Résumé éditeur : This book tells two intertwined stories, centered on twentieth-century moral philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch. The first is the story of four friends who came up to Oxford together just before WWII. It is the story of their lives, loves, and intellectual preoccupations; it is a story about women trying to find a place in a man's world of academic philosophy. The second story is about these friends' shared philosophical project and their (...) unintentional creation of a school of thought that challenged the dominant way of doing ethics. That dominant school of thought envisioned the world as empty, value-free matter, on which humans impose meaning. This outlook treated statements such as “this is good” as mere expressions of feeling or preference, reflecting no objective standards. It emphasized human freedom and demanded an unflinching recognition of the value-free world. The four friends diagnosed this moral philosophy as an impoverishing intellectual fad. This style of thought, they believed, obscured the realities of human nature and left people without the resources to make difficult moral choices or to confront evil. As an alternative, the women proposed a naturalistic ethics, reviving a line of thought running through Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, and enriched by modern biologists like Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin. The women proposed that there are, in fact, moral truths, based in facts about the distinctive nature of the human animal and what that animal needs to thrive.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 126-127 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment T. J. Hochstrasser. Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 246. Cloth, $54.95. In a worthy addition to Cambridge's Ideas in Context series, T. J. Hochstrasser undertakes an excavation. His aim is to provide a description, and to (...) demonstrate the importance within the German Frühaufklärung, of a largely forgotten philosophical approach: eclecticism. Hochstrasser argues that the triumph of Wolffian rationalism in the Protestant universities in the middle of the eighteenth century occluded the importance of eclecticism for Kant, who in turn occluded it for everyone afterward. But the price of forgetting eclecticism is high. Not only are we left with no account--or a skewed account--of the development of German thought from the first stirrings of the Enlightenment to the emergence of the Critical philosophy, but our understanding of the development of the historiography of philosophy is badly compromised. For among their many accomplishments--in natural jurisprudence, in university reform--the eclectics were the first critical historians of philosophy, their distinctive genres being historically aware treatises on natural law and Whig histories of natural jurisprudence. Hochstrasser's study traces the development of eclecticism, from the work of its founders, Samuel Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius, through a devolution in the hands of Thomasius's later disciples, to the eventual oblivion in the middle of the eighteenth century. This review will focus on the beginning of this narrative, as Pufendorf is the leading figure in the book.Eclecticism began with Pufendorf's attempt, in his mature work on natural law, to reconcile his conflicting inheritances from Grotius and Hobbes without simply endorsing the work of either. He was impressed both by Grotius's explanation of the law of nations in terms of human sociability--but also by Hobbes's criticisms of Grotius, rooted in the latter's analysis of the state of nature. At the same time, he wished to reject Grotius's method of induction from sociological observation and Hobbes's minimally constrained voluntarism. Contributing further to his perplexity was his increasing disaffection from the geometric approach he had adopted in his Elementa Jurisprudentiae Universalis.The way out of this impasse, Hochstrasser contends, was revealed to Pufendorf in correspondence with Hermann Conring, the leading constitutional lawyer of his time, and Johann Böcler, Grotius's most erudite commentator. Böcler chastised Pufendorf for his neglect of history, and both of Pufendorf's correspondents pointed out his need for some non-Hobbesian criterion by which he could validate his first principles, whatever they turned out to be. Stung particularly by Böcler's remarks, Pufendorf returned to the Stoics and there discovered a via media between Hobbes's pessimism and Grotius's optimism: a synthesis anticipating Kant's doctrine of "unsocial sociability." For the purposes of Hochstrasser's study, the key aspects of Pufendorf's solution are these: first, it avoids mere voluntarism; second, it does this by means of a moral epistemology that sharply distinguishes natural law [End Page 126] from moral theology; finally, the validating criterion for Pufendorf's first principles is located in critical appropriation of the history of moral philosophy. These were to be hallmarks of Pufendorf's school.On the first and second points, Hochstrasser seems to me substantively correct, though I think he misunderstands the nature of Pufendorf's escape from mere voluntarism and thereby underplays the religious dimensions of Pufendorf's theory. Among recent Anglo-American commentators on Pufendorf, only Robert Adams has in my view properly construed Pufendorf's thought: that it involves a command theory of obligation proper, but posits the natural advantageousness of some hierarchies as a buttress against mere voluntarism. Hochstrasser is thus right to insist, against Leibniz, that Pufendorf's account of obligation is coherent. But he is wrong to suggest that "there was nothing in Pufendorf's theory... to oblige him to introduce fear of punishment by a superior... " (105). He is... (shrink)

