BackgroundThe role of consent for research use of health information is contentious. Most discussion has focused on when project-specific consent may be waived but, recently, a broader range of consent options has been entertained, including broad opt-in for multiple studies with restrictions and notification with opt-out. We sought to elicit public values in this matter and to work toward an agreement about a common approach to consent for use of personal information for health research through deliberative public dialogues.MethodsWe conducted seven (...) day-long public dialogues, involving 98 participants across Canada. Immediately before and after each dialogue, participants completed a fixed-response questionnaire rating individuals' support for 3 approaches to consent in the abstract and their consent choices for 5 health research scenarios using personal information. They also rated how confident different safeguards made them feel that their information was being used responsibly.ResultsBroad opt-in consent for use of personal information garnered the greatest support in the abstract. When presented with specific research scenarios, no one approach to consent predominated. When profit was introduced into the scenarios, consent choices shifted toward greater control over use. Despite lively and constructive dialogues, and considerable shifting in opinion at the individual level, at the end of the day, there was no substantive aggregate movement in opinion. Personal controls were among the most commonly cited approaches to improving people's confidence in the responsible use of their information for research.ConclusionBecause no one approach to consent satisfied even a simple majority of dialogue participants and the importance placed on personal controls, a mechanism should be developed for documenting consent choice for different types of research, including ways for individuals to check who has accessed their medical record for purposes other than clinical care. This could be done, for example, through a web-based patient portal to their electronic health record. Researchers and policy makers should continue to engage the public to promote greater public understanding of the research process and to look for feasible alternatives to existing approaches to project-specific consent for observational research. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 3, Page 273-297, September 2022.

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 3, Page 273-297, September 2022.

The current study highlights individual differences in the joint articulation strategies used by novices practicing a hip-hop dance movement, the wave. Twelve young adults, all naive regarding hip-hop dance performance, practized the wave in 120 trials separated into four blocks with the order of internal or external attentional focus counterbalanced across subjects. Various kinematic analyses were analyzed to capture performance success while exploiting the observed individual differences in order to establish the reliability of the proposed performance indicators. An external focus (...) of attention marginally facilitated the smooth transfer of a wave motion across neighboring limb segments as characterized by a constant propagation speed combined with large wave amplitudes. Systematic correlations between the success indicators were found, exemplifying the various degrees of joint articulation that novices prove capable of during an initial practicing session to try and perform a novel complex motor task. (shrink)

Since their derivation, human embryonic stem (hES) cells have been used for a variety of applications including developmental biology, pathology, chemical biology, genomics, and proteomics. However, their most important potential application is the generation of cells and tissues, which can be used for cell‐based therapies. One of the main drawbacks of hES cell culture is that they are particularly sensitive to dissociation, which is required for passaging, expansion, cryopreservation, and other applications. Recently, it has been discovered that an inhibitor of (...) Rho kinase (ROCKi; Y‐27632) increases the survival rate of dissociated, single hES cells. This breakthrough has allowed new methods in hES cell culture to be developed, with the promise of increasing hES cell numbers into the realm of clinical relevance. In our studies demonstrating that ROCKi dramatically increases hES cell cryopreservation efficiency, we have observed that ROCKi treatment does not decrease hES cell's susceptibility to apoptosis. Rather, we hypothesize that ROCKi treatment desensitizes single hES cells to their environment reducing the odds that individual cells will undergo anoikis. (shrink)

Rather than advance novel strategies for achieving the objectives of conservation, Sandler suggests that we change the goals of conservation itself, emphasizing ecological processes through...

