A collection of articles on the the principles of social justice from an Australian Catholic perspective. Contents: Forward (Archbishop Philip Wilson), Introduction (James Franklin), The right to life (James Franklin), The right to serve and worship God in public and private (John Sharpe), The right to religious formation (Richard Rymarz), The right to personal liberty under just law (Michael Casey), The right to equal protection of just law regardless of sex, nationality, colour or creed (Sam Gregg), The right to freedom (...) of expression (Damian Grace), The right to choose and freely maintain a state of life, married or single, lay or religious (Marita Winters), The right to education (Anthony Cleary), The right to petition government for the redress of grievances (Paul Russell), The right to a nationality (Andrew Hamilton), The right to have access to the means of livelihood, by migration when necessary (Brenda Hubber), The right of association and peaceful assembly (Michael Hogan), The right to work and choose one's occupation (Ian Blandthorn), The right to personal ownership, use and disposal of property subject to the right of others (Brian Coman), The right to a living wage (Garrick Small), The right to collective bargaining (Keith Harvey), The right to associate by industries and professions to obtain economic justice (Henrik Jurisevic), The right to assistance from society, if necessary from the State, in distress of persons and family (Catherine Althaus), Afterword (James Franklin). (shrink)

Providing meaningful and actionable explanations for end-users is a situated problem requiring the intersection of multiple disciplines to address social, operational, and technical challenges. However, the explainable artificial intelligence community has not commonly adopted or created tangible design tools that allow interdisciplinary work to develop reliable AI-powered solutions. This paper proposes a formative architecture that defines the explanation space from a user-inspired perspective. The architecture comprises five intertwined components to outline explanation requirements for a task: (1) the end-users’ mental models, (...) (2) the end-users’ cognitive process, (3) the user interface, (4) the Human-Explainer Agent, and (5) the agent process. We first define each component of the architecture. Then, we present the Abstracted Explanation Space, a modeling tool that aggregates the architecture’s components to support designers in systematically aligning explanations with end-users’ work practices, needs, and goals. It guides the specifications of what needs to be explained (content: end-users’ mental model), why this explanation is necessary (context: end-users’ cognitive process), to delimit how to explain it (format: Human-Explainer Agent and user interface), and when the explanations should be given. We then exemplify the tool’s use in an ongoing case study in the aircraft maintenance domain. Finally, we discuss possible contributions of the tool, known limitations or areas for improvement, and future work to be done. (shrink)

Source: Author: Ombor Pereowei Garrick, Ombor Elizabeth Oshuare, Adumene Sidum This study provides a framework to holistically assess the level of passengers' satisfaction for a given ferry service based on the dominant Design/Operational, Passengers Care/Safety/Security and Environmental categorical factors that define the ferry service operations and influence passengers' satisfaction. A test case carried out for a ferry service offered by a boat operator in the Warri wharf yields a Passengers' Satisfaction Index of 3.84, indicating that the ferry service is (...) in the range of dissatisfactory and moderately satisfactory, which is in good agreement with popular opinions that the service offered by that operator does not satisfy most of the passengers' expectations. The results of the test case proved that the framework reliably and realistically predicts the level of satisfaction the passengers derived from the various segments that define the service offered by a boat operator. This study will assist passengers make informed decision about the choice of operators to patronize. It will also guide operators and regulators to identify and improve those areas of the ferry service that are pertinent to the successful operation of the ferry business. ]]>. (shrink)

In their responses to James Tully’s article “Deparochializing Political Theory and Beyond,” Garrick Cooper, Charles W. Mills, Sudipta Kaviraj and Sor-hoon Tan engage with different aspects of Tully’s “genuine dialogue.” While they seem to concur with Tully on the urgency of deparochializing political theory, their responses bring to light salient issues which would have to be thought through in taking this project forward.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 has been widely portrayed as an anachronistic piece of legislation that needs to be reformed or abandoned. In the absence of reform, many US labor unions try to avoid the NLRA process altogether by organizing workers outside the confines of the law. But Somos un Pueblo Unido, or “Somos,” a worker center in New Mexico, has been using a novel interpretation of the NLRA less to boost union density than to develop an alternative (...) to contract unionism. By helping nonunionized workers use Section 7 of the NLRA to act concertedly in their own defense, I argue, Somos is combating employer abuse, in the short run, and demonstrating that worker centers and their memberships may be transforming the US labor movement, in the long run. Their experiences illustrate the ability of organizations to redeploy existing institutional resources with potentially transformative results. (shrink)

