Further validation of computer-assessed response time to emotionally evocative stimuli

Response time (RT) to stimuli from word association test items to Rorschach cards has long been held to be clinically important; especially when unusually long. Recently, Temple and Geisinger (1990) reported longer RT to personality test items previously rated evocative than to other items rated neutral. Our research replicated both Temple and Geisinger's (1990) methods and findings on 23 college students. Subsequent analyses revealed that this effect was found in 78% of all subjects at MMPI-2 item length. Implications for augmenting test validity are discussed.     

Ontological Soufflé

Possibilities are so much easier to swallow. So transform those left‐over cosmological arguments into scrumptious new ontological arguments.     

HOW EMPIRICAL IS WIEMAN'S THEOLOGY?

Abstract. The essay is a response to the papers written by Nancy Frankenberry and Charley Hardwick in the March 1987 issue of Zygon. Questions are raised about whether Wieman's theology is functionalist in the way described by Frankenberry and whether Hardwick's proposal to establish the logical possibility of naturalism as a framework for an existential interpretation of the Christian message is satisfactory. The most basic question raised by both papers is whether Wieman's theology is fully empirical when viewed from the point of view of the radical empiricist.     

Commanding Belief

This essay shows three things: first, that we cannot comply with a command from God to believe in God; second, that God cannot command us to believe in God; and, third, that the divine command theory is false. The third conclusion follows from the second, and the second follows from the first. The essay focuses on an argument from the medieval Jewish philosopher, Hasdai Crescas. It also draws from, and is something of a sequel to, an argument from Brown and Nagasawa published previously in this journal. 1     

The New Cosmological Argument: O’Connor on Ultimate Explanation

Timothy O’Connor presents a novel and powerful version of the cosmological argument from contingency. What distinguishes his argument is that it does not depend on the Principle of Sufficient Reason. This version thus avoids powerful objections facing the Principle. We present and develop the argument, strengthening it in various ways. We fill in big gaps in the argument and answer criticisms. These include the criticisms that O’Connor considers as well as new criticisms. We explain how his replies to a Kantian criticism and to the demand for contrastive explanation fail, and properly answer the criticism and the demand. We develop two new criticisms, the objection from opaqueness and the objection from constitution, and explain how these objections can be answered.     

God,existence, and fictional objects: the Case for Meinongian theism

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Metaphyiscal Nihilism and Necessary Being

This paper addresses the most fundamental question in metaphysics, Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is framed as a question about concrete entities, Why does a possible world containing concrete entities obtain rather than one containing no concrete entities? Traditional answers are in terms of there necessarily being some concrete entities, and include the possibility of a necessary being. But such answers are threatened by metaphysical nihilism, the thesis that there being nothing concrete is possible, and the subtraction argument for this thesis, an argument that is the subject of considerable recent debate. I summarize and extend the debate about the argument, and answer the threat it poses, turning the tables on it to show how the subtraction argument supports a cosmological argument for a necessary being.