Rem B. Edwards

This volume contains the editor’s informative “Preface to the Period”, the Quaestio that Edwards submitted in 1723 to complete his master’s degree at Yale, and 19 sermons. Some of the sermons were first preached during 1723 and 1724 in Bolton, Connecticut, but most were composed between 1726 and 1729 in Northampton, Massachusetts while Edwards was junior minister in the church of Solomon Stoddard, his grandfather; a few originated after Stoddard’s death in February, 1729, when Edwards became sole minister of the Northampton congregation.

Philosophers might be misled by the title of this book, particularly philosophers of religion. Although the author argues that some religious ideas are natural, he does not try to vindicate "natural religion" or "natural theology." Instead, he argues that some religious concepts are natural in that they depend on "noncultural constraints" like genetics and the effects of evolution on human brain development, and that these ideas are considered to be "perfectly obvious" and "self-evident" to those who hold them. Boyer focuses on a few religious concepts which, though not absolutely universal, are nevertheless very widespread in human cultures. He warns that his approach has no "philosophical relevance" to the truth or falsity of these ideas and little significance for systematized theology. Boyer pays little attention to major world religions and, aside from a few references to Catholicism, concentrates upon primitive religions like that of the Fang peoples of Cameroon or the Aguaruna of the Peruvian Amazon, including their religious practices and social categories or roles, as well as their religious ideas.

Modern bioethics is clearly dominated by deontologists who believe that we have some way of identifying morally correct and incorrect acts or rules besides taking account of their consequences. Robert M. Veatch is one of the most outspoken of those numerous modern medical ethicists who agree in rejecting all forms of teleological, utilitarian, or consequentialist ethical theories. This paper examines his critique of utilitarianism and shows that the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill is either not touched at all by his critique or can be defended against it. This article argues that the dominant deontological majority is mistaken and that a utilitarian theory of moral action very much like Mill’s is precisely what is needed by modern medical ethics and by those medical practitioners who are resolved to practice medicine in a reasonable and morally acceptable manner.

Traditional hedonists like Epicurus, Bentham and Sidgwick were quantitative hedonists who assumed that pleasures and pains differ, not just from each other, but also from other pleasures and pains only in such quantitatively measurable ways as intensity, duration, and nearness or remoteness in time. They also differ with respect to their sources or causes. John Stuart Mill introduced an interesting and important complication into the modern theory of hedonism by insisting that pleasures also differ qualitatively as well as quantitatively. This article thoroughly and critically examines Mill’s attempt to explain what qualitative differences might mean, and it proposes, defends, and extends a plausible theory of qualitative differences.

A Return to Moral and Religious Philosophy in Early America concentrates especially on three philosophical positions that dominated early American philosophy, Puritanism and Idealism, the Enlightenment or Age of Realism, and Transcendentalism. This book focuses primarily but not exclusively on the best representatives of each. Jonathan Edwards was the most brilliant and philosophically minded of early Puritan thinkers; his thinking was colored by metaphysical idealism. Thomas Jefferson gave us the best of the Age of Reason, but other Enlightenment thinker like Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, and Tom Pain are considered where relevant. Ralph Waldo Emerson is presented as the best of that romantic individualism known as Transcendentalism. Briefer references are made to other early American thinkers like Samuel Johnson, John Witherspoon, Cadwallader Colden, John Adams, James Madison, Henry David Thorough, and Theodore Parker. Considerable quoted material, especially from the central figures, is included. A moral and religious interpretative framework for binding all of this together into a coherent story is provided.

This work is conceived as a modem study of the relationships of the concept of human freedom with the moral concepts of responsibility and obligation and other closely allied notions. One pitfall into which writers on my sub jects have occasionally fallen has been that of spending too much time in critically examining positions and arguments which no sane philosopher has ever offered. In order to guard against the danger of debating with "straw men," I have attempted to engage in critical conversations with several twentieth century writers on my theme. I have attempted to pay special at tention to a handful of writers who have written extremely important and influential discussions and who are representatives of a diversity of per spectives on the issues involved. In particular, I have taken note of the work of two determinists, Sir David Ross and Hastings Rashdall, a libertarian, C. A. Campbell, and a reprel>entative of the more recent linguistic-analytic approach, P. Nowell-Smith. Many other important writers have been brought in at crucial points in the conversation. But this is not a history of the problem in the 20th century. Rather, it is a critical, systematic study of a problem or set of related problems. This work may be divided roughly into two parts, a metaphysical-psycho logical part comprising the first three chapters, and a metaethical-ethical part consisting of the last three chapters.

Ethics of Psychiatry addresses the key ethical and legal issues in mental health care. With selections by Paul S. Applebaum, Christopher Boorse, Kerry Brace, Peter R. Breggin, Paula J. Caplan, Glen O. Gabbard, Donald H.J. Hermann, Lawrie Reznek, Thomas Szasz, Jerome Wakefield, Bruce J. Winick, and Robert M. Veatch, among others, this sourcebook offers the latest research in psychiatry, psychology, advocacy, mental health law, social services, and medical ethics relevant to the rational autonomy of psychiatric patients.

