In this book, Paul K. Moser offers a new approach to religious experience and the kind of evidence it provides. Here, he explains the nature of theistic and non-theistic experience in relation to the meaning of human life and its underlying evidence, with special attention given to the perspectives of Tolstoy, Buddha, Confucius, Krishna, Moses, the apostle Paul, and Muhammad. Among the many topics explored in this timely volume are: religious experience characterized in a unifying conception; religious experience (...) naturalized relative to science; religious experience psychologized in merely psychological phenomena; and religious experience cognized relative to potential defeaters from evil, divine hiddenness, and religious diversity. Understanding Religious Experience will benefit those interested in the nature of religion and can be used in relevant courses in religious studies, philosophy, theology, Biblical studies, and the history of religion. (shrink)

Three questions motivate this book's account of evidence for the existence of God. First, if God's existence is hidden, why suppose He exists at all? Second, if God exists, why is He hidden, particularly if God seeks to communicate with people? Third, what are the implications of divine hiddenness for philosophy, theology, and religion's supposed knowledge of God? This book answers these questions on the basis of a new account of evidence and knowledge of divine reality that challenges skepticism about (...) God's existence. The central thesis is that we should expect evidence of divine reality to be purposively available to humans, that is, available only in a manner suitable to divine purposes in self-revelation. This lesson generates a seismic shift in our understanding of evidence and knowledge of divine reality. The result is a needed reorienting of religious epistemology to accommodate the character and purposes of an authoritative, perfectly loving God. (shrink)

Many people in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic monotheistic traditions testify to their experience of being commanded by God to do something or to be a certain way. Is this kind of testimony from experience credible in some cases, and, if so, on what ground? The main thesis of this article is that it is credible in some cases and a suitable ground is available in the morally purifying experience of the human conscience. The article looks to the Hebrew Bible, the (...) New Testament, and the Qur’an for relevant testimony to the importance of righteous divine commanding experienced by humans. The relevant commands are not abstract or merely theoretical but grounded in human moral experience and potentially motivating for righteous action. The article doubts that God would be God if there were no divine commanding given directly to receptive people in their moral experience. It contends that God would not be a morally righteous guide of the divine kind needed for the worthiness of worship by humans in the absence of God’s commanding people directly in their experience. (shrink)

In this book, Paul K. Moser proposes a new approach to inquiry about God, including a new discipline of the ethics for inquiry about God. It is an ethics for human attitudes and relationships as well as actions in inquiry, and it includes human responsibility for seeking evidence that involves a moral priority for humans. Such ethics includes an ongoing test, a trial, for human receptivity to goodness, including morally good relationships, as a priority in human inquiry and life. (...) Moser also defends an approach to the evidence for God that makes sense of the elusiveness and occasional absence of God in human experience. His book will be of interest to those interested in inquiry about God, with special relevance to scholars and advanced students in religious studies, philosophy, theology, and biblical studies. (shrink)

If God exists, where can we find adequate evidence for God's existence? In this book, Paul Moser offers a new perspective on the evidence for God that centers on a morally robust version of theism that is cognitively resilient. The resulting evidence for God is not speculative, abstract, or casual. Rather, it is morally and existentially challenging to humans, as they themselves responsively and willingly become evidence of God's reality in receiving and reflecting God's moral character for others. Moser (...) calls this 'personifying evidence of God,' because it requires the evidence to be personified in an intentional agent - such as a human - and thereby to be inherent evidence of an intentional agent. Contrasting this approach with skepticism, scientific naturalism, fideism, and natural theology, Moser also grapples with the potential problems of divine hiddenness, religious diversity, and vast evil. (shrink)

