Higher education serves many purposes, one of which is to prepare college and university students with the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary for employment. Some would argue that this is the primary and even sole purpose of collegiate education. However, many also contend that university education is intended to broaden students' minds and enable them to question, investigate and think critically in order to be productive and engaged citizens. Regardless of the lens through which higher education is viewed, within any (...) of these purposes is the need for ethical practices in teaching, learning, student engagement, and overall operational structures. Truly, in every facet of university life, ethical practices exist. If institutions of higher education are the places where, in part, the global future is shaped, then it is imperative that these same organizations be the exemplars of ethical practices. Ethics in Higher Education includes chapters that explore and examine topics such as teaching of ethics, ethical practices on campus, ethics of clinical practices, ethics and leadership in the academy, ethics in hiring practices at colleges/universities, ethics and campus-sponsored research, as well as other topics relevant to higher education. In addition to drawing attention to the successes and challenges regarding ethical practices in higher education, this book aims to encourage future research initiatives and collaborations. (shrink)

In this article I argue that evolutionary psychological strategies for making inferences about present-day human psychology are methodologically unsound. Evolutionary psychology is committed to the view that the mind has an architecture that has been conserved since the Pleistocene, and that our psychology can be fruitfully understood in terms of the original, fitness-enhancing functions of these conserved psychological mechanisms. But for evolutionary psychological explanations to succeed, practitioners must be able to show that contemporary cognitive mechanisms correspond to those that were (...) selected for in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, that these present-day cognitive mechanisms are descended from the corresponding ancestral mechanisms, and that they have retained the functions of the ancestral mechanisms from which they are descended. I refer to the problem of demonstrating that these conditions obtain as “the matching problem,” argue that evolutionary psychology does not have the resources to address it, and conclude that evolutionary psychology, as it is currently understood, is therefore impossible. (shrink)

Intrateam competition is an inherently social and interactional process, yet it is not often studied as such. Research on competition is mostly limited to studying it as an individual state and assumes that the resulting team outcomes are equivalent across different competition types. Often overlooked in competition research are the means through which competition can lead to constructive outcomes for the team. Constructive competition occurs when the primary motivation is not to win at the expense of others, but rather to (...) make social comparisons and gain knowledge of relative competence. This study furthers insight into constructive competition by studying its interpersonal characteristics as it develops within a team, and its impact on task conflict, perceived performance, and team satisfaction. The conversations of 24 student project teams were recorded over 4 weeks and analyzed, operationalizing competition as an attempt to exert control and influence on the team. Each individual then provided sociometric ratings of perceived performance of each team member, and rated the level of task conflict and satisfaction of the team. The effects of competition on perceived performance and team satisfaction, both directly and indirectly through task conflict, were examined. Findings demonstrated a negative direct effect of competition on the range of perceived performance ratings, and a positive indirect effect of competition on team satisfaction as mediated through task conflict. The study broadens understanding on the construct of competition and underscores the positive implications competition can bring to the teams. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of what organisms are and therefore what kinds of biological entities qualify as organisms. For some time now, the concept of organismality has been eclipsed by the notion of individuality. Biological individuals are those systems that are units of selection. I develop a conception of organismality that does not rely on evolutionary considerations, but instead draws on development and ecology. On this account, organismality and individuality can come apart. Organisms, in my view, are as Godfrey- (...) class='Hi'>Smith puts it “essentially persisters.” I argue that persistence is underpinned by differentiation, integration, development, and the constitutive embeddedness of organisms in their worlds. I examine two marginal cases, the Portuguese Man O’ War and the honey bee colony, and show that both count as organisms in light of my analysis. Next, I examine the case of holobionts, hosts plus their microsymbionts, and argue that they can be counted as organisms even though they may not be biological individuals. Finally, I consider the question of whether other, less tightly integrated biological systems might also be treated as organisms. (shrink)

Some things are living and some are not. Under the heading “living things” come entities at various levels of biological organization. Some are called “organisms.” However, the term “organism” does not pick out organismal entities uniformly—that is, among all the things that are considered to be whole living systems, some are regarded as indisputably organisms, and others are accorded only qualified organismic status. Perhaps this is because it is not clear why some biological systems should count as organisms and others (...) should not. (shrink)