In this essay, I offer an interpretation of the ethical thought of Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch. The combined effect of their work was to revive a naturalistic account of ethical objectivity that had dominated the premodern world. I proceed narratively, explaining how each of the four came to make the contribution she did towards this implicit common project: in particular how these women came to see philosophical possibilities that their male contemporaries mostly did not.

This volume is the first to place these topics within the context of the Critical philosophy as a whole, encouraging not only a more metaphysical, but also a ...

Benjamin Lipscomb (The Women Are Up to Something) and Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachel Wiseman (Metaphysical Animals) have written books discussing the same four women philosophers—Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch—and their rise to prominence in the almost exclusively male-dominated academies of Oxford and Cambridge universities. This review focuses on these philosophers’ intellectual contributions, with special attention given to the Aristotelian character of their views in the face of an opposing philosophical regimen. We conclude with a (...) brief reflection on Ayn Rand’s moral philosophy in light of the contributions made by these four women philosophers. (shrink)

Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb, The Women Are up to Something. How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics, Oxford University Press, New York, 2022, 326pp., ISBN 978–0–19–754107–4.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics by Benjamin J. B. LipscombAmy Gilbert RichardsLIPSCOMB, Benjamin J. B. The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. xxx + 326 pp. Cloth, $27.95In The Women Are Up to Something, Lipscomb demonstrates in (...) form and content the inextricable link between philosophical theory and personal story and character. The book tells two stories: "first, a story [End Page 148] about four women, their overlapping friendships, and their struggle to establish themselves as philosophers in an often-hostile context; second, a story about two conflicting approaches to ethics." These two stories connect through the role these women played in the development of the second of the conflicting approaches—a challenge to the mid-twentieth-century Oxbridge orthodoxy in metaethics, what Lipscomb later calls a "minority report."Chapter 1 centers on the fact–value divide. The consequence of this divide for ethics lies in its banishment of all evaluative terms from the realm of possible facts, thereby demoting them to matters of "opinion." Lipscomb here offers a genealogy of the divide. He also introduces the insight that will become the seed of the minority report: The picture of the world offered by the fact-value divide is just that, a picture. Bringing to light the deep background pictures that undergird our understanding of the world is one of the most difficult intellectual tasks. But the picture rooted in the fact–value divide includes the claim that the divide itself is simply a "fact"—not a picture at all, and therefore not contestable. Lipscomb labels this view "the Dawkins' sublime."The next three chapters continue the work of stage-setting. Chapter 2 immerses us in the Oxford of the women's undergraduate years—an Oxford temporarily but dramatically altered by World War II, where female students made up a much larger percentage of the undergraduate population than was usual, and where professors were in a new way open to mentoring women. Chapter 3 briefly recounts all four childhoods, lived in the aftermath of the first World War. Chapter 4 returns to Oxford and narrates the graduate degrees of the four women. It also offers a perceptive primer on the history of analytic ethics, culminating in the state of the field at the point when the women were on the cusp of entering it—the precise shape of the approach to ethics the women would eventually abjure.Each of the next four chapters traces the development of the mature philosophy of one of the four women—in order: Murdoch, Anscombe, Foot, and Midgley. Despite deep differences among their philosophical and theological outlooks, they all four came to defend a version of the thesis, commonplace in ancient and medieval philosophy, that there are things that are good for human beings qua human being, that our moral lives are largely a matter of seeing and responding—well or poorly—to these elements of the human good that are given as part of our nature. In other words, there are facts about values. We in crucial ways discover rather than invent morality.The last chapter serves as an epilogue to both stories: It traces the ways in which the writing and lives of these four women produced a decisive change in the landscape of Anglo-American philosophy. Lipscomb notes which strains in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy owe their existence to the minority report. Figures like Korsgaard feature as contemporary representatives of an ethics grounded in the fact–value [End Page 149] divide. Figures like MacIntyre and Hursthouse feature as inheritors of the philosophical legacy of the book's heroines.In this final chapter Lipscomb also offers brief portraits of the later life and death of each of the women in turn. At the end of the final portrait, the book rounds to a poetic close—not offering a final philosophical statement but reflecting on the fruits of friendship and the power of its legacy for those who come after.It is difficult to pin down Lipscomb's precise philosophical... (shrink)

