Inspired by Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), we develop an argument—the “Scriptural Argument Against Dogmatic Protestantism” (SAADP)—that Protestants who accept the doctrine of sola scriptura cannot reasonably hold that Catholic and Eastern churches are in doctrinal error. If sola scriptura is true and Catholic and Eastern Churches have fallen into error, it is improbable that any Protestant can reliably form true beliefs about controversial points of Christian doctrine, including sola scriptura or suggestions that Catholic and Eastern Christians are in (...) error. We evaluate potential responses to SADDP, considering how SAADP should affect ecumenical doctrinal debates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Got Ethics? Envisioning and Evaluating the Future of Our Guild and DisciplineStacey M. Floyd-Thomas (bio)IN LIGHT OF THE SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS’ TWENTY-First Century and 2020 Initiatives, several ad hoc committees and working groups have examined the fate and future of both the Society and the field of Christian ethics. The stated purposes of these initiatives and their correlative task forces were to think about a new era that (...) is ostensibly different from the state of the discipline of Christian ethics and the demographics of the Society in the past. In effect, each initiative was charged with addressing the evolving needs of our field, particularly giving attention to our mission, membership, meeting, media, management, and mass appeal. There has also been considerable attention paid to our relevance in an academy and society where underrepresented groups of color are no longer minorities in the demographic composition of the United States. Further, numerous discussions have focused on the shifting dynamics of a global and postsecular age. Each initiative therefore chose to focus its attention on the practices of the Society in order to expand our ethical conversations with ethicists in other cultures, traditions, and institutional settings. Finally, each initiative executed its own inventory, and recommendations to the board and membership emerged.The 2016 preconference workshop titled “Got Ethics?” was a roundtable discussion that was an effort to make good on the hard work of those initiatives and the good intentions of the SCE board. Herein four ethicists—namely, Gloria Albrecht, Agnes Chiu, Gary Dorrien, and Miguel De La Torre, joined me in the quest to revisit the implications that a diverse demographic and discipline as well as the developing global context may pose for the future of our scholarship and society. Each panelist stated hard truths for these troubling times that poignantly mark both the crises of theological education and the church, and even more urgently for the future of our discipline and our Society as Christian ethicists. [End Page 195]Gary Dorrien offered a rigorous overview of the history of Christian social ethics that coalesced around the ever-growing gap that threatens its viability:Today, as in previous generations, some ethicists work hard at straddling the divide between social justice activism and disciplinary scholarship. For many of us, our purview consists entirely of ethicists fitting this description. All of us up here work hard at doing both things and we struggle with the trade-offs of doing so. I have completed my assignment and my time is up, but I have a cautionary conclusion. Unlike previous generations of social ethicists, we cannot assume that our field has a future. The existence of our field is in jeopardy except in Catholic institutions. On the road I have talked with many academic administrators who are skeptical that their schools need to teach anything called Christian ethics or comparative religious ethics or social ethics. We cannot settle for merely asserting that our work is relevant and that our field has an established standing. The weight of presumption is shifting against us. The field is shrinking, and we must prove that our work is substantial and relevant.1As Dorrien traces the history of social ethics as a discipline, beginning with the rise of the Social Gospel and its modern social consciousness, he also causes us to reflect on our postmodern consciousness as well. Social ethics began with black and white Social Gospel ministers who preached radical social change; however, Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism tempered this radical vision, moving the discipline in a more moderate direction. Today social ethics remains in a crisis of identity and relevance, caught between the need to establish itself as a discipline in its own right and the ethical exigency of speaking directly to social injustices.As an emerging moral theologian, Agnes Chiu echoes Dorrien’s perspective by asserting thatChristian ethics is a discipline that intersects and calls for Christian engagement with the world. It enables Christianity to be relevant because it deals with issues with which the world wrestles such as justice, conflicts, and human dignity. Theologians have long warned against the danger of irrelevancy and indifference by both our discipline and the... (shrink)

