First Amendment issues have long bedevilled American jurisprudence. There are several areas of Professor Oderberg's fine paper where the witches are bewitching and where I find myself in disagreement with him. I choose to focus on what he calls ‘mere sincerity’. He worries that this sincerity leads to absurdity, but he fails to appreciate why it also protects central moral concerns. The basic issue Oderberg addresses is whether and how the state should avoid forcing people to do what those people (...) think is wrong. On the one hand, the state could say, ‘You will not be required to do “whatever” you personally believe is wrong. Thus, if you sincerely think taxes are wrong, you are not required to pay them.’ On the other hand, the state could say, ‘Whatever you think about the ethics of taxes is irrelevant. Rather, you must pay.’ It is a matter of indifference to the government why one pays taxes, whether sincerely out of a sense of social justice or merely out of fear. But problems arise when people have moral or religious objections for not complying with government mandates. In religious and conscience matters, the gravitational pull of absolutisms tends to rip actions out of government control. As Jesus's disciples protested: …. (shrink)

Catholic natural law has had a long and evolving interest in bioethics. Thomas Aquinas left natural law a legacy of great flexibility in evaluating goods within a whole life. He also bequeathed to the Church the basis for an abolutism on sexual issues. Modern reproductive medicine and a deeper understanding of human freedom have reopened these issues. The Vatican has developed new, holistic arguments to proscribe reproductive interventions, but critics remain unconvinced that marital relationships and goods have been adequately evaluated. (...) The resolution of this debate will require further experience and reflection. Keywords: Thomas Aquinas, freedom, natural law, reproductive ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Love is religious love to the degree that it cooperates with God's love. Interpretations of God's love and what it would mean to participate in God's love rest on deeper and sometimes divergent conceptualizations of God and God's relation to the world. Agape is an essential feature of Christian life, but it does not follow that it is the distinctive form of Christian love. It is not equally privileged in all Christian theological traditions. Within the framework of Roman Catholic theology, (...) a full understanding of God's love requires appeal to all three relationships that we know under the names of philia, agape, and eros. The most inclusive of these is not agape but philia. (shrink)

AS BABY BOOMERS BEGIN TO REACH RETIREMENT AGE IN 2010, THEY ARE faced with the prospect of twenty to thirty postwork years. Should this period have any goals or purpose other than be a very long vacation? Four gerontological theories propose alternative priorities for this time: continuity, new start, disengagement, and completion. Each has a place within a full life. Careful consideration of each theory exposes how certain vices and virtues mutate during this "third age" of life: integrity and dissipation; (...) self-gratification and generosity; repentance, humility, and denial; and trust and detachment. (shrink)

Recent work on the ethics of love may be divided into norm-centered and affective-centered approaches. Norm-centered approaches, exemplified by Hallett and Outka, argue for either moral parity between self and other or for self-subordination; they regard self-love as legitimate within strict boundaries; and they sharply distinguish agape from other forms of love. Affective-centered approaches, exemplified by Vacek and Post, con- centrate on love for God as the central context for neighbor-love; they ac- cord a high status to friendship, marriage, (...) and other primary relationships; and they regard all forms of love as Christian in that they are transformed by grace and constitute cooperation with God. The re- maining agenda for both approaches is primarily theological, including especially the need to develop an extended application of the doctrines of creation and grace for the status of "special relations" in the ethics of love. (shrink)

In this paper the authors argue that research ethics committees should not be paternalistic by rejecting research that poses risk to people competent to decide for themselves. However it is important they help to ensure valid consent is sought from potential recruits and protect vulnerable people who cannot look after their own best interests. The authors first describe the tragic deaths of Jesse Gelsinger and Ellen Roche. They then discuss the following claims to support their case: competent individuals are epistemologically (...) and ethically in the best position to say which risks are reasonable for them, so RECs should be no more restrictive than the “normal” constraints on people taking risks with themselves; RECs do not judge individual competence ; individual liberty is mostly limited by what serves the public interest, and RECs do not determine public interest; RECs may have a paternalistic role in preventing exploitation of competent people vulnerable to the use of incentives, and in protecting the interests of incompetent people; however, the moral and political authority of RECs has not been established in this respect. (shrink)

