Background: Besides regulatory learning skills, learning also requires students to relate to their social context and negotiate it as they transition and adjust to medical training. As such, there is a need to consider and explore the role of social and cultural aspects in student learning, particularly in problem-based learning, where the learning paradigm differs from what most students have previously experienced. In this article, we report on the findings of a study exploring first-year medical students’ experiences during the first (...) semester of an undergraduate problem-based learning medical program at an African medical school. Method: We employed a qualitative case study approach using in-depth interviews with 23 first-year medical students. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years. All students were bi/multilingual (some spoke three to five languages), with English as the learning language. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis to systematically identify and analyze patterns in the data using the Braun and Clarke framework. Results: Before medical school, students worked hard to compete for admission to medical school, were primarily taught using a teacher-centered approach, and preferred working alone. At the beginning of medical school, students found it challenging to understand the problem-based learning process, the role of the case, speaking and working effectively in a group, managing a heavy workload, and taking increased responsibility for their learning. By the end of the first semester, most students were handling the workload better, were more comfortable with their peers and facilitators, and appreciated the value of the problem-based learning approach. Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of interrogating contextual sociocultural factors that could cause tension when implementing problem-based learning in non-western medical schools. Adjustment to problem-based learning requires a conceptual and pedagogic shift towards learner-centered practice, particularly concerning self direction, the role of the case, and collaborative learning. As such, there is a need to develop and implement research informed learning development programs that enable students to reflect on their sociocultural beliefs and practices, and enhance their regulatory learning competence to optimize meaningful and early engagement with the problem based learning process. (shrink)

Wright, Ken Review of: Hope, by Stan Van Hooft, Acumen Publishing, Durham, 2011, pp. viii + 152.

Wright, Ken Review of: Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities, by Martha C. Nussbaum, Princeton University Press, 2012, xv + 168 pp. $27.95.

Wright, Ken Review of: How much is Enough?: Money and the good life, by Robert and Edward Skidelsky, Other Press, New York, 2012, x + 241 pp., $20.07.

Wright, Ken Review of: Matter and what matters: Some science for the religious and some religion for scientists, Lionel Sharman, Steele Roberts, Wellington, 2013, 116 pp., NZD 24.99.

Wright, Ken Review(s) of: A more perfect heaven: How copernicus revolutionised the cosmos, by Dava Sobel, Bloomsbury, London, 2011; 274 pp.; hardback $35.00.

Wright, Ken Review(s) of: Universe from nothing: Why there is something rather than nothing, by Lawrence M. Krauss, Free Press, New York 2012; xix + 202 pp.; hardback, $29.99.

