Care is a feature of all of our lives, all of the time. An analysis of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence reveals that care and caring permeate complex dimensions of life in and after school and we ask here, if, on some accounts, care can do the work required of it. Acknowledging the significance of her contribution to care, we focus on the work of Nel Noddings suggesting that she pays insufficient attention to other emotions implicated in the work of morally (...) appropriate care. We argue here that Noddings' version of care would benefit from the support of an ethical theory of the emotions, including a moralized form of compassion, if care in schools is to be both better understood and more likely realised. (shrink)

The August 2011 riots in England occasioned widespread condemnation from government and the media. Here, we apply the concepts of hypocrisy and affiliation to explore reactions to these riots. Initially acknowledging that politics necessitates a degree of hypocrisy, we note that some forms of hypocrisy are indefensible: they compromise integrity. With rioters condemned as thugs and members of a feral underclass, some reactions exemplified forms of corrosive hypocrisy that deflected attention away from economic, social and cultural problems. Moreover, such reactions (...) omitted to attend to the concept of [dis]affiliation amongst young rioters. Accordingly, we look to the role that education might play in re-affiliating those who do not feel they belong to, or have a sufficient stake in, society. Whilst our focus is on the riots in England, the exploration of hypocrisy and affiliation, and discussion of education for re-affiliation, transcends that national context. (shrink)

:Long-term patient outcomes after severe brain injury are highly variable, and reliable prognostic indicators are urgently needed to guide treatment decisions. Functional neuroimaging is a highly sensitive method of uncovering covert cognition and awareness in patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness, and there has been increased interest in using it as a research tool in acutely brain injured patients. When covert awareness is detected in a research context, this may impact surrogate decisionmaking—including decisions about life-sustaining treatment—even though the prognostic value (...) of covert consciousness is currently unknown. This paper provides guidance to clinicians and families in incorporating individual research results of unknown prognostic value into surrogate decisionmaking, focusing on three potential issues: Surrogate decisionmakers may misinterpret results; Results may create false hope about the prospects of recovery; There may be disagreement about the meaningfulness or relevance of results, and appropriateness of continued care. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBringing philosophical work on friendship to bear on the growing body of critique about the state of the neoliberal academy, this paper defends academic friendship. Initially a vignette illustrates the key features of academic friendship and the multiple demands on academics to account for themselves in the neoliberal university. We locate academic friendship in the context of that neoliberal university before discussing managerialist threats to this relationship. We indicate how the performativity-driven working environment contrasts radically and unfavourably with some defining (...) features of friendship. Academic friendship, we argue, can entail generative intellectual and moral activity and growth though trusting and honest reflection on research and scholarship, and teaching and learning. Contending that it may offer an antidote to aspects of the neoliberal academy, in our concluding section academic friendship is highlighted as both a defence and a means of resistance against the worst excesses of the university in dark times. (shrink)

Campaigns to decolonize higher education have focused mainly on decolonizing the curriculum. Although the cultural features of colonialism and its material imperatives and damage were both modes of colonial domination and exploitation, more attention has been paid to the former in recent debates about education, and it tends to dominate arguments about and characterizations of decolonization in higher education, by making knowledge and the curriculum the central focus. We argue the need to attend not only to the cultural consequences of (...) imperialism and the damage to the self so thoroughly emphasized in postcolonial and decolonial theory, but also to the material implications of colonialism and the evolution of Empire, which has persisted in new forms since formal decolonization. Decolonizing higher education and its institutions must also address new forms of Empire which have colonized the university. We argue that unless the material aspects of colonization and decolonization are adequately addressed, the university will not be substantively decolonized. Indeed, so strong is the influence of late capitalism in the form of neoliberalism on the contemporary university that its modes of practice are likely to foster superficial strategies to ‘decolonize’ the curriculum instead of addressing how capitalist structures and practices sustain current forms of coloniality. We discuss how neoliberalism, exemplified in the use of global rankings, shapes the contemporary university in today’s new age of Empire and we defend an approach to decolonizing that widens the focus of current debates beyond decolonization of the curriculum, to which we give qualified support. (shrink)

Is it just to charge international students fees that are generally much higher than those paid by home and European Union students at UK universities? Exploring the ethical tension between universities? avowed commitment to social justice on the one hand and selling education to foreign students at a premium on the other, we argue that increased global association and the reduced salience of the sovereign state make the education of international students an issue of global justice. If we view education (...) as a global public good, the ethics of higher education provision call for reconsideration of both the current fee regime and of universities? role in a competitive global economy. (shrink)

