In this paper, I wish to reflect upon the insistence on the use of gender neutral language and its implications for freedom of speech in Canada. There has been much controversy in Canada over recent legislation that adds gender expression and gender identity as protected grounds under the Canada Human Rights Act- i.e. Bill C-16, Jordan B. Peterson, Professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has expressed his dissatisfaction with Bill C-16 and its implications for free speech. Peterson argues (...) that free speech is the mechanism by which democracies have survived over the centuries! He has further argued that the imposition of language on people can have devastating effects. For example, there is a clear distinction between legislation concerning What one ought not to say, such as screaming "fire!" in a crowded cinema and mandating speech about what one must say, such as compelling the use of gender-neutral pronouns. In order to understand the background behind Bill C-16, and in order to gather insights as to what is motivating certain cultural trends and what is at stake, I will examine two distinct philosophical approaches. First, will examine the thought of Jordan Peterson, who I would dub the "defender of objectivity." Second, I will present some of the views of the postmodern epistemologist, Jacques Derrida, Derrida can be dubbed the "wishful mortician of the absolute" for his methodology of deconstructionism. Through examining these distinct approaches, I wish to put a clearer finger on the complex issues surrounding Bill C-16, political correctness, and free speech. (shrink)

This article explores various issues with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's theology including his view of God, his articulation of a "new religion," and his thoughts about transhumanism. This article published is a commemoration of Monsignor Vincent Foy's contributions to Catholic thought. -/- After having examined many of Teilhard's writings and commentaries that have been articulated by both supporters and detractors, I am persuaded that one should not take an all-or-nothing approach to Teilhard (or any other thinker for that matter). The (...) works of Teilhard are often written in poetic prose and remain obscure, in part because of his mysticism. He uses scientific language which at times is conflated with his evolutionary and spiritual understanding of the world. This article looks at some of the theological missteps of Teilhard's works. (shrink)

Many different aspects of science intersect with Christian spirituality. Some of these points of intersection are apparent in astronomy, cosmology, quantum physics, genetics, neuroscience, organic evolution, chemical evolution, technological advances, and environmental science. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between organic evolution and Christian spirituality. It is important to note that Christian spirituality has varying significances throughout Christendom. For the purpose of this paper, I will treat Christian spirituality as the study of the experience of Christian (...) faith and discipleship. This definition will be helpful because it is specific enough to make direct correlations with how one can understand science from a Christian spiritual (faith) perspective. (shrink)

This paper will explore the evolution of the conceptions of Satan (the devil), and demons throughout the past 3,000 years, in light of an in-depth study of St. Anselm of Canterbury’s medieval text, The Fall of Satan (De Casu Diaboli). Anselm’s brilliant work, De Casu Diaboli, has inspired much reflection into not just the nature of angels and demons but also into our own. It is worth noting that, it is impossible to exhaustively cover a 3,000-year period on such a (...) major topic, but a brief overview of the significant periods will be provided before focusing on De Casu Diaboli. (shrink)

This paper will examine the problem of suffering as it arises from both moral and natural evil through a Christian philosophical and theological perspective. Suffering throughout our planet is pervasive. We all experience it in one form or another. In western culture, we are bombarded, through the media with the terrible tragedies that occur in our home country and abroad. Inevitably we ask ourselves, the following question, as Professor Ramon Martinez, probes into his book, Sin and Evil, “Why does God (...) permit suffering?” In order to address the question of suffering and its relation to the God of Christianity, we must understand what suffering is and how it affects humanity. (shrink)

The focus of this research paper concerns the dialogue between science and theology. The current state of the dialogue involves a wide range of points of intersection that both pose and provoke questions concerning the very viability and coherence of such a dialogue. In particular, this paper examines the physicist/theologian, Robert John Russell's 'Creative Mutual Interaction' (CMI). The significance of the CMI diagram is that it names the basic interactions between science and theology and theology and science. These interactions are (...) presented as pathways, 8 in all, 5 of which flow from science to theology and 3 of which flow from theology to science. These pathways integrate a number of philosophical assumptions. These pathways can make scientists, theologians, and philosophers more aware of the philosophical assumptions at work between both theology and science. Russell, in his CMI, provides 8 paths to this interaction; 5 pathways where science informs theology and 3 by which theology informs science. In this thesis, I examine a test case of Russell's where he interacts the concepts of cosmology, eschatology, and bodily resurrection as it applies to Jesus Christ in New Testament Studies. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the liturgical spirituality of Virgil Michel through some of the literature he left behind. It is important to note that it would be difficult to derive Virgil Michel’s spirituality, solely from his own works, since the texts in general do not delve deeply into the background and context of his life. This is why secondary sources written about Virgil Michel were also consulted and played a role in the research. Several of his (...) major works were essential to the research, these include: an article entitled the “Significance of the Liturgical Movement” and two books entitled, The Liturgy of the Church and Christian Social Reconstruction. All of these sources provided important insights into Virgil’s liturgical spirituality, while the secondary sources helped make sense of material regarding Virgil’s life that were not directly accessible through his own literature. (shrink)

