Faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines are typically expected to pursue grant funding and publish to support their research or teaching agendas. Providing effective professional development programs on grant preparation and management and on research publications is crucial. This study shares the design and implementation of such a program for Native STEM faculty from two tribal colleges and one public, non-tribal, Ph.D. granting institution during a 3-year period. The overall development and implementation of the program is centered (...) on the six R’s Indigenous framework – Respect, Relationship, Representation, Relevance, Responsibility, and Reciprocity. The role of NAF-STEM and their interactions with the program, as members of the community formed by their participation, impacted the program. Their practices and the program co-emerged over time, each providing structure and meaning for the other. Through such reciprocity, NAF-STEM and the program research team continually refined the program through their mutual engagement. They took on the shared responsibility of the program while they participated in and shaped its practices. The process and results of formative and summative assessment and the impact of COVID-19 on the program are reported. Results of the program offer lessons on the implementation of six R’s framework in professional development at institutions of higher education. (shrink)

We often talk of people as being more or less imaginative than one another – as being better or worse at imagining – and we also compare various feats of imagination to one another in terms of how easy or hard they are. Facts such as these might be taken to suggest that imagination is often implicitly understood as a skill. This implicit understanding, however, has rarely (if ever) been made explicit in the philosophical literature. Such is the task of (...) this chapter. I first attempt to flesh out several conditions for an activity to count as a skill. I then attempt to show how imagination can meet such conditions. The chapter concludes with an attempt to answer various worries that might be raised to the claim that imagination should be thought of as a skill. (shrink)

By the 1840s and 1850s biogeographical theory had polarized into two opposing views — both of which had their origins in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. At issue in this polarization was the question of God's involvement with His creation. At one end of the spectrum were Sclater, Agassiz, Kirby, and others who saw a neatly designed world in which geographical distributions were planned and executed by the hand of God at creation. For most of these naturalists, organisms were created (...) en masse within the regions they now occupy. Disjunct distributions were proof to them that God had indeed created species in situ as many individuals. These naturalists hoped to reveal God's biogeographical plan by discovering His regions of creation. They had hoped to demonstrate a neatly devised set of regions of creation which might be applicable to all creatures, but in attempting to do so, they arrived at conflicting sets of delineations — thus helping to undermine their conceptions of nature in which design (both idealist and utilitarian) played an important part.93At the other end of the biogeographical spectrum were the theoretical ideas of Prichard and Lyell, who viewed a more remote God — one who allowed His creation to be shaped and modified by secondary laws. Lyell in particular wished to leave considerations of design aside, hoping to demonstrate that the shape of the present creation is due to natural laws. Prichard and Lyell saw God's role in the creation of species (and distributions) as being extremely limited. In fact, the regions of creation seen today are in actuality only natural artifacts produced by migrations and barriers. They saw distributions being in constant flux, as was the rest of nature.Those supporting the views of Prichard and Lyell spent a great deal of effort in attempting to remove a major obstacle in their paths — disjunct distributions. If disjunct distributions were indeed the products of separate creative acts, as Sclater and others claimed, then the arguments of Prichard and Lyell would be negated. For if the creation of a species was shown to be the product of multiple creations, then what was the need of migrations and dispersal mechanisms? Also at stake, of course, was the concept of species based upon generation. Darwin was well aware that if the supernatural implications of disjunct distributions could not be refuted, then his evolutionary system — founded upon a species concept based on descent — would be in peril.94A further barrier to the acceptance of the Prichard/Lyell view was the fact that those sympathetic to a nonsupernatural explanation of disjunct distributions could not agree upon a natural explanation for those anomalies, and an internal debate between naturalists within this group raged for decades.95By 1859 a biogeographical stalemate had occurred. Sclater and others, supporting their static view of nature, continued to look for regions of creation, pointing to disjunct distributions in support of their arguments, while those favorable to the views of Prichard and Lyell continued to search for natural explanations for such biogeographical anomalies.The key needed to resolve the biogeographical debate was a credible theory for species origins. By 1858 there were essentially three options for British naturalists: supernatural creation, Lamarckian transmutation, or natural creation. A few British naturalists grasped at these straws, but most workers preferred the option of remaining silent until a more viable explanation for the origin and distribution of species could be advanced.96 And not until the publication of Darwin's theory did that explanation become available. (shrink)

The authors offer ways to encourage and educate Americans to participate in the public deliberations that make democracy work and lay out the principles of..

