Smith, Glass, and Miller have reported a meta-analysis of over 500 studies comparing some form of psychological therapy with a control condition. They report that when averaged over all dependent measures of outcome, psychological therapy is. 85 standard deviations better than the control treatment. We examined the subset of studies included in the Smith et al. metaanalysis that contained a psychotherapy and a placebo treatment. The median of the mean effect sizes for these 32 studies was. 15. There was a (...) nonsignificant inverse relationship between mean outcome and the following: sample size, duration of therapy, use of measures of outcome other than undisguised self-report, measurement of outcome at follow-up, and use of real patients rather than subjects solicited for the purposes of participation in a research study. A qualitative analysis of the studies in terms of the type of patient involved indicates that those using psychiatric outpatients had essentially zero effect sizes and that none using psychiatric inpaticnts provide convincing evidence for psychotherapeutic effectiveness. The onty studies clearly demonstrating significant effects of psychotherapy were the ones that did not use real patients. For the most part, these studies involved small samples of subjects and brief treatments, occasionally described in quasibeliavioristic language. It was concluded that for real patients there is no evidence that the benefits of psychotherapy are greater than those of placebo treatment. (shrink)

The emergence and development of the field of clinical ethics coincided with the revitalization of moral philosophy following the publication of John Rawls’ ma...

Infrastructure can make or break a farm’s economic viability. Farmers’ ownership and ability to invest in infrastructure is often arranged through the family farm model, where farmers are typically married to their business partners. In this paper, we analyze the implications of organizing infrastructure access through the family farm model. Through interviews with 66 farmers and key informants in New England, U.S., we identify a treadmill of infrastructure accumulation for farmers with family capital and a treadmill of high labor and (...) low profitability for farmers without the family capital to acquire needed infrastructure. Infrastructure accumulation in the family farm model builds farms that are difficult to adapt to new systems and markets, challenging to retire from without selling to developers, and hard for beginning farmers to afford. The economic tendencies of organizing infrastructure through the family farm model can make it difficult for farmers of all social backgrounds to access farmland and infrastructure. Moreover, continued inequities in family wealth and wages, credit access, and social capital means that the family farm model systematically disadvantages farmers of color, LGBTQ + farmers, limited resource, and women farmers. We argue that infrastructure accumulation through the family farm model is a process that intensifies inequities in farm viability, exacerbates the challenges of transitioning farms to new farmers and ways of farming, and fuels land injustice. (shrink)

Bigotry distractions are strategic invocations of racism, transphobia, or negative stigma toward other marginalized groups to shape political discourse. Although the vast majority of Americans agree on large policy issues ranging from reducing air pollution to prosecuting corporate crime, bigotry distractions divert attention from areas of agreement toward divisive identity issues. This article explores how the nefarious targeting of identity groups through bigotry distractions may be the tallest barrier to health reform, and social change more broadly. The discussion extends the (...) literature on dog whistles, strategic racism, and scapegoating. (shrink)

This brief article introduces a symposium discussing the extended mind thesis and its suggestive relation to religious thought. Essays by Mark Rowlands, Lynne Rudder Baker, Teed Rockwell, Joel Krueger, Leonard Angel, and Matthew Day present a variety of perspectives.

BackgroundParents affected by cancer are confronted with challenges such as communicating with their children about the disease and dealing with changes in their parental role. Providing appropriate information could support affected parents and their children. Still, high-quality and information booklets are rare. Therefore, we developed an information booklet for affected families. The study aims are: investigating the acceptability and usability of the information booklet, determining parental information needs, and collating suggestions for implementation. Finally, we adapted the booklet according to the (...) findings.MethodsWe interviewed five experts in psychosocial care of parental cancer and nine affected parents using a semi-structured interview guideline. Participants received the developed booklet after giving the consent to participate. Interviews on acceptability and usability of the booklet and information needs were conducted about 1 week after receiving the booklet. The interviews were analyzed using structuring content analysis.Results Experts and parents reported that the information booklet addresses the experiences of affected families and that the content combination makes it useful in an unprecedented way indicating both acceptance and usability. Following dimensions were identified as information needs: communication, support offers, children’s disease understanding and needs, organization of family life, competence in parenting, and sources of additional information material. The booklet should be handed out personally by, e.g., healthcare professionals and might be accompanied by a personal counseling. Minor adaptations on language and content were conducted based on the findings.ConclusionIndicated acceptance and usability of the developed information booklet for parents with cancer suggest a low-threshold, basic support for affected families and health professionals. The diverse parental information needs are covered. The long-term effects of the booklet, e.g., on the use of psychosocial support offers, parental self-efficacy and psychological distress will be quantitatively investigated. (shrink)

A number of recent legal cases in the United States have considered both disability‐based exceptions to Covid‐19‐related mask mandates and disability‐based claims to stronger masking rules in states restricting the abilities of local governments to enforce mask mandates. We argue that a proper legal and ethical analysis of such cases requires understanding the distinction between disability accommodations and disability modifications. Disability accommodations are individualized adjustments that enable qualified individuals to perform jobs or achieve access on terms comparable to those experienced (...) by others. Disability modifications are programmatic changes to structures or policies that increase accessibility. We contend that in the context of mask mandates, modifications rather than accommodations are ethically desirable because modification‐oriented policies promote disability access in a way that treats all individuals fairly, avoiding the risk of promoting misinformation and uncertainty about the health benefits of masking. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Part I Part II Note.

Did the universe originate from a "big bang" as argued by leading astrophysicists and others? Or does some other theory more accurately describe its beginnings? Are there other forms of life in the universe? What about other universes? This volume discusses these and other topics in this hotly debated area where philosophy and science meet.