BackgroundFear of cancer recurrence is an important cause of suffering for cancer survivors, and both empirical evidence and theoretical models suggest that prognostic uncertainty plays a causal role in its development. However, the relationship between prognostic uncertainty and FCR is incompletely understood.ObjectiveTo explore the relationship between prognostic uncertainty and FCR among patients with ovarian cancer.DesignA qualitative study was conducted utilizing individual in-depth interviews with a convenience sample of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer who had completed first-line treatment with surgery and/or (...) chemotherapy. Semi-structured interviews explored participants’ understanding of their prognosis; experiences, preferences, and attitudes regarding prognostic information; and strategies for coping with prognostic uncertainty. Inductive qualitative analysis and line-by-line software-assisted coding of interview transcripts was conducted to identify key themes and generate theoretical insights on the relationship between prognostic uncertainty and FCR.ResultsThe study sample consisted of 21 participants, nearly all of whom reported experiencing significant FCR, which they traced to an awareness of the possibility of a bad outcome. Some participants valued and pursued prognostic information as a means of coping with this awareness, suggesting that prognostic uncertainty causes FCR. However, most participants acknowledged fundamental limits to both the certainty and value of prognostic information, and engaged in various strategies aimed not at reducing but constructing and maintaining prognostic uncertainty as a means of sustaining hope in the possibility of a good outcome. Participants’ comments suggested that prognostic uncertainty, fear, and hope are connected by complex, bi-directional causal pathways mediated by processes that allow patients to cope with, construct, and maintain their uncertainty. A provisional dual-process theoretical model was developed to capture these pathways.ConclusionAmong patients with OC, prognostic uncertainty is both a cause and an effect of FCR—a fear-inducing stimulus and a hope-sustaining response constructed and maintained through various strategies. More work is needed to elucidate the relationships between prognostic uncertainty, fear, and hope, to validate and refine our theoretical model, and to develop interventions to help patients with OC and other serious illnesses to achieve an optimal balance between these states. (shrink)

The Socratic, or dialog, form is central to the history of philosophy and has been the discipline's canonical genre ever since. Paul Feyerabend's Three Dialogues on Knowledge resurrects the form to provide an astonishingly flexible and invigorating analysis of epistemological, ethical and metaphysical problems. He uses literary strategies - of irony, voice and distance - to make profoundly philosophical points about the epistemic, existential and political aspects of common sense and scientific knowledge. He writes about ancient and modern relativism; (...) the authority of science; the ignorance of scientists; the nature of being; and true and false enlightenment. Throughout Three Dialogues on Knowledge is provocative, controversial and inspiring. It is, unlike most current philosophical writing, written for readers with a keen sense of what matters and why. (shrink)

This paper is part of a symposium on Paul Moser, _Philosophy After Objectivity (Oxford University Press, 1993). The paper replies to contributions by Philip Quinn and Robert Audi.

Philosophers have traditionally sought objective knowledge: knowledge of things whose existence does not depend on one's conceiving of them. Philosophy After Objectivity uses lessons from debates over objective knowledge to characterize the kinds of reasons pertinent to philosophical and other theoretical views. It argues that we cannot meet skeptics' typical demands for non-question begging support for claims to objective truth, and that, therefore, we should not regard our supporting reasons as resistant to skeptical challenges.

SummaryThis paper defends the philosophical importance of analyticity against the influential objections raised by W. V. Quine. It characterizes analyticity in a way that is nonepistemic, avoids Quine's objections and fits his general strictures, and explains the epistemological importance of analyticity. It also explains why even proponents of Quine's naturalized epistemology should value the epistemological importance of analyticity, in connection with questions about the correctness of their epistemic principles. Given these considerations, this paper may be regarded as having rescued analyticity (...) from the throes of suspicion and myth, as set by “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.”. (shrink)

This article contends that a God worthy of worship would care about how a human fills in the following blank: “I inquire or believe regarding God’s existence because I want _____.” It asks what human motives we should expect God to want in human inquiry and belief regarding God. This approach is widely neglected among philosophers, theologians, and oth­ers, but it can illuminate some important issues in religious epistemology. The article identifies the volitional struggle of Gethsemane as crucial to receiving (...) salient evidence of God, and it notes how this approach manifests serious shortcomings in the arguments of traditional natural theology. It indicates that such arguments fail to accommodate the motives that God, as worthy of worship, would want in human inquiry and belief regarding God. The article proposes that divine redemption would aim for the profound moral, Gethsemane transformation of humans independent of abstract philosophical arguments. It identifies the key issue, for religious episte­mology, of whether we are willing to undergo such transformation. (shrink)

Contains nineteen newly commissioned articles by top philosophers on various aspects of the theory of knowledge. The articles survey the field as well as make original contributions to contemporary debates.

