Robert Cummings Neville

On the National Commission: A Puritan Critique of Consensus Ethics

he Report and Recommendations of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects on research involving the institutionalized mentally infirm is an extraordinary example of the development of public ethics. Prudent and helpful as its recommendations are, perhaps more significant is the social institution of ethical deliberation and policy-making that the Commission has created in producing this and its many other reports. The present report presents a general consensus about the moral conflicts involved in doing research on people institutionalized as mentally infirm-a consensus that is adequate for recommending sane, cautious policies with a broad base of support. The Commission has done what it was asked to do. Although I believe that is the proper way of establishing national policy, we must recognize the degree to which this form of deliberation and policy-making exerts a conservative force in choosing among a variety of ethical options. Precisely when the underlying value assumptions of our society cry out for reconsideration, social institutions such as the commission reinforce those assumptions by rationalizing, coordinating, and making them practically applicable.

Sterilizing the Mildly Mentally Retarded without Their Consent

Under certain specific circumstances it is morally permissible to sterilize some mildly mentally retarded people without their consent. At the outset of my argument I want to acknowledge that there is a grave difficulty, conceptually and empirically, in identifying which individuals belong to the relevant class of the mentally retarded. If that class is either conceptually so vague or empirically so confused that individuals who do not belong in it are inadvertently placed there, then it would be ethically impermissible to subject the class to involuntary sterilization. But let me put that difficulty aside until the end, and proceed with the argument as if we knew with acceptable exactness who the mildly mentally retarded are and which of them meet the specified requirements for sterilization.

Religions, philosophies, and philosophy of religion

The most dramatic change in the study of religion in the last twenty-five years has been the vast increase in the knowledge, by Western scholars, of the world’s diverse religious traditions. Although there remain important conceptual questions about the nature of religion as such, many scholars would prefer the operative phrase to be the study of religions, not the study of religion. 1 A number of factors have contributed to this change.

The Philosophical Arguments

There is a serious difficulty in identifying which individuals belong to the class of the mentally retarded. However, under cetain circumstances, it would seem morally permissible to sterilize some mildly retarded people without their consent. Involuntary sterilization might be in the best interest of the people who, while capable of engaging in and enjoying sex, would not be able to bear the physiological and psychological stresses connected with pregnancy, delivery and child raising. These people have great difficulty in managing nonpermanent forms of contraception, therefore sterilization could be the only responsible contraceptive choice. Also, involuntary sterilization in the right cases would foster, rather than deny, the membership of the mildly mentally retarded in the moral community, and enhance the dignity of their position. Policies regarding these positions should come from the political process.

Creation and the Trinity

THE DOCTRINE of the Trinity will be elaborated and defended here in a way that demands philosophical theology. It will be maintained that the doctrine stems from both revelational and speculative roots, and that its defense must appeal to and acknowledge both. The argument will put forward a set of speculative notions that articulate an abstract metaphysical theory of creation. Then the traditional conception of the Trinity will be related to the speculative categories, first in general, and later with reference to certain dilemmas crucial to the orthodoxy of the Trinitarian formulations: for instance, economic versus immanent Trinitarianism, modalism and monarchianism, the distinction between creating and begetting, and so forth. At the end it will be apparent, in outline at least, that the particularities and unique claims of the Trinitarian doctrine that stem from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ can be given general and critical, though not particular and demonstrative, articulation in the notions of the creation theory. That is, the speculative theory says only general things about the Trinitarian persons and unity; but it says general things that are liable to particular specification by precisely the elements exhibited in the historical revelation. A general defense of this connection between revelation and speculation is a topic for another essay. But a word can be said here about the advantage of such a connection. Speculation can make no claim to prove a revelational thesis. Yet it can exhibit the fact that the revelational claim is neither contradictory nor unintelligent by articulating the general features of the claim in an abstract and consistent set of categories. Most arguments against revelational doctrines (such as the Trinity) do in fact try to show the doctrines self-contradictory or unintelligent. Furthermore, the speculative interpretation of a doctrine rooted in revelation relates

