In the past ten years, work by K€olbel, MacFarlane, Richard and others has rekindled old debates on relativism. In this important contribution to those debates, the authors defend a ‘mainstream’ view about the contents of thought and talk that they call Simplicity against the assaults from such ‘analytic relativists’.

Open peer commentary on the article “Learning about Urban Sustainability with Digital Stories: Promoting Collaborative Creativity from a Constructionist Perspective” by Maria Daskolia, Chronis Kynigos & Katerina Makri. Upshot: Creativity, collaboration and learning are fascinatingly messy and interconnected processes. Does knowledge develop by engaging in a collaborative creative process, or does existing knowledge allow us to create more creative artefacts? Does one build upon the other in a bricolage process, familiar to constructionist learning experiences? If so, how can we best (...) facilitate this type of learning? This OPC raises a number of questions that it does not attempt to answer but raises them to draw attention to the complexity of the phenomena under investigation. (shrink)

“A wise person makes a distinction or says nothing.” There are few distinctions as important as the nature (divided or united) of power. Pluralism becomes clear when divided into DP visitor pluralism and UP insular pluralism.

The philosophical study of Confucian thought seeks to both understand the nature of Confucian thought in its historical and cultural context and relate it in an intellectually fruitful manner to contemporary philosophical discourse. Someone engaged in such a study will be pulled inward toward approximating the perspectives of the Confucian thinkers set in the context of their concerns and activities, and pulled outward away from the Confucians’ world of ideas to relate them to our present concerns and interests, specifically those (...) that characterize contemporary philosophical discourse. These two psychological forces, the inward pull and outward pull, can be combined in different ways in the psychological orientation that underlies such a study. This essay presents and discusses the merits of an approach that it describes as “studying Confucian thought from the inside out.” On this approach, the inward pull is maximally dominant, and even as the outward pull leads us to move beyond the Confucians’ own perspectives to relate their ideas to our present concerns and interests, we at the same time seek to do so in a way that is maximally continuous with their perspectives. Such an approach helps draw out the distinctive characteristics and insights of Confucian thought, and also furthers a direction of inquiry that the Confucian thinkers themselves advocate. (shrink)

During the past few decades, philosophers of biology have debated the issue of reductionism versus anti-reductionism, with both sides often claiming a ‘pluralist’ position. However, both sides also tend to focus on a single research paradigm, which analyzes living things in terms of certain macromolecular components. I offer a case study where biologists pursue other analytic pathways, in a tradition of quantitative genetics that originates with the initially purely mathematical theories of R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall (...) Wright in the 1930s. Aster Models offers a class of statistical models designed for studying the fitness of plant and animal populations, by integrating the measurements of separate, sequential, non-normally distributed fitness components in novel ways. Their work generates important theoretical and practical results that do not require elaboration by molecular biology, and thus serves as a counterexample to the claims of philosophers whose ‘pluralism’ still harbors reductionist assumptions. (shrink)