Background Empirical studies of surrogate decision-making tend to assume that surrogates should make only a 'substituted judgement'—that is, judge what the patient would want if they were mentally competent. Objectives To explore what people want in a surrogate decision-maker whom they themselves select and to test the assumption that people want their chosen surrogate to make only a substituted judgement. Methods 30 undergraduate students were recruited. They were presented with a hypothetical scenario about their expected loss of mental capacity in (...) the future and asked to answer some questions about their choice of surrogate. These data were analysed qualitatively using thematic content analysis. Results Most respondents talked about choosing someone who was caring and competent in certain ways, giving interesting evidence for their judgements. Surprisingly few highlighted how well they thought their chosen surrogate knew their preferences and would be able to make a substituted judgement. Moreover, few specified that their chosen surrogate had similar attitudes and values to their own and so would make a similar decision to theirs in the circumstances presented. Some respondents also referred to the social role of their chosen surrogate or the social dynamics of their situation which influenced their choices, as well as to ideas of reciprocity and characteristics of honesty and loyalty. Conclusion In the event that they lose mental capacity, many people will not select a surrogate to decide about medical treatments on their behalf solely on the basis that they expect their surrogate to make a substituted judgement. (shrink)

The ethics review system of research is now well-established, at least in the developed world, although there are many differences in how countries view it and go about managing it. The UK specifically is now seeking to revise its system by speeding up the process of ethics approval but only for some studies. It is proposed that only those studies which pose “no material ethical issues” should be “fast-tracked”. However, it is unclear what this means, who should decide and what (...) should be included in this category. In this paper, we go some way towards answering these questions. While we are certain that the debate is only just beginning, we are equally certain that it will continue to run long after the system has been reformed. To stimulate this conversation and to inform a pilot project of the new system directly, we review two candidates to help give some substance to the notion of “material” ethical issues. Firstly, material could mean a certain type or degree of risk. Second, material could mean how physically invasive the research is. We conclude that there is still much work to be done on making the system of governing health and social care consistent and practicable. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 103, Issue 1105, Page 322-325, May 2022.

In this paper, we respond to Andrew Avins's recent review of methods whose use he advocates in clinical trials, to make them more ethical. He recommends in particular, “unbalanced randomisation”. However, we argue that, before such a recommendation can be made, it is important to establish why unequal randomisation might offer ethical advantages over equal randomisation, other things being equal. It is important to make a pragmatic distinction between trials of treatments that are already routinely available and trials of restricted (...) treatments. We conclude that unequal randomisation could, indeed, be an ethical compromise between protecting the interests of participants and those of society. (shrink)

In this paper the need for valid evidence of the cost-effectiveness of treatments that have not been properly evaluated, yet are already available, albeit in short supply, are examined. Such treatments cannot be withdrawn, pending proper evaluation, nor can they be made more widely available until they have been shown to be cost-effective. As a solution to this impasse the argument put forward recently by Toroyan et al is discussed. They say that randomised controlled trials of such resources could be (...) done but only if resources are randomly allocated independently of a research context. Relevant outcome data could then be collected for research, given this opportunity. We agree. We disagree with Toroyan et al on a number of points. First, they claim that no ethical issue relating to equipoise arises. We disagree and this disagreement depends on our showing that equipoise should be maintained in a relationship that they do not consider. Secondly, they say that consent to data collection is always needed. Again we disagree. Thirdly, they claim that the previous two issues are the only possible ethical issues that could arise. We argue, instead, that there is a further conflict of interests that has ethical import. (shrink)

Despite an enormous amount of literature on St Augustine of Hippo, this work provides the first examination of what he taught about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Augustine expounded Christ's resurrection in his sermons, letters, Answer to Faustus the Manichean, the City of God, Expositions of the Psalms, and the Trinity. Saint Augustine on the Resurrection of Christ: Teaching, Rhetoric, and Reception explores what Augustine held about the centrality of Christ's resurrection from the dead, the agency of Christ's resurrection, and (...) the nature of his risen existence. Leading scholar, Gerald O'Collins, investigates the impact of his resurrection on others and his mediatory role as the risen High Priest. O'Collins then unpicks Augustine's rhetorical justification for the resurrection of Christ: evidence from creation, human history, and the desires of all human beings. This groundbreaking study illustrates the enduring significance of Augustine's teaching on and apologetic for the resurrection, and updates, augments, and corrects what Augustine held. (shrink)

