"The papers within this volume articulate the challenges perceived by an individual or a country when its sense of self is confronted by the foreign, the threatening. Migration, exile, and invasion all challenge the individual or the nation to redefine itself and thereby write and rewrite the concept of personal and national identity. This interdisciplinary collection of papers, published for the first time, provide a stimulating and varied set of insights into the ongoing conversation that maps identity"--P. [4] of cover.

"--Richard Grandy, Rice University "This is the first compelling diagnosis of what has gone awry in the raging 'science wars.

Traits like simplicity and explanatory power have traditionally been treated as values internal to the sciences, constitutive rather than contextual. As such they are cognitive virtues. This essay contrasts a traditional set of such virtues with a set of alternative virtues drawn from feminist writings about the sciences. In certain theoretical contexts, the only reasons for preferring a traditional or an alternative virtue are socio-political. This undermines the notion that the traditional virtues can be considered purely cognitive.

The paper considers and opposes the view that processes are best thought of as continuants, to be differentiated from events mainly by way of the fact that the latter, but not the former, are entities with temporal parts. The motivation for the investigation, though, is not so much the defeat of what is, in any case, a rather implausible claim, as the vindication of some of the ideas and intuitions that the claim is made in order to defend — and (...) the grounding of those ideas and intuitions in a more plausible metaphysics than is provided by the continuant view. It is argued that in addition to a distinction between events and processes there is room and need for a third category, that of the individual process, which can be illuminatingly compared with the idea of a substance. Individual processes indeed share important metaphysical features with substantial continuants, but they do not lack temporal parts. Instead, it is argued that individual processes share with substantial continuants an important property I call ‘modal robustness in virtue of form’. The paper explains what this property is, and further suggests that the category of individual process, thus understood, might be of considerable value to the philosophy of action. (shrink)

This paper explores a number of recent proposals regarding "feminist science" and rejects a content-based approach in favor of a process-based approach to characterizing feminist science. Philosophy of science can yield models of scientific reasoning that illuminate the interaction between cultural values and ideology and scientific inquiry. While we can use these models to expose masculine and other forms of bias, we can also use them to defend the introduction of assumptions grounded in feminist political values.

This paper presents a dilemma which it has been alleged by Kim Frost must be faced by any defender of the notion of a two-way power and offers a solution to the dilemma which is distinct from Frost’s own. The dilemma is as follows: assuming that powers are to be individuated by what they are powers to do or undergo, then either there is a unified description of the manifestation-type which individuates the power, or there is not. If there is, (...) then two-way powers are revealed really to be one-way powers, after all. If there is not, then it is difficult to explain why the two-way power does not simply dissolve into a mere combination of two one-way powers. The paper offers an account of what a two-way power is that is distinct from the one Frost takes for granted, and argues that this different conception is the key to avoiding the dilemma. It is also argued that this alternative conception has several further advantages over its rival and also that it has no less of a claim than Frost’s notion to be prefigured in Aristotle’s original discussion. (shrink)

The paper argues that actions should be thought of as processes and not events. A number of reasons are offered for thinking that the things that it is most plausible to suppose we are trying to cotton on to with the generic talk of ‘actions’ in which philosophy indulges cannot be events. A framework for thinking about the event-process distinction which can help us understand how we ought to think about the ontology of processes we need instead is then developed, (...) building on some excellent work already done by philosophers working at the intersection of philosophy and linguistics. (shrink)

