This research aim to investigate the effects of motor imagery, focused on the trajectory of the ball and the target area, and self-talk before the actual strike on the performance of the service in skilled tennis players. Thirty-three participants, competing in regional to national competitions, were randomly divided into three groups: Control, MI, and MI + self-talk. They performed a pre-test, 20 acquisition sessions, and a post-test similar to the pre-test, in match situations. The percentage of the first service, their (...) speed, and the efficiency scores, evaluated by experts, were use as dependent variables and indicators of performance. While there was no difference in service speed, this study showed an improvement in the first service percentage and efficiency in the participants of the MI and MI + self-talk groups. Additionally, analyses revealed greater efficiency when MI was combined with self-talk compared to other conditions. It, therefore, seems advantageous for skilled tennis players to use MI and motivational self-talk before performing the first service balls. (shrink)

ObjectivesThe aims of this research were to compare the levels of physical activity of eHealth users and non-users, to determine the effects of these technologies on motivations, and to establish the relationship that could exist between psychological constructs and physical activity behaviors.MethodsThis cross-sectional study involved 569 adults who responded to an online questionnaire during confinement in France. The questions assessed demographics, usage of eHealth for exercise and physical activity, and behavioral levels. The questionnaire also measured the constructs of Social Cognitive (...) Theory, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and automaticity facets toward eHealth for exercise and physical activity.ResultsParticipants who were users of eHealth for exercise and physical activity presented significantly higher levels of vigorous physical activity and total physical activity per week than non-users. The chi-square test showed significant interactions between psychological constructs toward eHealth and physical activity levels. Self-efficacy was significantly and negatively correlated with walking time per week. Concerning the automaticity facets, efficiency was positive and significantly correlated with vigorous physical activity levels per week. Then, regressions analyses showed that self-efficacy and automaticity efficiency explained 5% of the variance of walking minutes per week and vigorous physical activity per week, respectively.ConclusionThis study has shown that people during confinement looked for ways to stay active through eHealth. However, we must put any technological solution into perspective. The eHealth offers possibilities to stay active, however its benefits and the psychological mechanisms affected by it remains to be demonstrated: eHealth could be adapted to each person and context. (shrink)

Dans son projet de refondation ontologique du savoir comme dans sa pensée sociale, Simon Frank (1877-1950) accorde une place centrale à l’idée d’unité dans la pluralité désignée par le pronom « nous ». Comment cette réalité d’ordre spirituel, en elle-même inconcevable, permet-elle à Frank d’expliciter à la fois, dans le champ psychique, l’émergence du sujet, dans le champ social, la dynamique interne à l’œuvre dans toute communauté humaine et, dans le champ idéologique, le danger des tendances individualistes et collectivistes qui (...) menacent, selon lui, l’équilibre, par ailleurs toujours instable, entre la vie personnelle intérieure de l’homme et sa participation au monde extérieur? (shrink)

Several studies on research misconduct have already explored and discussed its potential occurrence in universities across different countries. However, little is known about this issue in Spain, a paradigmatic context due to its consolidated scientific evaluation system, which relies heavily on metrics. The present article attempts to fill this gap in the literature through an empirical study undertaken in a specific university: Universitat Jaume I (Castelló). The study was based on a survey with closed and open questions; almost half the (...) total population of the university’s researchers participated (505 out of 1030, i.e. 49.03%), yielding a representative sample of different academic career stages and areas of knowledge. Results show that 71.68% (n = 362) of the respondents consider at least one form of misconduct to be proliferating in their area of knowledge at the national level. This figure falls to 48.95% (n = 247) in reference to misconduct in their own institution. The most frequently reported types of misconduct linked to life with colleagues are especially the use of personal influence (in evaluation or review processes); lax supervision of doctoral theses; and the abuse of power over people in lower positions. Personal ambitions and pressure from the evaluation system are regarded as the most influential causes of misconduct proliferation, according to academics at this Spanish university. (shrink)