This article draws on analysis of a variety of problems emerging from practical applications of Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) to propose a fundamental evolution of decision support models from the traditional single decision-spine model to the decision-hedgehog. It positions decision making through the construction of narratives making the rhizome that constitutes the body of the hedgehog with the fundamental aim of enriching understanding of the contexts of decision making. Localized processes constructing and exploring prescriptions for action within a plethora (...) of decision spines are rooted in this rhizome. It identifies a synthesis of theories that influence decision making within organizations and proposes a comprehensive system of Group Decision Authoring and Communication Support (GDACS). In doing so it proposes that the iterative development of collective narrative within an organizing system engaged with complex decision making leads to active engagement with implementation - a process we call Collaborative Authoring of Outcomes. Throughout, the article outlines the implications for the organization of GDACS and proposes a comprehensive architecture that enables this approach. (shrink)

A critical study of the private, homoerotic, interracial photographs taken by Carl Van Vechten, a patron of the arts of black America, presents an array of sixty duotone photographs that celebrate the sensuality of the nude male form, accompanied by an analysis of the relationship of the images to the photographer's private desires and the underground gay culture of the era.

The interactions between literature and science and between literature and psychoanalysis have been among the most thriving areas for interdisciplinary study in recent years. Work in these 'open fields' has taught us to recognize the interdependence of different cultures of knowledge and experience, revealing the multiple ways in which science, literature, and psychoanalysis have been mutually enabling and defining, as well as corrective and contestatory of each other. Inspired by Gillian Beer's path-breaking work on literature and science, this volume presents (...) fourteen new essays by leading American and British writers. They focus on the evolutionary sciences in the nineteeth-century; the early years of psychoanalysis, from Freud to Ella Freeman Sharpe; and the modern development of the physical sciences. Drawing on recent debates within the history of science, psychoanalytic literary criticism, intellectual history, and gender studies, the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the formation of knowledge. Among its recurrent themes are: curiosity and epistemology; 'growth', 'maturity', and 'coming of age' as structuring metaphors ; taxonomy; sleep and dreaming and elusive knowledge; the physiology of truth; and the gender politics of scientific theory and practice. The essays also reflect Beer's extensive influence as a literary critic, with close readings of works by Charlotte Brontë, Alfred Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Edith Ayrton Zangwill, Charlotte Haldane, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Karin Boye. (shrink)

The ideas (i) that skill is a form of knowledge and (ii) that it can be taught are commonplace in both ancient philosophy and everyday life. I argue that contemporary epistemology lacks the resources to adequately accommodate them. Intellectualist and anti-intellectualist accounts of knowledge how struggle to represent the transmission of skill via teaching and learning (§II), in part because each adopts a fundamentally individualistic approach to the acquisition of skill that focuses on individual practice and experience; consequently, learning from (...) an expert’s teaching is rendered at best peripheral (§III). An account of the transmission of skill that focuses on guided practice is shown to be immanent in an anti-individualist account of skill (§IV) that takes seriously the Aristotelian ideas that skills are rational capacities and second natures by developing the thought that doing, teaching, and practising are three moments of an a priori unity: the life-cycle of a skill (§V). (shrink)

Nietzsche's thinking on justice and punishment explores the motives and forces which lie behind moral concepts and social institutions. His dialogue with several writers of his time is discussed here. Eugen Dühring had argued that a natural feeling of ressentiment against those who have harmed us is the source of the concept of injustice, so that punishment, even in its most impersonal form, is always a form of revenge. In attacking this theory, Nietzsche developed his own powerful critique of moral (...) concepts such as responsibility and guilt. He borrowed his ‘historical’ approach to moral concepts from Paul Ree, who suggested that the utilitarian function of punishment had been obscured by its practice, which appears to be directly linked with moral guilt. Nietzsche responds that punishment has quite different purposes and meanings at different times, so that any single explanation or justification is inadequate. In this way, he rejects the pre-suppositions common to the retributivists and utilitarians of his time. (shrink)