If you were to take a time machine and travel back to the 1980s, Catholic epistemology would look drastically different than it does today, at least in analytic circles. One of those drastic changes relates to whether Catholic epistemology is consistent with Reformed epistemology. Another issue relates to whether St. Thomas Aquinas was a classical evidentialist. In this paper, I survey recent developments in Catholic epistemology. I do this by first looking at Gregory Stacey's recent work arguing the Catholic (...) Church's teaching on faith is best situated in a Reformed epistemological framework. I then engage decades old objections to Reformed epistemology from a Catholic perspective. I respond to these objections partly by surveying recent work by Catholic epistemologists. The paper then takes a turn to look at the recent scholarship on Aquinas' epistemology. I show that there is now an emerging consensus that Aquinas belongs not to a hard evidentialist camp as it was previously thought, but rather an externalist friendly tradition. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical literature challenges philosophers’ reliance on intuitions as evidence based on the fact that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and socio-economic status. Our research extends this challenge, investigating Lehrer’s appeal to the Truetemp Case as evidence against reliabilism. We found that intuitions in response to this case vary according to whether, and which, other thought experiments are considered first. Our results show that compared to subjects who receive the Truetemp Case (...) first, subjects first presented with a clear case of knowledge are less willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case, and subjects first presented with a clear case of nonknowledge are more willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case. We contend that this instability undermines the supposed evidential status of these intuitions, such that philosophers who deal in intuitions can no longer rest comfortably in their armchairs. (shrink)

Though stereotype threat is most well-known for its ability to hinder performance, it actually has a wide range of effects. For instance, it can also cause stress, anxiety, and doubt. These additional effects are as important and as central to the phenomenon as its effects on performance are. As a result, stereotype threat has more far-reaching implications than many philosophers have realized. In particular, the phenomenon has a number of unexplored “epistemic effects.” These are effects on our epistemic lives—i.e., the (...) ways we engage with the world as actual and potential knowers. In this paper I flesh out the implications of a specific epistemic effect: self-doubt. Certain kinds of self-doubt can deeply affect our epistemic lives by exacerbating moments of epistemic injustice and by interacting with pernicious ideals of rationality. In both cases, self-doubt can lead to a person questioning their own humanity or full personhood. Since we have reasons to believe that stereotype threat can trigger this kind of self-doubt, then stereotype threat can affect various aspects of ourselves besides our ability to perform to our potential. It can also affect our very sense of self. (shrink)

We critique two popular philosophical definitions of intellectual humility: the “low concern for status” and the “limitations-owning.” accounts. Based upon our analysis, we offer an alternative working definition of intellectual humility: the virtue of accurately tracking what one could non-culpably take to be the positive epistemic status of one’s own beliefs. We regard this view of intellectual humility both as a virtuous mean between intellectual arrogance and diffidence and as having advantages over other recent conceptions of intellectual humility. After defending (...) this view, we sketch remaining questions and issues that may bear upon the psychological treatment of intellectual humility such as whether evidence will help determine how this construct relates to general social humility on the one hand, and intellectual traits such as open-mindedness, curiosity, and honesty on the other. (shrink)

Under the umbrella of the burgeoning neurotransdisciplines, scholars are using the principles and research methodologies of their primary and secondary fields to examine developments in neuroimaging, neuromodulation and psychopharmacology. The path for advanced scholarship at the intersection of law and neuroscience may clear if work across the disciplines is collected and reviewed and outstanding and debated issues are identified and clarified. In this article, I organize, examine and refine a narrow class of the burgeoning neurotransdiscipline scholarship; that is, scholarship at (...) the interface of law and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). (shrink)

Digital Media: Human–Technology Connection examines the technologically textured world through case studies that illustrate the way humans and technology connect with each other and the world. An interdisciplinary array of sources from philosophy, postphenomenology, philosophy of technology, media studies, media ecology, and film studies shows that digital media and its content are not neutral. This technology textures the world in multiple and varied ways that transform human abilities, augment experience, and pattern the world.

The popular media has repeatedly pointed to pride as one of the key factors motivating leaders to behave unethically. However, given the devastating consequences that leader unethical behavior may have, a more scientific account of the role of pride is warranted. The present study differentiates between authentic and hubristic pride and assesses its impact on leader ethical behavior, while taking into consideration the extent to which leaders find it important to their self-concept to be a moral person. In two experiments (...) we found that with higher levels of moral identity, authentically proud leaders are more likely to engage in ethical behavior than hubristically proud leaders, and that this effect is mediated by leaders’ motivation to act selflessly. A field survey among organizational leaders corroborated that moral identity may bring the positive effect of authentic pride and the negative effect of hubristic pride on leader ethical behavior to the forefront. (shrink)

