An essay to develop some of Wittgenstein's remarks about the notion of 'criteria' and to give the concept clarity even at the expense of some features Wittgenstein claimed for it. This effort was made because of the important role 'criteria' plays in Wittgenstein's discussions of feelings and mental states, and it is hoped that a defense of 'criteria' will make those discussions more coherent. An attempt is made to relate this notion of 'criteria' to the definition and expression of mental (...) states, following some of Wittgenstein's suggestions, and to rebut skepticism about other minds. (shrink)

We can freely cross disciplinary boundaries, as well as the line between theory and practice, and allow practices to cast their light back on the theory and show us its deficiencies. In short, this approach reorients some much-discussed issues of professional, business, and military ethics and reveals them as variations on one deeply rooted theme. The author does not treat current institutions as final and unalterable. If these arrangements frustrate moral evaluation, she finds that an argument for change. To make (...) intelligent changes, however, we need a clear view of the reasoning that makes them seem natural and inevitable. That is what this book attempts to do. In the process, the author also reexamines the concept of "person." Not all cultures put so much stress on the idea as Western - and particularly American - cultures do. If we wish to keep this emphasis, then here is another argument for change. (shrink)

We examined two potential correlates of hypnotic suggestibility: dissociation and cognitive inhibition. Dissociation is the foundation of two of the major theories of hypnosis and other theories commonly postulate that hypnotic responding is a result of attentional abilities . Participants were administered the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C. Under the guise of an unrelated study, 180 of these participants also completed: a version of the Dissociative Experiences Scale that is normally distributed in non-clinical populations; a latent inhibition (...) task, a spatial negative priming task, and a memory task designed to measure negative priming. The data ruled out even moderate correlations between hypnotic suggestibility and all the measures of dissociation and cognitive inhibition overall, though they also indicated gender differences. The results are a challenge for existing theories of hypnosis. (shrink)

Are Detroit ruin tours a form of morally permissible cultural tourism, or do these tours amount to a form of exploitation? To answer this question I compare Detroit ruin tours with ‘slum tours’ – guided tours of slums in the world's major cities. I argue that exploitation of the sort we find in slum tourism also exists, to a lesser extent, in Detroit ruin tours. To show this I detail two different accounts of exploitation and argue that Ruth Sample's account (...) best captures what is most morally problematic with slum tours and ruin tours. I then identify the similarities and differences between slum tours and ruin tours, and provide suggestions for how ruin tours could be retooled to avoid some of the worries of exploitation. Finally, I suggest that with the proper framing Detroiters could embrace photographic tours as a new form of cultural tourism. (shrink)

This volume is part two of a two-volume set. It may be purchased separately or in conjunction with volume one. Vol. II: From the St. Louis Hegelians through C. I. Lewis. and G. H. Mead.

BackgroundUse of routinely collected patient data for research and service planning is an explicit policy of the UK National Health Service and UK government. Much clinical information is recorded in free-text letters, reports and notes. These text data are generally lost to research, due to the increased privacy risk compared with structured data. We conducted a citizens’ jury which asked members of the public whether their medical free-text data should be shared for research for public benefit, to inform an ethical (...) policy.MethodsEighteen citizens took part over 3 days. Jurors heard a range of expert presentations as well as arguments for and against sharing free text, and then questioned presenters and deliberated together. They answered a questionnaire on whether and how free text should be shared for research, gave reasons for and against sharing and suggestions for alleviating their concerns.ResultsJurors were in favour of sharing medical data and agreed this would benefit health research, but were more cautious about sharing free-text than structured data. They preferred processing of free text where a computer extracted information at scale. Their concerns were lack of transparency in uses of data, and privacy risks. They suggested keeping patients informed about uses of their data, and giving clear pathways to opt out of data sharing.ConclusionsInformed citizens suggested a transparent culture of research for the public benefit, and continuous improvement of technology to protect patient privacy, to mitigate their concerns regarding privacy risks of using patient text data. (shrink)

