There is increasing evidence that a clear battleline is forming again between reductive materialism and general idealistic philosophy. In the days of Royce and Bowne in this country and Bradley and Bosanquet in Britain, the stimuli to a revived materialism came from the theory of evolution and from the natural sciences generally. And there was some growing analytic aversion to Hegel’s system. Idealists today have clearly shown that their views are not easily annulled by facile citations to modern scientific activity. (...) One need only call to mind the solid work of Errol Harris, whose brilliant Nature, Mind and Modern Science of 1954 has just been translated by Philip Mueller as Nature, l’esprit et science moderne. In a recent article dealing with the changing relations of nature, man, and modern science, Harris points out that current biology in conjunction with holistic physics has produced an organismic conception of nature which incorporates man and his activities “as a dialectical scale of forms in which human mentality is a late stage.” Nature is then not something to be exploited but to be viewed as an ecological system, a matrix of human life. (shrink)

The Search for the Legacy of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee is a collection of essays from experts in a variety of fields seeking to redefine the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The essayists place the legacy of the study within the evolution of racial and ethnic relations in the United States. Contributors include two leading historians on the study, two former United States Surgeons General, and other prominent scholars from a wide range of fields.

I explore some new directions-suggested by feminism-for medical ethics and for philosophical ethics generally. Moral philosophers need to confront two issues. The first is deciding which moral issues merit attention. Questions which incorporate the perspectives of women need to be posed-e.g., about the unequal treatment of women in health care, about the roles of physician and nurse, and about relationship issues other than power struggles. "Crisis issues" currently dominate medical ethics, to the neglect of what I call "housekeeping issues." The (...) second issue is how philosophical moral debates are conducted, especially how ulterior motives influence our beliefs and arguments. Both what we select-and neglect-to study as well as the "games" we play may be sending a message as loud as the words we do speak on ethics. (shrink)

I explore some new directions—suggested by feminism—for medical ethics and for philosophical ethics generally. Moral philosophers need to confront two issues. The first is deciding which moral issues merit attention. Questions which incorporate the perspectives of women need to be posed—e. g., about the unequal treatment of women in health care, about the roles of physician and nurse, and about relationship issues other than power struggles. “Crisis issues” currently dominate medical ethics, to the neglect of what I call “housekeeping issues.” (...) The second issue is how philosophical moral debates are conducted, especially how ulterior motives influence our beliefs and arguments. Both what we select—and neglect—to study as well as the “games” we play may be sending a message as loud as the words we do speak on ethics. (shrink)

A more complete methodology for normative ethics is needed, and Kierkegaard's philosophy, which emphasizes the individual's role in moral decision-making, can help to meet this need. This essay discusses two ways in which Kierkegaard sought to expand a commonly accepted conception of morality. First, he stressed that the agent changes as part of the process of moral decision-making, with personal experience and insight integral parts of that process. Second, Kierkegaard included within the realm of morality decisions (e.g., about occupation) which (...) are normally viewed as simply matters of personal preference. (shrink)

There is increasing evidence that a clear battleline is forming again between reductive materialism and general idealistic philosophy. In the days of Royce and Bowne in this country and Bradley and Bosanquet in Britain, the stimuli to a revived materialism came from the theory of evolution and from the natural sciences generally. And there was some growing analytic aversion to Hegel’s system. Idealists today have clearly shown that their views are not easily annulled by facile citations to modern scientific activity. (...) One need only call to mind the solid work of Errol Harris, whose brilliant Nature, Mind and Modern Science of 1954 has just been translated by Philip Mueller as Nature, l’esprit et science moderne. In a recent article dealing with the changing relations of nature, man, and modern science, Harris points out that current biology in conjunction with holistic physics has produced an organismic conception of nature which incorporates man and his activities “as a dialectical scale of forms in which human mentality is a late stage.” Nature is then not something to be exploited but to be viewed as an ecological system, a matrix of human life. (shrink)

At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

This article provides ethical guidance on using race in health research as a variable or in defining the study population. To this end, a plain, non-exhaustive checklist is provided for researchers and research ethics committees, preceded by a brief introduction on the need for justification when using race as a variable or in defining a study population, the problem of exoticism, that distinctions pertain between race, ethnicity and ancestry, the problematic naming of races, and that race does not serve well (...) as a presumed biological construct in genetic research. (shrink)

