D. Z. Phillips holds that we cannot ask a general philosophical question about the existence of God because we discover what it means for God to exist only from within particular linguistic contexts, especially those of prayer and worship. This raises the suspicion that God’s existence therefore depends on a particular language-use, as does the existence of cultural objects like prices or the equator. The article suggests that Phillips’s position overlooks the peculiar status of other persons in our discourse, and (...) the part they play in establishing a basic sense of “existence.” Closer consideration of this aspect of our language-use can take us beyond the limits of Phillips’s approach, and reopen the question of God’s existence in a strong sense. (shrink)

D. Z. Phillips holds that we cannot ask a general philosophical question about the existence of God because we discover what it means for God to exist only from within particular linguistic contexts, especially those of prayer and worship. This raises the suspicion that God’s existence therefore depends on a particular language-use, as does the existence of cultural objects like prices or the equator. The article suggests that Phillips’s position overlooks the peculiar status of other persons in our discourse, and (...) the part they play in establishing a basic sense of “existence.” Closer consideration of this aspect of our language-use can take us beyond the limits of Phillips’s approach, and reopen the question of God’s existence in a strong sense. (shrink)

Introduction: Schools have become a primary setting for providing mental health care to youths in the U.S. School-based interventions have proliferated, but their effects on mental health and academic outcomes remain understudied. In this study we will implement and evaluate the effects of a flexible multidiagnostic treatment called Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, or Conduct Problems on students' mental health and academic outcomes.Methods and Analysis: This is an assessor-blind randomized controlled effectiveness trial conducted across five (...) school districts. School clinicians are randomized to either MATCH or usual care treatment conditions. The target sample includes 168 youths referred for mental health services and presenting with elevated symptoms of anxiety, depression, trauma, and/or conduct problems. Clinicians randomly assigned to MATCH or UC treat the youths who are assigned to them through normal school referral procedures. The project will evaluate the effectiveness of MATCH compared to UC on youths' mental health and school related outcomes and assess whether changes in school outcomes are mediated by changes in youth mental health.Ethics and Dissemination: This study was approved by the Harvard University Institutional Review Board. We plan to publish the findings in peer-reviewed journals and present them at academic conferences.Clinical Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02877875. Registered on August 24, 2016. (shrink)

Is helping those whose subsistence needs are not meet a matter of charity or an obligation? What role should ordinary citizens of developed nations play? In a globalized world, the causes, connections, and responsibilities become complicated. Agriculture subsidies that keep food prices low for many in relatively rich countries may, for example, negatively impact poor farmers in developing countries. Students in Ethics/Philosophy 352 report on their project examining whether, and to what extent, a true obligation to aid exists.

With precision and profundity born of 30 years of devoted study, John Boyle offers an essential introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas on Scripture, shedding helpful light on the goals, methods, and commitments that animate the Angelic Doctor's engagement with the sacred page. Because the genius of St. Thomas's approach to the Bible lies not so much in its novelty but rather in the fidelity and clarity with which he recapitulates the riches of the preceding interpretive Tradition, this initiation into (...) St. Thomas's vision of Scripture is itself an orientation to the Church's vision of Scripture, from the Fathers through and beyond the Middle Ages. St. Thomas's embeddedness within the Church's Tradition and his own historical context is integral to his approach to Scripture, yet it sets him at some distance from modern readers, for whom his interpretive vision may seem perplexing or even impenetrable. In this Primer, Boyle first provides an acclimation to this medieval context through a survey and explanation of pertinent technical terminology used by St. Thomas and characteristic of the scholastic theology of the time. With an eye to the medieval practice of considering Scripture according to the fourfold division of causes, Boyle builds on this initial foundation by exploring in turn St. Thomas's accounts of the end or use of Scripture (final cause), its divine and human authorship (efficient cause), its order and division (material cause), and its literary styles or genres (formal cause). Drawing on writings from across St. Thomas's corpus, but especially his work On the Commendation and Division of Sacred Scripture and the prologues to his biblical commentaries, Boyle masterfully elucidates both the hermeneutical principles and deep wisdom of the Angelic Doctor's approach to Scripture, imparting invaluable guidance not only for reading and understanding St. Thomas and other great masters of the Tradition, but also-and ultimately-for understanding Scripture in light of this Tradition and reading it with greater benefit and joy. (shrink)

This was designed for all instructors who teach aspects of biological evolution in their college courses.

The proofs of the existence of God in part 4 of Descartes’s Discourse on Method may yet surprise us. These arguments appear to be crafted with such ambiguity that their deeper import has rarely been suspected. This essay proposes that, in spite of the text’s conventional appearance, Descartes exposes the error of scholastic metaphysics, namely, that it mistakes the perfectibility of the human mind for a transcendent perfect being. Superficially, the thinker’s “idea of a more perfect being” serves to ground (...) the traditional theology; but surreptitiously, this idea refers to human possibility and supplies the metaphysical basis for scientific progress, freed from theology altogether. This ironic result is obtained not by speculating on Descartes’s irony directly, but by submitting the “idea of a more perfect being” itself to the Cartesian test of truth and falsehood. In that light, the text’s proofs of God reveal their skeptical, philanthropic intent. (shrink)

Whiskey Lao -- Fair warning -- Randomness at large -- We the addicted -- The best possible world -- The importance of being doomed -- Moral responsibility -- The upper limit to the value of possible worlds.

IN 1903, commenting on an article he had written more than thirty years before, Charles Peirce said that he had changed his mind on many issues at least a half-dozen times but had "never been able to think differently on that question of nominalism and realism" (1.20). For anyone acquainted with Peirce's writings, this remark alone could justify a study of "that question.".