As universities in the United Kingdom gear themselves up for the next Research Excellence Framework, REF2021, with peer review at its core, we critically re-visit the idea of peer review as a gold standard proxy for research excellence. We question the premise that anonymous peer review is a necessary and enabling condition for impartial, expert judgement. We argue that the intentions and supposed benefits underlying peer review and its associated concepts have become congealed in received discourse about research quality. Hence (...) we explore the key conceptual issues raised by the nested assumptions and concepts that come into play in peer review as currently practised: primarily those of secrecy, anonymity, legitimacy, trust, impartiality and openness. After delineating the benefits attributed to peer review, we contrast its declared virtues with its problematic features. We locate peer review in an audit culture in which the reviewer is an academic labourer. Drawing on recent trends in moral and political philosophy, we question the usefulness of the ideal of impartiality when tied to secrecy. Then we raise more deliberative, intersubjective possibilities for a revised understanding of peer review in the context of an academic community. Finally, we suggest ways in which the academic community could pursue quality in research by recasting peer review to be less secret and more open. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss rape myths and mythologies, their negative effects on rape and sexual assault complainants, and how they prejudicially construct women qua women. The backdrop for the analysis is the Belfast Rugby Rape Trial, which took place in 2018. Four men, two of whom were well-known rugby players, were acquitted of rape and sexual assault in a nine-week criminal trial that dominated local, national and international attention. The acquittal resulted in ‘I Believe Her’ rallies and protests across (...) Northern Ireland. Of concern were the deeply sexist and misogynistic text exchanges among the acquitted about the complainant and women more generally. One month after the trial, the Criminal Justice Board of Northern Ireland commissioned an independent review of the arrangements to deliver justice in cases of serious sexual offences. The Gillen Review proposed 16 key recommendations, among them measures to dispel rape myths and the role that Relationship and Sex Education in schools could play in combatting these myths. I will explore these issues using Miranda Fricker's construction of epistemic injustice. I argue that there is little appreciation of the profound impact that routine testimonial injustice—where the credibility of a speaker is deflated or undermined on account of her social identity—can have on the wellbeing of speakers and how it ramifies with other forms of injustice. To illustrate, I draw on neurological explanations to show why attributions of sexual consent are unjustly sustained in cases of rape and sexual assault. (shrink)

This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia. The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, ‘As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch’, gathers wider philosophical (...) considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, ‘Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?’, looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, ‘If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you’, focuses to Greta Thunberg’s messages and their responses. The last section, ‘Towards a new normal’, explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles’ parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic education. (shrink)

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben—whose work has influenced intellectuals in political theory, political philosophy, legal theory, literature, and art—stands among the foremost intellectual figures of the modern era. Engaging with a range of thinkers from Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger to Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, Agamben considers some of the most pressing issues in recent history and politics. His work explores the relationship between the sovereign state and the politically marginalized _Homo Sacer_—exiles, refugees, prisoners of war, and others whom the (...) state actively excludes from political participation and full humanity. Further, his critique of the increasing deployment of a “state of exception”—the declaration of a state of emergency that legitimizes the sovereign state’s suspension of law for the public good—as a dominant paradigm for governing has particular power in today’s global political climate. Infused with the spirit of Agamben’s critical self-reflection, this special issue of _SAQ_ examines his seminal works _Homo Sacer_, _The Open_, and _State of Exception_. Some contributors use Agamben’s work to examine the history of abortion law in the West, the history of slavery, and women’s rights. Others analyze the connections between Agamben’s work and that of his contemporaries, including Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek, and Jean-Luc Nancy. Still other essays identify new points of interdisciplinary communication between some of Agamben’s most provocative ideas and popular twentieth-century writing. _Contributors_. Andrew Benjamin, Claire Colebrook, Jean-Philippe Deranty, Penelope Deutscher, Eleanor Kaufman, Adrian Mackenzie, Catherine Mills, Alison Ross, Lee Spinks, Ewa Płonowska Ziarek, Krzysztof Ziarek. (shrink)

This article argues that modern finance should be an important object of attention. Particularly worthy of study are three demarcations: the changing disciplinary boundary of economics, the distinction between private and public knowledge, and the legal and cultural demarcation between legitimate trading and gambling. The balance between what Barnes calls N-type and S-type terms in finance is different from, for example, that in physics, but that is no criticism of finance theory: the activities of those who disbelieve finance theory’s efficient (...) market hypothesis probably make the hypothesis more true. The case of Black-Scholes-Merton option pricing theory is drawn on to argue that the loops of self-reference intrinsic to S-terms seem predominantly performative: they increase the truth of finance theory’s typical assumptions. S-loops in the financial markets do not always promote stability, however, as is shown here by a case study of the fate of the hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management. (shrink)

