Consider the following causal exclusion principle: For all distinct properties F and F* such that F* supervenes on F, F and F* do not both cause a property G. Peter Menzies and Christian List have proven that it follows from a natural conception of causation as difference-making that this exclusion principle is not generally true. Rather, it turns out that whether the principle is true is a contingent matter. In addition, they have shown that in a wide range (...) of empirically ordinary cases, it follows that F* causes G and F does not. These cases plausibly include instances where F* is a mental property and F and G are physical properties. If this is the right conception of causation, it therefore turns out that the physical world is not causally closed. In this paper I show that there is an alternative conception of causation as difference-making that does not have the same consequences. Whether the physical world is causally closed therefore turns out to depend, inter alia, on which conception of difference-making is correct. I give a number of arguments for the alternative conception of difference-making. (shrink)

In this paper we consider mechanistic explanations for biologic malfunctions. Drawing on Lipton’s work on difference making, we offer three reasons why one should distinguish i) mechanistic features that only make a difference to the malfunction one aims to explain, from ii) features that make a difference to both the malfunction and normal functioning. Recognition of the distinction is important for a) repair purposes, b) mechanism discovery, and c) understanding. This analysis extends current mechanistic thinking, which (...) fails to appreciate the distinction. We illustrate our contribution with a case on sleeping disorders as arising from disruptions of circadian rhythms. (shrink)

Hierarchical groups shape social, political, and personal life. This paper concerns the question of how individuals within such groups can be responsible. The paper explores how individual responsibility can be partially grounded in difference-making. The paper concentrates on the control condition of responsibility and takes into view three distinct phenomena of responsibility in hierarchical groups. First, a superior can be responsible for outcomes that her subordinates bring about. Second, a subordinate can be responsible although she is unable to (...) prevent the outcome she brings about. Third, a superior can sometimes be responsible to a greater degree than her subordinates. It is argued that difference-making, as an interpretation of the control condition that partially grounds responsibility, accounts for all three of these phenomena within a limited but significant range of circumstances and can hence partially ground individual moral responsibility in hierarchical groups. The paper provides an element of a theory of individual responsibility to complement theories of corporate responsibility. (shrink)

We put forth an analysis of causation. The analysis centers on the notion of a causal model that provides only partial information as to which events occur, but complete information about the dependences between the events. The basic idea is this: an event causes another just in case there is a causal model that is uninformative on both events and in which the first event makes a difference as to the occurrence of the other. We show that our analysis (...) captures more causal scenarios than the other counterfactual accounts to date. (shrink)

We define a notion of difference-making for partial grounds of a fact in rough analogy to existing notions of difference-making for causes of an event. Using orthodox assumptions about ground, we show that it induces a non-trivial division with examples of partial grounds on both sides. We then demonstrate the theoretical fruitfulness of the notion by applying it to the analysis of a certain kind of putative counter-example to the transitivity of ground recently described by Jonathan (...) Schaffer. First, we show that our conceptual apparatus of difference-making enables us to give a much clearer description than Schaffer does of what makes the relevant instances of transitivity appear problematic. Second, we suggest that difference-making is best seen as a mark of good grounding-based explanations rather than a necessary condition on grounding, and argue that this enables us to deal with the counter-example in a satisfactory way. Along the way, we show that Schaffer's own proposal for salvaging a form of transitivity by moving to a contrastive conception of ground is unsuccessful. We conclude by sketching some natural strategies for extending our proposal to a more comprehensive account of grounding-based explanations. (shrink)

We introduce the overall topic of the S.I. Difference-Making and Explanatory Relevance and provide brief summaries of the twelve contributed articles.

