In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Good and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics by Robert Benne, and: The Way of Peace: Christian Life in the Face of Discord by James M. Childs Jr.Bruce P. RittenhouseGood and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics Robert Benne Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 127 pp. $14.00The Way of Peace: Christian Life in the Face of Discord James M. Childs Jr. Minneapolis: Fortress (...) Press, 2008. 149 pp. $19.00A comparison of Robert Benne’s Good and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics and James Childs’s The Way of Peace illustrates the current divisions in political theology in the US Lutheran tradition. Benne’s book is a polemic aimed at the leadership of the mainline Protestant denominations and their mode of engagement with the American political process. In Benne’s account, these denominations draw too direct and exclusive a line between Christian faith and liberal political commitments; conversely, he sees greater agreement between core Christian norms and conservative political concerns. By contrast, Childs’s book provides an exegetical development of Christian norms of peace and peacemaking, followed by direct applications of Christian norms to public issues of economic justice and war that parallel the positions of secular liberals.Benne seeks to explore anew the issue of how Christians should interact with the political process. Unlike H. Richard Niebuhr, who undertook a similar project in Christ and Culture, Benne engages contemporary secular interpretations and critiques of religious engagement in politics. Benne rejects the strict separationist positions of the new atheists such as Richard Dawkins and the fusionist positions he attributes to Paul Tillich and the leadership of the contemporary mainline denominations in favor of a critical engagement model based on the Lutheran two kingdoms doctrine. Benne’s passion is not matched by the strength of his arguments. There is a straw man quality to his characterization of his antagonists. For example, Benne describes Tillich as seeing no difference between the demands of the Christian faith and democratic socialism. But Tillich explicitly recognizes the limitations of democratic [End Page 195] socialism in expressing Christian ideals and makes clear that his preference for this form of government is conditioned on a historical situation in which the alternatives are laissez-faire capitalism, fascism, and communism. Benne displays epistemological hubris when he questions mainstream scientific judgments. For example, he mocks the “alleged global warming consensus” (35) without offering any evidence that he possesses the necessary evidence or expertise to judge that consensus. He adds questionable historical claims, exaggerating Nazi persecution of Christians and minimizing the religious motivation of the European wars following the Reformation.Childs’s treatment of the question of how Christians are to engage in the US political process is even more problematic than Benne’s. His political prescriptions are written as if the problem did not exist, as if there existed a unified Christian polity fully faithful to its ideals that could express those ideals directly in the nation’s public policies. In this, there is a lack of the moral realism that Lutherans traditionally express through the doctrine that Christians are simul justus et peccator (at the same time justified and sinner). It is telling that the only sins that Childs acknowledges in the church are those that correspond to secular liberal norms: “racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of discrimination” (110). Childs’s representations of the church as holy, a community of peacemakers, and a sign of peace are normative not descriptive, effacing the traditional Lutheran distinction between the visible and invisible church. Childs also demonstrates a lack of political realism with respect to the influence of Christians in the American political process. In proposing that public policy be directed by Christian ideals, Childs either presupposes a significant conversion of our pluralistic society or he imagines that those not presently acting in the political process according to Christian moral principles can be persuaded to selflessness without conversion. The former position is not an empirical reality, and the latter contradicts the traditional Lutheran understanding of original sin, which holds that in the absence of faith human beings are curvatus in se, curved in upon themselves.Benne makes a... (shrink)

Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbitrary, reconceiving the nature, goals, and methods of epistemology. In Considered Judgment, she argues (...) for a reconception that takes reflective equilibrium as the standard of rational acceptability. A system of thought is in reflective equilibrium when its components are reasonable in light of one another, and the account they comprise is reasonable in light of our antecedent convictions about the subject it concerns.Many epistemologists now concede that certainty is a chimerical goal. But they continue to accept the traditional conception of epistemology's problematic. Elgin suggests that in abandoning the quest for certainty we gain opportunities for a broader epistemological purview--one that comprehends the arts and does justice to the sciences. She contends that metaphor, fiction, emotion, and exemplification often advance understanding in science as well as in art. The range of epistemology is broader and more variegated than is usually recognized. Tenable systems of thought are neither absolute nor arbitrary. Although they afford no guarantees, they are good in the way of belief. (shrink)

The current paper synthesizes theory and data from the field of life history (LH) evolution to advance a new developmental theory of variation in human LH strategies. The theory posits that clusters of correlated LH traits (e.g., timing of puberty, age at sexual debut and first birth, parental investment strategies) lie on a slow-to-fast continuum; that harshness (externally caused levels of morbidity-mortality) and unpredictability (spatial-temporal variation in harshness) are the most fundamental environmental influences on the evolution and development of LH (...) strategies; and that these influences depend on population densities and related levels of intraspecific competition and resource scarcity, on age schedules of mortality, on the sensitivity of morbidity-mortality to the organism’s resource-allocation decisions, and on the extent to which environmental fluctuations affect individuals versus populations over short versus long timescales. These interrelated factors operate at evolutionary and developmental levels and should be distinguished because they exert distinctive effects on LH traits and are hierarchically operative in terms of primacy of influence. Although converging lines of evidence support core assumptions of the theory, many questions remain unanswered. This review demonstrates the value of applying a multilevel evolutionary-developmental approach to the analysis of a central feature of human phenotypic variation: LH strategy. (shrink)

