Mental health facilities and practitioners commonly permit researchers to have direct access to patients' records for the purposes of archival research without the informed consent of patient-participants. Typically these researchers have access to all information in such records as long as they agree to maintain confidentiality and remove any identifying data from subsequent research reports. Changes in the American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles (American Psychological Association, 1992) raise ethical and legal issues that require consideration by practitioners, researchers, and facility Institutional (...) Review Boards. This article addresses these issues and provides recommendations for changes in ethical standards as well as alternative avenues for conducting research using archival mental health records. (shrink)

Portable digital devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and netbooks, now permeate our society. These devices allow substantial efficiencies in access to and communication of information by mental health professionals. They also bring with them risks to psychotherapist–client privacy. This article reviews these threats and offers suggestions as to their mitigation.

Ellen G. White’s writings contribute to clarify the doctrine of sanctification. In her writings sanctification means a submissive acceptance of God’s revealed will and has more to do with integrity and service than with emotions and self-sufficiency. The focus is placed on sanctification as a vit..

This volume of essays by internationally prominent scholars interprets the full range of Heidegger's thought and major critical interpretations of it. It explores such central themes as hermeneutics, facticity and Ereignis, conscience in Being and Time, freedom in the writings of his period of transition from fundamental ontology, and his mature criticisms of metaphysics and ontotheology. The volume also examines Heidegger's interpretations of other authors, the philosophers Aristotle, Kant and Nietzsche and the poets Rilke, Trakl and George. A final group (...) of essays interprets the critical reception of Heidegger's thought, both in the analytic tradition and in France. This rich and wide-ranging collection will appeal to all who are interested in the themes, the development and the context of Heidegger's philosophical thought. (shrink)

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross had a brief intersection with the nascent and emerging field and practice of Clinical Ethics in the 1970s. She fertilized and influenced the field in distinctive ways, some mo...

In North America, across the political spectrum, we have a strong tendency to reduce religion to nothing more than a tool to promote our own socio-political views. This is a natural consequence of our hyper-polarized culture and our impoverished view of “religion.” It is also, however, a problem—particularly for those inspired by the call to renewal through an integration of the quest for social justice and the pursuit of the spiritual life. By focusing on the value of participating in religious (...) liturgy, I show how a renewed respect for religion can help the proponents of social justice fulfil some of the foundational desires of the original movement and, thereby, to bring to fruition some of its dormant promise. This includes, in particular, the desire for social harmony and the desire to pay greater attention to our concrete reality. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The First Phase: Fichte's “Metaphysics of Dasein” and Its Systemic Betrayal The Second Phase: Onto‐theo‐ego‐logy and the Question of Infinity at a “Crossroads” with Hegel The Third Phase: Schelling on the Basic Distinction, the Primal Being of the Will, and the Existence of Evil The Fourth Phase: Hegel's Completion of Western Philosophy and “Getting over” Metaphysics by Thinking Its Forgotten Ground.

here seems to be some recognition of the relevance of dihydrogen oxide (water) in many spheres. Among others, literature in poetry, religious texts and medical science, address the value of water in emotional, physical and psychological healings. To understudy how religion, spirituality and medical science connect and contrast in domesticating water for healing purposes, this article undertook literary research on religious and medical hydro-healings in Christianity, African and Native American traditional religions, and medical science. It presented links, benefits, challenges and (...) contrasts between spiritual healing and medical water therapy as well as inter-religious connections. Based on the literature, the article discovered that spiritual hydro-healing is spiritual, instantaneous and non-scientific, but medical hydrotherapy is organic, naturopathic, gradual and scientific or logical. On the positive side, the article found that indigenous spiritual knowledge is a key motivating factor in the popularity of hydro-healing practices. Whereas, on the negative, it observed the danger of the grey areas of spiritual hydro-healings which include, but are not limited to, unethical practices, commercialisation of healing waters, addiction, river baptism mortality and the quest for instantaneous hydro-healing leading to health hazards and death.Contribution: The article concluded with an urgent call to stakeholders to pay attention to the hydro-healing practices that can compromise public health and safety. (shrink)