Review of Lipscomb, B. J. B. (2021). The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Using data from the Survey of the Status of Social Studies ( S4), this article describes the instructional decisions and practices of elementary teachers in two neighboring states, one where social studies is tested and another where it is not. We define students’ opportunity to learn within these states as a composite of three variables: time allocations for social studies (teacher reported instructional time), methods for teaching social studies (teacher reported instructional strategies), and content focus (teacher reported content emphases and (...) state-mandated curriculum standards). Our guiding research question for this study was: To what extent do teachers’ perceptions of elementary school social studies instructional practices and content vary between two states with different testing policies for social studies? Initial findings revealed notable differences that could not be explained by testing policies alone. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory content analysis of the elementary social studies curricula in these neighboring states. We uncovered curricular differences that suggest that state standards influence teachers’ decisions in both what and how they choose to teach social studies. However, there were curriculum differences that did not align with S4 instructional methods and content focus output. Thus, we concluded that other factors apart from the curriculum guide teachers’ decision-making. Results provided evidence that students have different opportunities to learn based on (1) state testing policies in social studies, (2) curriculum content, (3) how social studies is delivered (e.g., stand-alone versus integration), and (4) time allocated to social studies. We concluded that these variables constrict or expand students’ opportunity to learn social studies and may influence teachers’ pedagogical and content choices in elementary social studies. (shrink)

Should we regard Jennifer Lackey’s ‘Creationist Teacher’ as understanding evolution, even though she does not, given her religious convictions, believe its central claims? We think this question raises a range of important and unexplored questions about the relationship between understanding, factivity and belief. Our aim will be to diagnose this case in a principled way, and in doing so, to make some progress toward appreciating what objectual understanding—i.e., understanding a subject matter or body of information—demands of us. Here is the (...) plan. After some ground clearing in §1, §2 outlines and motivates a plausible working model—moderate factivity—for characterising the sense in which objectual understanding should be regarded as factive. §3 shows how the datum that we can understand false theories can, despite initial suggestions to the contrary, be assimilated straightforwardly within the moderate factivity model. §4 highlights how the inverse kind of case to that explored in §3—viz., a variant of Lackey’s creationist teacher case—poses special problems for moderate factivity. With reference to recent work on moral understanding by Hills, §5 proposes a solution to the problem, and §6 attempts to diagnose why it is that we might originally have been led to draw the wrong conclusion. (shrink)

Normative and prescriptive claims regarding social justice are often inadequately developed in the nursing literature and, in consequence, they must be rejected in their current form. Thus, claims regarding social justice are frequently presented as mere assertion or, alternatively, when assertions are supported that support may be weak . This paper challenges the coherence of social justice as a shared nursing value and it is suggested that claims regarding the concept should be tempered.

Value–act relationships are less secure than is commonly supposed and this insecurity is leveraged to address two questions. First, can nurses refuse professional value claims (e.g., claims regarding care and compassion)? Second, even when value claims are accepted, might values be held provisionally and tentatively? These questions may seem absurd. Nurses deliver care and nursing is, we are told, a profession the members of which hold and share values. However, focusing attention on the problematic nature of professional value claims qua (...) claims permits a more conciliatory and realistic stance to be taken towards nurses holding alternative values and value interpretations. This could prove beneficial. (shrink)

Mixed method study designs are becoming increasingly popular among nurse researchers. Mixed studies can have advantages over single method or methodological investigative designs. However, these advantages may be squandered where researchers fail to think through and justify their theoretic decisions. This paper argues that nurse researchers do not always pay sufficient heed to the philosophic and theoretic elements of research design and, in consequence, some mixed study reports lack argumentative coherence and validity. It is here suggested that Hempel's concept of (...) equivalence can be stretched to usefully illustrate one of the main threats to argumentative coherence in mixed study design. The critical realist theory of Roy Bhaskar is then introduced and this, it is proposed, offers one means by which Hempel's equivalence dilemma can be overcome. Critical realists recognize the existence of logical connections between the ontological, epistemological, and methodological premises that underpin their work. They are therefore more likely to produce coherent studies than uncritical pragmatists who ignore such linkages and, paradoxically, critical realists can be epistemological pluralists because, in re‐conceptualizing the ontological basis of inquiry, problems associated with the mixing of alternative metaphysics are circumvented. (shrink)

