This is an important book precisely because there is none other quite like it.

Traits like simplicity and explanatory power have traditionally been treated as values internal to the sciences, constitutive rather than contextual. As such they are cognitive virtues. This essay contrasts a traditional set of such virtues with a set of alternative virtues drawn from feminist writings about the sciences. In certain theoretical contexts, the only reasons for preferring a traditional or an alternative virtue are socio-political. This undermines the notion that the traditional virtues can be considered purely cognitive.

Underdetermination arguments support the conclusion that no amount of empirical data can uniquely determine theory choice. The full content of a theory outreaches those elements of it (the observational elements) that can be shown to be true (or in agreement with actual observations).2 A number of strategies have been developed to minimize the threat such arguments pose to our aspirations to scientific knowledge. I want to focus on one such strategy: the invocation of additional criteria drawn from a pool of (...) cognitive or theoretical values, such as simplicity or generality, to bolster judgements about the worth of models, theories, and hypotheses. What is the status of such criteria? Larry Laudan, in Science and Values, argued that cognitive values could not be treated as self-validating, beyond justification, but are embedded in a three-way reticulational system containing theories, methods, and aims or values, which are involved in mutually supportive relationships (Laudan, 1984). My interest in this paper is not the purportedly self-validating nature of cognitive values, but their cognitive nature. Although Laudan rejects the idea that what he calls cognitive values are exempt from rational criticism and disagreement, he does seem to think that the reticulational system he identifies is independent of non-cognitive considerations. It is this cognitive/non-cognitive distinction that I wish to query in this paper. Let me begin by summarizing those of my own views about inquiry in which this worry about the distinction arises. (shrink)

The paper considers and opposes the view that processes are best thought of as continuants, to be differentiated from events mainly by way of the fact that the latter, but not the former, are entities with temporal parts. The motivation for the investigation, though, is not so much the defeat of what is, in any case, a rather implausible claim, as the vindication of some of the ideas and intuitions that the claim is made in order to defend — and (...) the grounding of those ideas and intuitions in a more plausible metaphysics than is provided by the continuant view. It is argued that in addition to a distinction between events and processes there is room and need for a third category, that of the individual process, which can be illuminatingly compared with the idea of a substance. Individual processes indeed share important metaphysical features with substantial continuants, but they do not lack temporal parts. Instead, it is argued that individual processes share with substantial continuants an important property I call ‘modal robustness in virtue of form’. The paper explains what this property is, and further suggests that the category of individual process, thus understood, might be of considerable value to the philosophy of action. (shrink)

The paper argues that actions should be thought of as processes and not events. A number of reasons are offered for thinking that the things that it is most plausible to suppose we are trying to cotton on to with the generic talk of ‘actions’ in which philosophy indulges cannot be events. A framework for thinking about the event-process distinction which can help us understand how we ought to think about the ontology of processes we need instead is then developed, (...) building on some excellent work already done by philosophers working at the intersection of philosophy and linguistics. (shrink)

The paper considers whether psychiatric kinds can be natural kinds and concludes that they can. This depends, however, on a particular conception of ‘natural kind’. We briefly describe and reject two standard accounts – what we call the ‘stipulative account’ (according to which apparently a priori criteria, such as the possession of intrinsic essences, are laid down for natural kindhood) and the ‘Kripkean account’ (according to which the natural kinds are just those kinds that obey Kripkean semantics). We then rehearse (...) a more permissive account: Richard Boyd’s ‘homeostatic property cluster’ (HPC) account. We argue that psychiatric kinds can in principle count as natural kinds on the HPC account. Moreover, specific psychiatric kinds (Tourette’s, schizophrenia, etc.) can be natural kinds even if the category psychiatric disorder is not itself a natural kind. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPeople can be moved and overwhelmed, a phenomenon typically accompanied by goose-bumps and tears. We argue that these feelings of being moved are not limited to situations that are appraise...

