The essays in Object-Oriented Feminism explore OOF: a feminist intervention into recent philosophical discourses--like speculative realism, object-oriented ontology (OOO), and new materialism--that take objects, things, stuff, and matter as primary. Object-oriented feminism approaches all objects from the inside-out position of being an object too, with all of its accompanying political and ethical potentials. This volume places OOF thought in a long history of ongoing feminist work in multiple disciplines. In particular, object-oriented feminism foregrounds three significant aspects of feminist thinking in (...) the philosophy of things: politics, engaging with histories of treating certain humans (women, people of color, and the poor) as objects; erotics, employing humor to foment unseemly entanglements between things; and ethics, refusing to make grand philosophical truth claims, instead staking a modest ethical position that arrives at being "in the right" by being "wrong." Seeking not to define object-oriented feminism but rather to enact it, the volume is interdisciplinary in approach, with contributors from a variety of fields, including sociology, anthropology, English, art, and philosophy. Topics are frequently provocative, engaging a wide range of theorists from Heidegger and Levinas to Irigaray and Haraway, and an intriguing diverse array of objects, including the female body as fetish object in Lolita subculture; birds made queer by endocrine disruptors; and truth claims arising in material relations in indigenous fiction and film. Intentionally, each essay can be seen as an "object" in relation to others in this collection. Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, University of Michigan; Karen Gregory, University of Edinburgh; Marina Gržinic, Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts; Frenchy Lunning, Minneapolis College of Art and Design; Timothy Morton, Rice University; Anne Pollock, Georgia Tech; Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Columbia University; R. Joshua Scannell, CUNY Graduate Center; Adam Zaretsky, VASTAL. (shrink)

On the heels of the advance since the twentieth-century of wholly physicalist accounts of human persons, the influence of materialist ontology is increasingly evident in Christian theologizing. To date, the contemporary literature has tended to focus on anthropological issues (e.g., whether the traditional soul / body distinction is viable), with occasional articles treating physicalist accounts of such doctrines as the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus cropping up, as well. Interestingly, the literature to date, both for and against this influence, is (...) dominated by philosophers. The present volume is a collection of philosophers and theologians who advance several novel criticisms of this growing trend toward physicalism in Christian theology. The present collection definitively shows that Christian physicalism has some significant philosophical and theological problems. No doubt all philosophical anthropologies have their challenges, but the present volume shows that Christian physicalism is most likely not an adequate accounting for essential theological topics within Christian theism. Christians, then, should consider alternative anthropologies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Setting specific, challenging goals motivates employees to exert greater effort in their jobs. However, goal-setting may have unintended consequences of also motivating unethical behavior. The present study explores these consequences in the context of other features of goal-setting in organizations, how goals are framed and rewarded, to determine the tradeoff between performance and ethical behavior. Undergraduate students were incentivized to complete math problems using different outcome frames and incentive structures and were also provided an opportunity to cheat. Findings demonstrate (...) that when goals rewarded with piece-rate incentives are framed as a loss, performance increased, though cheating behavior increased as well. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the instantiation of the grounding relation that connects the various entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I seek to utilise the explanatory framework of Richard Swinburne within a specific metaphysical context, a ground-theoretic context, which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of grounding. And thus, given (...) the truth of this type of explanation, we will have a further reason to believe in the existence of God. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the existence of certain entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I assume the cogency of Swinburne’s explanatory framework and seek to resituate it within a new philosophical context-that of the field of contemporary metaphysics-which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of the non-fundamental entities that fill (...) up the various levels of the layered structure of reality. And thus, given the truth of this type of explanation, we will have one more good reason to believe in the existence of God. (shrink)