The recent pop culture iconography of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) label has attracted more devoted (white) fans than a 90s boy band. In philosophy, this trend is evidenced by the growing number of white feminists who extend their work in gender analogically to questions of race and identity. The trend is further evidenced by the unchecked use of the CRT label to describe (1) any work dealing with postcolonial authors like W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon or (2) the (...) role postcolonial themes like power, discourse, and the unconscious play in the social constructionist era. While this misnomer may seem practically insignificant, the artifice formerly known as CRT in philosophy—more adequately labeled “critical theories of race”— has been axiomatically driven by the political ideals of integration and by a revisionist commentary that seeks to expand traditional philosophical ideas, such as reason, history, and humanity, which were previously closed off by racial borders, to people of color. This “revision in the name of inclusion,” however, is not without its consequences. In order to incorporate the experiences of those who suffer under the weight of modernity and are marred by the burdens of racism into the narration of Continental and American philosophy, the theoretical perspectives in Critical Race Theory that deny the legitimacy of philosophy’s diversity agenda must necessarily be excluded.In particular, this recent move to recognize the study of race as a category of philosophical relevance has resulted in the outright denial of the nationalist and revolutionary fervor contained in the intellectual history specific to the Critical Race Theory movement started by the works of Derrick Bell.2 Instead, this new movement favors narratives that inculcate the ideals of a post-racial humanity and racial amelioration between compassionate (Black and white) philosophical thinkers dedicated to solving America’s race problem. (shrink)

Derrick Darby’s Rights, Race, and Recognition and Ronald R. Sundstrom’s The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice are two recent efforts to answer the challenges that race and racism pose to liberal theory. Darby draws upon civil rights and abolitionist discourse to advance an “externalist” account of political rights, while Sundstrom explores the strains placed upon liberalism by recent demographic trends. In this review essay, I provide a brief account of their overall arguments, and offer some (...) further critical considerations. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a psychologically informed critique of and alternative to approaches to teaching issues of race and racial justice that are based on the recognition of white privilege. White privilege pedagogy, I argue, faces serious limitations avoided by a pedagogy grounded in “interest convergence.” Advanced by critical race theorist Derrick Bell, the theory of interest convergence holds that racial progress is most likely when the interests of whites converge with the interests of oppressed racial groups. Applying (...) this insight to pedagogical practice, I argue that it has the potential to overcome white resistance to acknowledging and addressing racial injustice, in the classroom and in the broader public sphere. After making this case in general terms, I illustrate it concretely by describing an interest convergence-based approach to teaching affirmative action. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a psychologically informed critique of and alternative to approaches to teaching issues of race and racial justice that are based on the recognition of white privilege. White privilege pedagogy, I argue, faces serious limitations avoided by a pedagogy grounded in “interest convergence.” Advanced by critical race theorist Derrick Bell, the theory of interest convergence holds that racial progress is most likely when the interests of whites converge with the interests of oppressed racial groups. Applying (...) this insight to pedagogical practice, I argue that it has the potential to overcome white resistance to acknowledging and addressing racial injustice, in the classroom and in the broader public sphere. After making this case in general terms, I illustrate it concretely by describing an interest convergence-based approach to teaching affirmative action. (shrink)

Derrick Darby’s Rights, Race, and Recognition and Ronald R. Sundstrom’s The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice are two recent efforts to answer the challenges that race and racism pose to liberal theory. Darby draws upon civil rights and abolitionist discourse to advance an “externalist” account of political rights, while Sundstrom explores the strains placed upon liberalism by recent demographic trends. In this review essay, I provide a brief account of their overall arguments, and offer some (...) further critical considerations. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will explore how COVID-19 has made us collectively vulnerable to illness and death, although marginalized and minority communities have been particularly hard hit. In stark fashion, the pandemic has shown us that as a discipline, bioethics can no longer engage in business as usual but instead needs to be reimagined. We explore two conceptions that will help explore how this collective vulnerability has occurred with COVID-19, and how the change that occurs often is not sustainable or (...) truly “ethical”. The first is Rawl’s “veil of ignorance” and the second is Derrick Bell’sBell, Derrick “interest convergence” theory, which posits that at some points in a movement, things are only good because the party with power has an agenda that aligns or “converges” with the non-dominant group, but not because there is actual moral agreement. Although these theories are largely descriptive, Heckler and Mackey’s novel theory on interest cognizance suggests that there are normative ways in which a movement becomes sustainable because there is not just superficial “buy-in” but actual moral agreement. From that analysis, we posit a path forward for bioethics that goes beyond traditional principles and incorporates novel considerations such as connectivity. Given global warming and other looming catastrophes, including possible future pandemics, such a reimagining is necessary in order to move forward in the face of extreme global vulnerability. (shrink)

