In this paper we introduce a conceptual distinction between a hedonic and transcendent conception of value. We posit three linguistic earmarks by which one can distinguish these conceptions of value. We seek validation for the conceptual distinctions by examining the language contained in reviews of cars and reviews of paintings. In undertaking the empirical examination, we draw on the work of ...

This paper uses (tele)presence concepts to explore the practical and philosophical implications of the simulation argument: the notion that individuals may be trapped within manufactured realities. After describing a series of hypothetical simulation scenarios, key distinguishing dimensions of the scenarios are considered and implications for epistemology, religion and morality, mortality, and ...

The growth of alternative medicine and its insurgence into the realms of the biomedical system raises a number of questions about the nature of evidence. Calls for 'gold standard' randomised controlled trial evidence, by both biomedical and political establishments, to legitimise the integration of alternative medicine into healthcare systems, can be interpreted as deeply political. In this pap...

Art plays a significant role in Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy, a major part of which may be interpreted as a proposal for the revision of religious belief. In this paper, I identify within Murdoch’s philosophical writings five distinct but related ways in which great art can assist moral/religious belief and practice: art can reveal to us “the world as we were never able so clearly to see it ...

This essay critically examines a questionable presupposition of contemporary science—that science is an instrumental means to human ends and as such is a valueneutral project. According to this presupposition, the responsibility for the ethical evaluation of science concerns only the uses to which science is put by society and thus does not belong properly to the scientific profession. This vie...

Current psychologies of religion reflect the modernist context in which they are situated. Religion is reduced to what is researchable, generalizable, individual and “thin.” This essay suggests that a psychology of religion which takes seriously the implications of Emmanuel Levinas’s emphasis on ethics and the alterity of the Other would result in a different model of psychotherapy. Levinas’s v...

the present paper discusses the priority of cognitive processes over language production of the speaker, based on mulla sadra’s philosophy of language. in this regard, the conditions of perceiving knowledge as well as the process of language production of the speaker are propounded. mulla sadra believes that knowledge is perceived through a process in which human soul is an active agent rather ...