In this work, Brian Philip Dunn focuses on the South Indian theologian A. J. Appasamy's "embodiment theology." This is the first book on Appasamy, a not insignificant Indian, Christian theologian. This study argues for the distinctive theological voice of Appasamy who develops a theology strongly influenced by the medieval Hindu theologian Ramanuja, in particular offering a reading of the Gospel of John. Dunn shows how Appasamy sees the Christian God in Ramanuja's theology and how his theology, (...) particularly about the presence of God in the icon in a temple, can become a heuristic device through which to understand the fourth Gospel in the context of its own time. This allows the reader to develop a rooted Christology that otherwise would remain hidden. Through Ramanuja, Appasamy can contribute to a constructive and important Theology that grounds the text and ideas of the incarnation in the Jewish context, particularly about priestly atonement. This reading of Ramanuja allows us to see a Christology in the Christian text that would otherwise not have been seen. (shrink)

The continuous spontaneous localization (CSL) model modifies Schrödinger's equation so that the collapse of the state vector is described as a physical process (a special interaction of particles with a universal fluctuating field). A consequence of the model is that an electron in an atom should occasionally get “spontaneously” knocked out of the atom. The CSL ionization rate for the 1s electrons in the Ge atom is calculated and compared with an experimental upper limit for the rate of “spontaneously” generated (...) x-ray pulses in Ge. This gives, for the first time, an experimental constraint on the parameters which characterize this model (the GRW parameters and the relative collapse rate of electrons and nucleons). It is concluded that the values assigned to the GRW parameters by GRW may be maintained only if the coupling of electrons to the fluctuating field is 0.35% or less than the coupling of nucleons, suggestive of a mass-proportional (and therefore gravitational) collapse mechanism. For other allowed values of the GRW parameters, it is still argued that nucleons should collapse more rapidly than electrons. (shrink)

Wavefunction collapse models modify Schrödinger's equation so that it describes the rapid evolution of a superposition of macroscopically distinguishable states to one of them. This provides a phenomenological basis for a physical resolution to the so-called “measurement problem.” Such models have experimentally testable differences from standard quantum theory. The most well developed such model at present is the Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model in which a universal fluctuating classical field interacts with particles to cause collapse. One “side effect” of this (...) interaction is that the field imparts energy to the particles: experimental evidence on this has led to restrictions on the parameters of the model, suggesting that the coupling of the classical field to the particles must be mass-proportional. Another “side effect” is that the field imparts momentum to particles, causing a small blob of matter to undergo random walk. Here we explore this in order to supply predictions which could be experimentally tested. We examine the translational diffusion of a sphere and a disc, and the rotational diffusion of a disc, according to CSL. For example, we find that the rms distance an isolated 10−5 cm radius sphere diffuses is ≈(its diameter, 5 cm) in (20 sec, a day), and that a disc of radius 2 ⋅ 10−5 cm and thickness 0.5 ⋅ 10−5 cm diffuses through 2πrad in about 70 sec (this assumes the “standard” CSL parameter values). The comparable rms diffusions of standard quantum theory are smaller than these by a factor 10−3±1. It is shown that the CSL diffusion in air at STP is much reduced and, indeed, is swamped by the ordinary Brownian motion. It is also shown that the sphere's diffusion in a thermal radiation bath at room temperature is comparable to the CSL diffusion, but is utterly negligible at liquid He temperature. Thus, in order to observe CSL diffusion, the pressure and temperature must be low. At the low reported pressure of 5 ⋅ 10−17 Torr, achieved at 4.2°K, the mean time between air molecule collisions with the (sphere, disc) is ≈(80, 45)min. This is ample time for observation of the putative CSL diffusion with the standard parameters and, it is pointed out, with any parameters in the range over which the theory may be considered viable. This encourages consideration of how such an experiment may actually be performed, and the paper closes with some thoughts on this subject. (shrink)

In the space of possible worlds, there might be a best possible world (a uniquely best world or a world tied for best with some other worlds). Or, instead, for every possible world, there might be a better possible world. Suppose that the latter is true, i.e., that there is no best world. Many have thought that there is then an argument against the existence of God, i.e., the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being; we will call (...) such arguments no-best-world arguments. In this paper, we discuss ability-based objections to such arguments; an ability-based objection to a no-best world argument claims that the argument fails because one or more of its premises conflict with a plausible principle connecting the applicability of some type of moral evaluation to the agent’s possession of a relevant ability. In particular, we formulate and evaluate an important new ability-based objection to the most promising no-best world argument. (shrink)

This book brings together some of the most important essays in the theory of history which have produced this revolution and the responses to it.