Previous examinations of the scope of moral concern have focused on aggregate attributions of moral worth. However, because trade‐offs exist in valuing different kinds of entities, tabulating total amounts of moral expansiveness may conceal significant individual differences in the relative proportions of moral valuation ascribed to various entities. We hypothesized that some individuals (“tree‐huggers”) would ascribe greater moral worth to animals and ecosystems than to humans from marginalized or stigmatized groups, while others (“human‐lovers”) would ascribe greater moral worth to outgroup (...) members than to the natural world. Additionally, because moral valuation is often treated as being zero‐sum, we hypothesized that there would be no difference in aggregate levels of moral concern between tree‐huggers and human‐lovers. Finally, because attributions of mental capacities substantially contribute to moral valuation, we predicted that tree‐huggers and human‐lovers would show different patterns of mind attribution for animals versus humans. Three studies (N = 985) yielded evidence in support of our hypotheses. First, over one‐third of participants valued nature over outgroups. Second, extending moral value to animals and nature was not indicative of more expansive moral concern overall; instead, tree‐huggers and human‐lovers were identical in their aggregate ascriptions of moral worth. Third, tree‐huggers had relatively amplified tendencies to attribute mental capacities to animals and relatively reduced tendencies to attribute mental capacities to outgroup members—thus having elevated rates of both anthropomorphism and dehumanization. These findings necessitate a reconceptualization of both the extension of moral worth and the attribution of minds. (shrink)

The selected effects or ‘etiological’ theory of Proper function is a naturalistic and realist account of biological teleology. It is used to analyse normativity in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine and elsewhere. The theory has been developed with a simple and intuitive view of natural selection. Traits are selected because of their positive effects on the fitness of the organisms that have them. These ‘selected effects’ are the Proper functions of the traits. Proponents argue that this (...) analysis of biological teleology has the unique advantage that the selected effect function of a trait is also a causal explanation of the trait: the trait exists because it performs this function. We show, however, that selected effect functions as currently defined explain the existence of traits only under highly restrictive assumptions about evolutionary dynamics. In many common scenarios in which traits evolve by natural selection, selected effect functions do not explain those traits. This is because definitions of selected effect function extract from any evolutionary scenario only the information that would be explanatorily relevant in the simple evolutionary scenario implicit in those definitions. When applied to more complex scenarios selected effect functions omit the key information that is explanatorily relevant in those scenarios. The assumptions required for selected effect functions to be explanatory are particularly unlikely to hold in the domain that its proponents care most about - the evolution of representation. A more adequate selected effects theory of Proper functions may be possible, but will require much greater attention to the structure of actual evolutionary explanations. (shrink)

Hyperbole is an easily misunderstood and misused trope, and it is largely unexplored in current rhetorical studies. Yet, at moments within thought and discourse, the excessiveness of hyperbole elicits a constructive, transformative ambiguity that can reveal alternative epistemological and ontological insights. Indeed, hyperbole is often the most effective way of trying to express seemingly impossible and inexpressible positions. I argue for the reexploration and critical examination of hyperbole, and I offer a theoretical framework from which to view texts and discourse (...) from a hyperbolic perspective. I identify the metafunction of hyperbole, and I offer two specific functions of hyperbole. Hyperbole is more than simply an obvious and intentional exaggeration and thus can benefit from an exploration that considers it beyond its traditional tropological limits. It can be engaged as a mode of inquiry in order to delve into the complexities and paradoxes of theo-philosophical discourse, and it can also be appropriated as a critical position from which one might, for example, propose interpretations of various textual expressions that differ from their more normative interpretations. (shrink)