Transpersonal psychology: Dean, S. R. The ultraconscious mind. Arasteh, A. R. Final integration in the adult personality.--The nature of madness: First, E. Visions, voyages, and new interpretations of madness. Van Dusen, W. Hallucinations as the world of spirits.--Biofeedback: White, J. The yogi in the lab. Kiefer, D. EEG alpha feedback and subjective states of consciousness.--Meditation research: Griffith, F. F. Meditation research: its personal and social implications. Kiefer, D. Intermeditation notes: reports from inner space.--Psychic research: Honorton, C. Tracing ESP through altered (...) states of consciousness. Johnson, C. W. Unexplored areas of parapsychology.--Paraphysics: White, J. Plants, polygraphs, and paraphysics. Reiser, O. L. Messages to and from the galaxy.--Biotechnology: Beal, J. B. The new biotechnology. Tiller, W. A. Energy fields and the human body.--The neurosciences: Conway, H. Life, death, and antimatter. Floyd, K. Of time and mind: from paradox to paradigm.--Ecological consciousness: Smith, R. A. Our passport to evolutionary awareness. Esser, A. H. Synergy and social pollution in the communal imagery of mankind.--Space travel and extraterrestrial life: Mitchell, E. D. Global consciousness and the view from space. White, J. Exobiology--where science fiction meets science fact.--Death as an altered state of consciousness: Tietze, T. R. Some perspectives on survival. Noyes, R. Dying and mystical consciousness. (shrink)

The title of Stewart’s biography is a tribute to Alain Locke’s seminal work, The New Negro: An Interpretation. This 1925 anthology highlighted the works of several up-and-coming black writers of the 20th century, planting these authors and, thus, a new black intellectual movement squarely in the public eye. While Alain Locke and John Dewey did not work directly together, Dewey’s philosophical approaches, specifically aesthetic valuation, significantly influenced Locke’s life. John C. Stewart provides a dense and thorough illustration of Locke’s use (...) of aesthetic valuation in his personal, professional, and educational experiences. Locke was pursuing his doctoral degree at Harvard University in Dewey’s discipline at... (shrink)

The balance between creative thinking and creative scholarship is a hard one to achieve, partly because the lure to be original is in conflict with the desire to be fair to the insights of past thinkers and partly because one can never be quite sure whether his scholarship is mere pedantry or actually constitutes significant discovery. In his essay, “On Books and Reading,” Schopenhauer distinguishes those who have “read themselves stupid” from those who take time to ruminate and set their (...) own thoughts to work. “A spring never free from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses its elasticity,” he writes, “and so does the mind if other people’s thoughts are constantly forced upon it.” Thomas Hobbes once observed that if he had read as much as other persons of his acquaintance he would have known no more than they. But the trouble is that if one does not read enough of what others have thought, he may repeat mistakes they made or turn down some cul-de-sac which is not worth exploring or is profoundly trivial. More common in philosophy is the arrogant upstart who has fastened onto some formula which he treats as a talisman enabling him to decide what to ignore and what to study. For a time, there were some philosophers who thought that anyone before Hume was not worth reading, and there are still a few who think anyone following in the footsteps of Descartes must surely be wrongheaded. (shrink)

In a review of a book by the British idealist, A. E. Taylor, some years ago, C. D. Broad commented: “What of the nightmarish appearance, stupid perseveration and meaningless fecundity in organic nature? If the teleologist would consider the ways of the locust and the lemming, he would be a sadder and perhaps a wiser man.” Of course, others besides idealists are teleologists, but in the idealist tradition since Plato, the question of overall teleology has been a fundamental one. It (...) may be that idealists have a peculiar problem in trying to reconcile apparent dysteleological facts with their overall belief in purpose. The question is a basic one. It may also be regarded as a watershed dividing Eastern idealists, especially Indian, from their Western counterparts. (shrink)

To understand any genuine theism we must recognize at once that we are dealing with a problem of a different order than technical puzzles in epistemology or conundrums in modal logic. That is not to say that theism is above rational investigation, that acceptance of it presupposes some special access, or that it cannot be examined philosophically. But it cannot be discussed fruitfully unless there is some grasp of what refined religious feeling in fact is. A lot of discussion about (...) God comes from the lips of people who have never visited temple, mosque, or meeting house, and who have not tried to find out what it is like to have a religious attitude toward an object of belief for forty years without a break. They have little interest in understanding the experience of prayer or finding out what it is like to commit oneself sincerely to a religious ideal. Invariably they know little about the teachings and claims of the eleven world religions, but they surely know how to find an assortment of flaws in St. Thomas’s “Five Ways” and they are consummate experts in showing up weaknesses in Paley’s “watchmaker” argument. They have a veritable field day in ridiculing the extravagances of uncritical Fundamentalism. (shrink)

Idealistically oriented thinkers have persistently fought against any tendencies on the part of diverse philosophies to interpret or explain the fact of self-experience in terms of something less than the self knows itself to be. But this insistence on the centrality of the knowing subject carries with it the obligation to explain not only what that knowing subject is but why it is central and why one must in some way begin with it in his philosophical explorations. The need for (...) such an explanation is laid upon the idealist by those who insist that all explanations, all philosophizing, must begin, rather, with the observable objective facts of the natural sciences and the “external order.” But those who dote so much on alleged “objective” facts then have to try to squeeze the claims of the self-conscious subject into some explanatory formula which accounts for those data causally and views the self as some kind of a product of something more basic ontologically. Is a thinker unalterably “subjectivistic” if he insists on the epistemic centrality of the knower? Is that merely another form of “foundationalism”? Of course, there are other philosophical alternatives, but can idealistic methodology be characterized wholly by the title of Quentin Lauer’s book on Husserl, The Triumph of Subjectivity? (shrink)