Algorithms used in the public sector, e.g., for allocating social benefits or predicting fraud, often require involvement from multiple stakeholders at various phases of the algorithm’s life-cycle. This paper focuses on the communication issues between diverse stakeholders that can lead to misinterpretation and misuse of algorithmic systems. Ethnographic research was conducted via 11 semi-structured interviews with practitioners working on algorithmic systems in the Dutch public sector, at local and national levels. With qualitative coding analysis, we identify key elements of the (...) communication processes that underlie fairness-related human decisions. More specifically, we analyze the division of roles and tasks, the required skills, and the challenges perceived by diverse stakeholders. Three general patterns emerge from the coding analysis: (1) Policymakers, civil servants, and domain experts are less involved compared to developers throughout a system’s life-cycle. This leads to developers taking on the role of decision-maker and policy advisor, while they potentially miss the required skills. (2) End-users and policy-makers often lack the technical skills to interpret a system’s output, and rely on actors having a developer role for making decisions concerning fairness issues. (3) Citizens are structurally absent throughout a system’s life-cycle. This may lead to unbalanced fairness assessments that do not include key input from relevant stakeholders. We formalize the underlying communication issues within such networks of stakeholders and introduce the phase-actor-role-task-skill (PARTS) model. PARTS can both (i) represent the communication patterns identified in the interviews, and (ii) explicitly outline missing elements in communication patterns such as actors who miss skills or collaborators for their tasks, or tasks that miss qualified actors. The PARTS model can be extended to other use cases and used to analyze and design the human organizations responsible for assessing fairness in algorithmic systems. It can be further extended to explore communication issues in other use cases, design potential solutions, and organize accountability with a common vocabulary. (shrink)

This report describes research focusing on virtues and character in teaching, by which we mean the kind of personal qualities professional teachers need to facilitate learning and overall flourishing in young people that goes beyond preparing them for a life of tests. The ‘good’ teacher is someone who, alongside excellent subject knowledge and technical expertise, cares about students, upholds principles of honesty and integrity both towards knowledge and student–teacher relationships, and who does good work . In the Framework for Character (...) Education , we considered the character of teachers to be a crucial ingredient in the development of flourishing children. This new report describes research that examined how teachers thought about, and drew upon, character strengths and virtues in their daily professional lives. (shrink)

To deal with the upcoming challenges and complexity of the nursing profession, it is deemed important to reflect on our current organization of care. However, before starting to rethink the organization of nursing care, an overview of important elements concerning nursing care organization, more specifically nursing models, is necessary. The aim of this study was to conduct a mapping review, accompanied by an evidence map to map the existing literature, to map the field of knowledge on a meta‐level and to (...) identify current research gaps concerning nursing models in a hospital setting. Next to nursing models, two other organizational correlates seem to be of importance when looking at the organization of nursing care: nurse staffing and skill mix. Although it seems that in recent research, the theoretical focus on the organization of nursing care has been left behind, the increasingly complex healthcare environment might gain from the use of nursing theory, or in this case, care delivery models. As almost no fundamental studies have been done toward the combination of care delivery models, nurse staffing, and skill mix, those elements should be taken into account to fully capture the organization of nursing care in future research. (shrink)

This study investigates the role of language in cross‐sector collaboration between mental health hospitals and municipalities, focusing on the challenges of maintaining continuity of care and integrating patient‐centered approaches. Using Fairclough's framework for critical discourse analysis, we examined focus group interviews with 21 healthcare professionals, including nurses, social workers, and psychiatrists, to identify key themes and patterns in how cross‐sector collaboration is discussed. The analysis revealed a dominant medicalized discourse in hospital settings, which often emphasized structured care processes like treatment (...) plans and medication management, overshadowing more flexible, patient‐centered approaches common in community‐based services. Power dynamics were evident, with hospital professionals frequently positioned as active agents, while patients and community‐based workers were portrayed in more passive roles. Although efforts to involve patients in decision‐making were noted, these were often controlled by professionals, reflecting a mediated approach to patient empowerment. The findings highlight the cultural and structural divides between hospital and community services and suggest the need for improved communication strategies, integrated care pathways, and a shift toward more inclusive, patient‐centered care models. Addressing these discursive barriers is crucial for achieving more effective, integrated, and patient‐centered care, ultimately improving outcomes for patients. (shrink)