Can exposure to media portrayals of human violence impact an individual’s ethical decision making at work? Ethical business failures can result in enormous financial losses to individuals, businesses, and society. We study how exposure to human violence—especially through media—can cause individuals to make less ethical decisions. We present three experiments, each showing a causal link between exposure to human violence and unethical business behavior, and show this relationship is mediated by an increase in individual hostility levels as a result of (...) exposure to violence. Using observational data, we then provide evidence suggesting that this relationship extends beyond the context of our experiments, showing that companies headquartered in locations marked by greater human violence are more likely to fraudulently misstate their financial statements and exhibit more aggressive financial reporting. Combined, our results suggest that exposure to human violence has significant and real effects on an individual’s ethical decision making. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a defense of the coherence of the doctrine of middle knowledge against the Grounding Objection. A solution to the Grounding Objection is provided by utilising the metaphysical thesis of Modal Realism proposed by David K. Lewis (as further developed by Kris McDaniel and Philip Bricker). Utilising this metaphysical thesis will enable the Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom, that are part of God’s middle knowledge, to have pre-volitional truthmakers, and thus, ultimately, we will have a means to (...) finally deal with this problematic issue that has often been raised against this doctrine. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which a ‘trope-theoretic’ version of Theism is a better theory than that of a theory of Atheism, as posited by Graham Oppy. This end will be achieved by utilising the systemisation of the theoretical virtues proposed by Michael Keas (as further modified by an application of the work of Jonathan Schaffer), the notion of a trope, introduced by D.C. Williams, and an aspect, proposed by Donald L.M. Baxter, which will establish (...) the basis of the trope-theoretic account of Theism that will be at the centre of our analysis. This assessment will ultimately show that Theism, rather than that of Atheism (Naturalism), can successfully achieve the trade-off between minimising theoretical commitments and maximising explanatory power. And thus, given this, the best theory of Theism—namely, that of ‘trope-theoretic Theism’—is to be privileged over that of the best theory of Atheism—namely, that of ‘Oppyian Naturalism’—and is able to provide grounds for a decisive reassessment of the cogency of Agnosticism. (shrink)

Currently, there remains an aversion for substance dualism in both philosophical and theological literature. However, there has been a renewed interest in substance dualism within philosophical literature. In the present article, I advance substance dualism as a viable position that persuasively accounts for the Scriptural and theological data within Christian thought. I make a specific argument in favor of a metaphysically simple substance. Along the way, I note the overlap between the philosophical and theological literature and suggest that a simple (...) soul as substance is a metaphysical presupposition grounding the data. (shrink)

The present study investigates the importance of emotional disclosure and vulnerability in the production of hegemonic masculinities. Of particular interest is the role that silence and invisibility play in how men talk about recent stressful life events. One-on-one interviews with men who experienced a stressful life event in the past year illustrate how men often talk about these events in simultaneously visible and invisible ways. We use the term “cloudy visibility” to describe this engagement, identified both in terms of what (...) men articulate in relation to their past stressful experiences and how they articulate these experiences within the present moment of the interview. The conversational consequences of these linguistic devices are analyzed to illustrate how men obscure their inner emotional lives, thus reproducing hegemonic masculine ideals of staying strong and stoic in the face of adversity, while they also seek to make aspects of their inner lives seen and heard to an interviewer. (shrink)

Since its publication, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory and its revision (Lilien- feld & Andrews, 1996; Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005) have become increasingly popular such that it is now among the most frequently used self-report inventories for the assessment of psychopathy. The current meta-analysis examined the relations between the two PPI factors (factor 1: Fearless Dominance; factor 2: Self-Centered Impulsivity), as well as their relations with other validated measures of psychopathy, internalizing and externalizing forms of psychopathology, general personality traits, and antisocial (...) personality disorder symptoms. Across 61 samples reported in 49 publications, we found support for the convergent and criterion validity of both PPI factor 2 and the PPI total score. Much weaker validation was found for PPI factor 1, which manifested limited convergent validity and a pattern of correlations with central criterion variables that was inconsistent with many conceptualizations of psychopathy. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a new philosophical explication of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A compositional model of the doctrine is formulated within the Dispositional Personhood account of Lynne Rudder Baker and the Composition as Identity framework of Donald L.M. Baxter. Formulating the doctrine of the Incarnation within this account and framework will enable it to be explicated in a clear and consistent manner, and the oft‐raised objections against this type of model can be answered.

