Although awareness of cultural differences that distinguish Indigenous peoples has increased worldwide following attention from international human rights bodies, Indigenous cultural values have had little influence in shaping research agendas or methods of inquiry. Self‐determination and reconciliation policies have been part of the decolonisation agenda of governments for several decades; however, these have not, until recently, been considered of relevance to research. Indigenous peoples feel that they are the most studied population in Australia, to the point where even the word (...) research arouses feelings of suspicion and defensive attitudes. Indigenous people are generally cynical about the benefits of research and cautious toward what many perceive to be the colonial mentality or ‘positional superiority’ ingrained in the psyche of western researchers. This article examines the characteristics and colonising effects of traditional research methods and describes an alternative, decolonising approach. Decolonising research methodology is congruent with Indigenous epistemology and is guided by the values and research agenda of Indigenous people. TheGuidelines for ethical conduct in Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander health research, developed by the National Aboriginal and Islander Health Organisation (NAIHO) with the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in 2003 are examined, as they exemplify a decolonising paradigm for researchers. (shrink)

Background: Ethical issues are increasingly being reported by care-providers; however, little is known about the nature of these issues within the nursing home. Ethical issues are unavoidable in healthcare and can result in opportunities for improving work and care conditions; however, they are also associated with detrimental outcomes including staff burnout and moral distress. Objectives: The purpose of this review was to identify prior research which focuses on ethical issues in the nursing home and to explore staffs’ experiences of (...) ethical issues. Methods: Using a systematic approach based on Aveyard (2014), a literature review was conducted which focused on ethical and moral issues, nurses and nursing assistants, and the nursing home. Findings: The most salient themes identified in the review included clashing ethical principles, issues related to communication, lack of resources and quality of care provision. The review also identified solutions for overcoming the ethical issues that were identified and revealed the definitional challenges that permeate this area of work. Conclusions: The review highlighted a need for improved ethics education for care-providers. (shrink)

This article argues that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing the action. I call this reason The Anti-Compounding Injustice principle or aci. Compounding injustice and the aci principle are likely to be relevant when analyzing the moral issues raised by “big data” and its combination with the computational power of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Past injustice can infect the data used in algorithmic decisions in two distinct ways. Sometimes (...) prior injustice undermines the accuracy of the data itself. In these contexts, improving accuracy will also help to avoid compounding injustice. Other times, past injustice produces real-world differences among people with regard to skills, health, wealth, and other traits that employers, lenders, and others seek to measure. When decisions are based on accurate data that itself results from prior injustice, these decisions can also compound injustice. This second dynamic has received less attention than the first but is especially important because improving the accuracy of data will not mitigate this unfairness. (shrink)

