As a psychologist and an ethicist, we have explored empirically newborn screening consent and communication processes. In this paper we consider the impact on families if newborn screening uses whole genome sequencing. We frame this within the World Health Organization’s definition of health and contend that proposals to use whole genome sequencing in newborn screening take into account the ethical, practical and psychological impact of such screening. We argue that the important psychological processes occurring in the neonatal phase necessitate a (...) clear justification that providing risk information at this stage provides a health benefit. We illustrate how research on current newborn screening can inform whole genome sequencing debates, whilst highlighting important gaps. Obtaining explicit, voluntary, and sufficiently informed consent for newborn screening is challenging, however we stress that such consent is ethically and legally appropriate and psychologically and practically important. We conclude by outling how this might be done. (shrink)

There existed a tradition of mimetic experimentation in the late nineteenth century, whereby morphologists sought to scale down sublime natural phenomena to tabletop devices in the laboratory. Experimenters constructed analogs of the aurora, attempting to replicate the colors and forms of the phenomenon with discharge tube experiments and electrical displays, which became popular spectacles at London’s public galleries. This paper analyses a closely allied but different kind of imitation. Between 1872 and 1884, Professor Karl Selim Lemström (1838–1904) attempted to reproduce (...) the aurora borealis in all of its complexity atop four mountains in northern Finland. Crucially, his “artificial aurora” was to materialize at the same scale as the original phenomenon and in its natural habitat in the polar atmosphere. With his experiment Lemström hoped to uncover the workings of the aurora and the electrical currents that he believed were always present within the atmosphere; his epistemological framework was one of learning by making. This paper sheds light on the broader problem of what it meant to authentically replicate a phenomenon that remained largely enigmatic, and, most importantly, how this replication could be verified. This prompts a discussion as to whether model experiments needed only to appear visually similar to the objects they purported to imitate, were required to preserve their form, or needed to be materially identical in order to the original to be identified as legitimate “reproductions” in the late nineteenth century. (shrink)

Fiona Woollard presents an original defence of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, according to which doing harm seems much harder to justify than merely allowing harm. She argues that the Doctrine is best understood as a principle that protects us from harmful imposition, and offers a moderate account of our obligations to offer aid to others.

Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one's cognitive system, for example, one's thoughts or beliefs? If one thinks that this can happen then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitively impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case of cognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typically use to explain away alleged cases. The case (...) is one in which it seems subjects' beliefs about the typical colour of objects affects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur. I suspect that people who are opposed to the idea that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable will be less opposed to the idea when they come to consider this indirect mechanism and that those who are generally sympathetic to the idea of cognitive penetrability will welcome the elucidation of this plausible mechanism. (shrink)

This powerfully iconoclastic book reconsiders the influential nativist position toward the mind. Nativists assert that some concepts, beliefs, or capacities are innate or inborn: "native" to the mind rather than acquired. Fiona Cowie argues that this view is mistaken, demonstrating that nativism is an unstable amalgam of two quite different--and probably inconsistent--theses about the mind. Unlike empiricists, who postulate domain-neutral learning strategies, nativists insist that some learning tasks require special kinds of skills, and that these skills are hard-wired into (...) our brains at birth. This "faculties hypothesis" finds its modern expression in the views of Noam Chomsky. Cowie, marshaling recent empirical evidence from developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, computer science, and linguistics, provides a crisp and timely critique of Chomsky's nativism and defends in its place a moderately nativist approach to language acquisition. Also in contrast to empiricists, who view the mind as simply another natural phenomenon susceptible of scientific explanation, nativists suspect that the mental is inelectably mysterious. Cowie addresses this second strand in nativist thought, taking on the view articulated by Jerry Fodor and other nativists that learning, particularly concept acquisition, is a fundamentally inexplicable process. Cowie challenges this explanatory pessimism, and argues convincingly that concept acquisition is psychologically explicable. What's Within? is a clear and provocative achievement in the study of the human mind. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty identifies an intertwined affective state of anxiety and courage, claiming that these are one and the same thing, as a fundamental characteristic of human existence. I argue that trust, understood as phenomenologically basic, is the unity, or the something beyond, the singularly conceived states of anxiety and courage, and that trust itself cannot be conceived apart from these states. Merleau-Ponty says little, directly, about trust in his work, yet his focus on the fundamental precariousness of existence demands such an (...) exploration. I explore how our ordinary day-to-day experience of existence is related to an intertwined affective state of anxiety and courage and how trust is operative in affective depth, in order to understand how it is we come to speak of trust not only in terms of proximity and distance, emotional depth and extension across time, but most markedly, in terms of how we see someone and what it is like to be in relation to them. (shrink)