"Nietzsche in Context presents a comprehensive reinterpretation of Nietzsche's thought, placing Nietzsche in the context of the philosophers of his own time. Offering a survey of important philosophical themes, Robin Small identifies the writer or writers with whom Nietzsche most felt himself to be engaging in dialogue. This historical dimension is complemented by original analysis and interpretation of the ideas under discussion. Nietzsche in Context takes Nietzsche scholarship into new and fruitful directions. By locating his ideas within a broader (...) context, this book provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of Nietzsche's thought adding to the continuing interest of his contributions to philosophy."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The objective in this article is to apply a Daoist model of an ethic derived from the _Laozi_ on writings of the Huang Lao tradition to offer a unique Daoist cosmically derived ethic _in its own terms_. Having our point of departure in the _Laozi_ we refer to its paradoxical language as a _living riddle_ that is inherent in the tradition, and as such it suggests a "model of modeling." We find this model in _Laozi_ 25, according to which self-so (...) (_ziran_ 自然) serves as foundation for an ethic that is neither dichotomizing nor resting on human moral conventions, but serves rather as a guiding philosophy of living. On this basis we explore the question of an ethic in the Huang Lao tradition. (shrink)

The objective in this article is to apply a Daoist model of an ethic derived from the Laozi on writings of the Huang Lao tradition to offer a unique Daoist cosmically derived ethic in its own terms. Having our point of departure in the Laozi we refer to its paradoxical language as a living riddle that is inherent to the tradition, and as such it suggests a “model of modeling.” We find this model in Laozi 25, according to which self-so (...) (ziran自然) serves as foundation for an ethic that is neither dichotomizing nor rests on human moral conventions, rather as a guiding philosophy of living. On this basis we explore the question of an ethic in the Huang Lao tradition. (shrink)

It is a commonplace in philosophy of action that there is and must be teleologically basic action: something done on an occasion without doing it by means of doing anything else. It is widely believed that basic actions are exercises of skill. As the source of the need for basic action is the structure of practical reasoning, this yields a conception of skill and practical reasoning as complementary but mutually exclusive. On this view, practical reasoning and complex intentional action depend (...) on skill and basic action, but the latter pair are not themselves rationally structured: the movements a basic action comprises are not intentional actions, and they are not structured as means to an end. However, Michael Thompson and Douglas Lavin have argued that action that bears no inner rational structure is not intentional action at all, and that therefore there can be no such thing as basic action. In this paper, I argue that their critique shows that standard conceptions of basic action are indeed untenable, but not that we can do without an alternative. I develop an alternative conception of skill and basic action on which their basicness is not to be equated with simplicity: like deliberation and non-basic action, they are teleologically complex, but their complexity takes a different form. On this view, skill contrasts with deliberation—not because it is not a manifestation of practical reason, but because the two are specifically different manifestations of practical reason. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and our understanding of ethics rests on diverse perspectives. While considering how leaders ought to act, scholars have created integrated models of moral reasoning processes that encompass diverse influences on ethical choice. With this, there has been a call to continually develop an understanding of the micro-level factors that determine moral decisions. Both rationalist, such as moral processing, and non-rationalist factors, such as virtue and humanity, shape ethical decision-making. Focusing on the role of moral (...) judgement and moral intent in moral reasoning, this study asks what bearings a trait of mindfulness and a sense of moral responsibility may have on this process. A survey measuring mindfulness, moral responsibility and moral judgement completed by 171 respondents was used for four hypotheses on moral judgement and intent in relation to moral responsibility and mindfulness. The results indicate that mindfulness predict moral responsibility but not moral judgement. Moral responsibility does not predict moral judgement, but moral judgement predicts moral intent. The findings give further insight into the outcomes of mindfulness and expand insights into the models of ethical decision-making. We offer suggestions for further research on the role of mindfulness and moral responsibility in ethical decision-making. (shrink)

In The Value of the Humanities prize-winning critic Helen Small assesses the value of the Humanities, eloquently examining five historical arguments in defence of the Humanities.

The first major consideration of old age in Western philosophy and literature since Simone de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age, Helen Small ranges widely from Plato through to recent work by Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams and others, and from King Lear through Balzac, Dickens, Beckett, Stevie Smith, Bellow, Roth, and Coetzee.

I argue that there is a cognition condition on intention and intentional action. If an agent is doing A intentionally, she has knowledge in intention that he is doing A. If an agent intends to do A, she has knowledge in intention that she is going to do A. In both cases, the agent has knowledge of eventual success, in this sense: she knows that it will be no accident if she ends up having done A. In both cases, the (...) agent’s knowledge is of what is happening, or what is going to happen, in the world; it is not knowledge merely of her state of mind. This knowledge is practical: it the cause of what it understands; without it what is happening, or what is going to happen, is not an intentional action, and any practical thought of the agent’s about what is happening, or what is going to happen, does not hit the heights of intention. I demonstrate that famous examples (from Davidson and Bratman) purporting to show that the cognition condition should be rejected (or its content or scope weakened) are ineffective, because they trade on confusions about the different kinds of failure to which intentional action may be susceptible, confusions remedied via reflection on the structure of intentional action. I show that the cognition condition is grounded not in reflection about the directions of fit and guidance of different kinds of mental states, nor in the indicative content of linguistic expressions of intention, but in the calculative and temporal structure of intentional action itself. (shrink)

This book contains the first English translations of The Origin of the Moral Sensations and Psychological Observations the two most important works by the German philosopher Paul Re. These essays present Re's moral philosophy, which ...