The problem of evil is an ideal topic for experimental philosophy. Suffering--which is at the heart of most prominent formulations of the problem of evil--is a universal human experience and has been the topic of careful reflection for millennia. However, interpretations of suffering and how it bears on the existence of God are tremendously diverse and nuanced. We might immediately find ourselves wondering why (and how!) something so universal might be understood in so many different ways. Why does suffering push (...) some people toward atheism while pushing others toward deeper faith? What cultural, psychological, or sociological differences account for this diversity of responses? And, importantly, what light might this diversity of responses shed on the problem of evil and how it has been formulated by philosophers in recent years? The primary aim of this paper is to highlight how the tools and resources of experimental philosophy might be fruitfully applied to the problem of evil. In the first section, we review some recent work in this area and describe the current state of this emergent body of literature. In the second section, we review the broader and more recent theoretical developments on the problem of evil. Finally, in the final section, we outline some potential areas of future empirical research that we see as especially promising given those developments. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to highlight, at least in short, how the resources of experimental philosophy could be fruitfully applied to the evidential problem of evil. To do this, we will consider two of the most influential and archetypal formulations of the problem: William L. Rowe’s article, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” (1979). and Paul Draper’s article, “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists” (1989). We will consider the relevance of experimental philosophy (...) to Rowe’s 1979 argument in §1 and to Draper’s 1989 argument in §2. But in addition to exploring how the resources of experimental philosophy might apply to the problem of evil, it is also worth exploring what broader empirical factors might contribute to people having the intuitions that have—from someone’s affective state to someone’s need for closure. In §3, we want to very briefly elucidate a few areas where the psychology of philosophy might be productively explored in future empirical research. (shrink)

If asked whether stereotypes about people have the potential to help overcome injustice, I suspect that many think there is a clear-cut answer to this question, and that answer is “no.” Many stereotypes do have harmful effects, from the blatantly dehumanizing to the more subtly disruptive. Reasonably then, a common attitude toward stereotypes is that they are at best shallow, superficial assumptions, and at worst degrading and hurtful vehicles of oppression. I argue that on a broad account of stereotypes, this (...) is not is not an inherent feature of them nor a foregone conclusion about them. At least some positive stereotypes have the potential to help resist certain forms of epistemic injustice--though they likely can only play a limited or temporary role in this regard. The takeaway is that we should approach moral and epistemic analyses of stereotypes by thinking about them as (crude) cognitive tools, and as such, focus on what these tools are being used for, and what their actual impact is. (shrink)

While experimental philosophy has fruitfully applied the tools and resources of psychology and cognitive science to debates within epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, relatively little work has been done within philosophy of religion. And this isn’t due to a lack of need! Philosophers of religion frequently rely on empirical claims that can be either verified or disproven, but without exploring whether they are. And philosophers of religion frequently appeal to intuitions which may vary wildly according to education level, theological background, etc., (...) without concern for whether or not the psychological mechanisms that underwrite those intuitions are broadly shared or reliable. In this chapter, I explore some of the fruit and possibilities for the emerging field of experimental philosophy of religion. First, in Section 1, I will elucidate some of the historical grounding for experimental philosophy of religion. Then in Section 2, I briefly consider how the tools and resources of experimental philosophy might be fruitfully applied to a seminal topic within philosophy of religion, namely, the problem of evil. In Section 3, we’ll sketch some broader applications of experimental philosophy of religion. (shrink)

BackgroundPersonal health information and biospecimens are valuable research resources essential for the advancement of medicine and protected by national standards and provincial statutes. Research ethics and privacy standards attempt to balance individual interests with societal interests. However these standards may not reflect public opinion or preferences. The purpose of this study was to assess the opinions and preferences of patients with kidney disease about the use of their health information and biospecimens for medical research.MethodsA 45-item survey was distributed to a (...) convenience sample of patients at an outpatient clinic in a large urban centre. The survey briefly addressed sociodemographic and illness characteristics. Opinions were sought on the research use of health information and biospecimens including consent preferences.ResultsTwo hundred eleven of 400 distributed surveys were completed. Respondents were generally supportive of medical research and trusting of researchers. Many respondents supported the use of their information and biospecimens for health research and also preferred consent be sought for use of health information and biospecimens. Some supported the use of their information and biospecimens for research without consent. There were significant differences in the opinions people offered regarding the research use of biospecimens compared to health information. Some respondent perspectives about consent were at odds with current regulatory and legal standards.ConclusionsClinical health data and biospecimens are valuable research resources, critical to the advancement of medicine. Use of these data for research requires balancing respect for individual autonomy, privacy and the societal interest in the greater good. Incongruence between some respondent perspectives and the regulatory standards suggest both a need for public education and review of legislation to increase understanding and ensure the public’s trust is maintained. (shrink)