This paper makes a plea for more reflexive attempts to develop and anchor the emerging concept of responsible research and innovation. RRI has recently emerged as a buzzword in science policy, becoming a focus of concerted experimentation in many academic circles. Its performative capacity means that it is able to mobilise resources and spaces despite no common understanding of what it is or should be ‘made of’. In order to support reflection and practice amongst those who are interested in and (...) using the concept, this paper unpacks understandings of RRI across a multi-disciplinary body of peer-reviewed literature. Our analysis focuses on three key dimensions of RRI that remain particularly opaque. A total of 48 publications were selected through a systematic literature search and their content was qualitatively analysed. Across the literature, RRI is portrayed as a concept that embeds numerous features of existing approaches to govern and assess emerging technologies. Our analysis suggests that its greatest potential may be in its ability to unify and provide political momentum to a wide range of long-articulated ethical and policy issues. At the same time, RRI’s dynamism and resulting complexity may represent its greatest challenge. Further clarification on what RRI has to offer in practice—beyond what has been offered to date—is still needed, as well as more explicit engagement with research and institutional cultures of responsibility. Such work may help to realise the high political expectations that are attached to nascent RRI. (shrink)

Despite the frivolous note implied in the popular expression, ‘The Greeks had a word for it’, the literal truth is that they did! Time and again we find reflected in the terminology developed by these ancient seekers after wisdom, an attention to important distinctions and a faithfulness to the details of actual experience which are truly remarkable. The Greek thinkers had, as every classical scholar and student of Greek philosophy knows, a finely developed philosophical language, one sensitive no less to (...) the unusual, pregnant experience than to the familiar details of ordinary life. (shrink)

Some decades ago in his intriguing book on Jonathan Edwards, Perry Miller used to great effect the device of supposing a two-fold biography of Edwards, an external one consisting of the historical record embracing the major events of his life and times, and an internal one aimed at an interpretation of the mind of Edwards and the development of his thought.

There is an undercurrent to be detected in Anselm's record of the meditative experience that issued in the Ontological Argument and, although it points to a profound and perennial problem in the interpretation of religion, this undercurrent has been largely ignored. The Argument, as is well known, moves entirely within the medium of reflective meaning focused on the idea of God and, unlike the cosmological arguments of later theologians, it makes no appeal whatever to a principle of causality or to (...) the discovery of a sufficient reason for finite existence. Anselm seems to have had his own sense of what one may call the unadulterated rationalism of the Argument when, in his own words, he wondered, ‘if perhaps it might be possible to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by itself would suffice to prove that God really exists’. Here we are entirely within that inner chamber of the mind so dear to the Augustinian tradition, a mind from which one is to exclude all thought save that of God. The task of the one who reflects is to penetrate the inner meaning of this thought in order to discover what it implies beyond what is evident on the surface. With such an eminently rational or logical aim occupying the centre of attention, it is quite understandable that the presence of another, and quite opposed, concern should have been overlooked - Anselm's concern, namely, to transcend, as it were, the medium of thought itself, and enter into the presence of God. The reason that this concern introduces a tension in the search for a proof is that the realization of presence would seem to render proof superfluous, while the inference in an argument - especially one moving towards existence – inevitably suggests, in some sense and to some degree, the absence of what is sought for. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that evolutionary psychological strategies for making inferences about present-day human psychology are methodologically unsound. Evolutionary psychology is committed to the view that the mind has an architecture that has been conserved since the Pleistocene, and that our psychology can be fruitfully understood in terms of the original, fitness-enhancing functions of these conserved psychological mechanisms. But for evolutionary psychological explanations to succeed, practitioners must be able to show that contemporary cognitive mechanisms correspond to those that were (...) selected for in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, that these present-day cognitive mechanisms are descended from the corresponding ancestral mechanisms, and that they have retained the functions of the ancestral mechanisms from which they are descended. I refer to the problem of demonstrating that these conditions obtain as “the matching problem,” argue that evolutionary psychology does not have the resources to address it, and conclude that evolutionary psychology, as it is currently understood, is therefore impossible. (shrink)

