Justified Belief from Unjustified Belief

Under what conditions is a belief inferentially justified? A partial answer is found in Justification from Justification (JFJ): a belief is inferentially justified only if all of the beliefs from which it is essentially inferred are justified. After reviewing some important features of JFJ, I offer a counterexample to it. Then I outline a positive suggestion for how to think about inferentially justified beliefs while still retaining a basing condition. I end by concluding that epistemologists need a model of inferentially justified belief that is more permissive and more complex than JFJ.     

Marriage and Family Therapy Students’ Change in Multicultural Counseling Competencies after a Diversity Course

Attention to diversity is required in Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education-accredited programs, yet not much research exists regarding the effectiveness of graduate training on therapists’ multicultural counseling competencies. In this study, 12 students enrolled in a masters-level diversity class were given pre- and post-tests of their multicultural counseling competencies. Results showed that students significantly increased their multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills after completing the diversity class. The discussion includes implications for educators who seek to improve students’ multicultural counseling competencies.     

Young Children's Reactions to Mothers’ Disclosure of Maternal HIV+ Serostatus

Little is known about the impact of maternal disclosure of HIV-positive serostatus on young children. The objective of this study was to explore this topic, utilizing in-depth qualitative interviews. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 47 mothers who had disclosed to their young, well child, and with the children. The most prevalent child response was anxiety, primarily focused on the mother's health and fear of her death. A number of children also worried about other people finding out, and seemed aware of the stigma surrounding HIV. For most children anxiety decreased over time, although for a small number it sustained and became maladaptive. The majority of children appeared to adjust well to maternal disclosure. Mothers who are planning to disclose their serostatus to their young children should be encouraged to plan for appropriate psychosocial follow-up following the disclosure, with special focus on the stigma associated with HIV.     

Mathematics in Economics: An Austrian Methodological Critique

Even the briefest and most superficial perusal of leading mainstream economics journals will attest to the degree that mathematical formalism has captured the economics profession. Whereas up to the early 20th century virtually all of the output of the dismal scientists was in the literary format, by the early 21st century this is not at all any longer the case. Mathematical formalism is supposed to serve economics, and yet now true economic insight has been crowded out by the math. If mainstream neoclassical economics is to come back to its proper path, a far less central role for mathematical economics, statistics and econometrics will have to be fashioned.     

ROBERT JOHN RUSSELL VERSUS THE NEW ATHEISTS

This essay compares Robert John Russell's work in his recent book Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: The Creative Mutual Interaction of Theology and Science (2008) to that of the authors known collectively as "the new atheists." I treat the latter as recent contributors to the modern tradition of scientific naturalism. This tradition makes claims to legitimacy on the basis of its close relations to the natural sciences. The purpose of this essay is to show up the poverty of the naturalist tradition's scientific credentials by contrasting it with Russell's careful account of positive relations between science and Christian theology.     

Creativity and Ethics: The Relationship of Creative and Ethical Problem-Solving

Students of creativity have long been interested in the relationship between creativity and deviant behaviors such as criminality, mental disease, and unethical behavior. In the present study we wished to examine the relationship between creative thinking skills and ethical decision-making among scientists. Accordingly, 258 doctoral students in the health, biological, and social sciences were asked to complete a measure of creative processing skills (e.g., problem definition, conceptual combination, idea generation) and a measure of ethical decision-making examining four domains, data management, study conduct, professional practices, and business practices. It was found that ethical decision-making in all four of these areas was related to creative problem-solving processes with late cycle processes (e.g., idea generation and solution monitoring) proving particularly important. The implications of these findings for understanding the relationship between creative and deviant thought are discussed.