Within contemporary philosophy of mind, it is taken for granted that externalist accounts of meaning and mental content are, in principle, orthogonal to the matter of whether cognition itself is bound within the biological brain or whether it can constitutively include parts of the world. Accordingly, Clark and Chalmers (1998) distinguish these varieties of externalism as ‘passive’ and ‘active’ respectively. The aim here is to suggest that we should resist the received way of thinking about these dividing lines. With reference (...) to Brandom’s (1994; 2000; 2008) broad semantic inferentialism, we show that a theory of meaning can be at the same time a variety of active externalism. While we grant that supporters of other varieties of content externalism (e.g., Putnam 1975 and Burge 1986) can deny active externalism, this is not an option for semantic inferentialists: On this latter view, the role of the environment (both in its social and natural form) is not ‘passive’ in the sense assumed by the alternative approaches to content externalism. (shrink)

Did the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. cause the values of teenagers in the U.S. to change? Did their previously important self-esteem and self-actualization values become less important and their survival and safety values become more important? Changes in the values of teenagers are important for practitioners, managers, marketers, and researchers to understand because high school students are our current and future employees, managers, and customers, and research has shown that values impact work and consumer-related attitudes and (...) behaviors. Further, studies that compared higher to lower performing for-profit and not-for-profit companies have found that higher performing organizations had strong values that permeated their organizations [Collins J. C., and J. I. Porras: 1994, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York, Harper Business); O’Reilly, C. A. and J. A. Chatman: 1996, in B. M. Staw and L. L. Cummings (eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, vol. 18 (JAI Press, Greenwhich, CT), pp. 157–200; O’Reilly, C. A.: 1989, California Management Review 31(4), 9–25; Posner, B. Z., and W. H. Schmidt: 1996, Public Personnel Management, 25(3), 277–298; Rousseau, D.: 1990, Group and Organization Studies 15(4), 448–460; Schein, E. H.: 2004, Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco, Jossey Bass)]. While one study of adults found value changes, no known studies have explored if the values of teenagers also changed post-9/11. This study filled that research gap by exploring the values of a random sample of 1000 U.S. teenagers in grades 9 to 12 pre- and post-9/11, using a demographic questionnaire and the Rokeach Value Survey. The research results indicated that teenage survival, safety, and security values (a world at peace, freedom, national security, and salvation) increased in importance while their self-esteem and self-actualization values (a sense of accomplishment, inner harmony, pleasure, self-respect, and wisdom) decreased in importance, mirroring the changes for adults. The meaning of these findings for practitioners, managers, marketers and researchers was discussed. (shrink)

In “Moral Perfectionism,” an essay in To Shape a New World, Paul C. Taylor explicitly mentions and openly avoids King’s personalism while advancing a type of Emersonian moral perfectionism motivated by a less than adequate reconstruction of King’s project. In this essay, I argue this is a mistake on two fronts. First, Taylor’s moral perfectionism gives pride of place to shame and self-loathing where the work of King makes central use of love. Second, by evading the personalist King, Taylor misses (...) the importance of love as foundational to King’s theory of community, the Beloved Community. In effect, Taylor engages in hermeneutic violence regarding King’s work and self-description as a personalist. I offer an account of King’s love informed by personalism that better situates love and shows why it is central to King’s philosophy. In conclusion I argue the following: Love is a type of orientation, attitude, and standpoint one can take in relation to another person. Philia and eros forms of love are contingent and conditional. Agapic love opens up persons to see the eternal dignity we all possess and is restorative and generative of community. The Holy Spirit that animates King’s conception of history is made manifest or hindered by the choice to act on the agapic principle of love that animates the cosmos. In the end, I suggest that Taylor’s perfectionist insights might be applied to a supplemental development of Kingian moral philosophy in the direction of a fuller virtue ethics. (shrink)

In this article, I examine how gay Christian men constructed compensatory manhood acts. Based on more than 450 hours of fieldwork in a southeastern LGBT Christian organization, I analyze how a group of gay men, responding to sexist, heterosexist, and religious stigma, as well as the acquisition of a new pastor, constructed identities as gay Christian men by emphasizing paternal stewardship, stressing emotional control and inherent rationality, and defining intimate relationships in a Christian manner. These subordinated men, regardless of their (...) intentions, collaboratively drew on and reproduced cultural notions that facilitate and justify the subordination of women and sexual minorities. Specifically, their compensatory manhood acts symbolically positioned them as superior to supposedly promiscuous, self-centered, and effeminate others. In conclusion, I draw out implications for understanding how groups of gay Christian men engage in compensatory manhood acts, and the consequences these actions have for the reproduction of inequality. (shrink)