SummaryThe hiddenness of God in relation to opus alienum reflects, in Luther, a particular theological anthropology: one based on the limits of humanity and the futility of human action; and one that ascribes a certain role to suffering. One aspect of this account of the hiddenness of God is a figure whose terror remains unmitigated even by the light of salvation. In their discussions of the hiddenness of God, Karl Barth and Eberhard Jüngel reject this particular hiddenness of God. However, (...) their theologies draw on the opus alienum, and in doing so, they examine and analyse the despair and anxiety that characterise it in their own discussions of evil as nothingness. These accounts of nothingness engage with philosophical accounts of nothingness as being that which prompts self-assertion and actualisation as authentic existence. However, this use of the opus alienum opens their theologies up to the figure that they rejected in their prior accounts of hiddenness: the hidden, alien, and terrifying God. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:REFLECTIONS ON GADAMER'S NOTION OF SPRACHLICHKEIT by Deborah Cook The works of Hans-Georg Gadamer recall the works of Martin Heidegger as those of Plato memorialize Socrates. The history of philosophy is constituted in such iterations. Indeed, die relationship between Gadamer and Heidegger offers us a paradigm for the understanding of die history of philosophy, manifesting as it does how this history is less marked by change than by (...) a ceaseless repetition of the same. Nevertheless, whUe Gadamer reappropriates the Heidegger of Being and Time, he does so with a different aim in mind; an aim very similar to that of Wilhelm Dilthey: to give to die human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) a solid epistemological foundation for their judgments of cultural artifacts. This foundation would also unsetde the truth value of scientificjudgments about natural objects by reinterpreting them. Heidegger's goal, on die odier hand, was to understand why diere is somediing radier dian nodiing. This led him to propose a fundamental ontology in Being and Time which he later based on die word (verbum). From the beginning, Gadamer could see in the word die power and importance Heidegger had neglected in Being and Time. Thus, on die basis of a philosophy or phenomenology of language, Gadamer pursues his end with the aid of Heidegger's original and ontologically significant formulation of die hermeneutic circle. For Gadamer, the hermeneutic circle of understanding (Verstehen), interpretation (Auslegung), and application (Anwendung) is a movement inscribed primarily in language. Using the literary text as the prototype for any object understood in the circle, he accounts for our appropriation of 84 Deborah Cook85 objects by attributing it to the power diat dwells in language. Gadamer terms this characteristic ofunderstanding its Sprachlichkeit or linguisticality. In our dealings with die world, we understand everytiring in it linguistically. As Heidegger suggested in his Letter on Humanism, language is the house of Being. It is language and language alone which accounts for die fact that we understand die world. Gadamer takes up this view diat language is die house of Being and claims diat understanding, interpretation, and application must be interpreted as linguistic phenomena because diey embody a unified whole — die understanding must not be divorced from interpretation — and because our traffic with objects takes a form analogous to mat of dialogue. It is my aim in mis discussion to consider this Sprachlichkeit as described in Truth and Method first in relation to the Heidegger ofBeing and Time and the later Heidegger and then with respect to our understanding of texts in reading. The Heidegger of Being and Time portrays the much celebrated hermeneutic circle in an original and ontologically significant way. The circle is, for Heidegger, an existentiale characterizing Dasein's very mode of being in the world and its meaning structures. It is no longer primarily a mediod. What is originally meaningful is not language but die structures of significance (the Zeichen ofequipment and the Bedeutsamkeit ofdie world) which are prior to language and from which language is derived. The circle is first and foremost a prelinguistic understanding of tiiose structures of significance toward which Dasein always transcends itself in its projects. The world and equipment are meaningful because Dasein invests diem with meaning. It is thus Dasein diat is responsible for die meaning of the world and equipment. Nonedieless, this meaning is not, for all that, arbitrary ; what underlies it, or makes it possible, is Being. Being (Sein) is die ontological foundation of pre-linguistic significance. It is that upon which meaning is grounded. While objects, dien, do not have meaning, meaning is bestowed on them by the Dasein diat seeks to render diem intelligible to itselfon die basis ofits immediate and pre-ontological understanding of Being. The hermeneutic circle characterizes die way in which diis prelinguistic and pre-ontological relationship to the world and to objects is deployed. In Heidegger's words, "To every understanding of die world, existence is understood with it and vice versa. All interpretation, moreover, operates in the forestructure which we have already characterized. Any interpretation which is to contribute to understanding must already have understood what is to be interpreted." Heidegger then goes on to claim that even the "... derivative ways... (shrink)

Background Ethical and scientific principles require that clinical trials address an important question and have the resources needed to complete the study. However, there are no clear standards for review that would ensure that these principles are upheld.Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with a convenience sample of nineteen experts in clinical trial design, conduct, and/or oversight to elucidate current practice and identify areas of need with respect to ensuring the scientific value and feasibility of clinical trials prior to initiation (...) and while ongoing. We used a priori and grounded theory to analyze the data and constant comparative method to induce higher order themes.Results Interviewees perceived determination of scientific value as the responsibility of the investigator and, secondarily, other parties who review or oversee research. Interviewees reported that ongoing trials are rarely reevaluated due to emerging evidence from external sources, evaluation is complex, and there would be value in the development of standards for monitoring and evaluating evidence systematically. Investigators, IRBs, and/or data monitoring committees (DMCs) could undertake these responsibilities. Feasibility assessments are performed but are typically inadequate; potential solutions are unclear.Conclusions There are three domains where current approaches are suboptimal and in which further guidance is needed. First, who has the responsibility for conducting scientific review, whether it be the investigator, IRB, and/or DMC is often unclear. Second, the standards for scientific review (e.g., appropriate search terms, data sources, and analytic plan) should be defined. Third, guidance is needed on the evaluation of ongoing studies in light of potentially new and evolving evidence, with particular reference to evidence from outside the trial itself. (shrink)

