The technoscientific consequences of both the human drives for glory on the one hand and a comfortable life on the other potentially threaten human existence. R.U.R., a science fiction play by Karel Čapek, bridges ancient writers and contemporary technoscientific endeavors, encouraging us to consider these issues in light of persistent human nature.

According to moral realists, ethics concerns matters of fact. According to naturalist moral realists, moral facts just are natural facts. In this book, I provide an in-depth analysis of moral naturalism's ontological, epistemological, semantic and psychological foundations.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, John Rawls received his undergraduate and graduate education at Princeton. After earning his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1950, Rawls taught at Princeton, Cornell, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and, since 1962, at Harvard, where he is now emeritus. Rawls is best known for A Theory of Justice (1971) and for developments of that theory he has published since. Rawls believes that the utilitarian tradition has dominated modern political philosophy in English-speaking countries because its (...) critics have failed to develop an alternative social and political theory as complete and systematic. Rawls's aim is to develop such an alternative: a contractarian view of justice, derived from the tradition of Locke, Rousseau, and especially Kant. Rawls carries social contract theory to a "higher order of abstraction" by viewing the principles of justice themselves as the objects of a social contract. Justice is the solution to a problem, which arises in this way: Society, as it is conceived in a liberal democracy, is a cooperative venture between free and equal persons for their mutual advantage. Individuals participate in it in order to implement their conceptions of the good life. Cooperation makes a better life possible for everyone by increasing the stock of what Rawls calls "primary goods" - things which it is rational to want whatever else you want, because they are required for any conception of a good life. Primary social goods include rights, liberties, powers, opportunities, income, wealth, and the social bases of self-respect. But society is also characterized by conflict, since people disagree not only about how its benefits and burdens should be distributed, but also about conceptions of the good. Principles of justice are used to evaluate the distributions of benefits and burdens and the institutions which effect them. Rawls's idea is to identify an acceptable conception of justice by asking what principles it would be reasonable for the members of society to agree to, which is to say, what principles would be fair.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 568-569 [Access article in PDF] James P. Scanlan. Dostoevsky the Thinker. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii + 251. Cloth, $29.95. Important works on Dostoevsky's life and thought abound, but James Scanlan offers the first comprehensive treatment and evaluation of Dostoevsky as a philosophical thinker. Scanlan uses Dostoevsky's thousands of letters, essays, and "capacious notebooks" (3), as well (...) as his literary work, to analyze systematically Dostoevsky's philosophical worldview and to argue for its coherence. Scanlan's commitment to careful scholarship is apparent throughout, including his translations of the texts. A philosopher himself, Scanlan contextualizes Dostoevsky's work in relation to traditional philosophers, including Descartes, Kant, and Kierkegaard. The result is a balanced, rich, and provocative treatment that also suggests new interpretations of some of Dostoevsky's literary works.If Bakhtin is right to describe Dostoevsky's novels as "polyphonic," how does one ascertain their author's position? Scanlan grants the challenges of approaching Dostoevsky as a philosopher. Nineteenth-century Russian thinkers rarely identified with particular philosophical schools, and Dostoevsky never thought of himself as a philosopher. Yet Dostoevsky was intensely interested in philosophy, and Scanlan argues that Dostoevsky's characters serve as surrogates for competing philosophical positions. Scanlan also reminds readers of Dostoevsky's often-neglected nonfiction works and weaves masterfully the nonfiction and the literature to support his argument.Echoing Bakhtin, Scanlan labels Dostoevsky's methodology "dialogical in style, monological in substance" (4). Doing so effectively rejects critical perspectives that suggest the author held contradictory positions. For Scanlan, Dostoevsky's dialectical method resulted from his preoccupation with combating others' ideas, implied by his frequent use of reductio ad absurdum arguments. Dostoevsky "sought to establish his own positions by demonstrating the failure of their antitheses" (231). Not only does Scanlan persuasively demonstrate the consistency of Dostoevsky's philosophical commitments, he also challenges the appropriation of Dostoevsky by existentialists as an "irrationalist," despite Dostoevsky's "convincing portrayals of human irrationality" and skepticism concerning rationality's powers (5).Scanlan examines Dostoevsky's vision of Christianity that included a strict binary of matter and spirit, and a rejection of rational egoism and mechanism (termed "nihilism"). Dostoevsky's positive deontologism, his "law of love" (with Christ as exemplar) was, for Dostoevsky, necessary to overcome the "law of personality," and conscience grounded in Christian love was the basis for salvation. Scanlan persuasively argues that Dostoevsky, if