“Basic research” is often used in science policy. It is commonly thought to refer to research that is directed solely toward acquiring new knowledge rather than any more practical objective. Recently, there has been considerable concern about the future of basic research because of purported changes in the nature of knowledge production and increasing pressures on scientists to demonstrate the social and economic benefits of their work. But is there really something special about basic research? The author argues here that (...) “basic research” is a flexible and ambiguous concept that is drawn on by scientists to acquire prestige and resources. She shows that it is used for boundary work and gives examples of the work it does in different situations by drawing on interviews with scientists and policy makers on the category of basic research and the changes they have seen in it over time. (shrink)

This paper reports the first empirical investigation of the hypothesis that epistemic appraisals form part of the structure of concepts. To date, studies of concepts have focused on the way concepts encode properties of objects and the way those features are used in categorization and in other cognitive tasks. Philosophical considerations show the importance of also considering how a thinker assesses the epistemic value of beliefs and other cognitive resources and, in particular, concepts. We demonstrate that there are multiple, reliably (...) judged, dimensions of epistemic appraisal of concepts. Four of these dimensions are accounted for by a common underlying factor capturing how well people believe they understand a concept. Further studies show how dimensions of concept appraisal relate to other aspects of concepts. First, they relate directly to the hierarchical organization of concepts, reflecting the increase in specificity from superordinate to basic and subordinate levels. Second, they predict inductive choices in category-based induction. Our results suggest that epistemic appraisals of concepts form a psychologically important yet previously overlooked aspect of the structure of concepts. These findings will be important in understanding why individuals sometimes abandon and replace certain concepts; why social groups do so, for example, during a “scientific revolution”; and how we can facilitate such changes when we engage in deliberate “conceptual engineering” for epistemic, social, and political purposes. (shrink)

The basic principle of educational equality is that each child should receive an equally good education. This sounds appealing, but is rather vague and needs substantial working out. Also, educational equality faces all the objections to equality per se, plus others specific to its subject matter. Together these have eroded confidence in the viability of equality as an educational ideal. This article argues that equality of educational opportunity is not the best way of understanding educational equality. It focuses on Brighouse (...) and Swift's well worked out meritocratic conception and finds it irretrievably flawed; they should, instead, have pursued a radical conception they only mention. This conception is used as a starting point for developing a luck egalitarian conception, pluralistic and complex in nature. It is argued that such a conception accounts for the appeal of equality of opportunity, fits with other values in education and meets many of the objections. Thus, equality is reasserted as what morally matters most in education. (shrink)

A recent study has established that thinkers reliably engage in epistemic appraisals of concepts of natural categories. Here, five studies are reported which investigated the effects of different manipulations of category learning context on appraisal of the concepts learnt. It was predicted that dimensions of concept appraisal could be affected by manipulating either procedural factors or declarative factors. While known effects of these manipulations on metacognitive judgements such as category learning judgements and confidence at test were replicated, procedural factors had (...) no reliable effects on the dimensions of concept appraisal. Effects of declarative manipulations on some forms of concept appraisal were observed. (shrink)

Harry Brighouse discusses two conceptions of educational equality. The first is a type of equality of opportunity, heavily influenced by the work of John Rawls, which he calls the meritocratic conception. According to this conception, an individual’s educational prospects should not be influenced by factors such as their social class background. The other, radical conception, suggests a person’s natural talents should not influence their educational prospects either. Brighouse favors the meritocratic conception, but this article argues that it is flawed and (...) that the radical conception ought to be preferred. Although a superior conception of educational equality, the radical conception is still not quite right, so this article develops a luck egalitarian conception of educational equality. It is argued that this conception reflects much current thinking about equality and avoids some of the difficulties with Brighouse’s two conceptions. Finally, two objections to a luck egalitarian conception are considered. (shrink)