To know the nature of any phenomenon or practice, it is often a good idea to learn about how it might have emerged or might have been constructed. The Birth of Ethics offers an account of how morality might have emerged, without any planning, in a society with language but without any properly ethical concepts or practices. The conjectural history that it documents serves a philosophical purpose, for it directs us the role that morality plays in human life and the (...) nature of morality that enables it to play that role. (shrink)

While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School--Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst--have persistently defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures (...) critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resouce we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future. (shrink)

Answere not a foole according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.Answere a foole according to his folly, lest hee be wise in his owne conceit.Proverbs 26:4-5.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 111-120 [Access article in PDF] Hobbes on Law, Nature, and Reason Kinch Hoekstra Balliol College, University of Oxford The reason of a thing is not to bee inquired after till you are sure the thing it selfe bee soe. Wee comonly are att (What's the reason of it?) before wee are sure of the thing. T'was an excellent question of (...) my Lady Cotton, when Sr. Robert Cotton was magnifying of a shoe, wch was Moses's or Noahs, & Wondering att the strange shape & fashion of it: but, Mr. Cotton, sayes shee, are you sure 'tis a shooe. 1A law of nature is a rule discovered by reason. 2 This is the key to John Deigh's attempt to show that "Hobbes's ethics is logically independent of his moral psychology." 3 By this he means that the "theorems" of Hobbes's ethics, the laws of nature, "have no other ground than the definition on which it [his ethics] is based." 4 Deigh thinks he establishes this conclusion by taking seriously both Hobbes's definition of a law of nature as "a Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life," and his definition of reason as "nothing but Reckoning (that is, Adding and Substracting) of the Consequences of generall names." 5 Deigh puts these two definitions together to argue that Hobbes's ethics is a deductive science, and that those who instead think of his ethics as dependent on desire or as involving instrumental reason ("means-to-ends thinking," as he calls it) are mistaken. The particular virtue of this interpretation, Deigh says, is that without it we have to read Hobbes in the Leviathan as sometimes using "reason" in a way that is different from the way he defines it in chapter 5. 6I will argue that Deigh misunderstands the basis, status, and scope of Hobbesian natural law. In his attempt to save Hobbes from using "reason" equivocally, Deigh attributes mistakes and inconsistencies to him that are more serious and have less [End Page 111] textual justification than that apparent equivocation. A source of the misunderstanding is a simplification—accepted by Mark Murphy and many other interpreters—of Hobbes's conception of reason.Let us begin with Deigh's view of the scope of the law of nature, as he admits that his interpretation would be undermined were he wrong about this. "While the laws of nature are dictates of reason for people living in a state of nature," he says, "they are not truly laws in such circumstances and therefore not sources of obligation in them." 7 If Murphy is right that Hobbes does think they are obligatory outside of civil society, then it is, Deigh concedes, "a genuine problem" for his account. 8 In reply, Deigh refers to the two passages where Hobbes says that the laws of nature are "not properly Lawes," quoting the one from chapter 26, which explicitly recapitulates a claim from chapter 15. 9 In this earlier passage, however, Hobbes adds: "But yet if we consider the same Theoremes, as delivered in the word of God, that by right commandeth all things; then are they properly called Lawes." 10 Hobbes thinks that the laws of nature are always obligatory. He holds, for example, that the law of nature that covenants be kept obliges even "in the condition of meer Nature" or "condition of Warre," and that "the rule of Manners, without Civill Government, is the Law of Nature." 11 Hobbes says that although the laws of nature donot always oblige "in foro externo; that is, to the putting them in act," they do always "oblige in foro interno; that is to say, they bind to a desire they should take place." 12 Although they only require "a desire, and endeavour," Hobbes makes clear that these requirements are laws, and that they are binding and obligatory. 13If Deigh were right, sovereigns would not be obligated by... (shrink)

Bailey (2021) offers a clever argument for the compatibility of determinism and moral responsibility based on the nature of intrinsic intentions. The argument is mistaken on two counts. First, it is invalid. Second, even setting that first point aside, the argument proves too much: we would be blameworthy in paradigm cases of non-blameworthiness. I conclude that we cannot reason from intentions to responsibility solely from the “inside out”—our possessing a blameworthy intention cannot tell us whether this intention is also blameworthy (...) in deterministic worlds. (shrink)

In the first three sections, I argue that Hobbes has a distinctive conception of philosophy, the highest value of which is not truth, but human benefit; and that his philosophical utterances are constrained by this value (both insofar as they are philosophical in particular, and insofar as they are public utterances of any kind). I address an evidentiary problem for this view in the penultimate section, and then turn to the question of how such a conception of philosophy requires different (...) interpretations of particular philosophical positions. The whole is intended as a case study of the need for an interpreter to understand how the interpreted philosopher conceives of the nature and aim of his undertaking. (shrink)