Paediatric research in low-income countries is essential to tackle high childhood mortality. As with all research, consent is an essential part of ethical practice for paediatric studies. Ethics guidelines recommend that parents or another proxy provide legal consent for children to participate, but that children should be involved in the decision through providing assent. However, there remain uncertainties about how to judge when children are ready to give assent and about appropriate assent processes. Malawi does not yet have detailed guidelines (...) on assent. Understanding perspectives among children and their parents can assist in developing contextually-appropriate assent guidance. Qualitative research was conducted with children and parents in three settings in Southern Malawi, to take account of any variations between socioeconomic and cultural contexts. In each setting, interviews were conducted with parents and their children who had participated in paediatric research to understand their experiences of assent and views on appropriate assent practice. Focus groups were also conducted with children and parents, to understand broader social perspectives. We found widespread support for involving children in decisions on research participation. Participants identified a range of factors that affect children’s capacity to give assent, including intellectual capacity, emotional development, life experience and cultural norms. Age was often mentioned as a consideration, but deemed an unreliable sole indicator of capacity to assent. In relation to appropriate assent processes, participants emphasised considerations such as supporting effective understanding and minimizing harms. Views on how to achieve these aims varied; for example, there were different ideas about the appropriate order in which to approach children and parents, and about whose decision to respect in the event of disagreement. Parents and children agreed about the value of involving children in decisions on research, and about the need to promote children’s decision-making capacity while respecting parents’ interests in children’s welfare. Developing practical guidance that meets these principles is challenging, particularly given the need for flexible approaches that suit different study types, children’s capacities and family environments. Further discussion within the Malawi research and ethics community will help develop contextually-appropriate guidelines. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the question what a continuant is, in the context of a very interesting suggestion recently made by Rowland Stout, as part of his attempt to develop a coherent ontology of processes. Stout claims that a continuant is best thought of as something that primarily has its properties at times, rather than atemporally—and that on this construal, processes should count as continuants. While accepting that Stout is onto something here, I reject his suggestion that we should (...) accept that processes are both occurrents and continuants; nothing, I argue, can truly occur or happen, which does not have temporal parts. I make an alternative suggestion as to how one might deal with the peculiar status of processes without jettisoning a very natural account of occurrence; and assess the consequences for the category of continuant. (shrink)

The aim of this literature review was to compose a narrative review supported by a systematic approach to critically identify and examine concerns about accountability and the allocation of responsibility and legal liability as applied to the clinician and the technologist as applied the use of opaque AI-powered systems in clinical decision making. This review questions if it is permissible for a clinician to use an opaque AI system in clinical decision making and if a patient was harmed as a (...) result of using a clinician using an AIS’s suggestion, how would responsibility and legal liability be allocated? Literature was systematically searched, retrieved, and reviewed from nine databases, which also included items from three clinical professional regulators, as well as relevant grey literature from governmental and non-governmental organisations. This literature was subjected to inclusion/exclusion criteria; those items found relevant to this review underwent data extraction. This review found that there are multiple concerns about opacity, accountability, responsibility and liability when considering the stakeholders of technologists and clinicians in the creation and use of AIS in clinical decision making. Accountability is challenged when the AIS used is opaque, and allocation of responsibility is somewhat unclear. Legal analysis would help stakeholders to understand their obligations and prepare should an undesirable scenario of patient harm eventuate when AIS were used. (shrink)

Feminist epistemology is both a paradox and a necessity. Epistemology is a highly general inquiry – into the meaning of knowledge claims and attributions, into conditions for the possibility of knowledge, into the nature of truth and justification, and so on. Feminism is a family of positions and inquiries characterized by some common sociopolitical interests centering on the abolition of sexual and gender inequality. What possible relation could there be between these two sets of activity? Furthermore, feminist inquiry results in (...) substantive claims and analyses of whose adequacy and correctness feminists hope to persuade nonfeminists as well as other feminists. How could such persuasion occur without some highly general and shared conceptions of knowledge and rationality to set the ground rules within which this persuasion will occur? How could this be anything but a general and uniformly applicable epistemology? A feminist epistemology is oxymoronic. On the other hand, feminist scholars have demonstrated the gender bias infusing most other academic disciplines – a gender bias that is expressed in particular claims and facilitated by disciplinary first principles. Women's experience is made invisible or distorted, as are gender relations. What reason have we for thinking philosophy and its subdisciplines might be immune? And how can feminists pursue philosophical inquiry without subjecting our own discipline and subdisciplines to the same kind of searching scrutiny to which other feminist scholars have subjected their disciplines? Indeed, since the traditional academic disciplines have rested on philosophical presuppositions that may be implicated in sexist or androcentric outcomes, it is imperative that we do so. Feminist epistemology is a necessity. (shrink)

