In The idea of justice (2009), Amartya Sen builds on his previous work on capabilities to develop a theory of comparative justice which he contrasts to the contractarian approach. The theory has two parts: the proper materials of justice (capabilities); and, a procedure for assessing those materials. The procedure that Sen advocates is one of open impartial deliberation operationalised through Adam Smith's impartial spectator, which he contends is superior to contractarian view operationalised by Rawls’ original position. In this paper we (...) argue that Sen's open impartiality is too open and defend a more bounded version as more workable regardless of the operationalising device used. Moreover, we demonstrate that Sen's own arguments against the possibility of agreement, though aimed at the contractarian tradition, undermine his own attempts to generate a contentful account of justice by driving a wedge between the materials and procedures. Sen's attempt to provide an alternative approach to political philosophy, we conclude, fails. (shrink)

In 1988 a piece of higher education reform legislation titled The Higher Education Funding Act was devised by the Labor Government and enacted by the Commonwealth of Australia to become law. The te...

This book examines cultural recognition and the struggle for identity in America's schools. In particular, the contributing authors focus on the recognition and misrecognition as antagonistic cultural forces that work to shape, and at times distort identity.

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

Scholars have wrestled with "consciousness", a major scholar calling it the "hard problem". Some thirty-plus years after the Towards a Science of Consciousness, we do not seem to be any closer to an answer to "What is consciousness?". Seemingly irresolvable metaphysical problems are addressed by bootstrapping, provisional assumptions, not unlike those used by logicians and mathematicians. I bootstrap with the same ontology and epistemology applicable to everything we apprehend. Here, I argue for a version of the unity of opposites, a (...) form of neutral monism. Something exists because of what it is not; nothing can exist by itself, singularities (analogous to monads), expressing the model. Applying this most fundamental law to the consciousness problem, the physical (movement) comes into being simultaneously as the mental (stasis), each displayed by a field that is variegated (ranging from creative to entropic processes). Such is in keeping with how the singularity emerged as our universe, the same form that may account for sub-Planck-scale phenomena. Overall, like the most fundamental law, deep structures are imminent in our universe, both as objects and processes. (shrink)

A three dimensional hypercube representing all of the 4,096 dyadic computations in a standard bivalent system has been created. It has been constructed from the 16 functions arrayed in a table of functional completeness that can compute a dyadic relationship. Each component of the dyad is an operator as well as a function, such as “implication” being a result, as well as an operation. Every function in the hypercube has been color keyed to enhance the display of emerging patterns. At (...) the minimum, the hypercube is a “multiplication table” of dyadic computations and produces values in a way that shortens the time to do operations that normally would take longer using conventional truth table methods. It also can serve as a theorem prover and creator. With the hypercube comes a deductive system without the need for axioms. The main significance of the 3-D hypercube at this point is that it is the most fundamental way of displaying all dyadic computations in binary space, thus serving as a way of normalizing the rendition of uninterpreted, or raw, binary space. The hypercube is a dimensionless entity, a standard by which in binary spaces can be measured and classified, analogous to a meter stick. (shrink)

Many philosophers of science follow Hempel in embracing both substantive and methodological anti-psychologism regarding the study of explanation. The former thesis denies that explanations are constituted by psychological events, and the latter denies that psychological research can contribute much to the philosophical investigation of the nature of explanation. Substantive anti-psychologism is commonly defended by citing cases, such as hyper-complex descriptions or vast computer simulations, which are reputedly generally agreed to constitute explanations but which defy human comprehension and, as a result, (...) fail to engender any relevant psychological events. It is commonly held that the truth of the substantive thesis would lend support to the methodological thesis. However, the standard argument for the substantive thesis presumes that philosophers’ own judgments about the aforementioned cases issues from mastery of the lay or scientific norms regarding the use of ‘explanation.’ Here we challenge this presumption with a series of experiments indicating that both lay and scientific populations require of explanations that they actually render their targets intelligible. This research not only undermines a standard line of argument for substantive anti-psychologism, it demonstrates the utility of psychological research methods for answering meta-questions about the norms regarding the use of ‘explanation.’. (shrink)

