Increasing societal concerns regarding the potential deleterious effects of future climate change have galvanized efforts to manage the problem both through reduction of greenhouse gases and through development of plans to reduce the impacts of climate change that cannot be avoided. These critical activities require making decisions under conditions of considerable uncertainty regarding future conditions in physical and human systems. As the focus on providing information about future climate for taking actions to cope with climate change, the science of uncertainty (...) of climate change will develop more and more with the needs of decision makers in mind. (shrink)

In this paper we consider some questions surrounding whether or not regional climate models “add value,” a controversial issue in climate science today. We highlight some objections frequently made about regional climate models both within and outside the community of modelers, including several claims that regional climate models do not “add value.” We show that there are a number of issues involved in the latter claims, the primary ones centering on the fact that different research questions are being pursued by (...) the modelers making the complaints against regional climate models. Further issues focus on historical deficiencies of particular—but not generalizable—failures of individual regional models. We provide tools to sort out these different research questions and particular failures, and to improve communication and understanding surrounding added value in climate modeling and philosophy of climate science. (shrink)

1. Introduction; Elisabeth A. Lloyd and Eric Winsberg.- Section 1: Confirmation and Evidence.- 2. The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong?; Naomi Oreskes.- 3. Satellite Data and Climate Models Redux.- 3a. Introduction to Chapter 3: Satellite Data and Climate Models; Elisabeth A. Lloyd.- Ch. 3b Fact Sheet to "Consistency of Modelled and Observed Temperature Trends in the Tropical Troposphere"; Benjamin D. Santer et al..- Ch. 3c Reprint of "Consistency of Modelled and Observed Temperature Trends (...) in the Tropical Troposphere"; Benjamin D. Santer et al..- 4. The Role of ’Complex’ Empiricism in the Debates about Satellite Data and Climate Models; Elisabeth A. Lloyd.- 5. Reconciling Climate Model/Data Discrepancies: The Case of the Trees That Didn’t Bark; Michael Mann.- 6. Downscaling of Climate Information; Linda O. Mearns et al..- Section 2: Uncertainties and Robustness.- 7. The Significance of Robust Model Projections; Wendy S. Parker.- 8. Building Trust, Removing Doubt? Robustness Analysis and Climate Modeling; Jay Odenbaugh.- Section 3: Climate Models as Guides to Policy.- 9. Climate Model Confirmation: From Philosophy to Predicting Climate in the Real World; Reto Knutti.- 10. Uncertainty in Climate Science and Climate Policy; Jonathan Rougier and Michel Crucifix.- 11. Communicating Uncertainty to Policy Makers: The Ineliminable Role of Values; Eric Winsberg.- 12. Modeling Climate Policies: A Critical Look at Integrated Assessment Models; Mathias Frisch.- 13. Modelling Mitigation and Adaptation Policies to Predict their Effectiveness: The Limits of Randomized Controlled Trials; Alexandre Marcellesi and Nancy D. Cartwright. (shrink)

Knowledge has almost always been treated as good, better than mere true belief, but it is remarkably difficult to explain what it is about knowledge that makes it better. I call this “the value problem.” I have previously argued that most forms of reliabilism cannot handle the value problem. In this article I argue that the value problem is more general than a problem for reliabilism, infecting a host of different theories, including some that are internalist. An additional problem is (...) that not all instances of true belief seem to be good on balance, so even if a given instance of knowing p is better than merely truly believing p, not all instances of knowing will be good enough to explain why knowledge has received so much attention in the history of philosophy. The article aims to answer two questions: What makes knowingp better than merely truly believing p? The answer involves an exploration of the connection between believing and the agency of the knower. Knowing is an act in which the knower gets credit for achieving truth. What makes some instances of knowing good enough to make the investigation of knowledge worthy of so much attention? The answer involves the connection between the good of believing truths of certain kinds and a good life. In the best kinds of knowing, the knower not only gets credit for getting the truth but also gets credit for getting a desirable truth. The kind of value that makes knowledge a fitting object of extensive philosophical inquiry is not independent of moral value and the wider values of a good life. (shrink)

