The interest in meaningful work has significantly increased over the last two decades. Much of the associated managerial research has focused on researching ways to 'provide and manage meaning' through leadership or organizational culture. This stands in sharp contrast with the literature of the humanities which suggests that meaningfulness does not need to be provided, as the distinct feature of a human being is that he or she has an intrinsic 'will to meaning'. The research that has been done based (...) on the humanistic paradigm has been quite fragmented. This article aims to address these gaps through an action research project that actively involved participants in the process of affirming and uncovering the meaningfulness of their work. Our findings contribute to current organizational scholarship and practice as they enable scholars to clearly distinguish 'meaningful work' from 'the management of meaning', bring together the various sources of meaningful work in one framework and show their relationship with each other, clearly show the importance of engaging with both the inspiration towards the ideal as well as the often less than perfect self and the organizational reality in which meaning gets expressed and contribute to our understanding of how to engage individuals in conversations about meaningful work that are not prescriptive or exclusive, but that also show where meanings are commonly held. (shrink)

The Structure of Emotions argues that emotion concepts should have a much more important role in the social and behavioural sciences than they now enjoy, and shows that certain influential psychological theories of emotions overlook the explanatory power of our emotion concepts. Professor Gordon also outlines a new account of the nature of commonsense (or ‘folk’) psychology in general.

Much of the recent philosophical discussion about free will has been focused on whether compatibilists can adequately defend how a determined agent could exercise the type of free will that would enable the agent to be morally responsible in what has been called the basic desert sense :5–24, 1994; Fischer in Four views on free will, Wiley, Hoboken, 2007; Vargas in Four views on free will, Wiley, Hoboken, 2007; Vargas in Philos Stud, 144:45–62, 2009). While we agree with Derk Pereboom (...) and others that the compatibilist’s burden should be properly understood as providing a compelling account of how a determined agent could be morally responsible in the basic desert sense, the exact nature of this burden has been rendered somewhat unclear by the fact that there has been no definitive account given as to what the basic desert sense of moral responsibility amounts to. In Sect. 1 we set out to clarify the compatibilist’s burden by presenting our account of basic desert moral responsibility—which we call retributivist desert moral responsibility for purposes of clarity—and explain why it is of central philosophical and practical importance to the free will debate. In Sect. 2 we employ a thought experiment to illustrate the kind of difficulty that compatibilists of any stripe are likely to encounter in attempting to explain how determined agents can exercise the kind of free will needed for retributivist desert moral responsibility. (shrink)

In practice, mathematical proofs are most often the result of careful planning by the agents who produced them. As a consequence, each mathematical proof inherits a plan in virtue of the way it is produced, a plan which underlies its “architecture” or “unity”. This paper provides an account of plans and planning in the context of mathematical proofs. The approach adopted here consists in looking for these notions not in mathematical proofs themselves, but in the agents who produced them. The (...) starting point is to recognize that to each mathematical proof corresponds a proof activity which consists of a sequence of deductive inferences—i.e., a sequence of epistemic actions—and that any written mathematical proof is only a report of its corresponding proof activity. The main idea to be developed is that the plan of a mathematical proof is to be conceived and analyzed as the plan of the agent(s) who carried out the corresponding proof activity. The core of the paper is thus devoted to the development of an account of plans and planning in the context of proof activities. The account is based on the theory of planning agency developed by Michael Bratman in the philosophy of action. It is fleshed out by providing an analysis of the notions of intention—the elementary components of plans—and practical reasoning—the process by which plans are constructed—in the context of proof activities. These two notions are then used to offer a precise characterization of the desired notion of plan for proof activities. A fruitful connection can then be established between the resulting framework and the recent theme of modularity in mathematics introduced by Jeremy Avigad. This connection is exploited to yield the concept of modular presentations of mathematical proofs which has direct implications for how to write and present mathematical proofs so as to deliver various epistemic benefits. The account is finally compared to the technique of proof planning developed by Alan Bundy and colleagues in the field of automated theorem proving. The paper concludes with some remarks on how the framework can be used to provide an analysis of understanding and explanation in the context of mathematical proofs. (shrink)

David Hume is widely regarded as the greatest English thinker in the history of philosophy. His contributions to a huge range of philosophical debates are as important and influential now as they were in the eighteenth century. This book provides an introduction to the ideas of this hugely significant thinker.