The doctrine of the atonement is a subject of perpetual curiosity for a number of contemporary theologians. The penal substitution theory of atonement in particular has precipitated a great deal of recent interest, being held up by many Protestants as ‘the’ doctrine of atonement. In this essay, we make a defense against the objection to the Anselmian theory of atonement that is often leveled against it by exponents of the Penal Substitution theory, namely, that Christ’s work does not accomplish anything (...) for those whom it appears he undertakes his atoning work, but merely makes provision for salvation. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus and its disease, COVID-19, have revealed how many health systems are ill equipped to respond to a population’s health needs. While the Catholic Church has nearly two thousand years of robust engagement in health care, it has been lacking in the realm of global public health. The Catholic Church’s health care ministries have been preoccupied with responding to illness by offering immediate relief to medical suffering. It is necessary to complement the focus on interpersonal healing by transforming (...) the social structures that perpetuate patterns of illness. By drawing on their social teachings, Catholic health care ministries offer a unique contribution to global public health. This paper will develop four contributions for global public health and analyze them in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

“De-Conditioning and Images of the Mind” explores the categories of Stephen Priest as developed in his article, “The Unconditioned Soul.” Through an analysis of historical and contemporary examples of the “conditioned” mode in recent philosophical and scientific discussions of the mind, the article articulates limitations of the proposed methods and advances examples of “de-conditioning” the mind that point in the direction of what Priest calls the “unconditioned.”.

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 57 Heft: 3 Seiten: 368-397.

Medical missions to provide cardiac surgical procedures in developing and technologically less advanced countries is a great challenge. It is also immensely gratifying, personally and professionally. Such missions typically present significant ethical dilemmas, especially making difficult choices, given limited time and resources, and the inability to help all children in need of cardiac surgery. We describe some of these issues from our perspective as visiting cardiologists.

The so-called ontological argument has a complex and controverted history, rising to particular prominence in contemporary analytic philosophy. Against this backdrop I will present a non-analytic interpretation of ontological argumentation for God’s existence by attempting to fuse Anselmian and Gödelian perspectives. I defend ontological argumentation in a number of slightly variant forms as neither a priori nor a posteriori, but ab actu exercito. Kantian and especially Thomistic critiques are confronted in the course of explaining how ontological argumentation may be logically (...) valid without depending on or yielding to subjectivist epistemologies. Hence, post-Gödelian ontological argumentation ought to be acceptable to realists. (shrink)

Business managers regularly employ metaphorical violent rhetoric as a means of motivating their employees to action. While it might be effective to this end, research on violent media suggests that violent rhetoric might have other, less desirable consequences. This study examines how the use of metaphorical violent rhetoric by business managers impacts the ethical decision making of employees. We develop and test a model that explains how the use of violent rhetoric impacts employees’ willingness to break ethical standards, depending on (...) the source of the rhetoric. The results of two experiments suggest that the use of violent rhetoric by a CEO at a competing company increases employees’ willingness to engage in ethical violations while the use of violent rhetoric by employees’ own CEO decreases their willingness to engage in unethical behavior. Furthermore, we find that participants who made less ethical decisions motivated by violent rhetoric used by a competitor’s CEO did not view their decisions as less ethical than the other participants in the experiments. The results of these studies highlight potentially harmful unintended consequences of the use of violent rhetoric, providing knowledge that should be useful to managers and academics who want to increase employee motivation without increasing a willingness to engage in unethical behavior. (shrink)

As a contribution to ramified natural theology, I advance some thoughts in favor of a distinctively Cartesian variation of natural theology that lends itself to the Christian understanding of God as a mind and as personal. I propose that defenders of Cartesian natural theology, as commonly construed in much of the contemporary substance dualist literature, construe the soul as a “sign” or “pointer” to God such that we, as human persons, seem to have access to God’s nature and existence via (...) the soul as a rationale for the world and for persons. On this basis, I respond to a common anti-Cartesian charge from subjectivism. Finally, I suggest that this approach deserves further consideration concerning theological prolegomena. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 1, Page 5-18, January 2022.

