Medical ethicist, Guidry-Grimes has critically reviewed the concept of insight, voicing concerns that it lacks consensus as to its components and that it undermines patient perspectives. We respond by briefly summarising research over the last 30 years that she overlooks which has helped establish the clinical validity of the construct. This includes the adoption of standardised assessment tools—at least in research—and longitudinal and cross-sectional studies quantifying associations with psychopathological, clinical and cognitive measures. We also make the distinction between the (...) current standards for assessing decision-making capacity leading to, where appropriate, involuntary treatment in clinical and medico-legal settings which in most legislations do not include insight assessments, and anecdotal reports of the use and misuse of ‘lack of insight’ as a proxy for more comprehensive evaluation. We conclude by encouraging a broader view of insight akin to self-knowledge. (shrink)

Costly signalling theory has become a common explanation for honest communication when interests conflict. In this paper, we provide an alternative explanation for partially honest communication that does not require significant signal costs. We show that this alternative is at least as plausible as traditional costly signalling, and we suggest a number of experiments that might be used to distinguish the two theories.

It is widely believed that bringing parties with differing opinions together to discuss their differences will help both in securing consensus and also in ensuring that this consensus closely approximates the truth. This paper investigates this presumption using two mathematical and computer simulation models. Ultimately, these models show that increased contact can be useful in securing both consensus and truth, but it is not always beneficial in this way. This suggests one should not, without qualification, support policies which increase interpersonal (...) contact if one seeks to improve the epistemic performance of groups. (shrink)

This collection addresses whether ethicists, like authorities in other fields, can speak as experts in their subject matter. Though ethics consultation is a growing practice in medical contexts, there remain difficult questions about the role of ethicists in professional decision-making. Contributors examine the nature and plausibility of moral expertise, the relationship between character and expertise, the nature and limits of moral authority, how one might become a moral expert, and the trustworthiness of moral testimony. This volume engages with the growing (...) literature in these debates and offers new perspectives from both academics and practitioners. The readings will be of particular interest to bioethicists, clinicians, ethics committees, and students of social epistemology. These new essays promise to advance discussions in the professionalization and accreditation of ethics consultation. (shrink)

This article presents the evolutionary dynamics of three games: the Nash bargaining game, the ultimatum game, and a hybrid of the two. One might expect that the probability that some behavior evolves in an environment with two games would be near the probability that the same behavior evolves in either game alone. This is not the case for the ultimatum and Nash bargaining games. Fair behavior is more likely to evolve in a combined game than in either game taken individually. (...) This result confirms a conjecture that the complexity of our actual environment provides an explanation for the evolution of fair behavior. Key Words: evolutionary game theory • Nash bargaining game • ultimatum game • fairness. (shrink)

In recent years, many scholars have suggested that the Baldwin effect may play an important role in the evolution of language. However, the Baldwin effect is a multifaceted and controversial process and the assessment of its connection with language is difficult without a formal model. This paper provides a first step in this direction. We examine a game-theoretic model of the interaction between plasticity and evolution in the context of a simple language game. Additionally, we describe three distinct aspects of (...) the Baldwin effect: the Simpson– Baldwin effect, the Baldwin expediting effect and the Baldwin optimizing effect. We find that a simple model of the evolution of language lends theoretical plausibility to the existence of the Simpson– Baldwin and the Baldwin optimizing effects in this arena, but not the Baldwin expediting effect. (shrink)

McGovern, Kevin This is an edited record of the presentation given by Revd Kevin McGovern, Director of the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics, at the Centre's conference on palliative care on 3 October 2013. It explores the processes, challenges and benefits of Advance Care Planning. It also argues that Advance Care Planning will change the provision of health care significantly.

McGovern, Kevin After exploring the sources of Catholic teaching about tube feeding, this article summarises that teaching in four points. Because tube feeding usually offers little if any benefit in advanced dementia, as a general rule a feeding tube is not inserted into these patients.