BackgroundClinical trials should be as inclusive as possible to facilitate equitable access to research and better reflect the population towards which any intervention is aimed. Informed by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Innovations in Clinical Trial Design and Delivery for the Under-served (INCLUDE) guidance, we audited oncology trials conducted by the Clinical Trials and Statistics Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research, London (ICR-CTSU) to identify whether essential documents were overtly excluding any groups and whether (...) sufficient data were collected to assess diversity of trial participants from groups suggested by INCLUDE as under-served by research in the UK.MethodsThirty cancer clinical trials managed by ICR-CTSU and approved between 2011–2021 were audited. The first ethics approved version of each trial’s protocol, patient information sheet, and patient completed questionnaire, together with the first case report forms (CRFs) version were reviewed. A range of items aligned with the INCLUDE under-served groups were assessed, including age, sex and gender, socio-economic and health factors. The scope did not cover trial processes in participating hospitals.ResultsData relating to participants’ age, ethnic group and health status were well collected and no upper age limit was specified in any trials’ eligibility criteria. 23/30 (77%) information sheets used at least one gendered term to address patients. Most CRFs did not specify whether they were collecting sex or gender and only included male or female categories. The median reading age for information sheets was 15–16 years (IQR: 14–15 – 16–17). Socio-economic factors were not routinely collected and not commonly mentioned in trial protocols.ConclusionsNo systemic issues were identified in protocols which would explicitly prevent any under-served group from participating. Areas for improvement include reducing use of gendered words and improving readability of patient information. The challenge of fully assessing adequate inclusion of under-served populations remains, as socio-economic factors are not routinely collected because they fall beyond the data generally required for protocol-specified trial endpoint assessments. This audit has highlighted the need to agree and standardise demographic data collection to permit adequate monitoring of the under-served groups identified by the NIHR. (shrink)

Apoptotic pathways have always been regarded as a key‐player in preserving tissue and organ homeostasis. Excessive activation or resistance to activation of cell death signaling may indeed be responsible for several mechanisms of disease, including malignancy and chronic degenerative diseases. Therefore, targeting apoptotic factors gained more and more attention in the scientific community and novel strategies emerged aimed at selectively blocking or stimulating cell death signaling. This is also the case for the TMEM219 death receptor, which is activated by a (...) circulating ligand, the Insulin‐like growth factor binding protein 3 (IGFBP3) and induces a caspase‐8‐dependent apoptosis of the target cells. Interestingly, stimulation of the IGFBP3/TMEM219 axis exerts an anti‐proliferative effect, while blockade of the TMEM219 deleterious signal protects TMEM219‐expressing cells of the endocrine pancreas, lung, and intestine from damage and death. Here, we summarize the most updated reports on the role of the IGFBP3/TMEM219 apoptotic axis in disease conditions, including intestinal disorders and diabetes, and we describe the advancements in designing and testing novel TMEM219‐based targeting approaches in emerging potential clinical applications. (shrink)

In another tumultuous term of the United States Supreme Court in 2022-2023 a series of critical cases implicate instant and forthcoming changes in multiple fronts that collectively shift the national public health law and policy environment.

The Handbook of Feminist Research Methodologies in Management and Organization Studies focuses on the interlinkages between feminist theories, methodologies and research methods. This ground-breaking Handbook analyses classic feminist theoretical texts and their methodological implications, as well as topical approaches to management and organization studies, including postcolonial feminism, critical race theory and new feminist materialisms. The book discusses what kind of methodological and methods related concerns different theoretical approaches call forth and highlights them through empirical examples. Featuring contributions from leading scholars (...) in the field of management and organization studies, the book examines knowledge production through different theoretical perspectives, including standpoint feminism, feminist post-structuralism, postcolonial feminism, and queer analysis. Providing a critical and analytical lens through which to view traditional research practices, it offers insight into how to tackle ethical and practical issues related to feminist research. This book is a vital resource for graduate and post-graduate students in management and organization as well as gender and management. It also provides feminist scholars a comprehensive overview of the contemporary debates in the field. The book is a key resource for any student and scholar engaged in qualitative methodologies and research methods in management, and organization studies and social sciences in general. (shrink)

Over the last half century, a multijurisdictional, multiscale system of governance has emerged to address concerns associated with toxic chemicals that have the capacity to bioaccumulate in organisms and biomagnify in food chains, leading to fish consumption advisories. Components of this system of governance include international conventions (such as the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Minamata Convention on Mercury), laws enacted by nation states and their subjurisdictions, and efforts to adaptively manage regional ecosystems (such as the U.S.–Canadian (...) Great Lakes). Given that many of these compounds – including mercury, industrial chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls, and pesticides such as toxaphene – circulate throughout the globe through cycles of deposition and reemission, regional efforts to eliminate the need for fish consumption advisories cannot be successful without efforts to reduce emissions everywhere in the world. This paper argues that the scientific community, by monitoring the concentrations of these compounds in the atmosphere and by modeling their fate and transport, play an important role in connecting the various jurisdictional scales of governance. In addition, the monitoring networks that this community of scientists has established can be visualized as a technology of governance essential in an era in which societies have the capacity to produce and release such chemicals on an industrial scale. (shrink)

