Conference 2011
Expediency or Conviction?
How to Engage People in a Common Cause
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Some comparisons between the thought of John Macmurray, and obersvations made in the Common Cause report.
John Macmurray:
“The concentration of interest upon instrumental values involves a growing unawareness of and in-sensitiveness to intrinsic values; and our sensitiveness to intrinsic values is the measure of our civilisation.”
Science Out Of Bounds in ‘Religion Art & Science’, The Forward Lectures, 1960; Liverpool Press, 1961; p 25.
Common Cause:
“civil society organisations must champion some long-held (but
insufficiently esteemed) values, while seeking to diminish the primacy of many values which are now prominent”
John Macmurray:
“My purpose has been to challenge …… the assumption that the Self is …. a ‘knowing subject’, …. [and] that the Self is an isolated individual”
The Self As Agent, 1957, published by Faber and Faber, 1995, p11-12
Common Cause:
“There is mounting evidence from a range of studies in cognitive science that the dominant ‘Enlightenment model’ of human decision-making is extremely incomplete.”
John Macmurray:
“…if reason is the capacity to act in terms of the nature of the object, it is emotion which stands directly behind activity determining its substance and direction, while thought is related to action indirectly and through emotion, detemrining only its form, and that only partially.”
Reason and Emotion, 1935, published by Humanities Press, 1992,
Common Cause:
“There is mounting evidence that facts play only a partial role in shaping people’s judgment. Emotion is often far more important.
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