Mathematical proofs are not sequences of arbitrary deductive steps—each deductive step is, to some extent, rational. This paper aims to identify and characterize the particular form of rationality at play in mathematical proofs. The approach adopted consists in viewing mathematical proofs as reports of proof activities—that is, sequences of deductive inferences—and in characterizing the rationality of the former in terms of that of the latter. It is argued that proof activities are governed by specific norms of rational planning agency, and (...) that a deductive step in a mathematical proof qualifies as rational whenever the corresponding deductive inference in the associated proof activity figures in a plan that has been constructed rationally. It is then shown that mathematical proofs whose associated proof activities violate these norms are likely to be judged as defective by mathematical agents, thereby providing evidence that these norms are indeed present in mathematical practice. We conclude that, if mathematical proofs are not mere sequences of deductive steps, if they possess a rational structure, it is because they are the product of rational planning agents. (shrink)

Almost 160 years after the American Civil War, where the Union defeated the Confederacy and ended slavery in the United States, approximately 1,910 tributes remain to Confederate military leaders located on public property in the 11 original Confederate states, particularly in cities with an exceptionally high density of Black residents. To Blacks, this iconography delivers a clear message of White supremacy. Six states have enacted laws to protect and preserve these memorials, making it almost impossible to use the court system (...) to move them to private property. This paper explores connections between support for a myth called the Lost Cause, which is a revisionist history intended to spread misinformation about the true cause of the American Civil War, and attitudes toward placement of Confederate symbols on public land. We show that there is significant belief in the Lost-Cause myth among many White U.S. Southerners. Furthermore, we find those who believe most in the myth are the least likely to want to move the monuments or end taxpayer support for their maintenance. (shrink)

Although understanding is the object of a growing literature in epistemology and the philosophy of science, only few studies have concerned understanding in mathematics. This essay offers an account of a fundamental form of mathematical understanding: proof understanding. The account builds on a simple idea, namely that understanding a proof amounts to rationally reconstructing its underlying plan. This characterization is fleshed out by specifying the relevant notion of plan and the associated process of rational reconstruction, building in part on Bratman's (...) theory of planning agency. It is argued that the proposed account can explain a significant range of distinctive phenomena commonly associated with proof understanding by mathematicians and philosophers. It is further argued, on the basis of a case study, that the account can yield precise diagnostics of understanding failures and can suggest ways to overcome them. Reflecting on the approach developed here, the essay concludes with some remarks on how to shape a general methodology common to the study of mathematical and scientific understanding and focused on human agency. (shrink)

How can we employ the philosophy of John Dewey to make sense of contemporary political contexts? How might Deweyan theorisations of present-day political problems inform contemporary policy approaches to, for instance, immigration, globalisation, global governance structures, or democratic institutions? What is new about contemporary political practice and thought from a pragmatist perspective? What is merely echoing the thinking and affective investments of previous political moments? And what is critical about this moment in time? These are some of the questions that (...) prompted the organisation of a conference titled “John Dewey and Critical Philosophies for Critical Political Times” at University College Dublin in October 2017. In light of the recent rise in nationalist rhetoric and unprecedented political developments, such as Brexit, the two-day event sought to draw out the confluences between the historico-political context that John Dewey was operating in and the contemporary political moment. At the same time, the conference set out to interrogate appeals to “history repeating itself” by capturing the unique inflection of the present. Conference delegates deftly examined such temporal concordances and dissonances by drawing on John Dewey’s expansive philosophical thought, theorising a host of topics ranging from structures of inequality - including gender, racial, and class inequality - to the role of inquiry in democratic practice. They made use of a wide array of Deweyan concepts and theories, encompassing, inter alia, his naturalism; his writing on democracy; his conception of the habituated, transacting self; and his meliorism. The essays collected in this special issue include some of the highlights of these presentations, as well as pieces specifically commissioned for the purposes of this publication. (shrink)

In this volume a group of distinguished moral and social thinkers address the urgent problem of terrorism. The essays define terrorism, discuss whether the assessment of terrorist violence should be based on its consequences, and explore what means may be used to combat those who use violence without justification. Among other questions raised by the volume are: what does it mean for a people to be innocent of the acts of their government? Might there not be some justification in terrorists (...) targeting certain victims but not others? Might terrorist acts be attributed to groups or to states? (shrink)

