Natural forms, often characterized by irregularity and roughness, have a unique complexity that exhibit self-similarity across different spatial scales or levels of magnification. Our visual system is remarkably efficient in the processing of natural scenes and tuned to the multi-scale, fractal-like properties they possess. The fractal-like scaling characteristics are ubiquitous in many physical and biological domains, with recent research also highlighting their importance in aesthetic perception, particularly in the visual and, to some extent, auditory modalities. Given the multitude of fractal-like (...) scaling manifestations, we explore potential commonalities in the way they might affect aesthetic preference within and across different physical and sensory domains. We use a range of visual and tactile stimuli to explore the equivalence of fractal-scaling effects on aesthetic preferences within and across visual and tactile modalities. Our results suggest that, despite some superficial differences, the underlying dimensional structure mediating the preference across the two domains is remarkably similar. The qualitative nature of this dimensional structure as well as suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

In this collection of articles, Isherwood writes about his teachers, his conversion to Vedanta, and various literary concerns.

Addiction is widely taken to involve a profound loss of self-control. Addictive motivation is extremely forceful, and it is remarkably hard to abstain from addictive behaviors. Theories of addiction have sought to explain how self-control is undermined in addiction. However, an important explanatory factor in addictive motivation and behaviors has so far been underexamined: emotion. This paper examines the link between emotion and loss of control in addiction. I use the concept of affective scaffolding to argue that drug use functions (...) as a form of emotion regulation that, especially in certain psycho-socioeconomic conditions, can escalate into what I term addictive affective dependence. Addictive affective dependence is extremely motivating of drug use, and in this way contributes to the agent losing control. An upshot of the paper is that it predicts something that is known to be true about addiction treatment and recovery: strategies that address psycho-socioeconomic conditions are particularly successful in bolstering agency in addiction. Furthermore, my view explains why these strategies work. Thus, the view provides a conceptual framework for existing effective methods of addressing addiction. (shrink)

Research in the philosophy of addiction commonly explores how agency is impacted in addiction by focusing on moments of apparent loss of control over addictive behavior and seeking to explain how such moments result from the effects of psychoactive substance use on cognition and volition. Recently, Glackin et al. (2021) have suggested that agency in addiction can be helpfully analyzed using the concept of affordances. They argue that addicted agents experience addiction-related affordances, such as action possibilities relating to drugs, drug (...) paraphernalia, and drug-related activities, as aberrantly salient motivations for action. Building on this approach, we present a novel two-tiered affordance model of addiction. In doing so, we suggest that what is significant about the addicted person’s world is not simply what affordances are experienced as salient, but also the way in which the addicted person’s world is shaped by a dominant concern. It is not only that addiction-related affordances become more prominent as addiction progresses but that one’s plurality of concerns become monopolized by and funneled through addiction. Our model endorses Glackin et al.’s idea that addiction-related affordances become aberrantly salient, while proposing why they become and remain so. This way of viewing agency in addiction also brings to light important implications for recovery and treatment. For, if an addicted person adopts a new, even “socially approved”, dominant concern, there is a risk that the shape of addiction is preserved, even though the content changes, leaving an individual at the risk of addiction substitution or relapse. (shrink)

If a list were compiled of all substance and process addictions, we would find ourselves with a long catalog, including heroin, methamphetamines, marijuana, fentanyl, exercise, pornography, gambling, cocaine, and video games, just to name a handful. Addiction is diverse. And in severe cases, addiction can have devastating consequences in the lives of addicted individuals. There is currently no widely accepted definition of addiction that crosses social, philosophical, scientific and medical discourse. In fact, there is no uncontested definition within any one (...) of these domains. However, across fields of study, the phenomenon of craving is widely taken to be an important, if not central, feature of addiction. Craving... (shrink)

I would like to thank Owen Flanagan and Douglas Porter for their interesting and insightful commentaries, both of which inspired me to think more deeply about aspects of addictive craving. In this response, I will make some clarifying points, particularly regarding my views on the relationship between neuroscience and phenomenology, and I will expand on my thesis, focusing especially on addiction treatment and the role of testimony.I will start with two central concerns that Flanagan raises, then I will address three (...) of his additional criticisms. First, Flanagan takes issue with my claim that the dominant neurobiological view of craving does not capture the phenomenology of craving. The worry is that I am asking... (shrink)