McGovern, Kevin This article reviews three statements from the National Health and Medical Research Council on post-coma unresponsiveness (PCU). One of the functions of the NHMRC is to propose standards and guidelines for health care in Australia. The paper explores the causes and neuropathology of PCU, imaging and other tests and prognosis from unresponsiveness.

Several recent attempts to develop models of moral reasoning have attempted to use some form of casuistry as a way to resolve the moral controversies of clinical ethics. One of the best known models of casuistry is that of Jonsen and Toulmin who attempt to transpose a particular model of casuistry, that of Roman Catholic confessional practice, to contemporary moral disputes. This attempt is flawed in that it fails to understand both the history of the model it seeks to transpose (...) and the morally pluralistic context of secular, postmodern society. The practice of casuistry which Jonsen and Toulmin wish to revive is a practice set in the context of a community with a shared set of moral values and structures of moral authority. Without a set of common moral values and rankings, and a moral authority to interpret cases the casuistry of the postmodern age will be pluralistic; that is, there will be many casuistries not just one. Keywords: casuistry, common morality, kinetics, moral authority, moral pluralism, morphology, paradigm cases, taxonomy CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This book offers new essays exploring concepts and applications of nonideal theory in bioethics. Nonideal theory refers to an analytic approach to moral and political philosophy (especially in relation to justice), according to which we should not assume that there will be perfect compliance with principles, that there will be favorable circumstances for just institutions and right action, or that reasoners are capable of being impartial. Nonideal theory takes the world as it actually is, in all of its imperfections. Bioethicists (...) have called for greater attention to how nonideal theory can serve as a guide in the messy realities they face daily. Although many bioethicists implicitly assume nonideal theory in their work, there is the need for more explicit engagement with this theoretical outlook. A nonideal approach to bioethics would start by examining the sociopolitical realities of healthcare and the embeddedness of moral actors in those realities. How are bioethicists to navigate systemic injustices when completing research, giving guidance for patient care, and contributing to medical and public health policies? When there are no good options and when moral agents are enmeshed in their sociopolitical viewpoints, how should moral theorizing proceed? What do bioethical issues and principles look like from the perspective of historically marginalized persons? These are just a few of the questions that motivate nonideal theory within bioethics. This book begins in Part I with an overview of the foundational tenets of nonideal theory, what nonideal theory can offer bioethics, and why it may be preferable to ideal theory in addressing moral dilemmas in the clinic and beyond. In Part II, authors discuss applications of nonideal theory in many areas of bioethics, including reflections on environmental harms, racism and minority health, healthcare injustices during incarceration and detention, and other vulnerabilities experienced by patients from clinical and public health perspectives. The chapters within each section demonstrate the breadth in scope that nonideal theory encompasses, bringing together diverse theorists and approaches into one collection. (shrink)

Dwayne Tunstall turns to Lewis Gordon's Africana existential phenomenology in an effort to untangle Marcel's “reflective method” from its involvements with colonial racism. Tunstall's book interprets Marcel's religious existentialism as a development of his attempt to resist modernity's burgeoning dehumanization but observes that Marcel's sociopolitical thought leaves antiblack racism unexamined, which amounts to a failure to attend to “the most noxious form of depersonalization existing in the twentieth century.” In this review I call into question both Marcel's conception of “philosophy (...) proper” as well as Tunstall's appropriation of that conception in order to do philosophy personally. I am also hard pressed to accept Tunstall's implication that better responses to various manifestations of dehumanization are located in “extraphilosophical” practices or his more explicit claim that “theism” succeeds where philosophy proper has failed. (shrink)

A number of recent legal cases in the United States have considered both disability‐based exceptions to Covid‐19‐related mask mandates and disability‐based claims to stronger masking rules in states restricting the abilities of local governments to enforce mask mandates. We argue that a proper legal and ethical analysis of such cases requires understanding the distinction between disability accommodations and disability modifications. Disability accommodations are individualized adjustments that enable qualified individuals to perform jobs or achieve access on terms comparable to those experienced (...) by others. Disability modifications are programmatic changes to structures or policies that increase accessibility. We contend that in the context of mask mandates, modifications rather than accommodations are ethically desirable because modification‐oriented policies promote disability access in a way that treats all individuals fairly, avoiding the risk of promoting misinformation and uncertainty about the health benefits of masking. (shrink)

Stochastic developmental variation is an additional important source of variance – beyond genes and environment – that should be included in considering how our innate psychological predispositions may interact with environment and experience, in a culture-dependent manner, to ultimately shape patterns of human behaviour.