Scientific and philosophical perspectives on hallucination: essays that draw on empirical evidence from psychology, neuroscience, and cutting-edge philosophical theory.

I argue that dreams can contain perceptual elements in multifarious, heretofore unthought-of ways. I also explain the difference between dreams that contain perceptual elements, perceptual experiences that contain dream elements, and having a dream and a perceptual experience simultaneously. I then discuss two applications of the resulting view. First, I explain how my taxonomy of perception in dreams will allow “dream engineers”—who try to alter the content of people’s dreams—to accurately classify different dreams and explore creating new forms of perception (...) in dreams. Second, I consider the consequences of the view for the role of memory in dreaming and imagination. I argue that not every element of dreams or sensory imaginations must rely on memory. The resultant view of sensory imagination provides a counterexample to Hume’s account of sensory imagination, according to which sensory imagination must be built up from faint copies of sensory impressions stored in memory. (shrink)

Fiona Nicoll and Melissa Gregg met on the job at a new university having both moved from Sydney to Brisbane to take up their appointments. Here they share reflections on teaching a cultural theory course that they inherited from a prominent Australian Professor of Cultural Studies, offering the perspectives of two consecutive generations of cultural studies theorists now teaching in the field since the early 1990s. This situation gives rise to new interpretations regarding the value and uses of theory (...) in the classroom. Noting the subtle differences involved in teaching the same theoretical material in different cities, the ironies of teaching radical cultural theory in a conservative institutional environment, and the specific opportunities and challenges of teaching cultural studies theory as opposed to others, the article considers some of the silences teachers must also contend with in their classroom practice, drawing on and expanding the terrain established by Thorkelson's thesis. (shrink)

This paper explores the potential for an international political theory of care as an alternative to liberalism in the context of contemporary global politics. It argues that relationality and interdependence, and the responsibilities for and practices of care that arise therewith, are fundamental aspects of moral life and sites of political contestation that have been systematically denied and obfuscated under liberalism. A political theory of care brings into view the responsibilities and practices of care that sustain not just ‘bare life’ (...) but all social life, from nuclear and extended families to local, national and transnational communities. It disrupts and challenges the individualism of liberalism, and the associated valorization of ‘freedom’, ‘autonomy’, and ‘toleration’. Instead, it emphasizes an ontology of relationality and interdependence that accepts the existence of vulnerability without reifying particular individuals, groups or states as ‘victims’ or ‘guardians’. Furthermore, by demonstrating the gendered and raced nature of caring in the contemporary world—from the household to the transnational level—an international political theory of care challenges our received assumptions about ‘dependence’ in world politics, and opens up space to interrogate politically not only gender but race and other aspects of inequality in the global political economy. (shrink)

The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. But how many senses are there? How many could there be? What makes the senses different? What interaction takes place between the senses? This book is a guide to thinking about these questions. Together with an extensive introduction to the topic, the book contains the key classic papers on this subject together with nine newly commissioned essays.One reason (...) that these questions are important is that we are receiving a huge influx of new information from the sciences that challenges some traditional philosophical views about the senses. This information needs to be incorporated into our view of the senses and perception. Can we do this whilst retaining our pre-existing concepts of the senses and of perception or do we need to revise our concepts? If they need to be revised, then in what way should that be done? Research in diverse areas, such as the nature of human perception, varieties of non-human animal perception, the interaction between different sensory modalities, perceptual disorders, and possible treatments for them, calls into question the platitude that there are five senses, as well as the pre-supposition that we know what we are counting when we count them as five.This book will serve as an inspiring introduction to the topic and as a basis from which further new research will grow. (shrink)