Several different approaches to the conceptual analysis of causation are guided by the idea that a cause is something that makes a difference to its effects. These approaches seek to elucidate the concept of causation by explicating the concept of a difference-maker in terms of better-understood concepts. There is no better example of such an approach than David Lewis’ analysis of causation, in which he seeks to explain the concept of a difference-maker in counterfactual terms. Lewis introduced (...) his counterfactual theory of causation with these words: 'We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it. Had it been absent, its effects—some of them, at least, and usually all—would have been absent as well.' (Lewis 1973b: pp. 160-1) According to Lewis, a cause c makes a difference to an effect e in the sense that if the cause c had not occurred, the effect e would not have occurred either. All we shall see in section 2, Lewis’ theory says there is more to the concept of causation than this counterfactual condition. Lewis is on the right track, I think, in saying that we think of a cause as something that makes a difference and that this thought is best explicated in terms of counterfactual concepts. However, I shall argue that the particular way in which Lewis spells out the concept of a cause as difference-maker is unsatisfactory. For Lewis’ articulation of this concept is distorted by a specific metaphysical assumption: specifically, that causation is an absolute relation, specifiable independently of any contextual factors. The distortion induced by this assumption is reflected in the undiscriminating manner in which his theory generates countless causes for any given effect. However, commonsense judgement is much more discriminating about causes than Lewis’ theory. Accordingly, I claim that Lewis' analysis faces the problem of profligate causes and I outline some specific problem cases in section 3.. (shrink)

Climate change appears to be a classic aggregation problem, in which billions of individuals perform actions none of which seem to be morally wrong taken in isolation, and yet which combine to drive the global concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) ever higher toward environmental (and humanitarian) catastrophe. When an individual can choose between actions that will emit differing amounts of GHGs―such as to choose a vegan rather than carnivorous meal, to ride a bike to work rather than drive a car, (...) or to take a reusable bag to the supermarket rather than send another plastic bag to landfill―does she have any reason to choose the lower-emitting actions? In this chapter I'll reject the claim that individuals don't make a difference when it comes to climate change. I first discuss making a difference with every action, as a way of getting clearer about how individuals' actions impact causally on the harms resulting from climate change, making a distinction so far overlooked in the climate ethics discussion between 'macro' thresholds like ice-cap melt, and 'micro' thresholds like severe weather events. I set aside making a difference with every action as implausible, and then move on to discuss both low probability of major difference, and high probability of minor difference. I argue that both of these are plausible characterizations of individuals' causal contributions to climate change. I conclude by noting some policy implications of having (probabilistic) individual difference-making back in play. (shrink)

I argue that difference-making should be a crucial element for evaluating the quality of evidence for mechanisms, especially with respect to the robustness of mechanisms, and that it should take central stage when it comes to the general role played by mechanisms in establishing causal claims in medicine. The difference- making of mechanisms should provide additional compelling reasons to accept the gist of Russo-Williamson thesis and include mechanisms in the protocols for Evidence- Based Medicine (EBM), as (...) the EBM+ research group has been advocating. (shrink)

In this paper a generalized account of relevance as difference-making is developed. It is argued that relevance should not be considered as a particular relation, but as a (higher-order) property of instances of arbitrary relations: namely the property that variations of the relata of the relation instance make a difference for its truth. This generalized account of relevance can be fruitfully applied in many domains, such as (i) logical reasoning with applications to explanation, confirmation, verisimilitude, is-ought inference, (...) (ii) probabilistic reasoning with applications to explanation and confirmation, (iii) nomological and causal implication, (iv) communication, (v) grounding and (vi) essentiality. In conclusion, difference-making relevance is a highly unifying and fruitful philosophical concept. (shrink)

A difference-making account of causality is proposed that is based on a counterfactual definition, but differs from traditional counterfactual approaches to causation in a number of crucial respects: it introduces a notion of causal irrelevance; it evaluates the truth-value of counterfactual statements in terms of difference-making; it renders causal statements background-dependent. On the basis of the fundamental notions 'causal relevance' and 'causal irrelevance', further causal concepts are defined including causal factors, alternative causes, and importantly inus-conditions. Problems (...) and advantages of the proposed account are discussed. Finally, it is shown how the account can shed new light on three classic problems in epistemology, the problem of induction, the logic of analogy, and the framing of eliminative induction. (shrink)

