The everyday concept of a social group is approached by examining the concept of going for a walk together, an example of doing something together, or "shared action". Two analyses requiring shared personal goals are rejected, since they fail to explain how people walking together have obligations and rights to appropriate behavior, and corresponding rights of rebuke. An alternative account is proposed: those who walk together must constitute the "plural subject" of a goal. The nature of plural subjecthood, the thesis (...) that social groups are plural subjects, and the relation of these ideas to Rousseau's and Hobbes 's, are briefly explored. (shrink)

This paper introduces the author's approach to everyday ascriptions of collective cognitive states as in such statements as we believe he is lying. Collective epistemology deals with these ascriptions attempting to understand them and the phenomena in question.

The author develops and elaborates on her account of collective belief, something standardly referred to, in her view, when we speak of what we believe. This paper focuses on a special response hearers may experience in the context of expressions of belief, a response that may issue in offended rebukes to the speaker. It is argued that this response would be appropriate if both speakers and hearers were parties to what the authors calls a joint commitment to believe a certain (...) proposition as a body. This joint commitment puts speakers under an obligation to refrain from speaking in certain ways, and gives hearers a correlative right to such refraining, and hence a basis for offended rebukes. (shrink)

Collective action is interpreted as a matter of people doing something together, and it is assumed that this involves their having a collective intention to do that thing together. The account of collective intention for which the author has argued elsewhere is presented. In terms that are explained, the parties are jointly committed to intend as a body that such-and-such. Collective action problems in the sense of rational choice theory—problems such as the various forms of coordination problem and the prisoner’s (...) dilemma—are then considered. An explanation is given of how, when such a problem is interpreted in terms of the parties’ inclinations, a suitable collective intention resolves the problem for agents who are rational in a broad sense other than the technical sense of game theory. Key Words: rationality • collective action • collective intention • joint commitment. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a distinction between subjective and value laden aspects of judgements showing why equating the former with the latter has the potential to confuse matters when the goal is uncovering the influence of political influences on scientific practice. I will focus on three separate but interrelated issues. The first concerns the issue of ‘verification’ in computational modelling. This is a practice that involves a number of formal techniques but as I show, even these allegedly objective (...) methods ultimately rely on subjective estimation and evaluation of different types of parameters. This has implications for my second point which relates to uncertainty quantification—an assessment of the degree of uncertainty present in a particular modelling scenario. I argue that while this practice also involves subjective elements, in no way does that detract from its status as an epistemic exercise. Finally I discuss the relation between accuracy and uncertainty and how each relates to judgements that embody social/ethical/political concerns, in particular those associated with high consequence systems. (shrink)

We create a database of company codes of ethics from firms listed on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and, separately, a sample of small firms. The SEC believes that "ethics codes do, and should, vary from company to company." Using textual analysis techniques, we measure the extent of commonality across the documents. We find substantial levels of common sentences used by the firms, including a few cases where the codes of ethics are essentially identical. We consider these results in (...) the context of legal statements versus value statements. While legal writing often mandates duplication, we argue that value-based statements should be held to a higher standard of originality. Our evidence is consistent with isomorphic pressures on smaller firms to conform. (shrink)

By observing how fatalism expresses itself in one's daily life, in everything from table manners to shopping to sport, the book proposes ways to limit its influence.

It is widely accepted that only the victim of a wrong can forgive that wrong. Several philosophers have recently defended “third-party forgiveness,” the scenario in which A, who is not the victim of a wrong in any sense, forgives B for a wrong B did to C. Focusing on Glen Pettigrove's argument for third-party forgiveness, I will defend the victim's unique standing to forgive, by appealing to the fact that in forgiving, victims must absorb severe and inescapable costs of distinctive (...) kinds, a plight that third parties do not share. There are, nonetheless, significant, even essential, roles played by third parties in making forgiveness possible, reasonable, or valuable for victims of serious wrongs. I take a closer look at the links between victims, wrongdoers, resentment, and forgiveness in showing why the victim alone can forgive. (shrink)

John Ziman-- the much-missed-- reminds us that 'no man is an island', and takes us to task for working from an individualistic theoretical base. That 'us' includes nearly all social scientists, and most Anglo-American philosophers too. For sure, it includes cognitive scientists, who theorize people in terms of concepts drawn from cybernetics and/or artificial intelligence. (I'll use the term 'computational concepts' broadly, to cover both types.) Indeed, it's a common complaint that cognitive science is overly individualistic.