This paper defends a substance-based metaphysics for organisms against three arguments for thinking that we should replace a substantial understanding of living things with a processual one, which are offered by Dan Nicholson and John Dupré in their edited collection, Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Dupré and Nicholson consider three main empirical motivations for the adoption of a process ontology in biology. These motivations are alleged to stem from facts concerning metabolism; the life cycles of organisms; and (...) ecological interdependence. The paper discusses each of the three arguments in turn and concludes that none gives us any compelling reason to abandon the metaphysics of things. At best, they are arguments against a kind of caricature substance metaphysics that ought never to have been in the running in any case. Then, at the end of the paper, it is suggested that there may be more positive arguments for insisting on retaining things in our metaphysics, arguments which, perhaps ironically get their main impetus from the phenomenon of life. (shrink)

According to common-sense morality, agents can become morally connected to the wrongdoing of others, such that they incur special obligations to prevent or rectify the wrongs committed by the primary wrongdoer. We argue that, under certain conditions, voluntary and unjustified observation of another agent’s degrading wrongdoing, or of the ‘product’ of their wrongdoing, can render an agent morally liable to bear costs for the sake of the victim of the primary wrong. We develop our account with particular reference to widespread (...) modern phenomena such as so-called ‘revenge porn’, ‘up-skirting’, and the online observation of sexual assault and murder. On our account, observation is not a sui generis basis of liability. Instead, observation grounds liability in virtue of manifesting three, more general, grounds of liability. First, observation can compound a primary wrong, making that wrong more harmful for the victim. Second, observation can constitute degrading treatment of the victim. Third, in certain cases observation can enable primary wrongdoing. We conclude by discussing the conditions under which observing degrading wrongs might be morally justified. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of the nature of inferring and focusses on the relation between reasons for belief and causes of belief. Two standard approaches to the analysis of inference, the epistemological and the psychological, are identified and discussed. While both approaches incorporate insights concerning, inference, counterexamples show that neither provides by itself an adequate account. A third account is developed and recommended on the grounds that it encompasses the essential insights of the rejected analyses while being immune to (...) their counterexamples. On this account coming to believe for a reason is taken to be central to our concept of inferring, but a causal relation holds between taking something to be a reason and belief. (shrink)

This paper draws on the author's work in social epistemology and on comparative studies of sciences of human behavior to draw attention to the importance of interaction. Drawing further on recent and contemporary research in biology, she argues that interaction ought to be considered a distinct ontological category, not reducible to properties of its participants.

This paper argues for the replacement of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities by an alternative principle, the Principle of Possible Non-Performance, which it is argued represents an important improvement on the Principle of Alternate Possibilities in the context of Frankfurt-style examples. The suggestion that the principle offers only the possibility of something insufficiently 'robust' to supply a decent replacement to PAP is countered.

This paper considers the analogies and disanalogies between a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about free will and a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about the external world. In the case of free will, I offer the ancient Lazy Argument and an argument of my own, which I call the Agency Argument, as examples of the relevant genre; and in the case of the external world, I consider Moore’s alleged proof of an external world. (...) I draw attention to analogies and disanalogies between the arguments offered in each case in order to suggest that although the Agency Argument shares with its Moorean relative the unfortunate property of being dialectically ineffective against some of those it is mainly hoping to convince, it will not be dialectically ineffective against all of them. It is also argued that the Agency Argument is less vulnerable than Moore’s proof to worries about its justificatory structure. (shrink)