In “What’s Wrong with the (Female) Nude?” A. W. Eaton argues that the female nude in Western art promotes sexually objectifying, heteronormative erotic taste, and thereby has insidious effects on gender equality. In this response, I reject the claim that sexual objectification is a phenomenon that can be generalized across the experiences of women. In particular, I argue that Eaton’s thesis is based on the experiences of women who are white, and does not pay adequate attention to the lives of (...) racialized women. This act of exclusion undermines the generality of Eaton’s thesis, and exposes a more general bias in discussions of the representation of women in art. Different kinds of gendered bodies have been subjected to different kinds of objectifying construal, and the ethics of nudity in art must be extended to take such variation into account. (shrink)

The aphorisms collected in this book, first published in 1953, were composed by Patanjali, a great Indian sage, over 1,500 years ago, and here translated into clear English prose. The accompanying commentary interprets the sayings for the modern world, and in doing so gives a full picture of what yoga is, what its aims are, and how it can be practised.

Gerald Sykes -- Aldous Huxley -- Gerald Heard -- Christopher Isherwood -- John van Druten -- Marianna Masin -- J. Crawford Lewis -- Dorothy F. Mercer -- Kurt Friedrichs -- Swami Atulananda -- Jane Molard -- The Countess of Sandwich -- John Yale -- Joan Rayne -- Durgacharan -- Pravrajika Saradaprana.

Issues of race, gender, nationality and religion have been the breeding ground of conflict and oppression throughout history. This book provides an engaging assessment of the dangers of defining the self against the other.

My Guru and His Disciple is a sweetly modest and honest portrait of Isherwood's spiritual instructor, Swami Prabhavananda, the Hindu priest who guided Isherwood for some thirty years. It is also a book about the often amusing and sometimes painful counterpoint between worldliness and holiness in Isherwood's own life. Sexual sprees, all-night drinking bouts, a fast car ride with Greta Garbo, scriptwriting conferences at M-G-M, intellectual sparring sessions with Berthold Brecht alternated with nights of fasting at the (...) Vedanta Center, a six-month period of celibacy and sobriety, and the pious drudgery of translating the Bhagavad-Gita. Seldom has a single man been owed with such strong drives toward both sensuality and spirituality, abandon and discipline; out of the passionate dialectic between these drives, My Guru and His Disciple has been written. (shrink)

Vedanta is the philosophy of the Vedas, those Indian scriptures which are the most ancient religious writings now known to the world. ...

This article examines what it is to think through queer eyes, that is what may queer theory offer to the study of theology. It shows what queer is in this context and challenges the reader to think in other ways. The article examines how queer theory helps to illuminate the radical nature of incarnation at the same time as examining some of the concerns expressed by theorists about the nature of the queer theological project.

Lisa Isherwood, one of the founding editors of Feminist Theology journal reflects on the development of Feminist Theology over the past 20 years and looks to its future. Avenues for the future include development of the area of Atonement Theologies and working to get it disseminated to seminaries and various clerical training institutions. Feminism in Europe, particularly Central or Eastern Europe, also has a place in the next 20 years of Feminist Theology and the journal.

Life is a constant search for meaning, and reflective minds need to find deeper and more comprehensive meaning than that normally proffered by the orthodox teaching of any creedal religion. When this book was initially published in 1964, religion had begun to recognize the importance of psychology and psychology had considered a spiritual principle in man. Miss Isherwood’s purpose in writing this book is to relate science and religion more closely. Her theme is that the evolution of consciousness from (...) protozoa provides a link which not only gives grounds for faith in life and an inspiration for carrying development forward, but which reveals that, as we continuously work at deepening our insight into the realms of spirit, the life process appears to us as steadily more meaningful. Her engaging writing style makes this a fascinating glimpse at a philosophy of religion starting to engage with science. (shrink)

Has Christianity, a religion with incarnation at its heart, devalued the flesh through an over-emphasis on the cross? In this article Lisa Isherwood's response is an overwhelming 'yes'. Isherwood argues that the devaluation of the flesh has hindered Christianity's efforts to address the genocidal realities of global capitalism. She suggests that a return to the tree found in Eden and sensuously engaged with by our foremother Eve, will provide a sounder base for the development of a Christo-ethic that (...) can offer alternatives to advanced capitalism. (shrink)