irrationalist, belongs more with Kant than Kierkegaard in viewing rationality as limited but not to be rejected wholesale. Scanlan uses this analysis to ground a provocative new reading of Notes from Underground.Scanlan also explores the connectedness of Dostoevsky's ethics and aesthetics in Dostoevsky's insistence that artists should create moral beauty beyond the purely aesthetic or cognitive. Much has been written about Dostoevsky's aesthetics, but Scanlan exposes its logical grounding in Dostoevsky's rejection of the subjective utilitarian aesthetics of Chernyshevsky and the radical materialism of Dobrolyubov. For Dostoevsky, the need for [End Page 568] beauty and creativity is intrinsic to human nature, and art serves an epistemological function that gestures toward reality, not as a "mindless photographer" (140) but as a cognitive vision penetrating "the core of his subject" (141). Dostoevsky also justified his use of the anomalous, noting that the exceptional might be "an avenue of access to the universal" (143).Dostoevsky's "dream of a community of perfect Christian brotherhood and love" (160) grounds Scanlan's examination of Dostoevsky's sociopolitical philosophy and his rejection of the critical view that Dostoevsky's politics radically changed over time. Though Scanlan agrees with biographers that Dostoevsky despised the "moral blight" (169) of serfdom, he argues that Dostoevsky's vision of Christian society permitted social stratification so long as service to masters was voluntary, cooperative, and rational. This analysis makes clear the distance between Dostoevsky and Western liberal political theorists.For Dostoevsky, society based on universal Christian love is the only acceptable "socialism," and the last part of Scanlan's work analyzes Dostoevsky's nationalism and its relation to his attacks on socialism. In addition to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 568-569 [Access article in PDF] James P. Scanlan. Dostoevsky the Thinker. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii + 251. Cloth, $29.95. Important works on Dostoevsky's life and thought abound, but James Scanlan offers the first comprehensive treatment and evaluation of Dostoevsky as a philosophical thinker. Scanlan uses Dostoevsky's thousands of letters, essays, and "capacious notebooks" (3), as well (...) as his literary work, to analyze systematically Dostoevsky's philosophical worldview and to argue for its coherence. Scanlan's commitment to careful scholarship is apparent throughout, including his translations of the texts. A philosopher himself, Scanlan contextualizes Dostoevsky's work in relation to traditional philosophers, including Descartes, Kant, and Kierkegaard. The result is a balanced, rich, and provocative treatment that also suggests new interpretations of some of Dostoevsky's literary works.If Bakhtin is right to describe Dostoevsky's novels as "polyphonic," how does one ascertain their author's position? Scanlan grants the challenges of approaching Dostoevsky as a philosopher. Nineteenth-century Russian thinkers rarely identified with particular philosophical schools, and Dostoevsky never thought of himself as a philosopher. Yet Dostoevsky was intensely interested in philosophy, and Scanlan argues that Dostoevsky's characters serve as surrogates for competing philosophical positions. Scanlan also reminds readers of Dostoevsky's often-neglected nonfiction works and weaves masterfully the nonfiction and the literature to support his argument.Echoing Bakhtin, Scanlan labels Dostoevsky's methodology "dialogical in style, monological in substance" (4). Doing so effectively rejects critical perspectives that suggest the author held contradictory positions. For Scanlan, Dostoevsky's dialectical method resulted from his preoccupation with combating others' ideas, implied by his frequent use of reductio ad absurdum arguments. Dostoevsky "sought to establish his own positions by demonstrating the failure of their antitheses" (231). Not only does Scanlan persuasively demonstrate the consistency of Dostoevsky's philosophical commitments, he also challenges the appropriation of Dostoevsky by existentialists as an "irrationalist," despite Dostoevsky's "convincing portrayals of human irrationality" and skepticism concerning rationality's powers (5).Scanlan examines Dostoevsky's vision of Christianity that included a strict binary of matter and spirit, and a rejection of rational egoism and mechanism (termed "nihilism"). Dostoevsky's positive deontologism, his "law of love" (with Christ as exemplar) was, for Dostoevsky, necessary to overcome the "law of personality," and conscience grounded in Christian love was the basis for salvation. Scanlan persuasively argues that Dostoevsky, if irrationalist, belongs more with Kant than Kierkegaard in viewing rationality as limited but not to be rejected wholesale. Scanlan uses this analysis to ground a provocative new reading of Notes from Underground.Scanlan also explores the connectedness of Dostoevsky's ethics and aesthetics in Dostoevsky's insistence that artists should create moral beauty beyond the purely aesthetic or cognitive. Much has been written about Dostoevsky's aesthetics, but Scanlan exposes its logical grounding in Dostoevsky's rejection of the subjective utilitarian aesthetics of Chernyshevsky and the radical materialism of Dobrolyubov. For Dostoevsky, the need for [End Page 568] beauty and creativity is intrinsic to human nature, and art serves an epistemological function that gestures toward reality, not as a "mindless photographer" (140) but as a cognitive vision penetrating "the core of his subject" (141). Dostoevsky