Linguists, biological anthropologists, and cognitive scientists come together in this book to explore the origins and early evolution of phonology, syntax, and semantics. They consider the nature of pre- and proto-linguistic communication, the internal and external triggers that led to its transformation into language, and whether and how language may be considered to have evolved after its inception. Evidence is drawn from many domains, including computer simulations of language emergence, the songs of finches, problem-solving abilities in monkeys, sign language, and (...) the structure of languages today. (shrink)

When our nearest and dearest experience medical crises, we may need to step into caregiving roles. But in doing so, we may find that our new caregiving relationship is actually in tension with the loving relationship that motivated us towards care. What we owe and are entitled to as friends, spouses, and family members, can be different from what we owe and are entitled to as caregivers. For this reason, caregiving carries with it the risk of a type of moral (...) distress that I call “role conflict distress.” Rather than view role conflict distress as a sign that we are falling short, I suggest that it actually speaks to the commitment that we have to the loving relationship that grounds our duty of care. (shrink)

'This is a book to which the attention of students of art theory and criticism, and all those interested in the important application of psychoanalysis to other ...

In this article, we ask why is it that sociology has been slow to take up the animal challenge, and ask what would happen if it did. We argue that sociology’s fraught relationship with biology, its assumptions about human exceptionalism and its emergence in the context of industrialization and urbanization are key to understanding its lack of attention to animals and contribute to a limited conceptualization of society. This can be remedied by viewing non-human animals as involuntarily embedded in social (...) relationships, a move which involves a redefinition of the social and of what it means to be human; a revision of notions of agency, subjectivity and reflexivity; and a rejection of the speciesism and anthropocentrism on which sociology is based. Finally, the article contends that a full understanding of society is not possible if we continue to direct the sociology gaze only at humans. (shrink)

Standpoint theory is an explicitly political as well as social epistemology. It’s distinctive features are commitment to understand the social locations that shape the epistemic capacities and resources of individuals in structural terms, and a recognition that those who are marginalized within hierarchically structured systems of social differentiation are often epistemically advantaged. In some crucial domains they know more and know better as a contingent function of their situated experience and knowledge. This “inversion thesis” counters the alignment of social with (...) epistemic privilege. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the ways in which literary spaces can become sexualized by the transfer of objects between women, as well as by the ways in which bodies themselves touch. It discusses how lesbian desire changes both spatial and temporal structures, via a consideration of the use of pearl imagery. In particular, it analyses the link between sexual, class and bodily construction in two texts: Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca (1938) and Carol Ann Duffy's poem ‘Warming Her Pearls’ (...) (1987). These texts encode contrasting ideas about the lesbian body, ideas that are discursively textured by the periods in which they were written and by the relative ideological resistance of their writers. While du Maurier's novel establishes a concept of spatial and temporal enclosure, Duffy's poem creates an unconfined and unstable lesbian body-text. Within this, the pearl can be seen as a subversive device, destructuring and stretching the parameters of lesbian desire. (shrink)

BackgroundThe conduct of research is critical to advancing human health. However, there are issues of ethical concern specific to the design and conduct of research in conflict settings. Conflict-affected countries often lack strong platform to support technical guidance and monitoring of research ethics, which may lead to the use of divergent ethical standards some of which are poorly elaborated and loosely enforced. Despite the growing concern about ethical issues in research, there is a dearth of information about ethical compliance in (...) conflict areas. Valid and ethically informed decision-making is a premier pact with research participants in settling possible ethical issues before commencing the research, which is ensured by gaining informed consent from prospective participants of the research.AimsThis research aimed to explore compliance with research ethics and consent validity in community-based epidemiological research conducted previously.MethodsResearch participants were recruited in the western part of Ethiopia in three districts subjected to conflicts. A community-based cross-sectional study design was utilized, and 338 residents were enrolled as study participants. All participants had previously been enrolled as research participants in epidemiological studies. Data was collected using a questionnaire that was pilot-tested before the commencement of the main data collection. The questionnaire focused on participants’ experiences of the informed consent process followed when they were recruited for an epidemiological study and covered themes such as essential information provided, level of comprehension, and voluntarism of consent.ResultsOver half of the study participants, 176 (52%), were not provided with essential information before consenting. And 135 (40%) of them did not comprehend the information provided to them. One hundred and ninety (56%) participants freely and voluntarily agreed to partake in one of these epidemiological studies, with over a quarter (97; 28.7%) of them reporting they were subjected to undue influence. Written consent was obtained from only 32 (9.4%) of the participants. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to philosophically examine how disinformation from state officials and politicians affects the right to access to information and political participation. Next to the more straightforward implications for political self-determination, the paper examines how active dissemination of lies by figures of epistemic authority can be framed as a human rights issue and affects trust patterns between citizens, increases polarization, impedes dialogue, and obstructs access to politically relevant information by gatekeeping knowledge. Analyzing European Convention on Human (...) Rights (ECHR) case law, the paper argues that human rights law provides some argumentative basis for extending individuals’ rights as epistemic and political agents towards a “right to truth spoken by politicians”. However, challenges in balancing a possible restriction of lies and assessing the real effective harm that comes from them remain, potentially leading to a vacuum of rights protection for less visible long-term harm to individuals and public discourse. In order to have a real chance at tackling the harmful consequences of publicly told lies from a human rights perspective, it is necessary to rethink the notion of harm to encompass more complex and abstract forms of politico-epistemic damage to individuals and the public. (shrink)

