The field of community psychology has focused on individuals' and groups' behavior in interaction with their social contexts, with an emphasis on prevention, early intervention, wellness promotion, and competency development. Over the past few decades, however, community-based applications of the newest research methodologies have not kept pace with the development of theory and methodology with regard to multilevel data collection and analysis. The Handbook of Methodological Approaches to Community-Based Research is intended to aid the community-oriented researcher in learning about and (...) applying cutting-edge quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches. The Handbook presents a number of innovative methodologies relevant to community-based research, illustrating their applicability to specific social problems and projects. These methodological approaches explore individuals and groups in interaction with their communities and provide examples of how to implement and evaluate interventions conducted at the community level. The chapters discuss how particular methodologies can be used to help gather and analyze data dealing with community-based issues. Furthermore, they illustrate the benefits that occur when community theorists, interventionists, and methodologists work together to better understand complicated person-environment systems and the change processes within communities. (shrink)

This book examines the poet and singer/songwriter through the analysis of various philosophical positions.

This essay is my review of the classic TV series, Route 66. It was a classic “buddy movie,” with two young men who tour the country in a gorgeous 1956 Chevy Corvette, staying in various towns and working at various blue-collar jobs. The acting was generally superb, and the scripts were mainly written by the fine script writer Stirling Silliphant, and produced by the famous producer Herbert Leonard. I suggest that this 50-year-old series tells us a lot about cultural (...) change in America during that time. I suggest also that it helps demonstrate that the charge made by a famous cultural critic of the time—Newton Minow, who was Chairman of the Federal Communications Corporation from 1961 to 1963—that this period of commercial TV was a “vast wasteland” was not merely arrogantly elitist, but was in fact patently false. The 1950s and early 1960s saw many amazingly good series in a wide variety of genres. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore, in some cases for the first time, the significance of the ethical, liberatory dimension of Spinoza’s thought among a number of women philosophers across the long nineteenth century’s German tradition. I begin with brief discussions of Elise Reimarus and Charlotte von Stein. I then proceed to more in-depth treatments of Caroline Michaelis- Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling and Karoline von Günderrode, stressing not only that we may learn about both in drawing out a link to Spinoza or Spinozism, but (...) likewise that we can deepen our understanding of Spinoza in bringing him into dialogue with each (in particular regarding, respectively, the importance of others for self-expression, as well as the metaphysical and ethical status of death, especially suicide). I conclude with a discussion of the turn-of-the-century thinkers Lou Salomé as well as Resa von Schirnhofer, Anna Tumarkin, and especially Elisabeth Schmitt—some of the first academic women philosophers in the German-language context, all closely engaged with Spinoza’s writings—before presenting final remarks concerning the status of Spinoza’s thought in the present context. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore, in some cases for the first time, the significance of the ethical, liberatory dimension of Spinoza’s thought among a number of women philosophers across the long nineteenth century’s German tradition. I begin with brief discussions of Elise Reimarus and Charlotte von Stein. I then proceed to more in-depth treatments of Caroline Michaelis- Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling and Karoline von Günderrode, stressing not only that we may learn about both in drawing out a link to Spinoza or Spinozism, but (...) likewise that we can deepen our understanding of Spinoza in bringing him into dialogue with each (in particular regarding, respectively, the importance of others for self-expression, as well as the metaphysical and ethical status of death, especially suicide). I conclude with a discussion of the turn-of-the-century thinkers Lou Salomé as well as Resa von Schirnhofer, Anna Tumarkin, and especially Elisabeth Schmitt—some of the first academic women philosophers in the German-language context, all closely engaged with Spinoza’s writings—before presenting final remarks concerning the status of Spinoza’s thought in the present context. (shrink)