This study investigated ideological belief bias, and whether this effect is moderated by analytical thinking. A Swedish nationally representative sample (N = 1005) evaluated non-political and political syllogisms and were asked whether the conclusions followed logically from the premises. The correct response in the political syllogisms was aligned with either leftist or rightist political ideology. Political orientation predicted response accuracy for political but not non-political syllogisms. Overall, the participants correctly evaluated more syllogisms when the correct response was congruent with their (...) ideology, particularly on hot-button issues (asylum to refugees, climate change, gender-neutral education, and school marketization). Analytical thinking predicted higher accuracy for syllogisms of any kind among leftists, but it predicted accuracy only for leftist and non-political syllogisms among rightists. This research contributes by refining a promising paradigm for studying politically motivated reasoning, demonstrating ideological belief bias outside of the United States across diverse political issues, and providing the first evidence that analytical thinking may reduce such bias. (shrink)

A mass casualty (MASCAL) event is different to a major incident. The crux of this difference is that in a major incident, by the adoption of special measures, normal or near-normal standards of care can be maintained. In a MASCAL, irrespective of what special measures are instituted, standards of care inevitably drop. This is a, currently unmet, challenge for medical planning and planning policy. Twenty-First century weaponry is capable of producing thousands of causalities a day over a period of several (...) days in peer-on-peer conflict. In this chapter, we propose that medical planning for military events on this scale should include the following: explicit acceptance that ‘gold standard’ care cannot be given to patients who are triaged for treatment, a better understanding how to identify those patients who will not be triaged for treatment, a focus on ensuring patient flow (which includes diversion, self-care and remote monitoring), and implementation of the principle that care should be given by the lowest capable provider. We attempt to begin to develop some principles for planners to consider drawing on historical precedents and explore some of the ethical implications of our proposals. (shrink)

In Property Rights and Poverty, / argued that seventeenth? to mid?nineteenth?century liberal theories of the natural right to property included both the ability to exclude others from resources lawfully acquired and the ability to claim as property the resources necessary for life and livelihood. Virtually every defense of the right to exclude written during this period carried limits which allowed and even required the government to enforce the rights of those without resources to the property of others. But although Locke, (...) among others, was a theorist of welfare rights, it is a mistake to describe him as a radical, as Richard Ashcraft does, which identifies Locke's purposes too closely with the legitimately radical theorists of the early nineteenth century who were deeply influenced by his work. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is sometimes taken to be incapable of providing guidance for an individual's actions, as some other ethical theories do. I show how virtue ethics does provide guidance for action, and also meet the objection that, while it may account for what we ought to do, it cannot account for the force of duty and obligation.

We propose a Bayesian framework for the attribution of knowledge, and apply this framework to generate novel predictions about knowledge attribution for different types of “Gettier cases”, in which an agent is led to a justified true belief yet has made erroneous assumptions. We tested these predictions using a paradigm based on semantic integration. We coded the frequencies with which participants falsely recalled the word “thought” as “knew” (or a near synonym), yielding an implicit measure of conceptual activation. Our experiments (...) confirmed the predictions of our Bayesian account of knowledge attribution across three experiments. We found that Gettier cases due to counterfeit objects were not treated as knowledge (Experiment 1), but those due to intentionally-replaced evidence were (Experiment 2). Our findings are not well explained by an alternative account focused only on luck, because accidentally-replaced evidence activated the knowledge concept more strongly than did similar false belief cases (Experiment 3). We observed a consistent pattern of results across a number of different vignettes that varied the quality and type of evidence available to agents, the relative stakes involved, and surface details of content. Accordingly, the present findings establish basic phenomena surrounding people’s knowledge attributions in Gettier cases, and provide explanations of these phenomena within a Bayesian framework. (shrink)

These days, who still has a soul? asks Julia Kristeva in her psychoanalytic exploration, _New Maladies of the Soul._ Hailed by Peter Brooks in the _New York Times_ as "a critic of great psychoanalytic insight," Kristeva reveals to readers a new kind of patient, symptomatic of an age of political upheaval, mass-mediated culture, and the dramatic overhaul of familial and sexual mores. The book poses a troubling question about the human subject in the West today: Is the psychic space (...) that we have traditionally known disappearing? (shrink)