While Roman Ingarden is well known for his work in aesthetics and studies in ontology, one of his most important and lasting contributions has been largely overlooked: his approach to a general ontology of social and cultural objects. Ingarden himself discusses cultural objects other than works of art directly in the first section of “The Architectural Work”1, where he develops a particularly penetrating view of the ontology of buildings, flags, and churches. This text provides the core insight into how his (...) more lengthy studies of the ontology of works of art in The Literary Work of Art and the rest of The Ontology of the Work of Art, combined with the ontological distinctions of Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, may be used to understand social and cultural objects. The view that results, I will argue, is based in foreseeing problems with the reductivist and projectivist views that remain popular, and is capable of resolving central problems still thought to plague those who would offer a theory of cultural objects. (shrink)

Empathy has for a long time, at least since the eighteenth century, been seen as centrally important in relation to our capacity to gain a grasp of the content of other people's minds, and predict and explain what they will think, feel, and do; and in relation to our capacity to respond to others ethically. In addition, empathy is seen as having a central role in aesthetics, in the understanding of our engagement with works of art and with fictional characters. (...) A fuller understanding of empathy is now offered by the interaction of research in science and the humanities. This volume draws together nineteen original chapters by leading researchers across several disciplines, together with an extensive Introduction by the editors. The individual chapters reveal how important it is, in a wide range of fields of enquiry, to bring to bear an understanding of the role of empathy in its various guises. It offers the ideal starting-point for the exploration of this intriguing aspect of human life. (shrink)

Imagination is celebrated as our vehicle for escape from the mundane here and now. It transports us to distant lands of magic and make-believe, and provides us with diversions during boring meetings or long bus rides. Yet the focus on imagination as a means of escape from the real world minimizes the fact that imagination seems also to furnish us with knowledge about it. Imagination seems an essential component in our endeavor to learn about the world in which we live--whether (...) we're planning for the future, aiming to understand other people, or figuring out whether two puzzle pieces fit together. But how can the same mental power that allows us to escape the world as it currently is also inform us about the world as it currently is? Ten original essays grapple with this neglected question; in doing so, they present a diverse array of positions ranging from cautious optimism to deep-seated pessimism. Blending perspectives from philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics, Knowledge Through Imagination sheds new light on the epistemic role of imagination. (shrink)

Opponents of abortion sometimes hold that it is impermissible because fetuses are persons from the moment of conception. But miscarriage, which ends up to 89 % of pregnancies, is much deadlier than abortion. That means that if opponents of abortion are right, then miscarriage is the biggest public-health crisis of our time. Yet they pay hardly any attention to miscarriage, especially very early miscarriage. Attempts to resolve this inconsistency by adverting to the distinction between killing and letting die or to (...) the difficulty of preventing miscarriage fail, leaving a dilemma. Opponents of abortion should either advocate a substantial shift in our political and medical priorities or else give up the view that fetuses are persons from the moment of conception. (shrink)

Disarming the Prophets - ABSTRACT: Kinch Hoekstra takes up another question related to supposed revelatory experience, namely, the claim to prophesy, and, more particularly, why Hobbes’s concern with it grows during the decade after 1640, what varieties of it preoccupy him and what his responses are to them. Of central importance for Hobbes was his contemporaries’ concern with biblical prophecy, both radical and royalist. Trying to pluck its political sting, Hobbes argues that apocalyptic prophecy is a form of madness (...) but more broadly seeks to place the interpretation of scripture solidly within the purview of the sovereign. By blunting the belief in prophecy, Hobbes disarms the prophet. (shrink)

To what extent are countability distinctions subject to systematic semantic variation? Could there be a language with no countability distinctions—in particular, one where all nouns are count? I argue that the answer is no: even in a language where all NPs have the core morphosyntactic properties of English count NPs, such as combining with numerals directly and showing singular/plural contrasts, countability distinctions still emerge on close inspection. I divide these distinctions into those related to sums and those related to parts. (...) In the Sahaptian language Nez Perce, evidence can be found for both types of distinction, in spite of the absence of anything like a traditional mass–count division in noun morphosyntax. I propose an extension of the Nez Perce analysis to Yudja, analyzed by Lima as lacking any countability distinctions. More generally, I suggest that at least one countability distinction may be universal and that languages without any countability distinctions may be unlearnable. (shrink)