Are animals agents? This question demands a prior answer to the question of what an agent is. The paper argues that we ought not to think of this as merely a matter of choosing from a range of alternative definitional stipulations. Evidence from developmental psychology is offered in support of the view that a basic concept of agency is a very early natural acquisition, which is established prior to the development of any full-blown propositional attitude concepts. Then it is argued (...) that whatever one makes of the developmental evidence, it is in any case arguable on other grounds that the concept of agency as we have it in adulthood remains perfectly comprehensible independently of any reference to the more sophisticated propositional attitudes. Any reluctance we might feel to ascribe such things as beliefs to non-human animals, therefore, need not stand in the way of the claim that they are agents, nevertheless. The paper attempts to characterise the core of this basic agency concept, and discusses, albeit briefly, the question how we ought to decide which animals are to be thought of as falling under it. It concludes with some speculations about the nature of the intellectual currents which have made the shape of this important concept so hard for us to discern. (shrink)

This paper proposes that mammals exhibit three primary emotion categories for mating and reproduction: (1) the sex drive, or lust, characterized by the craving for sexual gratification; (2) attraction, characterized by increased energy and focused attention on one or more potential mates, accompanied in humans by feelings of exhilaration, “intrusive thinking” about a mate, and the craving for emotional union with this mate or potential mate; and (3) attachment, characterized by the maintenance of close social contact in mammals, accompanied in (...) humans by feelings of calm, comfort, and emotional union with a mate. Each emotion category is associated with a discrete constellation of neural correlates, and each evolved to direct a specific aspect of reproduction. The sex drive is associated primarily with the estrogens and androgens; it evolved to motivate individuals to seek sexual union. The attraction system is associated primarily with the catecholamines; it evolved to facilitate mate choice, enabling individuals to focus their mating effort on preferred partners. The attachment system is associated primarily with the peptides, vasopressin, and oxytocin; it evolved to motivate individuals to engage in positive social behaviors and assume species-specific parental duties.During the evolution of the genus Homo, these emotion systems became increasingly independent of one another, a phenomenon that contributes to human mating flexibility and the wide range of contemporary human mating and reproductive strategies. (shrink)

The modern view of causation can be traced back to the mechanistic science of Descartes, whose rejection of Aristotelian physics, with its concept of substantial forms, in favor of mechanical explanations was a turning-point in the history of philosophy. However the reasoning which led Descartes and other early moderns in this direction is not well understood. This book traces Descartes' groundbreaking theory of scientific explanation back to the mathematical demonstrations of Aristotelian mechanics and interprets these advances in light of the (...) available arguments for and against substantial forms. It also examines how Descartes' new theory led him to develop a metaphysical foundation for his science that could avoid skeptical objections. It will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in the philosophy and science of the early modern period. (shrink)

This essay surveys twenty-five years of feminist epistemology in the pages of Hypatia. Feminist contributions have addressed the affective dimensions of knowledge; the natures of justification, rationality, and the cognitive agent; and the nature of truth. They reflect thinking from both analytic and continental philosophical traditions and offer a rich tapestry of ideas from which to continue challenging tradition and forging analytical tools for the problems ahead.

With the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare, there is also a need for professional guidance to support its use. New (2022) reports from National Health Service AI Lab & Health Education England focus on healthcare workers’ understanding and confidence in AI clinical decision support systems (AI-CDDSs), and are concerned with developing trust in, and the trustworthiness of these systems. While they offer guidance to aid developers and purchasers of such systems, they offer little specific guidance for the clinical (...) users who will be required to use them in patient care.This paper argues that clinical, professional and reputational safety will be risked if this deficit of professional guidance for clinical users of AI-CDDSs is not redressed. We argue it is not enough to develop training for clinical users without first establishing professional guidance regarding the rights and expectations of clinical users.We conclude with a call to action for clinical regulators: to unite to draft guidance for users of AI-CDDS that helps manage clinical, professional and reputational risks. We further suggest that this exercise offers an opportunity to address fundamental issues in the use of AI-CDDSs; regarding, for example, the fair burden of responsibility for outcomes. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's System of Logic was a significant early work in the history of the philosophy of science. The goal of this essay is to characterize Mill's views concerning the central purposes of the sciences and the methods that give to scientific inquiry its distinctive quality and power. More broadly, this chapter explores the implications of Mill's philosophy of science for important debates concerning the nature of inductivism and the normativity of scientific practice in the construction of an adequate (...) philosophy of science. To this end, it addresses William Whewell's trenchant criticisms of Mill's views and some the implications of their debates for the discipline of the philosophy of science. (shrink)