The linkage between ethical judgment and ethical behavioral intention was investigated. The Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES) was used to measure ethical judgment ratings of hypothetical behaviors in retail, sales, and automobile repair scenarios. Confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 300 undergraduate business students showed that a model with three latent variables representing three correlated ethical dimensions of moral equity, relativism, and contractualism, three correlated scenario latent variables, and correlated residuals presented a good fit to the data. Further, structural models (...) of the relationship of ethical judgment to behavioral intentions revealed that behavioral intentions were more highly related to the scenario factors than to the ethical dimensions across three scenarios. Adding a method factor to the model improved goodness-of-fit and changed some structural model conclusions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Studying Penguins to Understand BirdsJacinta O. A. Tan (bio), Anne Stewart (bio), Ray Fitzpatrick (bio), and Tony Hope (bio)Keywordsanorexia nervosa, treatment decision-making, competence, valuesWe are grateful to Grisso, Appelbaum, Charland, and Vollmann for their thoughtful commentaries on our paper. We would like to respond by picking up on some of the points they make, although we do not address all the issues raised.Our general aims in the paper (...) are less immediately pragmatic than are the central concerns of Grisso and Appelbaum. Our interest is primarily in a number of ethical, and related conceptual, issues that arise from empirical data. In the long run, of course, we believe that these ethical and conceptual issues are important to the care of people with mental disorders, but our focus is philosophical.Our central interest is what justifies overriding treatment refusal. We are unhappy with a "status" approach according to which, for example, the mere fact that a person suffers a mental disorder provides grounds for overriding her wishes. Such an approach, it seems to us, fails to identify reasons, and discriminates against those with mental disorder, a view shared by the Law Commission (The Law Commission 1995). We are, on the other hand, attracted by the approach that grounds any overriding of treatment refusal on lack of capacity (or competence) to make treatment decisions. The concept of capacity has been well developed through legal cases and conceptual analysis, not least by Grisso and Appelbaum themselves. We were struck, however, first through clinical experience, and subsequently from the pilot study reported in our paper, that many patients with anorexia nervosa who refuse treatment do not necessarily lack capacity, using the current criteria, and yet show features or give reasons that raise serious doubts as to whether it is right to respect their refusal of treatment.To avoid reliance on a "status" approach, the issue with which we are grappling is whether the concept of capacity (and therefore lack of capacity) can be developed to encompass some of our findings, and whether it is ethically right to do so. Charland makes the important point that the concept of competence, or capacity, has both a descriptive and a prescriptive component. It is for this reason that the question of whether, for example, we should extend the criteria for capacity is part of the question of when it is morally right to override treatment refusal.Grisso and Appelbaum suggest that our work advances "our thinking about appreciation, rather than requiring that we add new elements" (2006, 297). From our perspective, and at this stage, it is a secondary issue whether we are suggesting a development of appreciation, or a new element (e.g., "pathological values"). The primary issue for us is whether the reasons for refusal to which we draw attention provide grounds for overriding refusal, and if they do how they can be characterized in [End Page 299] such a way as to avoid the ever-present danger of simply overriding autonomy in a patient's best interests.We chose to study anorexia nervosa for various reasons, but we expect that the issues raised have a more general relevance (such as to substance abuse and impulse control disorders as Grisso and Appelbaum and Charland suggest). We do not expect the results to be relevant to all, or even most, mental disorders. Our main interest is not the specific management of people with anorexia, but how the data challenge, and help to develop, the concept of capacity, and the ethical analysis of overriding patient refusal of treatment. Our paper aims to address what we understand Charland to be referring to by the "pretheoretical desiderata" (2006, 283) of the concept of capacity. One reason why we chose anorexia as the focus of this work is because it is different from many mental disorders in the issues that it raises. In this it is, perhaps, rather like studying penguins to better understand the concept of bird just because penguins, although clearly birds, have unusual features.We agree, therefore, with Grisso and Appelbaum's caution that it would be unwise to jump in and change the MacCAT-T on the basis of the results... (shrink)

Studying Lacan's Seminar VII offers a contemporary, critically informed set of analyses of Lacan's ethics seminar and astute reflections about what Lacan's ethics offers to the field of psychoanalytic thought today. The volume interrogates the seminar with fresh voices and situated curiosities and perspectives, making for a compellingly exciting range of explorations of the crucial matters related to an ethics of psychoanalysis. The essays question and tease out the paradoxes Lacan draws attention to in his seminar of 1959-1960, and (...) in addition, offer radical engagements with the seminar in light of theories of racism, inequality, capitalism, education, and subjectivity. The key elements in Lacan's seminar are explained, debated, and reconsidered with Antigone, das Ding, and the inevitable "ne ceder pas sur son desir" duly unpacked, examined, and ruminated upon. Studying Lacan's Seminar VII will be of interest to psychoanalytic scholars and students of Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as psychoanalytic therapists and analysts. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of politics, philosophy, and studies at the intersections of racism, film, feminism, sociology, gender and queer theory. (shrink)

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfängen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen für die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfügung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden müssen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.