In this essay, I suggest that a slightly modified version of Freedman’s formulation of the clinical equipoise requirement is justified. I begin this essay with a brief discussion of the equipoise r...

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, in Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, assert that rejecting the use nudges is ‘pointless’ because ‘[i]n many cases, some kind of nudge is inevitable’. Schlomo Cohen makes a similar claim. He asserts that in certain situations surgeons cannot avoid nudging patients either toward or away from consenting to surgical interventions. Cohen concludes that in these situations, nudging patients toward consenting to surgical interventions is uncriticizable or morally permissible. I call this argument: The (...) Unavoidability Argument. In this essay, I will respond to Cohen's use of the unavoidability argument in support of using nudges during the process of informed consent. Specifically, I argue that many so-called ‘unavoidable nudges’ are, in fact, avoidable. Although my argument is directed toward Cohen's use of the unavoidability argument, it is applicable to the unavoidability argument more generally. (shrink)

In “Nudging, Bullshitting, and the Meta-Nudge”, the author responds to William Simkulet’s claim that nudging is bullshitting (according to Harry Frankfurt’s analysis of bullshit and bullshitting), and therefore nudging during the process of informed consent renders consent invalid. The author argues that nudging is not necessarily bullshitting and then explains that although this issue is philosophically interesting, practically speaking, even if nudging is bullshitting, it does not follow that nudging necessarily renders informed consent invalid. This is obviously true in those (...) situations in which nudging during the process of informed consent is unavoidable. The author concludes with a discussion of the meta-nudge and suggests that physicians can use the meta-nudge to eliminate or decrease the power of inappropriate, problematic, or undesirable nudges. (shrink)

This essay strives to bring together the institutional history of phenomenological psychology within the American academy from the middle of the 20th century to the current moment. Although phenomenological psychology has always been a dynamically international and interdisciplinary movement, the scope of this essay is limited to the different ways in which this new field expressed itself in certain psychology departments and educational institutions across the United States. After presenting this institutional history, and some individual contributors, a brief commentary is (...) offered. (shrink)

This link contains two reviews of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. My review is the second one.

In this essay I discuss a novel engineering ethics class that has the potential to significantly decrease the likelihood that students will inadvertently or unintentionally act unethically in the future. This class is different from standard engineering ethics classes in that it focuses on the issue of why people act unethically and how students can avoid a variety of hurdles to ethical behavior. I do not deny that it is important for students to develop cogent moral reasoning and ethical decision-making (...) as taught in traditional college-level ethics classes, but as an educator, I aim to help students apply moral reasoning in specific, real-life situations so they are able to make ethical decisions and act ethically in their academic careers and after they graduate. Research in moral psychology provides evidence that many seemingly irrelevant situational factors affect the moral judgment of most moral agents and frequently lead agents to unintentionally or inadvertently act wrongly. I argue that, in addition to teaching college students moral reasoning and ethical decision-making, it is important to: 1. Teach students about psychological and situational factors that affect people’s ethical judgments/behaviors in the sometimes stressful, emotion-laden environment of the workplace; 2. Guide students to engage in critical reflection about the sorts of situations they personally might find ethically challenging before they encounter those situations; and 3. Provide students with strategies to help them avoid future unethical behavior when they encounter these situations in school and in the workplace. (shrink)

Review of John C. Lennox's book on God and Stephen Hawking.

Most philosophy professors want to help their students improve their writing, but determining a good way to do so is not easy. Requiring students to write rough drafts is a good start, but the extra work these require can overload already busy professors. In this article I describe and defend the use of peer-review assignments as a way of improving undergraduate writing. The largest benefit of such assignments is that they allow the students to take a more objective view of (...) their own writing. I also provide sample questionsto use in such assignments. (shrink)

This article examines the thoughts and works of Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain and evangelical philosopher Norman Geisler in light of their understanding of Thomas Aquinas’s view of faith and reason.