This article proposes a theoretical re-conceptualization of power dynamics and their legitimation in contemporary business–society relations using the prism and metaphor of parentalism. The paper develops a typology of forms of parentalism along two structuring dimensions: care and control. Specifically, four ideal-types of parentalism are introduced with their associated practices and power-legitimation mechanisms. As we consider current private governance and authority through this analytical framework, we are able to provide a new perspective on the nature of the moral legitimation of (...) power dynamics in contemporary business–society relations. And we weave the threads between this conceptual frame and historical antecedents, suggesting that business ethicists need to revive old debates on paternalism in light of the current pervasive trend of modernized and subtler forms of parentalism. Implications for business ethics and political CSR are discussed. (shrink)

The paper attempts to explicate and justify the position I call `Agency Incompatibilism'- that is to say, the view that agency itself is incompatible with determinism. The most important part of this task is the characterisation of the conception of agency on which the position depends; for unless this is understood, the rationale for the position is likely to be missed. The paper accordingly proceeds by setting out the orthodox philosophical position concerning what it takes for agency to exist, before (...) going on to explain why and how that orthodoxy should be challenged. The relations between my own views and those of others writing on the issues of free will and moral responsibility, in three crucial and inter-connected areas are then explored. These are (1) the question how animals should figure in the philosophy of action; (2) the question what the lesson is of `Frankfurt-style' examples; and (3) the distinction between so-called `leeway' incompatibilism and `source' incompatibilism. The paper moves on to consider and respond to various objections to Agency Incompatibilism, including the claim that to embrace the conception of agency that makes incompatibilism plausible is to beg the question against the compatibilist, and also the worry that determinism is an empirical thesis which ought not to be straightforwardly falsifiable by such a priori reasoning as Agency Incompatibilism appears to involve. I also try to rebut the worry that Agency Incompatibilism is committed to the existence of an unintelligible and/or naturalistically impossible variety of irreducible agent causation. (shrink)

In Science, Truth, and Democracy, Philip Kitcher develops the notion of well-ordered science: scientific inquiry whose research agenda and applications are subject to public control guided by democratic deliberation. Kitcher's primary departure from his earlier views involves rejecting the idea that there is any single standard of scientific significance. The context-dependence of scientific significance opens up many normative issues to philosophical investigation and to resolution through democratic processes. Although some readers will feel Kitcher has not moved far enough from earlier (...) epistemological positions, the book does represent an important addition to literature on science, society, and values. (shrink)

Biological research on aggression is increasingly consulted for possible answers to the social problems of crime and violence. This paper reviews some contrasting approaches to the biological understanding of behavior—behavioral genetic, social-environmental, physiological, developmental—as a prelude to arguing that approaches to aggression are beset by vagueness and imprecision in their definitions and disunity in their measurement strategies. This vagueness and disunity undermines attempts to compare and evaluate the different approaches empirically. Nevertheless, the definitions reveal commitments to particular metaphysical views concerning (...) behavior. Alternative understandings of aggression suggest even different research approaches than those most commonly found in the literature. (shrink)

The paper offers the outlines of a response to the often-made suggestion that it is impossible to see how indeterminism could possibly provide us with anything that we might want in the way of freedom, anything that could really amount to control, as opposed merely to an openness in the flow of reality that would constitute the injection of chance, or randomness, into the unfolding of the processes which underlie our activity. It is suggested that the best first move for (...) the libertarian is to make a number of important concessions to the compatibilist. It should be conceded, in particular, that certain sorts of alternative possibilities are neither truly available to real, worldly agents nor required in order that those agents act freely; and it should be admitted also that it is the compatibilist who tends to give the most plausible sorts of analyses of many of the 'can' and 'could have' statements which seem to need to be assertible of those agents we regard as free. But these concessions do not bring compatibilism itself in their wake. The most promising version of libertarianism, it is argued, is based on the idea that agency itself (and not merely some special instances of it which we might designate with the honorific appellation 'free') is inconsistent with determinism. This version of libertarianism, it is claimed, can avoid the objection that indeterminism is as difficult to square with true agential control as determinism can sometimes seem to be. (shrink)