The process of constructing a social reality where “difference” becomes a social asset rather than a monster that threatens peace and progress must commence with a phenomenological understanding of social interactions within and among human societies. In my opinion, Hegel, more than any other thinker, has constructed a phenomenological framework that adequately captures and represents the nature of group interactions within human societies. This paper explores the Hegelian phenomenon of social identity, and, especially, characterizes the interactions between and among various (...) social identities. It is a modest effort to contribute theoretically to the available discourse on the management of “difference” in multi-ethnic societies. (shrink)

The concept of economic rent is among the oldest in political economy. This reflects the fact that economies have always included parties whose income appears more parasitic than productive. The concept of rent-seeking refers to the efforts of parties seeking to secure such income by way of gaining influence over economic regulation or otherwise gaining favors from government. In spite of its intuitiveness, however, it has proven difficult to precisely distinguish rent from other categories of income. This chapter seeks to (...) acquaint readers with this problem. The privatization of incarceration is then supplied as an important case study in current rent-seeking behavior. (shrink)

This article explores and defends the claim that addictive desires—for alcohol in particular—are partly explained by the motive of self-escape. We consider how this claim sits with the neurophysiological explanation of the strength of addictive desires in terms of the effect addictive substances have on the dopamine system. We argue that nothing in the neuroscientific framework rules out pluralism about the causes of addictive desire.

This paper addresses puzzling issues concerning the ontological status of dispositions. Following review of debates about a traditional conditional analysis as well as Lewis’s “reformed conditional analysis” of dispositions, the paper analyzes attempts to solve the problem of what makes the relevant conditional true. Reasons are presented for rejecting attempts to locate the relevant truth-maker in a causal basis that allegedly dispenses with dispositions or in properties that are universally dispositional. In this way the paper argues that neither “eliminativism” nor (...) “pandispositionalism” provides a successful account of dispositions’ ontological status, and that ontology must find a way to countenance the reality of both dispositional and non-dispositional properties. (shrink)

This paper concerns Hegel’s much-neglected discussion of the rational observation of nature in the first part of the chapter on reason in the Phenomenology of Spirit. The paper focuses, in particular, on the themes of nature’s inexhaustibilit y, animal life’s holistic character, and the earth’s individual distinctiveness insofar as Hegel appeals to them to challenge a certain kind of self-understanding of what it means to observe nature rationally. In addition to examining the significance and trenchancy of this challenge, the paper (...) inquires whether these same themes have implications for Hegel’s own philosophical understanding of reason as spirit. (shrink)

This paper elaborates four asymmetrical, developmental stages of the phenomenon of human freedom, starting with a rudimentary sort of freedom, thebasic experience of a relatively unencumbered power to act in alternative ways. The paper argues that structural elements of this rudimentary form of freedomare demonstrable in three distinct, supervening forms of freedom: instrumental freedom, the experience of the self-reflective ability to pursue certain aims, perfectionist freedom, the experience of the capacity to master oneself according to some ideal, and, finally, interpersonal (...) freedom, the experience of empowerment and alternatives only available through commitments to others. (shrink)

To criticize a philosopher’s views properly a primary requirement is an accurate understanding of the questions he raises, the problems he acknowledges, and the procedures he follows. In the following study I attempt to identify the specific question of truth which Hegel addresses, the basis of the sort of skepticism posing a serious threat to its resolution, and finally a strategy he adopts. The specific question of truth for Hegel is a question of metaphysical truth or, in the Cartesian terms (...) which Hegel willingly employed, the question of the objectivity of thoughts. The sort of skepticism he has in mind is one which, based on certain purported conditions of human knowing, rejects the possibility of metaphysical truth. While Hegel’s strategy is to analyze those various conditions in an encyclopedic fashion, my concern in this paper is his analysis of the logical conditions of human knowing. (shrink)