Thematically organized around the major concerns of Basil Bernstein's work as a sociologist, this book includes chapters from some of the leading sociologists and educational scholars. Each section attempts to provide a critical evaluation of Bernstein's work, framed within four interrelated contexts: his sociological theory, sociology of language and code theory, sociology of education and social reproduction, and the influence of his sociology on educational research. In a separate section, Bernstein himself responds to the earlier chapters. The book examines Bernstein's (...) sociology of schools in relation to his general sociological theory and in doing so demonstrates that sociology is an essential lens for understanding the structure and processes of schooling. It also provides a critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of Bernstein's work, as well as a correction to current work in education, which eschews theory in favor of practicality. (shrink)

John Conington was a towering figure in Victorian scholarship, not least because of his remarkably sensitive and literate commentaries on Virgil’s _Aeneid. _The three-volume cloth edition of _The Works of Virgil_, begun by Conington in 1852, has been unavailable for over a century, except in rare second-hand sets. Now, for the first time, the whole of Conington’s work is being reissued in a set of six paperback volumes. Each volume includes a new introduction by an established scholar, setting Conington's commentary (...) in context, as well as a general introduction to Conington’s work by Philip Hardie, who offers a fresh appreciation of the work. (shrink)

In this paper we examine many of the arguments contained in Milton Friedman’s classic essay, in the form of critiques linked with learning objectives forclassroom discussions.

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

This book moves toward building a new and more comprehensive theory of literature, philosophy, psychology, and art. The extremely popular work of Ken Wilber, unites the best of both western and eastern thought and affirms that the stages of consciousness, more refined than that of the reasoning mind, do exist.

The effects of research ethics training on medical students' attitudes about clinical research are examined. A preliminary randomized controlled trial evaluated 2 didactic approaches to ethics training compared to a no-intervention control. The participant-oriented intervention emphasized subjective experiences of research participants (empathy focused). The criteria-oriented intervention emphasized specific ethical criteria for analyzing protocols (analytic focused). Compared to controls, those in the participant-oriented intervention group exhibited greater attunement to research participants' attitudes related to altruism, trust, quality of relationships with researchers, desire (...) for information, hopes about participation and possible therapeutic misconception, importance of consent forms, and deciding quickly about participation. The participant-oriented group also agreed more strongly that seriously ill people are capable of making their own research participation decisions. The criteria-oriented intervention did not affect learners' attitudes about clinical research, ethical duties of investigators, or research participants' decision making. An empathy-focused approach affected medical students' attunement to research volunteer perspectives, preferences, and attributes, but an analytically oriented approach had no influence. These findings underscore the need to further examine the differential effects of empathy-versus analytic-focused approaches to the teaching of ethics. (shrink)

The effects of research ethics training on medical students' attitudes about clinical research are examined. A preliminary randomized controlled trial evaluated 2 didactic approaches to ethics training compared to a no-intervention control. The participant-oriented intervention emphasized subjective experiences of research participants. The criteria-oriented intervention emphasized specific ethical criteria for analyzing protocols. Compared to controls, those in the participant-oriented intervention group exhibited greater attunement to research participants' attitudes related to altruism, trust, quality of relationships with researchers, desire for information, hopes about (...) participation and possible therapeutic misconception, importance of consent forms, and deciding quickly about participation. The participant-oriented group also agreed more strongly that seriously ill people are capable of making their own research participation decisions. The criteria-oriented intervention did not affect learners' attitudes about clinical research, ethical duties of investigators, or research participants' decision making. An empathy-focused approach affected medical students' attunement to research volunteer perspectives, preferences, and attributes, but an analytically oriented approach had no influence. These findings underscore the need to further examine the differential effects of empathy-versus analytic-focused approaches to the teaching of ethics. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

This chapter outlines three programs that aim to use biological insights in support of philosophical positions in ethics: Aristotelian approaches found, for example, in Thomas Hurka and Philippa Foot; Humean approaches found in Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard; and biologically grounded approaches found in of Elliott Sober and Brian Skyrms. The first two approaches begin with a philosophical view, and seek support for it in biology. The third approach begins with biology, and uses it to illuminate the status of (...) morality. This chapter pursues a version of the third program. A major accomplishment of evolutionary biology has been the explanation of biological altruism, which opens the door to a similar explanation of psychological altruism, or “fellow-feeling.” The chapter conjectures that humans have evolved a capacity for normative governance by socially shared rules. A process of cultural evolution led to the social rules with which we are familiar. This genealogical story poses a challenge, for the idea of moral truth plays no role in it. The story therefore lends support to non-cognitivism or anti-realist expressivism. The chapter concludes by exploring the implications of the genealogical story for moral knowledge, moral objectivity, and the idea of moral authority. (shrink)