“Clinical ethics consultants” have been practicing in the United States for about 50 years. Most of the earliest consultants—the “pioneers”—were “outsiders” when they first appeared at patients' bedsides and in the clinic. However, if they were outsiders initially, they acclimated to the clinical setting and became “insiders” very quickly. Moreover, there was some tension between traditional academics and those doing applied ethics about whether there was sufficient “critical distance” for appropriate reflection about the complex medical ethics dilemmas of the day (...) if one were involved in the decision making. Again, the pioneers deflected concerns by identifying and instituting safeguards to assure professional objectivity in clinical ethics consultation services. One might suggest that in moving inside and establishing normative practices, the pioneer clinical ethics consultants anticipated adoption of their routines and professionalization of the field. (shrink)

I argue that a phenotypic trait can be an adaptation to a particular environmental condition, as against others, only if the environmental condition and the phenotype interactively cause fitness. Models of interactive environmental causes of fitness generally require that environments be individuated by explicit representation rather than by measures of environmental quality, although the latter understanding of ‘environment’ is more prominent in the philosophy of biology. Hence, talk of adaptations to some but not other environmental conditions relies on conceptions of (...) ‘environment’ importantly different from that commonly presupposed in philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Restorative Free Will examines free will as an adaptive capacity that evolved in humans and many other species, and restores free will to species excluded by claims of human uniqueness. Restorative Free Will recognizes the basic biological value of both libertarian and compatibilist elements of free will, and explains how these traditionally opposed accounts of free will capture an essential element of foraging animals' free will.

The idea and use of the concept of intrinsic value in environmental ethics has spawned much debate in environmental ethics/axiology. Although for many, it seems fundamental and necessary for formulating an ethic for environmental protection, it seems to confuse and even undermine such efforts. ' Intrinsic value ' is, I argue, a concept born in the Western intellectual tradition for purposes of insulating and isolating those to whom intrinsic value can be attributed from one another and their environmental context. This (...) is especially true from the Modern period onward. When used as a basis for determining moral considerability, these Modern foundations engender contradictory and self-defeating ways of thinking about the individual/ecosystem relationship. As a result, formulations of moral sensibilities and principles become self-defeating and, vis-à-vis the ecological context, incoherent. On the critique of this Modern residue, an alternative axiological framework is built, using Anthony Weston's idea of interdepending values as a preparation for a more ecologically coherent approach to environmental protection. This approach is dialectical and attempts to formulate an ecological foundation for moral considerability. (shrink)

I argue that results from foraging theory give us good reason to think some evolutionary phenomena are indeterministic and hence that evolutionary theory must be probabilistic. Foraging theory implies that random search is sometimes selectively advantageous, and experimental work suggests that it is employed by a variety of organisms. There are reasons to think such search will sometimes be genuinely indeterministic. If it is, then individual reproductive success will also be indeterministic, and so too will frequency change in populations of (...) organisms employing such search. (shrink)

In this article I explore some statistical difficulties confronting going conceptions of ‘group’ as understood in accounts of group selection. Most such theories require real groups but define the reality of groups in ways that make it impossible to test for their reality. There are alternatives, but they either require or invite a nominalism about groups that many theorists abjure.

Standard models of statistical explanation face two intractable difficulties. In his 1984 Salmon argues that because statistical explanations are essentially probabilistic we can make sense of statistical explanation only by rejecting the intuition that scientific explanations are contrastive. Further, frequently the point of a statistical explanation is to identify the etiology of its explanandum, but on standard models probabilistic explanations often fail to do so. This paper offers an alternative conception of statistical explanations on which explanations of the frequency of (...) a property consist in the derivation of that frequency from a statistical specification of the mechanism by which instances of the relevant property are produced. Such explanations are contrastive precisely because they identify the determinate causal etiologies of their explananda. (shrink)