Discussions of the interpretation of quantum theory are at present obstructed by (1) the increasing axiomania in physics and philosophy which replaces fundamental problems by problems of formulation within a certain preconceived calculus, and (2) the decreasing (since 1927) philosophical interest and sophistication both of professional physicists and of professional philosophers which results in the replacement of subtle positions by crude ones and of dialectical arguments by dogmatic ones. More especially, such discussions are obstructed by the ignorance of both opponents, (...) and also defenders of the Copenhagen point of view, as regards the arguments which once were used in its defence. The publication of Bunge's Quantum Theory and Reality and especially of Popper's contribution to it are taken as an occasion for the restatement of Bohr's position and for the refutation of some quite popular, but surprisingly naive and uninformed objections against it. Bohr's position is distinguished both from the position of Heisenberg and from the vulgarized versions which have become part of the so-called "Copenhagen Interpretation" and whose inarticulateness has been a boon for all those critics who prefer easy victories to a rational debate. Einstein's main counterargument is discussed, and Bohr's refutation restated. The philosophical background and earlier forms of Bohr's views are stated also. Considering that these views are more detailed, better adapted to the facts of the microdomain than any existing alternative it follows that fundamental discussion must first return to them. Their uniqueness is not asserted, however. Here the author still maintains that a hundred shabby flowers are preferable to a single blossom, however exquisite. But a hundred shabby flowers plus an exquisite blossom are more desirable still. (shrink)

Paul Moser's book defends what has been an unfashionable view in recent epistemology: the foundationalist account of knowledge and justification. Since the time of Plato philosophers have wondered what exactly knowledge is. This book develops a new account of perceptual knowledge which specifies the exact sense in which knowledge has foundations. The author argues that experiential foundations are indeed essential to perceptual knowledge, and he explains what knowledge requires beyond justified true beliefs. In challenging prominent sceptical claims that we (...) have no justified beliefs about the external world, the book outlines a theory of rational belief. (shrink)

This paper offers a survey of some recent work in epistemology, including the following books: _A Priori Justification, by Albert Casullo; _Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues, by Laurence Bonjour and Ernest Sosa; _New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge, edited by Susana Nuccetelli; _Pathways to Knowledge: Private and Public, by Alvin Goldman; _The Skeptics: Contemporary Essays, edited by Steven Luper; and _Thinking About Knowing, by Jay F. Rosenberg.

Contemporary Materialism brings together the best recent work on materialism from many of our leading contemporary philosophers. This is the first comprehensive reader on the subject. The majority of philosophers and scientists today hold the view that all phenomena are physical, as a result materialism or 'physicalism' is now the dominant ontology in a wide range of fields. Surprisingly no single book, until now, has collected the key investigations into materialism, to reflect the impact it has had on current thinking (...) in metaphysics, philosophy of mind and the theory of value. The classic papers in this collection chart contemporary problems, positions and themes in materialism. At the invitation of the editors, many of the papers have been specially up-dated for this collection: follow-on pieces written by the contributors enable them to appraise the original paper and assess developments since the work was first published. The book's selections are largely non-technical and accessible to advanced undergraduates. The editors have provided a useful general introduction, outlining and contextualising this central system of thought, as well as a topical bibliography. Contemporary Materialism will be vital reading for anyone concerned to discover the ideas underlying contemporary philosophy. David Armstrong, University of Sydney; Jerry Fodor, Rutgers University, New Jersey; Tim Crane, University College, London; D. H. Mellor, Univeristy of Cambridge; J.J.C. (shrink)

This article considers the differential absorption and integration of refugee physicists into various countries during the 1930s, and the social and intellectual factors responsible for this, focusing particularly on the social functions of the British and American university at that period, as well as continuing ideological struggles in the Soviet Union. More generally, the issue of the relative absorption of refugee physicists is used to examine the nature of the physics communities and other institutions of the host societies.

