What determines whether an action is right or wrong? Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader explores for students and researchers the relationship between consequentialist theory and moral rules. Most of the chapters focus on rule consequentialism or on the distinction between act and rule versions of consequentialism. Contributors, among them the leading philosophers in the discipline, suggest ways of assessing whether rule consequentialism could be a satisfactory moral theory. These essays, all of which are previously unpublished, provide students in (...) moral philosophy with essential material and ask key questions on just what the criteria for an adequate moral theory might be. (shrink)

Moral reasoning typically relates unexpectedly weakly with both Machiavellianism and authoritarianism. Although researchers often explain this by pointing to apparent shortcomings in both the construct and the measure of moral reasoning, such explanations are questionable given the many instances of support for hypotheses involving moral reasoning using the same construct and measure. As these latter cannot only sometimes be flawed, we explored the possible influence of moral reasoning index choice on observed results by using multiple indices available in the Defining (...) Issues Test. In a sample of 201 employed persons surveyed in 1998, with results reported for the first time, advanced moral reasoners tended to be neither Machiavellian nor authoritarian. However, the specific moral reasoning index employed was critical to detecting these hypothesized inverse relationships. Specifically, we proposed that currently unavailable D scores would be the relevant index for examining inverse relationships with Machiavellianism and that P scores would be most appropriate in the context of inverse relationships with authoritarianism, particularly among persons inclined to utilize their characteristic moral reasoning. We extrapolate the conceptual logic underpinning such relationships, and suggest that appropriate index choice flows from this logic and is essential to hypothesis testing across a broad array of constructs. Future research could adopt this logic to examine relationships involving constructs with implications similar to those found in Machiavellianism and authoritarianism. (shrink)

Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory) vs. empirical (ethnography). In Theory Can Be More than It Used to Be, Dominic Boyer, James D. Faubion, and George E. Marcus argue that we need to take a step back from the assumption that we know what theory is to investigate how theory—a matter of concepts, of analytic practice, of medium of value, of professional ideology—operates in anthropology (...) and related fields today. They have assembled a distinguished group of scholars to diagnose the state of the theory-ethnography divide in anthropology today and to explore alternative modes of analytical and pedagogical practice. Continuing the methodological insights provided in Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be, the contributors to this volume find that now is an optimal time to reflect on the status of theory in relation to ethnographic research in anthropology and kindred disciplines. Together they engage with questions such as, What passes for theory in anthropology and the human sciences today and why? What is theory's relation to ethnography? How are students trained to identify and respect anthropological theorization and how do they practice theoretical work in their later career stages? What theoretical experiments, languages, and institutions are available to the human sciences? Throughout, the editors and authors consider theory in practical terms, rather than as an amorphous set of ideas, an esoteric discourse of power, a norm of intellectual life, or an infinitely contestable canon of texts. A short editorial afterword explores alternative ethics and institutions of pedagogy and training in theory. Contributors: Andrea Ballestero, Rice University; Dominic Boyer, Rice University; Lisa Breglia, George Mason University; Jessica Marie Falcone, Kansas State University; James D. Faubion, Rice University; Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Andreas Glaeser, University of Chicago; Cymene Howe, Rice University; Jamer Hunt, Parsons The New School for Design and the Institute of Design in Umea, Sweden; George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine; Townsend Middleton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Deepa S. Reddy, University of Houston–Clear Lake; Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago. (shrink)

Inside What Would Plato Do?, you'll find the basics of philosophy, written in an easy, digestible way we can all understand, along with questions to help you apply these important theories to your own life. So, after you've learned about a philosophical concept, you'll then be challenged to test yourself and see how the results can impact your daily life. For instance, after learning about Kant's theory of morality and the importance of intention you're challenged with questions like: Can good (...) people do bad things? Was there a time when you intended to do something helpful that ended up being hurtful? Does that make you a good person (because you intended to do good) or a bad person (because the results were bad)? What Would Plato Do? will not only help you better understand some of the greatest thinkers ever but will also help you think of the world around you in a whole new way! (shrink)

Climate science denial results from ignorance and perpetuates ignorance about scientific facts and methods of inquiry. In this paper, I explore climate science denial as a type of active ignorance...

This paper explores Dewey's landmark book Democracy and Education1 and the insights it holds for 21st-century education. Regarding the term "21st-century education," Alfie Kohn aptly notes that "we can take whatever objectives of teaching strategies we happen to favor and, merely by attaching a label that designates a future time period, endow them and ourselves with an aura of novelty and significance."2 The intention of this paper is to re-appropriate this term from two groups that tend to employ it. The (...) first of these is the standardization movement, which includes proponents of high-stakes testing and the concomitant narrowing of curricula. The second group is advocates for digital ubiquity in K–12 classrooms... (shrink)