The Art Firm explores the seemingly unorthodox alliance of the arts, management, and marketing. Art firms—as avant-garde enterprises and arts corporations—have existed for at least two hundred years, using texts, images, and other types of art to create corporate wealth. This book investigates how to apply the methods artists use in creating value to the methods more traditional managers use in running their businesses. Guillet de Monthoux offers a crash course in aesthetics from Kant to Gadamer, showing how aesthetic (...) management and metaphysical marketing can create value. Using case studies of successful art managers from Richard Wagner to Robert Wilson, the author illustrates the creative role—so central to value-making in contemporary economies—performed by aesthetic play in art firms. Along the way, Guillet de Monthoux points out how responsible aesthetic management and marketing can eradicate the problems of banality and totality, the two capital sins of an art-based economy. (shrink)

Emma Borg examines the relation between semantics and pragmatics, and assesses recent answers to fundamental questions of how and where to draw the divide between the two. She argues for a minimal account of the interrelation between them--a 'minimal semantics'--which holds that only rule-governed appeals to context can influence semantic content.

Mirror neurons are neurons which fire in two distinct conditions: (i) when an agent performs a specific action, like a precision grasp of an object using fingers, and (ii) when an agent observes that action performed by another. Some theorists have suggested that the existence of such neurons may lend support to the simulation approach to mindreading (e.g. Gallese and Goldman, 1998, 'Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind reading'). In this note I critically examine this suggestion, in both (...) its original and a revised form (due to Iacoboni et al., 2005, 'Grasping the intentions of others with one's own mirror neuron system'), and argue that the existence of mirror neurons can in fact tell us very little about how intentional attribution actually proceeds. (shrink)

Some demonstrative expressions, those we might term ‘bare demonstratives’, appear without any appended descriptive content (e.g. occurrences of ‘this’ or ‘that’ simpliciter). However, it seems that the majority of demonstrative occurrences do not follow this model. ‘Complex demonstratives’ is the collective term I shall use for phrases formed by adjoining one or more common nouns to a demonstrative expression (e.g. ‘that cat’, ‘this happy man’) and I will call the combination of predicates immediately concatenated with the demonstrative in such phrases (...) the ‘matrix’ of the expression. The question, then, is how we should construe the logical form of such expressions within a semantic theory for our language; and I wish to suggest that some recent answers to this question are, in fact, mistaken. The structure of the paper is as follows: first, I wish to highlight two (often underlying) assumptions about the nature of noun phrases in general, and suggest that, if they are both adopted, they apparently constrain the possible accounts of the logical form of complex demonstratives to just three options. The second and third parts of the paper will be concerned with expanding these options and arguing that none of them are adequate; thus the major part of the paper is concerned with the negative claim that the most obvious moves to make in this area must actually fail on closer inspection. The fourth and final section will then (very briefly) sketch the positive thesis of the paper: that we can deliver a clear and cohesive account of complex demonstratives, armed simply with elements which we will draw from David Kaplan’s theory of demonstratives, but only at the cost of rejecting (or at least refining) one assumption we recognised initially. (shrink)

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as (...) well as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

‘Pragmaticist’ positions posit a three-way division within utterance content between: (i) the standing meaning of the sentence, (ii) a somewhat pragmatically enhanced meaning which captures what the speaker explicitly conveys (following Sperber and Wilson 1986, I label this the ‘explicature’), and (iii) further indirectly conveyed propositions which the speaker merely implies. Here I re-examine the notion of an explicature, asking how it is defined and what work explicatures are supposed to do. I argue that explicatures get defined in three different (...) ways and that these distinct definitions can and do pull apart. Thus the notion of an explicature turns out to be ill-defined. (shrink)