ArgumentThe British Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, spent four months on a Scottish mountainside in 1774, making observations of zenith stars and coordinating a detailed survey of the size and shape of the mountain Schiehallion, in order to demonstrate and quantify what was known as “the attraction of mountains.” His endeavors were celebrated in London, where it was stated that he had given proof of the universality of Newtonian gravitation and allowed for a calculation of the relative densities of the earth (...) as a whole and the earth near its surface. This paper argues that the “Schiehallion Experiment” was as much a trial of the precision of Maskelyne's instruments and their expert management as it was a trial of Newtonian theory. By tracing the biography of the key instrument used by Maskelyne, his zenith sector, we see how much personal credibility was a stake for him in Scotland. By considering the mountainside as a place to test and reveal the precision of astronomical instruments we see a link between the Scottish endeavors and Maskelyne's ambitions for the Greenwich Observatory. (shrink)

I argue for a teleological account of events in progress. Details aside, the proposal is that events in progress are teleological processes. It follows from this proposal that final causes are ubiquitous: anything happening at any time is an event with a telos.

Bioethics as a distinctive field is undergoing a critical turn. It may be a quiet revolution, but a growing body of scholarship illustrates a perceived need for a rethink of the scope of the field and the approaches and priorities that have carried bioethicists through many heady years of success. Few areas of bioethical practice have been left unexamined, ranging from questions as to the sustainability of the discipline in its current form to the “expertise” of its practitioners; the legitimacy (...) of bioethics in the realms of policymaking; its relationship to philosophy; the purchase of empirical and interdisciplinary method; the relationship of bioethics to the real world; bioethical understandings of the concept of “health” ; its agenda, priorities, and inclusiveness right up to what might be the overarching question: “What is bioethics all about?” Unsurprisingly, these questions elicit varied responses. Scholars from various disciplines have critiqued fundamental tenets of the “ethics” business, albeit as claims of its “conservatism,” “corruption,” and its questionable “usefulness” suggest, not always with a charitable or constructive eye. But quite crucially and often overlooked, bioethics itself has not shied away from the question as to what bioethics is and what it should become; increasingly apparent is that this kind of self-conscious and reflexive theorizing is regarded as a key priority for taking contemporary ethics forward. (shrink)

Recent work on diachronic agency has challenged the predominantly structural or synchronic approach to agency that is characteristic of much of the literature in contemporary philosophical moral psychology. However, the embodied dimensions of diachronic agency continue to be neglected in the literature. This article draws on phenomenological perspectives on embodiment and narrative conceptions of the self to argue that diachronic agency and selfhood are anchored in embodiment. In doing so, the article also responds to Diana Meyers' recent work on corporeal (...) selfhood. (shrink)

This paper raises questions about bioethical knowledge and the bioethical ‘expert’ in the context of contestation over methods. Illustrating that from the perspective of the development of bioethics, the lack of unity over methods is highly desirable for the field in bringing together a wealth of perspectives to bear on bioethical problems, that same lack of unity also raises questions as to the expert capacity of the ‘bioethicist’ to speak to contemporary bioethics and represent the field. Focusing in particular on (...) public bioethics, the author argues that we need to rethink the concept of bioethicist, if not reject it. The concept of the bioethicist connotes a disciplinary or theoretical unity that is simply not present and from the perspective of public policy, it is incredibly misleading. Instead, bioethical expertise would be a capacity of a broader community, and not an individual. Such a conception of bioethics as an expert community rather than as an individual capacity, focuses our attention on the more functional question of what knowledge and skill set any individual possesses. (shrink)