Julia Kristeva, herself a product of the famous May '68 Paris student uprising, has long been fascinated by the concept of rebellion and revolution. Psychoanalysts believe that rebellion guarantees our independence and creative capacities, but is revolution still possible? Confronted with the culture of entertainment, can we build and nurture a culture of revolt, in the etymological and Proustian sense of the word: an unveiling, a return, a displacement, a reconstruction of the past, of memory, of meaning? In the (...) first part of the book, Kristeva examines the manner in which three of the most unsettling modern writers--Aragon, Sartre, and Barthes--affirm their personal rebellion. In the second part of the book, Kristeva ponders the future of rebellion. She maintains that the "new world order" is not favorable to revolt. "What can we revolt against if power is vacant and values corrupt?" she asks. Not only is political revolt mired in compromise among parties whose differences are less and less obvious, but an essential component of European culture--a culture of doubt and criticism--is losing its moral and aesthetic impact. (shrink)

What kind of evidence will lead people to revise their moral beliefs? Moral beliefs are often strongly held convictions, and existing research has shown that morality is rooted in emotion and socialization rather than deliberative reasoning. In addition, more general issues—such as confirmation bias—further impede coherent belief revision. Here, we explored a unique means for inducing belief revision. In two experiments, participants considered a moral dilemma in which an overwhelming majority of people judged that it was inappropriate to take action (...) to maximize utility. Their judgments contradicted a utilitarian principle they otherwise strongly endorsed. Exposure to this scenario led participants to revise their belief in the utilitarian principle, and this revision persisted over several hours. This method provides a new avenue for inducing belief revision. (shrink)

Early philosophical accounts of explanation mistook the function of boundary conditions for that of contingent facts. I diagnose where this misunderstanding arose and establish that it persists. I...

Scholarship in neuroethics and related disciplines has long reflected on the value of different conceptual models of disability and impairment. While this theoretical work is valuable, centering the voices of people with mental health conditions in neuroethics research can help us better understand how such models apply in everyday people’s lives. Drawing on qualitative data from a study on mental health peer providers’ lived experiences of recovery, this paper will demonstrate that peers borrow from both a neurodiversity framework and the (...) medical model of disability, though their feelings toward the two models were often complex and ambivalent. These findings advance neuroethics by indicating that future research and clinical practice should take a nuanced approach to responding to the needs of people with mental health conditions and turn to peers as experts, honoring their values and recognizing both the promise and pitfalls of living with a mental health condition. (shrink)

What is it like to be a good person? I examine and reject suggestions that this will involve having thoughts which have virtue or being a good person as part of their content, as well as suggestions that it might be the presence of feelings distinct from the virtuous person’s thoughts. Is there, then, anything after all to the phenomenology of virtue? I suggest that an answer is to be found in looking to Aristotle’s suggestion that virtuous activity is pleasant (...) to the virtuous person. I try to do this, using the work of the contemporary social psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and his work on the ‘flow experience’. Crucial here is the point that I consider accounts of virtue which take it to have the structure of a practical expertise or skill. It is when we are most engaged in skilful complex activity that the activity is experienced as ‘unimpeded’, in Aristotle’s terms, or as ‘flow’. This experience does not, as might at first appear, preclude thoughtful involvement and reflection. Although we can say what in general the phenomenology of virtue is like, each of us only has some more or less dim idea of it from the extent to which we are virtuous—that is, for most of us, not very much. (shrink)

Moral psychologists have shown that people’s past moral experiences can affect their subsequent moral decisions. One prominent finding in this line of research is that when people make a judgment about the Trolley dilemma after considering the Footbridge dilemma, they are significantly less likely to decide it is acceptable to redirect a train to save five people. Additionally, this ordering effect is asymmetrical, as making a judgment about the Trolley dilemma has little to no effect on people’s judgments about the (...) Footbridge dilemma. We argue that this asymmetry is the result of a difference in how each dilemma affects people’s beliefs about the importance of saving lives. In two experiments, we show that considering the Footbridge dilemma disconfirms these beliefs, while considering the Trolley dilemma does not significantly affect them. Consistent with predictions of sequential learning models, our findings offer a clear and parsimonious account of the asymmetry in the ordering effect. (shrink)

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series.