Philosophical and technoculture studies surrounding the existential understanding of the human–technology–world experience have seen a slow but steady increase that makes a turn to material hermeneutics in the second decade of the twenty-first century (Ihde in Postphenomenology: essays in the postmodern context. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1993; Capurro in AI Soc 25(1):35–42, 2010; Romele in Digital hermeneutics: philosophical investigations in new media and technologies. Routledge, Abingdon, 2020; among others). This renewed focus makes sense because human–technology–world experiences need to be interpreted. (...) And many of these are more complicated to study, precisely because technology is at the root of the experiences. One interesting subset of technologies is media technologies, also called digital media, which intertwines the device and the content to mediate together in the world (Irwin in Digital media: human-technology connection. Lexington Books, Lanham, 2016). Visual media technologies and media content, together, through what is called moving image technologies, create virtual role-playing, virtual and augmented reality, video games, and social media focused worlds that have become central experiences in contemporary culture. Just as image-based scientific instruments read the world in different ways, so to do these visual mediated experiences. How might this comingled “reading” of technology explain the digital film language and experience? I contend that understanding the existential “early” film experience helps understand the new age of cinema, with implications for digital media, digital representation of the visual, and technoscience and technoculture studies. The material hermeneutics perspective called postphenomenology is one way to study these visually focused human–technology–world perceptual and interpretive experiences. Don Ihde’s methodological framework (1990, 1993, 1996, 2002, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2019) is both an idea from technoscience studies and a set of nuanced vocabulary that helps to explore and reveal variations, patterns, and trajectories of the whole-body experience of technology. This use case will first explore traditional cinema and then the “new age” term “moving image”, to learn more about this complicated and radically transforming technological experience. Work by Don Ihde and Vivian Sobchack is considered. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical literature challenges philosophers’ reliance on intuitions as evidence based on the fact that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and socio‐economic status. Our research extends this challenge, investigating Lehrer’s appeal to the Truetemp Case as evidence against reliabilism. We found that intuitions in response to this case vary according to whether, and which, other thought‐experiments are considered first. Our results show that compared to subjects who receive the Truetemp Case first, (...) subjects first presented with a clear case of knowledge are less willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case, and subjects first presented with a clear case of non‐knowledge are more willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case. We contend that this instability undermines the supposed evidential status of these intuitions, such that philosophers who deal in intuitions can no longer rest comfortably in their armchairs. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce posits that the self is known only through negation—by the knower finding out that he or she is wrong. Even more importantly he considers a man to be nothing more than a sign. This is existentially inadequate. In this chapter, Stacey Ake shows the shortcomings of Peirce’s Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness in creating human identity by utilizing and developing Walker Percy’s notion of Fourthness in order to show that there is a positive way to create identity (...) and, more importantly, community. (shrink)

Beginning with a sustained analysis of Seneca's theory of monarchy in the treatise De clementia, in this text Peter Stacey traces the formative impact of ancient Roman political philosophy upon medieval and Renaissance thinking about princely government on the Italian peninsula from the time of Frederick II to the early modern period. Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince offers a systematic reconstruction of the pre-humanist and humanist history of the genre of political reflection known as the mirror-for-princes tradition - (...) a tradition which, as Stacey shows, is indebted to Seneca's speculum above all other classical accounts of the virtuous prince - and culminates with a comprehensive and controversial reading of the greatest work of renaissance political theory, Machiavelli's The Prince. Peter Stacey brings to light a story which has been lost from view in recent accounts of the Renaissance debt to classical antiquity, providing a radically revisionist account of the history of the Renaissance prince. (shrink)