Why do children learn language more easily than adults do? This puzzle has fascinated cognitive and language scientists for decades. In the present letter, we approach the language learning puzzle from a cognitive perspective that is inspired by evidence from the perceptual and motor learning literature. Neuroscientific studies show that two memory systems in the brain are involved in human learning: an early implicit procedural memory system and a late-developing cognitive or declarative memory system. We argue that higher cognitive development (...) constrains implicit statistical learning processes that are essential for learning patterns and regularities in languages, that is, the adult cognitive architecture has a cost. This is supported by experimental evidence showing that acquisition of implicit linguistic knowledge is enhanced under cognitive depletion in adults. More research is needed to test the cognitive cost hypothesis as it could partly solve the language learning puzzle. (shrink)

Moral behaviour, and more recently wisdom and prudence, are emerging as areas of interest in the study of business ethics and management. The purpose of this article is to illustrate that Cicero—lawyer, politician, orator and prolific writer, and one of the earliest experts in the field recognised the significance of moral behaviour in his society. Cicero wrote ‘Moral Duties’ (De Officiis) about 44 BC. He addressed the four cardinal virtues wisdom, justice, courage and temperance, illustrating how practical wisdom, theoretical/conceptual wisdom (...) and justice were viewed in Rome of the first century BC. ‘Moral Duties’ is a letter admonishing his son, Marcus. It refers to personal behaviour, business practice and analyses terms such as good faith and criminal fraud. In addition, it contains material which would be suitable for tutorials/seminars and discussions, particularly in the areas of critical thinking in business ethics and general management. A study of De Officiis in respect to present day management and business practice could give a wider perspective to business ethics and management students. If concepts such as moral virtue, moral propriety and moral goodness, many of which seem to be ignored in business situations today, are to be embedded in business leaders of the future, it is reasonable to expect that these qualities will be analysed and discussed by business students today. Further, a study of Cicero’s six-step approach, when preparing an address/speech, could be useful and productive for practitioners and students in this area. (shrink)

Julia Annas proposes to shed light on the intelligence of virtue through an analogy with the intelligence of practical skills. To do so, she first aims to distinguish genuine skills and skillful actions from mere habits and routine behaviour: like skills, habits are acquired through habituation and issue in action immediately (i.e. unmediated by reasoning about what to do), but the routine behaviour in which habit issues is mindless and unintelligent, and cannot serve to establish or illuminate the intelligence of (...) virtuous action. In a second step, she argues that virtue has the same kind of intellectual structure—and is acquired through the same kind of habituation—as skill. I argue that Annas’s proposal fails at the first step: her conceptions of the rational articulacy of skill and the immediacy that characterizes its exercise in action cannot be squared. I offer an alternative conception of the intelligence of skill and its exercise that draws on Aristotle’s conception of rational capacities as two-way powers. But as a virtue is not a two-way power, virtues and skills do not share a common intellectual structure. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of knowledge how typically focus on the question whether or not knowing how to do ϕ consists in propositional knowledge, and divide the field between intellectualists and anti-intellectualists. This way of framing the issue is said to derive from Gilbert Ryle. I argue that this is a misreading of Ryle, whose primary interest in discussing knowledge how was not epistemological but rather action-theoretical, whose argument against intellectualism has for this reason been misunderstood and underestimated, and whose positive view (...) aims to chart a middle course between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. (shrink)

Education aims at more than supplying learners with information, or knowledge of facts. Even when the transmission of information is at stake, abilities relevant to using that information are among the things that teachers aim, or ought to aim, to inculcate. We may think that abilities for critical reflection on knowledge, and critical thinking more generally, are central to what teachers should cultivate in their students. Moreover, we may hope that students acquire not merely the ability to (e.g.) think critically, (...) but the propensity or habit of doing so. We hope that critical thinking will be something they *do* do, not something they merely *can* do; that they will become, not merely capable of inquiry, but inquisitive; and so on. If education aims at more than the inculcation of propositional knowledge, are these other aims non-cognitive, or non-epistemic? This essay aims to make progress on this question by critically examining Gilbert Ryle's conceptions of skill and habit. (shrink)