Chinese Philosophy in Systematic Metaphysics

The chief problematic for contemporary systematic metaphysics is to develop categories for understanding the world as having value at the same time that it is explicable by science. Western philosophical thinking, with major exceptions, has tracked science by understanding the world to be factual but not intrinsically valuable. Chinese philosophy in all periods has understood human beings to be embedded within society which in turn is embedded within nature, all of which bear values of appropriate types. Themes in Chinese philosophy contribute to this problematic of systematic metaphysics in important ways, explored in this article.

The Role of Concepts of God in Cross Cultural Comparative Theology

The obvious problem with concepts of God as cross-cultural comparative categories is that some religions do not have them, or conceive gods in relatively trivial ways. To appreciate why this is a problem, however, it is important to see why concepts of God are so attractive for comparative purposes. The main reason is that, at least for the monotheistic religions, the categories spelling out divinity refer to what is religiously most important. God is the center around which all other religious elements move. Whether conceived in metaphysical ways as creator or in existential ways as judge, savior, lover, goal or eschatological finisher, God is conceived in the monotheistic religions to be the most important reality for human life, concepts of which determine more of all the other religious notions than any of them directly affects the concepts of God. So naturally comparative theology ought to be able to recognize what at least some religions take to be the most important reality and compare religions in respect of it. If a religion cannot be compared to others with respect to what it takes to be most important, the comparisons that are left seem trivial. Religions can be compared on their respective attitudes toward eating popcorn, but so what? Religions can be compared with respect to their moral codes, but, without connection to the concepts of God, moral codes fail to be religious for the monotheistic traditions.

Phenomenology and Pragmatism: A Continuing Dialogue with Patrick A. Heelan

The honor of being invited to contribute to this well-deserved Festschrift for Patrick Heelan is made more pleasurable by the occasion it affords to continue a dialogue with him that began thirty-five years ago about the relative merits of phenomenology and pragmatism. Our friendship has not been all philosophical dialogue, of course. We taught together at Fordham University and again at SUNY Stony Brook. He has been an important friend within my family since he brought comfort after the brief life of our first daughter. When our two other girls were in grade school, he would haul his definitely non-portable computer over to our house for them to play with, introducing them to the computer age when I had barely mastered an electrified typewriter. And now he exercises an avuncular superintendence over our youngest who teaches history at a neighboring university in Washington. But our philosophic dialogue has always been a crucial part of the friendship, starting in the early days at Fordham. It continued in the philosophy and religious studies departments at Stony Brook where Patrick sat in on my seminar on Peirce. For several years it was formalized around a small group of philosophers including George Wolf, a neuroscientist, Ed Casey, a phenomenologist, and David Weissman, a pragmatist, who met monthly in New York City at Jay Schulkin’s apartment. Jay is a pragmatic neuroscientist.

Tale of a Theologian without Walls

PRECIS:This article provides a detailed autobiographical account of two oddly coupled things. On the one hand, the author has been firmly committed to theology without walls since early childhood, including high school publications in a church newsletter and coming down to a three-volume philosophical theology based on world religions, vulnerable to all perspectives. On the other hand, the author has been actively and deeply religious, including ordination in the United Methodist Church and being the dean of the United Methodist School of Theology at Boston University. Being religious in a particular way is compatible with pursuing theology without walls.

Value and Selfhood: Pragmatism, Confucianism, and Phenomenology

This article articulates a dialogue between Edward Casey, Cheng Chung-ying, and me that began at the Eastern Division annual meeting in Philadelphia of the American Philosophical Association, in a session sponsored by the International Society for Chinese Philosophy. There, we read brief versions of the papers presented in this issue and commented on one another. Casey represented Continental phenomenology, Cheng the Chinese tradition as he has developed it into onto-generative hermeneutics, and I the melding of American pragmatic and Confucian traditions that I have been developing.