The design argument was rebutted by David Hume. He argued that the world and its contents (such as organisms) were not analogous to human artifacts. Hume further suggested that there were equally plausible alternatives to design to explain the organized complexity of the cosmos, such as random processes in multiple universes, or that matter could have inherent properties to self-organize, absent any external crafting. William Paley, writing after Hume, argued that the functional complexity of living beings, however, defied naturalistic explanations. (...) In effect he dared anyone to come up with an alternative to his inference to design, and hence a designer, outside of nature. Charles Darwin explained the apparent design of functional complexity by his theory of natural selection. Asa Gray, however, in essays as well as in correspondence with Darwin argued that natural selection allowed for a type of ‘evolutionary teleology’ in which design at most could be considered the result of universal principles. F.E. Hicks updated Hume by specifically objecting to the use of design arguments by Paley. Hicks argued that the apparent design seen in nature reflected order at a deep level in nature. The design argument was briefly revived by Lawrence Henderson early in the twentieth century but he ultimately concluded that design and teleology were not necessarily mutually entailing and he retracted his design argument in favor of one that he termed ‘natural teleology’. The current claims of ‘intelligent design’ have the same logical problems that have beset previous design arguments. If design is divorced from teleology and its discontents put behind us, then there is a possibility that the latter can have a place in the development of theories to explain the phenomena of emergent complexity. (shrink)

argues that correlated interactions are necessary for group selection. His argument turns on a particular procedure for measuring the strength of selection, and employs a restricted conception of correlated interaction. It is here shown that the procedure in question is unreliable, and that while related procedures are reliable in special contexts, they do not require correlated interactions for group selection to occur. It is also shown that none of these procedures, all of which employ partial regression methods, are reliable when (...) correlated interactions of a specific kind arise, and it is argued that such correlated interactions will likely be ubiquitous in natural populations. Introduction Process and Product Fitness, Mean Fitness, and Phenotypic Change Correlated Interactions Causation Implications CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Sober (1984) presents an account of selection motivated by the view that one property can causally explain the occurrence of another only if the first plays a unique role in the causal production of the second. Sober holds that a causal property will play such a unique role if it is a population level cause of its effect, and on this basis argues that there is selection for a trait T only if T is a population level cause of survival (...) and reproductive success. Sterelny and Kitcher (1988) claim against Sober that some traits directly subject to selection will not satisfy the probabilistic condition on population level causation. In this paper I show that Sober has the resources to resist the Sterelny-Kitcher complaint, but I argue that not all traits that satisfy the probabilistic condition play the required unique role in the production of their effects. (shrink)

: Models that fail to satisfy the Markov condition are unstable in the sense that changes in state variable values may cause changes in the values of background variables, and these changes in background lead to predictive error. This sort of error arises exactly from the failure of non-Markovian models to track the set of causal relations upon which the values of response variables depend. The result has implications for discussions of the level of selection: under certain plausible conditions the (...) models of selection presented in such debates will not satisfy the Markov condition when fit to data from real populations. Since this is true both for group and individual level models, models of neither sort correctly represent the causal structure generating, nor correctly explain, the phenomena of interest. (shrink)

In the same year, 1961, Peter D. Mitchell and Robert R.J.P. Williams both put forward hypotheses for the mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria and photophosphorylation in chloroplasts. Mitchell's proposal was ultimately adopted and became known as the chemiosmotic theory. Both hypotheses were based on protons and differed markedly from the then prevailing chemical theory originally proposed by E.C. Slater in 1953, which by 1961 was failing to account for a number of experimental observations. Immediately following the publication of Williams's (...) hypothesis and before his own was published, Mitchell initiated a correspondence. Examination of the letters shows the development of a dispute based on the validity of the proposals, who should have priority and particularly whether Mitchell had drawn on Williams's work without acknowledgement. We have concluded that Mitchell's proposals were original although it is evident that prior to the correspondence Williams had considered and rejected a proposition similar to Mitchell's theory. However, a major cause of the dispute was the difference in disciplinary backgrounds of Mitchell, a microbial biochemist and Williams, a chemist. (shrink)

Moving beyond the retributive system requires clearing away some of the basic assumptions that form the foundation of that system: most importantly, the assumption of moral responsibility, which is held in place by deep and destructive belief in a just world. Efforts to justify moral responsibility typically appeal to some version of self-making, and that appeal is only plausible through limits on inquiry. Eliminating moral responsibility removes a major impediment to deeper inquiry and understanding of the biological, social, and environmental (...) causes of both vicious and virtuous behavior. The resources for moving beyond the moral responsibility are already being developed in social democratic corporatist cultures as well as in workplace management models that nurture commitment and reject blame and shame. Without moral responsibility we must face the unpleasant fact that although punishment is sometimes unavoidable it is always unjust. That unpleasant fact motivates difficult but beneficial changes that minimize both the extent and the severity of punitive measures. (shrink)

A review of a 2010 translation of the inaugural address of Dr Jaap Klapwijk as professor of Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam in 1976.