Many philosophers take mental causation to be required for free will. But it has also been argued that the most popular view of the nature of mental states, i.e. non-reductive physicalism, excludes the existence of mental causation, due to what is known as the ‘exclusion argument’. In this paper, I discuss the difference-making account of mental causation proposed by [List, C., and Menzies, P. 2017. “My Brain Made Me Do It: The Exclusion Argument Against Free Will, and What’s (...) Wrong with It.” In H. Beebee, C. Hitchcock, & H. Price (eds.), Making a Difference: Essays on the Philosophy of Causation. Oxford Scholarship Online: Oxford University Press], who argue that their account not only solves the problem of causal exclusion but also saves free will. More precisely, they argue that it rebuts what they call ‘the Neurosceptical Argument’, the argument that if actions are caused by neural states and processes unavailable to us, there is no free will. I argue that their argument fails for two independent reasons. The first reason is that they fail to show that difference-makers are independent causes. The second reason is that physical realizers of mental states can be individuated in a way that makes both mental states and their realizers difference-makers. (shrink)

This paper explores conditionals expressing that the antecedent makes a difference for the consequent. A 'relevantised' version of the Ramsey Test for conditionals is employed in the context of the classical theory of belief revision. The idea of this test is that the antecedent is relevant to the consequent in the following sense: a conditional is accepted just in case (i) the consequent is accepted if the belief state is revised by the antecedent and (ii) the consequent fails to (...) be accepted if the belief state is revised by the antecedent's negation. The connective thus defined violates almost all of the traditional principles of conditional logic, but it obeys an interesting logic of its own. The paper also gives the logic of an alternative version, the `Dependent Ramsey Test', according to which a conditional is accepted just in case (i) the consequent is accepted if the belief state is revised by the antecedent and (ii) it is rejected (e.g., its negation is accepted) if the belief state is revised by the antecedent's negation. This conditional is closely related to David Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation. (shrink)

It has been claimed that difference-making plays important roles in both metaphysics and epistemology. The idea is that facts often make a difference to other facts. Thus, causes are said to make a difference to their effects, and the world is thought to make a difference to what is believed. One way to cash out this idea is in terms of the notion of counterfactual dependence between the facts in question. It has recently been objected (...) by some philosophers, however, that the counterfactual-dependence account misrepresents the difference-making idea, prompting them to offer a different, weaker construal of the idea in question, which, they claim, illuminates a number of problems in both epistemology and metaphysics. This article, while acknowledging that the difference-making idea is a genuine constraint on some of our concepts, challenges the claim that the weaker interpretation has significant philosophical potentials and, having delineated its real function, spells out the lessons that should be drawn from its failure. (shrink)

A regularity theory of causation analyses type-level causation in terms of Boolean difference-making. The essential ingredient that helps this theoretical framework overcome the problems of Hume’s and Mill’s classical accounts is a principle of non-redundancy: only Boolean dependency structures from which no elements can be eliminated track causation. The first part of this article argues that the recent regularity-theoretic literature has not consistently implemented this principle, for it disregarded an important type of redundancies: structural redundancies. Moreover, it is (...) shown that a regularity theory needs to be underwritten by a hitherto neglected metaphysical background assumption stipulating that the world’s causal makeup is not ambiguous. Against that background, the second part then develops a new regularity theory that does justice to all types of redundancies and, thereby, provides the first all-inclusive notion of Boolean difference-making. (shrink)

A regularity theory of causation analyses type-level causation in terms of Boolean difference-making. The essential ingredient that helps this theoretical framework overcome the problems of Hume’s and Mill’s classical accounts is a principle of non-redundancy: only Boolean dependency structures from which no elements can be eliminated track causation. The first part of this paper argues that the recent regularity theoretic literature has not consistently implemented this principle, for it disregarded an important type of redundancies: structural redundancies. Moreover, it (...) is shown that a regularity theory needs to be underwritten by a hitherto neglected metaphysical background assumption stipulating that the world's causal makeup is not ambiguous. Against that background, the second part then develops a new regularity theory that does justice to all types of redundancies and, thereby, provides the first all-inclusive notion of Boolean difference-making. (shrink)

Why do we value higher-level scientific explanations if, ultimately, the world is physical? An attractive answer is that physical explanations often cite facts that don’t make a difference to the event in question. I claim that to properly develop this view we need to commit to a type of deterministic chance. And in doing so, we see the theoretical utility of deterministic chance, giving us reason to accept a package of views including deterministic chance.