Kant's philosophical achievements have long overshadowed those of his German contemporaries, often to the point of concealing his contemporaries' influence upon him. This volume of new essays draws on recent research into the rich complexity of eighteenth-century German thought, examining key figures in the development of aesthetics and art history, the philosophy of history and education, political philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. The essays range over numerous thinkers including Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Meyer, Winckelmann, Herder, Schiller, Hamann and Fichte, showing how (...) they variously influenced, challenged, and revised Kant's philosophy, at times moving it in novel directions unacceptable to the magister himself. The volume will be valuable for all who are interested in this distinctive period of German philosophy. (shrink)

Part of the bafflement over expressions like “contemporary” and “postmodern” in philosophy can be traced to a flood of nineteenth-century historians of philosophy who dubbed the so-called “post-medieval” era from Bacon and Descartes to Mill and Nietzsche the “Philosophie der Neuzeit,” “L’époque moderne,” and “modern philosophy.” Even the philosophers mentioned suffice to indicate that these labels are often only placeholders for views of thinkers linked by little more than a birth after the onset of the Reformation and a death before (...) the Curies’ discovery of polonium. Nevertheless, philosophers in the twentieth century and their historians were faced with the dilemma of either subsuming their work under this broadly conceived moniker, thereby signaling nolens volens a lack of significant innovation, or coming up with some appropriately distinctive term. (shrink)

After reviewing basic features of language, this paper reviews a central debate among twentieth-century philosophers over the proper analysis of linguisticmeaning. While some center the analysis of meaning in language’s capacity to be true, others locate meaning in the communicative intentions of the users of thelanguage. As a means of addressing this impasse and suggesting its unfounded character, the paper draws on recent studies of language acquisition and relates them to existential dimensions of language.

En Hugo de San Víctor, el amor es la raíz y el motivo fundamental del autoconocimiento. Con el conocimiento de sí no sólo procura el alma conocer lo que es, sino también y principalmente amar más. La confluencia del conocimiento y el amor expresan la estructura de la interioridad. Esta urdimbre interior es la que permite que las almas se eleven a las alturas de la mística. Sin autoconocimiento no sería posible recibir los dones del Espíritu Santo ni la contemplación (...) mística. (shrink)

This major study of Heidegger is the first to examine in detail the concept of existential truth that he developed in the 1920s. Daniel O. Dahlstrom critically examines the genesis, nature and validity of Heidegger's radical attempt to rethink truth as the disclosure of time, a disclosure allegedly more basic than truths formulated in scientific judgements. The book has several distinctive and innovative features. First, it is the only study that attempts to understand the logical dimension of Heidegger's thought (...) in its historical context. Second, no other book-length treatment explores the breadth and depth of Heidegger's confrontation with Husserl, his erstwhile mentor. Third, the book demonstrates that Heidegger's deconstruction of Western thinking occurs on three interconnected fronts: truth, being and time. Dealing with a crucial aspect of the philosophy of one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, this book will be important to all scholars and students of Heidegger, whether in philosophy, theology or literary studies. (shrink)

There is a class of fictionalist strategies (the reflexive fictionalisms) which appear to suffer from a common problem: the problem that the entities which are supposedly fictional turn out, by the lights of the fictionalist theory itself, to exist. The appropriate solution is to reject so-called strong fictionalism in each case: that is, to reject the variety of fictionalism which takes appeal to the domain of fictional entities to provide an explanation or analysis of the operators or predicates with which (...) the objects are systematically correlated. (shrink)

: Whereas research on Moses Mendelssohn’s Morning Hours has largely focused on the proofs for the existence of God and the elaboration of a purified pantheism in the Second Part of the text, scholars have paid far less attention to the First Part where Mendelssohn details his mature epistemology and conceptions of truth. In an attempt to contribute to remedying this situation, the present article critically examines his account, in the First Part, of different types of truth, different types of (...) knowledge, and the case against idealism. The examination stresses potential but overlooked strengths of his account, questions of ambiguity if not inconsistency in his concepts of existence and substance, and the potential import of these questions for the role he assigns to common sense. (shrink)

The essays trace carefully the histories of the influences of earlier thinkers and their legacies upon later thinkers.