Patient narratives from two investigational deep brain stimulation trials for traumatic brain injury and obsessive‐compulsive disorder reveal that injury and illness rob individuals of personal identity and that neuromodulation can restore it. The early success of these interventions makes a compelling case for continued post‐trial access to these technologies. Given the centrality of personal identity to respect for persons, a failure to provide continued access can be understood to represent a metaphorical identity theft. Such a loss recapitulates the pain of (...) an individual's initial injury or illness and becomes especially tragic because it could be prevented by robust policy. A failure to fulfill this normative obligation constitutes a breach of disability law, which would view post‐trial access as a means to achieve social reintegration through this neurotechnological accommodation. (shrink)

In this paper I critically examine the implications of the uncodifiability thesis for principlism as a pluralistic and non-absolute generalist ethical theory. In this regard, I begin with a brief overview of W.D. Ross’s ethical theory and his focus on general but defeasible prima facie principles before turning to 2) the revival of principlism in contemporary bioethics through the influential work of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress; 3) the widespread adoption of specification as a response to the indeterminacy of abstract (...) general principles and the limitations of balancing and deductive approaches; 4) the challenges raised to fully specified principlism by the uncodifiability thesis and 5) finally offer a defense of the uncodifiability thesis against various critiques that have been raised. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARD A RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY: A REVIEW DISCUSSION [I]t seems to me that Schema 18 [preparatory draft for the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World] needs to rest on a deeper realization of the urgent problems posed by technology.... (The Constitution on Mass Media seems to have been totally innocent of any such awareness.) For one thing, the whole massive complex of technology, which reaches (...) into every aspect of social life today, implies a huge organization of which no one is really in control, and which dictates its own solutions irrespective of human needs or even reason.... I am not of course saying that technology is "bad," and that progress is something to be feared. But I am saying that behind the cloak of specious myths about technology and progress, there seems to be at work a vast uncontrolled power which is leading man where he does not want to go... and in which the Church... ought to be somewhat more aware of the intervention of the "principalities and powers" of which St. Paul speaks. -Thomas Merton, Letter to Bernard Haring (December ~6, 1964) l WHEN A DRAFT of the United States Roman Catholic bishops' proposed pastoral letter on human values was circulated to philos·ophy teachers at Catholic colleges in 1975, one respondent took the occasion to suggest that what was needed was not another geneml restatement of " human values " or a piecemeal analysis of specific issues (unemployment, artificial contraception, abortion, nuclear weapons, etc.) but something intermediate-work toward the development of an ethics of technology.2 Unbeknown i The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, selected and edited by William H. Shannon (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985), pp. 383-384. 2 The pastoral subsequently appeared as To Live in Christ Jesus: A Pastoral Reflection on the Moral Life (Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Conference, November 1976). 146 TOWARD A RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY 147 to himself, he had voiced a concern similar to that expressed by Thomas Merton a decade earlier. With the publication another decade later of Technological Powers and the Person: Nuclear Energy and Reproductive Technology,3 the proceedings of a workshop for Catholic bishops by the Pope John XXIII Medical-Moral Research and Education Center (then in St. Louis, now in Boston) there is evidence that this need is being increasingly recognized. Working from cmss-disciplinary analyses of two commonly un-associaited issues-nuclear energy and reproductive technologies (i.e., the ostensibly positive correlates 0£ nuclear weapons and artificial contraception)-Technological Powers and the Person seeks to formulaite general guidelines for the engagement with modern technology. Two specific technologies are rightly seen as related aspects of a global phenomenon, and philosophical anthropology is properly proposed as the foundation for ethical principles. Although aspects of this assessment may well be criticized, the general approach-a.s well as this particular workshop and the form of its final proceedingsdeserve commendation. 'Vhat follows, then, are some comments on format and substantive content aimed at furthering such a project. 1. The workshop itself (which was held in Dallas, Texas) was opened on the evening of January 31, 1983, with a keynote address by Christopher Derrick, a Catholic layman from England who has written on moral and religious issues of cuLture s Albert S. Moraczewski, O.P., Donald G. McCarthy, Edward J. Bayer, S.T.D., Michael P. McDonough, S.T.D., and Larry D. Lossing, eds., Technological Powers and the Person: Nuclear Energy and Reproductive Technologies (St. Louis, MO: Pope John Center, 1983). Pp. xiii, 500. This is the third in a series. Previous proceedings are New Technologies of Birth and Death (196 pages, from a 1980 workshop) and Human Sexuality and Personhood (254 pages, from a 1981 workshop), both published by the Pope John Center; as the titles and pages alone indicate, neither has the scope of the present volume. 148 CARL MITCHAl\1 and eoology.4 Together with a general overview of the workshop by the senior editor, Derrick's address constitutes part ooo of the proceedings. His fundamental question concerns whether there might not be an "inordinate attachment to temporal good... (shrink)