Ernst Mayr has criticised the methodology of population genetics for being essentialist: interested only in “types” as opposed to individuals. In fact, he goes so far as to claim that “he who does not understand the uniqueness of individuals is unable to understand the working of natural selection” (1982, 47). This is a strong claim indeed especially since many responsible for the development of population genetics (especially Fisher, Haldane, and Wright) were avid Darwinians. In order to unravel this apparent incompatibility (...) I want to examine the possible sources and implications of essentialism in this context and show why the kind of mathematical analysis found in Fisher's work is better seen as responsible for extending the theory of natural selection to a broader context rather than inhibiting its applicability. (shrink)

Seventeenth century philosophers were pre-occupied with the justification for the use of coercion; the nature and scope of the citizen's duty to obey the law was a central concern. The typical philosophical accounts which attempt to articulate the conditions under which a citizen has an obligation to obey the law tend to fall into two camps: those that ground the obligation to obey the law in consent, and those that ground it in benefits received, or possibly a combination of both. (...) More recently, however, some have argued that questions about the obligation to obey the law have been eclipsed by questions about distributive justice. Many leading figures in modern analytic jurisprudence remain concerned with the nature of political obligation. Joseph Raz is a current-day theorist who has recognized the importance of this issue and the need for an answer that is not over-simplistic. Recently Raz has re-examined his account in ?The Problem of Authority: Revisiting the Service Conception, - making an exploration of his theory particularly timely. Raz argues that all governments claim morally legitimate authority, but not all of them actually possess it. His theory seeks to give us the tools by which to distinguish the legitimate claims from imposters. The complexity and flexibility of Raz's understanding of the nature and scope of the individual's obligation to obey the law accounts for its appeal. Upon closer inspection, however, difficulties emerge. I argue that Raz's theory is plagued by a deep-seated tension between his two central theses: the pre-emption thesis and the normal justification thesis. While I explore both theses in further depth, the gist of the pre-emption thesis is that it requires a pre-commitment to authority in order for the law?s mediating role to be performed. Conversely, the normal justification thesis invites a case by case assessment of the bindingness of norms. I argue that instead of offering us a unified conception of authority, Raz vacillates unstably between two models - a consent-based model and a benefits received model. I demonstrate that this tension is ineradicable because the theses are connected to divergent models of law and incompatible methodologies. (shrink)

Moral psychology studies the features of cognition, judgement, perception and emotion that make human beings capable of moral action. Perspectives from feminist and race theory immensely enrich moral psychology. Writers who take these perspectives ask questions about mind, feeling, and action in contexts of social difference and unequal power and opportunity. These essays by a distinguished international cast of philosophers explore moral psychology as it connects to social life, scientific studies, and literature.

This book addresses one of the most urgent questions in American society today, one that is currently in the spotlight and hotly debated on all sides: Who shall rule the schools--parents or educators? _School Choice or Best Systems: What Improves Education?_ presents an overview of research and practical applications of innovative--even radical--school reforms being implemented across the United States. These fall along a continuum ranging from "parental choice" to "best systems." At the one extreme are schools of choice, which allow (...) parents to choose and even govern schools for their children. These include charter schools, traditional private and parochial schools, schools that are privately governed but publicly funded through vouchers, and those that are funded by private scholarships provided by both corporations and wealthy individuals. At the other extreme are centralized state or district systems, based on reform initiatives and new systems of education that have been developed in response to views of citizens and legislators that schools can do much better. These schools, which specify uniform goals, policies, and programs for each school, are highly innovative systems based on research or representing advanced thinking about "what works," and have attracted wide interest. Important questions related to schools of choice and best systems are addressed: How can we choose among schools of choice and best systems? Among the various approaches within each of these alternatives? How can we understand their guiding principles and operational practices? What results do they produce? How can we evaluate their claims? In choosing among the alternatives, how should issues of student achievement, accountability, costs, feasibility, and equity be factored in? This volume brings together leading researchers and education leaders who have carried out the latest studies and advances in the field, providing a forum for them to set forth the arguments and evidence that will be most helpful in making choices for tomorrow's schools. It does not provide a single "right" answer--values and preferences differ across parents, schools, districts, and states. However, there are benefits for all from seeing the rigorous research, challenging thinking, and alternate points of view this volume presents. (shrink)

I propose a novel account of the essentially expressive nature of reparations. My account is descriptive of new practices of reparations that have emerged in the past half-century, and it provides normative guidance on conditions of success for reparative attempts. My account attributes to reparative attempts a dual expressive function: a communicative function that requires the gesture to carry a vindicatory message to victims; and an exemplifying function that requires the gesture to model the right relationship that was absent or (...) violated in the wrongdoing to which reparations respond. This account is able to explain the breadth and variety of measures now recognized as reparations; how reparative attempts can fail in two distinct ways; and why material compensation is never sufficient and not always necessary to reparations. (shrink)