Abduction, deduction and induction describe forms of reasoning. Deduction and induction are discussed in the nursing literature. However, abduction has been largely neglected by nurse scholars. In this paper it is proposed that abduction may play a part in qualitative data analysis – specifically, in the identification of themes, codes, and categories. Abduction is not, in research, restricted to or associated with any particular methodology. Nevertheless, situating abduction in qualitative research facilitates the identification of three interlinked issues. First, it is (...) suggested that abductively derived claims require support from deductive and inductively sourced evidence if they are to ‘hold’ and, yet, in qualitative research this is clearly problematic. Second, difficulties in choosing between alternative plausible hypotheses are explored through an examination of the ‘generality problem’. Third, the role of background and auxiliary theories in adjudicating between hypothesis options is discussed. It is argued that if qualitative researchers utilize abductive inference in the manner suggested, then the peculiarly fallible nature of abduction must be acknowledged and, in consequence, the action guiding potential of qualitative research findings is compromised. (shrink)

A myriad of coordinated signals control cellular differentiation. Reprogramming the cell's proteome drives global changes in cell morphology and function that define cell phenotype. A switch in alternative splicing of many pre‐mRNAs encoding neuronal‐specific proteins accompanies neuronal differentiation. Three groups recently showed that the global splicing repressor, polypyrimidine track‐binding protein (PTB), regulates this switch.1-3 Although a subset of neuronal genes are turned on in both non‐neuronal and neuronal cells, restricted expression of PTB in non‐neuronal cells diverts their mRNAs to nonsense‐mediated (...) decay and prevents protein expression. When the PTB brake is released, the cell splices like a neuron. BioEssays 30:1–4, 2008. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, and not just out of thought, out of a partially functioning mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless and that time and the timeless each has its own unique value. The timeless, or real silence, that which alone can make for depth in one's living and (...) relating, can be there only when, in one's awareness, time and all that is related to time, have come to an end. An examination of a wide variety of statements made by writers, both past and present, shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past. 'Living beyond the One and the Many' invites readers to consider the possibility that what is presented in it can bring deep meaning to one's way of living in the world"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

Educationalists introduce students to literature search strategies that, with rare exceptions, focus chiefly on the location of primary research reports and systematic reviews of those reports. These sources are, however, unlikely to adequately address the normative and/or metaphysical questions that nurses frequently and legitimately interest themselves in. To meet these interests, non‐research texts exploring normative and/or metaphysical topics might and perhaps should, in some situations, be deemed suitable search targets. This seems plausible and, moreover, students are encouraged to ‘read widely’. (...) Yet accepting this proposition creates significant difficulties. Specifically, if non‐research scholarly sources and artistic or literary (humanities) products dealing with normative/metaphysical issues were included in what are, at present, scientifically orientated searches, it is difficult to draw boundaries around what – if anything – is to be excluded. Engaging with this issue highlights problems with qualitative scholarship's designation as ‘evidence’. Thus, absurdly, if qualitative scholarship's findings are labelled evidence because they generate practice‐relevant understanding/insight, then any literary or artistic artefact (e.g. a throwaway lifestyle magazine) that generates kindred understandings/insights is presumably also evidence? This conclusion is rejected and it is instead proposed that while artistic, literary, and qualitative inquiries can provide practitioners with powerful and stimulating non‐evidential understanding, these sources are not evidence as commonly conceived. (shrink)