In this paper I want to explore the arguments for so-called ‘unarticulated constituents’ (UCs). Unarticulated constituents are supposed to be propositional elements, not presented in the surface form of a sentence, nor explicitly represented at the level of its logical form, yet which must be interpreted in order to grasp the (proper) meaning of that sentence or expression. Thus, for example, we might think that a sentence like ‘It is raining’ must contain a UC picking out the place at which (...) the speaker of the sentence asserts it to be raining. In §1 I will explore the nature of UCs a little further, and, in §2, suggest that we can recognise two different forms of argument for them.. (shrink)

Organizations operate in dynamic environments, which not only requires organizations to adjust, but also for employees to adapt quickly to align with new or adjusted organizational goals. Servant leadership has been shown to help employees develop and grow and behave in a moral and fair manner which are important elements for successful change. We aim to provide a further understanding of the associations between servant leadership and organizational outcomes during changing times. Drawing on the theories of social exchange and goal-setting, (...) and the norm of reciprocity, we propose the mediating role of organizational goal clarity in the associations between servant leadership and five organizational outcomes. The hypotheses are tested in four studies: a two-wave time-lagged survey study conducted in a service company going through a merger, and three experimental studies. The results show that servant leadership relates positively to goal clarity and negatively to uncertainty of employees during organizational change. Furthermore, organizational goal clarity positively mediates the associations between servant leadership and employees’ organizational change commitment and service performance (e.g., organizational citizenship behavior, customer service and customer orientation). This investigation provides a theoretical and empirical validation of a mechanism through which servant leaders enhance organizational performance during changing times. (shrink)

How management philosophy is conceived depends on if pragmatism is acknowledged or not! After having been under the main domination of management science both research and education has until recently widened its scope from a decision-making to an action-perspective. It seems to be a recent reconnection to pragmatism that makes the 2011 Carnegie report propose to rethink management in liberal arts terms, whilst the vastly influential 1959 Carnegie Pierson report distanced itself from American pragmatism thus focusing on decisions and forgetting (...) actions. Actions may contain decisions and choices but contain more than that. A decision-perspective explains by causal inference modelling choices as calculated or programmed. The action-perspectives strive at understanding intentions of agents by philosophical interpretations of action stories. It is less limited to finding the logics for constructing worlds, to paraphrase Herbert Simon’s favorite philosopher Rudolf Carnap, than embarking on plausible, although not certain, reconstructions of intentions giving meaning to action stories. This can be illustrated by turning to Elizabeth Anscombe’s Wittgensteinian investigation of intentions as Aristotelian syllogistic reasoning. Her constant analytical care to defend a philosophy of action against metaphysical assumptions and taken-for-granted “psychologisms” shows that an action-perspective is as analytic as ever one of decision-making. What differs is that the latter seems constantly attracted by programming inquiry by “scientific methodology” whilst the latter is charmed by philosophical approaches to action welcoming fascinating conundrums, enigmas and human goofs in the reality of managerial practice. Management science wants to reduce management to logics, programs and models for formal decision making whereas management philosophy is closer to spotting the artfully entrepreneurial in actions. The latter points in the direction of engineering tools, the former to appreciate the toys of management as artwork. Finally the argument of Georg Henrik von Wright helps us see that the two are philosophically compatible; for in a pragmatically inspired management philosophy actions may well contain decisions. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the race to find an effective vaccine or treatment saw an ‘extraordinary number’ of clinical trials being conducted. While there were some key success stories, not all trials produced results that informed patient care. There was a significant amount of waste in clinical research during the pandemic which is said to have hampered an evidence-based response. Conducting trials which could have been predicted to fail to answer the research question (e.g. because they are not large enough (...) to provide a definitive result) is not only a waste of resources but also a breach of research participants’ trust and a violation of research ethics. The issues seen in COVID-19 clinical trials are symptomatic of a wider trial design crisis where many trials do not provide informative results. This paper examines the roles of key stakeholders in delivering ethical and informative trials and whether guidance published by ‘The Good Clinical Trials Collaborative’ could be used to align key stakeholder groups and enable a joined-up approach to improve clinical trial design. (shrink)

Understanding in Epistemology Epistemology is often defined as the theory of knowledge, and talk of propositional knowledge has dominated the bulk of modern literature in epistemology. However, epistemologists have recently started to turn more attention to the epistemic state or states of understanding, asking questions about its nature, relationship … Continue reading Understanding in Epistemology →.