Two rival paradigms permeate bioethics. One generally favors eugenics, euthanasia, assisted suicide and other methods for those with severely restricting physical and cognitive attributes. The other typically opposes these and favors instead ample support for "persons of difference" and their caring families or loved ones. In an attempt to understand the relation between these two paradigms, this article analyzes a publicly reported debate between proponents of both paradigms, bioethicist Peter Singer and lawyer Harriet McBryde Johnson. At issue, the article (...) concludes, are two distinct axiomatic sets of values resulting in not simply different styles of rhetoric but different vocabularies, in effect two different languages of ethics. (shrink)

Peter Menzies has developed a novel version of the exclusion principle that he claims to be compatible with the possibility of mental causation. Menzies proposes to frame the exclusion principle in terms of a difference-making account of causation, understood in counterfactual terms. His new exclusion principle appears in two formulations: upwards exclusion — which is the familiar case in which a realizing event causally excludes the event that it realizes — and, more interestingly, downward exclusion, in which an (...) event causally excludes its realizer. This paper shows that one consequence of Menzies’s proposed solution to the problem of mental causation is a ubiquitous violation of the principle of closure — a fact that forces him into a trilemma to which we see no satisfactory response. (shrink)

In this paper we defend the view that mechanisms are underpinned by networks of difference-making relations. First, we distinguish and criticise two different kinds of arguments in favour of an activity-based understanding of mechanism: Glennan’s metaphysics- first approach and Illari and Williamson’s science-first approach. Second, we present an alternative difference-making view of mechanism and illustrate it by looking at the history of the case of scurvy prevention. We use the case of scurvy to argue that evidence (...) for a mechanism just is evidence for difference-making relations. (shrink)

Today there is a wealth of fascinating studies of connexive logical systems. But sometimes it looks as if connexive logic is still in search of a convincing interpretation that explains in intuitive terms _why_ the connexive principles should be valid. In this paper I argue that difference-making conditionals as presented in Rott (_Review of Symbolic Logic_ 15, 2022) offer one principled way of interpreting connexive principles. From a philosophical point of view, the idea of difference-making demands (...) full, unrestricted connexivity, because neither logical truths nor contradictions or other absurdities can ever ‘make a difference’ (i.e., be relevantly connected) to anything. However, difference-making conditionals have so far been only partially connexive. I show how the existing analysis of difference-making conditionals can be reshaped to obtain full connexivity. The classical AGM belief revision model is replaced by a conceivability-limited revision model that serves as the semantic base for the analysis. The key point of the latter is that the agent should never accept any absurdities. (shrink)

Juan Comesaña and Carolina Sartorio have recently proposed a diagnosis of what goes wrong in apparently illegitimate cases of ‘bootstrapping’ one’s way toexcessively easy knowledge. They argue that in such cases the bootstrapper bases at least one of her beliefs on evidence that does not evidentially support the proposition believed. I explicate the principle that underlies Comesaña and Sartorio’s diagnosis of such cases and show that their account of what goes wrong in such cases is mistaken.

This paper examines the relationship between physical theories of causation and theories of difference-making. It is plausible to think that such theories are compatible with one another as they are aimed at different targets: the former, an empirical account of actual causal relations; the latter, an account that will capture the truth of most of our ordinary causal claims. The question then becomes: what is the relationship between physical causation and difference-making? Is one kind of causal (...) fact more fundamental than the other? This paper defends causal foundationalism: the view that facts about difference-making are dependent on the obtaining of facts about physical causation. However, the paper's main goal is to clarify the structure of the debate. At the end of the paper, it is shown how settling the issue about the relationship between physical theories of causation and theories of difference-making has more than mere intrinsic interest in unifying the very different pursuits that have been undertaken in the philosophy of causation. It can help to break a stalemate that has arisen in the current debate about mental causation. (shrink)