also justified his use of the anomalous, noting that the exceptional might be "an avenue of access to the universal" (143).Dostoevsky's "dream of a community of perfect Christian brotherhood and love" (160) grounds Scanlan's examination of Dostoevsky's sociopolitical philosophy and his rejection of the critical view that Dostoevsky's politics radically changed over time. Though Scanlan agrees with biographers that Dostoevsky despised the "moral blight" (169) of serfdom, he argues that Dostoevsky's vision of Christian society permitted social stratification so long as service to masters was voluntary, cooperative, and rational. This analysis makes clear the distance between Dostoevsky and Western liberal political theorists.For Dostoevsky, society based on universal Christian love is the only acceptable "socialism," and the last part of Scanlan's work analyzes Dostoevsky's nationalism and its relation to his attacks on socialism. In addition to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:594 Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Liberty Walther Barnes and Christin L. Munsch The Paradoxical Privilege of Men and Masculinity in Institutional Review Boards In the 1939 Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz, the great wizard admonishes Dorothy and her friends to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” Dorothy and company turn to see a man standing before a large (...) control panel operating the smoke, holographic image, and voice of the great wizard. Realizing he has been discovered, the man gives up manipulating the switches and the nebulous wizard vanishes.1 Hegemonic masculinity is analogous to the “all-powerful” wizard.2 In order to maintain its grandeur, power, and mystique, the mechanics of masculine ideology—as well as the social actors who participate in its reproduction —must be kept hidden.3 A crucial aim of feminist research is to 1. The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming (Culver City, CA: Metro-Goldwyn -Mayer, 1939). 2. See R. W. Connell, Masculinities: Knowledge, Power and Social Change (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1995); R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender & Society 19 (2005): 829–61; Michael Kaufman, “Me, Feminism, and Men’s Contradictory Experiences of Power,” in Theorizing Masculinities, ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994), 142– 63; and Michael S. Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity” in Brod and Kaufman, Theorizing Masculinities, 119–42. 3. Michael Flood and Bob Pease, “Undoing Men’s Privilege and Advancing Gender Equality in Public Sector Institutions,” Policy and Society 24, no. 4 (2005): 119–38; Allan G. Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unraveling Liberty Walther Barnes and Christin L. Munsch 595 pull back the curtain on men’s lives and masculine institutions in order to demystify socially constructed masculinities, particularly in their most powerful forms. As early feminist scholars note, male privilege renders women’s lives invisible.4 But male privilege renders aspects of men’s lives invisible, too. In this article we highlight how institutional review boards (IRBs) in universities and hospitals erect barriers to research that render particular aspects of men’s lives invisible. We draw on our experiences of submitting ten applications for a series of methodologically diverse studies of masculinity to eight IRBs. First, we argue that, despite their original function of protecting subordinated groups, IRBs are gendered institutions in which members base their decisions on culturally dominant, normative images of women and men. We show how this results in the stringent protection of male research participants, the safeguarding of participants’ personal masculinity, and the shielding of men’s lives from social inquiry. Second, we argue that IRBs are gendering institutions. Our experiences reveal how the privileging and protection of masculinity results in mandatory protocol modifications that idealize hegemonic masculinity. These modifications require researcher-participant interactions that socialize men to engage in gender “appropriate” behavior and reify gendered expectations. Third, our experiences reveal the ways in which IRBs protect the institution itself and privilege the universities, hospitals, and (predominantly male) medical doctors they represent. Consequently, the ways they reproduce social inequality remain impervious to academic inquiry. IRBS AS GENDERED AND GENDERING INSTITUTIONS Every university and hospital in the United States where human research is conducted houses a human research protections program, or IRB, to oversee academic research. Universities with hospitals typically our Patriarchal Legacy (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997); Michael Kimmel, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (New York: Harper Collins, 2008). 4. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Howard M. Parshley (New York: Knopf, 1951); Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); Dorothy E. Smith, “Women’s Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology,” in Feminist Perspectives on Social Research, ed. Sharlene N. Hesse-Biber and Michelle L. Yaiser (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 84–96. 596 Liberty Walther Barnes and Christin L. Munsch maintain two types of IRB committees: a social-behavioral committee that oversees studies in the social sciences, and a biomedical committee to supervise clinical drug trials, experimental medical treatments, and tissue and blood research. The duty of the... (shrink)