I argue that any successful account of permissible self- defence must be action-guiding, or practical . It must be able to inform people’s deliberation about what they are permitted to do when faced with an apparent threat to their lives. I argue that this forces us to accept that a person can be permitted to use self-defence against Apparent Threats: characters whom a person reasonably, but mistakenly, believes threaten her life. I defend a hybrid account of self-defence that prioritises an (...) agent’s subjective perspective. I argue that it is sufficient to render the use of defence permissible if an agent reasonably believes that (a) she is morally innocent, and (b) if she does not kill this person, then they will kill her. I argue that the correct account of self-defence must distinguish between whether an agent is permitted to inflict harm, and whether the target is liable to bear that harm. (shrink)

The fields of medical ethics, bioethics, and women's studies have experienced unprecedented growth in the last forty years. Along with the rapid pace of development in medicine and biology, and changes in social expectations, moral quandaries about the body and social practices involving it have multiplied. Philosophers are uniquely situated to attempt to clarify and resolves these questions. Yet the subdiscipline of bioethics still in large part reflects mainstream scholars' lack of interest in gender as a category of analysis. This (...) volume aims to show how a feminist perspective advances bioethics. The author uncover inconsistencies in traditional arguments and argue for the importance of hitherto ignored factors in decision-making. The essays include theory and very specific examples that demonstrate the glaring inadequacy of mainstream bioethics, where gender bias is still often to be found, along with general lack of attention to women's concerns. (shrink)

As the author of A Metaphysics for Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), I respond to each of the preceding eight papers in this Special Issue.

_New Public Management and the Reform of Education_ addresses complex and dynamic changes to public services by focusing on new public management as a major shaper and influencer of educational reforms within, between and across European nation states and policy actors. The contributions to the book are diverse and illustrate the impact of NPM locally but also the interplay between local and European policy spheres. The book offers: A critical overview of NPM through an analysis of debates, projects and policy (...) actors A detailed examination of NPM within 10 nation states in Europe A robust engagement with the national and European features of NPM as a policy strategy The book actively contributes to debates and analysis within critical policy studies about the impact and resilience of NPM, and how through a study of educational reforms in a range of political systems with different traditions and purposes a more nuanced and complex picture of NPM can be built. As such the book not only speaks to educational researchers and professionals within Europe but also to policymakers, and can inform wider education and policy communities internationally. (shrink)

In this paper I meditate on what it means to be well by interspersing my reflections on my time in an Intensive Care Unit with my sister, Bronzino’s 1560 painting of Noli me Tangere, along with Jean Luc Nancy’s book by this name, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on embodied movement. I conclude that wellness is a stance before death; love and joy belong to wellness but can neither be planned for nor made to happen. In keeping with the coloniality of (...) which the Western medical system is a part, the normative stance for caregiving in the ICU does not take into account the complexity and interconnectedness of communicative contact, or recognize that contact happens when unexpected. There is contact between bodies, but it is not about presence, about one body physically touching another; the contact happens elsewhere. (shrink)

This essay explores the intersection of race science and plant taxonomy in the creation of evolutionary taxonomies (phylogenies) of populations of Zea mays, also known as maize or corn. Following recent work in the history and sociology of race, it analyzes maize taxonomy as technology. Through an analysis of successive attempts to classify diverse maize varieties, especially those originating in Mexico, it shows that taxonomy created possibilities for researchers to intervene in commercial agriculture, state development projects, biological conservation, and domestic (...) and international politics and policy. It further underscores that the modern science of maize taxonomy was distinct but never inseparable from assessments of maize’s human cultivators. Attending to particularities of this relationship is crucial, because it reveals the application of maize taxonomy as a technology for ordering human diversity and intervening in human lives, as well as managing the impressive diversity of Zea mays. (shrink)

There is a form of argument for a certain kind of essentialist conclusion which appears not to depend upon any appeal to intuition. Identity statements involving natural kind terms are often adverted to in the literature as examples of the necessary a posteriori, and it can appear as though the essentialist is on very strong ground with respect to these claims. It is not merely that they are apt to strike one as plausible in the light of philosophical arguments or (...) modal intuitions; rather, they appear to be provable, given only fairly trivial logical principles and uncontroversial scientific truths. This paper attempts to counter the claim, made particularly convincing by the work of Saul Kripke, that this indeed the case. (shrink)

This article will discuss the concepts of Cradle to Cradle and Circular Economy in relation to sustainable production involving philosophical debates on economic growth, and the risk of subversion of managerial practice to business as usual. The case study is based on the assignments submitted by Masters students as part of a course related to sustainable production and consumption at Leiden University in The Netherlands. Some of the supposedly best practice cases placed on the website of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (...) or those awarded Cradle to Cradle certificate were evaluated by students as green-washing. Larger implications of circular production for business and ecological management are discussed. (shrink)