In this paper, we reflect on our experience as science and technology studies researchers who were members of the working group that produced A Synthetic Biology Roadmap for the UK in 2012. We explore how this initiative sought to govern an uncertain future and describe how it was successfully used to mobilize public funds for synthetic biology from the UK government. We discuss our attempts to incorporate the insights and sensibilities of STS into the policy process and why we chose (...) to use the concept of responsible research and innovation to do so. We analyze how the roadmapping process, and the final report, narrowed and transformed our contributions to the roadmap. We show how difficult it is for STS researchers to influence policy when our ideas challenge deeply entrenched pervasive assumptions, framings, and narratives about how technological innovation necessarily leads to economic progress, about public reticence as a roadblock to that progress, and about the supposed separation between science and society. We end by reflecting on the constraints under which we were operating from the outset and on the challenges for STS in policy. (shrink)

Classification is an important goal in many branches of mathematics. The idea is to describe the members of some class of mathematical objects, up to isomorphism or other important equivalence, in terms of relatively simple invariants. Where this is impossible, it is useful to have concrete results saying so. In model theory and descriptive set theory, there is a large body of work showing that certain classes of mathematical structures admit classification while others do not. In the present paper, we (...) describe some recent work on classification in computable structure theory.Section 1 gives some background from model theory and descriptive set theory. From model theory, we give sample structure and non-structure theorems for classes that include structures of arbitrary cardinality. We also describe the notion of Scott rank, which is useful in the more restricted setting of countable structures. From descriptive set theory, we describe the basic Polish space of structures for a fixed countable language with fixed countable universe. We give sample structure and non-structure theorems based on the complexity of the isomorphism relation, and on Borel embeddings.Section 2 gives some background on computable structures. We describe three approaches to classification for these structures. The approaches are all equivalent. However, one approach, which involves calculating the complexity of the isomorphism relation, has turned out to be more productive than the others. Section 3 describes results on the isomorphism relation for a number of mathematically interesting classes—various kinds of groups and fields. In Section 4, we consider a setting similar to that in descriptive set theory. We describe an effective analogue of Borel embedding which allows us to make distinctions even among classes of finite structures. Section 5 gives results on computable structures of high Scott rank. Some of these results make use of computable embeddings. Finally, in Section 6, we mention some open problems and possible directions for future work. (shrink)

Makkai [10] produced an arithmetical structure of Scott rank $\omega _{1}^{\mathit{CK}}$. In [9]. Makkai's example is made computable. Here we show that there are computable trees of Scott rank $\omega _{1}^{\mathit{CK}}$. We introduce a notion of "rank homogeneity". In rank homogeneous trees, orbits of tuples can be understood relatively easily. By using these trees, we avoid the need to pass to the more complicated "group trees" of [10] and [9]. Using the same kind of trees, we obtain one of rank (...) $\omega _{1}^{\mathit{CK}}$ that is "strongly computably approximable". We also develop some technology that may yield further results of this kind. (shrink)

While models of business ethics increasingly recognize that ethical behavior varies cross-culturally, scant attention has been given to understanding how culture affects the ethical reasoning process that predicates individuals' ethical actions. To address this gap, this paper illustrates how culture may affect the various components of individuals' ethical reasoning by integrating findings from the cross-cultural management literature with cognitive-developmental perspective. Implications for future research and transnational organizations are discussed.

In a recent article, Joel Pust argued that direct inference based on reference properties of differing arity are incommensurable, and so direct inference cannot be used to resolve the Sleeping Beauty problem. After discussing the defects of Pust's argument, I offer reasons for thinking that direct inferences based on reference properties of differing arity are commensurable, and that we should prefer direct inferences based on logically stronger reference properties, regardless of arity.

We investigate effective categoricity of computable equivalence structures . We show that is computably categorical if and only if has only finitely many finite equivalence classes, or has only finitely many infinite classes, bounded character, and at most one finite k such that there are infinitely many classes of size k. We also prove that all computably categorical structures are relatively computably categorical, that is, have computably enumerable Scott families of existential formulas. Since all computable equivalence structures are relatively categorical, (...) we further investigate when they are categorical. We also obtain results on the index sets of computable equivalence structures. (shrink)

