On a sunny Sunday afternoon in 2012 a conflict arose between two men riding a popular mountain biking track in New Zealand. The bulk of this was filmed from a helmet-mounted action camera, facilitating a single case analysis of the transition from an everyday trouble to an unexpected violent ending. The two riders come across each other travelling downhill at speed on a narrow track. Unease quickly develops for the camera-clad rider wants to pass the rider in front, but except (...) for an intriguing and brief interlude, the first rider will not let the other pass. The second rider grows frustrated, progressing to tailgate the ‘slower’ rider, in the midst of which he invokes a rule of mountain biking conduct. The reflexive implications of the rule-invocation need to be seen to be believed. The video is used as data to get close to such seeing, and despite some limitations, we can see a clear trajectory where the rule significantly contributes to a moment of phenomenological salience. Thereafter, it becomes witnessably relevant to the conflict that develops. (shrink)

Many health care undergraduate students would benefit from having a compact, comprehensive, and well organised focal text for their thinking about ethics that keeps the genuine complexities of the issues clearly in view. Some teachers find that certain well known works, such as Beauchamp and Childress’s Principles of Biomedical Ethics, are not satisfactory for this purpose, partly on account of their emphasis on specific theoretical positions that are not universally endorsed. But also the style of such “theory led” texts is (...) not always accessible to students, who tend to prefer less abstraction and more immediate demonstrations of clinical relevance. The approach taken by Mike Parker and Donna Dickenson in this workbook is an attempt to satisfy the demands of teachers and students in all these respects. Parker and Dickenson see this workbook as having several potential applications: as a resource for individual reference, and as a set text for group teaching, as well as providing materials for open learning (an area in which the authors have particular expertise). On the back of this flexibility, students in health care disciplines, qualified practitioners, as well as a non-professional audience, are all included in the book’s broad intended readership. Claims about “flexibility” can sometimes mask a lack of direction or specificity. But the authors have taken pains to ensure that their book does not suffer from these faults. Parker and Dickenson have integrated three basic kinds of material in the production of this workbook: case studies, commentaries, and activities. The case studies are presented in …. (shrink)

What is the right paradigm for professional ethics? According to Mike Martin, there is a received or dominant one—he calls this the consensus paradigm—in which professional ethics is reducible to duties and dilemmas. It consists of identifying the duties that are or should be standardized within professional codes of ethics applicable to all members of a profession, and grappling with how to apply the duties to particular situations where they conflict or have unclear implications. Martin rejects this as “implausible (...) and constricting”. His counterproposal is that professional ethics be expanded to include personal commitments and ideals. By “ideals” he means “commitments to forms of goodness around which individual character is formed and which are not reduced to general duties,” and by “personal” he “means that they shape the work of individuals without necessarily being incumbent on all members of a profession”. (shrink)

Are people rational? This question was central to Greek thought and has been at the heart of psychology and philosophy for millennia. This book provides a radical and controversial reappraisal of conventional wisdom in the psychology of reasoning, proposing that the Western conception of the mind as a logical system is flawed at the very outset. It argues that cognition should be understood in terms of probability theory, the calculus of uncertain reasoning, rather than in terms of logic, the calculus (...) of certain reasoning. (shrink)

A recent development in the cognitive science of reasoning has been the emergence of a probabilistic approach to the behaviour observed on ostensibly logical tasks. According to this approach the errors and biases documented on these tasks occur because people import their everyday uncertain reasoning strategies into the laboratory. Consequently participants' apparently irrational behaviour is the result of comparing it with an inappropriate logical standard. In this article, we contrast the probabilistic approach with other approaches to explaining rationality, and then (...) show how it has been applied to three main areas of logical reasoning: conditional inference, Wason's selection task and syllogistic reasoning. (shrink)

A fresh translation and in-depth commentary of Leibniz's seminal text, the Monadology. -/- Written in 1714, the Monadology is widely considered to be the classic statement of Leibniz's mature philosophy. In the space of 90 numbered paragraphs, totalling little more than 6000 words, Leibniz outlines - and argues for - the core features of his philosophical system. Although rightly regarded as a masterpiece, it is also a very condensed work that generations of students have struggled to understand. -/- Lloyd (...) Strickland presents a new translation of the Monadology, alongside key parts of the Theodicy, and an in-depth, section-by-section commentary that explains in detail not just what Leibniz is saying in the text but also why he says it. The sharp focus on the various arguments and other justifications Leibniz puts forward makes possible a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of his doctrines. (shrink)