Hume's two definitions of causation have caused an extraordinary amount of controversy. The starting point for the controversy is the fact, well known to most philosophy undergraduates, that the two definitions aren't even extensionally equivalent, let alone semantically equivalent. So how can they both be definitions? One response to this problem has been to argue that Hume intends only the first as a genuine definition—an interpretation that delivers a straightforward regularity interpretation of Hume on causation. By many commentators' lights, however, (...) this is a bug rather than a feature: such an account of the two definitions leaves necessary connection out of Hume's story about the meaning of "cause" .. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungEthische Fragen der Pflegepraxis haben sich in den letzten Jahren zugespitzt. Sie sind häufig verbunden mit einer grundsätzlichen Sorge um eine kompetente und verantwortliche Pflege, die den Bedürfnissen von Patient*innen gerecht wird. Forschungen aus drei Jahrzehnten zeigen, dass strukturelle Beschränkungen, Konflikte mit Kolleg*innen, Patient*innen und Angehörigen sowie eine Managementorientierung und die Unsichtbarkeit der Pflegearbeit, Ursachen für die grundsätzlichen Sorgen sind. Sie führen zu moralischem Stress, fehlenden Beziehungen und einer Fragmentierung der Pflege. Teilweise reagieren Pflegende widerständig, indem sie beispielsweise die Regeln (...) beugen und eine passive „wait and see“ Position einnehmen. Einige Pflegende erheben ihre Stimme und suchen ein Klinisches Ethikkomitee auf. Klinische Ethikkomitees bieten eine Möglichkeit, die komplexen ethischen Fragen der Pflegepraxis zu thematisieren. Allerdings verweisen die Studien aus drei Dekaden auf einen Mangel der Thematisierung. Die Analyse der Ursachen lässt die Schlussfolgerung zu, demokratischen Lernprozessen Raum zu geben. (shrink)

This article examines a changing global reality that manifests itself in new forms of social activism. The struggle of the multitude challenges political representation and contemporary art seems to corroborate this observation. Becoming a form of social intervention, it turns into an active force and leaves behind the need to double action with representation, representational practices being the hallmark of classical art. A new theory of the image would have to incorporate this dynamic: it would have to treat and develop (...) the basic categories of action and relation. There are few philosophies of the act, and the existing semiotic models mostly deal with dual structures (signifier/signified; sign/meaning; image/referent, and so on). It is necessary to sketch out a dynamic theory of the image that would: (1) reveal the limitations of the concept of representation; (2) conceive of the image as a set of multiple changing relations. The image would thus be seen as a necessary part of the relations governing the world in its entirety, that is, as part of the movement of matter itself. Which is another way of saying that those relations are actualized, or expressed, in the image. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the widespread view that obstructors are a special sort of bystander is mistaken. Obstructors make Victim worse off by their presence, and thus are more properly described as innocent threats. Only those characters who do not make Victim worse off by their presence can be classified as bystanders.

Our contribution in this paper is to highlight the ethical implications of workforce engagement strategies in an age of austerity. Hard or instrumentalist approaches to workforce engagement create the potential for situations where engaged employees are expected to work ever longer and harder with negative outcomes for their well-being. Our study explores these issues in an investigation of the enactment of an engagement strategy within a UK Health charity, where managers and workers face paradoxical demands to raise service quality and (...) cut costs. We integrate insights from engagement, paradox, and ethic of care literatures, to explore these paradoxical demands—illustrating ways in which engagement experiences become infused with tensions when the workforce faces competing requirements to do ‘more with less’ resources. We argue that those targeted by these paradoxical engagement strategies need to be supported and cared for, embedded in an ethic of care that provides explicit workplace resources for helping workers and managers cope with and work through corresponding tensions. Our study points to the critical importance of support from senior and frontline managers for open communications and dialogue practices. (shrink)

In this article, Hannah Arendt's concept of action will be used to problematize current transformations of the health care sector and examine some responses by ethicists in light of those transformations. The sphere of human interaction that should typify health care work is identified as an action of unpredictable praxis in contrast to controllable procedures and techniques which increasingly take place in the health care sector.