Karen Barad develops a view she calls ‘posthumanism,’ or ‘agential realism,’ where the human is reconfigured away from the central place of explanation, interpretation, intelligibility, and objectivity to make room for the epistemic importance of other material agents. Barad is not alone in this kind of endeavor, but her posthumanism offers a unique epistemological position. Her aim is to take a performative rather than a representationalist approach to analyzing ‘socialnatural’ practices and challenge methodological assumptions that may go unnoticed in some (...) disciplinary fields. Yet for all the good of the challenge, Barad must support it with sound epistemological theorizing, theorizing that would apply to any methodology, whether that be sociological, historical, anthropological, or philosophical. Thus, where one might critique Barad on her assessments of sociological, historical, or anthropological incorporations of humans and the nonhuman, I critique Barad’s epistemology on its sense of objectivity and dismissal of the centrality of the human. I argue that Barad’s epistemology must retain a particular form of humanism, a humanism that stakes human subjectivity as the locus of rationality and objectivity, without which it creates intractable problems. To recuperate Barad’s challenge to contest assumptive distinctions while avoiding her epistemological problems, I offer some parting reflections. (shrink)

A high profile context in which physics and biology meet today is in the new field of systems biology. Systems biology is a fascinating subject for sociological investigation because the demands of interdisciplinary collaboration have brought epistemological issues and debates front and centre in discussions amongst systems biologists in conference settings, in publications, and in laboratory coffee rooms. One could argue that systems biologists are conducting their own philosophy of science. This paper explores the epistemic aspirations of the field by (...) drawing on interviews with scientists working in systems biology, attendance at systems biology conferences and workshops, and visits to systems biology laboratories. It examines the discourses of systems biologists, looking at how they position their work in relation to previous types of biological inquiry, particularly molecular biology. For example, they raise the issue of reductionism to distinguish systems biology from molecular biology. This comparison with molecular biology leads to discussions about the goals and aspirations of systems biology, including epistemic commitments to quantification, rigor and predictability. Some systems biologists aspire to make biology more similar to physics and engineering by making living systems calculable, modelable and ultimately predictable—a research programme that is perhaps taken to its most extreme form in systems biology’s sister discipline: synthetic biology. Other systems biologists, however, do not think that the standards of the physical sciences are the standards by which we should measure the achievements of systems biology, and doubt whether such standards will ever be applicable to ‘dirty, unruly living systems’. This paper explores these epistemic tensions and reflects on their sociological dimensions and their consequences for future work in the life sciences. (shrink)

Paper is divided into two parts. The first contains two philosophical discussions about comprehension of courage and the second focuses on the findings in an empirical study with care home managers about the virtue of courage. First discussion revolves around the question whether the virtue of courage is expressed a) only in life–threatening situations or is it a virtue trained and exemplified in b) everyday life settings, while the second emphasises the difference between i) courage of efficiency as a skill (...) and ii) courage of excellence as a virtue. Arguments here support a vision of courage as the virtue of excellence expressed in everyday life settings. The second part of the paper highlights a new perspective of courage with regards to the notion of care towards the aim of the courageous endeavour. The ‘courage of care’ supports the idea that the courage practised as the virtue of excellence aims to develop the moral character of the actor fundamentally outside of the life–threatening situation. Care for the self, other people, animals and intangible moral principles inspire us to do brave deeds. Thus, by accepting Alasdair MacIntyre’s statements that a) in the times of the peace managers represent moral idols and b) idea that the notion of courage should be closely related to the practice of care and compassion, the research continued with the interviews with the care home managers in Kent county in England. Conversations with care home managers released further insights into how care and compassion influence the understanding of the virtue of courage. (shrink)

We introduce several highness notions on degrees related to the problem of computing isomorphisms between structures, provided that isomorphisms exist. We consider variants along axes of uniformity, inclusion of negative information, and several other problems related to computing isomorphisms. These other problems include Scott analysis (in the form of back-and-forth relations), jump hierarchies, and computing descending sequences in linear orders.

