What Do Chaplains Contribute to Large Academic Hospitals? The Perspectives of Pediatric Physicians and Chaplains

This article analyzes interviews with pediatric physicians (N = 30) and chaplains (N = 22) who work at the same large academic medical centers (N = 13). We ask how pediatric physicians understand and work with chaplains and how chaplains describe their own work. We find that physicians see chaplains as part of interdisciplinary medical teams where they perform rituals and support patients and families, especially around death. Chaplains agree but frame their contributions in terms of the perspectives related to wholeness, presence, and healing they bring. Chaplains have a broader sense of what they contribute to patient care than do physicians.     

Hume on Miracles: Would It Take a Miracle to Believe in a Miracle?

Given Hume's theory of belief and belief production it is no small task to explain how it is possible for a belief in a miracle to be produced. I argue that belief in a miracle cannot be produced through Hume's standard causal mechanisms and that although education, passion, and testimony initially seem to be promising mechanisms for producing belief in a miracle, none of these is able to produce the belief in a miracle. I conclude by explaining how this poses a problem for Hume's theory of belief and I briefly investigate the alternatives available for solving this problem.     

Can Children with Language Impairment Be Accurately Identified Using Temporal Processing Measures? A Simulation Study

Three simulation experiments were conducted to determine the basis of the high predictive accuracy (98%) of temporal processing variables for the identification of language impairment obtained by Tallal, Stark, and Mellits (1985). In the first two experiments, the stepwise discriminant analysis using a set of 160 arrays of random numbers to predict a dichotomous language status (either normal or disordered) resulted in an average accuracy rate of 86.3% in contrast with the 98% rate obtained by Tallal, Stark, and Mellits. The third experiment showed that a 95% accuracy rate could be obtained from an array of 160 variables that each may only account for about 1.5% variance in the language ability. These results emphasize the need for confirmatory studies when large data sets are used to identify a small set of predictor variables.     

What Lies Outside Language?

The paper aims to make out the incoherence of the distinction between and rigid separation of 'the linguistic' and 'the extra-linguistic' as well as to absolve Wittgenstein from any commitment to it. Insistence on a descent from the abstract to a concrete discussion allows a connection to be made between Tractatus positions such as: 'The limits of my language indicate the limits of my world.' and 'The world and life are one.' and the Investigations : 'What has to be accepted is - so one could say - forms of life .' From this a picture is developed of the intimate interconnection between language, practical life, and world.     

Why Be Immoral?

Developing themes in the work of Thomas Hill, I argue that servility is an underappreciated but pervasive reason for moral transgression. Recognizing servility as a basic cause of immorality obliges us to reconsider questions about the rationality of morality. Traditional answers to the problem of the immoralist, which tend to be stated in terms of enlightened self-interest, fail to properly engage the problems posed by 'servile immorality.' In response to these problems, I develop a Humean version of a traditionally Kantian strategy for substantiating the rationality of morality: (i.e.) agents' conceptions of themselves commit them to accepting morality's authority. Servile behavior implies cognitive dissonance, which can restructure or dissolve those particular desires, beliefs, and projects that constitute agents' most highly valued contingent conceptions of themselves. I conclude that agents have reason to abstain from servility even on a parsimonious Humean account of practical reasons.     

Gettier Cases without False Lemmas?

Examples cited by Feldman, Lehrer and others of true beliefs that are justified, but not by false lemmas, turn out under scrutiny to involve false lemmas after all. In each case there is an EG inference whose conclusion is unwarranted unless its base instance is false. A shift to non-deductive justification does not avert the difficulty. The relation of this result to non-inferential Gettier cases is suggested.     

Verbal Fluency Deficits in Children With Specific Language Impairment: Slow Rapid Naming or Slow to Name?

This study examined aspects of verbal fluency performance of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and typically developing children matched on age and Block Design scores. While children with SLI showed deficits in verbal fluency compared to their peers, they showed the same pattern of performance on phonemic compared to semantic fluency trials. Children with SLI and normally developing children also demonstrated equivalent rates of clustering and switching, measures hypothesized to reflect aspects of frontal lobe functioning, when the overall number of exemplars was taken into account. The absence of a condition by group effect supports general processing limitation accounts of SLI, while the absence of group differences on cluster size and switches supports language-based processing accounts of SLI.     

Can Internalism Be Saved?

Abstract: Richard Feldman argues that a good deal more of Chisholm's approach can be saved than I allow in “Roderick Chisholm and the Shaping of American Epistemology.” More than this, Feldman argues that there are other, and still more defensible, forms of internalism. I argue here that the problems I presented for Chisholm's view are not so easily sidestepped either within Chisholm's system or by other forms of internalism.     

Is a Tenseless Language Possible?

Whether it takes the form of a translation or of giving truth-conditions, any putative reduction of tensed language to tenseless language will be undermined if it can be shown that there could be no genuinely tenseless language. A similar problem faced traditional phenomenalism: it was far from clear that there could be a 'language of sense-data'. Either the imagined language was no language at all, or it was dependent upon object-language, not the other way around. A parallel dilemma faces tenseless reductionism. In spelling out what a tenseless language would be like, one either ends up with something that no creature could have as a language, or with something that is parasitic upon tensed language - not the other way around.     

Can Illness Be Edifying?

