The story of Somali immigrants in America. Since 2003, Abdi Roble - who came to the US from Somalia in 1989 - and Doug Rutledge have been documenting the lives of Somalis who have fled to camps in Kenya and to the US. This book follows the story of a family as they struggle to survive in Kenya and then in America.

This essay indicates how theology of a certain sort may contribute to the “human humanities” as Willem B. Drees understands them, but also that there is no single entirely satisfactory solution to the question of how to give due attention to the intensely self‐involving character of plural religions. The best we can do is to undertake theology, religious studies, and philosophy of religion in proximity to one another. This helps to maintain the sense that, in the humanities generally and the (...) study of religion specifically, we not only develop comparative and disciplined reflections that aspire to a measure of neutrality, but also invite persons to undertake inherently self‐involving and reflexive inquiries, including theological ones. (shrink)

Jaak Panksepp’s article ‘Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans’ is a excellent review and summary by a leading empirical contributor whose work for many years has been running counter to reigning behavioristic premises in neuroscience. It may unfortunately be true that he could not get this review published in many neuroscience journals because it attacks too many sacred cows. Panksepp has given readers of Consciousness and Cognition a nicely condensed summary of much of his classic 1998 textbook, (...) Affective Neuroscience. I’m reasonably confident that future neuroscience students will look on that textbook as one of the seminal publications on the subject of emotion and the brain, much as we might now look back on Luria’s Higher Cortical Functions in Man, or Paul MacLean’s classic work, The Triune Brain. There is probably little that I can add to his elegant presentation of the basic affective neuroscience findings, but I would like to highlight a few key issues for the reader. (shrink)

This essay argues that H. Richard Niebuhr's classic book, Christ and Culture, is best understood as a typology of moral theologies. Each of Niebuhr's five types may be regarded as a patterned resolution of four theological relations: reason and revelation, God and world, sin and goodness, and law and gospel. Many of his evaluative comments reflect his preference for what he calls a transformationist or conversionist pattern. However, it is not difficult to imagine evaluative comments on the several types, including (...) the transformationist one, made from the perspective of a different preferred resolution of the four theological relations. Moreover, Niebuhr's scheme remains useful for analyzing more recent texts in theological ethics, such as Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation. Thus, while the book is not without its flaws and while readers may wish to enter some emendations and revisions, Christ and Culture is still worth reading because the categories it presents for analyzing moral theologies remain unsurpassed in their richness, usefulness, and suggestiveness. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY PRESENTS THE ARGUMENT THAT A THEOLOGICAL ETHIC CAN be Christian if it is shaped by a Christian theology or a reflective attempt to articulate a Christian worldview in the service of the life of faith. But there is no generic Christian theology, only historical varieties, many of which shape our ethics differently and also include distinctive self-critical resources. Therefore, although theology is not all you need, you must also be your own theologian to be a critical, interesting, and (...) ecclesially relevant Christian ethicist. (shrink)

The story of theology and ethics at Union Seminary from 1812 to the present illustrates the critical relationship between theology, ethics, and historical circumstances. In a distinctive fashion, it also reflects both the wider story and current challenges of theology and ethics in American Protestantism.

Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr developed different stances in theological ethics as well as contrasting interpretations of important circumstances and events. Despite their differences, however, when it came to the idea of responsibility, they shared a fundamental insight about the situated character of human agency. Their insight points to a substantial if also flexible Niebuhrian legacy in theological ethics, and promising and problematic features of this legacy have continued to engage the critical and constructive energies of diverse thinkers, including James (...) M. Gustafson, Gordon D. Kaufman, Robin W. Lovin, and William Schweiker. (shrink)

Our theological pictures of God, the world, and ourselves sometimes change in order to take account of scientific findings, ideas, and beliefs. How might they alter in response to recent ideas about the cosmos and the place of us humans in it?

SummaryMore than enough people are still trying to define art. I wonder: Why do that? There don't seem to be any good reasons for doing it. I examine three of these reasons: that our concept of art is abasicconcept, that a definition will have practical value, and that a definition would be interesting from a theoretic point of view.