This original analysis examines the three leading traditional solutions to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human free will--those arising from Boethius, from Ockham, and from Molina. Though all three solutions are rejected in their best-known forms, three new solutions are proposed, and Zagzebski concludes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. The discussion includes the relation between the foreknowledge dilemma and problems about the nature of time and the causal relation; the logic of counterfactual conditionals; and the differences (...) between divine and human knowing states. An appendix introduces a new foreknowledge dilemma that purports to show that omniscient foreknowledge conflicts with deep intuitions about temporal asymmetry, quite apart from considerations of free will. Zagzebski shows that only a narrow range of solutions can handle this new dilemma. A compelling contribution to the field, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge will appeal to students and scholars of theistic philosophy and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This was published in Cultural Critique (Winter 1991-92), pp. 5-32; revised and reprinted in Who Can Speak? Authority and Critical Identity edited by Judith Roof and Robyn Wiegman, University of Illinois Press, 1996; and in Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds edited by Susan Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner, (New York: New York University Press, 1994); and also in Racism and Sexism: Differences and Connections eds. David Blumenfeld and Linda Bell, Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.

Sociopaths are “outstanding” members of society in two senses: politically, they draw our attention because of the inordinate amount of crime they commit, and psychologically, they hold our fascination because most ofus cannot fathom the cold, detached way they repeatedly harm and manipulate others. Proximate explanations from behavior genetics, child development, personality theory, learning theory, and social psychology describe a complex interaction of genetic and physiological risk factors with demographic and micro environmental variables that predispose a portion of the population (...) to chronic antisocial behavior. More recent, evolutionary and game theoretic models have tried to present an ultimate explanation of sociopathy as the expression of a frequency-dependent life strategy which is selected, in dynamic equilibrium, in response to certain varying environmental circumstances. This paper tries to integrate the proximate, developmental models with the ultimate, evolutionary ones, suggesting that two developmentally different etiologies of sociopathy emerge from two different evolutionary mechanisms. Social strategies for minimizing the incidence of sociopathic behavior in modern society should consider the two different etiologies and the factors that contribute to them. (shrink)

An ethic for wrongdoers -- Repaying moral debts : self-punishment and restitution -- Changing one's heart, changing the past : repentance and moral transformation -- Reforming relationships : the reconciliation theory of atonement -- Forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and redemption -- Making amends for crime : an evaluation of restorative justice -- Collective atonement : making amends to the Magdalen penitents.

People typically show excellent memory for information that is central to an emotional event but poorer memory for peripheral details. Not all studies demonstrate memory narrowing as a result of emotion, however. Critically important emotional information is sometimes forgotten; seemingly peripheral details are sometimes preserved. To make sense of both the general pattern of findings that emotion leads to memory narrowing, and findings that violate this pattern, this review addresses mechanisms through which emotion enhances and impairs memory. Divergent approaches to (...) characterising information as central versus peripheral are also addressed. By directly contrasting these approaches, and the evidence supporting them, this review helps to clarify when and how emotion enhances memory and provides directions for future research. Evidence shows that memory narrowing as a result of emotion, and a number of violations of the memory narrowing pattern, can be explained by the view that emotion enhances memory for information relevant to currently active goals. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE Political Theory as a Signifying Practice Political theory has been a heroic business, snatching us from the abyss a vocation worthy of giants. ...

Abstract In this paper I argue that to understand the ethics of belief we need to put it in a context of what we care about. Epistemic values always arise from something we care about and they arise only from something we care about. It is caring that gives rise to the demand to be epistemically conscientious. The reason morality puts epistemic demands on us is that we care about morality. But there may be a (small) class of beliefs which (...) it is not wrong to hold unconscientiously. I also argue that epistemic values enjoy a privileged place in the panorama of what we care about because they are entailed by anything we care about. That means that when there is a conflict between caring about knowledge or true belief and caring about something else, that conflict cannot be resolved simply by following the one we care about the most because caring about knowledge in any domain is entailed by caring about that domain. Finally, I argue that whereas caring demands different degrees of conscientiousness in different contexts, contextualism about knowledge is less plausible. (shrink)

