In “There’s No Harm in Talking,” McCarthy, Homan, and Rozier note that in recent years theological bioethicists have not felt the need to translate their insights for a broader pluralistic a...

I argue that reflection on philosophers who could have been working among us but aren’t can lead us to give up our philosophical beliefs.

While many people outside India find the images, sounds, and practices of Indian performing arts compelling and endeavor to incorporate them into the "global" repertoire, few are aware of the central role of religious belief and practice in Indian aesthetics. Completing the trilogy that includes Darsan: Seeing the Divine and Mantra: Hearing the Divine in India and America, this volume focuses on how rasa has been applied in a range of Indian performance traditions. "Rasa" is taste, essence, flavor. How is (...) it possible that a word used to describe a delicious masala can also be used to critique a Bharata Natyam performance? Rasa expresses the primary goals of performing arts in India in all the major literary, philosophical, and aesthetic texts, and it provides the cornerstone of the oral traditions of transmission. It is also essential to the study and production of sculpture, architecture, and painting. Yet its primary referent is cuisine. This book articulates the religious sensibility underlying the traditional performing arts as well as other applications of rasa and examines the relationships between the arts and religion in India today. (shrink)

The challenge of orphans and vulnerable children has become central to the response of many organisations today. The number of OVC throughout northern Nigeria is growing as a result of the Boko Haram pandemic. Mostly, this is caused by the death of parents who have been killed by the insurgents. It has been estimated that by 2015, 200 000 children under the age of 18 had been orphaned by the Boko Haram insurgents. As the number of OVC is growing, it (...) is becoming more and more difficult for their communities to address all their needs, including their need for positive role models and mentors. This article discusses the role that mentoring can play in the development of OVC affected by violence in northern Nigeria, specifically those in internally displaced person camps. This article argued that one approach to improve the holistic care of OVC in IDP camps in northern Nigeria is through the use of mentors. (shrink)

Do free will beliefs influence moral judgments? Answers to this question from theoretical and empirical perspectives are controversial. This study attempted to replicate past research and offer theoretical insights by analyzing World Values Survey data from residents of 46 countries (n = 65,111 persons). Corroborating experimental findings, free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors and support for severe criminal punishment. Further, the link between free will beliefs and intolerance of unethical behavior was moderated by variations in countries’ institutional integrity, (...) defined as the degree to which countries had accountable, corruption-free public sectors. Free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors for residents of countries with high and moderate institutional integrity, but this correlation was not seen for countries with low institutional integrity. Free will beliefs predicted support for criminal punishment regardless of countries’ institutional integrity. Results were robust across different operationalizations of institutional integrity and with or without statistical control variables. (shrink)

I criticize Richard Fumerton’s fallibilist acquaintance theory of noninferential justification.

In this candid autobiographical essay, Nathan Salmon recounts and assesses the impact of various philosophers and events on his philosophical development.

In Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (Doubleday, 2008), Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen argue that human embryo-destructive experimentation is morally wrong and should not be supported with state funds. I argue that their arguments fail.

The main feature of any type of dialectic seems to be a drive for totalities or wholes, that is to say, a drive towards a synoptic view. This might be realized in various forms, either in systems of thought or in systems embracing both thought and being. The well known formal features of dialectic, that is to say, the contradiction of concepts, is but an indication that the inner movement--as Hegel put it--of concepts in their development toward the establishment or (...) manifestation of the whole takes place through and because of concepts. (shrink)

Let us start our analysis with a reference to a thesis formulated by Scholem under the general heading "Ten Unhistorical Propositions about Kabbalah." The ninth thesis reads as follows: "Totalities can only be conveyed [tradierbar] in an occult manner. God’s name is capable of being addressed in language but not of being uttered in language. For only its fragmentariness renders language utterable. The ‘true’ language cannot be uttered, just as the absolutely concrete cannot be realized." In the third thesis he (...) says, "Character of knowledge in Kabbalah: Torah is the medium in which all beings come to know.". (shrink)

The nursing community in the United States polarized in September 2020 between Dawn Wooten's whistleblowing about forced hysterectomies at an immigration center in Georgia and the American Nurses Association's refusal to endorse a presidential candidate despite the Trump administration's mounting failures to address the public health crisis posed by the COVID‐19 pandemic. This reveals a need for more attention to political aspects of health outcome inequities. As advocates for health equity, nurses can join in recent scholarship and activism concerning the (...) political determinants of health. In this paper, we examine recent work on the political determinants of health with an aim to add two things. First, we seek to build further on the notion of “political” determinants of health by distinguishing policy and governance structures from dynamics of politicization through appeal to critical disabilities studies. Second, we seek to apply this further nuanced approach to challenge rhetorical uses of “vulnerable populations,” where this phrase serves to misrecognize systemic institutionalized forces that actively exploit and marginalize people and groups. By refocusing attention to political systems organized around and perpetuating inequitable health outcomes, nurses and other health care professionals—as well as those whom they serve—can concentrate their effort and power to act on political determinants of health in bringing about more equitable health outcomes. (shrink)