Artificially intelligent systems (AISs) are being created by software developing companies (SDCs) to influence clinical decision‐making. Historically, clinicians have led healthcare decision‐making, and the introduction of AISs makes SDCs novel actors in the clinical decision‐making space. Although these AISs are intended to influence a clinician's decision‐making, SDCs have been clear that clinicians are in fact the final decision‐makers in clinical care, and that AISs can only inform their decisions. As such, the default position is that clinicians should hold responsibility for (...) the outcomes of the use of AISs. This is not the case when an AIS has influenced a clinician's judgement and their subsequent decision. In this paper, we argue that this is an imbalanced and unjust position, and that careful thought needs to go into how personal moral responsibility for the use of AISs in clinical decision‐making should be attributed. This paper employs and examines the difference between prospective and retrospective responsibility and considers foreseeability as key in determining how personal moral responsibility can be justly attributed. This leads us to the view that moral responsibility for the outcomes of using AISs in healthcare ought to be shared by the clinical users and SDCs. (shrink)

An agent A morally coerces another agent, B, when A manipulates non-epistemological facts in order that B’s moral commitments enjoin B to do what A wants B to do, and B is motivated by these commitments. It is widely argued that forced choices arising from moral coercion are morally distinct from forced choices arising from moral duress or happenstance. On these accounts, the fact of being coerced bears on what an agent may do, the voluntariness of her actions, and/or her (...) accountability for any harms that result from her actions. This paper does not provide an account of the wrongness of moral coercion. Rather, I argue that, whatever the correct account of its wrongness, the mere fact of being coerced has no bearing on what the agent may do, on the voluntariness of her action, or her accountability for any resultant harm, compared to otherwise identical cases arising from duress and happenstance. (shrink)

A ‘good enough’ nurse: supporting patients in a fertility unitIn this paper, I discuss the findings of an ethnographic study of a fertility unit. I suggest that caring as ‘emotional awareness’ and ‘non‐caring’ as ‘emotional distance’ may be forms of nursing akin to Fabricius’s (1991) arguments around the ‘good enough’ nurse. This paper critiques caring theories and contributes to the debates over the nature of caring in nursing. I discuss the implications raised for nurses if patients want a practical approach (...) to caring and do not expect an emotionally intimate relationship from nurses. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I carry out an analysis of an event in Sweden called ‘the spring turnout’. It is a traditional event where cows are allowed out into the fields after the winter. I show how i...

What should we do about climate change? This article examines the ethical problems that arise from climate change, and considers our obligations and responsibilities to one another, other species and the planet because of global warming.

Irigaray's insistence on sexual difference as the primary difference arises out of a phenomenological perception of nature. Drawing on Heidegger's insights into physis, she begins with his critique of the nature/culture binary. Both philosophers maintain that nature is not matter to be ordered by technical know-how; yet Irigaray reveals that although Heidegger distinguishes physis from techn in his work, his forgetting of the potentiality of matter, the maternal-feminine, and the two-fold essence of being as sexual difference means that his own (...) concept of physis can be understood as another techn. Focussing in particular upon Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle's privileging of morphé over hylé as a description of presencing into appearance, I show that for Irigaray the movements of presencing and absencing emerge out of a metaphysics that does not take into account the fluidity, the mixtures and interpenetrations of a nature that is limited by fecundity not by death. Our oblivion to nature is the greatest danger, and thus attending to our embodied and hence sexuate nature holds the promise of a new age, since it is rooted in the possibilities of the flesh revealed through the cultivated perception of sexual difference. (shrink)