Taking seriously the social dimensions of knowledge puts pressure on the assumption that epistemic agents can usefully be thought of as autonomous, interchangeable individuals, capable, insofar as they are rational and objective, of transcending the specificities of personal history, experience, and context. If this idealization is abandoned as the point of departure for epistemic inquiry, then differences among situated knowers come sharply into focus. These include differences in cognitive capacity, experience, and expertise; in access to information and the heuristics that (...) make it intelligible; and in motivating interests and orienting standpoint. Dissent takes on rather different significance, as a potentially productive feature of epistemic life rather than evidence of a failure of aperspectivality or an indication of error. The central questions are, then, what forms of diversity are epistemically consequential, and how can they best be deployed to ensure that the beliefs we warrant as knowledge are as well grounded and truth-tracking as possible. (shrink)

Much of the modern philosophy of causation has been governed by two ideas: (i) causes make their effects inevitable; (ii) a cause is something that makes a difference to whether its effect occurs. I focus on explaining the origin of idea (ii) and its connection to (i). On my view, the frequent attempts to turn (ii) into an analysis of causation are wrongheaded. Patterns of difference-making aren't what makes causal claims true. They merely provide a useful test (...) for causal claims. Moreover, what justifies us in using them as a test is idea (i). That's how (i) and (ii) are connected. (shrink)

Four years ago The Hastings Center initiated a That project gave the Center staff a chance to explore one swath of the theoretical literature concerning how members of democratic regimes ought to think about and respond to the differences among themselves. Much of that literature, produced by philosophers like Charles Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, and John Kekes, is wonderfully articulate about difference in general. But it is nearly silent about how particular categories of difference actually make a difference (...) in the lives of particular individuals negotiating particular institutions. (shrink)

This paper responds to Kenneth Waters’s account of actual difference making. Among other things, I argue that although Waters is right that researchers may sometimes be justified in focusing on genes rather than other causes of phenotypic traits, he is wrong that the apparatus of actual difference makers overcomes the traditional causal parity thesis.

Those of us who enjoy certain products of the global industrial economy but also believe it is wrong to consume them are often so demoralized by the apparent inefficacy of our individual, private choices that we are unable to resist. Although he was a deontologist, Kant was clearly aware of this ‘consequent-dependent’ side of our moral psychology. One version of his ‘moral proof’ is designed to respond to the threat of such demoralization in pursuit of the Highest Good. That version (...) of the argument says that the capacity that faith and trust in God has to sustain our moral resolve licenses that faith and trust, from a practical point of view. My goal here is to argue that Kant’s proof has a contemporary, secular analogue in modern industrial contexts where the apparent “inefficacy” of an individual consumer’s choices in the face of massive insensitive supply-chains is a threat to her moral resolve. I conclude by suggesting that the Kantian approach may license us in adopting (as an item of defeasible moral faith) an evidential decision-theoretic principle regarding what it is to ‘make a difference.’ This in turn licenses trust -- if not in God then in other right-minded people. (shrink)

The idea that truth is the aim of justification is one that is often defended by theorists who uphold different views about the nature of epistemic justification. Despite its prevalence, however, it is not quite clear how one is to cash out the metaphor that justification aims at truth. Some theorists, for example, have objected that the thesis would leave no room for justified false beliefs and unjustified true beliefs. In this paper, I offer an account of what it is (...) for justification to aim at truth using the recently revived idea of difference-making according to which facts often make a difference to other facts. It will be argued that, thus understood, the thesis can illuminate a number of controversial debates in epistemology and that, given its explanatory power, it has a lot to recommend it. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to devise a logic that can deal with both the paradoxes that motivate dialetheism and the paradoxes related to the irrelevance of material implication. We propose the semantics and the sequent calculus of a relevant logic inspired by difference-making accounts of causation and arguably true to Graham Priest’s Logic of Paradox \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {LP}$$\end{document}: a relevant logic that validates those and only those \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} (...) \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {LP}$$\end{document}-consequences that are not irrelevant. The new logic’s relevant implication is then added to \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {LP}$$\end{document} to obtain a logic with the logical vocabulary required to cope with the mentioned paradoxes. (shrink)