How do corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and innovation investment co-evolve with organizational forms to affect firm market value? To address this question, we draw on the co-evolutionary perspective and theorize that the contingency effect of CSR reporting is more pronounced for firms with high uncertainty and low legitimacy by comparing start-up firms vs. established firms and privately owned enterprises (POEs) versus state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Moreover, taking a dynamic approach, we propose that the effects of CSR and innovation investment on (...) market value change when the organizational form transitions over time. Specifically, we argue that when start-up firms transitioned to established firms or when POEs were transformed from SOEs, the strengthening effects of CSR reporting become less pronounced. We test our theory using panel data on 2204 Chinese listed firms for the period of 2008–2017. (shrink)

Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) are common and costly in both primary and secondary health care. It is gradually being acknowledged that there needs to be a variety of interventions for patients with medically unexplained symptoms to meet the needs of different groups of patients with such chronic long-term symptoms. The proposed intervention described herewith is called The BodyMind Approach (TBMA) and promotes learning for self-management through establishing a dynamic and continuous process of emotional self-regulation. The problem is the mismatch between (...) the patient’s mind-set and profile and current interventions. This theoretical article, based on practice-based evidence, takes forward the idea that different approaches (other than cognitive behaviour therapy) are required for people with MUS. The mind-set and characteristics of patents with MUS are reflected upon to shape the rationale and design of this novel approach. Improving services for this population in primary care is crucial to prevent the iterative spiralling downwards of frequent GP visits, hospital appointments, and Accident and Emergency attendance, all of which are common for these patients. The approach derives from embodied psychotherapy (authentic movement in dance movement psychotherapy) and adult models of learning for self-management. It has been developed from research and practice-based evidence. In this article the problem of MUS in primary care is introduced and the importance of the reluctance of patients to accept a psychological/mental health referral in the first instance is drawn out. A description of the theoretical underpinnings and philosophy of the proposed alternative to current interventions is then presented related to the design, delivery, facilitation and educational content of the programme. The unique intervention is also described to give the reader a flavour. (shrink)

Collectivist accounts of the ethics of war have traditionally dominated just war theory (Kutz 2005; Walzer 1977; Zohar 1993). These state-based accounts have also heavily influenced the parts of international law pertaining to armed conflict. But over the past ten years, reductive individualism has emerged as a powerful rival to this dominant account of the ethics of war. Reductivists believe that the morality of war is reducible to the morality of ordinary life. War is not a special moral sphere with (...) its own special moral rules. Reductivists typically reject a collectivist approach to the morality of war in favor of an individualist view, according to which individuals (rather than states or other collectives) are the proper focus of moral guidance and evaluation. This view holds that the rules governing killing in war are simply the rules governing killing between individuals, most obviously the rules of self-defense and other-defense (Fabre 2009; Frowe 2014; McMahan 2009; Tadros 2014). -/- This chapter defends reductive individualism against the claim that it is unable to sanction wars of national defense that seek to protect non-vital interests. These non-vital interests include political goods such as the defense of sovereignty—that is, of political and territorial integrity. (shrink)

Poetics of futurism: Zaum, shiftology, nonsense -- Poetics of Deleuze: structure, stoicism, univocity -- The materialist manifesto -- Shiftology #1: from performativity to dramatisation -- Shiftology #2: from metaphor to metamorphosis -- The see-sawing frontier: linguistic spatiotemporalities -- Concllusion: Suffixing, prefixing.

The article analyzes the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian war in terms of a colonial seizure undertaken by a fading but aggressive Russian empire. This highly political adventure is translated into more abstract terms, that is, an irresolvable conflict between existence, which is always the experience of coexistence devoid of any essence whatsoever, and imperial expansion, which is an infinite conquest of space indifferent to all forms of life. The dualism in question is backed up by the writings of two important scholars, namely, (...) the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and the Russian scientist and revolutionary Peter Kropotkin. Nancy’s philosophy of being-in-common is the development of Heidegger’s concept of Mitsein, where the meaning of Mit- (co-, with) is existential and not categorical. Nancy’s philosophy challenges all forms of communal essence, of which empire is one blatant example. For Kropotkin, existence is even more all-embracing, implying a continuity of different life forms. His doctrine of mutual aid is a law that governs both society and nature, as well as evolution itself. Even morality springs from “solidarity” and the joys of social life, while sympathy or love are too narrow a basis for human ethics. Viewed from this perspective, a colonial war would not only be the greatest waste of human lives and natural resources—it would contradict the very order of things. (shrink)

This paper considers Davidson's critique, in his paper 'Causal Relations' of the Millian notion of the 'whole cause' of an event. The paper attempts to show why Davidson's criticisms of Mill, taken to its logical conclusion, entails that we must give up 'the network model of causation', a model which dominates contemporary philosophy of mind (as well as many accounts of the nature of causation in general) and shapes prevailing ideas about the form of some of its most important questions.