In this exclusive Interview Ada María Isasi-Díaz responds to questions about her work in theology, and the social and political challenges for Mujerista Theology in the first half of the twenty-first century. She discusses some of the biggest shifts in theology since she first engaged with it, and the challenges of growing ‘a Hispanic garden in a foreign land.’ A focus of the interview is Mujerista Theology and how it has developed over the last 20 years and is adapting for (...) the future. (shrink)

This paper asks whether Christianity has always been queer, is the very nature of it beyond what one might expect from reality? Does the core of Christianity destabilise the categories by which subsequent Christian leaders have created doctrine, developed ethics and controlled the faithful? Is this queer core located in the very notion of incarnation itself, an event that truly changes all we thought we knew about the nature of materiality? The paper is not attempting to find a queer past (...) in order to justify a queer present and solidify a queer future but rather to suggest that fluidity, rupture and unexpected outcomes should be at the heart of the Christian enterprise. It also follows that if the categories which have been used to exclude are themselves queered then Christianity becomes a far more inclusive way of living. The paper also asks whether the very notion of monotheism itself is a barrier to what may be understood as the fluid volatile core of incarnational religion. What does the queer theologian do with the ONE? (shrink)

The author argues that Christian theology needs to examine itself in the light of the events surrounding September 11th. Not only has some Christian theology lent itself to the creation of imperialistic mindsets that could be argued to be the root cause of the violence before and after September 11th but it now seems to sit on the fence. The author suggests that this, like so many in Christian theology, is ultimately a christological question and that we need to dislodge (...) the dualistic lens through which we view Jesus if we are to make progress in this bleeding world. Dualism lends itself to hierarchy and hierarchy to division and exploitation against which background even the most horrifying acts can be understood. Christianity can no longer hide its head and claim that exploitative interpretations are misunderstandings—it needs to look again at its central doctrines. (shrink)

This article is a response by a body theologian to Indecent Theology written by Marcella Althaus-Reid. The author takes Eve Ensler as a companion in a journey which attempts to spit out phallocentric meaning and engage with wicked and wordy cunning linguists as they move towards more honest telling-theology from the body. The author examines the divine masquerade, which is encouraged by some Christian theology and calls for a stripping away of such pretence and an acknowledgement of what play we (...) are actually engaged in so that we may come closer to what it is we are attempting to express about the divine. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the levels of domestic abuse in the UK and USA. The author argues that it is a mistake to see this as a purely private and therefore pastoral matter but it is rather a public and systematic problem and such is the stuff of public theological and ethical debate. The article demonstrates some ways in which Christian theology has been used to devalue women and thus create a climate in which abuse and death are both possible and (...) even acceptable. The author considers how theology can be instrumental in the creation of more mutually empowering models of masculinity and femininity. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with the Slim for Him programmes which suggest that Christianity has no place for the fleshy, indeed that the devil lurks in ample bodies. It investigates the way in which women have suffered a reducing rhetoric which has had its genesis in certain kinds of theology but has exacted a great price on the flesh of women. The paper therefore offers a fleshy Christology as a counter rhetoric in the hope that women may once again dance (...) in their skins and offer another set of values on their broad hips. (shrink)

This article considers the question of capitalism and the underlying aspects of Christological construction through comparing the approach of a Radical Orthodoxy theologian and feminist theologians. The author is concerned that feminist scholarship has been hijacked by male theologians who wish to offer a quite conservative agenda while appearing radical. The article shows that we can not change the outcomes if we are not willing to examine and change the underlying theories even if they are matters of doctrine.

This paper examines how a radical incarnational starting point would change the way we view the economic order. It highlights the way in which the current system creates extreme poverty and suffering for the many and asks if this can be tolerated by Christians. It also examines the Christian underpinnings of such a system and suggests that other Christian roots would lead to alternate and more inclusive systems.

Recent social policy discourses in Aotearoa New Zealand focus on vulnerable children’s well-being and the detrimental, long-term and costly impacts of child poverty. The discourse pervading much of the policy labels children and young people as ‘vulnerable’ or ‘at risk’ or ‘in crisis’, a view, which we argue, is both disempowering and marginalising. We propose a shift in focus which views children and young people as agentic, capable and competent. Drawing on several small-scale research projects and reports we demonstrate how, (...) when asked, children and young people can participate effectively in discussions about policy matters that concern them. We have much to learn from the insights children share with us when asked, but very often existing structures, at both government and community level, do not include adequate processes to hear their voices, let alone act on what has been communicated. (shrink)