Disputes over the nature of faith, as understood in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, sometimes focus on whether it is to be identified exclusively with trust in God or with loyalty/fidelity to God. Drawing on recent work on the semantic range of the Hebrew ʾĕmûnâ and Greek pistis lexicons, we argue for a multidimensional account of what it is to be a person of faith that includes trust and loyalty in combination. The Trust-Loyalty account, we maintain, makes better sense of the faith (...) of exemplars, including Abraham, and fits well with the biblical language of faith. Further, a normatively appropriate combination of trust and loyalty towards others is a recognizable social virtue, aimed at promoting flourishing relationships. Finally, we consider how to make sense of ancient and modern exemplars of faith who protest against God, such as Job and Elie Wiesel, and argue that the Trust-Loyalty view is uniquely well suited to accommodate them. (shrink)

One of the central questions of the field of Religious Studies is "What is religion and how might we best understand it?". Sigmund Freud was surely a paradigmatic cartographer of this terrain. Among the first theorists to explore the unconscious fantasies, fears, and desires underlying religious ideas and practices, Freud can be considered a grandfather of the field. Yet Freud's legacy is deeply contested. His reputation is perhaps at its lowest point since he came to public attention a century ago, (...) and students often assume that Freud is sexist, dangerous, passe, and irrelevant to the study of religion. How can Freud be taught in this climate of critique and controversy? The fourteen contributors to this volume, all recognized scholars of religion and psychoanalysis, describe how they address Freud's contested legacy: they "teach the debates." They describe their courses on Freud and religion, their innovative pedagogical practices, and the creative ways they work with resistance. P I focuses on institutional and curricular contexts: contributors describe how they teach Freud at a Catholic and Jesuit undergraduate institution, a liberal seminary, and a large multicultural university. In Part II contributors describe courses structured around psychoanalytic interpretations of religious figures and phenomena: Ramakrishna, Jesus and Augustine, myth and mysticism. Part III focuses explicitly on courses structured around major debates over gender, Judaism, anti-semitism, religion and ritual. Part IV describes courses in which psychoanalysis is presented as a powerful pedagogy of transformation and insight. (shrink)

Parlare del fallimento delle primavere arabe come di una sconfitta, che ha favorito, da un lato, la restaurazione di regimi autoritari e, dall’altro, il rafforzamento dei movimenti fondamentalisti, è riduttivo. L’articolo si propone di mostrare come i movimenti collettivi, che hanno animato le proteste nelle maggiori piazze delle capitali di molti Paesi arabi, hanno interpretato il bisogno di cambiamento politico ed economico che da troppi anni è stato ignorato o represso dai regimi al potere. Tali movimenti sono l’espressione di un (...) contro-movimento politico alternativo a quanti, in questi anni, inneggiando all’islam, hanno teorizzato e messo in pratica la lotta armata rivoluzionaria. La differenza fra questi due tipi di movimenti collettivi sta nella diversa posta in gioco che essi pongono al centro della loro azione. Per i movimenti di rivolta, la battaglia politica è per l’avvento della democrazia, per i movimenti fondamentalisti è, invece, in buona sostanza, la costituzione di un ferreo regime della verità religiosa, ancor più autoritario dei regimi politico-militari che si sono ripresi il potere dopo il 2012. (shrink)

A moral-pragmatic argument for a proposition is an argument intended to establish that believing the proposition would be morally beneficial. Since such arguments do not adduce epistemic reasons, i.e., reasons that support the truth of a proposition, they can seem at best to be irrelevant epistemically. At worst, believing on the basis of such reasoning can seem to involve wishful thinking and intellectual dishonesty of a sort that that precludes such beliefs from being epistemically unjustified. Inspired by an argument from (...) William James’ classic, “The Will to Believe”, I argue that there is a way of making sense of moral-pragmatic arguments such that they are epistemically relevant. I develop and argue for a theory of epistemic justification that I dub the “moral encroachment theory” (emphasizing its connection to recent pragmatic encroachment views). According to the theory, moral considerations can raise or lower epistemic standards from where they would be in morally neutral settings. The moral encroachment theory, I contend, denotes a normative property that is at once distinctively epistemic and valuable. The theory also allows a legitimate role for moral-pragmatic reasoning under certain conditions. The upshot is that moral-pragmatic reasoning can be epistemically as well as morally appropriate. (shrink)

