Given the ongoing and pervasive religious diversity that characterises contemporary life, constructive interaction with differing religious beliefs presents itself as an attractive option. Yet, constructive interaction must be conducted in a philosophically responsible manner, which includes considerations concerning the role of epistemic justification. In this and the following paper, Dirk-Martin Grube and I consider various issues related to the philosophical foundations of constructive interreligious interaction. I propose the notion of modal justification, which allows religious believers to ascribe positive epistemic status (...) to the other’s belief, thus enabling constructive interaction, while also maintaining that the other’s belief is false. (shrink)

In recent discussions in this journal, Moti Mizrahi defends the claim that knowledge equals epistemic certainty. Howard Sankey finds Mizrahi’s argument to be problematic, since, as he reads it, this would entail that justification must guarantee truth. In this article, I suggest that an account of the normativity of justification is able to bridge the gap between Mizrahi’s proposal and Sankey’s objections.

Background and ObjectivesThe influence of democracy and democratization on health is difficult to disentangle from a complex web of factors such as population characteristics and social determinants of health. The goal of this study was to begin to characterize the roles of the individual attributes of democracy on a key measure of health, mortality rates among female children under five years of age.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective observational cohort study utilizing data over a study period from 1975–2021 with data from 173 (...) countries. We utilized publicly available data from the Global State of Democracy Indices (GSoD) and the United Nations Inter Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN-IGME) databases.ResultsOur data support prior work showing that strength of democracy is associated with improved population health measures. Stronger democracies are associated with improvements in female child mortality, even controlling for within-country variation over time and for income level. This relationship is most pronounced when examining the relationship between protections of civil rights and child mortality.ConclusionsChild mortality increases when democracy declines. With declines in democracy worldwide, it is critical that advocates are concerned with the global democratic experience, especially with policies that compromise fundamental rights. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe report the findings of an experimental study that tested the contributions of semiotic and critical discourse studies on immigration. Two-way analyses of variance were conducted to examine the effects of immigration terminology on measures of attribution and empathy. Our experiment revealed a statistically significant difference in attribution. Participants who received a narrative prompt with the term ‘illegal immigrant’ evaluated the character's situation with internal attribution, and thus deserving of any negative outcomes, such as racial profiling, deportation, and separation from (...) one's family. This finding is consistent with studies that have reported the concrete effects of immigrant labels on public opinion and policy, as migrants become scapegoats for macro-structural forces. Our experiment did not reveal an effect on empathy, demonstrating the complicated symbolic and material effects produced by immigration discourse. (shrink)