The embargo on touching in museums is increasingly being brought into question, not least by blind activists who are calling for greater access to collections. The provision of opportunities to touch could be read as a potential conflict between established optic knowledge and illicit haptic experience, between the conservation of objects and access to collections. Instead I suggest that touch is not necessarily other to the museum; rather, the status of who does the touching and knowing is crucial and not (...) the use of touch per se. It is expert territory and vested academic interests that are at stake here. Using Bruno Latour’s (1993) conceptions of hybrid networks and purified zones of academic practice, I then explore what the unacknowledged existence of touch means for museums and for notions of authority more generally. I suggest that if the apparent boundaries of disciplines are unconvincing in practice, then the possibility of expert knowledge is seriously undermined. Blind people’s demand for access through touch is not then a challenge of one paradigm to another but implicitly questions the accreditation of authority itself. As such it forms part of a wider institutional shift with regard to expertise and an increased need for negotiating between different conceptual frameworks. The ocularcentric bias of museums is increasingly being questioned by blind and visually impaired visitors who emphasize touch as a learning and aesthetic experience. This challenge is contentious not least because it ostensibly brings the individuals’ rights of access into direct conflict with museum conservation. I argue that concerns over conservation can, however, mask and serve to legitimate preconceptions about who should have access to collections; what counts as damage or dirt; and the means by which art and artefacts can be understood or enjoyed. It is expertise rather than the conservation of objects which is at stake. This article suggests that in campaigning for access through touch, blind people physically move beyond the barriers which reserve contact for the museum elite and simultaneously establish the viability of learning in a way that is not sanctioned by the art historical community. Thus resistance to touch in museums is not so much a concern for preservation as a defence of territory and expertise. (shrink)

It can be observed that the doctrine of innate ideas may be as old as philosophy itself, as it may be one of the most basic conceptions. The notion that the character of our mental faculties is determined internally or innately is evident in works as early as that of Plato, which was revived between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by significant rationalist philosophers, and which underwent further examination in the twentieth century by mentalists such as Jerry Fodor and Noam (...) Chomsky. There is, however, no definite statement about what exactly nativism is all about. While some may believe that what is in our minds was already innate, such a hypothesis is enough to raise several different problems, as such innateness may be of various types of cognitive equipment: ideas, beliefs and faculties. This chapter attempts to clarify certain misconceptions about the notion of nativism. (shrink)

In H.M. Advocate v. Grimmond1 the judge in a Scottish High Court trial refused permission for expert psychological evidence to be admitted on behalf of the Crown in a prosecution involving sexual offences against two children. The Crown had sought to lead an expert witness to explain to the jury about patterns of disclosure in child sexual abuse cases. The case was remarkable, not so much for the strict application of the longstanding rule in R. v. Turner that constrains the (...) use in the courtroom of expert evidence from the behavioural sciences, but for the way in which the arguments presented by the Crown in Grimmond resonate with enduring feminist critiques regarding the treatment of women in rape trials. The theoretical issues raised by the decision include the quest for context to counter rigid evidential frameworks, and the choice of a child sexual abuse case as the medium for challenging the boundaries of the admissibility of expert evidence in the courtroom. The ramifications of Grimmond are tangible as legislation intended to benefit children and women has already been enacted by the Scottish Parliament to ameliorate the effects of the decision. This article suggests that while this legislation should be given a cautious welcome it remains to be seen whether the heralded benefits will actually materialise. (shrink)

