The study aims to lay the groundwork for systematically investigating children’s peer discourse at different age levels with a view to delimiting the role of peer talk for pragmatic development. An interdisciplinary stance to the study of children’s peer talk is argued for, considering it simultaneously as the arena for the co-construction of childhood cultures as well as an arena for development. We propose a four-dimensional model of discursive events, meant to capture both dimensions simultaneously. The model takes into account (...) the dynamic interplay among the type of activity children are engaged in, the overall thematic frame of the event, its internal framing by the children themselves and the genre used. The model is applied to the analysis of natural peer talk at two age levels, preschoolers and fourth graders, focusing mainly on variation along the dimension of keying. The two age groups studied are shown to share a rich repertoire of keyings and genres, but to differ in their relative salience and modes of realization by age. Our analysis suggests that peer talk offers children ample opportunities to listen in, practice and display conversational as well as academic discursive skills, and hence may very well prove a crucial site for pragmatic development. (shrink)

McFarland and Co. 2016. 284pp. Pb. £41.50. ISBN-13: 9780786498093. E-book: 9781476623504.

Some years ago, Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist, nailed the divide between scientists who conduct research on animals in the hope of advancing medical knowledge and people who object to that work for being immoral and inhumane. They are “like two different nations, nations locked in a long, bitter, seemingly intractable political standoff,” she wrote in her 1994 book, The Monkey Wars. The two sides certainly have been like nations locked in a long, bitter standoff. That (...) standoff has seemed intractable. But when Blum talked to people on both sides, she found glimmers of hope—a few individuals willing to listen to one another and find common ground. “When they can be freely heard,” she concluded, “then we will have progressed to another place, beyond this time of hostilities.” Today, while we are not yet beyond hostilities, we have progressed to another place. (shrink)

Numerous philosophical theories of joint agency and its intentional structure have been developed in the past few decades. These theories have offered accounts of joint agency that appeal to higher-level states that are?shared? in some way. These accounts have enhanced our understanding of joint agency, yet there are a number of lower-level cognitive phenomena involved in joint action that philosophers rarely acknowledge. In particular, empirical research in cognitive science has revealed that when individuals engage in a joint activity such as (...) conversation or joint problem solving, they become aligned at multiple levels. We argue that this phenomenon of alignment is crucial to understanding joint actions and should be integrated with philosophical approaches. In this paper, we sketch a possible integration, and draw out its implications for understanding of joint agency and collective intentionality. The result is a process-based, dynamic account of joint action that integrates both low-level and high-level states, and seeks to capture the separate processes of how a joint action is initiated and sustained. (shrink)

A critically important ethical issue facing the AI research community is how AI research and AI products can be responsibly conceptualised and presented to the public. A good deal of fear and concern about uncontrollable AI is now being displayed in public discourse. Public understanding of AI is being shaped in a way that may ultimately impede AI research. The public discourse as well as discourse among AI researchers leads to at least two problems: a confusion about the notion of (...) ‘autonomy’ that induces people to attribute to machines something comparable to human autonomy, and a ‘sociotechnical blindness’ that hides the essential role played by humans at every stage of the design and deployment of an AI system. Here our purpose is to develop and use a language with the aim to reframe the discourse in AI and shed light on the real issues in the discipline. (shrink)

Chapter Introduction Hobbes's political doctrine presents the unusual feature that it has given rise to an "official" interpretation, in terms of which, ...

Idiosyncrasies of Hobbes's composition process, together with a paucity of reliable autobiographical materials and the norms of seventeenth-century manuscript production, render interpretation of his political theory particularly difficult and contentious. These difficulties are surveyed here under three headings: the process of "serial" composition, which was common in the period; the relationship between Hobbes's three political-theory texts-- the "Elements of Law, De Cive ", and "Leviathan", which is basic to defining the textual embodiment of his theory, and controversial; and his method (...) of writing. I argue that Hobbes's composition process undercut his intention to produce a deductive, logical theory of politics and opened the door to inconsistency and muddle in his arguments. (shrink)