Informed consent has passed through three stages. The first paternalistic stage lasted for many centuries: The doctor's diagnosis and healing arts were kept secret, and informing patients was regarded as professionally and ethically wrong. Second came the legal stage, when the right of patients to make informed decisions concerning their own treatment was imposed by the courts and reluctantly tolerated by medical professionals. The third informed consent stage emerged more recently: the general therapy stage. The therapeutic benefits of informed consent (...) have been well established, and informed consent is widely recognized as an important element in sound medical practice. When patients are effectively informed and can exert knowledgeable control over their own treatment decisions and therapy processes, that enhances recovery, strengthens the immune system, promotes better pain tolerance, prevents depression, and encourages patient cooperation and fortitude in treatment, rehabilitation, and preventative procedures. As the medical community has absorbed greater knowledge of this research, informed consent has been recognized as both ethically essential and therapeutically sound: the hallmark of the current general therapy stage of informed consent. (shrink)

The lack of metaphysical grounding of environmental values, and impatience towards the enterprise of seeking such grounding, result in a superficial and wrongheaded view of anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism is best understood as a limiting condition, a point from which we can begin to reformulate an understanding of ourselves, our values, and our relation to the environment. It is not principally a starting point for the existence of values, as is assumed under traditional theories of anthropocentrism. To demonstrate and elaborate on this (...) position, the paper focuses on environmental values and how we traditionally assume them to be formed and legitimated. A critique of the analyses of two prominent figures in the field of environmental ethics, Bryan Norton and Eugene Hargrove, serves as the backdrop against which an alternative view is formed. This alternative is metaphysically grounded in an ecologically informed analysis of valuational activity. Against the tradition, the argument establishes two main points: 1) that attempts to ground environmental values on human preferences, agreements, traditions, or culturally driven commitments are liable to legitimate contrary values; and 2) that an ecologically driven analysis of values shows that valuations of the environment are not fundamentally conferred onto it by human beings. Positively, the paper attempts to show that our inclusion as members of the ecological community makes our valuational activity an integral and transformational element within more comprehensive ecological processes. As such, our moral commitment to the environment must be radically reshaped in order adequately to incorporate this renewed understanding. (shrink)

This is the Guest Editor's Introduction to a volume of Philosophia Reformata that considers Jaap Klapwijk's book in which he seeks to discuss evolutionary biology in relation to Christian philosophy.

I argue that the orthodox account of probabilistic causation, on which probabilistic causes determine the probability of their effects, is inconsistent with certain ontological assumptions implicit in scientific practice. In particular, scientists recognize the possibility that properties of populations can cause the behavior of members of the populations. Such emergent population‐level causation is metaphysically impossible on the orthodoxy.

This is a review of the book by Henk Woldring Karl Mannheim: the development of his thought Van Gorcum 1986.

Immanuel Kant might have stated the central and urgent problem facing contemporary literary theory as the need to seek a path between dogmatism and skepticism. We confront today a multiplicity of critical methods, each filling books and journals with no doubt convincing arguments for its correctness. If we cling to one, denying others possess truth, we are dogmatists; if, however, we grant that two or three or all are equally true, we admit that each is at the same time false (...) in relation to the others’ truth, and so we are skeptics. The “dogmatic employment” of reason, Kant noted, “lands us in dogmatic assertions to which other assertions, equally specious, can always be opposed-that is, in scepticism.”1Into this professional breach steps “pluralism” , claiming it can vindicate sharply limited patterns of reading which nonetheless allow for diversity in the relation of word to idea and, so, of interpreting reader to text. This would make it possible to encompass within a single theory the insights which both camps find in their positions. Clearly, this entices.But do we really understand what pluralism is, if it is at all? Its critical practice already exists—this essay grew from a 1984 conference which sought possible intellectual “foundations” of that practice—but how are these practitioners to understand what they do? Pluralism’s philosophic pedigree may have been neatly sketched by Nelson Goodman as the traditionThat began when Kant exchanged the structure of the world for the structure of the mind, continued when C. I. Lewis exchanged the structure of the mind for the structure of concepts, and that now proceeds to exchange the structure of concepts for the structure of the several symbols systems of the sciences, philosophy, the arts, perception, and everyday discourse. The movement is from unique truth and a world fixed and found to a diversity of right and even conflicting versions of world in the making.2 1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith , p. 57; all further references to this work, abbreviated CPR, will be included in the text.2. Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking , p. x. Since Lewis is not often classified among pluralists, I support Goodman by calling attention to Pepper having been Lewis’ student and to Lewis’ observation that he and Pepper “have been, so to say, continuously aware of each other, and of a common background of thought…. I should like to think that our respective views, both in theory of value and in ethics, are mutually supplementary rather than rival theories” . Numerous essays from this volume are useful for situating Lewis. Bruch Erlich is associate professor of English and modern languages at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln where he teaches comparative literature and literary theory. He has published on Shakespeare, Walter Benjamin, and intellectual history and is preparing a book on cognitive universals in tension with the experience of historical change, Unintelligible Limits: Time, meaning, and a Hermeneutic of Suffering. (shrink)