We critically investigate and refine Dunn's relevant predication, his formalisation of the notion of a real property. We argue that Dunn's original dialectical moves presuppose some interpretation of relevant identity, though none is given. We then re-motivate the proposal in a broader context, considering the prospects for a classical formalisation of real properties, particularly of Geach's implicit distinction between real and ''Cambridge'' properties. After arguing against these prospects, we turn to relevance logic, re-motivating relevant predication with Geach's distinction (...) in mind. Finally we draw out some consequences of Dunn's proposal for the theory of identity in relevance logic. (shrink)

Where does philosophy, the oldest academic subject, stand at the beginning of the new millennium? This remarkable volume brings together leading figures from most major branches of the discipline to offer answers. What remains of the "linguistic turn" in twentieth-century philosophy? How should moral philosophy respond to and incorporate developments in empirical psychology? Where might Continental and Anglophone feminist theory profitably interact? How has our understanding of ancient philosophy been affected by the emergence of analytic philosophy? Where does the mind-body (...) problem stand today? What role must value judgments play in science? Do Marx, Nietzsche, or Freud matter in the 21st century? These and many other questions at the cutting edge of the discipline are addressed by distinguished philosophers from Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States. They aim not only to stimulate philosophical debate, but to introduce those in cognate disciplines--biology, classics, economics, history, law, linguistics, literary studies, mathematics, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, among others--to what is happening in contemporary philosophy. In a substantial introduction, the editor gives an overview of the state of philosophy today and helps orient non-philosophers. List of Contributors Julia Annas: Ancient Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century Don Garrett: Philosophy and History in the History of Modern Philosophy Brian Leiter: The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud Timothy Williamson: Past the Linguistic Turn? Jaegwon Kim: The Mind-Body Problem at Century's Turn David J. Chalmers: The Representational Character of Experience Alvin I. Goldman: The Need for Social Epistemology Philip Kitcher: The Ends of the Sciences Nancy Cartwright: From Causation to Explanation and Back Thomas Hurka: Normative Ethics: Back to the Future Peter Railton: Toward an Ethics that Inhabits the World Rae Langton: Projection and Objectification Philip Pettit: Existentialism, Quietism, and the Role of Philosophy. (shrink)

Dualists say plausible things about our mental concepts: there is a way of thinking of pain, in terms of how it feels, which is independent of causal role. Physicalists make attractive ontological claims: the world is wholly physical. The attraction of a posteriori physicalism is that it has seemed to do both: to agree with the dualist about our mental concepts, whilst retaining a physicalist ontology. In this paper I argue that, in fact, a posteriori physicalism departs from the dualist's (...) intuitive picture of our phenomenal concepts in just as radical a manner as more traditional forms of physicalism. Whereas the physicalism of David Lewis and David Armstrong is counterintuitive in holding that our only way of thinking about pain is in terms of its causal role, the physicalism of David Papineau and Brian Loar departs from common sense in holding that our phenomenal concept of pain is opaque: thinking of pain in terms of how it feels reveals nothing of what it is for something to feel pain. The arguments of David Chalmers and Frank Jackson against a posteriori physicalism involve general claims about all concepts. In contrast, my argument makes a claim only about phenomenal concepts: phenomenal concepts are not opaque. (shrink)