This paper argues that human rights-based approaches to human security overlook the importance of caring values, relations of care, and care work in the achievement and long-term maintenance of human security. It outlines an alternative approach to the ethics of human security which combines a feminist ontological and normative position on the centrality of caring values and practices in sustaining life with a feminist account of the gendered political economy of contemporary globalisation. Moreover, it argues that a critical, feminist ethics (...) of care can provide a comprehensive ontological and normative framework for integrating economic exclusion with violence, and thus for understanding and conceptualising human security in a way that is sensitive to the role played by gender identities and other types of power relations. This, I argue, can be achieved through an interrogation of the relationship between neoliberal globalisation and hegemonic forms masculinity in the context of contemporary global governance. (shrink)

This article investigates the contribution made by indigenous employees to the work of the Hong Kong Observatory from its inception and into the early twentieth century. As has so often been the case in Western histories of science, the significance of indigenous workers and of women in the Hong Kong Observatory has been obscured by the stories of the government officials and observatory director(s). Yet without the employees, the service could not have functioned or grown. While the glimpses of their (...) work and lives are fleeting, often only revealed in minor archival references, this article seeks to interrogate these sources to make these workers’ lives visible and to offer an examination of everyday working relationships at this place and point in time. It focuses on three areas. First, an exploration of who these workers were, and the role they played at the observatory. Second, an investigation of their contribution to the nascent science of meteorology. Third, an examination of available evidence – levels of high staff turnover, complaints, instances of foot dragging, or working to rule, as well as the tenacity to continue for years under difficult working conditions – to demonstrate the ability of workers to reject or to negotiate with colonial/patriarchal authority. In profiling their stories, this article will add to the literature examining the lives of scientific workers and their contributions to science, the everyday cultural and social contexts of colonial meteorology, and the role of ordinary men and women in producing meteorological knowledge at this time. (shrink)

The late nineteenth to early twentieth century saw a small but dedicated rise in experimental rainmaking. The possibility that humanity might one day be able to control the weather – especially to alleviate drought – was very attractive to governments and private investors. The late nineteenth century was an era of scientific optimism and a number of rainmaking experiments across the world had brought the potential for weather control out of the realms of discourse and literature and further into tangible (...) near-future science. There has been a small but thorough historiographical literature on this subject, focusing largely on American, British, and Australian efforts. This article seeks to build on this by exploring the little-known history of rainmaking in Hong Kong before 1930, centering on a case study of a particular experiment intended to alleviate the disastrous drought of 1928–9. As was the case elsewhere, Hong Kong’s rainmaking efforts raised as much skepticism as they did support, with the government, scientists, and the general public in two minds about whether making rain was even possible. As such, this article aims to interrogate the concepts of the sociotechnical imaginary and the history of failure, while also contributing to the wider story of meteorological knowledge-making. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that God has been put to rest. Naturalism is the default position, and the naturalist can explain what needs to be explained without recourse to God. This book agrees that we should be naturalists, but it rejects the more prevalent scientific naturalism in favour of an 'expansive' naturalism inspired by David Wiggins and John McDowell. Fiona Ellis draws on a wide range of thinkers from theology and philosophy, and spans the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy. (...) She tackles various philosophical problems including the limits of nature and the status of value; some theological problems surrounding the natural/ supernatural relation, the Incarnation, and the concept of myth; and offers a model to comprehend the relation between philosophy and theology. (shrink)

In this paper, we present new cases of illusion and hallucination that have not heretofore been identified. We argue that such cases show that the traditional accounts of illusion and hallucination are incorrect because they do not identify all of the cases of non-veridical experience that they need to and they elide important differences between cases. In light of this, we present new and exhaustive definitions of illusion and hallucination. First, we explicate the traditional accounts of illusion and hallucination. We (...) then proceed to outline cases of pure property experience—that is, experience as of properties, but not as of objects. We suggest that some might find it to be plausible that olfactory experience is of this kind. We argue that, within instances of such pure property experience, one can identify cases of veridical property perception, illusory property perception and hallucinatory property experience. With these distinctions in hand, we re-examine ordinary cases of experiences as of objects having properties. Drawing on the ideas uncovered by considering pure property experience, we bring to light many new cases of illusion and hallucination within ordinary experience as of objects having properties. These consist in different combinations of veridical perception, illusory perception and hallucination of both objects and properties. In order to accept that these new cases of illusion and hallucination exist in ordinary experience as of objects having properties, nothing turns on accepting the idea that there is pure property experience, or that olfactory experience is an instance of it. Such a conception of experience is simply a tool—a ladder to gain a good vantage point from which one can appreciate that there are these further cases. But this is a ladder that, as Wittgenstein might say, can be thrown away once it is used. Identifying new instances of illusion and hallucination provides much needed, important data for testing theories of experience and perception—theories that are frequently motivated, and should be judged, by their ability to account for cases of illusion and hallucination. (shrink)