Conciliationism is a view—well, a family of views—in the epistemology of disagreement. The idea, simply put, is that, in a wide range of cases where you find yourself in disagreement with another reasoner about the truth of some proposition, you are rationally obliged to adjust your credence in the direction of hers. Conciliationism enjoys a fair bit of prima facie plausibility. Most versions of it, however, suffer from a common (and rather obvious) problem: self-incrimination. Although there is some recognition in (...) the recent literature on disagreement that there is a problem in this vicinity, it, more often than not, is completely ignored. When it is not completely ignored, both the conciliationists and their critics tend to frame the problem incorrectly. As a result, they end up focusing most of their attention on pseudo-problems rather than the genuine worry. Furthermore, even when they have hit on the genuine worry, conciliationists have tended to give surprising and implausible responses to it. Even by their own lights, conciliationists aren’t justified in believing their conciliationist theses. In this paper, I argue that it’s time to come clean. Time to look for a view on the epistemic significance of disagreement that we can actually be justified in believing. (shrink)

The question of how to handle incidental findings has sparked a heated debate among neuroimaging researchers and medical ethicists, a debate whose urgency stems largely from the recent explosion in the number of imaging studies being conducted and in the sheer volume of scans being acquired. Perhaps the point of greatest controversy within this debate is whether the magnetic resonance imaging scans of all research participants should be reviewed in an active search for pathology and, moreover, whether this search should (...) be performed by a radiologist. Resistance to routine readings performed by radiologists, as opposed to selective review of those scans on which investigators have spotted a possible IF, has been fueled in part by the obvious and enormous cost — financial and logistical — of engaging radiologists to read massive numbers of scans. This cost would be especially burdensome, even prohibitive, to investigators who are not affiliated with a medical center, because of their limited access to radiologists and other medical expertise. (shrink)

All knowledge 'begins with experience,' but it does not therefore 'arise' from experience.The classical American pragmatists are usually considered to be either empiricists or heirs to the empiricist tradition in philosophy. This is unsurprising given the nature of the pragmatist philosophical program as a late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century reaction against transcendental idealism. Pragmatists sought to ground their inquiry resolutely in experience sans speculative metaphysics. However, the pragmatists were also stridently opposed to certain doctrines and epistemological tendencies in British empiricism that (...) they regarded as either implicitly idealist, or as laying a groundwork that stood as the .. (shrink)

According to the Transmission View of Testimony : TVT: If a speaker testifies to a hearer that p, and if the hearer is justified in believing that p on the basis of that speaker's testimony, then the hearer's belief is justified by whatever justification the speaker has for believing that p. The aim of this paper is to develop and defend a novel objection to the TVT.

By most accounts Deleuze's engagement with Marx begins with the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia he co-authored with Félix Guattari. However, Deleuze's Difference and Repetition alludes to a connection between Deleuze's critique of common sense and Marx's theory of fetishism, suggesting a connection between the critique of the image of thought and the critique of capital. By tracing this connection from its emergence in the early texts on noology, or the image of thought, to the development in the critique (...) of state thought in A Thousand Plateaus, it can be argued that what initially appears as an entirely infra-philosophical problem, concerned with the presuppositions of philosophy, is not only a political problem as well, but ultimately bears on the very nature of the conjunction between thought and politics, making possible a re-examination of what is meant by revolutionary thought. It is a transition from noology to noopolitics. In the end it can be argued that revolutionary thought is no longer an eschatology, attempting to discern the signs of the future revolution in the present, but a thought oriented towards everything that exceeds the fetish of society, towards the virtual relations and micropolitical transformations that constitute society but exceed its representation. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The 2003 National Business Ethics Survey, conducted by the Ethics Resource Center, found that respondents who were both young and had short organizational tenure were substantially less likely than other respondents to report misconduct that they observed in the workplace to an authority. We propose that the life-course model of deviance can help account for this attenuation of acquiescence in misbehavior. As employees learn to perceive informal prosocial control during their socialization into the workforce, we hypothesize that they will become (...) more willing to blow the whistle on misconduct. Analysis of the 2003 NBES (n = 1,417, with a subset of 314 who observed misconduct) reveals that young and short-tenured employees do perceive less informal prosocial control, and that informal prosocial control does boost whistle-blowing; however, tests for mediation of the relationship between youth and short-tenure and whistle-blowing by informal social control were largely negative, suggesting that other explanations are still needed. (shrink)