THE POINT of studying ethics, so Aristotle reminds us, is to become, ourselves, actually good. But surely we must wonder--as did the Greeks--whether it is in fact through studying ethics that we become good, or whether we ought perhaps look rather to the subtler influences of role models, both public and private, and the practical context of home and school environment. The question is as persistent today as it was in classical Greece: How is it that human beings come to (...) lead lives of genuine human quality? This is the rock-bottom question that Meno puts to Socrates in the opening exchange of the dialogue that bears his name. It is obviously a question of crucial import for all of us, and equally obviously a question of deep concern for Plato. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on Sexual Difference: Metaphysics, Biology, Politics by Marguerite DeslauriersRosemary TwomeyMarguerite Deslauriers. Aristotle on Sexual Difference: Metaphysics, Biology, Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 376. Hardback, $110.00.Aristotle on Sexual Difference is the latest addition to a growing literature on Aristotle’s views on women and other female animals. Like much of that literature, it surveys both his biological views and his political and ethical commitments. The writing is (...) lucid, and the book is well organized. As described in the introduction, the book defends two overarching theses. First, Deslauriers claims that, unlike some of his predecessors who either saw women as an unalloyed evil (Hesiod, Empedocles, and Plato, among others) or thought of sexual difference as ideally eliminated (Plato again), Aristotle believes that females are valuable, albeit inferior. Second, she finds a biological basis for Aristotle’s description of women’s reason as not authoritative, which she argues is the result not of an intellectual deficit but of a moral one.The first chapter gives an overview of how Aristotle’s predecessors approached questions about sexual difference: How did females first come to exist? What distinguishes them biologically? And how are those differences reflected in the role that women play both in the actual state and in ideal states like Plato’s kallipolis? Here Deslauriers seeks to highlight those accounts according to which women are not only inferior but also bad, since she will later argue that, unlike some earlier thinkers, Aristotle sees females as good.Part of Deslauriers’s case for the significance of females comes from the role they play in reproduction. In chapter 2, she points to the cool heart that Aristotle says is distinctive of females. Their lower body heat prevents them from concocting blood into sperm, but it does allow them to produce katamênia (menses), which is necessary as the material cause of offspring. Deslauriers argues convincingly that Aristotle thought males and females share a form and an end; as such, they are not essentially different. Instead, the difference between them is material: a female fetus is accidentally produced when either the semen or the menses is imperfectly concocted (116). When Aristotle says that females are deformed men, Deslauriers argues that he does not mean that they fail to achieve the end set by the form, but only that they do so to a lesser extent than males do. Both sexes have as an end “generat[ing] another such as itself” (DA II.4, 416b24), which in turn requires that they produce fertile residue. Since the menses that females produce is the material cause of the fetus, it is, she says, a fertile residue, albeit a residue less fertile than the semen acting as the efficient cause of the fetus.In chapter 3, Deslauriers considers the role of women in the city. Here she emphasizes that Aristotle describes rule over women, unlike rule over slaves and children, as constitutional (politikôs). Aristotle notoriously claims that women have the deliberative capacity in a nonauthoritative way, but rather than highlighting his assertion that their deliberative capacity lacks authority, Deslauriers foregrounds the fact that at least he thought that women possess such a capacity. The deliberative capacity’s lack of authority does not imply, she claims, that women are intellectually inferior. Rather, Aristotle thinks that women lack the authority to set collective ends. They “acquire virtue by borrowing the phronêsis of a natural ruler” (169), which Deslauriers describes as a moral rather than intellectual failing. Evocatively, she compares women’s role in the city to that of a nonvoting committee member (183). [End Page 501]Chapter 4 attempts to locate women’s need to borrow the phronêsis of another in their biological nature. One possibility is that Aristotle thinks that women’s coldness affects their perceptual capacity and therefore their rational imagination. Deslauriers thinks that this interpretation is inconsistent with Aristotle’s claim that women do have the deliberative faculty, since it would seem to follow that women would be faulty at practical deliberation more generally, not just at decision-making (230). Instead, she prefers an interpretation according to which women’s relative coldness and moistness weaken their thumos... (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a secular conception of blasphemy as a grave moral wrong. I argue for this conception on the basis of a neo-Aristotelian conception of virtue ethics. Specifically, I argue that there is a virtue of intellectual fidelity to matters of great importance: morally permissible ends. In order to structure our lives around such ends, which is essential to living a characteristic human life, we must consistently bear in mind what we know to be true about (...) our ends and not succumb to a temptation to belittle our ends when we struggle in our attempts to realize them. Conversely, a disposition to believe falsehoods about morally permissible ends is a vice, and acts that express that character trait are blasphemous and wrong. Likewise, I argue that it is wrong to belittle or promote falsehoods about the morally permissible ends of others, for we must recognize that in pursuing morally permissible ends of various sorts, people are realizing their humanity in worthwhile ways. (shrink)

Wright, Ken Review of: Born bad: Original sin and the making of the western world, by James Boyce, Black Inc., Collingwood, Vic., 2014, pp. 260, $34.99.

Wright, Ken Review of: Humanism for inquiring minds, by Barbara Smoker, Conway Hall Ethical Society, London, 6th ed., 2013, 80 pp. 6.50 pounds.

Wright, Ken Review of: Taking god to school: The end of Australia's egalitarian education?, by Marion Maddox, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2014, pp. xxiii + 248, $29.99.

[Crispin Wright] Two kinds of epistemological sceptical paradox are reviewed and a shared assumption, that warrant to accept a proposition has to be the same thing as having evidence for its truth, is noted. 'Entitlement', as used here, denotes a kind of rational warrant that counter-exemplifies that identification. The paper pursues the thought that there are various kinds of entitlement and explores the possibility that the sceptical paradoxes might receive a uniform solution if entitlement can be made to reach (...) sufficiently far. Three kinds of entitlement are characterised and given prima facie support, and a fourth is canvassed. Certain foreseeable limitations of the suggested anti-sceptical strategy are noted. The discussion is grounded, overall, in a conception of the sceptical paradoxes not as directly challenging our having any warrant for large classes of our beliefs but as crises of intellectual conscience for one who wants to claim that we do. /// [ Martin Davies] Wright's account of sceptical arguments and his use of the idea of epistemic entitlement are reviewed. His notion of non-transmission of epistemic warrant is explained and a concern about his notion of entitlement is developed. An epistemological framework different from Wright's is described and several notions of entitlement are introduced. One of these, negative entitlement, is selected for more detailed comparison with Wright's notion. Thereafter, the paper shows how the two notions of entitlement have contrasting consequences for non-transmission of warrant and how they go naturally with two conceptions of the presuppositions of epistemic projects. Problems for negative entitlement are explained and solutions are proposed. (shrink)