A critical review of Peter Kivy's "Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience" Cornelle, Cornell University Press, 1990.

Thoroughly researched contributions from conferences at Harvard and Paris on coping with ignorance in late medieval and early modern administrative practices, science, literature and the arts, are tightly connected by a new theoretical framework on how to historicize ignorance.

Christine Battersby rethinks questions of embodiment, essence, sameness and difference, self and "other", patriarchy and power. Using analyses of Kant, Adorno, Irigaray, Butler, Kierkegaard and Deleuze, she challenges those who argue that a feminist metaphysics is a a contradiction in terms. This book explores place for a metaphysics of fluidity in the current debates concerning postmodernism, feminism and identity politics.

Cornel West is one of the nation's premier public intellectuals and one of the great prophetic voices of our era. Whether he is writing a scholarly book or an article for Newsweek, whether he is speaking of Emerson, Gramsci, or Marvin Gaye, his work radiates a passion that reflects the rich traditions he draws on and weaves togetherÑBaptist preaching, American transcendentalism, jazz, radical politics. This anthology reveals the dazzling range of West's work, from his explorations of ”Prophetic Pragmatism” to his (...) philosophizing on hip-hop.The Cornel West Reader traces the development of West's extraordinary career as academic, public intellectual, and activist. In his essays, articles, books, and interviews, West emerges as America's social conscience, urging attention to complicated issues of racial and economic justice, sexuality and gender, history and politics. This collection represents the best work of an always compelling, often controversial, and absolutely essential philosopher of the modern American experience. (shrink)

Taking Emerson as his starting point, Cornel West’s basic task in this ambitious enterprise is to chart the emergence, development, decline, and recent resurgence of American pragmatism. John Dewey is the central figure in West’s pantheon of pragmatists, but he treats as well such varied mid-century representatives of the tradition as Sidney Hook, C. Wright Mills, W. E. B. Du Bois, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West’s "genealogy" is, ultimately, a very personal work, for it is imbued throughout with the (...) author’s conviction that a thorough reexamination of American pragmatism may help inspire and instruct contemporary efforts to remake and reform American society and culture. "West... may well be the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our generation."—The Nation "_The American Evasion of Philosophy_ is a highly intelligent and provocative book. Cornel West gives us illuminating readings of the political thought of Emerson and James; provides a penetrating critical assessment of Dewey, his central figure; and offers a brilliant interpretation—appreciative yet far from uncritical—of the contemporary philosopher and neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty.... What shines through, throughout the work, is West's firm commitment to a radical vision of a philosophic discourse as inextricably linked to cultural criticism and political engagement."—Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Wisconsin Project on American Writers Frank Lentricchia, General Editor. (shrink)