With the challenges from science, there has been a shift away from traditional or classical versions of substance dualism toward emergentist accounts of the mind. Of particular importance for those still inclined to make some distinction between the mind and brain, emergent substance dualism provides an attractive option. However, it promises more than it can deliver. In the present article, I show that a version of emergent substance dualism, where the brain produces a soul, lacks the resources to account for (...) the particularity of the soul. I show that, if, in fact, souls have primitive thisness, then physical laws could not produce these souls. That being the case, I show how creationism and emergent substance dualism, rather than being disjunctive options, are compatible. In the end, what I call emergent-creationism or creationist-emergentism provides an attractive theory of the origin of souls. (shrink)

This article seeks to provide a response to the Aloneness Argument Against Classical Theism proposed by Joseph C. Schmid and Ryan T. Mullins. This response focuses on showing the unsoundness of the argument once the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity is reformulated within the essentialist aspectival framework provided by the Aspectival Account. Formulating a response to this argument will thus also serve the further purpose of providing an extension of the Aspectival Account and a needed revision of the Doctrine of Divine (...) Simplicity, which can aid others in their quest to further clarify the nature of this doctrine. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the existence of the infinite plurality of concrete and abstract possible worlds, posited by David K. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga. This assessment will be carried out within the (modified) explanatory framework of Richard Swinburne, which will lead to the conclusion that the existence of God provides a true fundamental explanation for these specific entities. And (...) thus, given the truth of this type of explanation, we have another good abductive argument for God’s existence and grounds for affirming a weaker form of the principle of methodological naturalism in our metaphysical theorising. (shrink)

What may seem astonishing is the near dismissal of the beatific vision doctrine in the last 50+ years of biblical and theological scholarship in contrast to the emphasis given to it throughout church history. The state of theological scholarship is changing. In what follows, we set forth a short survey of a theology of the beatific vision, while also introducing the rest of the volume on the beatific vision and theosis, of which we take to have an intimate and overlapping (...) relationship. The editorial article has four parts: it begins by (1) introducing some of the relevant biblical material on the vision, proceeding to (2) develop a theological interpretation of those passages, and then (3) offer a short historical survey of the doctrine, focusing on the relevant medieval and Reformed developments. It finally (4) introduces the articles of the issue. (shrink)

SummaryThe recent atonement literature reveals a growing trend accepting the thesis that the Reformer’s doctrine just is the biblical doctrine of penal substitution. This is the claim of William Lane Craig in his recent works on the atonement. In the present article, we challenge these set of claims in Craig’s recent works and advance an alternative theory of the atonement that has some significant footing in the Reformed theological tradition, most notably reflected in the theologian, William Ames. Finally, we lay (...) out several reasons why Craig’s doctrine of the atonement fails to capture the biblical data on the atonement and fails to avoid the legal fiction problem parasitic on most, if not all, accounts of penal substitution. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years, transitional justice scholars have grappled with whether, and to what extent, post-conflict societies should foster forgiveness. In response to this question, this article argues that forgiveness is a legitimate goal of transitional justice, but that interpersonal forgiveness cannot be mandated by the government. It will look to the example of Guatemala to demonstrate how the recovery of narrative truth through individual and communal acts of remembrance enabled forgiveness while at the same time affirmed the need (...) for justice. The article proceeds in two parts. First, it explores the praxis of forgiveness and the role of narrative truth and the healing of memory as constitutive elements of forgiveness. Second, it argues that Guatemala’s Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI) is an illustration of this praxis. Finally, this article argues against conceptions of forgiveness that promote forgetting the past and forgoing justice. (shrink)

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Summary Discussions on soul origins are perceived as antiquated at best. However, there is a recent resurgence of interest in the nature and origins of the mind. This is due in part to the recent developments on the nature of “emergent” properties and/or substances in the contemporary literature on the philosophy of mind. As a contribution to this discussion, I examine the two most prominent theories of mental origins and find that each encounter some noteworthy problems. With these in mind, (...) I recommend that some form of Creationism deserves our attention. It provides a solution to the various philosophical and theological concerns associated with the previously mentioned emergence theories of the mind. Finally, I lay out a more satisfying theory of the soul’s creation in a way that accounts for the benefits of emergentism. (shrink)