Taraneh Rosanna Wilkinson

This paper addresses a potential contradiction between the two primary philosophical traditions that inform Gibsonian ecological psychology: the phenomenological and pragmatist traditions. These two traditions exhibit potentially contradictory intuitions about the epistemic role of direct perception. This epistemic role of direct perception was famously problematized by Sellars’ critique of the myth of the given (1956; 1997), and we draw on it here to serve as a test case for the Gibsonian synthesis of phenomenology and pragmatism. While ecological psychology’s emphasis on the firstperson perspective of organisms shares in the legacy of the phenomenological tradition, it also tends to assume direct experience as a given, something basic and foundational to knowledge. Pragmatism, on the other hand, is generally suspicious of experience as a foundational given. We argue that Gibson’s successful synthesis of these two traditions is also what makes his theory of affordances less susceptible to the myth of the given than some phenomenological approaches to perception. Namely, on the Gibsonian account of perception is always part of an action-perception cycle that takes place in and through embodied action and therefore no one act of perception functions as an epistemic given.

The Islamic concept of “tawḥīd” or Divine Unity is more than a simple affirmation that God is One. It lies at the heart of Islamic spirituality, thought, and practice. It is a concept with a rich semantic field and complex philosophical connotations. Tawḥīd affirms God’s incomparable unity in such a way as to embrace the plurality of existence and infuse it with life and meaning. Tawḥīd, in the context of Turkish Muslim thought, has functioned as a conceptual tool for addressing difference to suggest ways of engaging the challenges posed by skepticism and the truth-claims of other religions within an Islamic context. This chapter lays out various Turkish Muslim theological interpretations and applications of tawḥīd to the phenomena of religious pluralism and global diversity, and then turns to the work of theologian Şaban Ali Düzgün as a case study. The paper concludes with the observation that, in both Düzgün’s work and in Turkish discussions on pluralism more generally, tawḥīd serves as both a limit and a facilitator to pluralism.

Karl Rahner, S.J., is known to be one of the great theological forces behind Vatican II and has influenced subsequent Catholic theologians in their exploration of other religions. Drawing upon the heuristic of finite-Infinite that runs through Rahner’s thought, this chapter examines the theological method of Francis X. Clooney, S.J., pioneer of an approach to comparative theology growing in popularity. The paper treats three related themes from the perspective of one who has appropriated Clooney’s methods for her own scholarship: Rahner’s theological anthropology as a resource for comparative theology, Rahner’s affinity with F.D.E. Schleiermacher on this question, and the strengths and limitations of Clooney’s approach.