It is often supposed that the spectacular successes of our modern mathematical sciences support a lofty vision of a world completely ordered by one single elegant theory. In this book Nancy Cartwright argues to the contrary. When we draw our image of the world from the way modern science works - as empiricism teaches us we should - we end up with a world where some features are precisely ordered, others are given to rough regularity and still others behave (...) in their own diverse ways. This patchwork makes sense when we realise that laws are very special productions of nature, requiring very special arrangements for their generation. Combining classic and newly written essays on physics and economics, The Dappled World carries important philosophical consequences and offers serious lessons for both the natural and the social sciences. (shrink)

How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resources provided by the (...) cognitive-social-cultural context of the problem; and dynamic processes of reasoning that extend ordinary cognition. Focusing on the third factor, Nersessian draws on cognitive science research and historical accounts of scientific practices to show how scientific and ordinary cognition lie on a continuum, and how problem-solving practices in one illuminate practices in the other. (shrink)

How our everyday interactions as neighbors shape—and sometimes undermine—democracy "Love thy neighbor" is an impossible exhortation. Good neighbors greet us on the street and do small favors, but neighbors also startle us with sounds at night and unleash their demons on us, they monitor and reproach us, and betray us to authorities. The moral principles prescribed for friendship, civil society, and democratic public life apply imperfectly to life around home, where we interact day to day without the formal institutions, rules (...) of conduct, and means of enforcement that guide us in other settings. In Good Neighbors, Nancy Rosenblum explores how encounters among neighbors create a democracy of everyday life, which has been with us since the beginning of American history and is expressed in settler, immigrant, and suburban narratives and in novels, poetry, and popular culture. During disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, the democracy of everyday life is a resource for neighbors who improvise rescue and care. Degraded, this framework can give way to betrayal by neighbors, as faced by the Japanese Americans interned during World War II, or to terrible violence such as the lynching of African Americans. Under extreme conditions the barest act of neighborliness is a bulwark against total ethical breakdown. The elements of the democracy of everyday life—reciprocity, speaking out, and "live and let live"—comprise a democratic ideal not reducible to public principles of justice or civic virtue, but it is no less important. The democracy of everyday life, Rosenblum argues, is the deep substrate of democracy in America and can be its saving remnant. (shrink)

What is commonly called Reichenbach’s “Principle of the Common Cause” is not a general criterion for a common cause, as many philosophers nowadays suppose. Examples include W. Salmon in his accounts of causal processes and Bas van Fraassen in his new book on quantum mechanics, in which he argues that the quantum world has no causal structure. This does not matter for Reichenbach’s purposes. Indeed it should not be surprising from his point of view that in different situations we need (...) different criteria or different methods for testing for the same phenomenon. The third thesis begins from a question: Where do probabilistic criteria for causality come from? (shrink)

Approximately 20% of adult cancer patients are eligible to participate in a clinical trial, but only 2.5-9% do so. Accrual is even less for minority and medically underserved populations. As a result, critical life-saving treatments and quality of life services developed from research studies may not address their needs. This study questions the utility of the bioethical concern with therapeutic misconception (TM), a misconception that occurs when research subjects fail to distinguish between clinical research and ordinary treatment, and therefore attribute (...) therapeutic intent to research procedures in the safety net setting. This paper provides ethnographic insight into the ways in which research is discussed and related to standard treatment. (shrink)

Efforts to decrease errors in health care are directed at prevention rather than at managing a situation when a mistake has occurred. Consequently, nurses and other health care providers may not know how to respond properly and may lack sufficient support to make a healthy recovery from the mental anguish and emotional suffering that often accompany making mistakes. This article explores the conceptualization of mistakes and the ethical response to making a mistake. There are three parts to an ethical response (...) to error: disclosure, apology and amends. Honesty and humility are discussed as important virtues that facilitate coping and personal growth for the health care provider who is involved in mistakes. In conclusion, a healthy view of nursing practice and mistake making is one that prevents error but, when prevention is not possible, accepts fallibility as part of the human condition and achieves the best possible outcome for all. (shrink)

Work by social constructionists over the past decade and a half has reenforced the epistemological pessimist's despair that our system of science could ever be a mirror of nature. Realists argue that the amazing success of modern science at precise prediction and control indicates just the contrary. In response, social constructionists often point out that these successes seldom apply to the world as it comes naturally, but only as it is reconstructed in the scientist's laboratory. But this does not explain (...) how scientific accounts, which are as wide of the mark as constructionists suppose in their general descriptions of the natural world, could be so effective in a limited environment, even if that environment is as benignly constructed as possible. This paper suggests that a more wholistic view of nature than modern science usually presupposes may provide an answer. (shrink)