In “Moral Perfectionism,” an essay in To Shape a New World, Paul C. Taylor explicitly mentions and openly avoids King’s personalism while advancing a type of Emersonian moral perfectionism motivated by a less than adequate reconstruction of King’s project. In this essay, I argue this is a mistake on two fronts. First, Taylor’s moral perfectionism gives pride of place to shame and self-loathing where the work of King makes central use of love. Second, by evading the personalist King, Taylor misses (...) the importance of love as foundational to King’s theory of community, the Beloved Community. In effect, Taylor engages in hermeneutic violence regarding King’s work and self-description as a personalist. I offer an account of King’s love informed by personalism that better situates love and shows why it is central to King’s philosophy. In conclusion I argue the following: Love is a type of orientation, attitude, and standpoint one can take in relation to another person. Philia and eros forms of love are contingent and conditional. Agapic love opens up persons to see the eternal dignity we all possess and is restorative and generative of community. The Holy Spirit that animates King’s conception of history is made manifest or hindered by the choice to act on the agapic principle of love that animates the cosmos. In the end, I suggest that Taylor’s perfectionist insights might be applied to a supplemental development of Kingian moral philosophy in the direction of a fuller virtue ethics. (shrink)

The rational status of the Bayesian calculus for revising likelihoods is compromised by the common but still unfamiliar phenomenon of information distortion. This bias is the distortion in the evaluation of a new datum toward favoring the currently preferred option in a decision or judgment. While the Bayesian calculus requires the independent combination of the prior probability and a new datum, information distortion invalidates such independence (because the prior influences the datum). Although widespread, information distortion has not generally been recognized. (...) First, individuals are not aware when they themselves commit this bias. In addition, it is often hidden in more obvious suboptimal phenomena. Finally, the Bayesian calculus is usually explained only with undistortable data like colored balls drawn randomly. Partly because information distortion is unrecognized by the individuals exhibiting it, no way has been devised for eliminating it. Partial reduction is possible in some situation such as presenting all data simultaneously rather than sequentially with revision after each datum. The potential dangers of information distortion are illustrated for three professional revision tasks: forecasting, predicting consumer choices from internet data, and statistical inference from experimental results. The optimality of the Bayesian calculus competes with people’s natural desire that their belief systems remain coherent in the face of new data. Information distortion provides this coherence by biasing those data toward greater agreement with the currently preferred position – but at the cost of Bayesian optimality. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that William Jamess concept of truth can be interpreted accurately if we pay attention to the radical empiricism that underlines the notion in all of James's later writings and if we also see radical empiricism as a type of process thought. When we acknowledge these two conditions, we can see how Cheryl Misak is mistaken in reinscribing subjectivism back into Jamess radical empiricism, which attempted to overcome the subject-object distinction in the first place. In reading (...) James through radical empiricism qua process philosophy, then, the background assumptions of James are set into relief yielding a deeper and richer conception of truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston PersonalismJ. Edward Hackett1. IntroductionWhen the question of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophical legacy arises in the academy, so far, the question remains open-ended (though, as I will shortly argue, the question has already been answered by King himself). Beyond his presence in public American consciousness, King left behind speeches, sermons, correspondence, and writings that inspire both (...) philosophical and theological reflection. However, King is also interpreted on the merits of the biases and philosophical traditions that we scholars navigate. Such biases and philosophical traditions mediate our