The present essay discusses a notorious rhetoric means familiar to all scholars in the social sciences and humanities including philosophy: name-dropping. Defined as the excessive over-use of authoritative names, I argue that it is a pernicious practice leading to collective disorientation in spoken discourse. First, I discuss name-dropping in terms of informal logic as an ad verecundiam-type fallacy. Insofar this perspective proves to lack contextual sensitivity, name-dropping is portrayed in Goffman’s terms as a more general social practice. By narrowing down (...) the focus to social science and the humanities, the essay emphasizes its function of discursive legitimation. This view, I argue, is incomplete because it overlooks the basic mechanism beneath. Names not only provide legitimation of but also orientation in discourse. Consequently, two tipping points—detour and disorientation—are proposed as benchmarks for it to become problematic. The conclusion re-widens the argument’s scope by suggesting questions for future inquiries. (shrink)

Recent corporate scandals in the USA forced regulatory change and brought the governance dialogue to new heights and domains. In an attempt to strengthen understanding of the role of governance in the nonprofit organisational setting, this manuscript reviews theoretical directions and practical approaches to corporate governance and discusses the applicability of these factors to nonprofit organisations. Instead of examining inter-organisational relationships, the focus is on the governance dimensions that inform stakeholders of the general operations and performance of nonprofits. It is (...) relevant to developed countries where there is a strong presence of nonprofit organisations operating. (shrink)

Feminists have re-visioned women as active subjects in knowledge by granting them agency and diversity and by challenging divisions like public versus private. But both feminist and traditional knowledge remain deeply adult centered. Adult perspectives infuse three contemporary images of children: as threats to adult society, as victims of adults, and as learners of adult culture. We can bring children more fully into knowledge by clarifying ideological constructions, with attention to the diversity of children's actual lives and circumstances; by emphasizing (...) children's agency as well as their subordination; and by challenging their conceptual privatization. The re-visioning of children involves complex issues of gender, generation, autonomy, and relatedness. (shrink)

Recent ideological positioning on the world stage has born a startling resemblance to a form of positioning within nursing theory – that of taking complex ideas, reducing them to a simplistic binary form, and uncritically adopting one half of that form. In some cases, this adoption of a binary position has led to a passionately held form of ‘othering’ that prohibits a healthy and critical engagement with ideas. As alluring as settling for the binary form may be – we argue (...) for holding binaries in tension as a catalyst for stimulating dialogue – reasoning and exploration of new ways of wrestling with the social and moral complexity of nursing. (shrink)

Theories of classification distinguish classes with some good structure theorem from those for which none is possible. Some classes (dense linear orders, for instance) are non-classifiable in general, but are classifiable when we consider only countable members. This paper explores such a notion for classes of computable structures by working out several examples. One motivation is to see whether some classes whose set of countable members is very complex become classifiable when we consider only computable members. We follow recent work (...) by Goncharov and Knight in using the degree of the isomorphism problem for a class to distinguish classifiable classes from non-classifiable. For real closed fields we show that the isomorphism problem is Δ1 1 complete (the maximum possible), and for others we show that it is of relatively low complexity. We show that the isomorphism problem for algebraically closed fields, Archimedean real closed fields, or vector spaces is Π0 3 complete. (shrink)

This paper calculates, in a precise way, the complexity of the index sets for three classes of computable structures: the class $K_{\omega _{1}^{\mathit{CK}}}$ of structures of Scott rank $\omega _{1}^{\mathit{CK}}$ , the class $K_{\omega _{1}^{\mathit{CK}}+1}$ of structures of Scott rank $\omega _{1}^{\mathit{CK}}+1$ , and the class K of all structures of non-computable Scott rank. We show that I(K) is m-complete $\Sigma _{1}^{1},\,I(K_{\omega _{1}^{\mathit{CK}}})$ is m-complete $\Pi _{2}^{0}$ relative to Kleen's O, and $I(K_{\omega _{1}^{\mathit{CK}}+1})$ is m-complete $\Sigma _{2}^{0}$ relative to O.