Some organisations make vaccination a condition of employment. This means prospective employees must demonstrate they have been vaccinated (eg, against measles) to be hired. But it also means organisations must decide whether _existing_ employees should be expected to meet newly introduced vaccination conditions (eg, against COVID-19). Unlike prospective employees who will not be _hired_ if they do not meet vaccination conditions, existing employees who fail to meet new vaccination conditions risk being _fired_. The latter seems worse than the former. Hence, (...) objections to vaccination mandates commonly centre on the harms that will be visited on existing employees who are unwilling to be vaccinated. However, because this objection does not necessarily entail the claim that vaccination is unnecessary for the effective and safe performance of certain jobs, those making this objection should have less of an objection, or no objection at all (at least on these grounds), to introducing vaccination requirements in some cases for _prospective_ employees. Yet, in this paper, I shall argue that if one has reason to believe vaccination requirements can be justified for prospective employees, one should also believe they are justified for existing employees _despite_ any asymmetry in consequences experienced by the two groups. As a consequence, common objections made against vaccination mandates grounded solely in the harms that may be experienced by existing employees who are unwilling to be vaccinated should be considered unpersuasive. (shrink)

Rooted in the field of cathedral studies, this paper draws into dialogue three bodies of knowledge: Edward Bailey’s notion of implicit religion that, among other things, highlights the continuing traction of the Christian tradition and Christian practice within secular societies; David Walker’s notion of the multiple ways through which in secular societies people may relate to the Christian tradition as embodied within the Anglican Church and John Fisher’s notion of spiritual wellbeing as conceptualised in relational terms. Against this conceptual background, (...) this paper draws on data provided by 1234 participants attending one of the Christmas Eve carol services in Liverpool Cathedral to explore the perceived impact of attendance on the spiritual health of people who do not believe in God and yet feel that Liverpool Cathedral is their cathedral, and it is this sense of belonging that brings them back at Christmas time.Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this paper links in an original way three fields of discourse: Edward Bailey’s notion of implicit religion, David Walker’s notion of the four ways of belonging to God facilitated by the Anglican Church and John Fisher’s conceptualisation and operationalisation of the notion of spiritual wellbeing. The hypothesis developed from this original integration of theoretical perspectives is then tested empirically on data provided by 404 participants at carol services who do not believe in God. (shrink)

In this article, the author explains some of the main ideas of his 2020 book on Anselm’s Proslogion and responds to several criticisms raised by Richard Campbell and others in reviews of the book. Finally, the author qualifies his case for the view that “that than which a greater cannot be thought” is Anselm’s single argument by drawing attention to a problematic aspect in a key passage in Anselm’s Responsio.