In its original context, the “problem of the speckled hen” was a challenge to classical foundationalists who held that introspective beliefs about experience enjoy infallible foundational justification. Ernest Sosa has led a revival of interest in the problem, using it to object to neo-classical foundationalists and to motivate his own reliabilist theory of introspective justification. His discussion has spawned replies from those who claim that there are viable non-reliabilist solutions to the problem. I argue that these alternative proposals in the (...) literature are unsuccessful. I end, though, with an objection to Sosa’s theory. Along the way I also consider what the speckled hen and related examples have to teach about the fineness of grain of experience. (shrink)

This paper considers an objection to intentionalism (the view that the phenomenal character of experience supervenes on intentional content) based on the phenomenology of blurred vision. Several intentionalists, including Michael Tye, Fred Dretske, and Timothy Crane, have proposed intentionalist explanations of blurred vision phenomenology. I argue that their proposals fail and propose a solution of my own that, I contend, is the only promising explanation consistent with intentionalism. The solution, however, comes at a cost for intentionalists; it involves rejecting the (...) "transparency of experience", a doctrine that has been the basis for the central argument in favor of intentionalism. (shrink)

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Introduction -- Religion as communication -- Religion and sense -- From capacity of improvisation to belief system -- Spirit and order -- Conclusion.

In this paper, I compare various theories of perception in relation to the question of the epistemological and ontological status of the qualities that appear in perceptual experience. I group these theories into two main views: quality externalism and quality internalism, and I highlight their contrasting problems in accounting for phenomena such as perceptual relativity, illusions and hallucinations (the “problem of perception”). Then, I propose an alternative view, which I callqualitative relationismand which conceives of the subject and the object of (...) perceptual experience as essentially related to one another (hencerelationism) in a process of co-constitution out of fundamental qualities (hencequalitativerelationism). I lend support to this view by drawing on Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, which I complement with a form of neutral monism. I argue that the investigation of the temporal structure of perceptual experience leads us to find at its heart a qualitative process that is more fundamental than the two relata of perception and that gives rise to them. Then, I extend this account of perception into a general theory of intentionality and experience and I develop its implications into a neutral monist metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper investigates the effects of Buddhist ethics on consumers’ materialism, that is, the propensity to attach a fundamental role to possessions. The literature shows that religion and religiosity influence various attitudes and behaviors of consumers, including their ethical beliefs and ethical decisions. However, most studies focus on general religiosity rather than on the specific doctrinal ethical tenets of religions. The current research focuses on Buddhism and argues that it can tame materialism directly, similar to other religions, and through the (...) specific Buddhist ethical doctrines of the Four Immeasurables: compassion, loving kindness, empathetic joy, and equanimity. The empirical results show the following: (1) Buddhism reduces materialism directly and through some of the Four Immeasurables, and (2) despite the doctrine of non-existence of the self, positive emotions toward the self are still present, and the self absorbs the effects of Buddhist ethics on materialism. The latter finding suggests a “resistance of the self” that is coherent with the idea of a consumer who leverages the self to go beyond it. (shrink)

Qual è il rapporto tra la mente cosciente e la natura? A tale questione fondamentale si può rispondere in modi molto diversi, a seconda di come si concepiscono sia la mente che la natura. Questo lavoro offre una risposta originale, integrando la fenomenologia husserliana e la concezione enattiva all’interno di una prospettiva unitaria chiamata fenomenologia enattiva. Nel percorso qui sviluppato, il lettore troverà un’analisi ricca e aggiornata di alcune tra le questioni più dibattute nella filosofia della mente e nelle scienze (...) cognitive contemporanee: il “problema difficile” della coscienza e il suo rapporto con l’intenzionalità, lo statuto epistemologico e ontologico delle qualità sensibili, la filosofia del colore, il dibattito sulla cognizione incorporata (embodiment) e l’approccio fenomenologico allo studio del mentale. L’autore sviluppa infine una proposta generale che si articola in una metafisica monistico-neutrale, processuale e relazionale della natura e della coscienza. (shrink)

Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology. This book presents research in the expansive field of bioethics including biomedical ethics in obstetrics, ethical decision making in the health care system, the feasibility of using human oocytes for stem cell research, as well as mandatory circumcision in Sub-Saharan Africa to (...) prevent HIV and AIDS and environmental ethics to preserve the world for future generations. (shrink)

Waking hallucinations suggest mechanisms of dream initiation and maintenance. Visual association cortex activation, yielding poorly attended-to, visually ambiguous dream environments, suggests conditions favoring hallucinosis. Attentional and visual systems, coactivated during sleep, may generate imagery that is inserted into virtual environments. Internally consistent dreaming may evolve from successive, contextually evoked images. Fluctuating arousal and context-evoked imagery may help explain dream features.