Both Jago, in his 2020 article ‘A short argument for truthmaker maximalism’ and his 2021 article ‘Which Fitch?’, and Loss in his 2021 article ‘There are no fundamental facts’, employ arguments similar to that familiar from the Church–Fitch Paradox to infer some substantial metaphysical claims from their mere logical possibility. Trueman in his 2022 article ‘Truthmaking, grounding and Fitch’s paradox’ and Nyseth in his 2022 article ‘Fitch’s paradox and truthmaking’ respond by using exactly the same kind of argument to prove (...) contrary theses. Intended as bad company objections, these counterarguments cast doubt on the original arguments, but do not actually identify their flaw. This paper aims to fill this gap. (shrink)

Preface -- Introduction -- Absolute becoming -- From becoming to time -- The time-atom theory -- Motion, ways, and time -- Gateway and lanes -- Linear and circular time -- The eternal perspective -- The way of greatness.

In Intention, Anscombe says that practical reasoning is practical, not by virtue of its content, but rather by virtue of its form. But in her later essay ‘Practical Inference’, she seems to take this back, claiming instead that (1) the practicality of practical reasoning (or inference) resides in the distinctive use it makes of the premises, and (2) ‘it is a matter of indifference’ whether we say that it exemplifies a distinctive form. I aim to show that Anscombe is right (...) about (1) but wrong about (2): the distinctive use (or teleology) of practical reasoning explains its distinctive formal features, and when the former is thought through, the latter are revealed to be more numerous and significant than Anscombe seems to recognize. (shrink)

As inpatient nurses spend the majority of their work time caring for patients at the bedside, they are often firsthand witnesses to the devastating outcomes of inadequate preventive healthcare and structural injustices within current social systems. This experience should obligate inpatient nurses to be involved in meeting the social justice needs of their patients. Many nursing codes of ethics mandate some degree of involvement in the social justice needs of society, though how this is to be achieved is not detailed (...) in these general guidelines. Acknowledging an explicit obligation for inpatient nurses to address the social justice issues of their patients would facilitate better overall understanding of social justice issues and reduce preventable admissions. If implementation of such an obligation is done with care, having inpatient nurses participate in justice projects could also mitigate compassion fatigue, allow for better job satisfaction among these nurses, and provide a sense of revitalization in nurses’ role as health promoters. (shrink)

Recent work on testimony has raised questions about the extent to which testimony is a distinctively second-personal phenomenon and the possible epistemic significance of its second-personal aspects. However, testimony, in the sense primarily investigated in recent epistemology, is far from the only way in which we acquire knowledge from others. My goal is to distinguish knowledge acquired from testimony (learning from being told) from knowledge acquired from teaching (learning from being taught), and to investigate the similarities and differences between the (...) two with respect to the interpersonal dimensions of their structures. (shrink)

Recent events in Western Australia culminating in the Royal Commission into Commercial Activities of Government and Other Matters 1992, and the subsequent publication of the Report, highlighted the fact that the commercial activities of the State Government in Western Australia had been in disarray for some time. However, in spite of some early interest in the outcomes of the Report, the general reaction by the public was largely one of disinterest. This paper traces some of the events which took place (...) after the main hearings. A number of leading citizens felt that some action was warranted. In brief, a series of lectures on different apects of business ethics were planned and given to business students at Curtin Business School. This paper highlights some of the observations made during this series of lectures. (shrink)

Formal codes of ethics are not the best way of addressing ethical issues arising in educational research. Philosophers have often exaggerated the importance of such codes, although philosophy has little to contribute to them. What we need rather is a closer attention to the ways in which ethical decisions about research are actually made. Moral theory can contribute here by clarifying this process and identifying helpful procedures and strategies, such as those used by institutional review committees in arriving at good (...) judgements. New and unfamiliar situations require us to extend our existing abilities, not to return to first principles and set up formal codes. (shrink)

Though everyday life accords a great deal of significance to practical abilities—such as the ability to walk, to speak French, to play the piano—philosophers of action pay surprisingly little attention to them. By contrast, abilities are discussed in various other philosophical projects. From these discussions, a partial theory of abilities emerges. If the partial theory—which is at best adequate only to a few examples of practical abilities—were correct, then philosophers of action would be right to ignore practical abilities, because they (...) could play no fundamental role in an account of human agency. For the idea that practical abilities *do* play a fundamental role in human agency to be worth considering, an alternative conception of them is needed. As a first step, I attempt some of the necessary ground-clearing work. (shrink)