Grounding talk has become increasingly familiar in contemporary philosophical discussion. Most discussants of grounding think that grounding talk is useful, intelligible, and accurately describes metaphysical reality. Call themrealistsabout grounding. Some dissenters reject grounding talk on the grounds that it is unintelligible, or unmotivated. They would prefer to eliminate grounding talk from philosophy, so we can call themeliminitivistsabout grounding. This paper outlines a new position in the debate about grounding, defending the view that grounding talk is (or at least can be) (...) intelligible and useful. Grounding talk does not, however, provide a literal and veridical description of mind-independent metaphysical reality. This (non-eliminative)irrealismabout grounding treads a path between realism and eliminativism. (shrink)

Without complete and accurate status information, a project manager’s ability to monitor progress, allocate resources effectively, and detect and respond to problems is greatly diminished, and this can lead to impaired project performance. Many different factors can contribute to intentional misreporting of status information by project members to the project manager. In this study, the impact of organizational ethical climate was assessed through the analysis of responses from 228 project members drawn from a variety of ongoing information systems projects. Our (...) results revealed that project members who perceived their organization to be one in which rules are followed strictly tended to misreport less, while those operating in an environment dominated by personal self-interest tended to misreport more. Somewhat surprisingly, the existence of a caring, team-spirited environment did not appear to have an impact on misreporting behaviors. Implications for researchers and project managers are discussed. (shrink)

Police officers around the world must often select between equally unappealing, uncertain courses of action in an attempt to achieve the best outcome. Despite the immense importance of such decisions, there remains a lack of understanding in the study of individual differences in police decision-making. Here, using a sample of senior police officers recruited from decision-making training events across the United Kingdom (n = 96), we used the Least-worst Uncertain Choice Inventory For Emergency Responses (LUCIFER) to measure the effect of (...) maximization on both domain-specific (police) and domain-general (military) decisions. In line with a wealth of research on traditional “consumer” decisions, we found that police officers who were “maximizers” found decisions more difficult. Gender and previous military experience also influenced the process of decision-making. Specifically, police officers with military experience took more time to assess the situation but were faster to choose a course of action and commit to it. Female police officers also were slower to assess the situation. As recent events show, the outcomes of police decisions have significant consequences for the public, the officers involved, the police force as a whole, and the wider population, yet psychological research has yet to fully explore the role of individual differences in how such decisions are made. While this study does not seek to identify factors associated with “good” or “better” decision-makers, it provides strong support for the need to factor in perspectives of the individual when creating theory, or applied tools, in support of police decision-making. (shrink)

We tested the hypothesis that choices determined by Type 1 processes are compelling because they are fluent, and for this reason they are less subject to analytic thinking than other answers. A total of 104 participants completed a modified version of Wason's selection task wherein they made decisions about one card at a time using a two-response paradigm. In this paradigm participants gave a fast, intuitive response, rated their feeling of rightness for that response, and were then allowed free time (...) to reconsider their answers. As we predicted, answers consistent with a matching heuristic were made more quickly than other answers, were given higher FOR ratings, and received less subsequent analysis as measured by rethinking time and the probability of changing answers. These data suggest that reasoning biases may be compelling because they are fluently generated; this is turn creates a strong FOR, which acts as a signal that further analysis is not necessary. (shrink)

What philosophical motivations lay behind the emergence of the genealogical method in Foucault’s thought? Pace traditional interpretations, I argue that genealogy is best construed as a supplementary addition to the archaeological mode of investigation. It addresses an issue that arose within the problematic to which the archaeological method responds, but which that method was not designed to solve: the problem of “transcendental genesis” as this issue was defined within the unique parameters set forth by the French phenomenological tradition.

The role of Amartya Sen's early work on famine notwithstanding, food security is generally seen as but one capability among many for scholars writing in development ethics. The early literature on the ethics of hunger is summarized to show how Sen's Poverty and Famines was written in response to debates of past decades, and a brief discussion of food security as a capability follows. However, Sen's characterization of smallholder food security also supports the development of agency in both a political (...) and an economic sense. Economic agency is discussed and tied to longstanding literatures on the moral significance of farming within political economy. Finally, while the newly emergent literature on food sovereignty includes many themes, it is shown to be re-articulating arguments that stress smallholder's economic agency as a development goal. This pattern of argument thus provides a way to reconcile at least some of the claims being advanced under the banner of food sovereignty with the human development.. (shrink)

Using normative correctness as a diagnostic tool reduces the outcome of complex cognitive functions to a binary classification (normative or non-normative). It also focuses attention on outcomes, rather than processes, impeding the development of good cognitive theories. Given that both normative and non-normative responses may be produced by the same process, normativity is a poor indicator of underlying processes.

Tolstoy writes in a letter to his friend A. A. Fet that what he has written in War and Peace, “especially in the epilogue,” is also said by Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation. Tolstoy adds, however, that Schopenhauer approaches “it from the other side.” Schopenhauer does indeed say much the same thing as Tolstoy says in his epilogue and elsewhere about history and the will. Each of these authors argues that history is not progressing and that it (...) is not governed by the actions of individual political or military leaders alone, but by the infinitely many actions of the multitude of people. What underlies this critique of history in each case is a quietist outlook on life, a perspective from which one must abandon the assertion of the will and accept life as it is given. Tolstoy's quietism, however, is a happy quietism; he wants his reader to joyfully embrace life for all that it has to offer. Schopenhauer's is an unhappy quietism; he wants his reader to accept life in the face of all that it is not. Thus, Tolstoy and Schopenhauer approach quietism, and consequently their critiques of history and the will, from different “sides.” These sides—to borrow Wittgenstein's way of speaking—are the sides of the happy and the unhappy. To approach quietism from one side rather than another is no small matter. In Tolstoy's case in particular, it made all the difference in the world. (shrink)