Senior leadership transitions present daunting challenges. To promote inclusive development and comply with equal opportunity legislation, South African companies often fast-track careers of high-potential previously disadvantaged individuals. Organisations typically do not sufficiently support transitioning leaders, possibly acting unethically. The rate of failure is high with devastating effects for the individual and their organisation. The novel, empirically researched Transformative Transition Coaching framework, helps facilitate deep and lasting changes in meaning perspectives of transitioning leaders through coaching. The ability of the TTC framework (...) to support transitioning leaders is presented in this article. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw on Alfred Schutz’s theoretical framework to better understand how oppression is enacted through discriminatory acts. By closely examining the role of typifications and relevances in our experience of others, and by supplementing this analysis with contemporary social scientific resources, we argue that a Schutzian perspective on oppression yields important phenomenological insights. We do this in three key steps. Firstly, we contextualise Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World within Schutz’s broader body of work, (...) elucidating his central conditions of discrimination. Secondly, we highlight the limitations of Schutz’s account, in how it fails to capture more peripheral, subtle, and implicit oppressive practices. Finally, we introduce two underexplored insights derived from Schutz’s framework: the role of relevances in understanding the motivational underpinnings of implicit biases, and the connection between self-typification and stereotype threat. With this multidimensional approach, we hope to enhance our understanding of oppression whilst bridging gaps in Schutz’s original conceptualization. (shrink)

Differences in family factors in determining academic achievement were investigated by testing 432 parents in nine independent, coeducational Melbourne schools. Schools were ranked and categorized into three groups , based on student achievement scores in their final year of secondary school and school improvement indexes. Parents completed a questionnaire investigating their attitudes towards the school environment, their aspirations, expectations, encouragement and interest in their child’s education . They also responded to six open‐ended questions on their attitudes to achievement and to (...) their school. Multiple regression analyses revealed that parental expectations of their children’s educational level made the strongest unique prediction of high achievement followed by the length of time they had maintained their expectations. Limitations discussed include the disparity in meaning associated with the definition of school success and whether these results can be generalized to all students considering the biased sample. (shrink)

This article concerns itself with the relationship between implicit moral cognitions and decisions in the realm of business ethics. Traditionally, business ethics research emphasized the effects of overt or explicit attitudes on ethical decision-making and neglected intuitive or implicit attitudes. Therefore, based on an implicit social cognition approach it is important to know whether implicit moral attitudes may have a substantial impact on managerial ethical decision-making processes. To test this thesis, a study with 50 participants was conducted. In this study (...) the participants were asked to work on a deliberative managerial ethical decision-making task, in which they had to decide on one of two options. Implicit moral attitudes towards the two options were measured using the implicit association test (IAT). A semantic differential scale was used to diagnose explicit moral attitudes towards the two options. Each step taken within the deliberative decision-making process, as well the decision itself, was assessed using a scoring model-based decision analysis and a decision-making questionnaire. The results of this study show that implicit moral attitude has a great influence on the deliberative ethical decision-making process. The derived conclusion is that complex and deliberative decision-making processes in the context of business ethics can be affected by implicit social cognitions such as implicit moral attitudes. (shrink)

In his recent book Reflective Democracy, Robert Goodin argues that 'external-collaborative' models of democratic deliberation procedures need to be supplemented by 'internal-reflective' deliberation. The exercise of the moral imagination plays a central role in Goodin's account of 'democratic deliberation within'. By imaginatively putting ourselves in the place of a range of others, he argues, including those who maybe not be able to represent their own interests, we can make their points of view 'communicatively present' in deliberation. Goodin's argument emphasizes the (...) role of art and other forms of cultural representation in helping to bring about this expansion of moral imagination. Drawing on debates in philosophy of mind concerning the scope and limits of our capacities to simulate other minds, I argue that Goodin's analysis of 'democratic deliberation within' conflates different kinds of imaginative project. In doing so, it underestimates both the difficulties of imaginatively putting ourselves in the place of others and the political risks in doing so. I argue, alternatively, that moral engagement with others involves the capacity for sympathy and that art and other forms of cultural representation can enlarge the scope of our sympathies, by assisting us to overcome imaginative resistance to alien points of view. In developing this argument, I provide a qualified defense of Iris Young's claim that respect for others involves 'asymmetrical reciprocity'. (shrink)