Pre-reading language skills develop rapidly in early childhood and are related to brain structure and functional architecture in young children prior to formal education. However, the early neurobiological development that supports these skills is not well understood. Here we acquired anatomical, diffusion tensor imaging and resting state functional MRI from 35 children at 3.5 years of age. Children were assessed for pre-reading abilities using the NEPSY-II subtests 1 year later. We applied a data-driven linked independent component analysis to explore (...) the shared co-variation of gray and white matter measures. Two sources of structural variation at 3.5 years of age demonstrated relationships with Speeded Naming scores at 4.5 years of age. The first imaging component involved volumetric variability in reading-related cortical regions alongside microstructural features of the superior longitudinal fasciculus. The second component was dominated by cortical volumetric variations within the cerebellum and visual association area. In a subset of children with rs-fMRI data, we evaluated the inter-network functional connectivity of the left-lateralized fronto-parietal language network and its relationship with pre-reading measures. Higher functional connectivity between the FPL and the default mode and visual networks at 3.5 years significantly predicted better Phonological Processing scores at 4.5 years. Together, these results suggest that the integration of functional networks, as well as the co-development of white and gray matter brain structures in early childhood, support the emergence of pre-reading measures in preschool children. (shrink)

BackgroundThe return of genetics and genomics research results has been a subject of ongoing global debate. Such feedback is ethically desirable to update participants on research findings particularly those deemed clinically significant. Although there is limited literature, debate continues in African on what constitutes appropriate practice regarding the return of results for genetics and genomics research. This study explored perspectives and ethical considerations of Ugandan genomics researchers regarding the return of genetics and genomics research results.MethodsThis was a qualitative study that (...) employed in-depth interviews. Thirty participants were purposively selected based on their expertise as genomics researchers in Uganda. Data were analysed through content analysis along the main themes of the study using a comprehensive thematic matrix, to identify common patterns arising from the narratives. NVivo software 12 was used to support data analysis.ResultsThe return of genetics and genomics research results was generally acceptable to researchers, and some indicated that they had previously returned individual or aggregate results to participants and communities. The main reasons cited for sharing research results with participants included their clinical utility, actionability and overall benefit to society. Ethical considerations for appropriate return of results included a need for effective community engagement, genetic counselling prior to disclosure of the results, adequate informed consent, and proper assessment of the implications of, or consequences of returning of results. However, the approaches to return of results were perceived as unstandardized due to the lack of appropriate regulatory frameworks.ConclusionsThe return of genetic and genomic research results is generally acceptable to researchers despite the lack of appropriate regulatory frameworks. Ethical considerations for return of genetics and genomics research results are highly divergent, hence the need for national ethical guidelines to appropriately regulate the practice. (shrink)

The impact of gender on assessments of leadership performance and leadership potential was examined through two clusters of leadership behaviors, one set related to traditional constructions of leadership labeled directing others and another associated with contemporary constructions of leadership labeled engaging others. Based on data collected from a sample of 91 senior leaders in one US financial services organization over a 3-year period prior to Covid-19, the results showed a negative relationship between directing others behaviors and leadership potential ratings (...) for females and a positive relationship between these variables for males. A negative relationship between engaging others behaviors and performance assessments was also found for females. This study highlights the continuing bias in leadership assessments of women and explores the contradictions between the perception and the reality of women's leadership. (shrink)

Background Research in children is essential for them to benefit from the outcomes of research but involvement must be weighed against potential harms. In many countries and circumstances, medical research legally requires parental consent until the age of 18 years, with poorly defined recommendations for assent prior to this. However, there is little research exploring how these decisions are made by families and the ethical implications of this. Aim To explore key ethical debates in decision-making for participation of children (...) and adolescents in a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine trial. Methods Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with Tanzanian girls (aged 9–16 years) who had participated in an HPV vaccine trial (n = 13), their parents or guardians (n = 12), and girls together with their parents (in paired parent-child interviews) (n = 6). The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Interview data came from a qualitative acceptability study undertaken as part of the Dose Reduction Immunobridging and Safety Study of Two Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccines in Tanzanian Girls (DoRIS) trial. Results Girls and parents desired collaborative decision-making, with parents ultimately making the decision to consent. However, girls wanted a larger part in decision-making. Decisions to consent involved many people, including extended social networks, the trial team, media outlets and healthcare professionals and this resulted in conflicts to be negotiated. Deciding where to place trust was central in participants and parents considering decisions to consent and overcoming rumours about trial involvement. Conclusions Existing models of decision-making help to understand dynamics between parents, adolescents and researchers but neglect the important wider social impacts and the fundamental nature of trust. Children’s roles in discussions can be evaluated using the principles of consent: autonomy, freedom and information. Concepts such as relational autonomy help to explain mechanisms families use to negotiate complex consent decisions. Whilst interviewees supported the maintenance of legal parental consent, researchers must design consent processes centring the child to ensure that whole family decision-making processes are supported. (shrink)