Is bioethics consultation a profession? Withfew exceptions, the arguments andcounterarguments about whether healthcareethics consultation is a profession haveignored the historical and cultural developmentof professions in the United States, the wayssocial changes have altered the work andboundaries of all professions, and theprofessionalization theories that explain howmodern societies institutionalize expertise inprofessions. This interdisciplinary analysisbegins to fill this gap by framing the debatewithin a larger theoretical context heretoforemissing from the bioethics literature. Specifically, the question of whether ethicsconsultation is a profession is examined fromthe (...) perspectives of trait theory, Wilensky''sfive-stage process of professionalization,Abbott''s interdependent system of professions,and Haug''s deprofessionalization thesis. Whilehealthcare ethics consultation does not meetthe criteria to claim professional status,neither could most professions pass these idealtheoretical standards. Instead of a yes or nodichotomous response to the question, it ismore helpful to envision a professionalizationcontinuum with sales clerks or carpenters atone end and medicine or law at the other. During the past decade healthcare ethicsconsultation has been moving along thiscontinuum toward greater professional status. (shrink)

Via the existential questioning outlook supplied by the Grasshopper’s three visions as relevant to the fate of humankind – oblivion, delusion, and really magnificent games – this article seeks to alleviate some of the ambiguity surrounding Bernard Suits’ provocative claim that Utopian existence is fundamentally concerned with game-playing. Specifically, after proposing an interpretation of Suits’ parable designed to enrich the logical intelligibility of his Utopian thesis, I advance the suggestion that the Grasshopper’s picture of people playing really magnificent games is (...) reasonably interpreted as a clue that the philosopher’s quest to discern games worthy of a Utopian might very well be that which saves humanity from the desolate oblivion-delusion paradox erected as a consequence of the initial two visions. (shrink)

Philosophers such as Dan Brock believe that surrogates who make health care decisions on behalf of previously competent patients, in the absence of an advance directive, should make these decisions based upon a substituted judgment principle. Brock favours substituted judgment over a best interests standard. However, Edward Wierenga claims that the substituted judgment principle ought to be abandoned in favour of a best interests standard, because of an inherent problem with the substituted judgment principle. Wierenga's version of the substituted judgment (...) principle and his counterexample to the principle's successful interpretation of valid surrogate consent is presented. A new version of what is meant by the substituted judgment principle is advanced. The new version is not beset with the problems Wierenga initially ascribed to the substituted judgment principle. (shrink)

The question of acceptability in respect to the strategic foul in sport has provoked a rich and seemingly irreconcilable dispute with normative theorists currently divided amongst three schools of thought including formalism, conventionalism and interpretivism. In this paper, I seek to transcend the three-way intellectual stalemate portrayed in the literature via a consideration as to whether or not the strategic foul qualifies as ‘Utopian’. More specifically, after demonstrating that Bernard Suits’ theory of game-playing is fully capable of embracing all three (...) rival accounts, I seek to end the normative debate altogether via a conceptual analysis of the strategic foul as unacceptable via the higher-order point of view afforded by essentialism. (shrink)

Comparing estimates of the cost-effectiveness of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) interventions can help communities select an HIV prevention portfolio to meet local needs efficiently. The authors developed a spreadsheet tool to estimate the relative cost-effectiveness of 26 HIV prevention interventions. HIV prevalence of the population at risk and the cost per person reached were the two most important factors determining cost-effectiveness. In low-prevalence populations, the most cost-effective interventions had a low per-person cost. Among the most cost-effective interventions overall were showing (...) videos in sexually transmitted disease clinics and raising alcohol taxes. (shrink)

In The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, Suits maintains the following two theses: game-playing is defined as ‘activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity’ and ‘game playing is what makes Utopia intelligible.’ Observing that these two theses cannot be jointly maintained absent paradox, this essay explores the (...) logical possibility that if is true, then must be false. More specifically, in the tradition of conceptual analysis it is argued that Suits’ definition of game-playing is too narrow inasmuch as it excludes really magnificent Utopian games of significance. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of Margaret Cavendish's moral and political philosophy. In some respects Cavendish's theoury echoes Hobbes. However, although Cavendish agrees with Hobbes that morality is based on self-interest, she holds that morality derives from our natural desire for public recognition, not the desire for self-preservation. Via the desire for fame, self-love can motivate people to pursue virtue, which, for Cavendish, means establishing and maintaining a good government (in particular, absolute sovereignty). The paper explores how Cavendish thinks such (...) a government can be established and maintained. Cavendish's account of female virtue and its connection with honor and fame is also discussed. (shrink)