This paper explores the epistemology and moral psychology of “therapeutic trust,” in which one trusts with the aim of inspiring greater trust-responsiveness in the trusted. Theorists have appealed to alleged cases of rational therapeutic trust to show that trust can be adopted for broadly moral or practical reasons and to motivate accounts of trust that do not involve belief or confidence in someone’s trustworthiness. Some conclude from the cases that trust consists in having normative expectations and adopting vulnerabilities with respect (...) to the trusted; others that trust involves accepting that someone will prove trustworthy. Although there are, I argue, some genuine cases of rational therapeutic trust, some prominent examples confuse trusting with entrusting and are actually counterexamples to the adopted vulnerabilities and acceptance accounts they have been taken to support. An alternative account, which construes trust in terms of being confident enough to take salient risks on someone’s trustworthiness, makes better sense of therapeutic trust. (shrink)

I examine Michel Bitbol’s proposal of a metaphysical counterpart of neurophenomenology, arguing that such a metaphysics should address the issue of the origin of consciousness. This can be accomplished through panqualityism, which conceives of the subject and object of experience as grounded in a flow of pre-phenomenal qualities. I conclude by framing this view in terms of a critical metaphysics that is consistent with the pragmatic and existential dimension of neurophenomenology.

There is growing interest among pharmaceutical policymakers in how to “disinvest” from subsidized medicines. This is due to both the rapidly rising costs of healthcare and the increasing use of accelerated and conditional reimbursement pathways which mean that medicines are being subsidized on the basis of less robust evidence of safety and efficacy. It is crucial that disinvestment decisions are morally sound and socially legitimate, but there is currently no framework to facilitate this. We therefore reviewed the bioethics literature in (...) order to identify ethical principles and concepts that might be relevant to pharmaceutical disinvestment decisions. This revealed a number of key ethical considerations—both procedural and substantive—that need to be considered when making pharmaceutical disinvestment decisions. These principles do not, however, provide practical guidance so we present a framework outlining how they might be applied to different types of disinvestment decisions. We also argue that, in this context, even the most rigorous ethical reasoning is likely to be overridden by moral intuitions and psychological biases and that disinvestment decisions will need to strike the right balance between respecting justifiable moral intuitions and overriding unjustifiable psychological impulses. (shrink)

Global health security in the Biden-Harris Administration has been a dynamic area of engagement, starting with the COVID-19 response, to strengthening and reforming the World Health Organization, to bolstering regional partnerships, and securing financing for pandemic preparedness. Sustained commitment to bilateral, regional, and multilateral cooperation will ensure that the United States stands ready to address any future health challenges.

Several philosophers have distinguished between three distinct mental states that play a role in visual recognition: experiences, propositional seemings, and beliefs. I clarify and offer some reasons for drawing this three-fold distinction, and I consider its epistemological implications. Some philosophers have held that propositional seemings always confer prima facie justification, regardless of a particular seeming's relation to experience. I add to criticisms of this view in the literature by arguing that it fails to solve a version of the ‘problem of (...) the speckled hen’. A more promising view holds that propositional seemings confer justification only when appropriately related to experiences. I offer advice for developing such an account. (shrink)

Many epistemologists accept some version of the following foundationalist epistemic principle: if one has an experience as if p then one has prima facie justification that p. I argue that this principle faces a challenge that it inherits from classical foundationalism: the problem of the speckled hen. The crux of the problem is that some properties are presented in experience at a level of determinacy that outstrips our recognitional capacities. I argue for an amendment to the principle that adds to (...) its antecedent the requirement that the subject have a recognitional capacity with respect to the given property. (shrink)