Knauff and Gazzo Castañeda (2022) object to using the term “new paradigm” to describe recent developments in the psychology of reasoning. This paper concedes that the Kuhnian term “paradigm” may be queried. What cannot is that the work subsumed under this heading is part of a new, progressive movement that spans the brain and cognitive sciences: Bayesian cognitive science. Sampling algorithms and Bayes nets used to explain biases in JDM can implement the Bayesian new paradigm approach belying any advantages of (...) mental models theory (MMT) at the algorithmic level. Moreover, this paper argues that new versions of MMT lack a computational level theory and questions the grounds for MMTs much-vaunted generality. The paper then examines common ground on the importance of small-scale models/simulations of the world and the importance of argumentation in the social domain rather than individual reasoning. Finally, the paper concludes that although there may be prospects for moving reasoning research forward in a more collective, collaborative manner, many disagreements remain to be resolved. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the relationship between body, image and affect within consumer culture. Body image is generally understood as a mental image of the body as it appears to others. It is often assumed in consumer culture that people attend to their body image in an instrumental manner, as status and social acceptability depend on how a person looks. This view is based on popular physiognomic assumptions that the body, especially the face, is a reflection of the self: (...) that a person’s inner character or personality will shine through the outer appearance. The modification and cosmetic enhancement of the body through a range of regimes and technologies can be used to construct a beautiful appearance and thereby a beautiful self. The article begins by examining body images in consumer culture and their relation to photography and moving images. This is followed by an examination of the consumer culture transformative process through a discussion of cosmetic surgery. The article then questions the over-simplistic logic that assumes that transformative techniques will automatically result in a more positive and acceptable body image. The new body and face may encourage people to look at the transformed person in a new way. But the moving body, the body without image, which communicates through proprioceptive senses and intensities of affect, can override the perception of the transformed appearance. A discussion of the affective body follows, via a closer examination of the body without image, the opening of the body to greater affect and indeterminacy. The affective body image and its potential greater visibility through new media technologies are then discussed through some examples taken from digital video art. The article concludes by examining some of the implications of these shifts within consumer culture and new media technologies. (shrink)

The Concussion in Sport Group guidelines have successfully brought the attention of brain injuries to the global medical and sport research communities, and has significantly impacted brain injury-related practices and rules of international sport. Despite being the global repository of state-of-the-art science, diagnostic tools and guides to clinical practice, the ensuing consensus statements remain the object of ethical and sociocultural criticism. The purpose of this paper is to bring to bear a broad range of multidisciplinary challenges to the processes and (...) products of sport-related concussion movement. We identify lacunae in scientific research and clinical guidance in relation to age, disability, gender and race. We also identify, through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary analysis, a range of ethical problems resulting from conflicts of interest, processes of attributing expertise in sport-related concussion, unjustifiably narrow methodological control and insufficient athlete engagement in research and policy development. We argue that the sport and exercise medicine community need to augment the existing research and practice foci to understand these problems more holistically and, in turn, provide guidance and recommendations that help sport clinicians better care for brain-injured athletes. (shrink)

S. A. Lloyd proposes a radically new interpretation of Hobbes's Leviathan that shows transcendent interests - interests that override the fear of death - to be crucial to both Hobbes's analysis of social disorder and his proposed remedy to it. Most previous commentators in the analytic philosophical tradition have argued that Hobbes thought that credible threats of physical force could be sufficient to deter people from political insurrection. Professor Lloyd convincingly shows that because Hobbes took the transcendence of (...) religious and moral interests seriously, he never believed that mere physical force could ensure social order. Lloyd's interpretation demonstrates the ineliminability of that half of Leviathan devoted to religion, and attributes to Hobbes a much more plausible conception of human nature than the narrow psychological egoism traditionally attributed to Hobbes. (shrink)

Wet markets, a ‘traditional’ form of food retail, have maintained their popularity in urban China despite the rapid expansion of ‘modern’ supermarket chains. Their continued popularity rests in the freshness of their food. Chinese consumers regard freshness as the most important aspect of food they buy, but what constitutes ‘freshness’ in produce is not simply a given. Freshness is actively produced by a range of actors including wholesalers, vendors as well as consumers. The paper examines what fresh food means to (...) consumers in the Chinese market. It argues that wet markets create a sense of freshness that resonates with this culinary culture through their sensoria, atmosphere, and trust between food vendors and consumers. Together these respond to desires for and reproduce criteria used to evaluate freshness. Within a fragmented food trade system, wet market vendors have an advantage in offering ‘freshness’ through their ability to connect various wholesalers, agencies, and middlemen, and shorten supply chains. The paper is based on participatory observation, a consumer survey and in-depth interviews of various stakeholders in southern China, especially Sanya in Hainan and Guangzhou in Guangdong. This study suggests that this cultural construction of freshness creates a niche for small-scale players and ‘traditional’ markets in an increasingly concentrated global food system. (shrink)