An influential tradition in the philosophy of causation has it that all token causal facts are, or are reducible to, facts about difference-making. Challenges to this tradition have typically focused on pre-emption cases, in which a cause apparently fails to make a difference to its effect. However, a novel challenge to the difference-making approach has recently been issued by Alyssa Ney. Ney defends causal foundationalism, which she characterizes as the thesis that facts about difference- (...) class='Hi'>making depend upon facts about physical causation. She takes this to imply that causation is not fundamentally a matter of difference-making. In this paper, I defend the difference-making approach against Ney’s argument. I also offer some positive reasons for thinking, pace Ney, that causation is fundamentally a matter of difference-making. (shrink)

Feminist theorist and educator, bell hooks, asserts that to seek true liberation one must choose marginality. One must choose to occupy the space outside the binary between colonizer-colonized, hegemonic center-periphery, and us-them in order to create a location of possibility. This essay will reveal the practice of social justice as the navigation of the space that difference makes and argue that choosing marginality provides a framework for health humanities work towards social justice in health care. The space of the (...) launderette that is depicted in Hanif Kureishi’s 1986 film, My Beautiful Laundrette, provides an example of choosing marginality and illustrates how difference structures both real and imagined spaces, which influences how individuals ultimately perceive one another. We will draw from the work of bell hooks; political geographer, Edward Soja; and Marxist philosopher, Henri Lefebvre, to demonstrate the importance of the health humanities’ position at the margin to traditional health care education. -/- . (shrink)

Ascribing moral responsibility in collective action cases is notoriously difficult. After all, if my individual actions make no difference with regard to the prevention of climate change, the alleviation of poverty, or the outcome of national elections, why ought I to stop driving, donate money, or cast my vote? Neither consequentialist nor non-consequentialist moral theories have straightforward responses ready at hand. In this contribution, I present a new suggestion which, based on thoughts about causal overdetermination along the lines of (...) Mackie’s INUS account, aims to show that causally overdetermined collective action cases are morally arbitrary in a way that makes it possible to ascribe moral responsibility even if individual actions make no difference. (shrink)

The idea that good explanations come with strong changes in probabilities has been very common. This criterion is called probabilistic difference-making. Since it is an intuitive criterion and has a long tradition in the literature on scientific explanation, it comes as a surprise that probabilistic difference-making is rarely discussed in the context of interventionist causal explanation. Specificity, proportionality, and stability are usually employed to measure explanatory power instead. This paper is a first step into the larger (...) project of connecting difference-making to the interventionist debate, and it starts by investigating whether probabilistic difference-making is contained in the notion of specificity. The choice of specificity is motivated by the observation that both probabilistic difference-making and specificity build on similar underlying intuitions. When comparing measures for both specificity and probabilistic difference-making, it turns out that the measures are not strictly correlated, and so the thesis that probabilistic difference-making is encoded within specificity has to be rejected. Some consequences of this result are discussed as well. (shrink)

In this article, the author compares two Spanish translations of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Taking into account that Spanish is a language in which words referring to human beings have a feminine and a masculine form, and grammatical gender corresponds to sex, all translators must interrogate the sex of the referent in order to translate gendered words. They are thus compelled to assign sex to genderless forms in the source text. Patriarchal translation has a long tradition of (...) devaluing and excluding the feminine in this process, as the author demonstrates here by revealing how Jorge Luis Borges translated the pronouns you and we in Woolf’s essay. In contrast, in her feminist translation of the essay, María Milagros Rivera-Garretas not only chooses the gender which most accurately represents the likely intended meaning of the source text, but recovers its message and legacy. (shrink)

