Sometimes epistemologists theorize about belief, a tripartite attitude on which one can believe, withhold belief, or disbelieve a proposition. In other cases, epistemologists theorize about credence, a fine-grained attitude that represents one’s subjective probability or confidence level toward a proposition. How do these two attitudes relate to each other? This article explores the relationship between belief and credence in two categories: descriptive and normative. It then explains the broader significance of the belief-credence connection and concludes with general lessons from the (...) debate thus far. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article(s): Jackson, E., Philosophy Compass 15/6 (2020) pp. 1-13 10.1111/phc3.12668.x.

Belief is a familiar attitude: taking something to be the case or regarding it as true. But we are more confident in some of our beliefs than in others. For this reason, many epistemologists appeal to a second attitude, called credence, similar to a degree of confidence. This raises the question: how do belief and credence relate to each other? On a belief-first view, beliefs are more fundamental and credences are a species of beliefs, e.g. beliefs about probabilities. On a (...) credence-first view, credences are more fundamental and beliefs are a species of credence, e.g. credence above some threshold. In this thesis, I develop and defend a third view that I call belief-credence dualism. On this view, belief and credence are independent, equally fundamental attitudes, and neither reduces to the other. I begin by motivating the project: why should we care about the relationship between belief and credence? I argue it has broad implications for many debates in epistemology and beyond. Then, I defend dualism, arguing that it can explain features of our mental lives that a credence-first view and a belief-first view cannot. I also argue that dualism has attractive, interesting implications when applied to the pragmatic encroachment debate. Finally, I explore implications of dualism, both for the nature of evidence and how faith might go beyond the evidence but nonetheless be epistemically rational. I conclude that the human mind is, in some ways, complex, but we should be happy with this conclusion also long as each mental state we posit has a clear role to play. (shrink)

This critical study will cover studies in being by F. Van Steenberghen, G. Smith, J. F. Anderson, and G. Esser. Yet if each metaphysician has such difficulty in understanding and in expressing the meaning of "being," one who is comparing these different expressions may be excused if he fail to give full justice to each in that comparison. It can only be hoped that in the attempt to understand these worthwhile expositions of the meaning of "being" one may aid in (...) penetrating that difficult notion and so advance to a deeper and more unified understanding. (shrink)

Background: Healthcare providers who are accountable for patient care safety and quality but who are not empowered to actualize them experience moral distress. Interventions to mitigate moral distress in the healthcare organization are needed. Objective: To evaluate the effect on moral distress and clinician empowerment of an established, health-system-wide intervention, Moral Distress Consultation. Methods: A quasi-experimental, mixed methods study using pre/post surveys, structured interviews, and evaluation of consult themes was used. Consults were requested by staff when moral distress was present. (...) The purpose of consultation is to identify the causes of moral distress, barriers to action, and strategies to improve the situation. Intervention participants were those who attended a moral distress consult. Control participants were staff surveyed prior to the consult. Interviews were conducted after the consult with willing participants and unit managers. Moral distress was measured using the Moral Distress Thermometer. Empowerment was measured using the Global Empowerment Scale. Results: Twenty-one consults were conducted. Analysis included 116 intervention and 30 control surveys, and 11 interviews. A small but significant decrease was found among intervention participants, especially intensive care staff. Empowerment was unchanged. Interview themes support the consult service as an effective mode for open discussion of difficult circumstances and an important aspect of a healthy work environment. Conclusions: Moral distress consultation is an organization-wide mechanism for addressing moral distress. Consultation does not resolve moral distress but helps staff identify strategies to improve the situation. Further studies including follow up may elucidate consultation effectiveness. (shrink)

This article attempts to locate the solicitor-advocacy reforms in the UK in the context of wider New Right led reforms of the welfare state and suggests that such reforms are part of a broader package aimed at weakening social democracy, encouraging the use of the market as an allocation mechanism and instilling 'efficiency' within and control over the professions. On the basis of interviews with organizational clients in Scotland, it is argued that the reforms may have a significant impact upon (...) the junior Bar and that while they may ultimately benefit corporate clients they are likely to bring further disadvantage to individual clients who are already weak within the professional-client relationship. (shrink)

Vector autoregression (VAR) modeling allows probing bidirectional relationships in gender/sex development and may support hypothesis testing following multi-modal data collection. We show VAR in three lights: supporting a hypothesis, rejecting a hypothesis, and opening up new questions. To illustrate these capacities of VAR, we reanalyzed longitudinal data that recorded dyadic mother-infant interactions for 15 boys and 15 girls aged 3 to 11 months of age. We examined monthly counts of 15 infant behaviors and 13 maternal behaviors (Seifert et al., 1994). (...) VAR models demonstrated that infant crawling predicted a subsequently close feedback loop from mothers of boys but a subsequently open ended, branched response from mothers of girls. A different finding showed that boys’ standing independently later predicted significant later increases of four maternal behaviors: rocking/jiggling, lifting, affectionate touching, and stimulation of infant gross-motor activity. In contrast, crawling by girls led mothers to later decrease the same maternal behaviors. Thus, VAR might allow us to identify how mothers respond differently during daily interactions depending on infant gender/sex. The present work intends mainly to showcase the VAR method in the specific context of the empirical study of gender/sex development. (shrink)

Religious leaders face numerous mental health challenges, and prior research suggests that some experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder due to work-related experiences. This study employed a diverse sample of 274 religious leaders to qualitatively describe the types of work-related experiences they identify as particularly stressful or overwhelming, assess the prevalence of PTSD symptoms associated with these experiences, and test hypothesized associations between PTSD symptoms and narcissism. The study found that the stressful experiences reported typically involved relational conflict, having limited (...) resources, or caring for people suffering. Over half of the sample endorsed symptoms that were above the cutoff for a clinical concern for PTSD, and PTSD symptoms were significantly associated with symptoms of both vulnerable narcissism and grandiose narcissism. Practical implications for the ongoing formation and support of religious leaders are discussed. (shrink)

Women's lack of participation in science and technology careers is foreshadowed by their low participation in these undergraduate majors. Kanter's theory of tokenism suggests that the effects of being in the numerical minority are responsible for women's absence from the science and technology pipeline. This article uses data from a sample of undergraduate women at a large state university to consider the effects of gender-disproportionate enrollment on women's persistence in majors. Many of the male-dominated majors were in science and technology (...) fields. The authors tested Kanter's theory of tokenism, including the effects of sex ratio in the major, performance pressure, and role entrapment on undergraduate women's likelihood of persistence. In support of Kanter's model, the authors found that performance pressure has a significant, negative effect on likelihood of persistence. However, contrary to Kanter's argument, women in more gender-balanced majors were most likely to be contemplating a change in major. (shrink)

Although moral distress is now a well-recognized phenomenon among all of the healthcare professions, few evidence-based strategies have been published to address it. In morally distressing situations, the “presenting problem” may be a particular patient situation, but most often signals a deeper unit- or system-centered issue. This article describes one institution’s ongoing effort to address moral distress in its providers. We discuss the development and evaluation of the Moral Distress Consultation Service, an interprofessional, unit/system-oriented approach to addressing and ameliorating moral (...) distress. (shrink)