Different types of consent are used to obtain human biospecimens for future research. This variation has resulted in confusion regarding what research is permitted, inadvertent constraints on future research, and research proceeding without consent. The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center's Department of Bioethics held a workshop to consider the ethical acceptability of addressing these concerns by using broad consent for future research on stored biospecimens. Multiple bioethics scholars, who have written on these issues, discussed the reasons for consent, the (...) range of consent strategies, and gaps in our understanding, and concluded with a proposal for broad initial consent coupled with oversight and, when feasible, ongoing provision of information to donors. This article describes areas of agreement and areas that need more research and dialogue. Given recent proposed changes to the Common Rule, and new guidance regarding storing and sharing data and samples, this is an important and tim.. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary field of neurorobotics looks to neuroscience to overcome the limitations of modern robotics technology, to robotics to advance our understanding of the neural system’s inner workings, and to information technology to develop tools that support those complementary endeavours. The development of these technologies is still at an early stage, which makes them an ideal candidate for proactive and anticipatory ethical reflection. This article explains the current state of neurorobotics development within the Human Brain Project, originating from a close (...) collaboration between the scientific and technical experts who drive neurorobotics innovation, and the humanities and social sciences scholars who provide contextualising and reflective capabilities. This article discusses some of the ethical issues which can reasonably be expected. On this basis, the article explores possible gaps identified within this collaborative, ethical reflection that calls for attention to ensure that the development of neurorobotics is ethically sound and socially acceptable and desirable. (shrink)

Aristotle believes that an agent lacks virtue unless she enjoys the performance of virtuous actions, while Kant claims that the person who does her duty despite contrary inclinations exhibits a moral worth that the person who acts from inclination lacks. Despite these differences, this chapter argues that Aristotle and Kant share a distinctive view of the object of human choice and locus of moral value: that what we choose, and what has moral value, are not mere acts, but actions: acts (...) done for the sake of ends. Morally good actions embody a kind of intrinsic value that inspires us to do them from duty (in Kant) or for the sake of the noble (in Aristotle). The chapter traces the difference in their attitudes about doing one's duty with pleasure to a difference in their attitudes towards pleasure itself: Aristotle sees it as a perception of the good, while Kant thinks of it as mere feeling. (shrink)

Purpose/methods: This study investigated the relationship between ethics education and training, and the use and usefulness of ethics resources, confidence in moral decisions, and moral action/activism through a survey of practicing nurses and social workers from four United States (US) census regions. Findings: The sample (n = 1215) was primarily Caucasian (83%), female (85%), well educated (57% with a master's degree). no ethics education at all was reported by 14% of study participants (8% of social workers had no ethics education, (...) versus 23% of nurses), and only 57% of participants had ethics education in their professional educational program. Those with both professional ethics education and in-service or continuing education were more confident in their moral judgments and more likely to use ethics resources and to take moral action. Social workers had more overall education, more ethics education, and higher confidence and moral action scores, and were more likely to use ethics resources than nurses. Conclusion: Ethics education has a significant positive influence on moral confidence, moral action, and use of ethics resources by nurses and social workers. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which competing institutional logics influence the knowledge base of the police, ideas about good police practice and organizational identities. A tension between the humanistic professional police logic and the instrumental New Public Management (NPM) logic is discussed in the context of policing. While the humanistic professional police logic gradually emerged in the 1960s and 70s, over the past twenty years the police force has been reformed in line with the NPM logic. Through qualitative interviews (...) and a quantitative study of the police force, the article investigates the ways in which the ideas of what constitutes a normative good practice are shaped in relation to these two, opposing, logics. A central finding is that despite many years of NPM as the dominant steering logic, a humanistic professional logic persists. However, the shift towards the NPM logic transforms the knowledge base in a more evidence-oriented direction and affects the ideas of normative good practice, especially among police management. (shrink)

In this, his premiere work, Cornel West provides readers with a new understanding of the African American experience based largely on his own political and cultural perspectives borne out of his own life's experiences. He challenges African Americans to consider the incorporation of Marxism into their theological perspectives, thereby adopting the mindset that it is class more so than race that renders one powerless in America. Armed with a new introduction by the author, this Twentieth Anniversary Edition of Prophesy Deliverance! (...) is a must have. (shrink)

This review argues that the role of technology in business and society debates has predominantly been examined from the limited, narrow perspective of technology as instrumental, and that two additional but relatively neglected perspectives are important: technology as value-laden and technology as relationally agentic. Technology has always been part of the relationship between business and society, for better and worse. However, as technological development is frequently advanced as a solution to many pressing societal problems and grand challenges, it is imperative (...) that technology is understood and analyzed in a more nuanced, critical, and comprehensive way. The two additional perspectives invite a broader research agenda, one that includes questions, such as “Which values and whose interests has technology come to emulate?”; “How do these values and interests play out in stabilizing the status quo?”; and, importantly, “How can it be contested, disrupted, and changed?” Any research that endorses green, sustainable, environmental, or climate mitigating technologies potentially contributes to maintaining the very thing that it seeks to change if questions such as these are not being addressed. (shrink)

(1938). The radiant heat spectrum from herschel to melloni.—I. The work of herschel and his contemporaries. Annals of Science: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 119-137.