In Utopophobia: On the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy, David Estlund defends against utopophobia in political philosophy. Estlund claims that it is no defect in a theory of justice if it sets a high standard that has little chance of being achieved by any society. The book does not, however, give similar permission to argue for unrealistically optimistic political proposals. Going beyond Estlund, I consider the possibility that some utopian thinking is warranted not just in the context of formulating (...) a theory of justice, but in the practical context, too. Sometimes theorizers ought to argue for and pursue political proposals that seem unrealistically optimistic. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 74-89, March 2021.

The idea of sustainability is an odd composite of imagination and accounting. Environmental history is a permissive historical subdiscipline, and this essay is about the environmental???economic???intellectual history of an environmental idea, sustainability, which is historical in the sense that it is very old, and historical, too, in the sense that it is an idea about history, or about imagining the future in relation to the past. One of the oddities of the last several decades is that these old ideas have (...) been transformed into the most celebrated of all the dicta of environmental policy, or an aspiration of UN commissions, ???strategy consultancies???, and very large government agencies. (shrink)

In this study, we analyzed the academic integrity policies of colleges in Ontario, Canada, casting a specific lens on contract cheating. We extracted data from 28 individual documents from 22-publicly-funded colleges including policies and procedures (n = 27) and code of conduct (n = 1). We analyzed the characteristics of the documents from three perspectives: (a) document type and titles; (b) policy language; and (c) policy principles. Then we examined five core elements of the documentation including (a) access; (b) approach; (...) (c) responsibility; (d) detail; and (e) support. Key findings revealed that specific and direct language pertaining to contract cheating was largely absent from the policy documents, that underlying policy principles lacked clear definition, and that exemplary policy has yet to be developed in this context. We conclude with recommendations for increased policy research in the area of academic integrity and a call for policy revision in Canadian higher education institutions to more explicitly address the issue of contract cheating, as well as provide more support to students and other campus stakeholders to better understand how contract cheating impacts and impedes teaching and learning. (shrink)

When consent to medical treatment is described as ‘valid’, it might simply mean that it has a sound basis, or it could mean that it is legally valid. Where the two meanings are regularly interchanged, however, it can lead to aspects of the sound basis or the legal requirements being neglected. This article looks at how the term is used in a range of guidance on consent to treatment and argues for consistency.

Common-sense (or folk) psychology holds that (generally) we do what we do for the reasons we have. This common-sense approach is embodied in claims like ‘I went to the kitchen because I wanted a drink’ and ‘She took a coat because she thought it might rain and hoped to stay dry’. However, the veracity of these common-sense psychological explanations has been challenged by experimental evidence (primarily from behavioural economics and social psychology) which appears to show that individuals are systematically irrational—that (...) often we do not do what we do because of the reasons we have. Recently, some of the same experimental evidence has also been used to level a somewhat different challenge at the common-sense view, arguing that the overarching aim of reasoning is not to deliver better or more reason-governed decisions for individual reasoners, but to improve group decision making or to protect an individual’s sense of self. This paper explores the range of challenges that experimental work has been taken to raise for the common-sense approach and suggests some potential responses. Overall, I argue that the experimental evidence surveyed should not lead us to a rejection of individual rationality. (shrink)

The Ways We Think critiques predominant approaches to the development of thinking in education and seeks to offer a new account of thought informed by phenomenology, post-structuralism and the ‘ordinary language’ philosophical traditions. Presents an original account of thinking for education and explores how this alternative conception of thought might be translated into the classroom Explores connections between phenomenology, post-structuralism and ordinary language philosophical traditions Examines the relevance of language in accounts of how we think Investigates the philosophical accounts of (...) Gilbert Ryle, Martin Heidegger, John Austin and Jacques Derrida Draws upon experience of own teaching practice as philosopher-in-residence. (shrink)

This article seeks to open up a re-examination of the relationship between thought and language by reference to two philosophers: John Austin and Jacques Derrida. While in traditional philosophical terms these thinkers stand far apart, recent work in the philosophy of education has highlighted the importance of Austin’s work in a way that has begun to bridge the philosophical divide. This article seeks to continue the renewed interest in Austin in educational research, yet also take it in new direction by (...) exploring Austin’s wider philosophical concern within the William James Lectures with the nature of language. The significance of the philosophical turn to language has entered the agenda of a number of philosophers of education in recent years. The main aim of this article will be to present, as a starting point for further work, an account of language that does justice to the way language actually operates. The article will argue that Austin’s account of the performative opens up new possibilities in this regard and yet—for reasons that will be made clear—also fails in the final instance to carry these through. By illustrating the way Derrida’s philosophy works, contrastingly, to take these possibilities to their full conclusion, I will argue that Derrida succeeds in bringing a radically new conception of language to the fore. The article will end by pointing towards some of the implications of the initial exploration conducted here to be developed elsewhere—particularly for the ways we think about thinking. (shrink)

Twelve essays by the influential radical include "Marriage and Love," "The Hypocrisy of Puritanism," "The Traffic in Women," Anarchism," and "The Psychology of Political Violence." Other enduringly relevant essays examine patriotism, the failure of the penal system, and drama as a means of conveying political theory.