Objective The UK Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine programme commenced in the autumn of 2008 for year 8 (age 12–13 years) schoolgirls. We examine whether the vaccine should be given when there is a difference of opinion between daughters and parents or guardians. Design Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. Participants A sample of 25 stakeholders: 14 professionals involved in the development of the HPV vaccination programme and 11 professionals involved in its implementation. Results Overriding the parents' wishes was perceived as problematic (...) and could damage the relationship between school and parents. A number of practical problems were raised in relation to establishing whether parents were genuinely against their daughter receiving the vaccine. Although many respondents recognised that the Gillick guidelines were relevant in establishing whether a girl could provide consent herself, they still felt that there were significant problems in establishing whether girls could be assessed as Gillick competent. In some areas school nurses had been advised not to give the vaccine in the absence of parental consent. None of the respondents suggested that a girl should be vaccinated against her consent even if her parents wanted her to have the vaccine. Conclusions While the Gillick guidelines provide a legal framework to help professionals make judgements about adolescents consenting to medical treatment, in practice there appears to be variable and confused interpretation of this guidance. Improved legal structures, management procedures and professional advice are needed to support those who are assessing competence and establishing consent to vaccinate adolescents in a school setting. (shrink)

Introduction to Global Military History provides a lucid and comprehensive account of military developments around the modern world from the eighteenth century up to the present day. Beginning with the background to the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary wars and ending with the recent conflicts of the twenty-first century, this third edition combines fully up-to-date global coverage with close analysis not only of the military aspects of war but also its social, cultural, political and economic dimensions and (...) repercussions. The new edition includes a fully revised chapter on conflicts during the eighteenth century, updated coverage of events post-1990 and increased coverage of non-Western conflicts to provide a truly international account of the varied and changing nature of modern military history. Covering lesser-known conflicts as well as the familiar wars of history and illustrated throughout with maps, primary source extracts and case studies, it is essential reading for all students of modern military history and international relations. (shrink)

The subject of discussion this evening is “ The Problem of Colour in Relation to the Idea of Equality,” and though the last seven words would seem to indicate some special limitation, it is in fact difficult to divide this question into watertight compartments. For the basis of all philosophical study is accuracy of definition, and we must therefore begin by forming a precise conception of what the phrase “ Colour problem ” connotes before we proceed to discuss its bearing (...) from a physiological, political, or sociological “ equality ” point of view. Thus at the outset we find ourselves in the very heart of a controversy, for it is difficult to find two people who will agree as to the definition of the Colour problem. Physiologically there is no line of demarcation, for of the inhabitants of North Central Asia many are as light—and indeed lighter—in the colour of their skin, their hair and their eyes than the Southern races of Europe, and the same may be true of Creoles, Quadroons, and Octaroons. (shrink)

Aim: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between moral self, moral integrity, and moral sensitivity in decision-making among nurses. Background: nurses face moral dilemmas almost on a daily basis. Studies have demonstrated that nurses with high moral sensitivity make thoughtful decisions and exhibit professional responsibility. The current study seeks to examine personality variables that may be related to moral sensitivity among nurses. Design: A cross-sectional study. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the IRB of the authors University’s ethics (...) committee (number: AU-HEA-LO-20220317). Written consent was obtained from all participants. Methods: A structured questionnaires were administered to a sample of 187 Israeli nurses. Results: The degree of nurses’ moral self, moral integrity and moral sensitivity was relatively high. “Patient-centered care” was found to be the most significant component of moral sensitivity. The next component is “Using knowledge bases,” followed by “Exercising professional judgment.” While the concept of patient-centered care was found to be related to the nurses’ moral self, the other components were found to be related to their moral integrity. The mediation model found that moral integrity mediates and even strengthens the moral self in its connection with moral sensitivity. Conclusions: Understanding the role of moral self and moral integrity in explaining moral sensitivity, can contribute to achieving a desirable combination of “the good and the right” in nursing practice, thereby enhancing nurses’ work. From a practical perspective, these findings are also relevant to nursing education. Nursing education plays a pivotal role in fostering moral and ethical decision-making in both clinical aspects and ethical moral sensitivity. Strengthening the moral self and moral integrity among nursing students can aid in making balanced and morally sensitive decisions while also building moral and ethical support systems to assist students in distressing and emergency situations. (shrink)