Wright, Ken Review(s) of: Blind spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right And What to Do about It, by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel Princeton University Press 2011, x, 191pp.

This article offers an account of settler witnessing of residential school survivor testimony that avoids the politics of recognition and the pitfalls of colonial empathy. It knits together the concepts of bearing witness, Indigenous storytelling, and affective reckoning. Following the work of Kelly Oliver, it argues that witnessing involves a reaching beyond ourselves and responsiveness to the agency and self-determination of the other. Given the cultural genocide of residential schools, responsiveness to the other require openness to and nurturing of Indigenous (...) ways of knowing and being. In order to illustrate the complexities and challenges of settler witnessing, the author reflects on her experiences in attending six of the TRC’s national events and, in particular, what she has learned from Frederick “Fredda” Paul, Passamaquoddy Elder, healer, storyteller, and residential school survivor. The article analyzes (1) aesthetics and emotions in the staging of TRC events and (2) making meaning over time and the temporality of transitional justice. (shrink)

Wright, Ken Review of: Against the spirit of the age, by Brian J. Coman, Connor Court Publishing, Ballarat, Vic, 2015, pp., xiii + 181.

Wright, Ken Review of: Moral tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them, by Joshua Greene, Atlantic Books, London, 2014, pp.422.

This book is for any among us who has ever had a discussion that turned on the subject of “happiness” which went nowhere, or nowhere good, because the word “happiness” itself has become so ambiguous that it seems at times to have lost any common meaning. Deal Hudson here clearly articulates the range of meaning packed into the word, by contrasting happiness and satisfaction, well-being and well-feeling, objective eudaimonism and the view that any subjective profession of happiness is unimpeachable. Since (...) the ascendancy of one or the other views has such radical personal, intellectual, and social implications, any of us who are interested in speaking more clearly with each other, across lives or disciplines or generations, might do well to take this book as a starting point for that conversation. (shrink)

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is tasked with facing the hundred-year history of Indian Residential Schools. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is frequently invoked in relation to the Canadian TRC, perhaps because this is one of the few TRCs worldwide that Canadians know. Whilst the South African TRC is mainly applauded as an international success, I argue that loose analogizing is often more emotive than concise. Whilst much indeed can be drawn from the South African experience, it (...) is important to specify the Canada–South Africa analogy. In this article, I do so by focussing on the institutional approach to truth and how this relates to issues of settler/White denial. The South African experience teaches that narrow approaches to truth collude with superficial views of reconciliation that deny continuities of violence. Consequently, I argue that Indigenous–settler reconciliation requires a broad truth that locates residential schools on a continuum of violence, linking extraordinary abuses with structural injustices and historic colonization with lived relationships. (shrink)

Psychoneural reductionists sometimes claim that sufficient amounts of lower-level explanatory achievement preclude further contributions from higher-level psychological research. Ostensibly, with nothing left to do, the effect of such preclusion on psychological explanation is extinction. Reductionist arguments for preclusion have recently involved a reorientation within the philosophical foundations of neuroscience---namely, away from the philosophical foundations and toward the neuroscience. In this chapter, I review a successful reductive explanation of an aspect of reward function in terms of dopaminergic operations of the mesocorticolimbic (...) system in order to demonstrate why preclusion/extinction claims are dubious. (shrink)