This book educates whilst also challenging the contemporary schools of thought within philosophical and religious ethics. In addition, it underlines the fact that the substance of ethics in general and bioethics/healthcare ethics specifically, is much more expansive and inclusive than is usually thought. Bioethics is a relatively new academic discipline. However, ethics has existed informally since before the time of Hippocrates. The indigenous culture of African peoples has an ethical worldview which predates the western discourse. This indigenous ethical worldview has (...) been orally transmitted over centuries. The earliest known written African text containing some concepts and content of ethics is the “Declaration of Innocence” written in 1500 B.C., found in an Egyptian text. Ubuntu is an example of African culture that presents an ethical worldview. This work interprets the culture of Ubuntu to explain the contribution of a representative indigenous African ethics to global bioethics. Many modern scholars have written about the meaning of Ubuntu for African societies over centuries. Some scholars have viewed Ubuntu as the greatest contribution of African cultures to other world cultures. None of the scholars, however has explored the culture of Ubuntu as providing a representative indigenous ethics that can contribute to global bioethics as discussed in this book.​. (shrink)

This essay argues that our national efforts at health reform ought to be informed by eleven key lessons from Oregon. Specifically, we must learn that the need for health care rationing is inescapable, that any rationing process must be public and visible, and that fair rationing protocols must be self-imposed through a process of rational democratic deliberation. Part I of this essay notes that rationing is a ubiquitous feature of our health care system at present, but it is mostly hidden (...) rationing, which is presumptively unjust. Part II argues that the need for health care rationing is inescapable. Although Oregon is flawed as a model of health rationing, it gives us worthy moral lessons for health reform at the national level, which I analyze and defend in Part III. The most significant of these lessons is the importance of rational democratic deliberation in articulating fair rationing protocols for a community. In Part IV I sketch the philosophic justification for this approach and respond to some important criticisms from Daniels. Keywords: cost containment, democratic deliberation, fairness, justice, rationing CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The roles digital media-technologies play in raising public issues relating to emerging technologies and their potential for engaging publics with science and policy assessments is a lively field of inquiry in Science and Technology Studies (STS). This paper presents an analysis of controversies over proposals for the large-scale removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CDR). The study combines a digital method (web-querying) with document analysis to map debates about two CDR approaches: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation. In (...) the first step, we locate actors using the web to engage with BECCS and afforestation and map their alignments in relation to competing framings of CDR. In a second step, we examine the devices deployed by UK-based actors to evidence and contest the feasibility of BECCS and afforestation. Our analysis shows that policy distinctions between “natural” and “engineered” CDR are used flexibly in practice and do not map neatly onto actor engagement with BECCS and afforestation. We highlight the predominance of cross-cutting techno-economic expertise and argue that framings of CDR as a solution to governing climate change may contribute to public disengagement from climate policy processes. The paper reflects on methods for studying controversies, publics, and issues emerging around processes of technoscientific assessment. (shrink)

We formulate a new modal ontological argument; specifically, we show that there is a possible world in which an entity that has at least the property of omnipotence exists. Then we argue that if such an entity is possible, it is necessary as well.

I begin by examining how genetics drivesschizophrenia research, and raise both familiar andrelatively novel criticisms of the evidence putativelysupporting the genetic basis of schizophrenia. Inparticular, I call attention to a set of concernsabout the effects of placentation on concordance ratesof schizophrenia in monozygotic twins, which furtherweakens the case for schizophrenia''s so-called stronggenetic component. I then underscore two criticalpoints. First, I emphasize the importance of takingseriously considerations about the complexity of bothontogenesis and the development of hereditarydiseases. The recognition of developmentalconstraints and (...) supports is crucial, for attention todevelopment exposes the naivete of too many models ofgene action in the aetiology of disease. Secondly, Iattend to those schizophreniologists who ignoremethodological criticisms and thus presume a geneticbasis for schizophrenia, and then seek the schizophrenic genotype lacking an adequatephenotype. In response I attempt to demonstrate thenecessity of a sustained effort at characterizing thephenotype of schizophrenia as an enabling conditionfor the whole enterprise of psychiatric genetics – andfor psychiatry itself. Without the organism-levelphenotype, research at the level of genes will remainunproductive – assuming of course that research at thegenetic level is appropriate at all. (shrink)