Feminist approaches within the social sciences have expanded enormously since the 1960s. In addition, in recent years, geographic perspectives have become increasingly significant as feminist recognition of the differences between women, their diverse experiences in different parts of the world and the importance of location in the social construction of knowledge has placed varied geographies at the centre of contemporary feminist and postmodern debates. Gender, Identity and Place is an accessible and clearly written introduction to the wide field of issues (...) that have been addressed by geographers and feminist scholars. It combines the careful definition and discussion of key concepts and theoretical approaches with a wealth of empirical detail from a wide-ranging selection of case studies and other empirical research. It is organized on the basis of spatial scale, examining the relationships between gender and place from the body to the nation, although the links between different spatial scales are also emphasized. The conceptual division and spatial separation between the public and private spheres and their association with men and women respectively has been a crucial part of the social construction of gendered differences and its establishment, maintenance and reshaping from industrial urbanization to the end of the millennium is a central linking theme in the eight substantive chapters. The book concludes with an assessment of the possibilities of doing feminist research. It will be essential reading for students in geography, feminist theory, women's studies, anthropology and sociology. (shrink)

In this paper I explore white attempts to move toward a proactive position against racism that will amount to more than self-criticism in the following three ways: by assessing the debate within feminism over white women's relation to whiteness; by exploring "white awareness training" methods developed by Judith Katz and the "race traitor" politics developed by Ignatiev and Garvey, and; a case study of white revisionism being currently attempted at the University of Mississippi.

Persons are thought to have a special kind of value, often called "dignity," which, according to Kant, makes them both infinitely valuable and irreplaceably valuable. The author aims to identify what makes a person a person in a way that can explain both aspects of dignity. She considers five definitions of "person": (1) an individual substance of a rational nature (Boethius), (2) a self-conscious being (Locke), (3) a being with the capacity to act for ends (Kant), (4) a being with (...) the capacity to act for another (Kant), and (5) an incommunicably unique subject (Wojtyla). She argues that none is capable of grounding both aspects of dignity since they are incompatible kinds of value; it is impossible for the same thing to ground both. Human persons are infinitely valuable in virtue of shareable qualities of their nature, whereas they are irreplaceably valuable because of a nonqualitative feature of their personhood. (shrink)

The book is designed to be of interest to women's studies students wishing an introduction to a specifically philosophical analysis of the problem of sex objectification, as well as to philosophers interested in the contemporary moral issues of sexism and sex stereotyping.

Background: Development of professional nursing values is critical within registered nurse–to–bachelor of science in nursing programs to prepare nurses for increasingly complex and diverse work environments. The results of previous studies have been inconsistent, with few studies focusing on online registered nurse–to–bachelor of science in nursing programs. In addition, little is known regarding the effectiveness of the educational methods used to support advancement of professional values and ethical practice. Objective: The object of this study was to gain an understanding of (...) nursing students’ attitudes and beliefs about professional values at entry and exit of an online registered nurse–to–bachelor of science in nursing program that includes a standalone ethics course and integrates American Nurses Association Code of Ethics provisions throughout the curriculum. Research design: For this one-group pretest–posttest, quasi-experimental design, longitudinal matched-pair data were gathered at program entry and exit using the Nurses Professional Values Scale–Revised. Participants and research context: In all, 119 students of an online registered nurse–to–bachelor of science in nursing program at a Midwest public university who completed entry and exit surveys between spring 2015 and spring 2018 were included in this study. Ethical considerations: This study was reviewed and determined to be exempt by the university’s institutional review board. Findings: The results showed a significant increase in total posttest scores when considering all participants. However, students who took the ethics course after the pretest demonstrated a significant increase in posttest scores, while students who took the ethics course prior to the pretest demonstrated a small increase that was not statistically significant. Significant increases were also found in the professionalism, activism, and trust factors. Discussion: This study supports previous study findings where students scored higher on caring and lower on activism and professionalism factors. The largest gains were made after completing the ethics course. Conclusion: The results suggest that requiring a standalone ethics course in the registered nurse–to–bachelor of science in nursing curriculum had a positive impact on self-reported professional values. (shrink)

The statistical interpretation introduced by Born in mid-1926 is not the interpretation now associated with his name. Born's own understanding of that interpretation is revealed by looking at some of its roots in Born's earlier work with Franck on collisions, his collaboration with Jordan on that topic, his contributions to matrix mechanics, his attempt in collaboration with Wiener at an operator formulation of quantum mechanics, and at the exposition of the interpretation in Born's first papers on a wave mechanical treatment (...) of collisions. (shrink)

Culture is surely important in human learning. But the relation between culture and psychological mechanism needs clarification in three areas: (1) All learning takes place in real time and through real-time mechanisms; (2) Social correlations are just a kind of learnable correlations; and (3) The proper frame of reference for cognitive theories is the perspective of the learner.