Exploration of the philosophical assumptions and presuppositions underlying the nature of science itself, as well as its continued progress, has been limited traditionally and primarily to the physical sciences. In recent years, work in the philosophy of the social sciences has been advancing. And now there is some significant new work being done on the logical and historical bases of the science of psychology. Indeed, as historians of psychology set about their task, they are beginning to find that that science (...) really had strong idealistic roots in its early days. These roots are not only worth studying from the general standpoint of intellectual history, they are also valuable in coming to an appreciation of the recent revival of neoidealistic psychology. (shrink)

No doubt taking his clue from a book published by Friedrich Paulsen under the title Philosophia Militans, Albert C. Knudson placed a chapter in his memorable history of personalistic idealism called “Militant Personalism”. And he raised by that very title, as Paulsen had earlier, the question of the actual forcefulness of philosophical ideas on history and society. Another book, issued three years after Knudson’s, was called Behaviorism: A Battle Line. This volume of collected essays, edited by W. P. King, made (...) the point that behaviorism as a philosophy of mind had such serious negative implications for human beings and the social order that it must be vigorously opposed and literally fought against. (shrink)

The idealistic current of thought has been flowing since the time of Plato and before; and while it has been diverted from time to time and even partially dammed up, it has persisted and found its way into our own period. Those who decide philosophical questions on the strength of what they take the Zeitgeist to be have been sure for a long time that philosophical idealism in its variegated forms is at best a narrow trickle about to disappear in (...) the mud of scientific naturalism or the fine grained sand of Anglo-American analysis. Some view any idealistic utterance as a mere seepage, an oddity; others, in a self-ascribed posture of contemporary “maturity,” ignore even the presence of the seepage, perhaps fearing that it might be a spring. (shrink)

The informal letters of great philosophers often provide valuable clues not only to the development of their thought processes but also to their inner personalities. The austere and distant Hegel comes alive as a man in his correspondence, and the rigorous Spinoza takes on the blood and flesh of a gracious friend in his letters. In Kant’s correspondence, we occasionally find helpful interpretations of his thought as he answers questions put to him by friends and inquirers. And the letters of (...) William James to his wide circle of friends are uniformly charming. We do not usually find a great deal of profound significance in the extant personal correspondence of philosophers but there is an occasional insight, often a clue to the unfolding of a personality, or an unguarded comment here or there which suggests a tendency or trait. (shrink)

That the late civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., was a devotee of the ethics of nonviolence is generally well-known. What is not so well-known is the fact that he was philosophically trained and that he was a personalist. He began the study of philosophy at Morehouse College in Atlanta, continued it in part at the Crozer Theological Seminary, and enrolled in a doctoral program at Boston University. For a time, he studied Plato with Raphael Demos of Harvard. His (...) doctoral dissertation was entitled: “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.” In it he provides a defense of personalistic theism which he sees as both a mediating position between the thinkers he evaluates as well as a sounder one. In the first of his seven books, Stride Toward Freedom, he affirms his acceptance of personal idealism in these words. (shrink)

The word ‘existentialism’ has become something of a catchword in religious circles today, and one suspects that it is sometimes a substitute rather than a medium for thought. Most theological teachers must from time to time have received from a pupil an essay in which the words ‘existential’, ‘existentially’ and ‘existentialism’ appear to have been sprinkled from a pepper-pot over an exposition whose meaning would remain unchanged if these words were excised altogether. Nevertheless, usum non tollit abusus, and the following (...) rather unsystematic remarks may perhaps be of some help in elucidating and evaluating a mode of thought and expression which has attracted the interest of some of the more profound, as well as of some of the more superficial, theological and philosophical writers of the present day. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview of the phenomenological approach to delusions, emphasizing what Karl Jaspers called the "true delusions" of schizophrenia. Phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the experience of delusions and the delusional world. Several features of this approach are surveyed, including emphasis on formal qualities of subjective life and questioning of standard assumptions about delusions as erroneous belief. The altered modalities of world-oriented and self-oriented experience that precede and ground delusions in schizophrenia, especially the experiences of revelation that Klaus Conrad (...) termed the outer and inner apophany, are then discussed. The chapter first considers the famous "delusional mood", then the role of ipseity-disturbance. In both cases it is explained how delusions can develop out of these distinctive alterations of perception and feeling. The classic question of the understandability or comprehensibility of schizophrenic delusion, together with the related issues of wish-fulfillment and rationalizing motives are then considered. The chapter addresses the crucial but neglected issue of the felt reality-status of delusions or the delusional world, discussing derealization, "double bookkeeping", and "double exposure". The chapter concludes by discussing delusions typically found in paranoid and affective psychoses, and monothematic delusions found in certain organic conditions. (shrink)