Unlike Martin‐Löf randomness and Schnorr randomness, computable randomness has not been defined, except for a few ad hoc cases, outside of Cantor space. This paper offers such a definition (actually, several equivalent definitions), and further, provides a general method for abstracting “bit‐wise” definitions of randomness from Cantor space to arbitrary computable probability spaces. This same method is also applied to give machine characterizations of computable and Schnorr randomness for computable probability spaces, extending the previously known results. The paper contains a (...) new type of randomness—endomorphism randomness—which the author hopes will shed light on the open question of whether Kolmogorov‐Loveland randomness is equivalent to Martin‐Löf randomness. The last section contains ideas for future research. (shrink)

This squib investigates a paradox that arises from the interaction of two well-studied domains of grammar: antecedent-contained deletion and the licensing of negative polarity items. The conflict arises from a simple set of facts that have been overlooked in the literature, given in (1).

Today the ethical and normative concerns of everyday citizens are all too often sidelined from the study of political and social issues, driven out by an effort to create a more "scientific" study. This book offers a way for social scientists and political theorists to reintegrate the empirical and the normative, proposing a way out of the scientism that clouds our age. In Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism: Reunifying Political Theory and Social Science, Jason Blakely (...) argues that the resources for overcoming this divide are found in the respective intellectual developments of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre. Blakely examines their often parallel intellectual journeys, which led them to critically engage the British New Left, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, continental hermeneutics, and modern social science. Although MacIntyre and Taylor are not sui generis, Blakely claims they each present a new, revived humanism, one that insists on the creative agency of the human person against reductive, instrumental, technocratic, and scientistic ways of thinking. The recovery of certain key themes in these philosophers' works generates a new political philosophy with which to face certain unprecedented problems of our age. Taylor's and MacIntyre's philosophies give social scientists working in all disciplines (from economics and sociology to political science and psychology) an alternative theoretical framework for conducting research. "This book does an excellent job in identifying a real problem in mainstream political theory--its overly normative character and its separation from social science. It contains many original contributions to the field. I particularly liked the way in which the problems of naturalism are presented as institutional, cultural, and political as well as philosophical. The historical background to these problems is also interesting and sheds fresh light on the issues." --Nicholas Smith, Macquarie University. (shrink)

Iran's nuclear program has garnered a great deal of media attention for nearly a decade, yet critical discourse scholars have been relatively silent on the matter. To spur more scholarship on the nuclear controversy, this study examines the language of nine interviews with former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Analyzing the opening questions of topic shifts, the relationship of scope and topic, and Secretary Rice's portrayal of the US and Iran, I argue that Rice used her media access as (...) a platform to encourage audiences to see Iran's nuclear program as a nuclear weapons program, often with the complicity of her interviewers and always without evidence. In the wake of the unilateralist American invasion of Iraq, Secretary Rice also worked to rebuild a positive image of the White House as she presented the US as a proponent of multilateral diplomacy as opposed to her portrayal of the Islamic Republic as a rogue state. (shrink)

Translated from German. Includes bibliographical references. Includes index.

It is shown that many different problems have the same degree of unsolvability. Among these problems are: THE INDUCTIVE INFERENCE PROBLEM. Infer in the limit an index for a recursive function f presented as f(0), f(1), f(2),.... THE RECURSIVE INDEX PROBLEM. Decide in the limit if i is the index of a total recursive function. THE ZERO NONVARIANT PROBLEM. Decide in the limit if a recursive function f presented as f(0), f(1), f(2),... has value unequal to zero for infinitely many (...) arguments. Finally, it is shown that these unsolvable problems are strictly easier than the halting problem. (shrink)