James Nguyen & Roman Frigg (2022). Scientific Representation. Cambridge University Press, 90pp., €21.23 (Paperback), ISBN: 9781009009157.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Aims The purpose of this literature review was to explore the psychosocial implications of long-term survival for people affected by cancer by systematically examining published research evidence. Key findings 283 abstracts of papers were retrieved and checked and 33 studies relating to the implications of long-term survival subjected to detailed scrutiny. This review suggests that the majority of long-term cancer survivors cope well and enjoy good QoL. However, there are areas of concern which warrant attention. Whilst this review did not (...) set out to review physical problems experienced in the long-term, long-term physical consequences of cancer and its treatment were associated with poorer QoL and more psychological distress and sexual problems. Other long term concerns included anxiety regarding recurrence, financial difficulties and reduced social and emotional support. Long term survivors of lung, head and neck cancers appear particularly vulnerable to long term problems although there were few studies involving people with these cancers in this review. A number of limitations in the current evidence base were highlighted. Little research was conducted in the UK and raises questions as to the relevance of the findings for a different environment or culture where patients may have different attitudes to cancer survival and receive different treatments. Also, when looking at practical issues for long-term survivors such as ability to obtain insurance, or employment matters, then country-specific factors will be important. (shrink)

Essay on Cuyckens, Dirven, & Taylor (eds.) Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics, with emphasis on work on polysemy, prototypicality, and contextual modulation.

Wright, Ken Review(s) of: What money can't buy: The moral limits of markets, by Michael J. Sandel, Allen Lane, London, 20012, 244 pp., hardback $24.90.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 562-564 [Access article in PDF] Louis E. Loeb. Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 280. Cloth, $42.50. As is well known, in the last year of his life, Hume repudiated his Treatise of Human Nature in an Advertisement that he had placed at the front of the volume of his writings containing (...) his mature philosophical works. He asked that only the two Enquiries and other later philosophical writings be regarded as the source of "his philosophical sentiments and principles." But not leaving it at that, he admitted that there were "negligences in his... reasoning" and in his manner of expressing himself in the Treatise. More than twenty years earlier, Hume had admitted that publishing the Treatise in its imperfect state in his youth constituted "a very great Mistake in Conduct." But he did not have sufficient foresight to see that the admission he made in his old age constituted at least as bad an indiscretion of the same kind. Acknowledging mistakes in reasoning and in expression for a philosopher [End Page 562] is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Two bulls in fact: the philosopher and the "reconstructive" historian of philosophy. The former is given ample work in correcting the older philosopher's mistakes; the latter in devising an interpretation of a text that apparently leaves itself open to many. Hence the immense popularity that Hume's Treatise of Human Nature has enjoyed in the two and a half centuries since he asked that it be disregarded. Who cares about "his philosophical sentiments and principles" anyway?Louis Loeb's study of epistemology in Hume's Treatise is both an exercise in "reconstructive history of philosophy" and a philosophical emendation of Hume's (reconstructed) "philosophical system." The first task is pursued in the first five chapters of the book; the second in the last two. "Reconstructive history" as practiced by Loeb does not try to provide "a balanced commentary" but rather "an illuminating and fruitful interpretive perspective" (viii) on what a philosopher has written. Loeb's perspective on Hume's epistemology is derived from details of Hume's psychology of the imagination developed mainly in sections 9-13 of part 3 of book 1, details which Hume himself considered "unnecessary" to the exposition of his mature epistemology in the first Enquiry. Loeb's philosophical emendations derive from his claim that Hume made certain mistakes which led him to despair of the success of his project and settle for sceptical conclusions in part 4. In the last two chapters of the book Loeb seeks to save Hume from his own sceptical conclusions.Loeb regards his account as a development and correction of the kind of naturalistic interpretation of Hume's epistemology that was originally developed by Norman Kemp Smith (21). A naturalistic theory of justification, according to Loeb, is one that grounds beliefs that one already considers to be justified in the psychological mechanisms that generate them. Whereas Kemp Smith argued that justification depends on the "irresistibility" or "inevitability" of the beliefs, Loeb holds that justification depends upon what he calls the "stability" of the belief generating mechanisms. A belief forming mechanism is stable just in case it produces a consistent set of beliefs that will stand up even under "reflection." For example, in part 3 of book 1 (81, 159, 238), Hume presents beliefs based on cause and effect as stable in this sense, and contrasts them with "unphilosophical" belief forming mechanisms such as indoctrination (education). Unlike the former, the latter mechanism generates beliefs that "are frequently contrary... to themselves in different times and places and is never on that account recognized by philosophers" (Treatise117). Furthermore, we have a positive motivation to accept stable mechanisms in that they produce ease or relief from psychological tension. Loeb links this goal both with the ancient Pyrrhonian quest for ataraxia (6-9) and with Hume's moral theory, where he seeks a general point of view as a relief from... (shrink)