Deborah K. W. Modrak - Aristotle and Other Platonists - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.2 315-317 Lloyd P. Gerson. Aristotle and Other Platonists. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2005. Pp. ix + 335. Cloth, $49.95. This book is a heroic effort to defend the thesis that the Neoplatonists' embrace of Aristotle as another Platonist is well grounded in Aristotle's own texts and not a product of Neoplatonic eclecticism. If this (...) case can be made by a comprehensive treatment of Aristotelian texts and attention to the enormous body of secondary literature on the texts discussed, Gerson is determined to make it. The introduction establishes the ancient credentials of the attribution of Platonism to Aristotle and explores the notion of harmony at the heart of Neoplatonic interpretations of Aristotle's positions. The goal of the Neoplatonic exegete of Aristotelian texts, according to Gerson, is to harmonize what Aristotle says, including his criticisms of Platonic positions, with Platonism. After setting out the central tenets of Platonism as understood by the Neoplatonic proponents of harmonization in the relatively short first chapter, Gerson goes on in the bulk of the work to examine various Aristotelian texts as interpreted by the.. (shrink)

Seventeenth-century natural-law philosophers participated in colonizing and slave-trading companies, yet they discussed slavery as an abstraction. This dispassionate approach is commonly explained with the “distance thesis” that the practice of slavery was at some remove from Northwest Europe. I contest the thesis, with a specific focus on pre-Restoration English discourse and Hobbes's political theory. By laying out the salient context — English experience of Barbary-coast slavery and an inherited neo-Roman intellectual frame — I argue, first, that slavery was hardly a (...) distant phenomenon and, second, that Hobbes's discussion of slavery expressed ideas familiar in ordinary discourse. The conclusion contrasts the English neo-Roman outlook with Spanish neo-Aristotelianism. (shrink)

Hobbes's defense of absolutism involves the dual claims that consent is the foundation of legitimate authority and that sovereignty is necessarily absolute. It is a paradoxical combination of claims: If absolute government is the product of choice how can it also be the sole possible constitution? While all of Hobbes's contractarian successors have rejected his preference for absolutism, his dual claims have become commonplace. Since Hobbes, contract thinkers routinely assert that people will choose their preferred constitution and that it is (...) the only possible one. The essay examines the genesis of this paradoxical argumentation: Hobbes's genius lay in merging Grotius's contractarian rationale with Bodin's analytic view that sovereignty must be absolute. The final section discusses related criticisms of Rawls's contract theory. Rawls inherited a genre already flawed by the impluse to combine voluntarist with non-voluntarist reasoning. (shrink)

“Trust” is not usually considered a Hobbesian concept, which is odd since it is central to the definition of a covenant. The key to understanding Hobbes’s concept of trust is to be found in his account of conquest— “sovereignty by acquisition”—which is a heavily revised adaptation of the Roman justification of slavery. Hobbes introduces a distinction between servants, who are trusted with liberty, and imprisoned slaves. The servant/master relationship involves mutual trust, an ongoing exchange of benefits (protection for service and (...) obedience), and performance monitoring. In contrast to Quentin Skinner’s and Philip Pettit’s shared concentration on the contrast between slavery and freedom, I argue that the salient analogy is between servants and subjects.The trust relationship between subjects and the sovereign involves defined roles, limited absolutism, and accountability in the early-modern form of licensing subjects to switch political allegiance should a regime fail. (shrink)

Laspro et al. (2024) present an insightful survey of ethical issues emerging in first-in-human whole eye transplants (WET). Their discussion is applicable to a broad range of first-in-human surgica...

Traditionally, acts of sportsmanship have been upheld as worthy of praise. The purpose of this paper is to discern whether Bernard Suits’ Grasshopper -- in "The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia" -- would share this approval. The paper begins with a conceptual analysis of good sportspersonship. From this, four action categories are identified including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, not trying, and lusory self-handicapping. A strategy for evaluation is derived from the Grasshopper’s theory. Game-playing (...) is defined as action reflecting lusory attitude acknowledgement. Game-spoiling is introduced as action demonstrating lusory attitude abandonment. Three of the four actions categories are characterized as game-spoiling including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, and not trying. It is concluded that genuine good sportspersonship is characterized solely by altruistic forms of lusory self-handicapping. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Most American engineers believe that they have a responsibility for the safety and well‐being of society, but whence does this responsibility arise? What does it entail? After describing engineering practice in America as compared with the practice of other professions, this paper examines two standard types of accounts of the social responsibilities of professionals. While neither provides a satisfactory account of the social responsibilities of American engineers, several lessons are learned by uncovering their weaknesses. Identifying the framework in which (...) professional rights and responsibilities are justified, I argue that an end or primary good is the starting place for conceptualizing a profession, and justifying its existence and shape. Too little attention has been paid to the end(s) of engineering. The social responsibilities of American engineers as defined in the present system of engineering are ambiguous and weak. I indicate how the case for assigning American engineers stronger social responsibilities must be made by starting with the end(s) of engineering. I argue that, at present, American engineers do not have social responsibilities as engineers, though they do have social responsibilities as persons. (shrink)