L.A. Paul argues that interesting issues for rational choice theory are raised by epistemically transformative experiences: experiences which provide access to knowledge that could not be known without the experience. Consideration of the epistemic effects of pregnancy has important implications for our understanding of epistemically transformative experiences and for debate about the ethics of abortion and applied ethics more generally. Pregnancy is epistemically transformative both in Paul’s narrow sense and in a wider sense: those who have not been pregnant face (...) significant barriers to acquiring the knowledge made accessible through pregnancy. This knowledge is crucial for engaging with the ethics of abortion. The epistemically transformativeWIDE nature of pregnancy may require us to use new methods to try to partially grasp what pregnancy is like such as for example, significant engagement with narrative literature. Because pregnancy is also epistemically transformative in a narrow sense, we need to work out how to engage in ethical reasoning when relevant knowledge is not fully accessible to all. This argument has implications beyond the debate about abortion. Philosophers in many areas of applied ethics will need to work out how to respond appropriately to epistemically transformative experiences. (shrink)

The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing , touching, tasting, and smelling. But what makes the senses different? How many senses are there? How many could there be? Wha t interaction takes place between the senses? This introduction is a guide to thinking about these questions.

The current discourse on gender equity in universities most often situates itself in relation to eliminating bias and thus ensuring objectivity in rankings of excellence. With a focus on the discipline of philosophy, the article asks whether we thereby miss what it is important to contest but also cultivate in social worlds organized by their ever-partial and imperfect forms of discrimination in judgment? An approach based in efforts to engage in socio-political regulation of discrimination is proposed as advantageous.

What happens when science hits the headlines - for all the wrong reasons? Do you remember the 'Climategate' email leak? Or the 'Frankenscience'-style headlines about the perils of GM foods? What about the time the government sacked its own science advisor for challenging drug laws? The truth behind the attention-grabbing headlines was complex, nuanced - sometimes even mundane. Yet that's not how it was reported or remembered. We rely on the media to help us make sense of complicated scientific developments (...) that could transform our world. Yet all too often, science coverage in the British press has been less fact than fiction. And equally scientists have too often either avoided engaging with the press or have been actively prevented from doing so. The result? Media hype, political spin, and misinformation from those with vested interests. In Beyond the Hype, Fiona Fox - founding director of the Science Media Centre, set up by scientists to encourage openness and accuracy in science communication - takes us behind the scenes of some of the most contentious stories in science over the past two decades. From animal research and genetically modified foods to hybrid embryos and climate change, she reveals the highs and lows of each controversy and shows us how transparency can radically transform the way science is reported, and what a difference that makes to public understanding. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper reveals David Hilbert’s position in the philosophy of mathematics, circa 1900, to be a form of non-eliminative structuralism, predating his formalism. I argue that Hilbert withstands the pressing objections put to him by Frege in the course of the Frege-Hilbert controversy in virtue of this early structuralist approach. To demonstrate that this historical position deserves contemporary attention I show that Hilbertian structuralism avoids a recent wave of objections against non-eliminative structuralists to the effect that they cannot distinguish (...) between structurally identical but importantly distinct mathematical objects, such as the complex roots of $-1$. (shrink)

