We are pleased and excited to be taking over as the co-editors of the Journal for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (JTPP). We want to gratefully acknowledge the diligence and committed work provided by the outgoing editor, Brent Slife, PhD. Slife and his team of associate editors has enabled JTPP to be a truly inspiring journal. We are honored to be entrusted with the excellent journal they have nurtured for many years, and we look forward to build upon that achievement while adapting to the needs of a dynamic and increasingly important area of psychology and interdisciplinary theoretical work.
Let us begin with brief introductions.
Bruce Jennings
My training is in political science and philosophy, and I bring to the journal a career pursuing practical ethics and normative public policy analysis of in the areas of bioethics, public health ethics, and environmental ethics. I am adjunct associate professor in the department of health policy and the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University. I am also senior fellow at the Center for Humans and Nature and Senior Advisor at The Hastings Center, where I worked for 26 years and served for eight years as executive director. I was editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Bioethics (entitled Bioethics, 4th Edition), a six-volume work published by Macmillan Reference, USA, in 2014. In bioethics, I have worked on ethical and legal issue in end of life and palliative care, and I have also worked on the application of normative political theory in the domains of public health and environmental policy. Overall, I would describe my work and interests as directed toward theoretical and philosophical issues in the social sciences and the humanities.
My aspirations for the journal are along the following lines. JTPP is defined by its interdisciplinary commitment, bringing together psychology, philosophy, and metatheory. At the heart of my vision for the journal is a notion of why that commitment is so valuable and important. The points of contact and overlap among specialized scholarship and research have been the source of most of the intellectual creativity and resilience that I have witnessed throughout the course of my career—from political theory (philosophy, social science, and history) initially to bioethics (philosophy, medicine, and law) later. The pages of the journal can be looked at as a forum for new languages of thinking; as a dynamic space of exchange for assertion and warrant, conjecture and defense, question and answer. I look forward to working with Jim Cresswell, the associate editors, peer reviewers, and contributing authors of JTPP in pursuit of that new thinking.
James Cresswell
I am a full professor at Ambrose University in Calgary, Canada. A large proportion of my work involves work in theoretical psychology and community-based research aimed at using research to support community organizations. Other areas of interest include: poverty, cognitive science of religion, and immigration. I have a deep commitment to education and enhancing the student experience.
I bring a focus on how i ntercultural interconnectivity and the importance of diversity (e.g. decolonizing psychology). Epistemic humility is needed, even as the journal engages with “big picture” interdisciplinary discussions. I seek to continue the interdisciplinary commitment of JTPP that brings together psychology, philosophy, and metatheory. I emphasize how the journal is a vehicle for bringing the best thinking being done in a society into contact with civic affairs and practical conduct. Our society needs civic learning, and fundamental aspects of such learning are to be found in the domain of theoretical and philosophical psychology.
Perspective on the journal
Together, we are looking for work that brings together a wide range of research and theory in a way that involves rigorous sifting and weighing of complex conceptualizations of human psychological phenomena. Our perspective is that the JTPP work both constructively and critically within the discipline and field of psychology. While the analysis of theoretical and philosophical knowledge has distinct methods and approaches, we do not see JTPP as isolated from the broader discipline of psychology. On the contrary, the purpose of theoretical work is to engage in penetrating conceptual analysis that is in dialogue with empirical work seen more broadly in psychology. JTPP seeks to publish deep conceptual analysis that produces unique innovative engagement rather than reviews of the existing literature. A central purpose of theoretical psychology is to engage and speak to the meaning of empirical work and practical problems. Realizing such purposes mean to evaluate empirical and theoretical work with an eye to the implications and broad contextual situatedness of a given endeavor. Theoretical and philosophically oriented psychologists are under the obligation to read widely to grasp multiple paradigms in a manner that is not required by psychologists working within a particular empirical domain. Reading widely is exactly what enables theoretical psychologists to move from the vain attempt to have no presuppositions to efficacious critique. JTPP should maintain a practice of including a wide range of paradigms.
We are excited to announce that this next phase of the JTPP will include the following new associate editors:
- Antonia Larrain, PhD, Universidad Alberto Hurtada, Chile
- Arthur Arruda Leal Ferreira, PhD , Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Ditte Alexandra Winther-Lindqvist, PhD, Aarhus University, Denmark
Continuing on with the JTPP will be the following associate editors:
- Mary Beth Morrissey, PhD, Fordham University, United States
- Jeffrey S. Reber, PhD, West Georgia University, United States
- Frank C. Richardson, PhD, University of Texas, United States
- Louise K. W. Sundararajan, PhD, EdD, Rochester, New York, United States
- Stephen C. Yanchar, PhD, Brigham Young University, United States
- Sunil Bhatia, PhD, Connecticut College, United States
Sincerely,
Bruce Jennings, MA
James Cresswell, PhD