Knowledge about ethical judgments has not advanced appreciably after decades of research. Such research, however, has rarely addressed the possible importance of the content of such judgments; that is, the material appearing in the brief vignettes or scenarios on which survey respondents base their evaluations. Indeed, this content has seemed an afterthought in most investigations. This paper closely examined the vast array of vignettes that have appeared in relevant research in an effort to reduce this proliferation to a more concise (...) set of overarching vignette themes. Six generic themes emerged from this process, labeled here as Dilemma, Classic, Conspiracy, Sophie’s Choice, Runaway Trolley, and Whistle Blowing. Each of these themes is characterized by a unique combination of four key factors that include the extent of protagonist personal benefit from relevant vignette activities and victim salience in vignette descriptions. Theme identification enabled inherent ambiguities in vignettes that threaten construct validity to come into sharp focus, provided clues regarding appropriate vignette construction, and may help to make sense of patterns of empirical findings that heretofore have seemed difficult to explain. (shrink)

Two contrasting types of individuals were each predicted to agree, for different reasons, that conventional ethical standards of society need not be upheld if organizational interests appear to demand otherwise. The hypotheses were investigated using questionnaire responses from two samples (employed and student, total N=308). Clear support was obtained for the prediction that individuals inclined toward self-interest and behavior counter to conventional standards would agree with the preceding position. Partial support was obtained for the hypothesis that individuals who simply feel (...) obligated to support an employing organization would also agree. While the latter's perspective may be somewhat narrow or perhaps even cynical, they do not seem to reflect the self-interest profile of the first group. This study also extends the groundbreaking work of Froelich and Kottke by exploring individual difference correlates of their promising ethics scale assessing the extent of agreement that organizational interests legitimately supersede more conventional ethical standards. (shrink)

D E Cooper; Is Language Learned?1, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 9, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 93–104, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1975.tb.

D E Cooper; Is Language Learned?1, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 9, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 93–104, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1975.tb.

Machine generated contents note: Part I. Introduction: 1. Personal epistemology in the classroom: a welcome and guide for the reader Florian C. Feucht and Lisa D. Bendixen; Part II. Frameworks and Conceptual Issues: 2. Manifestations of an epistemological belief system in pre-k to 12 classrooms Marlene Schommer-Aikins, Mary Bird, and Linda Bakken; 3. Epistemic climates in elementary classrooms Florian C. Feucht; 4. The integrative model of personal epistemology development: theoretical underpinnings and implications for education Deanna C. Rule and Lisa D. (...) Bendixen; 5. An epistemic framework for scientific reasoning in informal contexts Fang-Ying Yang and Chin-Chung Tsai; Appendices; 6. Who knows what and who can we believe? Epistemological beliefs are beliefs about knowledge (mostly) to be attained from others Rainer Bromme, Dorothe Kienhues, and Torsten Porsch; Part III. Students' Personal Epistemology, its Development, and Relation to Learning: 7. Stalking young persons' changing beliefs about belief Michael J. Chandler and Travis Proulx; 8. Epistemological development in very young knowers Leah K. Wildenger, Barbara K. Hofer, and Jean E. Burr; 9. Beliefs about knowledge and revision of knowledge: on the importance of epistemic beliefs for intentional conceptual change in elementary and middle school students Lucia Mason; 10. The reflexive relation between students' mathematics-related beliefs and the mathematics classroom culture Erik De Corte, Peter Op 't Eynde, Fien Depaepe, and Lieven Verschaffel; 11. Examining the influence of epistemic beliefs and goal orientations on the academic performance of adolescent students enrolled in high-poverty, high-minority schools P. Karen Murphy, Michelle M. Buehl, Jill A. Zeruth, Maeghan N. Edwards, Joyce F. Long, and Shinichi Monoi; 12. Using cognitive interviewing to explore elementary and secondary school students' epistemic and ontological cognition Jeffrey A. Greene, Judith Torney-Purta, Roger Azevedo, and Jane Robertson; Part IV. Teachers' Personal Epistemology and its Impact on Classroom Teaching: 13. Epistemological resources and framing: a cognitive framework for helping teachers interpret and respond to their students' epistemologies Andrew Elby and David Hammer; 14. The effects of teachers' beliefs on elementary students' beliefs, motivation, and achievement in mathematics Krista R. Muis and Michael J. Foy; Appendices; 15. Teachers' articulation of beliefs about teaching knowledge: conceptualizing a belief framework Helenrose Fives and Michelle M. Buehl; Appendices; 16. Beyond epistemology: assessing teachers' epistemological and ontological world views Lori Olafson and Gregory Schraw; Part V. Conclusion: 17. Personal epistemology in the classroom: what does research and theory tell us and where do we need to go next? Lisa D. Bendixen and Florian C. Feucht. (shrink)

Philosophers of technology are not playing the public role that our own theoretical perspectives motivate us to take. A great variety of theories and perspectives within philosophy of technology, including those of Marcuse, Feenberg, Borgmann, Ihde, Michelfelder, Bush, Winner, Latour, and Verbeek, either support or directly call for various sorts of intervention—a call that we have failed to heed adequately. Barriers to such intervention are discussed, and three proposals for reform are advanced: post-publication peer-reviewed reprinting of public philosophy, increased emphasis (...) on true open access publication, and increased efforts to publicize and adapt traditional academic research. (shrink)

I welcome Mr Kennedy's general approach, but query whether the concept of consumerism is so closely applicable to medical care as he maintains. However, in particular aspects, especially the handling of complaints, his criticisms echo those made by the Patients Association. Finally, I detect some ground for hope in the more enlightened attitude creeping in to the eduction of the medical student.