When a business owner approaches a bank for a loan for their business they might hope that a well-established bureaucratic procedure would ensure that their application was processed with stipulated rules and impersonal criteria. They might expect that two bank officials, evaluating the same proposal for a loan, would reach the same decision. However, research shows that both quantifiable data and “gut feelings” are used in the decision. In this research, analysis of interviews with senior managers, and both individual and (...) focus group interviews with bank loan officers, reveals that there are no set criteria or stipulated rules. The interviews demonstrate how and why nonquantifiable data is used, and why different bank officials can reach different conclusions on the same loan proposal. While these bank loan officers do not appear to be discriminatory against female business owners, the lending criteria and process allows significant room for discrimination. It appears questionable whether bank lending is seen as an ethical and fair process. (shrink)

This article proposes to identify the determinants of core ethical values among mass communications researchers in academia and industry. A survey of these 2 groups found that although both groups valued confidentiality equally, academic researchers scored higher on integrity and beneficence, whereas industry researchers experienced higher role conflicts.

This chapter examines the relation between Northumbrian and Irish churches during the period between 635 and 735. It suggests that the journeys of churchmen between Ireland and Northumbria were in some ways inextricably linked with those of their lay counterparts and that the development of major ecclesiastical establishments during the seventh and early eighth centuries added a new dimension to trans-Irish Sea contact. The chapter also explains why the trans-Irish Sea contact did not cease in 664 when formal links between (...) Lindisfarne on the one hand, and Iona and the Columban churches in Ireland, on the other, were terminated. (shrink)

I consider whether there are philosophical developments which can deepen our understanding of God. I focus upon the relation between experience and physical things and the nature of value. I reject the narrow limits of experience presupposed by the verificationist, and the related monopoly of science on reality. I recommend a conception of reality which is rich enough to accommodate physical things and also the intertwining of value in the natural world. I detect structural similarities between these two problems and (...) the problem of God, and consider how they might be related at the level of content. (shrink)

In this methods-building article, I show how attention to long-term continuities in female enslavement patterns helps us understand the emergence of the Black Atlantic. Slavery, I argue, is one form of human parasitism. I extend Orlando Patterson’s theory of human parasitism to examine the phenomenon of parasitic intertwining, wherein the forced labor of women became integral to broader social projects including household functioning, elite status maintenance, and population expansion. The thousand-year period between the fall of Rome and the rise of (...) the transatlantic slave trade was once described as a rupture in European slavery, with serfdom gradually supplanting slavery. The mass capture, transport, and enslavement of women, however, continued even as male slaves and ex-slaves gained significant status changes. The entrenchment of women in zonal slave trades generated both a potent cultural logic and a structural blueprint for the transatlantic trade. (shrink)

This discussion of Infinitely Demanding explores the terms of the paradox with which Critchley is centrally concerned: how an ethico-politics can at once begin in disappointment and yet allow for engagement, the infinite renewal of commitment and optimism. Placing this in critical relation to the paradox Rorty meets with his account of the "private ironist and public liberal" in Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, I argue that Critchley's ethico-politics invokes the possibility of a non-ironical categorical imperative, at the meeting point of finitude (...) and the infinite and at the heart of what is also a political space of intersubjectivity. I examine the logic of humour and of commitment within the Kantian frame thus suggested, arguing for their relevance to certain aspects of anarcho-activism, but also for their limitations in desperate circumstances, posing the risk that Critchley's preferred politics falls back into liberal complacency. (shrink)

This article considers the difficulties with using Gillon's model for health care ethics in the context of clinical practice. Everyday difficulties can arise when caring for people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, especially when they speak little or no English. A case is presented that establishes, owing to language and cultural barriers, that midwives may have difficulty in providing ethically appropriate care to women of Pakistani Muslim origin in the UK. The use of interpreters is discussed; however, there are (...) limitations and counter arguments to their use. Training is identified as needed to prepare service providers and midwives for meeting the needs of a culturally diverse maternity population. (shrink)

I argue that we should reject the sparse view that there are or could be only a small number of rather distinct senses. When one appreciates this then one can see that there is no need to choose between the standard criteria that have been proposed as ways of individuating the senses—representation, phenomenal character, proximal stimulus and sense organ—or any other criteria that one may deem important. Rather, one can use these criteria in conjunction to form a fine-grained taxonomy of (...) the senses. We can think of these criteria as defining a multidimensional space within which we can locate each of the senses that we are familiar with and which also defines the space of possible senses there could be. (shrink)