Recently, brain imaging has provided controversial evidence of persisting awareness in some people whose brains are so severely injured that consciousness is minimal or absent, but in whom prolongation of life depends on the provision of continuing medical care. The clinicians understanding of the persistent vegetative state is briefly outlined and the evidence provided by brain imaging of awareness in this condition is reviewed. Information regarding consciousness in progressive acquired dementias are considered in the context of management of these conditions. (...) This leads to the conclusion that quality of consciousness was more important than its presence or absence in managing people with impaired consciousness. (shrink)

In this introduction to the special issue “The New Politics of Inequality in Europe,” recent literature on income inequality in the advanced democracies is summarized. It is argued that dominant accounts are too heavily focused on the United States, whereas the experience of Western European countries has been neglected. Although income inequality has risen nearly everywhere in the rich industrial democracies since the end of the 1970s, it has done so from different starting points, at different rates, and for reasons (...) connected to different mechanisms and different parts of the distribution. Extending the analysis to Western Europe enables us to understand these variations more fully. (shrink)

The COPE Inventory is the most frequently used measure of coping; yet previous studies examining its factor structure yielded mixed results. The purpose of the current study, therefore, was to validate the factor structure of the COPE Inventory in a representative sample of over 2,000 adults in Slovakia. Our second goal was to evaluate the external validity of the COPE inventory, which has not been done before. Firstly, we performed the exploratory factor analysis with half of the sample. Subsequently, we (...) performed the confirmatory factor analysis with the second half of the sample. Both factor analyses with 15 factor solutions showed excellent fit with the data. Additionally, we performed a hierarchical factor analysis with fifteen first-order factors and three second-order factors which showed good fit with the data. Moreover, the COPE Inventory’s external validity was evaluated using consensual qualitative research analysis on data collected by in-depth interviews. Categories of coping created using CQR corresponded with all COPE first-order factors. Moreover, we identified two additional first-order factors that were not present in the COPE Inventory: self-care and care for others. Our study shows that the Slovak translation of the COPE Inventory is a reliable, externally valid, and well-structured instrument for measuring coping in the Slovak population. (shrink)

This article makes the case for including frameworks of media ecology and mobilities research in the shaping of critical robotics research for a human-centered and holistic lens onto robot technologies. The two meta-disciplines, which align in their attention to relational processes of communication and movement, provide useful tools for critically exploring emerging human–robot dimensions and dynamics. Media ecology approaches human-made technologies as media that can shape the way we think, feel, and act. Relatedly, mobilities research highlights various kinds of influential (...) movement and stillness of people, things, and ideas. The emerging field of critical robotics research can benefit from such attention to the ways of thinking, feeling, and moving robotic forms and environments encourage and discourage. Drawing on various studies into robotics, I illustrate those conceptual alignments of media ecology, mobilities, and critical robotics research and point to the value of this interdisciplinary approach to robots as media and robotics as socio-cultural environments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 303-321 [Access article in PDF] "The Peak on Which Abraham Stands": The Pregnant Moment of Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling Lasse Horne Kjaeldgaard When Søren Kierkegaard in the 1840s began his one-man crusade against the predominant philosophy of his time and place—the right Hegelianism that was en vogue among his contemporaries in Copenhagen—he chose his weapons with great circumspection. The (...) indirect form of communication, which he later advocated in more direct terms in his "Point of View," 1 was not only a maieutic means that helped the reader conceive of the latent and strictly private messages of the texts; it was also a strategy for Kierkegaard's undercover assaults on the Hegelian turn of the Geistesleben around him. By interweaving many of the Hegelian platitudes and self-confident pronouncements that circulated in the intellectual life of the day into the pseudonymous writings, Kierkegaard contested them with parody rather than argumentation. This is the local background against which these texts are structured and to which they are addressed in multiple and very subtle ways. That also goes for that of the pseudonymous writings which has become the best known but which may also be regarded as the most private and most secretive of them all, Fear and Trembling, published pseudonymously in 1843.Secrecy, silence, and unspeakable messages are abundantly thematized in Fear and Trembling, as one could expect from the name of the narrator, Johannes de Silentio. Silentio is a prominent member of the choir of pseudonymous figures Kierkegaard invented to communicate indirectly with his audience and in [End Page 303] the name of which he published his most celebrated works. The silence that Silentio speaks of is that of Abraham of the Old Testament, who was commanded by God to sacrifice his only son on Mount Moriah. Although Genesis 22 includes fragments of the dialogue between Abraham and Isaac on their way to the mountain, Silentio insists that Abraham remained silent on the essential issue: the command he acts upon. The unmediated message Abraham had received from God could not be conveyed, and he was therefore barred from communication and bereft of his community as he journeyed to the Mountain. Yet Silentio's discourse upon this silence in Fear and Trembling has given impetus to innumerable pages of commentary. The questions and answers he poses in his reflections upon Abraham's ordeal have called for critical attention and controversy since the time of its publication. His obsession with the biblical narrative certainly seems to have been passed on to many readers of Fear and Trembling, which, a recent commentator has remarked, "continues to haunt us like no other of [Kierkegaard's] writings." 2 So far, it would seem, then, that Kierkegaard was right when he predicted, in an undated journal entry, that "Fear and Trembling will be enough to immortalise my name." It has indeed been "read and translated into foreign languages," as he foresaw it would. 3Even so, what has passed unnoticed in its long history of reception is the significance of the titles that the manuscript text bore before it came to be called Fear and Trembling. On the title page the definitive appellation is placed together with two alternatives with less suggestion of pathos: "Movements and Postures" (Bevægelser og Stillinger) and "Between-each-other" (Mellemhver-andre). 4 Not much can be discerned from these unpeculiar phrases in isolation. However, tracing their history and significance through Kierkegaard's writings and beyond, will make it clear that Fear and Trembling was also dispatched to the narrow Hegelian community in Copenhagen for the purpose of questioning their literary and visual aesthetics and philosophy of history. Into the guerrilla warfare against them Fear and Trembling introduces a weapon of such sophistication that it has remained undetected so far: the power of the "pregnant moment." My aim here will be to demonstrate the way in which Fear and Trembling appropriates a principle of selection intended for the... (shrink)