Abstract Inspired by Rawls?s admission that his twentieth?century contract theory builds in the parochial horizon of modern constitutional democracy, this essay critically examines two truisms about seventeenth?century contract theory. The first is the stock view that the English case is irrelevant to the logic of Leviathan and the Second Treatise. To the contrary, I argue that their political conclusions depend on introducing constitutional and legal ?facts?, in particular, facts about the constitution of the English monarchy. Second, I challenge the Whiggish (...) characterization of contract theory as an important step in the development of democratic sovereignty. I draw on Hume?s famous critique of the genre to make the case that seventeenth?century contract theory addressed a peculiarly ancien?regime issue ? namely, resistance to legitimate rulers. In both respects, Hobbes?s and Locke?s social contracts are properly regarded as ancien?regime theories of politics. They are, as Rawls would put it, ?political not metaphysical? theories. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the repeated rhetorical moves through which the third wave autobiographical subject seeks to be real and to speak as part of a collective voice from the next feminist generation. Given that postmodernist, postructuralist, and multiculturalist critiques have shaped the form and the content of third wave expressions of the personal, the study is ultimately concerned with the possibilities and limitations of such theoretical analysis for a third wave of feminist praxis.

Being empathetic (or compassionate) is an important trait that allows for those working in health care professions to successfully analyze cases and provide patients with adequate care. One standard and enormously important way to try and teach empathy involves the use of case studies. The case-study approach, however, has some unique limitations in teaching empathy. This paper describes an activity where students are asked to imagine that they have contracted a specific disease (one that lasts the entire semester) through a (...) process of random (or lottery) assignment. Having contracted a disease, students are then tasked with taking on the persona of that patient. In writing and adopting the perspective of that patient, students are better able to learn the kind of empathy needed to be a successful health care professional. (shrink)

In one of his many metaphorical turns of phrase – a leitmotif in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity — Jürgen Habermas speaks of the path not taken by modern philosophers, a path that might have led them towards his own intersubjective notion of communicative reason. Habermas is especially critical of his predecessors, Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, because, he believes, they repudiated the rational potential in the culture of modernity. Whenever Adorno and Horkheimer heard the word ‘culture’, they apparently (...) reached for their revolvers. By the 1940s, their confidence in modern culture had allegedly succumbed to bitter disillusionment. Indeed, on Habermas's view, the confidence of these early critical theorists had been shaken so badly by the emergence of Nazism and Stalinism that their scepticism finally embraced reason itself, ‘whose standards ideology critique had found already given in bourgeois ideals’. Consequently, Adorno and Horkheimer were forced to call into question their own immanent critique of modernity: ideology critique itself came ‘under suspicion of not producing truths’. These philosophers supposedly had little choice but to render their now suspect critique ‘independent even in relation to its own foundations’. (shrink)

Although recent years have seen an increase in professional learning communities, use of video and lesson study groups, most teachers still work and learn in isolation. What they know is personal and remains private; little opportunity exists for most teachers to develop shared knowledge or language. The scale of the teaching force, and the rapid turnover of new teachers, makes this lack of shared knowledge an acute problem. This paper explores the potential of records of practice for developing collective professional (...) knowledge about teaching and learning. We define and illustrate what we mean by records of practice and elaborate the meaning of the term collective professional knowledge. Three concrete examples of records of practice, originating in different contexts and times, are presented and their special features are analyzed and discussed. The paper clarifies that records are not in themselves professional knowledge, but constitute a valuable and unique resource for the study of practice and the generation of knowledge originating in and useful for practice. To illustrate varied approaches for studying practice, possible uses of records of practice for the generation of collective professional knowledge are described and analyzed. The paper concludes with questions about records of practice and their uses. (shrink)

The product rule has been used to calculate the risk of a research study, in which the risk of harm is calculated as the product of the degree of harm multiplied by the likelihood that the harm will occur. This article challenges the product rule, especially when used to calculate "minimal risk" studies.