I offer a new interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety in Being and Time as an account of the relationship between individual agents and the public normative practices of their communities. According to a prominent recent interpretation, Heidegger’s discussions of anxiety, death and the “call of conscience” together explain how we can respond to the norms of our practices as reasons and subject them to critical reflection. I argue that this is only part of the story. Anxiety is an occasion (...) for Dasein to take responsibility for its ongoing activity of interpreting the possibilities for living and acting made available by the normative practices of its community, which is presupposed and overlooked from the perspective of everyday Dasein. Public normativity underdetermines Dasein’s conception of what it would mean to take up any of the possibilities available in its world as a way of living its own life. (shrink)

The effective altruism movement (EA) is one of the most influential philosophically savvy movements to emerge in recent years. Effective Altruism has historically been dedicated to finding out what charitable giving is the most overall-effective, that is, the most effective at promoting or maximizing the impartial good. But some members of EA want the movement to be more inclusive, allowing its members to give in the way that most effectively promotes their values, even when doing so isn’t overall-effective. When we (...) examine what it means to give according to one’s values, I argue, we will see that this is both inconsistent with what EA is like now and inconsistent with its central philosophical commitment to an objective standard that can be used to critically analyze one’s giving. While EA is not merely synonymous with act utilitarianism, it cannot be much more inclusive than it is right now. (shrink)

This book showcases the best in modern medieval and religious scholarship, deploying spirited and progressive approaches to the study of Christian mysticism and the philosophy of religion. The volume explores excessive forms of desire and eroticism at play within Christian mystical texts and the historiographical, theological, and philosophical problems bound up in the interrogation of extraordinary experiences of the divine. Amy Hollywood examines how feminist and queer studies have changed the history of mysticism and how the study of religion in (...) general has altered our understanding of what is true, what is real, and what it means to research a historical subject. Ideal for novices and experienced scholars alike, this volume models cutting-edge methods for the ethical study of divine embodiment and religious experience in the Middle Ages. It makes a forceful case for thinking about religion as both belief and practice, in which traditions marked by change are passed down through generations, laying the groundwork for their own critique. Through a provocative integration of medieval sources and texts by Derrida, Butler, Asad, and Chakrabarty this book redefines what it means to engage critically with history and those embedded within it. (shrink)

In recent analytic metaphysics, the view that ‘ordinary inanimate objects such as sticks and stones, tables and chairs, simply do not exist’ has been defended by some noteworthy writers. Thomasson opposes such revisionary ontology in favour of an ontology that is conservative with respect to common sense. The book is written in a straightforward, methodical and down-to-earth style. It is also relatively non-specialized, enabling the author and her readers to approach problems that are often dealt with in isolation in a (...) more unified way.Thomasson's arguments are mainly counter-attacks on six ‘eliminativist’ arguments against ordinary objects. A causal redundancy argument espoused by Trenton Merricks holds that to suppose that there are ordinary objects is to suppose that these objects have distinctive causal powers. However, the casual efficacy of a baseball, for example, is exhausted by that of some suitably arranged …. (shrink)