In this paper the arguments for optimal data selection and the contrast class account of negations in the selection task and the conditional inference task are summarised, and contrasted with the matching bias approach. It is argued that the probabilistic contrast class account provides a unified, rational explanation for effects across these tasks. Moreover, there are results that are only explained by the contrast class account that are also discussed. The only major anomaly is the explicit negations effect in the (...) selection task (Evans, Clibbens, & Rood, 1996), which it is argued may not be the result of normal interpretative processes. It is concluded that the effects of negation on human reasoning provide good evidence for the view that human reasoning processes may be rational according to a probabilistic standard. (shrink)

I. Diverse interpretations.--II. Purpose and naturalism.--III. The realities of experience.--IV. An historical controversy.--V. The ideal construction of naturalism.--VI. The web of causation.--VII. The problem of life.--VIII. Mind and mechanism.--IX. The science of metaphysics of will.--X. Genetic psychology.--XI. The metaphysical postulate.--XII. Determinism and purpose.

Genevieve Lloyd illuminates and challenges some perplexing aspects of contemporary attitudes to wonder. She draws especially on Flaubert, who influenced the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. She also reaches into contemporary debates on refugees, secularisation and climate change.

(2007). Sport, ethics and philosophy; context, history, prospects. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1-6. doi: 10.1080/17511320601173329.

A guide through the maze of contemporary political thought, consisting of an introductory essay, a glossary and examinations of: Conservatism and the New Right (by Mike Harris), Marxism and post-Marxism (David Howarth), Socialism and Social Democracy (Tony Fitzpatrick), The Christian Right (Martin Durham), Contemporary Liberalism (Matthew Festenstein), Communitarianism (Elizabeth Frazer), Green Politics (John Barry), Postmodernism (Simon Thompson) Feminism (Moya Lloyd) and Islamic Thought (Phil Marfleet).

It is argued that future research capacity building for the social sciences needs to incorporate methods to accelerate the acquisition by researchers of holistic expertise relevant to their roles as researchers and as developers of others. An agenda is presented, based on a model of learning that highlights missing elements of current provision, and two approaches currently under development are described.

This article introduces the special section on the contribution of Jack Goody, which focuses on The Theft of History (2006). Goody attacks the notion of a radical division between Europe and Asia, which has become built into the commonsense academic wisdom and categorical apparatus of the social sciences and humanities. Eurocentrism is a constant target as he scrutinizes and finds wanting the claims of the West to have invented modern science, cultural renaissances, the free city, capitalism, democracy, love and secularism. (...) Goody’s approach favours a dynamic long-term basis for comparisons between societies and focuses on the exchange of information and goods across Eurasia to argue that the comparative advantage one society gains has been only temporary, swinging between different parts of Eurasia a number of times over the millennia. Goody suggests that China developed an active mercantile urban culture before Europe. Cities and towns with their mixture of luxury and learning, should not be seen as inevitably subordinate to centralized power structures in both eastern and western Eurasia. Goody criticizes the theoretical assumptions and the handling of evidence of Perry Anderson, Fernand Braudel, Norbert Elias, Moses Finlay, David Landes, Karl Marx, Joseph Needham, Immanuel Wallerstein and Max Weber. His concern is that the master categories of world history, such as antiquity, feudalism and capitalism, have been developed against a background of the particular European trajectory, then projected onto the world at large. Goody remains sceptical, not just about eurocentrism, but also the additional danger of being eurocentric about ethnocentricity, which he regards as a trap that postcolonialism and postmodernism frequently fall into. (shrink)

This article argues that the peculiarly ‘common law tradition’ separation of common law and equity had at its origins a principled basis in the concept of ‘conscience’. But ‘conscience’ here did not mean primarily either the modern lay idea, or the ‘conscience’ of Christopher St German's exposition. Rather, it referred to the judge's, and the defendant's, private knowledge of facts which could not be proved at common law because of medieval common law conceptions of documentary evidence and of trial by (...) jury. The concept of a jurisdiction peculiarly concerned with this issue allowed the ‘English bill’ procedure to be held back to a limited subject area rather than—as in Scotland and the Netherlands—overwhelming the old legal system. By the later 17th century, however, the concept of conscience had lost its specific content, leaving behind the problem, still with us, of justifying the separation of ‘equity’. (shrink)