Education for Sustainable Development is a broad and varied field of study replete with compelling advocacies for a more humane world. Across a majority of its instances however, ESD might yet be seen to labour in stealth fidelity to a mode of political economy and model of human-nature relations complicit with planetary ecocide. This essay draws largely from the thinking of Jean Baudrillard in an effort to identify the implications of ESD’s mainstay commitments, particularly as expressed in the field’s lingering (...) fidelities to anthropocentric production and modes of protagonistic optimism. Such alliances are contrasted by the immanence of inhuman planetary difference as it might habilitate more eco-centric approaches and attitudes for thinking the very possibility of sustainable development in the present era of rapid ecological transformation. (shrink)

can prevent non-contact interactions in Newtonian collision mechanics. The proposal is weakened by the apparent arbitrariness of what will be shown as the requirement of only an odd number of sets of some ex nihilo-created self-exciting particles. There is, however, an initial condition such that, without the ex nihilo self-exciting particles, either there is a contradictory outcome, or there is a non-contact configuration law, or there are odds versus evens indeterminacies. With the various odds versus evens arbitrarinesses and other such (...) difficulties, there seems to be an ontological unsatisfactoriness in the speed-unbounded Newtonian collision system. Introduction Taking self-excitations very seriously A problematic initial condition Another alternative. (shrink)

This article is based on a distinctive study that seeks to analyse the nascent role of teenagers’ activism and protests for climate change action. With the increasing realisation of children's rights to participation, the past few years have marked the rise of the new dispensation of climate activism and protests in which teenagers have occupied the centre stage. We pay specific reference to Greta Thunberg, a Swedish child climate activist, in as much as she can set a framework upon which (...) Africa can draw parallels, lessons and insights for climate activism and protests. Even though the context may be different, the paper attempts to inform vibrant climate action through activism by children and ultimately climate policies, laws and management for environmental sustainability in Africa. We engaged document review and thematic approaches, and it emerged that children climate activism and protests in Africa are not as vibrant as they should be given the prevalence of climate inaction across the continent. Therefore, there is much to learn from Thunberg by pushing national governments and regional organisations to increase the decision-making space of children in the fight against climate change. (shrink)

Abstract:The American College of Physicians in its ethics manual endorsed the idea that physicians ought to improve their ability to provide care to their patients more parsimoniously. This elicited a critical backlash; critics essentially claimed that what was being endorsed was a renamed form of rationing. In a recent article, Tilburt and Cassel argued that parsimonious care and rationing are ethically distinct practices. In this essay I critically assess that claim. I argue that in practice there is considerable overlap between (...) what they term parsimonious care and what they define as rationing. The same is true of the Choosing Wisely campaign endorsed by the American Board of Internal Medicine. In both cases, if the goal is to control healthcare costs by reducing the use of marginally beneficial care that is not cost effective, then a public conversation about the justness of specific choices is essential. (shrink)

Some have claimed that since machines lack emotional “qualia”, or conscious experiences of emotion, machine intelligence will fall short of human intelligence. I examine this objection, ultimately finding it unpersuasive. I first discuss recent work on emotion that suggests that emotion plays various roles in cognition. I then raise the following question: are phenomenal experiences of emotion an essential or necessary component of the performance of these cognitive abilities? I then sharpen the question by distinguishing between four possible positions one (...) might take. I reject one of these four positions largely on empirical grounds. But the remaining three positions all suggest that even if emotional qualia play an important role in human cognition, emotional qualia are not essential to the performance of these cognitive abilities in principle, so, e.g., a machine that lacks emotional qualia might still be able to perform them. (shrink)

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 50, Issue 1, Page 123-145, March 2022.

Homer’s Odyssey has long served as a touchstone for environmental writers, but is this text itself a work of environmental ethics? Homer portrays, as a major and consistent purpose, the environmentally destructive consequences of hedonism, and the environmentally beneficent consequences of conservation and sustainable agriculture. The evidence of The Odyssey suggests that public critical dialectic about the treatment of animals, soil, and forests was not unknown to the ancient Greek world. Further, The Odyssey can have relevance to modern environmental ethics, (...) especially in Homer’s study of the relation between religion (especially its eating rituals) and the health of the natural environment. Finally, Homer teaches that it is not only possible but also worthwhile to code the arguments of environmental ethics in poetic/fictional terms. (shrink)

Climate change poses real and immediate impacts to the public health of populations around the globe. Adverse impacts are expected to continue throughout the century. Emphasizing co-benefits of climate action for health, combining adaptation and mitigation efforts, and increasing interagency coordination can effectively address both public health and climate change challenges.