In the mid-1990s, the Internet rapidly changedfrom a venue used by a small number ofscientists to a popular phenomena affecting allaspects of life in industrialized nations. Scholars from diverse disciplines have taken aninterest in trying to understand the Internetand Internet users. However, as a variety ofresearchers have noted, guidelines for ethicalresearch on human subjects written before theInternet's growth can be difficult to extend toresearch on Internet users.In this paper, I focus on one ethicalissue: whether and to what extent to disguisematerial (...) collected online in publishedaccounts. While some people argue thatvulnerable human subjects must always be madeanonymous in publications for their ownprotection, others argue that Internet usersdeserve credit for their creative andintellectual work. Still others argue thatmuch material available online should betreated as ``published.'' To attempt to resolvethese issues, I first review my own experiencesof disguising material in research accountsfrom 1992 to 2002. Some of the thorniestissues emerge at the boundaries betweenresearch disciplines. Furthermore, manyhumanities disciplines have not historicallyviewed what they do as human subjects research. Next, I explore what it means to do humansubjects research in the humanities. Inspiredby issues raised by colleagues in thehumanities, I argue that the traditional notionof a ``human subject'' does not adequatelycharacterize Internet users. A useful alternatemental model is proposed: Internet users areamateur artists. The Internet can be seen as aplayground for amateur artists creatingsemi-published work. I argue that thisapproach helps make some ethical dilemmaseasier to reason about, because it highlightskey novel aspects of the situation,particularly with regard to disguisingmaterial. Finally, I conclude by proposing aset of practical guidelines regardingdisguising material gathered on the Internet inpublished accounts, on a continuum from nodisguise, light disguise, moderate disguise, toheavy disguise. (shrink)

Philosophers often claim that doing philosophy makes people better thinkers. But what evidence is there for this empirical claim? This paper reviews extant evidence and presents some novel findings. We discuss standardized testing scores, review research on Philosophy for Children and critical thinking skills among college students, and present new empirical findings. On average, philosophers are better at logical reasoning, more reflective, and more open-minded than non-philosophers. However, there is an absence of evidence for the claim that studying philosophy (...) led to these differences. We present some preliminary and suggestive evidence that although some of these differences may be attributable to philosophical training, others appear to be selection effects. The key takeaway is that more data are needed. We conclude by urging philosophers and interdisciplinary collaborators to gather more data to test the claim that studying philosophy makes people better thinkers. (shrink)

The book provides a practical guide to the application of Critical Realism (CR), an increasingly popular philosophy of social science, in empirical research projects. Each purpose-written chapter reviews major social science research methods and contains extended illustration of how to conduct inquiry using CR.

Philosophers and scientists propose the idea that plants are cognitive, which has been met with criticisms. These criticisms focus on the fact that plants do not possess the properties traditionally associated with cognition. By contrast, several proponents introduce novel ways to conceptualize cognition. How should we make sense of this debate? In this paper, I argue that the plant cognition debate is not about whether plants meet a set of well-delineated and agreed-upon criteria according to which they count as cognitive. (...) Rather, many proponents are hypothesizing about cognition. They construe COGNITION not as an expression of what cognition is, but rather as a conjecture about what cognition might be. These conjectures orient research that can uncover novel similarities amongst the phenomena to which these concepts extend. In defending this view, I argue that investigating plant cognition is valuable, even if the results of these investigations lead us to reject the claim that plants are cognitive. (shrink)

: Testing the claims that scientists make is extremely difficult. Testing the claims that philosophers of science make about science is even more difficult, difficult but not impossible. I discuss three efforts at testing the sorts of claims that philosophers of science make about science: the influence of scientists' age on the alacrity with which they accept new views, the effect of birth order on the sorts of contributions that scientists make, and the role of novel predictions in the acceptance (...) of new scientific views. Without attempting to test philosophical claims, it is difficult to know what they mean. (shrink)

Thomas Elsaesser and Warren Buckland _Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis_ Arnold: London 2002 ISBN 0 340 76206 3 (PB) x + 309 pp.