In this promising and well written book, the author struggles with the question of how basic religious beliefs can be groundless without being irrational. He notes that the axiomatic beliefs--philosophical, scientific, or religious--which ground all areas of human knowledge, are groundless in the sense of being unsupported by more primitive evidential considerations. He wishes to avoid purely non-cognitivist accounts of religious belief as purely subjective expressions of tastes, preferences, values, or arbitrary decisions, insisting that it makes sense to speak of fundamental religious beliefs as being informative, true, and reasonable even though unsupported. They are not "hypotheses" whose truth value can be ascertained by identifying logically independent truth conditions. Rather, they closely resemble Wittgenstein's "certainties" in being unprovable beliefs that are so fundamental to our ways of thinking that even doubts about them would be groundless if doubts about them were well founded. Yet, basic religious beliefs are not quite certainties since they can be doubted intelligently "from outside" a given religious outlook, and since secular and religious alternatives to them are readily available. They are best classified as "principles," the author maintains, noting that contemporary philosophers seldom use this term any more even though it was part of our traditional stock-in-trade. Principles resemble certainties in being not grounded in other beliefs more basic than themselves and in sustaining, regulating, and informing other judgments and beliefs. The uniformity of nature, nothing vanishes without a trace, every event has a cause, the principle of sufficient reason, etc., are offered as examples of non-religious principles. Like these, religious principles "help believers to organize, to interpret, or to make sense out of their experience," and "their reasonableness depends on their power of illumination". Various religious principles are discussed which "vouch for a worthwhile ground or end in all that is, thereby enabling believers to pursue a meaningful existence". Belief in divine creation, and belief in predestination are discussed in some detail as examples of religious principles. It is reasonable to adopt principles if they are capacitating and to reject them if they are not, the author insists; so we are not irrational if we do not adopt every principle which comes our way. Basic religious beliefs such as belief in a Creator God, etc., are capacitating, we are told, in the sense that "they are discoveries of purpose and intimations of life's redeeming worth. If they are genuine, they show themselves in 'spiritual', inward capacities, such as the ability to consolidate one's selfhood, to resist despair, and to extend one's concern to others".

This article critically examines the several definitions of, or elements of a single definition of, Robert S. Hartman's understanding of “intrinsic values,” “intrinsic evaluations,” “extrinsic values,” and “extrinsic valuations”. [I have since changed my mind about what is said in the last few sentences. I now think, with Hartman, that only unique, non-repeatable, conscious individuals have intrinsic worth. Repeatable qualities like pleasure and knowledge are “good for us” properties, but not “good in, to, and for themselves” or “for their own sakes” properties.]

These two remarkable books, both published in 2010, share many themes but differ in significant ways, and each is very much worth reading and pondering. Oord’s The Nature of Love concentrates primarily on conceptual and theological themes relating to the very nature of love itself and what influential theologians have had to say about love. His Defining Love focuses on how the social and physical sciences impact our understanding of human and divine love. Both books presuppose and express many themes that are prominent in process theology such as: freedom is universally present (by degrees) in all creatures, especially us; predestination is abhorrent and untenable; God exists necessarily and everlastingly but not ..

This article tries to show that commonplace economic, ethico-religious, anti-racist,and logical-consistency objections to public funding of abortions and abortion counseling for poor women are quite weak. By contrast, arguments appealing to basic human rights to freedom of speech, informed consent, protection from great harm, justice and equal protection under the law, strongly support public funding. Thus, refusing to provide abortions at public expense for women who cannot afford them is morally unacceptable and rationally unjustifiable, despite the opinions of former Presidents Reagan and Bush, the more conservative members of the Supreme Court of the United States, the current Congress, and the majority of the American people.

The process claim that matter is mentally infused and that mind or consciousness is spatially and temporally extended is explored. The views of Peirce, Whitehead, Hartshorne, Cobb, Ford and Griffin on the following questions are examined: If spacy, where are the occasions of human consciousness, how are they related to the brain, how large are they, and can they be externally perceived directly or with instruments? It is proposed that what is internally experienced as human consciousness is objectively identical with the synthetic unity of those brain waves known to be correlated with wakeful awareness. If so, modern scanning technology can literally find us in our brains. Possible objections are discussed.

Rather than eliminate the terms "mental health and illness" because of the grave moral consequences of psychiatric labeling, conservative definitions are proposed and defended. Mental health is rational autonomy, and mental illness is the sustained loss of such. Key terms are explained, advantages are explored, and alternative concepts are criticized. The value and descriptive components of all such definitions are consciously acknowledged. Where rational autonomy is intact, mental hospitals and psychotherapists should not think of themselves as treating an illness. Instead, they are functioning as applied axiologists, moral educators, spiritual mentors, etc. They deal with what Szasz has called "personal, social, and ethical problems in living." But mental illness is real.

The theses of this paper are that: 1. the attempt to found absolute norms on rationality presupposes the availability of a single universal absolute conception of rationality, but no such conception is available; and 2. any conception of rationality which might be available for justifying one's ultimate normative commitments is itself evaluative. “Rationality” itself is a value-laden concept, as are all its philosophical sub-divisions—logic, ethics, aesthetics, axiology, etc. Choosing ultimate value principles under conditions of freedom, enlightenment, and impartiality presupposes that one positively values such things. Rationality is an inescapably evaluative concept, not a value neutral concept.