James Tabery Helen Longino’s Studying Human Behavior is an overdue effort at a nonpartisan evaluation of the many scientific disciplines that study the nature and nurture of human behavior, arguing for the acceptance of the strengths and weaknesses of all approaches. After years of conflict, Longino makes the pluralist case for peaceful coexistence. Her analysis of the approaches raises the following question: how are we to understand the pluralistic relationship among the peacefully coexisting approaches? Longino is ironically rather unpluralistic (...) about her pluralism, forcing a choice between integrative pluralism and her preferred ineliminative pluralism. I hope to show that the analysis of approaches she offers actually accommodates a pluralism that is both integrative and ineliminative.Approaches to studying human behaviorPhilosophy of biology took shape as a discipline in the 1970s. This disciplinary formation over. (shrink)

Practice-centric and theory-centric approaches in philosophy of science are described and contrasted. The contrast is developed through an examination of their different treatments of the underdetermination problem. The practice-centric approach is illustrated by a summary of comparative research on approaches in the biology of behavior. The practice-centric approach is defended against charges that it encourages skepticism regarding the sciences.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that having ‘leeway’ is part and parcel of what it is to be the agential source of an action, so that embracing source incompatibilism does not, by itself, absolve the incompatibilist of the need to find Frankfurtian agents to be possessors of alternate possibilities. I offer a response to Frankfurt-style counterexamples to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, based on the idea that Frankfurt's Jones exercises the two-way power of agency when he acts – a (...) power whose exercise intrinsically implies the possibility of having done otherwise. I then show how to respond to the objection that the alternative possibility noted is not sufficiently ‘robust’ to ground his moral responsibility. I also distinguish my own argument for the claim that source incompatibilism is not truly independent of leeway incompatibilism from an argument for the same conclusion which has been offered previously by Kevin Timpe, and suggest that my own version has the dialectical advantage that it does not automatically assume from the outset that sourcehood requires indeterminism, and hence is in line with the traditional idea that the alternate possibilities requirement on moral responsibility is the common property of compatibilists and incompatibilists alike. (shrink)

Stocks and flows are building blocks of dynamic systems: Stocks change through inflows and outflows, such as our bank balance changing with withdrawals and deposits, or atmospheric CO2 with absorptions and emissions. However, people make systematic errors when trying to infer the behavior of dynamic systems, termed SF failure, whose cognitive explanations are yet unknown. We argue that SF failure appears when people focus on specific system elements, rather than on the system structure and gestalt. Using a standard SF task, (...) SF failure decreased by a global as opposed to local task format; individual global as opposed to local processing styles; and global as opposed to local perceptual priming. These results converge toward local processing as an explanation for SF failure. We discuss theoretical and practical implications on the connections between the scope of attention and understanding of dynamic systems. (shrink)

Our contribution in this paper is to highlight the ethical implications of workforce engagement strategies in an age of austerity. Hard or instrumentalist approaches to workforce engagement create the potential for situations where engaged employees are expected to work ever longer and harder with negative outcomes for their well-being. Our study explores these issues in an investigation of the enactment of an engagement strategy within a UK Health charity, where managers and workers face paradoxical demands to raise service quality and (...) cut costs. We integrate insights from engagement, paradox, and ethic of care literatures, to explore these paradoxical demands—illustrating ways in which engagement experiences become infused with tensions when the workforce faces competing requirements to do ‘more with less’ resources. We argue that those targeted by these paradoxical engagement strategies need to be supported and cared for, embedded in an ethic of care that provides explicit workplace resources for helping workers and managers cope with and work through corresponding tensions. Our study points to the critical importance of support from senior and frontline managers for open communications and dialogue practices. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the widespread view that obstructors are a special sort of bystander is mistaken. Obstructors make Victim worse off by their presence, and thus are more properly described as innocent threats. Only those characters who do not make Victim worse off by their presence can be classified as bystanders.

Miriam Solomon's social empiricism is marked by emphasis on community level rationality in science and the refusal to impose a distinction between the epistemic and the non-epistemic character of factors ("decision vectors") that incline scientists for or against a theory. While she attempts to derive some norms from the analysis of cases, her insistent naturalism undermines her effort to articulate norms for the (appropriate) distribution of decision vectors.