There is a sense in which it is trivial to say that one accepts intention- (or convention-) based semantics.[2] For if what is meant by this claim is simply that there is an important respect in which words and sentences have meaning (either at all or the particular meanings that they have in any given natural language) due to the fact that they are used, in the way they are, by intentional agents (i.e. speakers), then it seems no one should (...) disagree. For imagine a possible world where there are physical things which share the shape and form of words of English or Japanese, or the acoustic properties of sentences of Finnish or Arapaho, yet where there are no intentional agents (or where any remaining intentional agents don’t use language). In such a world, it seems clear that these physical objects, which are only superficially language-like, will lack all meaning. Furthermore, it seems that questions of particular meaning are also settled by the conventions of intentional language users: it’s nothing more than convention which makes the concatenation of letters ‘a’^‘p’^‘p’^‘l’^‘e’ mean apple, rather than banana, in English.[3] So, understood as the minimal claim that intentional agents, who have a practice of using certain physical objects (written words, sounds, hand gestures, etc) to communicate certain thoughts, are a prerequisite for linguistic meaning, the idea that semantics is based on both intention and convention seems indisputable. I will label a theory which recognises this preconditional role for speaker intentions an A-style intention-based semantics and we will explore one such account in §1. (shrink)

Contemporary policy debates about managing the enormous volume of online content have taken a renewed focus on upload filtering, automated detection of potentially illegal content, and other “proactive measures”. Often, policymakers and tech industry players invoke artificial intelligence as the solution to complex challenges around online content, promising that AI is a scant few years away from resolving everything from hate speech to harassment to the spread of terrorist propaganda. Missing from these promises, however, is an acknowledgement that proactive identification (...) and automated removal of user-generated content raises problems beyond issues of “accuracy” and overbreadth--problems that will not be solved with more sophisticated AI. In this commentary, I discuss how the technical realities of content filtering stack up against the protections for freedom of expression in international human rights law. As policymakers and companies around the world turn to AI for communications governance, it is crucial that we recall why legal protections for speech have included presumptions against prior censorship, and consider carefully how proactive content moderation will fundamentally re-shape the relationship between rules, people, and their speech. (shrink)

Jecker et al 1 offer a valuable analysis of risk discussion in relation to Artifical Intelligence (AI) and in the context of longtermism generally, a philosophy prevalent among technocrats and tech billionaires who significantly shape the direction of technological progress in our world. Longtermists accomplish a significant justificatory win, when they use a utilitarian calculation that pits all future humanity against concerns about current humans and societies. By making this argument, they are able to have abstract (and uncertain) benefits for (...) an infinite group of people, outweigh concrete harms for current people—a nifty trick given it also often seems to align with their own personal benefits related to status, power and profit-making. In the AI space, specifically, this has worked well. As Jecker et al 1point out, while AI leaders have spoken openly and loudly about existential risk (X-risk) that conjures thoughts of sci-fi fantasies rather than realities (a strategy that also serves to hype up their work well beyond its current capacity), it fails to engage with concrete and less existential risks that have significant impacts. These risks are inconvenient to development in the Silicon Valley model that requires people to ‘move fast and break things’ rather than proceed carefully and thoughtfully. Not only that but …. (shrink)

We tend to hold people responsible for their choices, but not for what they can’t control: their nature, genes or biological makeup. This thought-provoking collection redefines the boundaries of moral responsibility. It shows how epigenetics reveals connections between our genetic make-up and our environment. The essays challenge established notions of human nature and the nature/nurture divide and suggest a shift in focus from individual to collective responsibility. Uncovering the links between our genetic makeup, environment and experiences, this is an important (...) contribution to ongoing debates on ethics, genetics and responsibility. (shrink)