I argued that the frameworks and mechanisms that produce unification do not enable us to explain why the unified phenomena behave as they do. That is, we need to look beyond the unifying process for an explanation of these phenomena. Anya Plutynski ([2005]) has called into question my claim about the relationship between unification and explanation as well as my characterization of it in the context of the early synthesis of Mendelism with Darwinian natural selection. In this paper I argue (...) that her methodological criticisms rest on a misinterpretation of my views on explanation and defend my historical interpretation of the work of Fisher and Wright. A statement of the problem Methodological differences: how to characterize explanation Historical matters: disagreements about details Explanation revisited: the possible versus the ‘merely actual’. (shrink)

The optimist may be secretly envied, but he is publicly despised. His pronouncements are regarded as expressions of simple-minded blindness or as cynical propaganda. Optimism is not regarded as intellectually respectable. It was not always so: there have been times when optimism was not merely considered worthy of rational argument, but was widely accepted by thinking men. Now, however, we react with a growing embarrassment to passages such as these: The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only (...) on free men who know no other master but their reason;… All the causes that contribute to the perfection of the human race, all the means that ensure it must by their very nature exercise a perpetual influence and always increase their sphere of action … the perfectibility of man is indefinite. (shrink)

The systemic difficulties of health care in the USA have brought to light another issue in nurse—patient advocacy — those who require care yet have inadequate or non-existent access. Patient advocacy has focused on individual nurses who in turn advocate for individual patients, yet, while supporting individual patients is a worthy goal of patient advocacy, systemic problems cannot be adequately addressed in this way. The difficulties nurses face when advocating for patients is well documented in the nursing literature and I (...) argue that, through collective advocacy, professional nursing associations ought to extend the reach of individual nurses in order to address systemic problems in health care institutions and bureaucracies. (shrink)

The parasol, whatever the conditions of use, ultimately functions as a social symbol as it satisfies no utilitarian need. The operative mechanism of that symbol varies from culture to culture but the parasol is polysemous even at its least complicated, when held by the person to be protected without allusion to foreign social systems and in the context of single-sex usage. For example, as an implement of fashionable feminine attire of over a century ago, the parasol signified the maintenance of (...) a standard of beauty that precluded extended activities out of doors and the delicate constitution of the lady thus protected, both with further implications of ‘good breeding’ and economic inutility; and the wasteful employment of items that must be changed with the costume and discarded before unserviceable to suit the dictates of fashion. Both facets—termed ‘conspicuous leisure’ and ‘conspicuous consumption’ by Veblen—conjointly served to advertise the wealth of the individual man on the basis of whose property such extravagance and non-productive practice could be sustained. (shrink)

The NIH has initiated a plan to mandate use of central IRBs for all multi-site research. This manuscript argues against the mandate, proposing that there is inadequate evidence to support the purported gains in efficiency and that the ethical integrity of research may suffer with any exclusion of the local review voice.

Transnational feminism should have normative force and be anti‐imperialist. This article addresses the possibility of an anti‐imperialist transnational feminism in conversation with Serene Khader’s Decolonizing Universalism. Khader argues that the key to an anti‐imperialist feminism is separating universalism from the features that result in imperialism, such as ethnocentrism and justice monism. This article shares Khader’s commitment to anti‐imperialist feminism and further explores three relevant issues: human rights, the definition of feminism, and economic justice. It proposes a decolonizing view of rights (...) that advocates a critical examination of their uses, applications, and origins. It argues that transnational feminism should engage with issues of economic justice. And it proposes that feminism as an intersectional praxis should include normative dimensions in addition to antisexism, such as antiracism and economic justice. (shrink)

This article recontextualizes Irigaray with reference to post-Freudian psychoanalytic theories of narcissism, and argues that a persistent theme in her work has been the diagnosis of the narcissism of Western culture. It indicates that one of the possible sources (other than Lacan) for her diagnosis of Western culture is the work of Béla Grunberger. It also argues that it is possible to make connections between Irigaray's critique of Western civilization and other related critiques. The second part of the article sketches (...) a brief account of the Kleinian and post-Kleinian concept of projective identification, and argues that reinterpreting Irigaray in the light of this concept can help to shed more light on her account of the significance of the maternal container. (shrink)