A themed issue on the work of Michael Oakeshott.

Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, statesman and jurist, is best known for developing the empiricist method which forms the basis of modern science. Bacon's writings concentrated on philosophy and judicial reform. His most significant work is the Instauratio Magna comprising two parts - The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. The first part is noteworthy as the first major philosophical work published in English. James Spedding and his co-editors arranged this fourteen-volume edition, published in London between 1857 and 1874, (...) not in chronological order but by subject matter, so that different volumes would appeal to different audiences. The material is divided into three parts: philosophy and general literature; legal works; and letters, speeches and tracts relating to politics. Volume 7, published in 1859, continues Bacon's literary works including his writings on religion, and contains his professional works on the law. (shrink)

Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, statesman and jurist, is best known for developing the empiricist method which forms the basis of modern science. Bacon's writings concentrated on philosophy and judicial reform. His most significant work is the Instauratio Magna comprising two parts - The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. The first part is noteworthy as the first major philosophical work published in English. James Spedding and his co-editors arranged this fourteen-volume edition, published in London between 1857 and 1874, (...) not in chronological order but by subject matter, so that different volumes would appeal to different audiences. The material is divided into three parts: philosophy and general literature; legal works; and letters, speeches and tracts relating to politics. Published in 1869, Volume 12 contains Bacon's letters and writings between 1613 and 1616, which primarily relate to his appointment as Attorney General. (shrink)

David Hume's greatness depends in large part on how his writings hint at beautiful and coherent theories which are recognizably Humean despite their divergences from the untidy originals. Now, perhaps the clearest vision of a contradiction–free Platonic Form of Hume was had by J. L. Mackie; he described it in such masterpieces as The Cement of the Universe, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, and The Miracle of Theism. How successful is this last in its attack on theism? I shall discuss (...) Mackie's case against theism of a Platonic or Neoplatonic type which replaces ‘God as a person or mind or spirit’ by a more abstract Creative Force or Principle. Mackie sees in it a ‘a formidable rival’ to any theism treating of a divine being; ‘if you demand an ultimate explanation, then this may well be a better one’ . But, his chapter thirteen contends, it fares badly in competition with an atheistic, naturalistic approach. (shrink)

The reproducibility movement in psychology has resulted in numerous highly publicized instances of replication failures. The goal of the present work was to investigate people’s reactions to a psychology replication failure vs. success, and to test whether a failure elicits harsher reactions when the researcher is a woman vs. a man. We examined these questions in a pre-registered experiment with a working adult sample, a conceptual replication of that experiment with a student sample, and an analysis of data compiled and (...) posted by a psychology researcher on their public weblog with the stated goal to improve research replicability by rank-ordering psychology researchers by their “estimated false discovery risk.” Participants in the experiments were randomly assigned to read a news article describing a successful vs. failed replication attempt of original work from a male vs. female psychological scientist, and then completed measures of researcher competence, likability, integrity, perceptions of the research, and behavioral intentions for future interactions with the researcher. In both working adult and student samples, analyses consistently yielded large main effects of replication outcome, but no interaction with researcher gender. Likewise, the coding of weblog data posted in July 2021 indicated that 66.3% of the researchers scrutinized were men and 33.8% were women, and their rank-ordering was not correlated with researcher gender. The lack of support for our pre-registered gender-replication hypothesis is, at first glance, encouraging for women researchers’ careers; however, the substantial effect sizes we observed for replication outcome underscore the tremendous negative impact the reproducibility movement can have on psychologists’ careers. We discuss the implications of such negative perceptions and the possible downstream consequences for women in the field that are essential for future study. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophical thought from the eighteenth century as well as conceptual frameworks developed in the twenty-first century, the essays in Beyond Sense and Sensibility examine moral formation as represented in or implicitly produced by literary works of late eighteenth-century British authors.

Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law is a forum for new philosophical work on law. The essays range widely over general jurisprudence, philosophical foundations of specific areas of law, and other philosophical topics relating to legal theory.

Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, statesman and jurist, is best known for developing the empiricist method which forms the basis of modern science. Bacon's writings concentrated on philosophy and judicial reform. His most significant work is the Instauratio Magna comprising two parts - The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. The first part is noteworthy as the first major philosophical work published in English. James Spedding and his co-editors arranged this fourteen-volume edition, published in London between 1857 and 1874, (...) not in chronological order but by subject matter, so that different volumes would appeal to different audiences. The material is divided into three parts: philosophy and general literature; legal works; and letters, speeches and tracts relating to politics. Volume 13, published in 1872, contains Bacon's papers from 1616 to 1618 and relate to his appointment as Lord Chancellor, and England's relations with Ireland and Spain. (shrink)

Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, statesman and jurist, is best known for developing the empiricist method which forms the basis of modern science. Bacon's writings concentrated on philosophy and judicial reform. His most significant work is the Instauratio Magna comprising two parts - The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. The first part is noteworthy as the first major philosophical work published in English. James Spedding and his co-editors arranged this fourteen-volume edition, published in London between 1857 and 1874, (...) not in chronological order but by subject matter, so that different volumes would appeal to different audiences. The material is divided into three parts: philosophy and general literature; legal works; and letters, speeches and tracts relating to politics. Volume 14, published in 1874, contains Bacon's papers from 1619 until his death, including his will, papers about his impeachment, and his treatise on English laws. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Change in a Pantheistic Scheme of Things No Experiences Can Disprove Four‐Dimensional Existence Immortality of a First, Einsteinian Type Immortality of a Second Type: An Afterlife Immortality, Type Three: The Continued Existence of Something that had Carried Our Life‐Patterns Does the Third Kind of Immortality Remove All Need for an Afterlife? The Chances of Immortality of One Kind or Another.