Havi Carel has recently argued that one can be ill and happy. An ill person can “positively respond” to illness by cultivating “adaptability” and “creativity”. I propose that Carel's claim can be augmented by connecting it with virtue ethics. The positive responses which Carel describes are best understood as the cultivation of virtues, and this adds a significant moral aspect to coping with illness. I then defend this claim against two sets of objections and conclude that interpreting Carel's phenomenology of illness within a virtue-ethical framework enriches our understanding of how illness can be edifying.     

Can Pragmatists Be Moderate?

In discussions of whether and how pragmatic considerations can make a difference to what one ought to believe, two sets of cases feature. The first set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic reasons for belief, is exemplified by cases of being financially bribed to believe (or withhold from believing) something. The second set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic encroachment on epistemic justification, is exemplified by cases where acting on a belief rashly risks some disastrous outcome if the belief turns out to be false. Call those who think that pragmatic considerations make a difference to what one ought to believe in the second kind of case, but not in the first, ‘moderate pragmatists’. Many philosophers – in particular, most advocates of pragmatic and moral encroachment – are moderate pragmatists. But moderate pragmatists owe us an explanation of exactly why the second kind of pragmatic consideration makes a difference, but the first kind doesn’t. I argue that the most promising of these explanations all fail: they are either theoretically undermotivated, or get key cases wrong, or both. Moderate pragmatism may be an unstable stopping point between a more extreme pragmatism, on one hand, and an uncompromising anti-pragmatism on the other.     

Can Cognitive‐Behavioral Therapy Be Optimized With Parent Psychoeducation? A Randomized Effectiveness Trial of Adolescents With Major Depression in Puerto Rico

This is a longitudinal randomized control trial on the impact of adding a parent psychoeducation intervention (TEPSI) as part of cognitive‐behavioral therapy (CBT) for adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) in a Puerto Rican sample. We tested the efficacy of adding 8 group sessions of TEPSI to 12 sessions of individual CBT on reducing depressive symptoms, MDD diagnosis, and improving family functioning. Participants (n = 121) were randomized to individual CBT with or without TEPSI. No main group effects were found for most patient domains including depression symptoms, as well as presence of adolescent's MDD diagnosis at posttreatment. Results did show a main effect of CBT over time for depression symptoms, suicide ideation, family criticism, and the presence of MDD diagnosis decreasing from pre‐ to postintervention. A year post treatment, almost 70% of adolescents in both conditions (CBT and CBT + TEPSI) remained in remission. A main effect was obtained for treatment in the adolescent's perception of familism and family emotional involvement. The primary hypothesis that family psychoeducation would optimize CBT for depression in adolescents was not supported. Both conditions yielded similar clinical end points. The culturally adapted CBT was found effective with Latino/a adolescents showing clinically significant improvements from pretreatment to posttreatment and remained stable at a 1‐year follow‐up. Regarding family outcomes, adolescents in CBT + TEPSI remained stable from pretreatment to posttreatment on family emotional involvement, while adolescents in CBT‐alone showed an increase. The implication of these findings is discussed.     

Why Bother With Hebrews?

Few, if any, present-day undergraduate degree courses in Theology include in their syllabus a study of the Epistle to the Hebrews or other New Testament writings other than the Gospels and the Pauline epistles. The result is in effect that we create a canon within a canon.
This paper, originally read at a postgraduate seminar, gives reasons why Hebrews in particular should not be neglected.
Hebrews provides evidence of the diversity of early Christian tradition, for example, with its teaching that it is impossible to be re-admitted to the community of faith, having once abandoned it, and with its unique use of Israel's day of Atonement rites in its presentation of Christ. Moreover, the very genre of Hebrews merits particular interest.
Hebrews also evidences a Christian community which has yet to break with Judaism. Its thoroughly Jewish background illustrates for students of the New Testament the necessity of knowing the Jewish Scriptures as well as the writings of the New Testament. Moreover, a study of the Epistle could make a constructive contribution to present-day Jewish–Christian dialogue, even if in the past it has been enlisted on the side of a thinly-disguised anti-Semitism.
Finally, Hebrews (e.g., with its depiction of Jesus as sacrificial victim and as High Priest) brings the student face to face with the metaphorical character of much of the language of the New Testament – a form of language which is not to be taken less seriously than other kinds of language; and in this case, Hebrews' Day of Atonement metaphors issue in new insights – in an innovative theology of access to God.
For this and other reasons, the study of Hebrews has an important contribution to make to theology degree syllabuses.     

What's Wrong With Methodism?

I distinguish between two theses, DPJ and DGP. DPJ asserts that one's justification for accepting particular epistemic propositions positively depends on one's being justified in believing general epistemic principles. DGP claims that one's justification in believing general epistemic propositions positively depends on one's being justified in believing particular epistemic propositions. I claim that methodism accepts DPJ and rejects DGP and particularism accepts DGP and rejects DPJ. I argue that we should reject DGP and methodism roughly because these views imply that many of us do not know epistemic propositions that we do know. This point is made by Roderick Chisholm in The Problem of the Criterion and challenged by Robert Amico. I consider Chisholm's arguments and Amico's objections. Finally, I argue that even if we reject DPJ and methodism, we need not embrace particularism, since we could reject both DPJ and DGP.