Causal theories of content, a popular family of approaches to defining the content of mental states, commonly run afoul of two related and serious problems that prevent them from providing an adequate theory of mental content—the misrepresentation problem and the disjunction problem. In this paper, I present a causal theory of content, built on information theoretic tools, that solves these problems and provides a viable model of mental content. This is the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, which identifies the (...) content of a signal as the event the surprisal of which is most reduced by that signal. Conceptually, this amounts to the claim that the content of a signal is the event the probability of which has increased by the largest proportion, or the event that the signal makes the most less surprising to us. I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content in four stages. First, I introduce the general project of causal theories of content, and the challenges presented to this project by the misrepresentation and disjunction problems. Next, I review two recent and prominent causal theories of content and demonstrate the serious challenges faced by these approaches, both clarifying the need for a solution to the misrepresentation and disjunction problems and providing a conceptual background for the greatest surprise reduction theory. Then, I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, demonstrate its ability to resolve the misrepresentation and disjunction problems, and explore some additional applications it may have. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of a particularly difficult challenge that remains to be addressed—the partition problem—and sketch a path to a potential solution. (shrink)

Investigations into ethical judgments generally seem fuzzy as to the relevant research domain. We first attempted to clarify the construct and determine domain parameters. This attempt required addressing difficulties associated with pinpointing relevant literature, most notably the varied nomenclature used to refer to ethical judgments (individual evaluations of actions’ ethicality). Given this variation in construct nomenclature and the difficulties it presented in identifying pertinent focal studies, we elected to focus on research that cited papers featuring prominent and often-used measures of (...) ethical judgments (primarily, but not exclusively, the Multidimensional Ethics Scale). Our review of these studies indicated a preponderance of inferences and conclusions unwarranted by empirical evidence (likely attributable at least partly to inconsistent nomenclature). Moreover, ethical judgments related consistently to few respondent characteristics or any other variables, emergent relationships may not always be especially meaningful, and much research seems inclined to repetition of already verified findings. Although we concluded that knowledge about ethical judgments seems not to have advanced appreciably after decades of investigation, we suggested a possible path forward that focuses on the content of what is actually being judged as reflected in the myriad of vignettes used in the literature to elicit judgments. (shrink)

(2001). Atomists, Liberals and Civic Republicans: Taylor on the Ontology of Citizenship. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 79, No. 4, pp. 465-478.

Infinite time Turing machines with only one tape are in many respects fully as powerful as their multi-tape cousins. In particular, the two models of machine give rise to the same class of decidable sets, the same degree structure and, at least for partial functions f : ℝ → ℕ, the same class of computable functions. Nevertheless, there are infinite time computable functions f : ℝ → ℝ that are not one-tape computable, and so the two models of infinitary computation (...) are not equivalent. Surprisingly, the class of one-tape computable functions is not closed under composition; but closing it under composition yields the full class of all infinite time computable functions. Finally, every ordinal that is clockable by an infinite time Turing machine is clockable by a one-tape machine, except certain isolated ordinals that end gaps in the clockable ordinals. (shrink)

There is a common view in medical ethics that the patient's right to be informed entails, as well, a correlative right not to be informed, i.e., to waive one's right to information. This paper argues, from a consideration of the concept of autonomy as the foundation for rights, that there can be no such ‘right’ to refuse relevant information, and that the claims for such a right are inconsistent with both deontological and utilitarian ethics. Further, the right to be informed (...) is shown to be a mandatory right (though not a welfare right); persons are thus seen to have both a right and a duty to be informed. Finally, the consequences of this view are addressed: since the way in which we conceptualize our problems tends to determine the actions we take to resolve them, it is important properly to conceptualize patients' requests not to be informed. There may be many reasons for acting in accord with such a request, but it is a mistake to conceptualize one's act as ‘respecting a right possessed by persons’. Keywords: medical ethics, informed consent, autonomy, information-waivers, rights, obligations CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This volume is an entertaining, multi-faceted exploration of what Facebook means for us and for our relationships. Facebook is a social networking service and website that launched in 2004. Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends,and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics. With discussions ranging from the nature of friendship and its relationship to "friending," to (...) the efficacy of "online activism," this book is a systematic attempt to understand Facebook, also offering perspectives on Twitter and Web 2.0. (shrink)

Editors and commentators ancient and modern have not responded very well to the challenge of the two riddles which round off the contest between Damoetas and Menalcas at the end of Eclogue 3 . The first is generally regarded as impossibly difficult; the second as impossibly easy. Critics take refuge in quoting Servius' despairing statement: sciendum aenigmata haec sicuti pleraque carere aperta solutione. Yet it is most unlikely that Virgil would introduce insoluble or meaningless riddles into the Bucolica. If there (...) is no solution the lines become pointless, even tasteless; and these are not epithets to be applied lightly to Virgil's poetry. (shrink)