This article extends earlier research concerning the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance, with particular emphasis on methodological inconsistencies. Research in this area is extended in three critical areas. First, it focuses on a particular industry, the chemical industry. Second, it uses multiple sources of data-two that are perceptual based (KLD Index and Fortune reputation survey), and two that are performance based (TRI database and corporate philanthropy) in order to triangulate toward assessing corporate social performance. Third, it (...) uses the five most commonly applied accounting measures in the corporate social performance and corporate financial performance (CSP/CFP) literature to assess corporate financial performance. The results indicate that the a priori use of measures may actually predetermine the CSP/CFP relationship outcome. Surprisingly, Fortune and KLD indices very closely track one another, whereas TRI and corporate philanthropy differentiate between high and low social performers and do not correlate to the firm's financial performance. (shrink)

Religion as illustion / Ludwig Feuerbach -- Against proofs in religion / S2ren Kierkegaard -- Evil and a finite God / John Stuart Mill -- Mysticism : The will to believe / William James -- Religion versus the religious / John Dewey -- Cosmic teleology / F.R. Tennant -- Revelation and its mode / William Temple -- The existence of God / Bertrand Russell & F.C. Copleston -- The eternal thou / Martin Buber --. - Two types of (...) philosophy of religion : Existential analyses and religious symbols / Paul Tillich -- On death and the mystical / Ludwig Wittgenstein -- The formally possible doctrines of God : Time, death and everlasting life / Charles Hartshorne -- Personal survival and the idea of another world / H.H. Price -- An empiricist's view of the nature of religious belief / R.B. Braithwaite -- A form of religious naturalism / John Herman Randall -- Gods. (shrink)

In this volume, John Horty brings to bear his work in logic to present a framework that allows for answers to key questions about reasons and reasoning, namely: What are reasons, and how do they support actions or conclusions?

Jaynes's maximum entropy principle (MEP) is analyzed by considering in detail a recent controversy. Emphasis is placed on the inductive logical interpretation of “probability” and the concept of “total knowledge.” The relation of the MEP to relative frequencies is discussed, and a possible realm of its fruitful application is noted.

It is assumed that experiments yield results that are not isomorphic with reality, but represent a distorted image of reality. Reality is related to observation via a communication channel of finite capacity. Quantum uncertainties are due to the bound on the amount of information available. Use is made of recent results from information and communication theories.

John F. Post argues that physicalistic materialism is compatible with a number of views often deemed incompatible with it, such as the objectivity of values, the irreducibility of subjective experience, the power of the metaphor, the normativity of meaning, and even theism.

F.A. Hayek studied at the University of Vienna, where he became both a Doctor of Law and a Doctor of Political Science. After several years in the Austrian civil service, he was made the first diector of the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. In 1931 he was appointed Tooke Professor of Economics and Statistics at the London School of Economics, and in 1950 he went to the University of Chicago as Professor of Social and Moral Sciences. He returned to (...) Europe in 1962, to the chair of Economics at the University of Freiburg, where he became Professor Emeritus in 1967. The holder of numerous honorary doctorates, and a member of the British Academy, Hayek was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974. He was created Companion of Honour in 1984. He is the author of some fifteen books, including _Prices and Production, The Pure Theory of Capital, The Road to Serfdom, The Counter-Revolution of Science, The Sensory Order, The Constitution of Liberty, _ _Law, Legislation and Liberty_, and _The Fatal Conceit_. (shrink)

This anthology contains ten selections on the philosophy of religion, all of which were written by English-speaking analytic philosophers. The opening selection contains the contributions of Antony Flew, R. M. Hare, and Basil Mitchell to the University discussion on theology and falsification. This first selection, written in 1951, establishes the basic problematic for the book, as indeed it has for much of the discussion of religion among analytic philosophers during the last twenty years. The next three chapters in the book (...) contain articles by I. M. Crombie, John Hick, and R. B. Braithwaite which further develop the question of the falsifiability of religious statements. These are followed by articles by J. L. Mackie and Alvin Plantinga which give contrary interpretations regarding the impact of the existence of evil upon the credibility of religious assertions. The remaining chapters contain discussions of religious belief by D. Z. Phillips and H. H. Price, and of the possibility of deciding the question of the existence of God by R. W. Hepburn and Terence Penelhum. The editor provides a helpful introduction which shows the relationships between the various articles and underscores the main contributions of each. The editor also provides a useful and ample bibliography of English-language books and articles on the philosophy of religion, most of them by analytic philosophers. The bibliography is arranged according to the subject-matter covered in the text. This is a representative and useful anthology of the analytic philosophy of religion. It makes clear what are the major questions which interest analytic philosophers of religion, what procedures these thinkers use to try to answer these questions, and what some of their answers are. The editor suggests that if there is a single lesson to be learned from his anthology, it is that the philosophy of religion demands both philosophical competence and a sympathetic understanding of the religious subject-matter. Another lesson one could easily draw from this collection is that the strength of analytic philosophy of religion lies in its logical exactitude and clarity of expression, while a major weakness is its neglect of the wealth of data regarding religion provided by phenomenology, the history of religions, and the social sciences.--H. F. (shrink)

Originally published in 1830, this book can be called the first modern work in the philosophy of science, covering an extraordinary range of philosophical, methodological, and scientific subjects. "Herschel's book . . . brilliantly analyzes both the history and nature of science."—Keith Stewart Thomson, American Scientist.

John Ashton, the editor who brought us In Six Days and On the Seventh Day, has done it again with this compelling new book that is a must-read for all ...