The mechanism of stellar aberration was explained and formulated by Bradley in terms of the existence of a unique reference frame for light propagation. However, Einstein's denial of the existence of such a frame appears to undermine Bradley's interpretation of the phenomenon. It is suggested that the recent evidence for a cosmologically-based inertial reference frame provides a new physical basis for Bradley's explanation in a manner consistent with the requirements of special relativity. It is shown that a “delay” effect is (...) also involved in our observation of the direction of nearby sources, and that the aberration and delay effects exactly compensate for nearby sources comoving with a terrestrial observer. (shrink)

From his 1920s black-and-white street scenes to the color photographs of signs and letter forms from his final years, the images made by photographer Walker Evans are icons of national identity that have shaped Americans' views of themselves and directly influenced important currents of modern art. 141 duotones, 53 color plates, 171 halftones.

A global health archive consisting of podoconiosis tissue slides and blocks (which was collected and imported into the UK before the introduction of the Human Tissue Act), was donated to Brighton & Sussex Medical School in 2014. There is little guidance on the socioethical and legal issues surrounding the retrospective use of archived or ‘abandoned’ tissue samples, which poses a number of questions relating to the ethical standing of the archive. There is a great deal of interpretation in the guidelines (...) that are currently in existence; however, modern ethical principles cannot be applied as it is not feasible to either reconsent or retrospectively seek approval. Our research team believed that it was unethical to leave the archive in storage, as this option favours neither researcher nor subjects. Permission was obtained from the Human Tissue Authority and a local ethics board for the tissues to be utilized in on-going research on podoconiosis aetiology. There is a delicate balance between the benefits gained by society relating to the development and progress of scientific research and the risks to the donor regarding the reuse of their tissues. Clearer guidelines should be made available to ensure that researchers are able to reuse tissue archives in contemporary research. (shrink)