Intellectual humility, which entails openness to other views and a willingness to listen and engage with them, is crucial for facilitating civil dialogue and progress in debate between opposing sides. In the present research, we tested whether intellectual humility can be reliably detected in discourse and experimentally increased by a prior self-affirmation task. Three-hundred and three participants took part in 116 audio and video-recorded group discussions. Blind to condition, linguists coded participants’ discourse to create an intellectual humility score. As (...) expected, the self-affirmation task increased the coded intellectual humility, as well as participants’ self-rated prosocial affect (e.g., empathy). Unexpectedly, the effect on prosocial affect did not mediate the link between experimental condition and intellectual humility in debate. Self-reported intellectual humility and other personality variables were uncorrelated with expert-coded intellectual humility. Implications of these findings for understanding the social psychological mechanisms underpinning intellectual humility are considered. (shrink)

When do data provide good evidence for a hypothesis, evidence that warrants an inference to the hypothesis? Standard answers either reject the legitimacy of induction or else allow warranted inference from data to hypothesis when there are suitable relationships between and among the data and hypotheses. The severity account rejects all of these, maintaining instead that the good evidence relation concerns not only relations between data and hypotheses but also the methods for obtaining the data and the sensitivity of these (...) methods to detecting falsehood. So, for example, the severity account allows two rival hypotheses to fit the data equally well, even to the point of having the same prior and posterior probabilities relative to those data, while the data nonetheless favour one hypothesis over the other by virtue of those data providing a severe test of one hypothesis and not the other. The contributions to Error and Inference variously trace the genesis of the severity account from statistics-oriented sciences, elaborate upon the account’s details, apply the account to various philosophical issues, and offer challenges to the account’s adequacy and replies to major criticisms. The editors have developed the severity account in detail elsewhere, and this anthology is an effort …. (shrink)

Deborah is a thirty-three-year-old who presented to labor and delivery at thirty-seven weeks gestation with complaints of contractions. Upon arrival, she explained that her fetus, Nathan, had been diagnosed with a “lethal” condition by her primary obstetrician. At twenty-two weeks gestation, an amniocentesis confirmed trisomy 13, a chromosomal abnormality leading to miscarriage or stillbirth in nearly one-half of affected pregnancies. During the admission process, Deborah voices the worry that due to Nathan's brain and heart structure, vaginal delivery could (...) be traumatic and cause him to suffer. Deborah wishes for him to have as painless and as dignified a death as possible; cesarean section, she feels, will achieve this. Yet with her history of three prior vaginal deliveries, normally progressing labor, and poor fetal prognosis that is unlikely to improve with cesarean delivery, there is no maternal or fetal indication for a cesarean section. Should the obstetrician proceed with a cesarean delivery despite knowing that it would expose the mother to surgical risks with little or no corresponding fetal or neonatal benefit? (shrink)

This is a book about Aristotle's philosophy of language, interpreted in a framework that provides a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and science. The aim of the book is to explicate the description of meaning contained in De Interpretatione and to show the relevance of that theory of meaning to much of the rest of Aristotle's philosophy. In the process Deborah Modrak reveals how that theory of meaning has been much maligned. This is a major (...) reassessment of an underestimated aspect of Aristotle that will be of particular interest to classical philosophers, classicists and historians of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

In everyday discourse and in the context of social scientific research we often attribute intentional states to groups. Contemporary approaches to group intentionality have either dismissed these attributions as metaphorical or provided an analysis of our attributions in terms of the intentional states of individuals in the group.Insection1, the author argues that these approaches are problematic. In sections 2 and 3, the author defends the view that certain groups are literally intentional agents. In section 4, the author argues that there (...) are significant reasons for social scientists and philosophers of social science to acknowledge the adequacy of macro-level explanations that involve the attribution of intentional states to groups. In section 5, the author considers and responds to some criticisms of the thesis she defends. (shrink)