A recent paper by Teresa Baron and Geoffrey Dierckxsens argues that puberty blockers and hormone therapy should be disallowed before adulthood on prudential and consent-related grounds. This response contends that their argument fails because it is predicated on unsupported premises and misinterpretations of the available evidence. There is no evidence that a large proportion of pubertal and postpubertal youths later discontinue medical transition. Meaningful assent is a viable and commonly accepted alternative to meaningful consent in paediatric bioethics. And finally, the (...) primary purpose of transition-related interventions is to actualise youths’ gendered self-image, not treat an underlying mental illness. (shrink)

This manuscript represents one segment of a philosophical conversation held in a virtual webinar in February 2021 to consider some of the current debates in nursing theory, education and practice, and their relationship to philosophy. The webinar was sponsored by the International Philosophy of Nursing Society and the Centre for Nursing Philosophy at University of California, Irvine as an opportunity provide a venue for important philosophical and theoretical thinking to a wide audience of nurse educators and practitioners around the world.

Scholars have noted persistent high rates of agricultural health and safety incidents and the need to develop more effective interventions. Participatory research provides an avenue to broaden the prevailing research paradigms and approaches by allowing those most impacted to illuminate and work to solve those aspects of their lives. One such approach is photovoice, an emancipatory visual narrative approach. Yet, despite its broad appeal, photovoice can be hard to implement. In this article, we leverage our experience using photovoice for a (...) farm children safety project to describe and reflect on the ethical and methodological aspects broadly relevant to agricultural health and safety topics. We first contextualize the tensions of navigating between photovoice, the research ethics committees (RECs) regulatory frameworks, and competing views on visual representations in agriculture. We then discuss the sources of risks to participants and researchers, how we addressed these risks, and how these risks unfolded during the research phase of the photovoice activity. We conclude with three lessons we (re)learned: the importance of collaborating with RECs, the need to increase preparation to limit psychological risks to participants and researchers, and avenues to augment the emancipatory power of photovoice in a virtual environment. (shrink)

While models of business ethics increasingly recognize that ethical behavior varies cross-culturally, scant attention has been given to understanding how culture affects the ethical reasoning process that predicates individuals' ethical actions. To address this gap, this paper illustrates how culture may affect the various components of individuals' ethical reasoning by integrating findings from the cross-cultural management literature with cognitive-developmental perspective. Implications for future research and transnational organizations are discussed.

Theories of classification distinguish classes with some good structure theorem from those for which none is possible. Some classes (dense linear orders, for instance) are non-classifiable in general, but are classifiable when we consider only countable members. This paper explores such a notion for classes of computable structures by working out a sequence of examples. We follow recent work by Goncharov and Knight in using the degree of the isomorphism problem for a class to distinguish classifiable classes from non-classifiable. In (...) this paper, we calculate the degree of the isomorphism problem for Abelian p-groups of bounded Ulm length. The result is a sequence of classes whose isomorphism problems are cofinal in the hyperarithmetical hierarchy. In the process, new back-and-forth relations on such groups are calculated. (shrink)

There is a tendency, a bad tendency, to make epistemic agency the central focus of epistemology. In brief, epistemologists have traditionally elevated epistemic agency as the crucial issue to be addressed, and ask all other epistemological questions in light of that issue. This is not surprising given the Cartesian influence on epistemology, but I argue that epistemic agency should not always be the central focus of epistemology. There are times when giving central place to epistemic agency gets in the way (...) of good epistemology. In this paper, I show how one approach to a communitarian epistemology falters precisely because of the primacy given to epistemic agency. Specifically, I take a close look at Lynn Hankinson Nelson?s notion of epistemological communities in terms of epistemic agency and analyze both its merits and its shortcomings. This is an important analysis for general consideration given the trend in non-traditional epistemologies to look towards social complexes as the real seats of knowledge. But this is also important because my analysis pushes one to consider an alternative framing concept for epistemology?that of epistemic practises instead of epistemic agency. (shrink)

Barry Barnes and David Bloor of the Strong Programme of the sociology of knowledge advance a naturalized epistemology that reduces all accounts of normativity to social causes. I endorse their program of naturalizing one kind of normativity, but I argue that there is another kind they cannot naturalize. Within the context of sociological explanations of rationality, there are norms of rationality instantiated by scientists that Barnes and Bloor study, and Barnes and Bloor's own normative ascriptions of scientists as rational beings. (...) I argue that Barnes and Bloor successfully justify their naturalization of the norms of rationality of the scientists they describe by a methodological caution and arguments from under-determination and finitism. But they inevitably fail to naturalize their own normative ascriptions of those scientists as rational. (shrink)

We investigate effective categoricity of computable Abelian p-groups . We prove that all computably categorical Abelian p-groups are relatively computably categorical, that is, have computably enumerable Scott families of existential formulas. We investigate which computable Abelian p-groups are categorical and relatively categorical.