Heterogeneous beliefs and decision processes generate positive externalities for social and economic systems, analogous to biodiversity in biological systems. Although some aspects of biodiversity (e.g., pests, parasites and bacteria) can lead to ecological and economic problems, biodiversity provides flows of beneficial ecological services and is widely regarded as a valuable natural resource and informational asset, whose value increases as we learn more and science progresses (Wilson in Bioscience 35(11):700–706, 1985). Heterogeneous beliefs and decision processes (and heterogeneous behaviors they generate) similarly (...) provide flows of beneficial economic services. Behavioral diversity should therefore be seen as a natural resource and informational asset likely to improve human wellbeing in surprising ways in the future. Paternalistic policies motivated by the goal of “correcting” allegedly suboptimal beliefs and behavior that diverge from expert recommendations jeopardize behavioral diversity at a substantial cost to social welfare. The risk of encroaching on this beneficial behavioral heterogeneity with policies that aim to induce behavioral and belief monocultures should be included explicitly as costs when evaluating nudges and other paternalistic policies. (shrink)

In this article, I probe the extent of Kierkegaard's skepticism and irrationalism by examining the nature and limits of his “objective” and “approximate” knowledge. I argue that, for Kierkegaard, certain objective knowledge of contingent being is impossible and “approximate” knowledge of the same is funded by the volitional passion of belief. But, while Kierkegaard endorses severe epistemic restrictions, he rejects wholesale skepticism, allowing for genuine “approximate” knowledge of mind-independent reality. However, I further argue that we cannot ignore his criticisms of (...) such knowledge because of its intrinsic dangers, and because epistemic limitations are crucial in developing religious selfhood before God. (shrink)

Although one can argue that they do not represent a radical departure from existing practices, protocols for reverse triage certainly step beyond what is ordinarily done in medicine and healthcare. Nevertheless, there seems to be some degree of moral concern regarding the ethical legitimacy of practicing reverse triage in the context of a pandemic. Such concern can be taken as a reflection of the moral antipathy some exhibit towards current practices of withdrawing treatment—that is, when withdrawal of treatment is arguably (...) in the best interests of patients—and a rejection of the purported normative insignificance of withholding and withdrawing. Given that the relevance of the psychological attitudes of some healthcare professionals to the moral assessment of withdrawing and withholding treatment continues to be debated, it would seem that some thought should be given to the introduction and implementation of reverse triage decisions in response to a pandemic. This brief paper will consider if provision should be made for healthcare professionals to conscientiously refuse to participate in reverse triage. (shrink)

In October 1862, the Duke of Argyll published an article in the Edinburgh Review entitled “The Supernatural.” In it, Argyll argued that contrary to the prevailing assumption, miracles were “natural” rather than “supernatural” acts of God. This reconceptualization was a response to the controversial publication Essays and Reviews (1860), which challenged orthodox Biblical doctrine. Argyll's characterization of a miracle was not novel; a number of early modern Newtonian thinkers had advanced the same argument for similar reasons. New in this nineteenth-century (...) reconceptualization, however, were (1) the recent geological, physical, and evolutionary developments and (2) the introduction of German higher criticism. Argyll and the neo-Newtonians thus attempted to construct a philosophico-theological alternative, which would constitute a middle-position between the traditional acceptance and liberal rejection of miracles. I argue finally that 21st-century debates on divine action in fact exist as part of a longer historical tradition that dates back to Augustine. (shrink)

A discussion conducted by Brubacher to see the fifth grade perspective on lacking accountability in an educational setting, along with a common link to philosophical grounds.

Outbreaks of epidemics like Ebola trigger difficult ethical challenges for civilian and military health care personnel. This book offers theoretical reflections combined with reports from recent military and NGO missions in the field. The authors of this volume focus on military medical ethics adding a distinct voice to the topic of epidemics and infectious diseases. While military health care personnel are always crucially involved during disaster relief operations and large-scale public health emergencies, most of the current literature treats ethical issues (...) during epidemics from a more general perspective without taking into account the specifics of the military context. The contributions in this volume provide first-hand insights into some of the ethical issues encountered by military health care personnel in missions during the Ebola outbreak in 2014/2015. This practical perspective is complimented by academic analyses and theoretical reflections on ethical issues associated with epidemics. (shrink)