While many philosophers of science have accorded special evidential significance to tests whose results are "novel facts", there continues to be disagreement over both the definition of novelty and why it should matter. The view of novelty favored by Giere, Lakatos, Worrall and many others is that of use-novelty: An accordance between evidence e and hypothesis h provides a genuine test of h only if e is not used in h's construction. I argue that what lies behind the intuition that (...) novelty matters is the deeper intuition that severe tests matter. I set out a criterion of severity akin to the notion of a test's power in Neyman-Pearson statistics. I argue that tests which are use-novel may fail to be severe, and tests that are severe may fail to be use-novel. I discuss the 1919 eclipse data as a severe test of Einstein's law of gravity. (shrink)

A. N. Prior; XIV—Time, Existence and Identity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 66, Issue 1, 1 June 1966, Pages 183–192, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

The fact that much of our knowledge is gained through the testimony of others challenges a certain form of epistemic individualism. We are clearly not autonomous knowers. But the discussion surrounding testimony has maintained a commitment to what I have elsewhere called epistemic agent individualism. Both the reductionist and the anti-reductionist have focused their attention on the testimony of individuals. But groups, too, are sources of testimony - or so I shall argue. If groups can be testifiers, a natural question (...) to ask is whether our beliefs based on the testimony of groups are ever justified and whether such a justification is to be conferred inferentially or non-inferentially. I consider and dismiss the possibility of extending an anti-reductionist account of justification to our group testimonial beliefs. I also argue against a version of reductionism that would have our group testimonial beliefs justified only in so far as we were able to monitor the trustworthiness of members of the group. However, there are forms of reductionism that can be extended to make sense of the justification of our group testimonial beliefs. There are mechanisms for monitoring the trustworthiness and competency of a group (rather than its members) and, further, a variety of background beliefs allow us to assess the testimony of a group for reliability. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas both champion the goal of a rational society. However, they differ significantly about what this society should look like and how best to achieve it. Exploring the premises shared by both critical theorists, along with their profound disagreements about social conditions today, this book defends Adorno against Habermas' influential criticisms of his account of Western society and prospects for achieving reasonable conditions of human life. The book begins with an overview of these critical theories (...) of Western society. Both Adorno and Habermas follow Georg Lukács when they argue that domination consists in the reifying extension of a calculating, rationalizing form of thought to all areas of human life. Their views about reification are discussed in the second chapter. In chapter three the author explores their conflicting accounts of the historical emergence and development of the type of rationality now prevalent in the West. Since Adorno and Habermas claim to have a critical purchase on reified social life, the critical leverage of their theories is assessed in chapter four. The final chapter deals with their opposing views about what a rational society would look like, as well as their claims about the prospects for establishing such a society. Adorno, Habermas and the Search for a Rational Society will be essential reading for students and researchers of critical theory, political theory and the work of Adorno and Habermas. (shrink)

In seeking general accounts of evidence, confirmation, or inference, philosophers have looked to logical relationships between evidence and hypotheses. Such logics of evidential relationship, whether hypothetico-deductive, Bayesian, or instantiationist fail to capture or be relevant to scientific practice. They require information that scientists do not generally have (e.g., an exhaustive set of hypotheses), while lacking slots within which to include considerations to which scientists regularly appeal (e.g., error probabilities). Building on my co-symposiasts contributions, I suggest some directions in which a (...) new and more adequate philosophy of evidence can move. (shrink)

Recent discussions of rational deliberation in science present us with two extremes: unbounded optimism and sober pessimism. Helen Longino (1990) sees rational deliberation as the foundation of scientific objectivity. Miriam Solomon (1991) thinks it is overrated. Indeed, she has recently argued (2006) that group deliberation is detrimental to empirical success because it often involves groupthink and the suppression of dissent. But we need not embrace either extreme. To determine the value of rational deliberation we need to look more closely at (...) the practice and practitioners of science. I offer a closer look here by exploring the joint agency of small research teams. Although there are factors that contribute to the suppression of dissent in group contexts, a closer look at the literature on group dynamics suggests that there are ways to mitigate the effects of groupthink. Thus, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic about the value of rational deliberation within certain scientific contexts. (shrink)

I argue that the Bayesian Way of reconstructing Duhem's problem fails to advance a solution to the problem of which of a group of hypotheses ought to be rejected or "blamed" when experiment disagrees with prediction. But scientists do regularly tackle and often enough solve Duhemian problems. When they do, they employ a logic and methodology which may be called error statistics. I discuss the key properties of this approach which enable it to split off the task of testing auxiliary (...) hypotheses from that of appraising a primary hypothesis. By discriminating patterns of error, this approach can at least block, if not also severely test, attempted explanations of an anomaly. I illustrate how this approach directs progress with Duhemian problems and explains how scientists actually grapple with them. (shrink)