The difficulties faced in the recruitment and retention of nursing staff in nursing homes for older people are an international challenge. It is therefore essential that the causes of nurses’ reluctance to work in these settings are determined. This paper considers the influence that multiple‐source care funding issues have on nursing home nurses’ experiences and views regarding the practice and appeal of the role. The methodology for this study was hermeneutic phenomenology. Thirteen nurses from seven nursing homes in the North (...) East of England were interviewed in a sequence of up to five interviews and data were analysed using a literary analysis method. Findings indicate that participants are uncomfortable with the business aspects that funding issues bring to their role. The primary difficulties faced are: tensions between care issues and funding issues; challenges associated with ‘selling beds’; and coping with self‐funding residents’ changing expectations of care. The findings of the study suggest that multiple‐source care funding systems that operate in nursing homes for older people pose challenges to nursing home nurses. Some of these challenges may impact on their recruitment and retention. (shrink)

The enduring popularity of Star Wars has much to do with its mythic dimensions. However, there are problems with Joseph Campbell's work on myth and George Lucas's use of Campbell's ideas in Star Wars. Both Campbell and Lucas promote a simplistic view that encourages fans to avoid some darker, more unsettling ideas in Star Wars, which may obscure myth's true power. Campbell remains one of the most famous mythologists, but he was by no means the first. Campbell's influence on Star (...) Wars seems obvious, but the details are difficult to determine, partly because Lucas himself gives different accounts of it. Campbell's monomyth leads us to see similarities between tales and, in so doing, overlooks many significant differences. Tensions between mythos and logos date back to ancient Greek philosophers, if not earlier. The mythic structure of Star Wars has immense hidden power, and this power has a dark side. (shrink)

Ethics isn’t a conversation exclusive to philosophers. There is value, then, in not only understanding how laypeople think about issues in ethics, but also bringing their judgments into dialogue with those of philosophers in order to make sense of agreement, disagreement, and the consequences of each. Experimental philosophers facilitate this dialogue uniquely by capturing laypeople’s judgments and analyzing them in light of philosophical theory. They have done so almost exclusively by using face valid quantitative surveys about philosophically interesting thought experiments. (...) Based on high participant support for this or that response, researchers conclude that a given theory is more or less intuitive, and in some cases that it is or isn’t true. However, such conclusions can only be drawn from quantitative survey data if one assumes those data accurately reflect laypeople’s thinking on the issues of interest, an assumption that can’t be justified by the quantitative data itself since they are potentially opaque. This is the methodological problem of experimental philosophy: experimental philosophers who use quantitative methods alone can’t sufficiently demonstrate their data to be reflective of relevant judgments/intuitions. To better explore people’s judgments on issues in ethics and to determine whether experimental philosophers are or aren’t getting what they take themselves to be getting in surveys, I recreated part of an experiment by Chituc, Henne, Sinnott-Armstrong, and De Brigard on the Kantian principle that “ought implies can”, or that whenever an agent ought to do something then it is the case that she can, and added a layer of qualitative data to it by having participants think aloud while completing the surveys and conduct a follow-up interview. With similar quantitative results to those from Chituc et al., I argue that my qualitative results 1) cast doubt on Chituc et al.’s data being reflective of many people’s judgments, especially on the more interesting questions relating to moral obligation; 2) reveal unique insights into how people think about OIC; 3) generally speak to the value of experimental philosophers using triangulation of methods in better understanding laypeople’s complex and varied thinking about questions important to ethics and beyond. Supplemental documents: Appendices A, B, C, D, and E are surveys I used in my study. Appendices C and D are derived from Chituc et al.’s publication “Blame, Not Ability, Impacts Moral ‘Ought’ Judgments for Impossible Actions: Toward an Empirical Refutation of ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can.’” Appendix F is the recruitment flyer I distributed for my study. Appendix H is the quantitative data from my study. (shrink)

Educators on all levels will benefit from this book that is dedicated to the importance of learning reasoning skills concurrently with subject matter. Habits of the Mind, written by a thirty-year veteran in the field of education, is ultimately concerned with the total strengthening of education in America through the teaching of logical and critical thinking.

Originally published in 1987. This book analyses what Englishmen understood by the term contract in political discussions during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It provides evidence for reconsidering conventional accounts of the relationships between political ideas, groups and practices of the period. But also suggests cause for examining the general history of modern European contract theory. It considers contract as a term appearing in a spectrum of works from philosophical treatise to sermons and polemical pamphlets. Looking at the (...) various vocabularies relating to contractualist ideas, the author suggests that standard histories of social contract theory and particular histories of English political thought during this unstable period have misrepresented the meaning of the term contract as a key term in political argument. He shows that there were in fact three different categories of contract theory but allows that the various kinds of contractualism did share certain broad features. This study of a crucial age in the history of appeals to contract in political argument will be of interest to political philosophers and historians. features. This study of a crucial age in the history of appeals to contract in political argument will be of interest to political philosophers and historians. (shrink)

This letter is a response to Richard Baer's article complaining about philosopher's neglect of the religious perspective.

Investigates the gap between what we are and what others perceive us to be to ascertain whether we are genuinely knowable entities. This book explores the central dilemma of how one can have a fixed idea of 'me' to shape and direct one's life when, in a world of constant change, events will rob us of that fixed idea at any moment.