Creations of the Mind: Essays on Artifacts and their Representation, ed. Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 23-47 [Access article in PDF] Suárez' Doctrine of Eternal Truths Amy D. Karofsky 1. Introduction The primary aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Suárez' doctrine of eternal truths as found in Metaphysical Disputation XXXI, chapter XII, sections 38-47. There, following the typical scholastic style, Suárez considers and rejects several theories before developing his own. Because it is (...) somewhat difficult to determine what view Suárez ultimately adopts, interpretations of this passage tend to vary. For example, Norman Wells suggests that the necessity and eternality of essential propositions is grounded in the intellect of the divine being. 1 Armand Maurer and John P. Doyle maintain that eternal truths are not grounded in the being of God, but rather in the real being of the essences themselves. 2 I will argue that none of these interpretations adequately expresses Suárez' project, for Suárez wants a solution to the problem of eternal truths that does not depend upon the will of the divine being and one that avoids any ontological commitment to unactualized, possible essences. 3 2. Explanation of the Problem of Eternal Truths Suárez begins the thirty-first disputation with a proof of the identity of essence and existence in finite creatures. The key premise in his argument is the claim that, lacking existence, an unactualized essence is not a being, but absolutely [End Page 23] nothing. 4 By 'being' Suárez means existing being, or a being that is created by God. 5 Unlike the essence of God, the essence of a creature is dependent for its being on the efficient causality of God. Prior to the creative act of God, then, the essence of a creature is not an existing being, hence not a being at all; the unactualized, possible essence is a non-being or nothing.From the claim that a nonexistent essence is absolutely nothing, the following problem arises:... si, ablata existentia, perit essentia, ergo propositiones illae in quibus praedicata essentialia de re praedicantur, non sunt necessariae, neque perpetuae veritatis... 6An essential proposition of the form "X is f" is a proposition in which an essential property f is attributed to an object X. If there are no X's in existence, then there is nothing of which f can be predicated. It would seem, then, that the proposition, "X is f" must be false. One might maintain, however, that even though there are no X's in existence, there is an essence (of) X that has the property f. And in this way, "X is f" remains true, even if there are no X's in existence.However, if one holds, as Suárez does, that the unactualized essence is absolutely nothing, then this solution will not work. For if there are no X's in existence, and if a nonexistent essence is absolutely nothing, then there is nothing of which the essential attribute can be predicated. Thus it appears that any proposition that purports to attribute a property to a nonexistent object must be false and so clearly it can be neither necessarily nor eternally true. Therefore, because Suárez believes that an unactualized essence is absolutely nothing, he seems to be committed to the claim that essential propositions are neither necessarily, nor eternally, true. I will refer to this problem as the Problem of Eternal Truths.Another way to illustrate the Problem of Eternal Truths is to see that there are two seemingly inconsistent propositions: AN: An unactualized, possible essence is absolutely nothing, and NE: True essential propositions are necessarily and eternally true. [End Page 24]Given that a proposition in which a property is attributed to an unactualized essence is false, if Suárez wants to assert the truth of AN, it would appear that he must deny the truth of NE, and, in so doing, reject the possibility of any science of creatures that deals only with necessary truths.Suárez considers three different solutions to this problem: (What I will call) the Aristotelian Solution, the Divine... (shrink)

Introduction : the politics of our selves -- Foucault, subjectivity, and the enlightenment : a critical reappraisal -- The impurity of practical reason : power and autonomy in Foucault -- Dependency, subordination, and recognition : Butler on subjection -- Empowering the lifeworld? autonomy and power in Habermas -- Contextualizing critical theory -- Engendering critical theory.

Does critical theory still need psychoanalysis? In Critique on the Couch, Amy Allen offers a cogent and convincing defense of its ongoing relevance. Countering the overly rationalist and progressivist interpretations of psychoanalysis put forward by contemporary critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, Allen argues that the work of Melanie Klein offers an underutilized resource. She draws on Freud, Klein, and Lacan to develop a more realistic strand of psychoanalytic thinking that centers on notions of loss, negativity, ambivalence, (...) and mourning. Far from leading to despair, such an understanding of human subjectivity functions as a foundation of creativity, productive self-transformation, and progressive social change. At a time when critical theorists are increasingly returning to psychoanalytic thought to diagnose the dysfunctions of our politics, this book opens up new ways of understanding the political implications of psychoanalysis while preserving the progressive, emancipatory aims of critique. (shrink)

Narrativists about well-being claim that our lives go better for us if they make good stories—if they exhibit cohesion, thematic consistency, and narrative arc. Yet narrativism leads to mistaken assessments of well-being: prioritizing narrative makes it harder to balance and change pursuits, pushes us toward one-dimensionality, and can’t make sense of the diversity of good lives. Some ways of softening key narrativist claims mean that the view can’t tell us very much about how to live a good life that we (...) can’t find in other theories of well-being; while there are smaller-scale ways we can incorporate narrativist insights into our views of well-being, narrativism should not be a universal organizing principle for our lives. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a host of ethical challenges, but key among these has been the possibility that health care systems might need to ration scarce critical care resources. Rationing p...

A longstanding problem with the study of empathy is the lack of a clear and agreed upon definition. A trend in the recent literature is to respond to this problem by advancing a broad and all-encompassing view of empathy that applies to myriad processes ranging from mimicry and imitation to high-level perspective taking. I argue that this response takes us in the wrong direction and that what we need in order to better understand empathy is a narrower conceptualization, not a (...) broader one. I propose that empathy be conceptualized as a complex, imaginative process through which an observer simulates another person's situated psychological states while maintaining clear self–other differentiation. I defend my view through an examination of three processes: emotional contagion, a process of self-oriented perspective taking that I call “pseudo-empathy,” and empathy proper. Drawing on recent findings in social neuroscience, I highlight the differences among these processes and discuss conceptual, empirical, and normative reasons for keeping them theoretically and conceptually distinct. (shrink)