In 1996, the sociological journal Theory and Society devoted a special issue to “Theory and Theoreticians.”1 My contribution, titled “For Theory,” was intended as an homage to the late Alvin Gouldner, the radical social theorist, self-described “outlaw Marxist,” and founding editor of the journal, among whose many books was one called For Sociology.2 The essay was also dedicated to the memory of Bill Readings, a gifted literary theorist inspired in particular by Jean-François Lyotard, and a participant in the seminar I (...) had led at the School of Criticism and Theory a decade earlier. Best known for his unflinching critique of what he called “the university in ruins,” Bill had lost his life at the age of thirty-four... (shrink)

The ‘critique of intellectuals’ refers to a genre of normative discourse that holds intellectuals accountable for the consequences of their ideas. A curious feature of the contemporary, especially American, variant of this genre is its focus on intellectuals who were aligned with such world-historic losers as Hitler and Stalin. Why are Cold War US intellectuals not held to a similar standard of scrutiny, even though they turn out to have been aligned with the world-historic winners? In addressing this general question, (...) some self-serving tendencies of intellectual history are observed, in particular the asymmetry between the ease with which intellectuals are credited with the good consequences of their ideas and the difficulty with which they are blamed for the bad consequences. This asymmetry is particularly noted in Richard Rorty, whose pragmatism treats past ideas as a legacy intended for the (American) reader’s benefit. As a corrective, I advocate, in Paul Ricoeur’s terms, a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ that treats intellectual life as fraught with danger, as our adoption of ideas always amounts to passing judgement over those who have borne them in the past. (shrink)

Kirkpatrick's contribution is evaluated in the context of historical developments and persistent crisis in the psychology of religion. The field has been characterized by the lack of a unifying theory, as well as by some literature being driven by religious apologetics. Kirkpatrick's approach has been truly theory-driven, always seeking a general psychological framework for analyzing religion and religiosity. His personal odyssey led him to embrace Bowlby's attachment theory, which has had a unique impact of research in academic psychology. But then (...) Kirkpatrick demonstrates his honesty and courage in realizing that the attachment framework was less than adequate for the task of unifying the field. Instead, he invites us to join him in embracing the broader framework of cognitive-evolutionary theory, which should serve as the unifying framework for the field. I concur with his judgment. (shrink)

An experiment is made up of two or more data-collection conditons that are identical in all aspects, but one. It owes its design to an inductive principle and its hypothesis to deductive logic. It is the most suited for corroborating explanatory theries , ascertaining functional relationship, or assessing the substantive effectiveness of a manipulation. Also discussed are (a) the three meanings of 'control,' (b) the issue of ecological validity, (c) the distinction between theory-corroboration and agricultural-model experiments, and (d) the distinction (...) among the hypotheses at four levels of abstraction that are implicit in an experiment. (shrink)

This essay discusses epistemic analysis of the fallacy of begging the question. In the literature, there are two prominent epistemic explanations of the fallacy, the objective and the subjective. The objective account bases the analysis of the fallacy on the epistemic relations of the propositions used in the argument. The subjective account bases the analysis on the way the arguers acquire their beliefs in the propositions used in the argument. Arguments that aim to show that a propositional analysis is not (...) flexible enough for fallacy analysis have been taken to be a decisive argument for the subjective approach. Yet, the propositional sense seems to address a central intuition about this fallacy. In this essay, it is argued that both analyses need to be retained. (shrink)