Traditional just war doctrine holds that political leaders are morally responsible for the decision to initiate war, while individual soldiers should be judged solely by their conduct in war. According to this view, soldiers fighting in an unjust war of aggression and soldiers on the opposing side seeking to defend their country are morally equal as long as each obeys the rules of combat. Revisionist scholars, however, maintain that soldiers who fight for an unjust cause bear at least some responsibility (...) for advancing an immoral end, even if they otherwise fight ethically. This article examines the attitudes of the American public regarding the moral equality of combatants. Utilizing an original survey experiment, we find that the public's moral reasoning is generally more consistent with that of the revisionists than with traditional just war theory. Americans in our study judged soldiers who participate in unjust wars as less ethical than soldiers in just wars, even when their battlefield conduct is identical, and a large proportion supported harsh punishments for soldiers simply for participating in unjust wars. We also find, however, that much of the American public is willing to extend the moral license of just cause significantly further than revisionist scholars advocate: half of the Americans in our survey were willing to allow an unambiguous war crime—a massacre of innocent women and children—to go unpunished when the act was committed by soldiers fighting for a just cause. Our findings suggest that incorporation of revisionist principles into the laws of war would reinforce dangerous moral intuitions encouraging the killing of civilians. (shrink)

The efforts of psychologists as well as laypersons to identify causes and motives of behavior is examined from an existential-phenomenological perspective. The claim made by modern psychology that its epistemological ground consists of an objectively given realm of “facts” is called into question. Psychological explanation is presented as a system of discourse that has its own psychological “motivation.” The traditional concepts of “conditions,” “causes,” and “motives” are critiqued and alternative notions such as “meaning” and “project” are drawn from the literature (...) of phenomenology as a basis for understanding rather than explaining human behavior. Verbal report data are used to illustrate and substantiate claims made about the illusive nature of explanation. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Phenomenology has remained a sheltering place for those who would seek to understand not only their own “first person” experiences but also the first person experiences of others. Recent publications by renowned scholars within the field have clarified and extended our possibilities of access to “first person” experience by means of perception (Lingis, 2007) and reflection (Zahavi, 2005). Teaching phenomenology remains a challenge, however, because one must find ways of communicating to the student how to embody it as a process (...) rather than simply to learn about it as a content area. Another challenge issues from the fact that most writings on applied phenomenology emphasize individual subjectivity as the central focus, while offering only indirect access to the subjectivity of others (for example, by way of analyzing written descriptions provided by the individual under study). While one finds in the literature of psychotherapy plentiful elucidations of the “we-experience” within which therapists form impressions of their clients’ experience, there is still need for a more thoughtful clarification of our rather special personal modes of access to the experience of others in everyday life. This paper will present “second person perspectivity” as a mode of resonating with the expressions of others and will describe class activities that can bring students closer to a lived understanding of what it means to be doing phenomenology in the face of the other. (shrink)

This is a reply to Don Marquis’‘Why Abortion is Immoral.‘ Marquis, who asserts that abortion is morally wrong, bases his argument on the following premise: Killing a being is morally wrong if that being is the sort of being who has a valuable future. I argue that this premise is false. I then assert that if I am correct about this premise being false, Marquis is faced with a dilemma. If he does not alter the premise in a way that (...) makes it true, his argument is unsound. However, if he does make such an alteration, he must also alter a second premise in his argument, and this second change opens him to the charge of question begging. In addition, I conclude that such an alteration requires Marquis to adopt a position much like that taken by Judith J. Thompson in ‘A Defense of Abortion,‘ a position he initially states is indefensible. (shrink)