Protagoras, of all the ancient philosophers, has perhaps attracted the most interest in modern times. His saying ‘Man is the measure of all things’ caused Schiller to adopt him as the patron of the Oxford pragmatists, and has generally earned him the title of the first humanist. Yet the exact delineation of his philosophcal position remains a baffling task. Neumann, writing on Die Problematik des ‘Homo-mensura’ Satzes in 1938,2 concludes that no certainty whatever can be reached on the meaning of (...) the dictum, since ‘man’, ‘measure’, and ‘things’ are all ambiguous, nor can we tell which of the three is the predicate. The time is past when it was believed that a man's philosophy could be understood apart from the events of his life and the circumstances of his age: yet in the case of Protagoras the historical method of approach has hardly been attempted, although the impact of environment was perhaps more decisive in the formation of philosophical concepts in the Greek world than anywhere else. The reality about which the Greek philosopher spoke had three aspects: it was either the one universe of physics, or the political unity, or God. For example, the book of Heracleitus Περ φσεως was divided into three chapters or logoi, About the Whole, a political, and a theological. Neither physics nor theology supplies from its own subject-matter the form in which this reality was described. (shrink)

A recent paper in this journal by Hardcastle et al. in 2005 argued that Anthony Giddens’s Structuration Theory (ST) might usefully inform sociological nursing research. In response, a critique of ST based upon the Realist Social Theory of Margaret Archer is presented. Archer maintains that ST is fatally flawed and, in consequence, it has little to offer nursing research. Following an analysis of the concepts epiphenomenalism and elisionism, it is suggested that emergentist Realist Social Theory captures or describes a more (...) coherent explanatory vision of social reality than other perspectives and nurse researchers are advised to consider its potential. (shrink)

Theoretic interest in the nature of events and event identity is apparent across a wide range of fields. However, this interest has not yet made itself known in nursing. In this paper, it is asserted that nurse theoreticians and researchers should consider the problematic of events and event identity. It is suggested that engagement with these issues is important because the manner in which this component of explanation is integrated into argument has concrete implications for our understanding of healthcare practice. (...) Indeed, refusal to engage with such issues may jeopardize explanatory coherence. (shrink)

The search for “usable” expert systems is leading somemedical researchers to question the appropriate role of these programs. Most current systems assume a limited role for the human user, delegating situated “decision-control” to the machine. As expert systems are only able to replace a narrow range of human intellectual functions, this leaves the programs unable to cope with the “constructivist” nature of human knowledge-use. In returning practical control to the human doctor, some researchers are abandoning focusedproblem-solving in favour of supportiveproblem-analysis. (...) Using ONCOCIN and QMR as examples, this article contrasts these approaches and suggests that the latter avoids many of the difficulties currently facing medical expert systems. (shrink)

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing (...) achievement. (shrink)

The received translation and interpretation of many of the technical terms current in the textile industry of the Roman Empire are inaccurate, because lexicographers have either fought shy of being precise, or have thought that they recognized in the ancient world technical processes which originated at a much later date. The evidence is often equivocal or insufficient, but may still yield details that have been overlooked. The textile expression scutulatus, to take an example, deserves more attention than Blümner has devoted (...) to it. When it refers to the appearance of a garment, Lewis and Short, s.v. scutulatus, translate ‘diamond or lozenge-shaped, checkered’. It seems worth while to attempt a more precise translation, and, if possible, to estimate the significance in context of the goods so designated. (shrink)

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

While nurses can and do behave as intentional political agents, claims that nurses collectively do , should or must act to advance political objectives lack credibility. This paper challenges the coherence and legitimacy of political demands placed upon nurses. It is not suggested that nurses ought not to contribute to political discourse and activity. That would be foolish. However, the idea that nursing can own or exhibit a general political will is discarded. It is suggested that to protect and advance (...) political discussion, to aid explanatory adequacy and clarity, the form in which nursing associates itself with political claims merits critical appraisal. Thus significant numbers of nurses probably reject or disagree with many of the political claims that attach to them – claims often made on their behalf. More specifically, the individual beliefs and goals of nurses can be in conflict with the political pronouncements of nursing scholars and organizations . It is proposed that nurses need not share substantive normative beliefs/goals and, if this proposal holds, group descriptors such as ‘nurses’ and ‘nursing’ cannot meaningfully or easily attach to political claims. Shared value theory is linked to the fallacy of composition and the concept of collective ascription error is introduced to explore the implausibility of using group descriptors such as ‘nurses’ and ‘nursing’ to refer to the beliefs/goals of all nurses. (shrink)