This reflection focuses on lived experience with the Technological Other (Quasi-Other) while pursuing creative video and film activities. In the last decade work in the video and film industries has been transformed through digital manipulation and enhancement brought about by increasingly sophisticated computer technologies. The rules of the craft have not changed but the relationship the artist/editor experiences with these new digital tools has brought about increasingly interesting existential experiences in the creative process. How might this new way of being (...) with technology change the craft and the crafter? Through a phenomenological understanding of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Don Ihde, and their contributions to the human-technology conversation, this essay moves to reveal the lived experiences of artists/editors who use computers to create by means of film and digital video formats. Exploring notions of lived space, lived body, lived time, and lived relation through the computer interface allows for digging deeper into inhabiting technology and experiencing the Technological Other. (shrink)

Symmetric informationally complete quantum measurements, or SICs, are mathematically intriguing structures, which in practice have turned out to exhibit even more symmetry than their definition requires. Recently, Zhu classified all the SICs whose symmetry groups act doubly transitively. I show that lattices of integers in the complex numbers, the quaternions and the octonions yield the key parts of these symmetry groups.

This article engages legal positivism conceived of as a political project rather than as a descriptive account of law. Jeremy Waldron’s ‘democratic jurisprudence’ represents such a politicized legal positivism—a normative argument for legal positivism rather than a non-normative claim that legal positivism is true. Unsurprisingly, the essential institutional elements of this democratic jurisprudence turn out to be the familiar features of classical legal positivism, and the case Waldron makes against judicial review grows out of his overarching political position. But, consequently, (...) if there are reasons to doubt the strength of Waldron’s case against judicial review, there are surely reasons to doubt the normative bases of his case for positivism, and in turn, descriptive or conceptual positivism more generally. This article investigates this claim, noting that Waldron’s political case for positivism is based on Kantian notions about moral autonomy given circumstances of moral disagreement, but that Waldron’s conclusions about the role of judges undermine both these Kantian foundations and the aims of democratic jurisprudence. While Waldron’s arguments revive a tradition of political positivism that goes back to Bentham, engagement with those arguments suggests that legal positivism ultimately must embrace a radical democratic form of anti-constitutionalism. (shrink)

Throughout the Middle Ages the expectation of eventual Jewish conversion lay at the center of traditional Christian justifications for protecting the Jewish populations which lived within their midst. St. Augustine and later Pope Gregory the Great enunciated a rationale for Christian protection of Jews, based loosely on Romans 11.25–29, that stressed the historical importance of the Jews as living witnesses to the Old Testament prophecies that confirmed Jesus' messiahship and that foresaw the Jews' eventual conversion to Christianity as a harbinger (...) of the end of days. As has been frequently pointed out, however, this was a theological view formulated much more for a Christian audience than a Jewish one. Nor was it a view that encouraged general campaigns directed at converting Jews en masse to Christianity. (shrink)

This article examines the privacy and security issues associated with mobile application-mediated health research, concentrating in particular on research conducted or participated in by independent scientists, citizen scientists, and patient researchers. Building on other articles in this issue that examine state research laws and state data protection laws as possible sources of privacy and security protections for mobile research participants, this article focuses on the lack of application of federal standards to mobile application-mediated health research. As discussed in more detail (...) below, the voluminous and diverse data collected by some independent scientists who use mobile applications to conduct health research may be at risk for unregulated privacy and security breaches, leading to dignitary, psychological, and economic harms for which participants have few legally enforceable rights or remedies under current federal law. Federal lawmakers may wish to consider enacting new legislation that would require otherwise unregulated health data holders to implement reasonable data privacy, security, and breach notification measures. (shrink)

Advances in science and technology frequently raise new ethical, legal, and social issues, and developments in neuroscience and neuroimaging technology are no exception. Within the field of neuroethics, leading scientists, ethicists, and humanists are exploring the implications of efforts to image, study, treat, and enhance the human brain.This article focuses on one aspect of neuroethics: the confidentiality and privacy implications of advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging. Following a brief orientation to fMRI and an overview of some of its current (...) and proposed uses, this article highlights key confidentiality and privacy issues raised by fMRI in the contexts of health care, research, employment, insurance, criminal justice, litigation, and cognitive privacy. (shrink)

Advances in neuroscience have implications for criminal law as well as civil and regulatory law, including health, disability, and benefit law. The role of the behavioral and brain sciences in health insurance claims, the mental health parity debate, and disability proceedings is examined.