Intuitionism is most commonly defined in terms of various strong epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions, e.g., that true moral principles are synthetic a priori propositions, known by some special faculty of moral reflection, and the like. I shall not here be concerned with such views. Rather my focus will be upon the program for normative investigation which I have elsewhere argued is implicit in the intuitionists’ writings and which I take to be intuitionism's salient characteristic.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of History: The Reenchantment of the World in the Age of EnlightenmentJohn E. SmithAvihu Zakai. Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of History: The Reenchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 348. Cloth, $49.95.Edwards's History of Redemption is the focus of this study by Avihu Zakai—Professor of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The History is a (...) series of thirty sermons Edwards preached on Isaiah 51:8 "... my righteousness shall be forever... my salvation from generation to generation." For him, it was a "new method in divinity... thrown into the form of a history"—a narrative showing God's sovereignty in redemption "from the fall of man to the end of the world."Zakai gives a comprehensive account of Edwards's view of history meant to highlight his struggle against modern beliefs threatening Christian faith (308; passim). The discussion is not limited to history, but includes most of Edwards's writing from 1720-1750 with emphasis on his opposition to the Enlightenment. Zakai cannot interpret so many works with the accuracy needed; he repeats old errors such as opposing the "head" and "heart" in the Affections and minimizing Edwards's respect for "common morality" in the ethical writings. Zakai is right in saying that Edwards insisted on God's authority over the world and history, but he puts it in such absolutistic terms that he often seems to abandon historical analysis in favor of exhortation.Zakai's best contribution is in his search for the general framework of God's redemption of the "engine" driving history (120ff.; 213ff.). He finds the answer in "seasons" of revival such as the Great Awakening. This is true, but Edwards notes other special events like the Reformation that "promoted the work of redemption" (Works, 9. 272), but are not revivals in the usual sense. For Edwards, special events are of many kinds and are identified by interpretation based on God's Providence. As Miller claimed, interpretation is essential; without it we may have a chronicle of events, but no history. Zakai seems to underestimate this point and the many problems it poses.The book strikes me as one more attempt—George Marsden's recent book, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, 2003), is another—to rescue Edwards from "profane" interpreters like Miller who saw that Edwards learned from the Enlightenment even though he challenged many of its ideas. In my view, Edwards can well take care of himself.John E. SmithYale UniversityCopyright © 2004 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

Some time in the 1950’s I was invited to address a meeting of the English Institute which took place at Columbia University and, while I have but a dim recollection of the topic, a point came up in the discussion which I still remember very well and it bears very closely on the subject of this essay. I had said something in my opening remarks about how technical recent philosophy had become and what a formidable language was growing up around (...) it. In the audience was Marjorie Hope Nicholson, the distinguished literary scholar and author of, among others, that delightful book about science and literature, Newton Demands the Muse. She took the occasion to tell us that in her student days she could read and profit from philosophical works—Locke, Bergson, James—and went on to say that in her opinion any intelligent person could read these authors and others without having, as we would now say, “majored” in philosophy. She added, however, that she found herself no longer able to read with much comprehension the writing of the philosophers of the time because of the remoteness of the issues from concrete experience and the esoteric language in which they were presented. What Nicholson was perceiving, perhaps without knowing the background, was the about-face in philosophy that was taking place at the time. Largely in response to the charge that philosophy, unlike science, was making no “progress,” many philosophers decided to limit philosophy to areas—logic, semantics, semiotics—in which it was believed that progress was possible. One result was the abandoning of all the undeniably vague and stubborn issues—God, the self, freedom and determinism, values and facts and the like —that resist solutions of a scientific sort. Unfortunately for philosophers, these are the matters that interest everyone most. (shrink)

No one acquainted with the odyssey of Hegel’s thought in America can fail to take note of the progress that has been made over the past twenty-five years in the study and interpretation of his writings. New texts, new translations, and, above all, penetrating commentaries, have led to a better and more accurate understanding of Hegel’s philosophy and at the same time have served to overcome prejudices, a priori opinions about what he must have said, and plain errors in construing (...) his basic ideas. Much of the work that has made this progress possible has been done by members of the Hegel Society and contributors to The Owl. (shrink)

Although Paton depends for his materials on virtually all of Kant's writings on moral philosophy, he makes the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten central to his analysis. This is a wise choice and one that is defensible since Paton has set for himself the task of elucidating the categorical imperative and it is in the Grundlegung that Kant sought to grasp the supreme principle of morality and its appearance to us as a categorical imperative. Despite the fact that, as the (...) author points out on many occasions, the Grundlegung neither stresses morality from the standpoint of action, nor does it deal in detail with many significant problems, it must nevertheless always be looked upon as central to Kant's ethics just because it does deal with the supreme principle as a categorical imperative. The seemingly more authoritative Critique of Practical Reason is more definitely concerned with the larger subject of reason in its practical employment and does not deal as directly with Paton's special concern as the Grundlegung does. (shrink)