This article considers why truth-telling is so difficult in institutions, and deceit and paltering are so common. Drawing on recent examples of churches and charities exposed for covering up the truth about abuse, the article explores the institutional barriers to truthfulness and considers how they might be removed.

Background In the US, many patients forgo recommended care due to cost. The ANA Code of Ethics requires nurses to give care based on need. Therefore, US nurses are compelled to practice in a context which breaches their professional ethical code. Research Objectives This study sought to determine if nurses do care for patients who forgo treatment due to cost (PFTDC) and if so, does this result in an experience of moral distress (MD). Research Design Semi-structured interviews were transcribed and (...) analyzed using a qualitative content analysis. Participants and Research Context A convenience sample of 20 nurses in practice for at least one year from a variety of health care setting participated. Ethical Considerations This project was approved by the Michigan State University Biomedical Institutional Review Board. Results There were 19 female and one male nurse-participants, averaging 47 years old with an average of 10 years in practice. 18 reported caring for PFTDC. These 17 nurse-participants experienced a moderate degree of MD as a result, averaging 5.4 of 10 on the Moral Distress Thermometer. In the interviews, the following themes were identified, strategies to help PFTDC, and the broken US health care system which had the subthemes of preference for business over patient-oriented benefit, PFTDC using the emergency department, and limited support for treatment/management of PFTDC. Conclusions The existence of this phenomenon places the profession of nursing in the US in a position of moral compromise and threatens to corrupt the institution of nursing in the US. (shrink)

According to standard philosophical analyses, only victims can forgive. There are good reasons to reject this view. After all, people who are neither direct nor indirect victims of a wrong frequently feel moral anger over injustice. The choice to foreswear or overcome such moral anger is subject to most of the same sorts of considerations as victims’ choices to forgive. Furthermore, bystanders’ reactions to their experiences of moral anger often reflect either virtues or vices that are of a piece with (...) what we normally describe as a forgiving or unforgiving disposition. In this paper, I reject the view that only victims can forgive by comparing the experience and regulation of moral anger by victims and bystanders. The virtues of victims and bystanders with regard to moral anger are so similar that there is no good reason to apply different labels. However, the recognition of forgiveness in bystanders offers us more than simple consistency. It also leads us to think about the role moral bystanders play in the maintenance of the moral community, as well as the ways in which this role can be abused or overstepped. (shrink)

Several robotic automation systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are being used in combat today. This evokes ethical questions. In this paper, it is argued that UAVs, more than any other weapon, may determine which normative theory the interpretation of the laws of war (LOW) will be based on. UAVs have advantages in terms of reducing casualties for the UAV possessor, but they may at the same time make war seem more like a risk-free enterprise, much like a computer (...) game, lowering the threshold for starting a war. This indicates the importance of revising the LOW, or adding some rules that focus specifically on UAVs. (shrink)

Young adults' attitudes toward the use of animals in scientific research were examined by using data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth . A structural equation model was estimated using LISREL8 to examine the development of these attitudes. Gender was found to have the greatest total effect on opposition to animal research, while feminist attitudes had the second greatest total effect. Feminist attitudes, 10th grade science achievement, adult scientific literacy, general attitudes toward science, partisan affiliation, anda numberof early home (...) influences each explained part, but not all of the gender difference in attitudes about scientific research. (shrink)