This essay examines the theological and rhetorical concerns animating John Henry Newman’s evaluation of efforts to prove the existence of God and/or the truth of Christianity with philosophical arguments about the design of nature. Newman’s complex position on arguments from design ought to be interpreted in light of his broader theological understanding of the challenges posed to the practice of Christian faith in his nineteenth century context. These challenges required that apologetics first and foremost defend the truth of Christianity as (...) a religion of holiness, not as a religion of reasonableness. (shrink)

(1989). The gift of an interval: Michael Oakeshott's idea of a university education. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 384-397.

Magical ersatzism is the view that possible worlds are primitive abstract entities. In On the Plurality of Worlds, David Lewis presented what appeared to many to be a devastating argument against magical ersatzism. In this paper, I show that Lewis’ central argument does not succeed. Magical ersatzism remains a viable theory of possible worlds.

A number of authors from different theoretical perspectives have called for new interdisciplinary ways of considering learning within the higher education context. Peter Jarvis’s lifelong learning perspective offers a viable alternative, but lacks a strong theory of the person as self, agent and actor. In response I propose that Margaret Archer’s realist social theory has a particular utility for bridging ‘common dualisms’ as part of an interdisciplinary enquiry into higher education learning, and offers a strong theory of the person.

The Ceci et al. article is consistent with tenure being a necessary condition for controversial research. In the absence of tenure, as in the United Kingdom, professors have been fired and suspended for politically controversial issues. There are a variety of reasons why tenure does not ensure that professors will engage in controversial research, including career interests and the desire to be liked. (Published Online February 8 2007).

In contemporary philosophy of science many theories of explanation are rooted in positivist or post-positivists accounts of explanation. This paper attempts to ground a phenomenological account of scientific explanation by using the works of Werner Heisenberg and Patrick Heelan. To explain something for Heisenberg is to describe what can be intersubjectively observed and conceptualized in an adequate language. However, this needs to be qualified, as not any adequate account will do. While Heisenberg thinks that Kant is right to think that (...) a priori concepts are the conditions which make science, and thus explanation, possible, he also believes pure a priori concepts have a limited range of applicability. Neils Bohr shared this belief with Heisenberg, but thinks human thought can go no further. However, Heisenberg never gave up on the idea that we could create new concepts that act as a priori grounds for quantum entities. To go beyond Heisenberg, I believe that we should look to Husserl’s account of Evidenz and the material a priori to help us think about a phenomenological account of explanation. (shrink)

This essay is a theological interpretation of John Henry Newman’s 1877 Preface to the third edition of the Via Media of the Anglican Church. Looking at the 1877 Preface through the lens of his earlier Anglican sermons, particularly his Parochial and Plain Sermons, this essay explores Newman’s general pneumatology and its influence on his ecclesiology and considers the spirituality underlying Newman’s Christocentric and Trinitarian vision of the Church as a mutually informing and correcting symbiosis of the spiritual, theological, and hierarchical (...) dimensions of Christian faith. (shrink)

McGovern, Kevin This article explores what is said in the fourth chapter of Pope Francis's Evangelii Gaudium about social engagement particularly with the poor. Francis sees practical engagement with the poor as an essential component of the Christian faith. This engagement begins with loving attentiveness to them. It seeks their integral development, and their full inclusion in the life of society. Such social engagement also calls us to care for the environment, to participate in the quest for peace, and (...) to engage in dialogue with all people to seek consensus on ways of building a better world. (shrink)