Changing the Wor(l)d draws on feminist publishing, postmodern theory and feminist autobiography to powerfully critique both liberal feminism and scholarship on the women's movement, arguing that both ignore feminism's unique contributions to social analysis and politics. These contributions recognize the power of discourse, the diversity of women's experiences, and the importance of changing the world through changing consciousness. Young critiques social movement theory and five key studies of the women's movement, arguing that gender oppression can be understood only in relation (...) to race, sexuality, class and ethnicity; and that feminist activism has always gone beyond the realm of public policy to emphasize improving women's circumstances through transforming discourse and consciousness. Young examines feminist discursive politics, critiques social science methodology, and proposes an alternative approach to understanding the women's movement. This approach explores feminist publishing and feminist autobiographical writing as examples of discursive activism with broadly subversive potential. (shrink)

Julia Kristeva is one of the most creative and prolific writers to address the personal, social, and political trials of our times. Linguist, psychoanalyst, social and cultural theorist, and novelist, Kristeva's broad interdisciplinary appeal has impacted areas across the humanities and social sciences. S. K. Keltner's book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the breadth of Kristeva's work. In an original and insightful analysis, Keltner presents Kristeva's thought as the coherent development and elaboration of a complex, multidimensional threshold constitutive of (...) meaning and subjectivity. The ‘threshold' indicates Kristeva's primary sphere of concern, the relationship between the speaking being and its particular social and historical conditions; and Kristeva's interdisciplinary approach. Kristeva's vision, Keltner argues, opens a unique perspective within contemporary discourses attentive to issues of meaning, subjectivity, and social and political life. By emphasizing Kristeva's attention to the permeable borders of psychic and social life, Keltner offers innovative readings of the concepts most widely discussed in Kristeva scholarship: the semiotic and symbolic, abjection, love, and loss. She also provides new interpretations of some of the most controversial issues surrounding Kristeva's work, including Kristeva's conceptions of intimacy, social and cultural difference, and Oedipal subjectivity, by contextualizing them within her methodological approach and oeuvre as a whole. _Julia Kristeva: Thresholds_ is an engaging and accessible introduction to Kristeva's theoretical and fictional works that will be of interest to both students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Inspired by the third chapter of Anselm's Proslogion, twentieth century philosophers including Charles Hartshorne and Alvin Plantinga developed “modal” ontological arguments for the existence of God. Such arguments use modal logic to infer God's existence from the premises that (i) God's existence is possible and (ii) if God exists, He exists necessarily. Like other ontological arguments, modal arguments have won few converts to theism; many commentators consider them question‐begging or liable to parody. This article details how recent attempts to defend (...) these arguments have tried to overcome these difficulties by drawing on modern accounts of the epistemology and metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

: The nature/culture dualism has long been criticized for constructing social beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that fail to respect and value the natural world. One possible way to bridge the divide between the human and non-human worlds is the process of identification. Orangutans, an endangered species found in Indonesia and Malaysia, enable individuals to bridge, connect, and identify with a seemingly separate natural world. Through identification with orangutans, humans come to reevaluate their own perspectives and dichotomous ways of thinking about (...) their relationships with nature. (shrink)