In modern, Western societies the purpose of schooling is to ensure that school-goers acquire knowledge of pre-existing practices, events, entities and so on. The knowledge that is learned is then tested to see if the learner has acquired a correct or adequate understanding of it. For this reason, it can be argued that schooling is organised around a representational epistemology: one which holds that knowledge is an accurate representation of something that is separate from knowledge itself. Since the object of (...) knowledge is assumed to exist separately from the knowledge itself, this epistemology can also be considered ‘spatial.’ In this paper we show how ideas from complexity have challenged the spatial epistemology’ of representation and we explore possibilities for an alternative ‘temporal’ understanding of knowledge in its relationship to reality. In addition to complexity, our alternative takes its inspiration from Deweyan ‘transactional realism’ and deconstruction. We suggest that ‘knowledge’ and ‘reality’ should not be understood as separate systems which somehow have to be brought into alignment with each other, but that they are part of the same emerging complex system which is never fully ‘present’ in any (discrete) moment in time. This not only introduces the notion of time into our understanding of the relationship between knowledge and reality, but also points to the importance of acknowledging the role of the ‘unrepresentable’ or ‘incalculable’. With this understanding knowledge reaches us not as something we receive but as a response, which brings forth new worlds because it necessarily adds something (which was not present anywhere before it appeared) to what came before. This understanding of knowledge suggests that the acquisition of curricular content should not be considered an end in itself. Rather, curricular content should be used to bring forth that which is incalculable from the perspective of the present. The epistemology of emergence therefore calls for a switch in focus for curricular thinking, away from questions about presentation and representation and towards questions about engagement and response. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus attention on the role of computer system complexity in ascribing responsibility. We begin by introducing the notion of technological moral action (TMA). TMA is carried out by the combination of a computer system user, a system designer (developers, programmers, and testers), and a computer system (hardware and software). We discuss three sometimes overlapping types of responsibility: causal responsibility, moral responsibility, and role responsibility. Our analysis is informed by the well-known accounts provided by Hart and Hart (...) and Honoré. While these accounts are helpful, they have misled philosophers and others by presupposing that responsibility can be ascribed in all cases of action simply by paying attention to the free and intended actions of human beings. Such accounts neglect the part played by technology in ascriptions of responsibility in cases of moral action with technology. For both moral and role responsibility, we argue that ascriptions of both causal and role responsibility depend on seeing action as complex in the sense described by TMA. We conclude by showing how our analysis enriches moral discourse about responsibility for TMA. (shrink)

Much light has been shed on important features of teaching and learning by Alasdair MacIntyre's writings. Yet there are experiences that are crucial to teaching and learning that are unaddressed in MacIntyre's arguments; experiences that reveal education as a distinctive kind of practice. This paper examines one kind of such experience: an experience I call ‘being pulled up short’. Drawing on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Gerald L. Bruns, I analyse an example of teaching King Lear to argue that (...) being pulled up short is a unique experience of disorientation that cannot be taught merely by pedagogical skill, including the modern tools and approaches provided by constructivist learning theory and meta-cognition. The paper concludes by identifying challenges that being pulled up short poses for the education of disposition, and for the aims and activities of teaching. (shrink)

The status of independent statements is the main problem in the philosophy of set theory. We address this problem by presenting the perspective of a practising set theorist. We thus give an authentic insight in the current state of thinking in set-theoretic practice, which is to a large extent determined by independence results. During several meetings, the second author asked the first author about the development of forcing, the use of new axioms and set-theoretic intuition on independence. Parts of these (...) conversations are directly presented in this article. They are supplemented by important mathematical results as well as discussion sections. Finally, we present three hypotheses about set-theoretic practice: First, that most set theorists were surprised by the introduction of the forcing method. Second, that most set theorists think that forcing is a natural part of contemporary set theory. Third, that most set theorists prefer an answer to a problem with the help of a new axiom of lowest possible consistency strength, and that for most set theorists, a difference in consistency strength weighs much more than the difference between Forcing Axiom and Large Cardinal Axiom. (shrink)