When future generations come to analyze and survey twentieth-century philosophy as a whole, Bertrand Russell’s logic and theory of knowledge is assured a place of prime importance. Yet until this book was first published in 1969 no comprehensive treatment of his epistemology had appeared. Commentators on twentieth-century philosophy at the time assumed that Russell’s important contributions to the theory of knowledge were made before 1921. This book challenges that assumption and draws attention to features of Russell’s later work which were (...) overlooked. The analysis starts with Russell’s earliest views and moves from book to book and article to article through his enormous span of writing on the problems and theory of knowledge. The changes in ideas as he developed the theory are traced, and the study culminates in a statement of his latest views. His work is seen in a continuity in which the changes were part of the development of his mature thought, and the total evaluation and interpretation clarify many of the common misunderstandings of his philosophy. This is naturally of interest to all philosophers, and for students this is the answer to inevitable questions on the nature of Russell’s ideas and their evolution. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;This thesis undertakes two interrelated projects. The first is to give an account of the epistemology of testimony. However, as is argued, this cannot be done properly except as an application of a general philosophical account of knowledge. For this reason a partial sketch of such a general account is offered, as a necessary part of the completion of the first project. A complementary second project is also adopted. (...) This is the development of a distinctive account of knowledge as justified belief which provides a philosophical defence for the justification requirements on belief of common sense. ;The main distinctive feature of the account of knowledge proposed is the general type of justifications for belief which are argued to be adequate. These are the types of justifications which are commonly given in everyday life. Thus it is a 'common sense' justification theory, in this sense. ;It is so also in a second sense: the process of certifying these everyday justifications as adequate is made using the postulates of the 'commonsense' background metaphysic or conception of the world which all human subjects share. The central epistemological theses a partial defence of which is offered are that firstly, justifications for belief which are 'commonsense' in the first sense are so also in the second sense; secondly, that such justifications for a subject's beliefs are both adequate, and typically available to him. Thus the thesis argues for the view that knowledge, conceived as justified belief, is Attainable and indeed Abundant. ;Specific accounts are offered of the justifications of this general type which are associated with seeing and testimony. These two ways of acquiring beliefs are compared, and disanalogies are found between them which are argued to show a disanalogy in their epistemology. (shrink)

This paper considers and criticizes Brentano's contention of the identity in kind between wül and emotion.

This article will examine the phase of Nishida’s thought in which he turns to the historical world and present the benefits of this turn to his overall philosophical project. In “The Philosophy of History in the ‘Later’ Nishida,” Woo-Sung Huh claims that Nishida Kitaro’s attempt to integrate history into his earlier writings on self-consciousness is a “wrong turn.” I will demonstrate how Huh’s criticism of Nishida’s writings on history stems from Huh’s own ontological assumption that consciousness and the historical world (...) occupy distinct realms. Leveling this criticism against Nishida causes the reader to miss Nishida’s greatest insight, namely that there is no such distinction; there is only one reality of consciousness and materiality. Nishida’s emphasis on the historical world makes his earlier claim that consciousness is inseparable from things more robust. I will argue that by expanding his earlier focus on consciousness to include the formative power of created physical objects and human bodies on consciousness, Nishida’s philosophy is actually strengthened. (shrink)

In this essay, Elizabeth Campbell reviews three recent books that address the ethical nature of professional practice: Knowledge and Virtue in Teaching and Learning: The Primacy of Dispositions, by Hugh Sockett; The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice, by Chris Higgins; and Towards Professional Wisdom: Practical Deliberation in the People Professions, edited by Liz Bondi, David Carr, Chris Clark, and Cecelia Clegg. While the first two books are situated within the context of teaching and education, the (...) third book, as an edited volume, contains chapters that represent a multidisciplinary perspective on the work of professionals within nursing, social work, counseling, and the ministry, as well as in teaching. Each of the books engages in the careful inquiry into philosophy broadly and educational philosophy specifically from conceptual frameworks widely associated with Aristotelian virtue ethics. Writing from an applied perspective on the field of scholarship relating to the moral and ethical dimensions of teaching, Campbell applauds the books for their timely reminder of the central role or persona of the individual professional as a moral agent and ethical practitioner. She argues that within the contemporary context of teacher education, which tends either to neglect or narrowly define the ethics of the profession, such an emphasis on the cultivation of personal character and responsibility within a framework of clear ethical dispositions or virtues is a welcome contribution to the field. It enables teachers, teacher educators, and student teachers to concentrate on both the ethics of practice and the practice of ethics in the ongoing quest to further their own development of virtue, practical wisdom, and personal and professional knowledge. (shrink)