We begin to fill a lacuna in the relevance logic enterprise by providing a foundational analysis of identity in relevance logic. We consider rival interpretations of identity in this context, settling on the relevant indiscernibility interpretation, an interpretation related to Dunn's relevant predication project. We propose a general test for the stability of an axiomatisation of identity, relative to this interpretation, and we put various axiomatisations to this test. We fill our discussion out with both formal and philosophical remarks (...) on identity in relevance logic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conquest and English Legal Identity in Renaissance IrelandBrian LockeyLike the Spanish administrators of the American territories, English administrators of Ireland attempted to impose their own native legal system on the Irish inhabitants. Nonetheless, important differences existed between the two kingdoms' legal approaches to their respective colonial contexts. Because Spanish jurisprudence was allied with universalist Catholic doctrine and was officially based on Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis (the ancient Roman legal (...) code which had close affinities to natural law discourse), Spanish administrators expected New World inhabitants to accept what they considered to be the "universal values" that were inherent in Spanish law.1 In contrast English common law had its roots not in natural law but in the peculiar customs of the English people. Thus, while the Spanish were able to claim that they were replacing unnatural Indian customs with a legal system rooted in universal natural law, the English were attempting to reform what they considered to be the unnatural practices of the Irish by imposing a legal system defined by its insularity and its peculiar affinity with English institutions.2 In this essay I show that Renaissance ethnographies on Ireland by such English administrators of Ireland as Edmund Spenser, Sir John Davies, and Fynes Moryson are fractured by a conflict between a commitment to natural-law theory, which had its origin in continental writings, and a corresponding commitment to the native English tradition of common law. I examine how works by Spenser, Davies, and Moryson dealt with this conflict within their collective project of articulating a legal justification and strategy for the pacification of Ireland. [End Page 543]Despite reports throughout Europe of Spanish-perpetrated cruelty throughout the Americas, the idea that war or conquest could be just or even charitable when prosecuted against oppression originated within the Catholic tradition of scholastic just-war theory.3 Many of the sixteenth-century writers who were writing about war and conquest in legal or ethical terms were Spanish or continental theologians who had attempted to evaluate Spanish imperial policy in the New World. On the one side were such figures as the Scottish theologian John Major and Spanish historian Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, both of whom had justified Spanish conquest and treatment of the Indians using arguments based on the foundation of natural law.4 On the other side were those who had, on similar terms, voiced criticisms of the cruelties which Spanish forces were inflicting on the Indians. Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de las Casas were certainly the most notable Spanish writers who favored more ethical treatment of New World inhabitants.5 Other prominent defenders of Indian rights were Domingo de Soto and Melchor Cano.6 Whether directly or through intermediaries, the ideas of many of these writers permeated the ideological fabric of England.Sir Fulke Greville's famous statement about Sir Philip Sidney's goal of fostering alliances with New World inhabitants in order to overthrow the Spanish authorities included an awareness of the "inhuman cruelties" of the Spanish forces, an awareness that probably originated in the English translation of Las Casas's Brevissima relación de la destrucyión de las Indias (1552).7 Beyond [End Page 544] this significant text, however, there were others. One important book that captured the ideas of the early Spanish debates on the ethics and justice of the New World conquests was Antonio de Guevara's Relox de príncipes (1529), a work twice translated into English during the sixteenth century.8 The third book of the Relox de príncipes, which treats the princely virtues of justice, peace, and magnificence, contains several sections that together constitute a polemic against violent imperialism and unjust conquest. In one notable episode Guevara employs the example of ancient Roman imperialism to produce a veiled critique of the injustices which Spain had committed against New World polities. A "villain of Danuby" from a German province newly conquered by Rome makes a speech to the Roman senate in which he criticizes the injustice of his Roman oppressors. The German villain characterizes the conquest of Germany in the following terms: "For I let you know, if you do not know it, that when... (shrink)

Proponents and opponents of euthanasia have argued passionately about whether it should be legalized. In Australia in the mid-1990s, following the world’s first legal euthanasia deaths, Dr. Philip Nitschke initiated a different approach: a search for do-it-yourself technological means of dying with dignity. The Australian government has opposed this effort, especially through heavy censorship. The citizen efforts led by Nitschke have the potential to move the euthanasia issue from a debate about legalization to a struggle over technology.

This essay is a reading of two Hollywood films: The Defiant Ones (1958, directed by Stanley Kramer, starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier) and Rising Sun (1993, directed by Philip Kauffman starring Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery, based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name). The essay argues that these films work to contain black demand for social and political equality not through exclusionary measures, but rather through deliberate acknowledgment of blackness as integral to US identity. My (...) reading shows how a homosocial bond between white and black stands in for US national identity, and how this identity is unified by foregrounding the threat of an apocalyptic outcome. I use the concept of brinkmanship to illustrate the political effects of this particular narrative form. Then I move to Rising Sun, a film that employs a racial triangle of white, black and Asian men to manage black demand for social change. I argue that the narrative logic and the cultural politics of the film require any figure that is both Asian and masculine to be coded as a foreign enemy. (shrink)