Kuhn maintains that what marks the transition to a science is the ability to carry out ‘normal’ science—a practice he characterizes as abandoning the kind of testing that Popper lauds as the hallmark of science. Examining Kuhn's own contrast with Popper, I propose to recast Kuhnian normal science. Thus recast, it is seen to consist of severe and reliable tests of low-level experimental hypotheses (normal tests) and is, indeed, the place to look to demarcate science. While thereby vindicating Kuhn on (...) demarcation, my recasting of normal science is seen to tell against Kuhn's view of revolutionary science. (shrink)

Since the idea of forbidden knowledge is rooted in the biblical story of Adam and Eve eating from the forbidden tree of knowledge, its meaning today, in particular as a metaphor for scientific knowledge, is not so obvious. We can and should ask questions about the autonomy of science.

Theories of statistical testing may be seen as attempts to provide systematic means for evaluating scientific conjectures on the basis of incomplete or inaccurate observational data. The Neyman-Pearson Theory of Testing (NPT) has purported to provide an objective means for testing statistical hypotheses corresponding to scientific claims. Despite their widespread use in science, methods of NPT have themselves been accused of failing to be objective; and the purported objectivity of scientific claims based upon NPT has been called into question. The (...) purpose of this paper is first to clarify this question by examining the conceptions of (I) the function served by NPT in science, and (II) the requirements of an objective theory of statistics upon which attacks on NPT's objectivity are based. Our grounds for rejecting these conceptions suggest altered conceptions of (I) and (II) that might avoid such attacks. Second, we propose a reformulation of NPT, denoted by NPT*, based on these altered conceptions, and argue that it provides an objective theory of statistics. The crux of our argument is that by being able to objectively control error frequencies NPT* is able to objectively evaluate what has or has not been learned from the result of a statistical test. (shrink)

Since the advent of the women's movement, women have made unprecedented gains in almost every field, from politics to the professions. Paradoxically, doctors and mental health professionals have also seen a staggering increase in the numbers of young women suffering from an epidemic of depression, eating disorders, and other physical and psychological problems. In The Cost of Competence, authors Brett Silverstein and Deborah Perlick argue that rather than simply labeling individual women as, say, anorexic or depressed, it is time (...) to look harder at the widespread prejudices within our society and child-rearing practices that lead thousands of young women to equate thinness with competence and success, and femininity with failure. They argue that continuing to treat depression, anxiety, anorexia and bulimia as separate disorders in young women can, in many cases, be a misguided approach since they are really part of a single syndrome. Furthermore, their fascinating research into the lives of forty prominent women from Elizabeth I to Eleanor Roosevelt show that these symptoms have been disrupting the lives of bright, ambitious women not for decades, but for centuries. Drawing on all the latest findings, rare historical research, cross-cultural comparisons, and their own study of over 2,000 contemporary women attending high schools and colleges, the authors present powerful new evidence to support the existence of a syndrome they call anxious somatic depression. Their investigation shows that the first symptoms usually surface in adolescence, most often in young women who aspire to excel academically and professionally. Many of the affected women grew up feeling that their parents valued sons over daughters. They identified intellectually with their successful fathers, not with their traditional homemaker mothers. Disordered eating is one way of rejecting the feminine bodies they perceive as barriers to achievement and recognition. Silverstein and Perlick uncover medical descriptions matching their diagnosis in Hippocratic texts from the fourth century B.C., in anthropological studies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and in case studies of many noted psychologists and psychiatrists, including the "hysteric" patients Freud used to develop his theories on psychoanalysis. They have also discovered that statistics on disordered eating, depression, and a host of other symptoms soared in eras in which women's opportunities grew--particularly the 1920s, when record numbers of women entered college and the workforce, the boyish silhouette of the flapper became the feminine ideal, and anorexia became epidemic, and again from the 1970s to the present day. The authors show that identifying this devastating syndrome is a first step toward its prevention and cure. The Cost of Competence presents an urgent message to parents, educators, policymakers, and the medical community on the crucial importance of providing young women with equal opportunity, and equal respect. (shrink)

A key element of the distinction between explicit and implicit cognitive functioning is the presence or absence of conscious awareness. In this review, we consider the proposal that neuropsychological disorders can best be considered in terms of a decoupling between preserved implicit or unconscious processing and impaired explicit or conscious processing. Evidence for dissociations between implicit and explicit processes in blindsight, amnesia, object agnosia, prosopagnosia, hemi-neglect, and aphasia is examined. The implications of these findings for a) our understanding of a (...) variety of neuropsychological disorders, b) the conceptualization of normal cognitive functioning, c) the neural basis of consciousness, and d) the clinical rehabilitation of brain-injured individuals are also discussed. (shrink)