“Bohr was primarily a philosopher, not a physicist, but he understood that natural philosophy... carries weight only if its every detail can be subjected to the... test of experiment”. As a result his approach differed from that of the school-philosophers whom he regarded with a somewhat “sceptical attitude, to say the least” and whose lack of interest in “the important viewpoint which had emerged during the development of atomic physics” he noticed with regret. But it also differed, and to a (...) considerable degree, from the spirit of what Professor T. S. Kuhn has called a “normal science.” Looking at Bohr's method of research we see that technical problems, however remote, are always related to a philosophical point of view; they are never treated as “tiny puzzles” whose solution is valuable in itself, even if one has not the faintest idea what it means, and where it leads: “For me” Bohr writes to Sommerfeld in 1922 “[the quantum theory] is not a matter for petty didactic details, but a serious attempt to reach... an inner coherence.” Emphasis is put on matters of principle and minor discrepancies, or “puzzles” in the sense of Kuhn, instead of being deemphasized, and assimilated to the older paradigm, are turned into fundamental difficulties by looking at them from a new direction, and by testing their background “in its furthest consequences by exaggeration”. A noteworthy example of Bohr's “non-normal” and rather metaphysical approach to physics is his scepticism in the face of the success of his own atomic model. (shrink)

It is argued that a pure coherence theory of epistemic empirical justification fails to avoid an isolation objection according to which empirical justification has been divorced from one's total empirical evidence. Also, it is shown that several recent efforts to meet this objection either are outright failures or are irrelevant inasmuch as they diverge from epistemic coherentism. The overall moral is that we should look beyond coherentism for an adequate theory of epistemic empirical justification.

Past, present, and future are reversed in the reader's encounter with the illustrations selected by Gertrude Stein for her Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.1 After the table of contents there is a table of illustrations that encourages everyone to look at the pictures before they begin reading. During that initial examination, the illustrations forecast what is to be discovered in the text. Expectations are aroused by photographs showing Gertrude Stein in front of the atelier door, rooms hung with paintings, Gertrude (...) and Alice in front of Saint Mark's Cathedral, and both with a car in front of Joffre's birthplace. It is natural—although, as it turns out, not altogether correct—to assume that the accumulation of paintings will be explained, that the life lived within the rooms will be fully depicted, and that conventional narrative explanation will be provided to account for the presence of Gertrude and Alice together in such disparate settings as Venice and the French marshal's home. · 1. For useful comments on several pictures as well as evidence that "even the book's sixteen photographs were carefully placed in the first edition," see Richard Bridgman, Gertrude Stein in Pieces , p. 219. Paul K. Alkon, professor of English at the University of Minnesota, is author of Samuel Johnson and Moral Discipline. Among his recent articles are "Boswellian Time" and "The Historical Development of the Concept of Time." He is writing a book about time in Defoe's fiction. See also: "The Mind, The Body, and Gertrude Stein" by Catharine R. Stimpson in Vol. 3, No. 3; "Gertrude Stein, the Cone Sisters, and the Puzzle of Female Friendship" by Carolyn Burke in Vol. 8, No. 3. (shrink)

Historians cannot escape the obligation to give the best possible causal explanations but should recognize that they cannot be more rigorous than the subject matter permits. Rarely if ever can historians identify necessary and sufficient conditions of events, or even sufficient conditions; their aim is usually to seek out the necessary antecedents. Also, they inevitably deal with the teleology of ends and purposes, and with the variable symbolic meanings that constitute culture. But the converse of the limitations on causal claims (...) is the ability to deal with questions of value, taste, and policy. Reductionism is logically appealing, but it leads to a non-historical form of knowledge which has achieved no success in understanding the activities of cultural man. (shrink)

The Wisdom of the Christian Faith joins philosophy and New Testament theology to offer a unique product: an anthology of accessible essays by prominent Christian philosophers on topics of religious and philosophical interest.