The Christian doctrine of Purgatory (CDP) is resurgent across confessional divides. Many philosophers and theologians have endorsed the Sanctification Account of CDP, according to which Purgatory provides the post-mortem moral purification required for believers to enter Heaven. The Sanctification Account can be embraced by Protestant and Orthodox Christians, who have historically disavowed CDP. However, its proponents typically ignore or repudiate traditional Catholic explanations of Purgatory’s purpose. Consequently, despite claims that Catholic doctrine merely affirms the Sanctification Account, there is a fresh (...) challenge to CDP’s ecumenical reception. In this paper, I offer a new understanding of Purgatory – the Application Account – which should prove acceptable to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. I further show how the Application Account can incorporate Eleonore Stump’s work on atonement to provide a theological development of Catholic teaching on Purgatory which avoids prominent criticisms of the latter. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical analysis of early-20th-century American postcards, focusing on the portrayal of black and white children as an aesthetic tool of white supremacy and pedophilic racist pleasures. These representations not only reflected but also perpetuated colonial ideologies and racial stereotypes, directly influencing educational practices and policies, and contributing to a social environment where discrimination and sexualization of children was normalized. The article begins with the contrast in the depiction of white and black children, revealing a pattern in (...) which white children were often fetishized as embodiments of innocence and purity, while black children were subjected to pornified portrayals that reinforced negative stereotypes and sought to ensure the continued intergenerational subjugation of African Americans in the afterlife of slavery. A significant aspect of this analysis delves into the role of the zealous purity crusader Anthony Comstock in shaping societal views on childhood innocence and obscenity during the Progressive Era. As a U.S. postal inspector, Comstock wielded influence over public discourse and policy, particularly through his campaigns against the distribution of what he considered morally objectionable representations. This examination extends to the racial implications of Comstock’s adult-centric actions, exploring how they contributed to the differential treatment of black and white children in both media representations and broader societal contexts. The article argues that these images were not merely passive reflections of societal beliefs; rather, they were active tools used to shape and influence the educational and socialization processes of children, and they contributed to the perpetuation of Jim Crow violence, which was manifested through the sexual assault, castration, and lynching of black youth. Furthermore, this essay examines the broader socio-historical context in which racist and pedophilic images were produced and circulated. These postcards are still trafficked today under the false designation of ‘Black Memorabilia,’ reaching significant prices as vintage collector’s items, but the article reframes them as a genre of child pornography. This perspective critically challenges prevailing narratives that may sanitize or downplay the exploitative and violent nature of these images. This essay urges a reconsideration of these consumer items’ historical significance as instruments intricately complicit in sustaining colonial structures and ideologies surrounding childhood innocence in North America. Within this analytical framework, the dehumanization of black children through pedophilic pornography reflects a long heritage of anti-child violence in Western traditions and the colonial strategy of exploiting children of color as a lucrative mechanism for profit and libidinal pleasure. (shrink)

Dans les discussions concernant la sous-représentation des femmes dans le domaine de la philosophie professionnelle, ceux et celles qui sont sceptiques quant à l’explication par la discrimination suggèrent souvent que les différences de genre dans les intérêts constituent une autre hypothèse possible. Certain.e.s croient que si les intérêts différents des femmes expliquaient la sous-représentation, les interventions suggérées par l’hypothèse de la discrimination ne seraient pas nécessaires, voire seraient risquées. Je maintiens qu’on doit considérer la façon dont les stéréotypes exerceraient une (...) influence sur les intérêts, et que ce faisant, on peut offrir une évaluation plus équilibrée des risques découlant des interventions proposées. (shrink)

In this exploratory paper, I consider how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might contribute to the failure of testimonial exchanges. In §1, I will briefly highlight four broad ways a testimonial exchange might fail. In §2, I will very briefly review the nature of epistemic injustice. In §3, I will explore how both epistemic injustice and intellectual humility can lead to failures in testimonial exchange, and I’ll conclude by suggesting how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might be related.

While the NSIGHT program was driven by a desire to define and gather data about both the benefits and harms of introducing genomic sequencing into the care of newborns, it remains to be seen how much influence these data will have in shaping the use of this technology in newborns. Ultimately, three additional forces—commercial interests, the technological imperative, and advocates—may play a significant role in shaping the use of sequencing in newborns. Policy‐makers and clinicians should be aware of the effects (...) of these additional forces when considering the appropriate use of this technology in clinical practice and public health screening programs. (shrink)

In this chapter: I distinguish the existential problem of divine hiddenness from the evidential problem of divine hiddenness. The former being primarily concerned with the apparent hiddenness of a personal God in the lives of believers amidst terrible suffering. The latter being primarily concerned with the apparent hiddenness of God being evidence against God’s existence. In the first section, I highlight the basic contours of the evidential problem of divine hiddenness, and suggested that the argument rests on two important assumptions: (...) the perfectly loving assumption and the no-fault assumption. In the second section, a few possible responses to the evidential problem of divine hiddenness were considered, which center on rejecting either the perfectly loving assumption or the no-fault assumption. (shrink)

How is it possible for unconscious states to function as reasons? Two challenges are considered—one concerning the apparent dependence of normativity on self-knowledge, the other concerning the apparent irrationality of the unconscious. Both challenges are addressed through a discussion of 'spatial reasoning', which helps to make sense of 'emotional reasoning' as well.