The paper examines a dichotomy between special access accounts of authoritative self‐knowledge and constitutive accounts that treat such authority as a feature of the ‘grammar’ of self‐ascriptions, and concludes that it is a false one. Firstly, special access theories are shown to include not just Cartesian views but also a number of different kinds of accounts of the nature of mental states and our self‐knowledge of them. One group comprises functionalist accounts—special access theories, which involve non‐Cartesian conceptions of the individuation (...) of conditions of mental states, and need make no play with any form of ‘inner perception’. Secondly, it is argued that there is space for intermediate theories according to which ‘grammar’ and empirical regularities collaborate inextricably to hold our actual mental state concepts together, and play a joint role in explaining the reliability of our basic self‐ascriptions of mental states. Finally, it is shown that all viable concepts of mental states, which can be competently self‐ascribed in a non‐inferential way, must be multi‐criterial concepts and not wholly fixed by ‘grammar’. (shrink)

. The time of violence: Deconstruction and value. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 190-205.

The nature–nurture controversy has been with us since it was first outlined by Plato and Aristotle. Nobody likes it anymore. All reasonable scholars today agree that genes and environment interact to determine complex cognitive outcomes. So why does the controversy persist? First, it persists because it has practical implications that cannot be postponed (i.e., what can we do to avoid bad outcomes and insure better ones?), a state of emergency that sometimes tempts scholars to stake out claims they cannot defend. (...) Second, the controversy persists because we lack a precise, testable theory of the process by which genes and the environment interact. In the absence of a better theory, innateness is often confused with (1) domain specificity (outcome X is so peculiar that it must be innate), (2) species specificity (we are the only species who do X, so X must lie in the human genome), (3) localization (outcome X is mediated by a particular part of the brain, so X must be innate), and (4) learnability (we cannot figure out how X could be learned, so X must be innate). We believe that an explicit, plausible theory of interaction is now around the corner, and that many of the classic maneuvers to defend or attack innateness will soon disappear. In the interim, some serious errors can be avoided if we keep these confounded issues apart. That is the major goal of this chapter: not to attack innateness but to clarify what claims about innateness are (and are not) about. (shrink)

This paper provides a sketch of an agent-centered way of understanding and answering the question, “What’s wrong with that?” On this view, what lies at the bottom of judgments of wrongness is a bad attitude; when someone does something wrong, she does something that expresses a bad, or inappropriate, attitude . In order to motivate this account, a general Kantian agent-centered ethics is discussed, as well as Michael Slote’s agent-based ethics, in light of analysis of the grounding role of attitudes (...) in the evaluation of two core cases. In light of these discussions, it is argued that there are advantages to preserving the grounding of the appropriateness of attitudes in facts about their objects , while cutting such an agent-centered ethics away from a Kantian grounding. (shrink)

This paper examines discourses of stakeholders regarding global climate change to assess whether and how they construct industrial animal agriculture as posing a risk. The analysis assesses whether these discourses have shifted since the release of Livestock’s Long Shadow, a report by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which indicated that the industrial animal agriculture sector as a whole contributes more to global climate change than the transportation sector. Using Ulrich Beck’s theorizing of the “risk society,” this paper examines (...) how various animal rights and welfare groups, environmental organizations, meat industry stakeholders, governmental agencies, and newspapers in Canada, the United States, and internationally investigate and construct industrial animal agriculture as a risk, if at all, and how their respective discourses conflict. The findings indicate that while some stakeholders acknowledge industrial animal agriculture’s contribution to global climate change, for the most part the problematization of animal agriculture has not increased since the release of Livestock’s Long Shadow, and the animal agriculture industry has seemingly not lost its power to “rationalize risk.”. (shrink)