National legislation, as well as arguments of experts, in Germany and Israel represent opposite regulatory approaches and positions in bioethical debates concerning end-of-life care. This study analyzes how these positions are mirrored in the attitudes of laypeople and influenced by the religious views and personal experiences of those affected. We qualitatively analyzed eight focus groups in Germany and Israel in which laypeople were asked to discuss similar scenarios involving the withholding or withdrawing of treatment, physician-assisted suicide, and euthanasia. In both (...) countries, respect for patient autonomy and patients’ wishes to die with dignity found broad consent. Laypeople argued in favor of accepting such wishes when they were put down in an advance directive. Laypeople in non-religious groups in both countries argued on the basis of a respect for autonomy for the possibility of euthanasia in severe cases but, at the same time, cautioned against its possible misuse. National contrast was apparent in the moral reasoning of lay respondents concerning the distinction between withholding and withdrawing treatment. The modern religious laypeople in Israel, especially, argued strongly, on the basis of the halakhic tradition, against allowing the withdrawal of treatment in accord with a patient’s wish. We conclude by discussing the emergent notion of shared responsibility and views of professional responsibility, which we connect through relevant cultural themes such as religion and national culture. (shrink)

In the introduction to the special volume, Gilbert Ryle: Intelligence, Practice and Skill, Julia Tanney introduces the contributions of Michael Kremer, Stina Bäckström and Martin Gustafsson, and Will Small, each of which indicates concern about the appropriation of Ryle’s distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that in seminal work in contemporary epistemology. Expressing agreement with the authors that something has gone awry in these borrowings from Ryle, Tanney takes this criticism to a deeper level. She argues that the very notion of (...) content-bearing, causally-efficacious mental states, let alone representational states of knowledge-that or knowledge-how, embodies the very presuppositions that Ryle calls into question in his rejection of classical theories of meaning and his related warning of the type-errors involved in conflating rational and mechanistic explanation. That these mental posits are presupposed, unchallenged, in today’s debates make his arguments against intellectualism particularly difficult to discern. (shrink)

Sextus’s arguments against ethical theories are shorter and more general than those he brings against the other two parts of ancient philosophy, logic and physics. Until recently this part of his work, in Outlines of Pyrrhonism III and Adversus Mathematicos XI has been comparatively neglected. Now, as well as the splendidly scholarly book by Emidio Spinelli, Sesto Empirico: Contro Gli Etici we have Richard Bett’s translation with commentary in the Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers series. Both books make Sextus’s sometimes elusive (...) work far more available and usable to the modern reader. (shrink)