If beliefs and desires affect perception—at least in certain specified ways—then cognitive penetration occurs. Whether it occurs is a matter of controversy. Recently, some proponents of the predictive coding account of perception have claimed that the account entails that cognitive penetrations occurs. I argue that the relationship between the predictive coding account and cognitive penetration is dependent on both the specific form of the predictive coding account and the specific form of cognitive penetration. In so doing, I spell out different (...) forms of each and the relationship that holds between them. Thus, mere acceptance of the predictive coding approach to perception does not determine whether one should think that cognitive penetration exists. Moreover, given that there are such different conceptions of both predictive coding and cognitive penetration, researchers should cease talking of either without making clear which form they refer to, if they aspire to make true generalisations. (shrink)

In England, education reforms in 2014 and 2019 place more emphasis on inclusive policies and practices. How are school teachers meeting this new requirement for better inclusion of pupils with special educational needs and disability (SEND)? Do collaborative practices have a part to play? These questions are addressed within the research project Empowering Teachers for Inclusion in Schools (ETIS), which examines teachers’ views of inclusion and in-school practices across six countries. This article reports on field research carried out in England (...) in 2022, and the views of 16 educators working in mainstream or SEND schools in London and Sussex. Teachers’ voices are heard describing the challenges and successes of working collaboratively to better include diverse pupils in both mainstream and SEND settings. Findings point to the importance of knowledge-sharing within and between schools in the mainstream sector, where new responsibilities to include have been defined by the recent education reforms. Equally, capacity-building in mainstream schools could be developed in conversation with the SEND sector, wherein lies considerable expertise about adaptive pedagogies. (shrink)

Macphail’s “null hypothesis,” that there are no differences in intelligence, qualitative, or quantitative, between non-human vertebrates has been controversial. This controversy can be useful if it encourages interest in acquiring a detailed understanding of how non-human animals express flexible problem-solving capacity (“intelligence”), but limiting the discussion to vertebrates is too arbitrary. As an example, we focus here on Portia, a spider with an especially intricate predatory strategy and a preference for other spiders as prey. We review research on pre-planned detours, (...) expectancy violation, and a capacity to solve confinement problems where, in each of these three contexts, there is experimental evidence of innate cognitive capacities and reliance on internal representation. These cognitive capacities are related to, but not identical to, intelligence. When discussing intelligence, as when discussing cognition, it is more useful to envisage a continuum instead of something that is simply present or not; in other words, a continuum pertaining to flexible problem-solving capacity for “intelligence” and a continuum pertaining to reliance on internal representation for “cognition.” When envisaging a continuum pertaining to intelligence, Daniel Dennett’s notion of four Creatures (Darwinian, Skinnerian, Popperian, and Gregorian) is of interest, with the distinction between Skinnerian and Popperian Creatures being especially relevant when considering Portia. When we consider these distinctions, a case can be made for Portia being a Popperian Creature. Like Skinnerian Creatures, Popperian Creatures express flexible problem solving capacity, but the manner in which this capacity is expressed by Popperian Creatures is more distinctively cognitive. (shrink)

Artworks at Lascaux and other late Palaeolithic caves integrate geological features or “relief” of the cave wall in a way that suggests a symbiotic relation between nature and culture. I argue this qualifies as “receptivity to a situation,” which is neither fully active nor merely passive and emerges as a necessary element of the intentions made apparent by such cave art. I argue against prominent interpretations of cave art, including the shamanist account and propose a structural interpretation attentive to particular (...) cases. Seen in this way, cave art displays intentions that are analyzable as having a tripartite structure: mentally directed, embedded in actions and receptive to a situation. Moreover, the latter is the medium through which the other two elements are conjoined. Drawing on a range of archaeological and philosophical resources from both analytical philosophy and phenomenology, I argue that what I call cave art’s “intentional story” is important for the philosophy of intentions more generally. (shrink)