Inspired by Husserl’s (1913/1962, 1925/1977, 1931/1960, 1948/1973, 1954/1970) long term interest in problems of “constitution” at transcendental, psychological, and intersubjective levels, this study originally took up the question of the constitution of social perception in the context of the psychodiagnostic interview. More simply, the research question was: how do psychologists participate in forming a clinical impression? As reported earlier (Churchill 1984a, 19984b, 1998, 2006), data consisted of descriptions obtained from two clinical psychologists reflecting upon their experience during the interview phase (...) of a diagnostic assessment, each of which was videotaped for later reference. These descriptions were obtained in writing, and served as a basis for further elaborating and clarifying their experience through a series of collaborative interviews. The descriptions and interview data were collated into a text of statements for each participant representing different perceptual “moments” distinguishable within the psychologist’s experience. The researcher performed an “intentional analysis” of these experiential moments within the data, posing the following question: What does this statement reveal about the meaning-constituting activity of the psychologist during this moment of the clinical encounter? The “intentional structure” of clinical impression formation was articulated in terms of three interconnected and essential constituents – constitutive projects and interests, modes of attention, and modes of explication – all characteristic of the psychologist’s presence to a patient. The current paper offers a further reflection upon the methodological virtues of the phenomenological method of intentional analysis with an aim to clarify how psychologists can fruitfully apply this philosophical psychological method in qualitative research investigations on perception, cognition, attention, attribution, reflexivity, and psychological understanding. (shrink)

Ronald Reagan, in his inaugural address as the Governor of California on January 5th, 1967, poignantly stated the following on the fragility of freedom: -/- "Perhaps you and I have lived too long with this miracle to properly be appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a (...) people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again." -/- These words ring as true today as they did when they were first uttered. And yet, over 55 years later, the majority of countries throughout the world and the majority of people living in them have been quick to relinquish their rights and freedoms under the pretext of “health safety.” Since March 2020, the world has been brought to its knees by what I would argue are unscientific and unethical mandates related to the COVID-19 crisis. These mandates have had a tremendously negative impact on the world economy and the lives of countless individuals. The ‘cure’ that has been offered. (shrink)

Have you ever thought about how self-consciousness (self-awareness) originated in the universe? Understanding consciousness is one of the toughest "nuts to crack." In recent years, scientists and philosophers have attempted to provide an answer to this mystery. The reason for this is simply because it cannot be confined to solely a materialistic interpretation of the world. Some scientific materialists have suggested that consciousness is merely an illusion in order to insulate their worldviews. Yet, consciousness is the most fundamental thing we (...) know, even more so than the external world since we require it to perceive or think about anything. Without it, reasoning would be impossible. Dr. Scott Ventureyra, in this ground-breaking book, explores the idea of the Christian God and Creation in order to tackle this most difficult question. He demonstrates that theology has something significant to offer in reflection of how consciousness originated in the universe. He also makes a modest claim that the Christian conception of God and Creation provide a plausible account for the origin of self-consciousness. He integrates philosophy, theology, and science in an innovative way to embark on this exploration. (shrink)

This paper explores the apologetic nature of Augustine’s Confessions. It first takes a brief look at Augustine’s intricate view of the relationship between faith and reason, in order to provide a background to his employment of apologetic elements throughout Confessions. Both positive and negative apologetic elements are examined throughout the paper. Some positive apologetic elements include Augustine’s presentation of the implied ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the argument from the experience of beauty, and the demonstration of the (...) coherence of the Christian conception of God (including his explorations with time and creation). His negative apologetic elements include dealing with detractors from the Christian faith such as the Manichees and their objections. Although studies in recent years have focused on the autobiographical and religious experiential dimensions of Confessions, this paper seeks to demonstrate that the apologetic dimension is also foundational to Augustine’s text. It is important to realize that the apologetic nature of Confessions does not detract from its other natures (autobiographical and religious-experiential) since objects, ideas and persons can have more than one nature – as is true with the case of Christ and a number line. It is my hope to revive a forgotten aspect of Confessions that is quite pertinent to the Church today. (shrink)

We are currently developing a short, online ethics course that attempts to teach students why well-intentioned people act unethically and what students can do to decrease the likelihood that they will find themselves in the middle of an ethical crisis in the future. Most of the well-known case studies in professional ethics textbooks concern ethical failures that do not involve difficult ethical choices. When our students read these case studies, it is not difficult for them to determine what went wrong (...) or what the players in the cases ought to have done. And students don’t need to read Kant or Mill to make these determinations. Importantly, the agents who acted wrongly usually seem to be ethical people. Rarely do cases involve moral monsters. In a similar vein, most cases of research misconduct are cut-and-dry, and most of our students who plagiarize did not enroll in the course intending to plagiarize. Rather, something went wrong. Professional ethics classes neglect to address an important practical question: Why do well-intentioned people find themselves in the middle of ethical crises and how can our students decrease the likelihood that they will find themselves in an ethical crisis in the future? We are developing a course that answers this question. Our course is built around the findings of John Dorris and other situationists. After teaching our students about situationism, we teach them a two-level theory of cognition that may help them avoid acting unethically. (shrink)