The use of computational tools in the humanities for science 2.0 practices is steadily increasing. This paper examines current research practices of a group of philosophers studying the history of philosophical concepts. We explain the methodology and workflow of these philosophers and provide an overview of tools they currently use in their research. The case study highlights a number of fundamental challenges facing these researchers, including: (i) accessing known relevant research content or resources; (ii) discovering new research content or (...) data; (iii) working collaboratively rather than individually. We propose a mash-up of search, visualization, and awareness tools addressing these challenges and discuss the design of the mash-up, its implementation, and evaluation with the target users. Through our case study, we demonstrate the benefits of a user-centered design approach, as well as the benefits of the concrete mash-up for historians of philosophy, and, importantly, the limitations of these tools for conducting historical and philosophical research. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine recent popular fiction on Richard of Gloucester (1452–1485), later Richard III. Of particular focus is the portrayal of Richard's pet hounds — specifically the Irish wolfhound depicted in Sharon Penman's novel, The Sunne in Splendour (1982). The article investigates the dialectic between the mythology of Richard as overplayed villain and as domestic family man, with the wolfhound as the centre-piece of this domesticity — an iconography which is at odds with the traditional stereotypes of Richard.

Understanding nature of science is widely considered an important educational objective and views of NOS are closely linked to science teaching and learning. Thus there is a lively discussion about what understanding NOS means and how it is reached. As a result of analyses in educational, philosophical, sociological and historical research, a worldwide consensus about the content of NOS teaching is said to be reached. This consensus content is listed as a general statement of science, which students are supposed to (...) understand during their education. Unfortunately, decades of research has demonstrated that teachers and students alike do not possess an appropriate understanding of NOS, at least as far as it is defined at the general level. One reason for such failure might be that formal statements about the NOS and scientific knowledge can really be understood after having been contextualized in the actual cases. Typically NOS is studied as contextualized in the reconstructed historical case stories. When the objective is to educate scientifically and technologically literate citizens, as well as scientists of the near future, studying NOS in the contexts of contemporary science is encouraged. Such contextualizations call for revision of the characterization of NOS and the goals of teaching about NOS. As a consequence, this article gives two examples for studying NOS in the contexts of scientific practices with practicing scientists: an interview study with nanomodellers considering NOS in the context of their actual practices and a course on nature of scientific modelling for science teachers employing the same interview method as a studying method. Such scrutinization opens rarely discussed areas and viewpoints to NOS as well as aspects that practising scientists consider as important. (shrink)

The appropriate methodology for psychological research depends on whether one is studying mental algorithms or their implementation. Mental algorithms are abstract specifications of the steps taken by procedures that run in the mind. Implementational issues concern the speed and reliability of these procedures. The algorithmic level can be explored only by studying across-task variation. This contrasts with psychology's dominant methodology of looking for within-task generalities, which is appropriate only for studying implementational issues.The implementation-algorithm distinction is related to (...) a number of other “levels” considered in cognitive science. Its realization in Anderson's ACT theory of cognition is discussed. Research at the algorithmic level is more promising because it is hard to make further fundamental scientific progress at the implementational level with the methodologies available. Protocol data, which are appropriate only for algorithm-level theories, provide a richer source than data at the implementational level. Research at the algorithmic level will also yield more insight into fundamental properties of human knowledge because it is the level at which significant learning transitions are defined.The best way to study the algorithmic level is to look for differential learning outcomes in pedagogical experiments that manipulate instructional experience. This provides control and prediction in realistically complex learning situations. The intelligent tutoring paradigm provides a particularly fruitful way to implement such experiments.The implications of this analysis for the issue of modularity of mind, the status of language, research on human/computer interaction, and connectionist models are also examined. (shrink)

The growing Chinese middle class and their accumulation of wealth and economic capital have seen an increasing number of Chinese students pursuing their education in the West. Due to this growing number, motivations behind their decision to study abroad warrant scholarly treatment. This article discusses the motives of Chinese middle-class families and their children in seeking studying abroad. The paper reports on a recent study of 166 students on American campuses from 2017 to 2018. It uses Bourdieusian concepts of (...) capital, habitus, and the idea of social mobility and social reproduction, to understand Chinese middle-class families’ strategic decisions around studying overseas in relation to employability, labour market competitiveness, and family support. Studying abroad, therefore, is construed by Chinese middle class families as a way of pursuing and preserving their social status and social mobility. (shrink)