No previous experience in formal studies in either philosophy or education is a requirement for a full comprehension of the text.

The concept of moral distress comes from nursing ethics, and was initially defined as ‘…when one knows the right thing to do, but institutional constraints make it nearly impossible to pursue the right course of action’. There is a large body of literature associated with moral distress, yet multiple definitions now exist, significantly limiting its usefulness. We undertook a systematic review of the argument-based bioethics literature on this topic as the basis for a critical appraisal, identifying 55 papers for analysis. (...) We found that moral distress is most frequently framed around individual experiences of distress in relation to local practices and constraints, and understood in terms of power relations and workplace hierarchies. This understanding is directly derived from, and often still seen as specific to, nursing. Frequently the perspective of the morally distressed individual is privileged. Understandings of moral distress have evolved towards an ‘occupational health approach’, with the assumption that moral distress should be measured and prevented. Counter-perspectives were identified, highlighting conceptual problems. Based on our review, we propose a redefinition of moral distress: ‘Ethical unease or disquiet resulting from a situation where a clinician believes they have contributed to avoidable patient or community harm through their involvement in an action, inaction or decision that conflicts with their own values’. This definition is specific enough for research use, anchored in clinicians’ professional responsibilities and concerns about harms to patients, framed relationally rather than hierarchically, and amenable to multiple perspectives on any given morally distressing situation. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the question of whether there exists an essential relation between emotions and wellbeing. We distinguish three ways in which emotions and wellbeing might be essentially related: constitutive, causal, and epistemic. We argue that, while there is some room for holding that emotions are constitutive ingredients of an individual’s wellbeing, all the attempts to characterise the causal and epistemic relations in an essentialist way are vulnerable to some important objections. We conclude that the causal and epistemic (...) relation between emotions and wellbeing is much less strong than is commonly thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I set an aspect of what it is to live a flourishing life against the backdrop of neo liberal trends that continue to influence educational policy across the globe. The view I set out is in sharp contrast to any narrow assumption that education’s main task is the measurement of high performing individuals who will thus contribute to an economically viable society. Instead, I explore and argue for a conception of what constitutes a flourishing life that is (...) embedded in a more pragmatist analysis of what education may be. The argument begins with developing the centrality of embodiment to aesthetic sensibility and goes on to suggest how collective understanding of this within a community could constitute a sense of performance and thus contribute to the educational aim of developing a full and flourishing life. The argument is that this way of seeing life could have implications for educational practice, the role of the teacher and could help to reconfigure how education is experienced by the young. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a metasemantics for relaxed moral realism. More precisely, I argue that relaxed realists should be inferentialists about meaning and explain that the role of evaluative moral vocabulary is to organise and structure language exit transitions, much as the role of theoretical vocabulary is to organise and structure language entry transitions.