McGovern, Kevin Over the next three decades, the number of people living with dementia both in Australia and around the world will almost triple. This calls for significant changes within our society. It calls for international cooperation, with particular assistance being given to low income countries. It calls for increased research into many aspects of dementia, ranging from the search for a cure to the identification of best practice in the care of persons with dementia. It calls for upskilling (...) in Australia's health, community and aged care sectors. Because many people with dementia will continue to live in the community, above all it calls for the creation of dementia-friendly communities. (shrink)

McGovern, Kevin Physician and ethicist Professor Paul Komesaroff and former judge Stephen Charles QC have proposed legislation to protect health professionals from the risk of criminal prosecution when in appropriate circumstances they provide pain relief which may shorten a patient's life. For this protection, they recommend that four conditions must all be satisfied: the patient has a terminal illness; the intention is to relieve pain and suffering; the treatment is reasonable in terms of current medical practice; and the treatment (...) is necessary to relieve pain and suffering. This article examines their proposal, supports it, and joins in the call for Victorian legislation which achieves this purpose. (shrink)

McGovern, Kevin British political strategist Philip Gould was diagnosed with cancer early in 2008. He died towards the end of 2011. Challenging community attitudes about dying with cancer, he insisted in a book-length memoir that this was "the most important ... the most fulfilling and the most inspirational time of my life." This article reflects on Philip's testimony.

McGovern, Kevin The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) released a new Instruction on bioethics on 12 December 2008, and titled it as Dignitas Personae. A brief summary of the new Vatican Instruction on bioethics is presented, which is aimed at contributing to the formation of conscience, and to promote biomedical research which is ethically sound and which truly serves human beings.

McGovern, Kevin This article explores what may ethically be done to prevent pregnancy after rape. The issue of pregnancy approach is dealt with in this article.

McGovern, Kevin When an unborn child is diagnosed with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition, many people now believe that the best solution is to immediately terminate the pregnancy. This article explores the option of continuing the pregnancy with the support of perinatal palliative care. Many parents have found this alternative fits better with their values, and better honours both their unborn child and their situation as the loving parents of this child. The article also explores the information and support (...) which parents need in order to make a truly informed choice between termination and continuing the pregnancy. (shrink)

Presburger arithmetic is the first-order theory of the natural numbers with addition. We characterize sets that can be defined by a Presburger formula as exactly the sets whose characteristic functions can be represented by rational generating functions; a geometric characterization of such sets is also given. In addition, ifp= are a subset of the free variables in a Presburger formula, we can define a counting functiong to be the number of solutions to the formula, for a givenp. We show that (...) every counting function obtained in this way may be represented as, equivalently, either a piecewise quasi-polynomial or a rational generating function. Finally, we translate known computational complexity results into this setting and discuss open directions. (shrink)

In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis advances the concept of integral ecology to connect the environmental crisis with a range of social crises afflicting our societies. This concept is grounded in a theological commitment, but directed towards its political effects. Those two trajectories are represented by the encyclical’s articulation of a spiritual awakening described as an ecological conversion and its repeated calls to dialogue. Francis is not unaware of the risk that a naïve engagement in dialogue could stifle serious mitigation of (...) the crises we face. Yet, even with many dire warnings about outcomes, much of the contemporary discourse around the climate and biodiversity crisis runs the risk of underestimating the nature of the problem. Apocalyptic theology, specifically in the work of William Stringfellow, is proposed as a valuable interlocutor at this point. Stringfellow’s account of the Christian life as a battle with the forces of Death allows Christians to name that which we are converted from in an ecological conversion, strengthening the grounds upon which dialogue is engaged. (shrink)

This essay consists of responses to several papers on my book *Kingdoms of God.*.

This essay seeks to explore contemplation as it features in Christian theology and philosophy, both ancient and modern. Contemplation, in ancient philosophy, is transformed in Christian theology; nonetheless, it has the structure of what Jean Wahl calls ‘transascendance’, a rising to the heights. Although contemplation remains as a theme in modern Christian theology, it drops out in modern philosophy: that is, post-Renaissance philosophy. And yet it returns, both in analytic and continental philosophy, in the twentieth century. It returns, however, in (...) the mode of ‘transdescendance’: by way of conditions of possibility, and fundamental orientations. (shrink)