There are several difficulties, largely the product of the distinctive question and paths of Heidegger's thinking, that beset any attempt to determine his philosophical heritage. In the first part of the following paper, after reviewing these difficulties, the author argues that Heidegger is, nonetheless, singularly and quite rightly preoccupied with the heritage of his thinking. In the second part an attempt is made to show how a particular understanding of being, namely, being as presence and absence, motivates various paths taken (...) by his thinking, paths which, indeed, have given rise to several appropriations of his thinking in the present: pragmatic, religious, hermeneutical as well as in the philosophy of art and technology. In the final part of the paper the author identifies some of these ongoing "Heideggerian heritages," but with the aim of underscoring their dependence upon what for the author is the principal heritage of his thinking, a way of thinking about being that recovers its fundamentally historical character. /// Existem várias dificuldades, as quais são em larga medida produto da questão distintiva e dos diversos caminhos do pensamento de Heidegger, que condicionam toda e qualquer tentativa de determinar a sua herança filosófica. Na primeira parte do presente artigo, o autor, depois de mencionar as sobreditas dificuldades, argumenta que Heidegger, apesar de tudo, está singularmente, e apropriadamente, preocupado com a herança do seu pensamento. Na segunda parte, é feita uma tentativa no sentido de mostrar até que ponto uma compreensão particular do ser, nomeadamente do ser como presença e ausência, deu lugar a diversas apropriações do pensamento heideggeriano no presente: apropriação pragmática, religiosa, hermenêutica, bem como no âmbito da filosofia da arte e da tecnologia. Finalmente, na sua última parte, o presente artigo identifica algumas das "heranças heideggerianas" correntes, mas com a intenção de sublinhar a sua dependência em relação àquilo que para o autor constitui a principal herança do seu pensamento, nomeadamente, um modo de pensar acerca do ser que recupera o seu carácter fundamentalmente histórico. (shrink)

For much of contemporary ethical theory, the universalizability of the motive of a contemplated action forms a necessary part of the basis of the action’s moral character, legitimacy, or worth. Considering the possibility of resentment springing from the performance of an action also serves as a means of determining the morality of an action. However, considerations of universalizability and resentment are plainly inconsistent with the performance of some unselfish moral actions. I argue that the sphere of the moral adequacy of (...) considerations of universalizability and resentment is limited. I profile key elements of “conformist” or “consensus-driven” ethical thinking modelled on Nagel’s ethical theory. Then, I elaborate the measure of validity of the profiled ethical thinking as well as its limitation, suggesting that its proper domain is located in an ethics of honor, delimited by an ethics of love and friendship. (shrink)

In 1929, after rejecting the suggestion that contemporary Christians may be expected to feel "threatened" by Kierkegaard's criticisms, the Protestant theologian Gerhardt Kuhlmann remarks.

This paper attempts to shed light on Heidegger’s critical appropriation of Husserl’s phenomenology. It begins by reviewing Heidegger’s basic criticisms of Husserl’s philosophical approach as well as his ambivalence towards it, an ambivalence that raises the question of whether Heidegger shares Husserl’s idealist trajectory. The paper then examines how Heidegger appropriates what he regards as two of Husserl’s “decisive discoveries,” namely, Husserl’s accounts of intentionality and categorial intuitions. Regarding the first discovery, the paper demonstrates how Heidegger tweaks the method of (...) phenomenological reduction for the purpose of describing intentional experience in terms of being-in-the-world. As for the second discovery, the paper shows how Heidegger adapts the basic sense of categorial intuitions, both pre-thematically and thematically, into his existential analysis. In conclusion, the paper discusses how the role of horizons in Heidegger’s analysis of temporality provides him with firm reasons to resist an idealist interpretation of phenomenology. (shrink)