Background: Little is known about what factors may contribute to the growth of a consultation service or how a practice may change or evolve across time. Methods: This study examines data collected from a busy ethics consultation service over a period of more than two decades. Results: We report a number of longitudinal findings that represent significant growth in the volume of ethics consultation requests from 19 in 1990 to 551 in 2013, as well as important changes in the patient (...) population for which ethics help is requested. The findings include (1) a steady growth in requests from primary care providers (e.g., physicians and nurses), as well as increases in ancillary services (e.g., social workers); (2) a decrease in length of stay (days) before ethics help is requested; (3) an increase in the reasons that individuals ask for help from ethics; (4) an upsurge in consults requests from areas outside the intensive care unit (ICU); (5) a decrease in patients that died during hospitalization (e.g., live discharges); and (6) growth in the numbers of patients lacking decision-making capacity. Conclusions: We believe the increases in consult requests reflect appropriate and necessary growth because recent consultations have also been associated with consultations requiring (7) additional interventions and (8) reasonably high time intensity scores. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The problem of the captivated gaze has been taken up repeatedly in philosophy. Plato's Allegory of the Cave stands paradigmatically for this. Here, the gaze at the shadowy images prevents people from taking the path to the sun. Denis Diderot's critical reinterpretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave is less well known. In Diderot, the view of the artificial light images is just as captivating as Plato's shadow images. Unlike there, however, Diderot does not distinguish between perception and cognition (...) but instead focuses on the significance of the seemingly unimportant shift of the gaze within the cave. Diderot determines the starting point of the realisation of freedom in the liberation of one's own gaze from the captivation intended by third parties. Prerequisites for the liberation of the gaze are the realisation of an interruption. It is shifts in the alignment of the eyeballs that become visible here as lucid intervals and which, in Diderot, become the starting point of power analysis and the site of revolt and freedom practice. In this article, I will show how Diderot's demand for enabling the individual realisation of lucid intervals is not first and foremost an aesthetic, but a highly political one. The criteria of art, which are defined by Diderot and have not lost their relevance until today, are based on his explosive insight that the incessant captivation of the gaze stands in the way of democratisation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The epistemological and methodological wars that bedevil social science often pit those who follow in the footsteps of natural science and those who favor a more holistic, interpretive approach. Into this war-torn landscape, Mark Bevir and Jason Blakley have dropped a plea for interpretive social science that will surely serve as a touchstone for years to come. However, their anti-naturalism is of the methodologically ecumenical kind, with the qualitative toolkit cohabiting with mass surveys, large-N statistics, and other quantitative methods (...) under well-specified conditions. The book’s insights therefore dovetail with emerging ecumenical trends in international political economy and even economics. (shrink)

Although evidence of teaching behaviour has been identified in some nonhuman species, human teaching appears to be unique in terms of both the breadth of contexts within which it is observed, and in its responsiveness to needs of the learner. Similarly, cultural evolution is observable in other species, but human cultural evolution appears strikingly distinct. This has led to speculation that the evolutionary origins of these capacities may be causally linked. Here we provide an overview of contrasting perspectives on the (...) relationship between teaching and cultural evolution in humans, and briefly review previous research which suggests that cumulative culture can occur without teaching. We then report the results of a novel experimental study in which we investigated how the benefits of teaching may depend on the complexity of the skill to be acquired. Participants were asked to tie knots of varying complexity. In our Teaching condition, opportunities to interact with an experienced partner aided transmission of the most complex knots, but not simpler equivalents, relative to exposure to completed products alone, and also relative to information about the process of completion. We conclude by considering the plausibility of various accounts of the evolutionary relationship between teaching and cultural evolution in humans. (shrink)

The way in which one understands information and concepts, and the way a student works to develop this, is an individual aspect of learning that cannot be universally defined as (at least manifested) the same for everyone. ‘Understanding’ is a broad term, and the way one achieves understanding is dependent on the way that material is presented. In this article, we argue that the philosophy of science can be important to nursing education—in particular, by showing that the way we imbue (...) understanding might depend on the meaning of ‘understanding’. Diagrams and concept maps are meant to guide newly formed knowledge and connections to develop proper thinking (e.g., the order in which nursing students must prioritize data) that a student requires in the field. We argue that whether or not an image/diagram/concept map confers understanding will depend on both what the object is and what we mean by ‘understanding’. (shrink)

According to recent suggestions within the global pragmatism discussion, metaethical debate must be fundamentally re-framed. Instead of carving out metaethical differences in representational terms, it has been argued that metaethics should be given an inferentialist footing. In this paper, I put inferentialist metaethics to the test by subjecting it to the following two criteria for success: Inferentialist metaethicists must be able to save the metaethical differences between moral realism and expressivism, and do so in a way that employs understandings of (...) these metaethical accounts which would be acceptable to moral realists or expressivists who endorse an inferentialist theory of meaning. Two results follow from my discussion. The first concerns inferentialist metaethics more narrowly, casting doubts on inferentialists’ ability to fulfil the two criteria for success by showing that proposed metaethical demarcation attempts either meet the first criterion but violate the second, or pass the second criterion but fail the first. The second upshot pertains to the global pragmatism debate more widely, pressing the point that inferentialists have not as yet provided a convincing account of ontological commitment. (shrink)

In their target article, Morain and colleagues (2019) tackle the long-standing and thorny issue of whether and when it might be ethical for a physician-investigator to obtain research consent from...