raíces históricas que afirman este tipo de música. Ese es un aporte innegable, que permite (...) al lector (o lectora) .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religion within the Limits of History Alone: Pragmatic Historicism and the Future of Theology by Demian WheelerNancy FrankenberryReligion within the Limits of History Alone: Pragmatic Historicism and the Future of Theology. Demian Wheeler. Albany: SUNY Press, 2020. ix+511pp. $95.00 hardcover.The history of Christian theology since the Enlightenment has been a series of unsuccessful attempts to evade a stark dilemma: either fundamentalism or atheism. Contemporary liberal theologians (...) have argued that this dilemma is [End Page 97] entirely too stark, too eliminative of the creative possibilities of revisionism. Liberal theology has wanted to revise and reinterpret Christian faith in conformity with history, reason, a scientific worldview, and a sophisticated grasp of the significance of symbol, analogy, and metaphor in the lives of religious practitioners. Eliminating both supernaturalism and anthropomorphism, liberal theology would make Christianity more intellectually tenable, rescuing it from the literalist hands of fundamentalists, without collapsing it into the equally literalist arms of atheism.The extreme difficulty of evading the either-or dilemma of choosing either fundamentalism or atheism landed liberal theology in a catch-22: either it rejected the intellectually untenable elements of belief, in which case it eliminated just those beliefs that constituted its appeal to popular piety, or it retained certain supernaturalistic and anthropomorphic beliefs, understood as “symbolic,” in which case it forfeited intellectual intelligibility and any appeal to sophisticated moderns. The first version is far too weakened for ordinary American Christians, and the second is still too religious for the masters of suspicion and their followers.It is for this reason that the history of American religious thought reveals a grave irony that complicates the hopes of pragmatic historicists, the protagonists of this superbly clear and rich, deep dive into authors that most readers of this journal will have read, but perhaps not have synthesized as thoroughly as has Demian Wheeler. That irony, as Wheeler knows, is that the more intellectual changes pragmatic historicists make to traditional Christian belief, the more they help to make unbelief viable. The question then arises as to whether pragmatic historicism is simply a half-way house on the road to an atheistic destination. Or, if the word “atheism” sounds too old-fashioned, like something that went out with steamships and girdles, then “agnosticism.” Or, if “agnosticism” still smacks too much of stale debates, why not “pantheism,” as recently revived by Mary-Jane Rubenstein?The detailed development, the verbal bravura, and the measured knowledge in this book are astonishingly impressive. Wheeler’s initial thesis is that liberal theology, particularly of the early Chicago School, and American pragmatism, particularly C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, provide important resources for meeting the challenges posed by the rise of historical consciousness. Sheila Davaney has designated this tradition “pragmatic historicism,” and Wheeler aims to show its compelling import for the future of theology itself. A good deal of the book is devoted to exposition and defense of the views of: Ernst Troeltsch, James, Dewey, George Burman Foster, Shirley Jackson Case, Shailer Matthews, and Gerald Birney Smith, down to Delwin Brown, Sheila Davaney, and William Dean (Wheeler’s teachers at Iliff), along with Gordon [End Page 98] Kaufman and Sallie McFague. In the last chapter, Wheeler draws expertly on the theological views of Bernard Loomer, Michael Hogue, Donald Crosby, and Wesley Wildman. Such an all-star cast deserves to receive all the attention they can get. Wheeler’s occasional emendations come as glittering nuggets of constructive engagement. He does not simply call for a pragmatic historicist approach to theology, but he executes one as well, showing in more detail than his predecessors what it means for such topics as religious diversity (chapters 3 and 4), the nature of authority (chapter 5), the meaning of critical realism, fallibilism, and an altered correspondence theory of truth (chapters 6 and 7), and the doctrine of God (chapter 8). With the same exhaustive treatment that his doktorvater Gary Dorrien has devoted to liberal theology’s history and contemporary expressions, Wheeler carefully saves pragmatic historicism from relativism, expertly critiques all the leading theologians of the “inclusivist,” “exclusivist,” and “pluralist” theologies of religions, while arguing the superiority of his own “particularist” corrective to pluralistic... (shrink)

