Secularity and biblical literalism: confronting the case for epistemological diversity

Stephen Carter argues that biblical literalism is predicated on an epistemological position drastically different than that maintained by mainstream scientists inasmuch as it operates on the basis of a “hermeneutic of inerrancy” with respect to the ideas laid out in the Bible. By relying on considerations offered by Charles Taylor and recent sociological studies, I contend that Carter’s thesis is incorrect. The divide between proponents and opponents of biblical literalism is ethical rather than epistemological. Beyond the philosophical implications of my contention, this displays that deliberative engagement between these parties—which depends on shared epistemological norms—is possible in principle.     

Rethinking fideism through the lens of Wittgenstein’s engineering outlook

Careful readers of Wittgenstein tend to overlook the significance his engineering education had for his philosophy; this despite Georg von Wright’s stern admonition that “the two most important facts to remember about Wittgenstein were, firstly, that he was Viennese, and, secondly, that he was an engineer.” Such oversight is particularly tempting for those of us who come to philosophy late, having first been schooled in math and science, because our education tricks us into thinking we understand engineering by extension. But we do not. I will illustrate this common tendency to misread Wittgenstein by examining three engineering concepts that have little significance for science but played important roles in Wittgenstein’s philosophical thinking. These are: method of projection, dynamical similarity, and satisfactoriness. The upshot of this analysis will be a strong challenge to the myth of his putative fideism because neither fideism nor its contrary simply would have occurred to Wittgensteinthe-engineer.     

D. Z. Phillips’ contemplations on religion and literature

This paper critically discusses D. Z. Phillips’ use of literary works as a resource for philosophical reflection on religion. Beginning by noting Phillips’ suggestion, made in relation to Waiting for Godot, that the possibilities of meaning that we see in a literary work can reveal something of our own religious sensibility, I then proceed to show what we learn about Phillips from his readings of certain works by Larkin, Tennyson, and Wharton. Through exploring alternative possible readings, I argue that, although Phillips’ discussions are of considerable philosophical interest, they undermine his claim to be deploying a purely contemplative hermeneutical method.     

Mere presence is not enough: Responsive support in a virtual world

When individuals are faced with novel or threatening situations, the presence of a trusted companion should reduce anxiety and promote feelings of security. Attachment theory assumes, however, that mere presence is not sufficient for establishing security; an attachment figure must also be attentive and emotionally responsive. To test this idea, participants came to the lab with their romantic partner and completed a threatening cliff-walking task in a digital immersive virtual environment. The presence and nonverbal support behavior (attentive vs. inattentive) of their partner was experimentally manipulated. Results indicated that participants in the attentive-partner condition experienced the task as less stressful than those who were alone; they also reported feeling more secure during the task and were less vigilant of their partner's behavior compared to those in the inattentive-partner condition. Those in the inattentive-partner condition felt less cared for and kept greater physical distance from their partner on a subsequent task. These findings suggest that human beings are predisposed to monitor their social environment for signs of responsiveness, and that perceived responsiveness, not mere presence, is the key modulator of emotional security.     

Short-term memory, executive control, and children's route learning

The aim of this study was to investigate route-learning ability in 67 children aged 5 to 11years and to relate route-learning performance to the components of Baddeley's model of working memory. Children carried out tasks that included measures of verbal and visuospatial short-term memory and executive control and also measures of verbal and visuospatial long-term memory; the route-learning task was conducted using a maze in a virtual environment. In contrast to previous research, correlations were found between both visuospatial and verbal memory tasks-the Corsi task, short-term pattern span, digit span, and visuospatial long-term memory-and route-learning performance. However, further analyses indicated that these relationships were mediated by executive control demands that were common to the tasks, with long-term memory explaining additional unique variance in route learning.     

Consequence Mining

The standard semantic definition of consequence with respect to a selected set X of symbols, in terms of truth preservation under replacement (Bolzano) or reinterpretation (Tarski) of symbols outside X, yields a function mapping X to a consequence relation \(\Rightarrow_X\). We investigate a function going in the other direction, thus extracting the constants of a given consequence relation, and we show that this function (a) retrieves the usual logical constants from the usual logical consequence relations, and (b) is an inverse to—more precisely, forms a Galois connection with—the Bolzano–Tarski function.     

Real Analysis in Paraconsistent Logic

This paper begins an analysis of the real line using an inconsistency-tolerant (paraconsistent) logic. We show that basic field and compactness properties hold, by way of novel proofs that make no use of consistency-reliant inferences; some techniques from constructive analysis are used instead. While no inconsistencies are found in the algebraic operations on the real number field, prospects for other non-trivializing contradictions are left open.     

Intuitionistic Epistemic Logic,Kripke Models and Fitch’s Paradox

The present work is motivated by two questions. (1) What should an intuitionistic epistemic logic look like? (2) How should one interpret the knowledge operator in a Kripke-model for it? In what follows we outline an answer to (2) and give a model-theoretic definition of the operator K. This will shed some light also on (1), since it turns out that K, defined as we do, fulfills the properties of a necessity operator for a normal modal logic. The interest of our construction also lies in a better insight into the intuitionistic solution to Fitch’s paradox, which is discussed in the third section. In particular we examine, in the light of our definition, DeVidi and Solomon’s proposal of formulating the verification thesis as \(\phi \rightarrow \neg \neg K\phi\). We show, as our main result, that this definition excapes the paradox, though it is validated only under restrictive conditions on the models.     

Religious and Spiritual Practices Among Patients with Cancer

The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency with which cancer patients engage in religious and spiritual practices, the methods used, the reasons for such a search, and the levels of depression and hopelessness in patients who seek spiritual assistance. One hundred and ten radiation oncology patients, who gave voluntary informed consent were included in this study. Questionnaires about religious and spiritual practices were administered, along with the Beck Depression and Beck Hopelessness scales. Twenty percent of the patients preferred spiritual practices. Female gender, lower education levels, and higher depression and hopelessness scores were associated with this preference. The frequency of depression was 18.2%, and the frequency of hopelessness was 20.9%. A significant number of cancer patients engaged in religious and spiritual practices. We recommend that practitioners offer their patients brief but sufficient information about religious and spiritual support and determine their patients’ depression and hopelessness levels.     

Locus of Control Beliefs Mediate the Relationship Between Religious Functioning and Psychological Health

Theistic and spiritually based beliefs and behaviors have been demonstrated to consistently predict physical and mental health, although the psychological processes underlying these relationships are unclear. This study investigated associative relationships and pathways of mediation between religious functioning, locus of control (LOC) and health. The sample consisted of 122 Christians (79 women, 43 men) who were predominately Catholic, ranging in age from 18 to 80 (M = 45.47, SD = 15.0). Participants were recruited from churches in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, and completed a questionnaire package measuring (1) psychological and physical health, (2) the religious variables of awareness of God, instability and impression management, and (3) God, internal and external LOC domains. Results indicated that awareness of God and internal LOC were associated with better health, whereas external LOC and instability were associated with poorer health. God LOC and impression management were not significantly associated with health. Sobel tests were used to analyse mediation hypotheses. Internal LOC was found to mediate the relationship between awareness of God and better psychological health, and external LOC was found to mediate the relationship between instability and poorer psychological health. These findings are of considerable clinical significance.