The imagery we adopt when recalling the personal past may involve different perspectives. In many cases, we remember the past event from our original point of view. In some cases, however, we remember the past event from an external “observer” perspective and view ourselves in the remembered scene. Are such observer perspective images genuine memories? Are they accurate representations of the personal past? This chapter focuses on such observer perspectives in memory, and outlines and examines proposals about the nature of (...) such imagery. (shrink)

With Slowing Metaphor Down: Elaborating Deliberate Metaphor Theory (henceforth SMD), Gerard J. Steen has given us a remarkable book, teeming with insights about metaphor use. The volume provides a...

Hasdai Crescas fue un importante pensador, autor y líder comunitario judío de finales del siglo XIV y principios del XV, cuyas obras son estudiadas con detalle en el mundo académico. No obstante, su impacto sobre la comunidad judía tradicional ha sido casi inexistente. Nunca terminó su obra legal, la que podría haber tenido impacto en los judíos tradicionales. Sus escritos filosóficos conservados son difíciles de seguir; solo sobrevive una de las dos polémicas anticristianas vernáculas, en una traducción/paráfrasis hebrea. Aunque Crescas (...) fue bien recordado en el siglo posterior a su muerte, ya en este período se pueden detectar las razones de su posterior olvido. Un examen de la historia de la recepción de la obra de Crescas en el siglo XV demuestra hasta qué punto sus posiciones polémicas, dogmáticas y filosóficas fueron mayoritariamente rechazadas, más allá de que tuvo partidarios, fundamentalmente entre sus alumnos más cercanos. No es de extrañar, entonces, que en los siglos posteriores, la memoria de Crescas fuera casi borrada de la conciencia comunitaria judía. (shrink)