It is with sincere appreciation that I commend this edited collection to readers of the AJTP. The collection meets the task of promoting lively discussion that addresses the interface between theology and philosophy, especially as shaped by empiricist, naturalist, process, and pragmatist traditions. As the most recent volume in the series Toward Ecological Civilization, it delivers papers from the Tenth International Whitehead Conference and Ninth International Forum on Ecological Civilization, held in Claremont, California, June 2015, thereby delivering on a second (...) focus for the AJTP: the development of liberal religious thought in America.The authors gathered in this collection take seriously the earnest and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Decision-Making as a Broader ConceptJacinta O. A. Tan (bio), Anne Stewart (bio), and Tony Hope (bio)KeywordsCompetence, decision-making, capacity, anorexia nervosa, autonomy, values, identityWe thank Demian Whiting for the thoughtful critique of aspects of our paper (Tan et al. 2006a). A primary aim of our research was to provide empirical grounds on which to stimulate discussion about the nature of decision-making capacity (DMC). Whiting criticizes in particular the concept (...) of 'pathological values' that we suggested might be relevant in the assessment of DMC and in the related issue of deciding when a patient's refusal of beneficial treatment should be overridden.Whiting's central concern is with DMC. Whiting argues that the absence of pathological values should not be a criterion for DMC. We are unclear whether he is also arguing that pathological values do not provide a reason of any kind for overriding treatment refusal. At the end of the paper he writes: "we cannot justify compulsory treatment of patients who have pathological values... on the grounds that these patients lack DMC" (2009, XX). This seems to leave open the possibility that we may be able to justify compulsory treatment of patients who have pathological values on grounds other than that they lack DMC. As we wrote in our response to the discussants of our original paper, "The primary issue for us is whether the reasons for refusal to which we draw attention provide grounds for overriding refusal, and if they do how they can be characterized in such a way as to avoid the ever-present danger of simply overriding autonomy in a patient's best interests" (Tan et al. 2006b, 300).In deciding on whether to use compulsory treatment, there are other relevant factors that may need to be considered, such as the seriousness of the decision, which determines the threshold for competence. However, in this response we consider three issues. First, we argue that the current concept of DMC is by no means so clear cut or generally agreed upon as Whiting implies, and that some of the lack of clarity relates to pathological values. Second, that the concept of DMC is itself dependent on accounts of autonomy, and that it is plausible that pathological values can affect autonomy. Third, we directly consider the question of whether a coherent account of pathological values might be given based on a concept of authenticity.The Current Criteria for DMCWhiting argues that the current criteria for DMC are correct and that an additional criterion along the lines of absence of pathological values should not be added. This argument assumes that there is a clear and agreed understanding of the current criteria. We believe this is not the case for three reasons.(i) Whiting begins his account of DMC by saying that it is normally taken to include: "(1) [End Page 345] understanding (and appreciation)" (2009, 341). Already there is an area of dispute, and the use of parentheses reflects this. The concept of 'appreciation' was developed by Grisso and Applebaum (Grisso, Appelbaum, and Hill-Fotouhi 1997). It is not included in either English common law development, for example (ReC), nor in the criteria specified in the Mental Capacity Act 2005. More important, Grisso and Appelbaum in their comment on our original paper (2006) argue that our work advances thinking about 'appreciation' rather than requiring that we add new elements. The implication is that they believe that what we have called pathological values are relevant to the assessment of capacity and are already included in an account of capacity that incorporates the criterion of 'appreciation.' In our response, we argued that pathological values are not entirely captured within the account of appreciation that Grisso and Appelbaum had previously given. We do not want to revisit that issue here, but the point of relevance is that on one view (that of Grisso and Appelbaum) pathological values are already included in the current criteria for DMC as part of the concept of appreciation, whereas on Whiting's view they are not.(ii) Even if there were agreement over the wording and concepts relevant to DMC there is a further important issue: how are those concepts... (shrink)