This paper describes the first phase of an ongoing education and research project guided by three main intentions: (1) to create opportunities for phronesis in the classroom; (2) to develop new understandings about phronesis as it relates to nursing care generally and to caring for specific groups, like formerly incarcerated adults; and (3) to provide an opportunity for formerly incarcerated adults and graduate nursing students to participate in a dialectical conversation about ethical knowing. Gadamer's writings on practical philosophy, phronesis, and (...) the Socratic dialectic provide the philosophical foundation and framework for the project. The first phase in the project was a 4‐h class within a graduate‐level health promotion course during which 30 nursing students and three formerly incarcerated panelists engaged in a dialectic conversation about what it means to care for formerly incarcerated adults in a meaningful way. After the class, two focus groups were conducted, one with the students and one with the formerly incarcerated panelists. Findings articulated participants' prejudices and assumptions prior to the class, expanded sense of phronesis, and ability to consider nursing practice within a larger ethical framework. Panelists and students left the class with a deeper understanding of one another and expressed an openness towards continued dialectic conversations together. Use of the Socratic dialectic within nursing curricula reflects a current and critical trend in nursing education to bring non‐epistemologic forms of knowledge into the classroom. (shrink)

The basic tenets of “classical” naturalism (exemplified in the work of Mead, Buchler, and Randall, among others) are delineated and distinguished from other versions of naturalism. Classical naturalism is also distinguished from reductive materialism and idealism. Nature is asserted to be indefinitely plural and not amenable to monistic or dualistic categorial schemes; that is, the principle of “ontological parity” is maintained. The method of inquiry of naturalism is outlined, along with the notion of truth as perspectivally objective. The metaphysical hypotheses (...) are then used to examine culture. Culture is found to be the specific environment of human being, arising out of, but irreducible to, other natural processes. Culture is described as the cumulative gestures of the human social organism as it discovers and creates itself in mutual constitution with other natural processes and products. (shrink)

This paper examines trust as a fundamental aspect of fiduciary relationships in education. The specific relationship under examination is that of academic employee and university employer. Both have the value of trust assigned to them as an implicit part of their social and professional contract. The setting is Australia, but the principles apply to any democratic jurisdiction and educational level or location, where fiduciary principles are a pre-condition for healthy and trustworthy working relationships. The paper firstly discusses the meaning and (...) application of ‘trust’ and ‘fiduciary’, and considers the codes that regulate fiduciary relationships in education. It then asks what happens if and when the fiduciary duties and obligations are not upheld, advancing that question through an employment law case against an Australian university, for alleged breach of the Fair Work Act. The analysis shows what may be the outcome when fiduciary trust between employee and employer is breached, how it may happen, and the consequences of this. The aim of the paper is to throw light on the value of trust for robust working relationships in academic life. Ultimately, the paper shows that trust is axiomatic to a working system of justice in a healthy educational workplace. (shrink)

Feminist Time Against Nation Time offers a series of essays that explore the complex and oftentimes contradictory relationship between feminism and nationalism through a problematization of contemporality. The collection pursues the following questions: how do the specific temporalities of nationalism and war limit and delimit public spaces in which dissent might happen; and how might we account for the often contradictory and ambiguous relationship of "feminism" and "nationalism" through an exploration of the problem of time?

Examination of the subversive nature of philosophy as its students challenge the authority and practices of government agencies and organizations. Draws a series of connections between philosophically oriented protesters and questioners of authority ranging from Socrates to 2004 protesters at the U.S. Republican party’s presidential convention in 2004.

This essay offers resources for the development of visual ethics by exploring Islamic fashion-veiling in one context: contemporary Indonesia. After providing a methodological framework and historical background for the case study, the moral discourse of two aesthetic authorities is discussed via a fashion blogger and print advice literature. The essay identifies how the practice of fashion-veiling generates norms, what is defined as morally valuable in this practice and why, and how this practice both offers opportunities for the critique and the (...) reinforcement of gendered norms. (shrink)

This review essay focusses on Gelderloos's normative theory of diversity of tactics. The book is worth serious attention by political theorists because of its sustained analysis of violence, nonvio...

... the suffering and faith of the individual worshiper come through the psalm's standardized expressions with great power. This shows the extent to which individual and worshiping community were one in Israel: The community gave voice to the needs and prayers of the individual; the individual gave voice to the trust and traditions of the community.

The scope of the lectionaries currently in use require the preacher to master a vast range of biblical material. A wide variety of resources are available to help them in this work.