It was love at first sight when Jonathan Calvert saw the Matterhorn in 1953. Something in the way the mountain held sway over him inspired a lifelong passion for natural beauty and adventure. Over the next fifty years, Calvert climbed, hiked, trekked, sailed, kayaked, and dog-sledded in wild places across the globe, following his urge to know. And he hasn t quit yet. In July 2014, he will spend a month in Central Asia traveling the Silk Road through (...) the Pamirs and Tian Shan mountains. In 2015 Calvert returns to the Antarctic in a sailboat to kayak and camp. This book is a record of his adventures, told through memoir, journals, and photographs. Calvert has devoted his life to exploring the world and himself, and he has never gotten to the bottom of the wellspring that is curiosity. Calvert has walked in the footsteps of early explorers, camped above the clouds, come face-to-tusk with a walrus, and, within yards of a summit, talked down the inner voice that cajoled him to quit. He has stumbled into crevasses, kayaked in quiet waters above whales, suffered altitude sickness, and called his family via radio and cell phone relay from a precipitous ledge to say, I made it. Discovering early in life that striking out by himself got the job done best, Calvert is no stranger to singular travels and travails. Yes, he adventures with comrades roped in as a team, paddling together, or taking his turn at the ship s helm but ultimately the journey is one s own. Throughout his life, Calvert has jumped at chance after chance, among them: climbing Alaska s Mount McKinley, Argentina s Aconcagua, and mountains in Switzerland, France, Tanzania, and Nepal; trekking in Tibet, Bhutan, England, and Pakistan; and kayaking the coast of Greenland and the Zhupanova River in the Kamchatka Peninsula. Where s that? Explore these pages, and then you will know.". (shrink)

This is the introduction to the special issue “The Meta-Inductive Approach to Hume’s Problem”. The introduction includes introductory remarks and brief comments on each of the papers appearing in the special issue.

Systems of logico-probabilistic (LP) reasoning characterize inference from conditional assertions interpreted as expressing high conditional probabilities. In the present article, we investigate four prominent LP systems (namely, systems O, P, Z, and QC) by means of computer simulations. The results reported here extend our previous work in this area, and evaluate the four systems in terms of the expected utility of the dispositions to act that derive from the conclusions that the systems license. In addition to conforming to the dominant (...) paradigm for assessing the rationality of actions and decisions, our present evaluation complements our previous work, since our previous evaluation may have been too severe in its assessment of inferences to false and uninformative conclusions. In the end, our new results provide additional support for the conclusion that (of the four systems considered) inference by system Z offers the best balance of error avoidance and inferential power. Our new results also suggest that improved performance could be achieved by a modest strengthening of system Z. (shrink)

The article begins by describing two longstanding problems associated with direct inference. One problem concerns the role of uninformative frequency statements in inferring probabilities by direct inference. A second problem concerns the role of frequency statements with gerrymandered reference classes. I show that past approaches to the problem associated with uninformative frequency statements yield the wrong conclusions in some cases. I propose a modification of Kyburg’s approach to the problem that yields the right conclusions. Past theories of direct inference have (...) postponed treatment of the problem associated with gerrymandered reference classes by appealing to an unexplicated notion of projectability . I address the lacuna in past theories by introducing criteria for being a relevant statistic . The prescription that only relevant statistics play a role in direct inference corresponds to the sort of projectability constraints envisioned by past theories. (shrink)

We compute that the index set of PAC-learnable concept classes is m-complete Σ30\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\Sigma^{0}_{3}}$$\end{document} within the set of indices for all concept classes of a reasonable form. All concept classes considered are computable enumerations of computable Π10\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\Pi^{0}_{1}}$$\end{document} classes, in a sense made precise here. This family of concept classes is sufficient to cover all standard examples, and also has the property that PAC learnability (...) is equivalent to finite VC dimension. (shrink)