Although tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) is the only medication approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for acute ischemic stroke, there is no consensus about the need for informed consent for its use. As a result, hospitals throughout the U.S. have varying requirements regarding obtaining informed consent from patients for the use of tPA, ranging from no requirement for informed consent to a requirement for verbal or written informed consent. We conducted a study to (1) determine current (...) beliefs about obtaining patients’ informed consent for tPA among a large group of stroke clinicians and (2) identify the ethical, clinical, and organizational factors that influence tPA consent practices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted by trained and experienced investigators and research staff to identify key barriers to implementing acute stroke services. Part of the interview explored current beliefs and practices around informed consent for tPA.This was a multicenter study that included 38 Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospital locations. Participants were 68 stroke team clinicians, serving primarily on the neurology (35 percent) or emergency medicine (41 percent) service. We conducted thematic analysis based on principles of grounded theory to identify codes about consent for tPA. We used interpretive convergence to ensure consistency among the individual investigators’ codes and to ensure that all of the investigators agreed on coding and themes.We found that 38 percent of the stroke clinicians did not believe any form of consent was necessary for tPA, 47 percent thought that some form of consent was necessary, and 15 percent were unsure. Clinicians who believed tPA required informed consent were divided on whether consent should be written (40 percent) or verbal (60 percent). We identified three factors describing clinicians’ attitudes about consent: (1) legal and policy factors, (2) ethical factors, and (3) medical factors.The lack of consensus regarding consent for tPA creates the potential for delays in treatment, uneasiness among clinicians, and legal liability. The identified factors provide a potential framework to guide discussions about developing a standard of care for acquiring the informed consent of patients for the administration of tPA. (shrink)

As medical technology becomes more sophisticate the ability to manipulate nature and manage disease forces the dilemma of when can becomes ought. Indeed, most bioethical discourse is framed in terms of balancing the values and interests and the benefits and burdens that inform principled decisions about how, when, and whether interventions should occur. Yet, despite advances in science and technology, one caregiver mandate remains as constant and compelling as it was for the earliest shaman—the relief of pain. Even when cure (...) is impossible, the physician's duty of care includes palliation. Moreover, the centrality of this obligation is both unquestioned and universal, transcending time and cultural boundaries.Although universally acknowledged, pain is a complex phenomenon for both the patient and the caregiver, influenced as much by personal values and cultural traditions as by physiological injury and disease. (shrink)

This paper focuses on disagreement spaces fused with emotion. Following Gilbert’s emotional mode of argumentation (1997), further expansions of the mode are made here, specifically for the purposes of being able to classify different types of emotional arguments. First, general concerns with arguments that stray from the traditional approach are addressed. Then a classification system for different types of emotional arguments is developed. Some of the criteria that help determine emotional arguments include dialogue types, arguers involved, as well as the (...) use of emotion. (shrink)

Jean Hampton argues that we can detect exploitation in personal relationships by thinking about what we would agree to were we to set aside the emotional benefits we receive from those relationships. Hampton calls her account "feminist contractarianism," but it has recently been critiqued as decidedly unfeminist, on the grounds that it is hostile to women's interests and women's values. Furthermore, Hampton's requirement that we imaginatively distance ourselves from our emotional connections to our loved ones--the key element in her contractarian (...) test--is simply ad hoc. In this essay, I will evaluate these objections and offer a new justification for Hampton's test. I conclude that feminist contractarianism is not only a useful tool for detecting exploitation in the family, it is also deserving of its feminist label. (shrink)

Do future generations of a wrongdoing group have a responsibility to preserve the memory of the past? If so, what manner of responsibility is it? In this essay, I critically examine the categories of forward-looking and backward-looking collective responsibility to see what they might offer to this discussion. I argue that these concepts of responsibility are ambiguous in ways that threaten to prevent important questions from being raised. I draw my examples from contemporary German practices of preserving the memory of (...) the Holocaust and World War II, especially the stolpersteine, which are memorial plaques for individual victims embedded in the sidewalks of German cities. (shrink)

IntroductionStrawsonian theories of moral responsibility, which aim to ground the phenomenon of moral responsibility in our practices of holding one another accountable for our actions, lead us to think more carefully about the content of those practices. Strawson and his followers have done much to explore the significance of the deontic reactive attitudes (resentment, indignation and guilt), which we tend to aim at wrongdoers.P. F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 48 (1962). See also, R. Jay (...) Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); and Stephen Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect and Accountability (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2006). In this essay, I am interested in the ways in which we express those attitudes. While it is plausible that experiencing a negative reactive attitude would be permissible in every case of blameworthy wrongdoing, few would agree that verbal .. (shrink)