Editorial peer reviewers play an important role in shaping the direction of knowledge growth of their discipline. Recent concern over reports of peer review misconduct has led some to advocate the establishment of a code of ethics for peer reviewers. Such a code should include guidelines for the discipline and for society at large, but it should also contain guidelines for the authors whose manuscripts are reviewed. Peer reviewers have a special obligation to show beneficence and fairness or impartiality towards (...) the authors for whom they review. The practical application of these two ethical concepts is discussed. (shrink)

In _The Deconstruction of Sex_, Jean-Luc Nancy and Irving Goh discuss how a deconstructive approach to sex helps us negotiate discourses about sex and foster a better understanding of how sex complicates our everyday existence in the age of #MeToo. Throughout their conversation, Nancy and Goh engage with topics ranging from relation, penetration, and subjection to touch, erotics, and jouissance. They show how despite its entrenchment in social norms and centrality to our being-in-the-world, sex lacks a clearly defined (...) essence. At the same time, they point to the potentiality of literature to inscribe the senses of sex. In so doing, Nancy and Goh prompt us to reconsider our relations with ourselves and others through sex in more sensitive, respectful, and humble ways without bracketing the troubling aspects of sex. (shrink)

: The idea of an exact science unified and complete has been advocated throughout the history of thought, but the sciences continue to cover only small patches of the world we live in. We may dream that the exact sciences will some day cover everything. But I argue that the very ways we do our exact sciences when they are most successfully done seems likely to confine them within limited domains. I discuss three cases to illustrate: the use of broad-scale (...) non-experimental statistics for causal modelling across the social sciences, an economic model on skill-loss during unemployment, and the quantum theory of superconductivity. In all cases, where we can expect exact order depends on where we can fit our models. And by the nature of how models do-and should-get constructed in exact science, they fit readily onto only very special bits of the world around us. I also maintain that an ill-supported belief in the universality of our favourite exact science can lead us to adopt bad methodologies for carrying out the central aim of the sciences, namely to make the world the way it ought to be. (shrink)

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where (...) they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.Cormac McCarthy, The Road. (shrink)

This volume features new findings by nine interdisciplinary teams of researchers on the topics of self, motivation, and virtue. Nine chapters bringing together scholars from the fields of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and sociology advance our substantive understanding of these important topics, and showcase a variety of research methods of interdisciplinary interest. Essays on Buddhism and the self in the context of romantic relationships, the development of personal projects and virtue, the notion of self-distancing and its moral impact, virtues as self-integrated (...) traits, humility and the self in loving encounter, the importance of nation and faith in motivating virtue in western and non-western countries, roles for the self and virtue in eudaimonic growth, overcoming spiritual violence and sacramental shame in Christian communities, and an investigation into the moral self highlight the range and diversity of topics explored in this volume. The concept of deep integration also characterizes this work: each member of the interdisciplinary teams was fully and equally invested in their project from inception to completion. This approach invites teams to examine their disciplinary assumptions, rethink familiar concepts, and adjust methodologies in order to view their topics with fresh eyes. The result is not only new findings of substantive and methodological interest, but also an interesting glimpse into the thinking of the researchers as they sought interdisciplinary common ground in their research. Self, Motivation, and Virtue will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, moral psychology, neuroscience, and sociology who are working on these topics. (shrink)

This collection of original essays examines innovations in both the theory and practice of classical philology. The chapters address interdisciplinary methods in a variety of ways. Some apply theoretical insights derived from other disciplines, such as folklore studies, performance theory, feminist criticism, and the like, to classical texts. Others examine the relationships between classics and cultural studies, popular literature, film, art history, and other related disciplines. Others, again, look to the evolution of theoretical methods within the discipline of classics. Taken (...) together, the essays offer a spectrum of new approaches in the classics and their place within the profession. (shrink)

There is danger in stressing commonalities among methods because the differences matter in fixing the meaning of our claims. Different methods can, and often do, test the same claim. But it takes a strong network of theory and empirical results to ensure that. Failing that, we are likely to fall into inference by pun. We use one set of methods to establish a claim and then draw inferences licensed by a similar-sounding claim that calls for different methods of testing. Our (...) inferences fail, and bridges we build depending on them fall down. (shrink)

Are things in the real world governed by the mathematical equations of fundamental theories in physics? If we take seriously the practice of fitting facts into equations, the answer should be no. To give a mathematical description of a real phenomenon requires bridge principles. However, given the constraints of theory, even these employ highly idealized fictional objects and processes, more akin to artful theatrical distortions than to true descriptions of things in the world.

In the context of linear causal systems, ‘How to Get Causes from Probabilities’ shows that given correct background information about other causal facts, certain probabilistic relations are both necessary and sufficient for the truth of new causal facts. This is done by showing how simple structural models from econometrics can be read causally if the conditions for identification of the model are met, and a generalized version of Reichenbach's principle of the common cause is assumed.