We argue that the common attribution to Zhuangzi of both perspectivalism or relativism on the one hand, and scepticism on the other is fundamentally mistaken. While granting that it is reasonable to construe Zhuangzi as offering a perspectiva! position on judgement, we argue that Zhuangzi's perspectivalism does not commit him to a relativist position on truth or to scepticism about human knowledge. Rather, we maintain that Zhuangzi's attacks on the concepts of truth and knowledge are better seen as his articulation (...) of a species of epistemological nihilism which rejects, as ultimately meaningless, the concepts of truth, reality, and knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I use the concept of forbidden knowledge to explore questions about putting limits on science. Science has generally been understood to seek and produce objective truth, and this understanding of science has grounded its claim to freedom of inquiry. What happens to decision making about science when this claim to objective, disinterested truth is rejected? There are two changes that must be made to update the idea of forbidden knowledge for modern science. The first is to shift (...) from presuming that decisions to constrain or even forbid knowledge can be made from a position of omniscience (perfect knowledge) to recognizing that such decisions made by human beings are made from a position of limited or partial knowledge. The second is to reject the idea that knowledge is objective and disinterested and accept that knowledge (even scientific knowledge) is interested. In particular, choices about what knowledge gets created are normative, value choices. When these two changes are made to the idea of forbidden knowledge, questions about limiting or forbidding lines of inquiry are shown to distract attention from the more important matters of who makes and how decisions are made about what knowledge is produced. Much more attention should be focused on choosing directions in science, and as this is done, the matter of whether constraints should be placed on science will fall into place. (shrink)

In a series of excellent, recent papers, Deborah Hellman expounds the intuitively appealing idea that we have a duty not to compound injustice. Roughly, one compounds injustice when facts that obtain as a result of prior injustice form part of one’s reason for imposing further disadvantages on the victims of this prior injustice. This article identifies several complexities and problems motivating various amendments to Hellman’s formulation of the duty not to compound injustice. Critically, it argues that the (...) intuitions she and others have sought to explain in terms of the duty not to compound injustice are better explained by the duty not to cause additional harm to people who are already unjustly worse off – perhaps in conjunction with a duty not to implicate ourselves in injustice. (shrink)

According to the hierarchy of models account of scientific experimentation developed by Patrick Suppes and elaborated by Deborah Mayo, theoretical considerations about the phenomena of interest are involved in an experiment through theoretical models that in turn relate to experimental data through data models, via the linkage of experimental models. In this paper, I dispute the HoM account in the context of present-day high-energy physics experiments. I argue that even though the HoM account aims to characterize experimentation as a (...) model-based activity, it does not involve a modeling concept for the process of data acquisition, and it thus fails to provide a model-based characterization of the theory-experiment relationship underlying this process. In order to characterize the foregoing relationship, I propose the concept of a model of data acquisition and illustrate it in the case of the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012. I show that the process of data acquisition in the ATLAS experiment is performed according to a model of data acquisition that specifies and organizes the experimental procedures necessary to select the data according to a predetermined set of selection criteria. I also point out that this data acquisition model is theory-laden, in the sense that the underlying data selection criteria are determined by considering the testable predictions of the theoretical models that the ATLAS experiment is aimed to test. I take this sense of theory-ladenness to indicate that the relationship between the procedures of the ATLAS experiment and the theoretical models of the phenomena of interest is first established, prior to the formation of data models, through the data acquisition model of the experiment, thus not requiring the intermediary of other types of models as suggested by the HoM account. I therefore conclude that in the context of present-day HEP experiments, the HoM account does not consistently extend to the process of data acquisition so as to include models of data acquisition. (shrink)

This chapter examines the emergence of a distinctively analytic approach to film as art. I begin with an overview of Berys Gaut’s claim that the philosophy of film art is, roughly speaking, organized around three levels of analysis: the film medium; film narrative and aesthetics; and philosophical themes that emerge in films. Next I trace the emergence of an analytic philosophy of film as art in the work of Alexander Sesonske and Francis Sparshott. Sesonske and Sparshott each draw attention to (...) the central features of film aesthetics—notably to the ways in which film treats time and space. I conclude by discussing contemporary developments such as “film as philosophy.”. (shrink)