Ethical youth work is ‘good' youth work but how do youth work practitioners collectively determine what is ‘good'? This article presents findings from four-country surveys of youth workers' attitudes and understandings of what constitutes ‘good', that is to say ‘ethical’ practice. The article presents the principles that youth workers say underpin ethical practice in Australia, Estonia, Iceland, and Ireland. The first three countries have well established Codes of Ethics and/or Practice and Professional Associations, while Ireland does not. A survey of (...) youth work practitioners funded by Erasmus Plus, was conducted across the four countries (n = 405). A comparative analysis of data across countries revealed consensus around key characteristics of youth work practice such as the participation, empowerment, and safety of young people. These core principles form the basis of good and ethical action by practitioners. In countries which have codified these principles, these Codes were reported to be useful tools to support practitioners in their work. The survey further suggests that reflective practice is important in the application of ethical codes to concrete practice situations acting as a form of collective accountability and praxis. To conclude, we consider the implications of these findings for professionalism, and professionalisation in youth work nationally and internationally. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE IN HINDU RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS Francis X. Clooney, SJ. Boston College Outline I.Violence, Sacrifice and Ritual 1. Some basic attitudes toward the killing of animals 2.Resolving the problem of sacrificial violence by internalization 3.Substitutions 4.Renunciation and nonviolence: an elite pathway 5.Violence andnonviolenceinrelation to vegetarianism: Hans Schmidt's theses?. Traditional Hindu Theorizations of Violence in Mimamsa Ritual Theory and Vedanta Theology 1. The ritual analysis (at Mimamsa Sutra 1.1.2) (...) of the Shyena rite which is performed in order to harm enemies 2.The Vedanta analysis (at Uttara Mimamsa Sutra 3.1.25) of ritual violence in relation to the prohibition of violence??. Violence in the Life of the State HOFrancis X. Clooney, S.J. 1. The royal power to punish (danda) 2.The synthesis of the ideals of brahmin and king a..The distribution and management of violence in the Laws ofManu (1st century CE) b. Policy toward warfare in the Arthashastra of Kautilya 3.The collapse of the brahmanical synthesis—and the emergence of a (seemingly) more nonviolent Hinduism 4.A comment on Gandhi (1 869-1948) and the contemporary emergence of post-Gandhian Hindu perspectives IV.Alternate Views from Outside the Sanskritic Tradition 1. Tamil Wisdom on Violence and Nonviolence: a.Tirukkural (c. 2nd century CE) b.Cilappatikaram (5th century CE) 2.Blood and Goddesses 3.From a Village Perspective a. Some Trouble with Cows b.Mahasweta Devi and the Literary Exposure of Violence V.The Question of a Christian Perspective on the Hindu Treatment of Violence and Religion: Are Victims Necessary? Some Presuppositions: • The following reflections, complex as they are, are governed by a reluctance to simplify Hindu teaching. I seek to avoid the view that the Hindu traditions had only one view of violence and nonviolence. • I use the term "Hindu" loosely and as a shorthand, without claiming that there is a single Hindu tradition, or a single creed shared by all Hindus, or a single attitude toward violence. But neither do I claim that there are simply many traditions without any common elements which justify the appellation "Hindu." • I am reluctant to idealize the Hindu traditions as if nonviolence must necessarily be taken as the epitome ofHindu thought. India's traditions are complex, and require complex treatment. • A serious artificiality of this paper is that I treat Hinduism without simultaneously lookinginto Buddhist andJain materials, though both were traditions with important and enduring commitments to nonviolence. Particularly with respect to the renunciant, marginal components of traditions, one ought not to make overly neat or decisive distinctions Violence and Nonviolence in Hindu Religious Traditions 1 1 1 between the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain theories and practices related to violence and nonviolence. • I attempt to give preference to indigenous discussions ofissues related to violence and nonviolence; the context and mode of thinking are important, notjust the conclusions drawn. I therefore avoid simply mining Hindu texts for an answer to a contemporary question, "What is the Hindu attitude toward violence and nonviolence?" • In most ofwhat follows we must distinguish contexts where "violence" indicates "physical action which causes pain to some living being," from contexts where "violence" indicates "an intention, rooted in anger or malice, to hurt someone." I use the word "violence" for both in order to highlight the complex issues of distinction involved. In considering the Sanskrit formulations, one likewise has to distinguish himsa as "causing pain" from himsa as "intending to harm." • It is often difficult to date ancient texts, and even when one narrows down a date—within 200-300 years—its significance still depends on other, often equally broadly stated dates. Nevertheless, I do offer dates throughout, as summarized here: •ancient Vedic sacrificial practices, from before 1200 BCE •Vedic ritual analyses and reformulations of sacrifices as ritualized acts, in the Brahmanas, from after 1000 BCE •the Upanishadic exploration of the deeper meanings of ritual and interiorized alternatives to ritual, from after 900 BCE •the Buddha, c. 500 BCE •key texts in the theorization of royal power, The Laws of Manu (beginning of Common Era) and Arthashastra (c. 150 CE) •the Tamil wisdom text Tirukkural (100 CE) •Goddess texts as evidenced in Sanskrit formulations, from after 500 CE... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Bridge From Analysis to Action:Psychodynamic Analyses of Religion and Michael S. Hogue's American ImmanenceAJ Turner (bio)I. IntroductionThe purpose of this essay is to work constructively with Michael S. Hogue's groundbreaking American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World to demonstrate how psychodynamic analyses of religion are essential theoretical allies in the fight for resilient democracy. The "revolution in mind"1 that psychodynamic approaches contribute, especially in their analyses of religion, (...) both complements and complicates socio-political theory as a whole. In the improvisational spirit of "yes-and," the goal here is not to identify and decry the failures and shortcomings of Hogue's theopolitical vision but rather to inspire the recovery of a sibling discourse—a kind of "rebirth of a forgotten alternative"2—that also draws deeply from the American immanental tradition in order to add psychodynamic depth to Hogue's timely and important analysis. Psychodynamic theories of religion shed light on how symbolic identifications, including and especially ultimate concerns, structure personal and collective experience. By engaging religion and theology sympathetically, constructively, and creatively, theorists such as Rollo May, Gordon Allport, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Ernest Becker departed from the skepticism, reductionism, and dismissal that characterized psychoanalytic analyses of religion in the wake of Freud.3 Each of these figures, and especially Becker whose work will be a focus in this essay, are noteworthy interlocutors for extending Hogue's theopolitical theorizing of resilient democracy, particularly in how they drew unique inspiration from the American immanental tradition [End Page 44] in their social analyses. In this respect, they provide a more robust theorization of the psychosocial conditions of the associational ethos needed to connect Hogue's conception of resilient democracy with forms of agonistic organization and democratic activism. Briefly stated, psychodynamic approaches are a helpful bridge for connecting these proposals to strategies of organization, their impediments, and collective action.In this way, both psychodynamic analyses of religion and Hogue's theopolitical innovation insist that no revolutionary political change is possible, and certainly not of the kind or scale needed to counter our wickedly entangled global crises, without a deep engagement with theological imaginaries. They differ, however, in their theoretical aims. Whereas Hogue compellingly argues for the political upshot of a theology deriving from the American immanental tradition, psychodynamic analysts of religion focus on the function of ultimate concerns in individual and collective life. In other words, American Immanence rests on a methodology of analyzing the philosophical and theological assumptions that have contributed to our climate crises and then presenting clear and compelling articulation of an alternative paradigm meant to open up new ways of being. In contrast psychodynamic analyses leverage conceptual clarity of psychic reality for the fundamentally therapeutic aim of transformation. At their best, both approaches share what could be called an etiological orientation to ontological questions in order to provide liberative alternatives through rational understanding and clarification, but the terrain, and thus the problems they hope to mitigate in their analyses are focused differently. Extending the visual metaphor, they are different lenses highlighting different areas of the same landscape. Furthermore, it must be said that neither are sufficient in themselves, but the psychodynamic theorists of religion to be highlighted in this essay share deeply with Hogue's heading in American Immanence.II. A Problematic AssumptionIn emphasizing and attempting to explain4 the role of non-rational processes in the both individual and social processes of perception and organization of experience, psychodynamic theories confound a widely held and problematic assumption that the triumph of rational analysis is the hallmark for building the society to which we should aspire. Political theory in general, [End Page 45] especially as it has taken its cues from a rationalist legacy about the inherently liberating force of Reason, has been weighted toward an assumption that its task of exposing the mystifications of power would suffice in inspiring more "rational" and therefore necessarily equitable social organization. This speaks to the longstanding socio-political interest in "consciousness raising" tactics, which are often meant to dispel "false consciousness." It even comes across in the emphases of Deweyan pragmatists on education. Psychologists of all stripes point out that this approach... (shrink)