Ce texte de Jean-Luc Nancy est une « divagation » pensante sur ce qu’évoquent les iris, ces fleurs dont le nom fait penser à celui d’un auteur qui a sans cesse joué avec ce type de consonances et de résonnances, entre les mots, les choses et les idées. Iris est une déesse qui importe à la philosophie : elle est la messagère des dieux, et comme un arc-en-ciel qui ne cesse de susciter l’étonnement. Nous sommes invités à emprunter quelques-unes (...) de ces infinies bifurcations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance by Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy, and Margaret PfeilNancy M. RourkeThe Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy, and Margaret Pfeil new york: palgrave macmillan, 2013. 203 pp. $90.00As a white American Catholic ethicist, I often envy my Protestant counterparts’ legacy of acknowledging and fighting (...) racism. Catholic moral theology lacks Protestantism’s bodies of literature, activism, and bold ecclesial statements addressing racism in the United States. (For more on this, see Bryan Massingale’s Racial Justice and the Catholic Church.) The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration demonstrates how Catholicism might approach American racism using several elements of Catholic theology.The book opens with series editor Mary Jo Iozzo’s introduction to the Content and Context in Theological Ethics series, of which this is the fifth book. A personal and reflective foreword by Sr. Helen Prejean follows. Then the book’s argument begins with a description of the United States’ practice of mass incarceration and brief discussions of what is meant by “whiteness” and “complicity.” This book employs a phenomenological understanding of race and of whiteness, taking whiteness as habitus. The literature about this approach to race and to identity is enormous, but familiarity with that literature is not necessary to follow this book’s presentation, argument, or use of the idea.Each of the book’s three authors has written a two-chapter section. Alex Mikulich’s explanation of white habitus speaks on levels of social thought and of the individual’s experience. Laurie Cassidy’s section looks at the culture of hyperincarceration and the development of the “dangerous black man” myth, and Margaret Pfeil’s section on spirituality works from the beatitudes, John of the Cross, and a wide array of other sources to describe a political spirituality of resistance for white Christians.This book would be most useful to masters-level graduate students in theological ethics or anyone preparing to begin teaching in areas of ethics related to racism or criminal justice (particularly in Catholic institutional settings). Rather than drawing exclusively on Catholic social teaching to talk about white participation in racism, these authors more satisfyingly put many Catholic traditions into action. For example, the book demonstrates careful use of the concepts of complicity, responsibility, participation, and intention; it considers specific [End Page 195] actions while maintaining focus on systems’ structures; and it uses a wide range of Catholic thinkers, including Metz, Copeland, Soelle, Gutiérrez, Carmelite Sr. Constance FitzGerald, Lonergan, Day, and John of the Cross.This book assumes and asserts that racism still exists, that whiteness exists and aims to make itself invisible, and that racism is kept alive through social structures that flow from white habitus. However, the book does not assume the reader’s agreement with any of these. Instead, the book first makes the case that these things are true and then takes next steps toward responsive practices of resistance. Rhetorically tinged homiletic shortcuts are not used to bolster this argument. For example, in similar works, the question of moral culpability for racist social structures is sometimes managed only with a discussion of how such structures distribute benefits and harms unequally. In this book, that argument is not used alone but in tandem with a careful look at the intention of one’s participation in such structures.Minor problems exist. The book would have benefited from one more round of editing to eliminate minor punctuation and writing problems, and the Catholic moral concept of “scandal” receives little systematic attention despite its presence in the title. Otherwise, the book demonstrates well what Catholic moral theology could do if applied to American white racism. Here’s hoping that this is just the beginning of more such scholarship.Nancy M. RourkeCanisius CollegeCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

As a population, people who self‐identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender face significant risks to health and difficulty in obtaining medical and behavioral health care, relative to the general public. These issues are especially challenging in safety‐net health care institutions, which serve a range of vulnerable populations with limited access, limited options, and significant health disparities. Safety‐net hospitals, particularly public hospitals with fewer resources than academic medical centers and other nonprofit hospitals that also serve as safety nets, are under (...) immense financial pressures. However, with the introduction in 2011 of standards for LGBT inclusion by The Joint Commission, showing progress on LGBT health care has become a compliance issue for hospitals. And because the health care community itself has contributed to LGBT health disparities through prejudice, disrespect, or inadequate knowledge that have made it difficult for LGB and especially T people to seek care or to obtain the care they need, there is a moral case for allocating scarce resources to this population: we owe them some investment in righting wrongs that the health care system itself has produced.So, where to begin in the typical safety‐net hospital or clinic? Beyond staff training, which is essential and for which good models now exist, what does justice demand from a service‐utilization perspective? Given the range of health care services that an LGBT person in the safety net may need or want, how should we set priorities? And what can't we promise to do for this member of our community? (shrink)