The archive is the place for the storage of documents and records. With the emergence of the modern state, it became the storehouse for the material from which national memories were constructed. Archives also housed the proliferation of files and case histories as populations were subjected to disciplinary power and surveillance. Behind all scholarly research stands the archive. The ultimate plausibility of a piece of research depends on the grounds, the sources, from which the account is extracted and compiled. An (...) expanding and unstable globalizing archive presents particular problems for classifying and legitimating knowledge. Increasingly the boundaries between the archive and everyday life become blurred through digital recording and storage technologies. Not only does the volume of recordable archive material increase dramatically (e.g. the Internet), but the volume of material seen worthy of archiving increases too, as the criteria of what can, or should be, archived expands. Life increasingly becomes lived in the shadow of the archive. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconcile the claims that the mind is both flat (Chater, 2018) and highly rational (Oaksford & Chater, 2020). According to the flat mind hypothesis, the mind is a mass of inconsistent and contradictory fragments of experience. However, standard accounts of rationality from formal epistemology argue that to be rational, our beliefs must be consistent, and we must believe all the logical consequences of our beliefs. A social account of rationality is developed based on Brandom's (1994) logical (...) expressivism, in which respecting the norms of logic and probability theory is still central but where these standards apply to our public commitments in social dialogical contexts rather than to our individual belief systems (Skovgaard-Olsen, 2017). According to this account, even if someone's individual beliefs are inconsistent, they cannot be condemned as irrational if they acknowledge the inconsistency and seek to resolve it. It is shown how this approach interacts with people's fragmented and shallow world knowledge, and its social distribution yields some counterintuitive consequences, such as it sometimes being rational individually not seeking to resolve contradictions. Other consequences of this social expressivist approach are considered, including for dual process theories of reasoning, our view of beliefs, the status of logic, and Fodor's (1983) view of central systems. It is concluded that people can have flat minds and yet be highly rational. (shrink)

‘Marital faithfulness’ refers to faithful love for a spouse or lover to whom one is committed, rather than the narrower idea of sexual fidelity. The distinction is clearly marked in traditional wedding vows. A commitment to love faithfully is central: ‘to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part… and thereto I plight [pledge] thee my troth [faithfulness]’. (...) Sexual fidelity is promised in a subordinate clause, symbolizing its supportive role in promoting love's constancy: ‘and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her/him.’. (shrink)

Computational-level models proposed in recent Bayesian cognitive science predict both the “biased” and correct responses on many tasks. So, rather than possessing two reasoning systems, people can generate both possible responses within a single system. Consequently, although an account of why people make one response rather than another is required, dual processes of reasoning may not be.

Green, Over, and Pyne's (1997) paper (hereafter referred to as ''GOP") seems to provide a novel approach to examining probabilistic effects in Wason's selection task. However, in this comment, it is argued that their chosen experimental paradigm confounds most of their results. The task demands of the externalisation procedure (Green, 1995) enforce a correlation between card selections and the probability of finding a counterexample, which was the main finding of GOP's experiments. Consequently GOP cannot argue that their data support Kirby's (...) (1994) proposal that people's normal strategy in the selection task is to seek falsifying evidence. Despite this methodological problem, effects of the probability of the antecedent ( p ) of a conditional rule, if p then q , predicted by Kirby (1994) and by Oaksford and Chater (1994) were observed, although they were inconsistent between Experiments 1 and 2. Moreover, the probability estimates that GOP collected, which are not vulnerable to that methodological criticism, do support the idea that when P ( p ) > P ( q ), participants revise P ( p ) down as suggested by Oaksford and Chater (1994). (shrink)

Espino, Santamaria, and Garcia-Madruga (2000) report three results on the time taken to respond to a probe word occurring as end term in the premises of a syllogistic argument. They argue that these results can only be predicted by the theory of mental models. It is argued that two of these results, on differential reaction times to end-terms occurring in different premises and in different figures, are consistent with Chater and Oaksford's (1999) probability heuristics model (PHM). It is argued that (...) the third finding, on different reaction times between figures, does not address the issue of processing difficulty where PHM predicts no differences between figures. It is concluded that Espino et al.'s results do not discriminate between theories of syllogistic reasoning as effectively as they propose. (shrink)

This commentary questions the claim that Take-The-Best provides a cognitively more plausible account of cue utilisation in decision making because it is faster and more frugal than alternative algorithms. It is also argued that the experimental evidence for Take-The-Best, or non-integrative algorithms, is weak and appears consistent with people normally adopting an integrative approach to cue utilisation.