Background Ethical decision-making education in nursing can be taught effectively by combining different teaching models that support the visualisation of taught concepts and integrating theory into practice. Objectives The study aims to examine the effect of flipped and jigsaw learning models on ethical decision-making and ethical sensitivity in nursing. Research design We used a nested mixed design. A pretest-posttest single-group quasi-experimental design was used in the quantitative part, and a case study method was used in the qualitative part. (...) Participants and research context This study was conducted in fall semester with second-year nursing students who studied an ethics course for the first time, using two different collaborative learning models. In the quantitative part, ethical dilemma and ethical sensitivity scales were made as pre-test with 117 and post-test with 128 students. In the qualitative part, a semi-structured three focus group interviews was conducted with 16 students. Ethical considerations After obtaining the approval of the University’s ethics committee, the study was carried out after obtaining participants’ informed written and verbal consent. Findings Students’ perspectives changed positively after training. This was related to six cases in section A of the Ethical Dilemma Scale. In part B, Practical Consideration (PC) and Principled Thinking (PT) mean scores were similar, showing no significant difference. For Familiarity in section C, it was determined that 68.4% of students in the pre-test and 77.3% in the post-test were familiar with similar dilemmas. The ethical sensitivity scale’s total scores were in a similar range. In the qualitative stage, ethical decision-making, ethical sensitivity, ethical dilemma and the improvement process were obtained as a theme. Conclusions There was an increase in the level of ethical sensitivity and familiarity with ethical dilemmas of nursing students after education. Flipped and jigsaw learning models can be used for nursing ethics courses. (shrink)

Is Big Data science a whole new way of doing research? And what difference does data quantity make to knowledge production strategies and their outputs? I argue that the novelty of Big Data science does not lie in the sheer quantity of data involved, but rather in the prominence and status acquired by data as commodity and recognised output, both within and outside of the scientific community and the methods, infrastructures, technologies, skills and knowledge developed to handle data. These (...) developments generate the impression that data-intensive research is a new mode of doing science, with its own epistemology and norms. To assess this claim, one needs to consider the ways in which data are actually disseminated and used to generate knowledge. Accordingly, this article reviews the development of sophisticated ways to disseminate, integrate and re-use data acquired on model organisms over the last three decades of work in experimental biology. I focus on online databases as prominent infrastructures set up to organise and interpret such data and examine the wealth and diversity of expertise, resources and conceptual scaffolding that such databases draw upon. This illuminates some of the conditions under which Big Data needs to be curated to support processes of discovery across biological subfields, which in turn highlights the difficulties caused by the lack of adequate curation for the vast majority of data in the life sciences. In closing, I reflect on the difference that data quantity is making to contemporary biology, the methodological and epistemic challenges of identifying and analysing data given these developments, and the opportunities and worries associated with Big Data discourse and methods. (shrink)

Some philosophers have claimed that causally determined agents are not morally responsible because they cannot make a difference in the world. A recent response by philosophers who defend the compatibility of determinism and responsibility has been to concede that causally determined agents are incapable of making a difference, but to argue that responsibility is not grounded in difference making. These compatibilists have rested such a claim on Frankfurt cases—cases where agents are intuitively responsible for acts (...) that they couldn’t have failed to perform. This essay argues, first, that the intuitive plausibility of the idea that responsibility is grounded in difference making is not completely put to rest by Frankfurt cases, even if those cases successfully show that responsibility is not grounded in difference making in the sense of access to alternative possibilities of action. It then goes on to develop a different compatibilist strategy, one according to which responsibility is grounded in difference making, but the type of difference making it is grounded in does not require access to alternative possibilities. Indeed, it is a form of difference making that is clearly compatible with determinism. (shrink)

We are responsible for some things but not for others. In this thesis, I investigate what it takes for an entity to be responsible for something. This question has two components: agents and actions. I argue for a permissive view about agents. Entities such as groups or artificially intelligent systems may be agents in the sense required for responsibility. With respect to actions, I argue for a causal view. The relation in virtue of which agents are responsible for actions is (...) a causal one. I claim that responsibility requires causation and I develop a causal account of agency. This account is particularly apt for addressing the relationship between agency and moral responsibility and sheds light on the causal foundations of moral responsibility. (shrink)