While all states in the United States require certain vaccinations for school attendance, all but three allow for religious exemptions to receiving such vaccinations, and 18 allow for exemptions on the basis of other deeply held personal beliefs. The rights of parents to raise children as they see fit may conflict with the duty of the government and society to protect the welfare of children. In the U.S., these conflicts have not been settled in a uniform and consistent manner. We (...) apply a test that provides a concrete and formal rubric to evaluate such conflicts. For some vaccinations, based on the individual medical characteristics of the disease and the risks of being unvaccinated, the test would suggest that permitting conscientious exemptions is ethical. However, for vaccinations protecting against other diseases that are more severe or easily transmitted, the test would suggest that the federal government may ethically impose laws that deny such exemptions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Peculiarly Favored Condition of GeneticsJames J. Lee, PhD (bio) and Damien Morris, MSc (bio)Turkheimer and Greer (2024) (henceforth “T&G”) make some fair points about problems in the scientific profession, including the regrettable tendency to promise practical applications of research that then never materialize. However, T&G’s sustained critique of a body of work associated with one particular researcher to make these general points struck us as uncharitable. More (...) pressingly, we feel that the far-reaching conclusions that T&G attempt to draw from the results they review from the Spit for Science (S4S) cohort are unjustified and risk misleading readers that psychiatric and behavioral genetics is in a parlous state.T&G state that S4S “produced a clear answer to the question it was designed to address,” namely, that its results “unambiguously contradict the hypothesis that alcohol-related behaviors have a meaningful genetic basis.” But S4S cannot possibly have provided affirmative evidence for the null hypothesis, because as a single cohort it lacked the statistical power to do so. Elsewhere T&G acknowledge that the sample size of S4S does not suffice for many purposes; they cannot have it both ways. When GCTA has been applied to samples of greater size, it has unambiguously supported the hypothesis that alcohol-related behaviors have a meaningful genetic basis. The UK Biobank yielded estimates exceeding 0.10 for the contribution of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with minor allele frequency of greater than 0.05 to the heritability of drinks per week, estimates more than ten times their standard errors (Liu et al., 2019).This heritability contributed by common variants is sometimes called “SNP heritability,” and T&G disparage it for the alleged “disadvantage of being substantially smaller” than “twin and family heritabilities.” Nowhere do T&G consider what the precise numbers actually mean—an approach that can be hazardous to your scientific health, as the late John Loehlin might have said. Let us, then, consider these numbers. Under a model of pure neutrality, SNP and pedigree narrow-sense heritabilities should be fairly close, essentially as a result of factors p(1 − p) canceling in the multiplication of the numbers of SNPs to be found at a given allele frequency by the average heritability contributed per SNP (Hill, 2010). If SNP and pedigree heritabilities are not close, then natural selection must have been acting on [End Page 441] the trait, preventing new mutations of large effect from becoming common and thereby concentrating heritability at allele frequencies lower than those typically studied in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). This deduction has been abundantly confirmed: the tendency of GWAS SNPs to reside in evolutionarily conserved regions (Finucane et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2019), the younger age of GWAS SNPs when compared to control SNPs of comparable frequencies (Gazal et al., 2017), the discovery of several rare variants with larger effects than those observed in typical GWAS (Barton et al., 2021; Chen et al., 2023; Marouli et al., 2017), the directly measured deleterious fitness effects of mutations in evolutionarily constrained genes (Gardner et al., 2022), and the substantial additional genetic variance accumulated when rare variants are included in GCTA-type studies, sometimes enough to close the gap between SNP and pedigree heritabilities (Evans et al., 2018; Jang et al., 2022; Pathan et al., 2024; Wainschtein et al., 2022).The genetic architecture of a typical quantitative trait consists of many sites across the genome that can mutate to affect it, numbering potentially in the millions (Agarwala et al., 2013; Zeng et al., 2021), of which those that are common SNPs have very small effects as a result of selection. This is the message, but T&G seem to find fault with the messenger, painting “tiny” effect sizes as an embarrassment to the field of behavioral genetics as a whole. We prefer to view the finding of high polygenicity as a revelation about nature, rather than as a debating point. What is this finding telling us? If one takes the action of stabilizing selection as the initial assumption (Uyeda et al., 2011), then the extreme polygenicity revealed by GWAS becomes part of the answer to the question regarding how traits can... (shrink)

Quality health care relies upon communication in a patient's preferred language. Language access in health care occurs when individuals are: Welcomed by providers regardless of language ability; and Offered quality language services as part of their care. Federal law generally requires access to health care and quality language services for deaf and Limited English Proficient patients in health care settings, but these patients still find it hard to access health care and quality language services.Meanwhile, several states are implementing Medicaid Accountable (...) Care Organization initiatives to reduce health care costs and improve health care quality. Alternative payment methods used in these initiatives can give Accountable Care Organizations more flexibility to design linguistically accessible care, but they can also put ACOs at increased financial risk for the cost of care. If these new payment methods do not account for differences in patient language needs, ACO initiatives could have the unintended consequence of rewarding ACOs who do not reach out to deaf and LEP communities or offer quality language services.We reviewed public documents related to Medicaid ACO initiatives in six states. Some of these documents address language access. More could be done, however, to pay for language access efforts. This article describes Medicaid ACO initiatives and explores how different payment tools could be leveraged to reward ACOs for increased access to care and quality language services. We find that a combination of payment tools might be helpful to encourage both access and quality. (shrink)

We speak of the right to know with relative ease. You have the right to know the results of a medical test or to be informed about the collection and use of personal data. But what exactly is the right to know, and who should we trust to safeguard it? This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the right to know and other epistemic rights: rights to goods such as information, knowledge and truth. These rights play a prominent role (...) in our information-centric society and yet they often go unnoticed, disregarded and unprotected. As such, those who control what we know, or think we know, exert an influence on our lives that is often as dangerous as it is imperceptible. Beginning with a rigorous but accessible philosophical account of epistemic rights, Lani Watson examines the harms caused by epistemic rights violations, drawing on case studies across medical, political and legal contexts. She investigates who has the right to what information, who is responsible for the quality and circulation of information and what epistemic duties we have towards each other. This book is essential reading for philosophers, legal theorists and anyone concerned with the protection and promotion of information, knowledge and truth.. (shrink)