Considerations stemming from a basic taxonomy of emotion suggest that the creation of social bonds is a critical domain for affective neuroscience. A critical phenomenon within this group of processes promoting attachment is empathy, a process essential to mitigation of human suffering, and for both the creation and long term stability of social bonds. Models of empathy emerging from cognitive and affective neuroscience show widespread confusion about cognitive versus affective dimensions to empathy. Human empathy probably reflects admixtures of more primitive (...) 'affective resonance' or contagion mechanisms, melded with developmentally later- arriving emotion identification, and theory of mind/perspective taking. From these considerations, a basic model of affective empathy is generated as a gated resonance induction of the internal distress of another creature, with an intrinsic motivation to relieve the distress. It is 'gated,' in that at least four classes of hypothesized variables determine intensity of an empathic response to the suffering of another. Differential predictions of this model vs. current ones, and future tests are proposed. (shrink)

Once deemed not respectable as a scientific domain, when behaviourist doctrine held sway, emotion is now an exploding subject of compelling attraction to a wide range of disciplines in psychology and neuroscience. Recent work suggests that the concept of 'affective regulation' has become a buzzword in these areas. Disciplines involved include not only affective neuroscience, but also cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, clinical psychiatric studies into syndromes of emotion dys-regulation , various psychotherapy approaches, and several others, e.g. the increasingly popular fields (...) of meditation and relaxation training. However, the overall conceptualization of emotion and its close ties to cognitive processes continues to befuddle many theorists and researchers, for various reasons. Mario Beauregard , Consciousness, Emotional Self-Regulation and the Brain. (shrink)

Merker offers a remarkable statement about the neural integration essential to conscious states provided by the mesodiencephalon. The model for triangular interaction between action selection, target selection, and emotion is heuristic. Unfortunately, there is little interest (relatively speaking) in neuroscience in the mesodiencephalon, and attention is currently heavily directed to the telencephalon. This suggests that there may be less real momentum than commonly assumed towards the Holy Grail of neuroscience, a scientific theory of mind, despite the major upsurge in interest. (...) (Published Online May 1 2007). (shrink)

A Review of Antonio Damasio's ‘The Feeling Of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness’.

Ethics and Advocacy considers the connections and differences between critical reflection or moral arguments or narratives and advocacy for particular issues regarding justice and moral behavior and dispositions. The chapters in this volume share an interest in overcoming polarizing division that does not enable fruitful give-and-take discussion and even possible persuasive justifications. The authors all believe that both ethics and advocacy are important and should inform each other, but each offers a divergent point of view on the way forward to (...) these agreed-upon ends. Our shared goal is to avoid academic withdrawal and to speak relevantly to the important issues of our day while halting--or at least mitigating--the disruptive discourse--almost shouting--that characterizes our polarized current society. (shrink)

This is an edition of one of the crucial texts of Renaissance scepticism, Quod nihil scitur, by the Portuguese scholar Franciso Sanches. The treatise, first published in 1581, is a refutation of Aaristotelian dialectics and scientific theory in the search for a true scientific method. This volume provides a critical edition of the original text, an English translation, a substantial introduction, and comprehensive annotation.

The aim of this research was to determine the degree to which undergraduate students’ learning approach, academic achievement and satisfaction were determined by the combination of an intrapersonal factor (self-regulation) and a interpersonal factor (contextual or regulatory teaching). The hypothesis proposed that greater combined regulation (internal and external) would be accompanied by more of a deep approach to learning, more satisfaction and higher achievement, while a lower level of combined regulation would determine a surface approach, less satisfaction and lower achievement. (...) Within an ex post facto design by selection, 1036 university students completed validated questionnaires using an online tool. Several multivariate analyses were conducted. Results showed that the combination of self-regulation and external regulation can be ordered as levels along a five-point scale or heuristic. These levels linearly determine type of learning approach, academic achievement and satisfaction. Implications are established for quality and improvement of the teaching and learning process at university. (shrink)