England and Wales have recently experienced wide-ranging rape law reform and a galloping rape reporting rate but no comparable increase in rape convictions, leading many erstwhile law reformers to turn attention to attitudes. In essence, their argument is that reform has proved relatively ineffective because a range of agents hold ‘rape myths’. Despite the broad consensus that this approach has attracted, I argue that the regressiveness of current public attitudes towards rape has been overstated. The claim that rape myths are (...) widespread may be challenged on three grounds: first, some of the attitudes are not myths; secondly, not all the myths are about rape; thirdly, there is little evidence that the rape myths are widespread. To a troubling extent, we are in the process of creating myths about myths. This process functions to close down, not open up, the possibilities of a productive public conversation about important and at times vexed questions. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead, one of America’s most important and influential philosophers, a founder of pragmatism, social psychology, and symbolic interactionism, was also a keen observer of American culture and early modernism. In the period from the 1870s to 1895, Henry Northrup Castle maintained a correspondence with family members and with Mead—his best friend at Oberlin College and brother-in-law—that reveals many of the intellectual, economic, and cultural forces that shaped American thought in that complex era. Close friends of John Dewey, Jane (...) Addams, and other leading Chicago Progressives, the author of these often intimate letters comments frankly on pivotal events affecting higher education, developments at Oberlin College, Hawaii, progressivism, and the general angst that many young intellectuals were experiencing in early modern America. The letters, drawn from the Mead-Castle collection at the University of Chicago, were collected and edited by Mead after the tragic death of Henry Castle in a shipping accident in the North Sea. Working with his wife Helen Castle, he privately published fifty copies of the letters to record an important relationship and as an intellectual history of two progressive thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century. American historians, such as Robert Crunden and Gary Cook, have noted the importance of the letters to historians of the late nineteenth century. The letters are made available here using the basic Mead text of 1902. Additional insights into the connection between Mead, John Dewey, Henry and Harriet Castle, and Hawaii’s progressive kindergarten system are provided by the foundation’s executive director Alfred L. Castle. Marvin Krislov, president of Oberlin College, has added additional comments on the importance of the letters to understanding the intellectual relationship that flourished at Oberlin College. Published with the support of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation. (shrink)

Because mourning and memorializing a miscarriage seems to imply acceptance of foetal personhood, feminists have been reluctant to address the often traumatic but common experience of pregnancy loss. Feminist anthropologists of reproduction have argued that adopting a view of personhood as constructed and negotiated, rather than inherent, solves this dilemma and enables the development of a feminist discourse of pregnancy loss. This article aims to make a critical contribution to such a discourse by analysing representations of lost babies and children (...) in online pregnancy loss memorials. It focuses on two genres of representation, idealized angels and medical ultrasound images. It argues that the dominance of a biological model of personhood limits the ability of both forms of representation to secure the status of memorialized children as real. However, pregnancy loss memorials do communicate the anguish of grieving parents, in part through the very unrepresentability of their loss. They also provoke a questioning of the taken for granted subject of `the child', whether imagined or real, absent or present. (shrink)

: This paper interprets Descartes's use of the Scholastic doctrine of divine concurrence in light of contemporaneous sources, and argues against two prevailing occasionalist interpretations. On the first occasionalist reading God's concurrence or cooperation with natural causes is always mediate (i.e., concurrence reduces to God's continual recreation of substances). The second reading restricts God's immediate concurrence to his co-action with minds. This paper shows that Descartes's metaphysical commitments do not necessitate either form of occasionalism, and that he is more plausibly (...) and charitably read as appropriating elements of Scholastic views on concurrence to bridge the gap between his metaphysics and physics. (shrink)