‘Supererogation’ is the notion of going beyond the call of duty. The concept of supererogation has received scrutiny in ethical theory, as well as clinical bioethics. Yet, there has been little attention paid to supererogation in research ethics. Supererogation is examined in this paper from three perspectives: (1) a summary of two analyses of ‘supererogation’ in moral theory, as well as an examination as to whether acts of supererogation exist; (2) a discussion of supererogation in clinical practice, including arguments that (...) both physicians and patients can practice acts of supererogation; (3) a discussion as to why researchers, qua researchers, are not routinely recognized to perform acts of supererogation, while at the same time the very nature of research subject participation involves supererogation. The article concludes by considering three examples of supererogation on the part of researchers, with a plea that researchers’ supererogatory actions be recognized as such. (shrink)

What makes "digital pets" pets? This article posits four necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for an individual to be a pet, concluding that digital pets fail to meet these sufficient criteria and thus are not pets.

“Trust” is not usually considered a Hobbesian concept, which is odd since it is central to the definition of a covenant. The key to understanding Hobbes’s concept of trust is to be found in his account of conquest— “sovereignty by acquisition”—which is a heavily revised adaptation of the Roman justification of slavery. Hobbes introduces a distinction between servants, who are trusted with liberty, and imprisoned slaves. The servant/master relationship involves mutual trust, an ongoing exchange of benefits (protection for service and (...) obedience), and performance monitoring. In contrast to Quentin Skinner’s and Philip Pettit’s shared concentration on the contrast between slavery and freedom, I argue that the salient analogy is between servants and subjects.The trust relationship between subjects and the sovereign involves defined roles, limited absolutism, and accountability in the early-modern form of licensing subjects to switch political allegiance should a regime fail. (shrink)

The role demographic, personality, and situational factors play in the ethical decision making process has received a significant amount of attention (Ford and Richardson, 1994). However, the empirical research on students' decisions to engage in collegiate cheating has not been included in this literature. This paper reviews the last 25 years of empirical research on collegiate cheating. The individual/situational factor typology from Ford and Richardson's review (1994) is used to compare the two literatures. In addition, issues pertaining to the quantification (...) of academic dishonesty, the perception that cheating is increasing, and methodological considerations are addressed in this review. (shrink)

Distinguished for the game-parabling expressed in The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, Bernard Suits is revered as the author of the unorthodox claim that Utopia is intelligible and game playing is what makes Utopia intelligible. Reasonably embraced as a game in itself, the purpose of this metaphysical brainteaser is to present the reader with an enigma, with the challenge of its resolution serving as the very means by which one is to be brought into line with the logic of the (...) Grasshopper’s Utopian thesis. Appreciating the fine intricacies of this challenge, the purpose of this essay is to advance the quest for resolution via a consideration of play as a necessary element of the Grasshopper’s game playing Utopia. As foundational to the enigma, I begin with a portrayal of the Grasshopper’s tangle of riddles about play, games and the good life. Converging upon the insights of the Grasshopper and/or his disciples in respect to the nature, meaning and significance of play in its conceptual relati... (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the role of emotion in the interpretation and memory of sexual encounters. We consider situations likely to generate negative emotions during sex, and the mechanisms through which the experience of negative emotions can lead to false memories of coercion and mislabeling of an encounter as sexual assault. Specifically, we consider the role of emotion in directing attention during a sexual encounter and the effects of emotion as context for interpretation at the time of the encounter, (...) and for retrieval and interpretation when the encounter is later recalled and reported. Our intent is to provide a greater understanding of the processes of interpretation and memory through which false claims of sexual assault might arise, if and when they do arise. (shrink)

Feminist literature sometimes posits that competition and cooperation are opposites. This dichotomy is important in that it is often invoked in order to explain why mainstream economics has focused on market activity to the exclusion of non-market activity, and why this fascination or focus is sexist. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the competition/cooperation dichotomy is false. Once the dichotomy is dissolved, those activities which are seen as competitive (masculine) and those which are seen as cooperative (feminine) (...) are no longer mutually exclusive but are, in fact, dependent upon one another. It is shown that the outcome of competition (more and better knowledge) enhances, and in some cases makes possible, cooperation. The function of battle is destruction; of competition, construction. Ludwig von Mises. (shrink)

The connections between science and education, disciplines which are usually considered separately, were particulary strong in the U.S.A. in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Many American scientists at that time were employed as educators, and interested in matters of pedagogy. Like educators they were interested in popularizing their subject, and promoting it into a profession. The overlapping of science and education was especially evident in the area of apparatus. The philosophical apparatus that American scientists were acquiring at a (...) great rate might be considered scientific. In fact, it was often used for public demonstrations of natural philosophy, and seldom used for the advancement of science. In many instances this apparatus was indistinguishable from that developed for the educational reform known as object teaching. The proliferation of this apparatus was furthered by a growing apparatus industry operating within a growing consumer culture. (shrink)