This essay is a reading of two Hollywood films: The Defiant Ones (1958, directed by Stanley Kramer, starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier) and Rising Sun (1993, directed by Philip Kauffman starring Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery, based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name). The essay argues that these films work to contain black demand for social and political equality not through exclusionary measures, but rather through deliberate acknowledgment of blackness as integral to US identity. My (...) reading shows how a homosocial bond between white and black stands in for US national identity, and how this identity is unified by foregrounding the threat of an apocalyptic outcome. I use the concept of brinkmanship to illustrate the political effects of this particular narrative form. Then I move to Rising Sun, a film that employs a racial triangle of white, black and Asian men to manage black demand for social change. I argue that the narrative logic and the cultural politics of the film require any figure that is both Asian and masculine to be coded as a foreign enemy. (shrink)

There is an intuition, notoriously difficult to formalise, that only some predicates express real properties. J. M. Dunn formalises this intuition with relevance logic, proposing a notion of relevant predication. For each first order formula Ax, Dunn specifies another formula that is intuitively interpreted as "Ax expresses a real property". Chapter I calls such an approach an object language approach, since the claim that Ax expresses a real property is rendered as a formula in the object language. On (...) a metalanguage approach, on the other hand, the claim that Ax expresses a real property would be metalinguistic, mentioning but not using the formula Ax. ;Our Introduction begins by investigating Dunn's motivation for relevant predication, and argues that it implicitly presupposes some interpretation of identity. Indeed, part of the dissertation's work is to use relevant predication as a key to a coherent account of relevant identity. ;Chapter I re-motivates relevant predication. We consider P. Geach's distinction between real and "Cambridge" change, and suggest that there is an underlying distinction between real and Cambridge predicates. We further argue that no classical object language approach can formalise this distinction. So we turn to relevance logic, remotivating relevant predication, with Geach's distinction in mind. ;In light of this new motivation, we argue that relevant prediction relies on a logically weak notion of identity, according to which "x = y" means "x and y share all relevant properties". Identity is taken up in a more technical setting in Chapters IV and V. ;Subsequent chapters investigate technical issues that flow from Chapter I. Chapter II investigates metalinguistic grammatical characterisations of relevant predication. Chapter III concerns the semantics of first order relevance logic. Chapter IV investigates the identity in R and its relationship to relevant predication. In particular, Chapter IV argues against introducing the axiom, $\to$ Ay), in relevance logic, since the resulting systems are unstable, in a sense motivated by the notion of relevant identity underlying Dunn's notion of relevant predication. Finally Chapter V investigates the possibility of a coherent theory of identity in R's modal relatives ${\bf R}\sp\square$ and E. (shrink)

Making the perspective of insiders critical to a theory of law, including particularly those who accept and enforce legal standards, has been the hallmark of corrections to John Austin’s theory at least since Hart’s The Concept of Law. Burge-Hendrix’s book continues this tradition and brings its insights to bear on the particular dispute between inclusive and exclusive positivists. That being said, the project has always seemed to me to be incomplete. If the participant’s perspective is indeed the critical one, then (...) the recognition that participants make normative claims about the concept of law itself surely deserves its own proper place in a legal theory. Those normative claims about law range, at the very least, from claims that coercion is justified to claims of authority. If these claims turn out to be false in cases of laws that are extremely unjust, then either they are not “laws” at all according to the participants' own views Or, participants will have to give up their normative claims about law and recognize that all that counts is pedigree and the power to coerce. In that case, we will be back to Austin’s coercive account of law, and much of the dispute between exclusive and inclusive positivists will be irrelevant. (shrink)

Religion is often singled out for special legal treatment in Western societies - which raises an important question: what, if anything, is special about religious conscience beliefs that warrants such special legal treatment? In this paper, I will offer an answer to this specialness question by investigating the relationship between religious conscientious objections and their insulation from relevant evidence. I will begin my analysis by looking at Brian Leiter’s arguments that religious beliefs are insulated from evidence and not worthy (...) of special legal treatment as a result. I will argue that he fails to show that religious conscience beliefs are both in principle responsive to empirical evidence and in practice typically more insulated from this evidence than secular conscience beliefs. If I am right about this, then Leiter fails to answer the “central puzzle” of his recent book and fails to sufficiently distinguish the religious conscience from the secular conscience. Second, I will look at whether or not it is plausible to understand the religious conscience as insulated from other forms of evidence. Following the research of social-psychologist Jonathan Haidt, I will argue that, typically, both forms of conscience seem to be similarly insulated from moral argumentation. I will also show that, while it seems as though the religious conscience usually draws from a larger set of moral values when compared to the secular conscience, this should make no legal difference overall. To conclude, I will explain that the arguments in this paper can be understood as evidence in support of an egalitarian response to religion’s specialness. (shrink)