In the article, “Precision Medicine for Whom? Public Health Outputs from “Genomics England” and “All of Us” to Make Up for Upstream and Downstream Exclusion,” Galasso focuses on how marginalized pe...

This article argues that xing 性 in the Zhuangzi 莊子 should not be understood as “human nature” but as “human condition.” It introduces the problem of interpreting xing as “human nature” by surveying relevant English-language literature before detailing the interpretive paradigm of Chinese accounts showing how the latter’s appropriation of the language of substance ontology hinders an accurate portrayal of Daoist xing. It argues that xing should be interpreted in connection to the concept of ming 命understood as contingent, natural, and (...) temporal “external conditions”. It argues that xing are “internal conditions” that function in conjunction with ming as “external conditions” where “habit” (xi 習) mediates their interaction. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the work of W. E. B. Du Bois to expose the disastrous effects of white supremacy in the U.S. and the world. While his early works suggest that white supremacy might be rehabilitated by the careful presentation of contrary evidence, in later works he catalogs the primary features of whiteness, including an infantile comportment, a pathological attachment to innocence, and an epistemic incapacity to absorb evidence of its own error. To capture the scope of the (...) delusion of whiteness on Du Bois’s account, I suggest the term “irrevocable license.” The remainder of the paper uses Du Bois’s account to examine the case of a “Karen”—a white woman who obliviously and inappropriately interferes with the lawful actions of a family of color—and further considers police violence against people of color as an outgrowth of white irrevocable license. (shrink)