experience of encountering King, and this mediation can impact our understanding of what exactly King’s philosophical legacy is.1Accordingly, we should seek to reconstruct King’s thoughts in the philosophical vocabulary King employed rather than displacing King from his own agency and the contexts that shaped him.2 In doing so, we prevent mistakes and misunderstandings that plague the public knowledge of King’s legacy. And yet, serious misunderstanding occurs every January with light fluff pieces in major newspapers and websites from authors who do not read King’s corpus. What’s more, some scholars are guilty of this lack of reading King widely. Consider Martha Nussbaum and her glaring error and omission in her recent contribution to a recent book that purports to look at King as a philosopher: “Although a religious man, [King] did not advance in his political writings a comprehensive and religious doctrine, as Gandhi did” (Nussbaum 123). In an otherwise interesting article about political emotions, Nussbaum completely neglects any historical consideration or development where King describes himself as a personalist.3 Like others, Nussbaum disregards King’s own self-description. This disregard is tantamount to a silent [End Page 45] and implicit racism that results in scholarly efforts that deprive King of his own intellectual agency when interpreting his work. This tendency prevails in both philosophy and theology departments, and this neglect has also been the larger challenge of African American philosophy gaining more acceptance as a field of philosophical inquiry (McClendon and Ferguson 38). My efforts in this article are to put an end to continual misreadings of King. First and foremost, King is a personalist.While this essay defends the personalist interpretation of King, let me lay out briefly those pieces of evidence. The interpretation of King as a personalist rests on four evidential sources: (1) King’s own words, (2) family background, (3) influence of personalist ideas on his writings, and (4) the tradition of King’s reception by other Boston personalists. First, King describes himself in his own words as a personalist. This is perhaps the biggest piece of evidence for why we should read King as a personalist. Second, King was influenced by personalism before studying Brightman’s philosophy with Gregory Davis at Crozers Theological Seminary.4 Before Morehouse College and Crozers Theological Seminary, according to Rufus Burrow, homespun personalism emerges out of King’s upbringing within the Black Church. For this reason, scholars should not doubt that King synthesizes personalist influences with how he was raised (Burrow, God and Human Dignity 17–31). Moreover, given that King chose to go to Boston University to study with Brightman and to be where Boston personalism was known to be strong, all of these facts indicate that King was a personalist (Burrow, God and Human Dignity 24).Homespun personalism gave King a vocabulary to bring together and synthesize many intellectual forces in his life, and this synthesis is recognized by other personalists. Walter Muelder is one such personalist. Muelder was Dean of Boston University’s School of Theology from 1945–1972 when King attended. Muelder and King exchanged correspondence, and Muelder delivered many lectures, some published and others unpublished, on the personalism of King. The most famous of these lectures is one Muelder gave to Morehouse College in 1983, in which Brightman’s moral law system is read into King’s own words. Taking this historical background and also that, to this day, some teachers at Morehouse College, like Lawrence Carter, make their students learn the personalist moral law system from Muelder and Bright-man, the personalist interpretation... (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, the author wishes to defend a naturalistic version of phenomenology rooted in and expropriated from William James’s radical empiricism against Max Scheler’s non-naturalistic phenomenology. By drawing from Jack Reynolds’s arguments for a minimal phenomenology, the author posits that radical empiricism is a middle way between the misguided self-sufficiency of transcendental phenomenology and the misguided self-sufficiency of ontological naturalism. The orthodox reading of Scheler as a dualist is found problematic, and in outlining four propositions characteristic of Scheler’s (...) positions, the author motivates resources from Jamesian thought to argue for the superiority of a naturalistic phenomenology. (shrink)

Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease is a fatal, transmissible, neurodegenerative disorder for which there is currently no effective treatment. vCJD arose from the zoonotic spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. There is now compelling evidence for human to human transmission through blood transfusions from presymptomatic carriers and experts are warning that the real epidemic may be yet to come. Imperatives exist for the development of reliable, non-invasive presymptomatic diagnostic tests. Research into such tests is well advanced. In this article the ethical implications of (...) the availability of these tests are elaborated and comparisons drawn with predictive genetic testing for Huntington’s disease and screening for HIV. Paramount to considerations is the issue of whom to test, weighing up respect for personal autonomy against obligations to benefit and protect society. A paradigm is proposed similar to that used for HIV screening but with unique features: compulsory testing of all blood/organ donors and individuals undergoing surgery or invasive procedures who have a significant risk of disease transmission. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William James, Radical Empiricism, and the Affective Ground of Religious LifeJ. Edward Hackett (bio)In the following article, I aim to discuss three separate linkages in William James’s overall philosophy of religion. James’s philosophy of religion is based thoroughly on his radical empiricism, and this is the uniting thread often missed in contemporary scholarship. Radical empiricism makes it possible to link 1) his criticism of both representational metaphysics and (...) theology and that philosophy through James must take to heart the lack of access both representative metaphysics and theology conventionally claimed, and 2) the affective ground on which both philosophy and religion have operated for James, especially in his “Will to Believe” argument, and 3) how understanding the affective ground informs a thoroughly empiricist philosophy of religion that moves through his treatment of religious themes (e.g. his mysticism in The Varieties of Religious Experience) and how this affective ground emerges in the body and action.In showing the accuracy of James’s affective grounds of religion, many reading this essay will note that I am not directing my comments in any particular spiritual path. Instead, my Jamesian commitments are about the individual experience of religion, and for James, he affirmed the widest possible conception of religion to remain neutral to the power such traditions have. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, he writes, “Religion, whatever it is, is man’s total reaction upon life.” To get at and underneath these total reactions is not to regard these reactions as causal. Instead, to discover them, James writes, “you must go behind the foreground of existence and reach down to that curious sense of the whole residual cosmos.”1 This residualness is the affective dimension of experience and its unfolding relations that do not regularly become thematized in philosophy of religion. By contrast, many versions of philosophy of religion attempt to justify the epistemic beliefs about religion through theoretical reason. By contrast, our total reactions make us feel the marrow of our existence because the sense of the world’s presence causes us to feel existence. These religious feeling acts come to form our most completest [End Page 67] answer to the question: “What is the character of the universe in which we dwell?”2 In feeling existence, we experience an ongoing relation with particulars in the world. These feeling acts consist in a whole range of possible religious experiences. By looking at the character of the universe in which we dwell, James is asking: What is the place of feeling that comes to characterize the shared character of the universe in which we all dwell? Reason always comes last. Feeling is always constitutive of all later and built-up cognition.My essay is about the Jamesian-experiential-scaffolding surrounding the religious traditions as ways to encounter the meaning of suffering and uncertainty in these ongoing felt relations. Following the example of James Campbell, I am not committed to drawing a distinction between psychological and metaphysical interpretations of affectivity. Suffering and uncertainty are ways we encounter the feeling of existence. Feeling of existence is, then, akin to a nearly phenomenological-like ontology in which the psychological that inspired the metaphysical are not entirely separate.3 The experiential-scaffolding is regarded as the very same starting place for every single religious person. In this essay and what I hope to make clear in James is that philosophy starts in the affective ground where existence is felt and philosophized about rather than assuming the whole of reality is complete, determined, and somehow reflected in our contemplation of it.4 In essence, the lack of access to reality in-itself means that our beliefs are risky and must start in the marrow where existence is felt. [End Page 68] We risk everything in our spiritual practices. As James reminds, “On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any [religious] hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it.”5 That is what makes them so necessary on an existential and practical level. Our passional nature (what James calls the feeling sense of religious feeling in The Varieties of Religious Experience), thus, fuels what we need, and philosophical reflection turns into proposing concepts and beliefs... (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that the experiential-based approaches of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and William James’s radical empiricism can help inform an account of humanism more rooted in concrete experience. Specifically, I will outline a form of humanism closely connected to the conceptual similarities between James’s radical empiricism and the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology of experience. Whereas many forms of humanism are underscored by an eliminativist impulse, I sketch a humanism of lived-experience more motivated by the restrictive and (...) experiential impetus closer to pragmatism and phenomenology than humanism defended on metaphysically eliminativist grounds.This paper is organized in the following way. In the first section, I explain the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology and explain the methodological commitments that underscore his concept of experience. In the second section, I outline the conceptual similarities between James’s later radical empiricism and Husserl’s thought. Finally, in the third section, James’s critique of metaphysics and his radical empiricism allow for a limited acceptability of religious interests in experience as well as scientific interests. These interests result from how we experience the world and affirm freedom and individuality of every person’s lived-experience. (shrink)

Heidegger's neglect of value : Schelerian prospects -- The lived-experience of humanism in Husserl and James -- Participatory realism in Scheler's ethics -- Interpreting Scheler's Aktsein through Heidegger's Sein-in-der-Welt -- Phenomenological personalism -- Persons realizing values : how participatory realism works -- Embodying values : making values more concrete -- Finding hierarchy and phenomenological realism in James's affective intentionality -- Ethical non-naturalism and Schelerian participatory realism.

“WALL.E” stands for Waste Allocated Load Lifter Earth‐class. The last robot on planet Earth, WALL.E is programmed by the Buy n Large Corporation to clean up the environment. With this depiction of a world in which only a single green plant survives, WALL.E offers a brilliant look at environmental devastation. One way to overcome the tendency to shortchange future generations is to focus on the intrinsic value of nature. In WALL.E, the animators attempt to overcome the defects of one's own (...) self‐interest by illustrating the love and care for the plant. He/she can see this depiction of love of the environment as an effort to prompt him/her to think more about the environment as if nature is a person. The ending of WALL.E is suggestive along the lines of sustainability, but it does not come out and directly advocate for solutions. (shrink)