This is the second of three articles on the relationship between science, religion and professional practice in psychology and psychiatry. The first article pointed out that the weakness of the integration debate consists of lack of awareness of the epistemological distinction between everyday knowledge, professional knowledge, scientific knowledge and philosophical assumptions. This article shows how the integration debate gains new impetus by relating knowledge to practices and by investigating the intrinsic normative nature of professional practices. In the first part of (...) the article I will analyze the structure of professional practices (psychiatry; psychotherapy), in order to gain insight into the role of norms and values in these practices. In the second part I show how the notion of integration can be elaborated upon along the dimensions of structure (levels; functions) and direction (opening-up; disclosure). It appears that the I-self relationship plays a crucial role in the conceptualization of the relation between these two dimensions. (shrink)

This thesis aims at formulating a human rights justification based on the assumption that disbelief in human rights is found in communicative grounds, rather than some sort of unreasonable evil. I first identify what I believe to be a flaw in the communicative strength of existing human rights justifications in explaining why rights should be. I suggest that there is a gap between the justifications of human rights that contain metaphysical narrative, and the justifications that rely on subjective experience of (...) rights as good. I further explain how this is a gap that political consensus and the idea of Kantian moral reason cannot seem to fill. I subsequently boil this gap down to the concept of value, since the foundation for each justification is based on a type of value. These are categorized as either given value – which applies to all attributes of value that is “given” to us independently of our actions or opinions, or created value – which applies to all attributes of value that stem from social interaction and experience. As justifications are funneled into either of these two categories of value, it begins to look like no other type of value exist, and as a result no one looks for it. To respond to this problem, I formulate a philosophical explanation, in Robert Nozicks terms. This explanation shows that there may be other routes to apply to value than sticking to simply given or created value. My explanation utilizes the three theories of philosophical anthropology, internal metaphysical realism and Wittgensteins philosophy of language, and it is based on the result of an analysis of material consisting of human rights justification arguments by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Alasdaire MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty. The actual philosophical explanation I formulate utilizes the metaphysics of Helen Steward to provide a given-value foundation for the primitive reactions of Stefan Eriksson, which creates value through social organization. Overall, I find that there are untried possibilities which may allow for a different type of value to act as the foundation for a human rights justification. My contribution to the field rests in the novelty of the theories used in my explanation, and the angle of the problem formulation. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists have advanced a plethora of explanations of the self in relation to narratives, positing varying degrees of connection between them. For some, narratives created by a subject about herself shape her self-constitution (Flanagan 1991; Fivush 1994). For others, they help the subject to participate in social cognition (Hutto 2008). Some represent narratives as merely one basis of personal identity and consider them cognitive tools used by the subject to construct self-concepts (Neisser 1997; Tekin 2011); others render narratives (...) the basis for self-constitution (Dennett 1992; MacIntyre 1981; Schechtman 1996). Some require that the subject create her ‘whole life narrative’ unifying her .. (shrink)

Aunque el debate jurídico entre Hans Kelsen y Carl Schmitt ha sido extensamente discutido y analizado, rara vez se lo sitúa en el marco de la disputa entre el mundo político antiguo y el moderno. La pérdida de este punto central de referencia impide focalizar la raíz filosófica de fondo en la polémica entre ambos autores, a saber, una batalla entre dos modelos alternativos de racionalidad política y moral. Uno es el antiguo (reivindicado por Schmitt) y otro el moderno (defendido (...) por Kelsen). Sostengo que no situar dicho debate en semejante contexto nos priva de comprender las implicaciones jurídicas que se desprenden del conflicto entre los supuestos teóricos normativos que hacen surgir a la Modernidad y el horizonte teleológico que da lugar a la Antigüedad. While the legal debate between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt has been widely discussed and analyzed, it is rarely located within the coordinates of the political dispute between the ancient and modern world. The loss of this central point of reference prevents focusing on the deeply philosophical root wich is in the midst of the controversy between the two authors, namely, a battle between two alternative models of political rationality and morality. One is the ancient (claimed by Schmitt) and the other is the modern (defended by Kelsen). i argue that not placing this debate in such context deprives us from understanding the legal implications arising from the conflict between the normative theoretical assumptions that give rise to Modernity and the teleological horizon which gives rise to the ancient world. (shrink)

When should humans enhance themselves? We try to answer this question by engaging in a conceptual analysis of the nature of different activities. We think that cognitive enhancement is morally impermissible in some practice-oriented activities, such as some educational activities, when it is the case both that cognitive enhancement would negatively affect the point of those activities and that we have good reasons to value that point. We then argue that cognitive enhancement should be allowed in two groups of cases, (...) namely in practice-oriented activities, such as recreational activities on which little moral value or social import hangs, and in some prominently goal-directed activities, such as high-responsibility professions, the goal of which has significant moral or social value. Finally, we argue that the use of efficacious and relatively safe cognitive enhancers may even be obligatory in those high-responsibility professions under certain special circumstances. (shrink)

We argue that the central goal of critical thinking is the making of reasoned judgments. Arriving at reasoned judgments in most cases is a dialectical process involving the comparative weighing of a variety of contending positions and arguments. Recognizing this dialectical dimension means that critical thinking pedagogy should focus on the kind of comparative evaluation which we make in actual contexts of disagreement and debate.

‘Ethics and the Conflicts of Modernity’ begins with a consideration of how lives might go wrong through a series of failures in relation to desire. In probing the relationship between an agent’s desires and her beliefs, MacIntyre introduces a woman who has not considered “that she might run away and join the circus”, and as we learn a few lines later, this possibility evades her because she wrongly believes that she could not become a trapeze artist. Incautious readers may regard (...) this as a flippant illustration; but that would be an error. Trapeze is an example of the type of practice in which, on MacIntyre’s account, participation both requires and develops virtues, and the circus provides a context for the type of virtuous local political community to which MacIntyre gives his allegiance. This paper uses the example of circus to illustrate the relationship between self-understanding and social order that underscores MacIntyre’s diagnoses of developments in mainstream moral and self-understanding. ‘Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity’ provides a largely sociological account as to why the distinctive and incoherent Morality of modernity persists, and moreover must persist, if the illusions of the conventional social order are to be maintained. MacIntyre’s allusions to such contexts as the circus manifest the same intimate relationship between self-understanding and social order, but in contrast to modernity, provide a context for coherence. (shrink)