How should we characterize the interaction between moral and aesthetic values in the context of environmental aesthetics? This question is important given the urgency of many environmental problems and the particular role played by aesthetic value in our experience of environment. To address this question, we develop a model of Environmental Virtue Aesthetics (EVA) that, we argue, offers a promising alternative to current theories in environmental aesthetics with respect to the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. EVA counters environmental aesthetic theories (...) that focus more narrowly on scientific knowledge and ground aesthetic value in ways that obfuscate pluralistic modes of appreciation of and relationships with natural and semi-natural environments. To develop EVA, we work with a revised notion of respect and engage with ideas concerning the development of aesthetic sensibilities, care, and virtuous aesthetic appreciation. EVA has the potential to support forms of human-nature co-flourishing, as well as constituting an aesthetic grounding for ecological citizenship. (shrink)

Navigating limits to confidentiality with adolescent clients can be ethically and professionally challenging. This study follows on from a previous quantitative survey of psychologists about confidentiality dilemmas with adolescents. The current study used qualitative methods to explore such dilemmas in greater depth. Twenty Australian psychologists were interviewed and asked to describe an ethically challenging past case. Cases were then used to facilitate discussion about the decision-making process and outcomes. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using interpretive content and thematic analysis. Three (...) key findings are discussed. First, it is of little use to perceive confidentiality dilemmas as binary choices because psychologists described 5 distinct options. These can be conceptualized on a spectrum of varying degrees of client autonomy, ranging from “no disclosure” to “disclosure without the client’s knowledge or consent”. Second, confidentiality dilemmas often involve balancing multiple and conflicting risks regarding both immediate and future harm. Third, a range of strategies are employed by psychologists to minimize potential harms when disclosing information. These are primarily aimed at maintaining the therapeutic relationship and empowering clients. These findings and the case studies described provide a valuable resource for teaching and professional development. (shrink)

Cross-cultural differences in argumentation may be explained by the use of different norms of reasoning. However, some norms derive from, presumably universal, mathematical laws. This inconsistency can be resolved, by considering that some norms of argumentation, like Bayes theorem, are mathematical functions. Systematic variation in the inputs may produce culture-dependent inductive biases although the function remains invariant. This hypothesis was tested by fitting a Bayesian model to data on informal argumentation from Turkish and English cultures, which linguistically mark evidence quality (...) differently. The experiment varied evidential marking and informant reliability in argumentative dialogues and revealed cross-cultural differences for both independent variables. The Bayesian model fitted the data from both cultures well but there were differences in the parameters consistent with culture-specific inductive biases. These findings are related to current controversies over the universality of the norms of reasoning and the role of normative theories in the psychology of reasoning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrior research on attention bias in anxious youth, often utilising a visual dot probe task, has yielded inconsistent findings, which may be due to how bias is assessed and/or variability in the phenomenon. The present study utilises eye gaze tracking to assess attention bias in socially anxious adolescents, and explores several methodological and within-subject factors that may contribute to variability in attention bias. Attention bias to threat was measured in forty-two treatment-seeking adolescents diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. Bias scores toward (...) emotional stimuli and bias scores away from emotional stimuli were explored. Bias scores changed between vigilance and avoidance within individuals and over the course of stimulus presentation. These differences were not associated with participant characteristics nor with self-reported social anxiety symptoms. However, clinician rated severity of social anxiety, explained a signific... (shrink)

ABSTRACTAlthough attention bias toward threat has been associated with Social Anxiety Disorder, concerns regarding the ability of current measures to detect change in AB following treatm...

Reading Morgan's eloquent explanation of himself as a "feminist," self-taught and now wholly enthused at the prospect of teaching a Women Writers course, one comes away sharing Morgan's concern that he not be left out in the cold. It is, after all, exciting and revitalizing to be part of a "revolution"—especially if, like Morgan, one can so generously and wholeheartedly espouse its goals; and, at the same time, it is surely comforting and ego-affirming to experience oneself as a legitimate son (...) of that sacred brotherhood, The Community of Scholars. What clearly disturbs Morgan is any suggestion that the two may not yet be compatible and that, further, if forced to choose, Morgan might find himself without viable options on either hand. For, if the larger academic "community" continues to close its professional ranks to women in general and feminists in particular , then Morgan, as a self-styled "feminist" will be forced to seek shelter among the female feminists, many of whom have closed their ranks to men. . . . Beverly Voloshin's Note restores to print some factual information which, for the sake of brevity, I cut from my original article, directing the reader, instead, to James D. Hart's concise summary of the original context of Hawthorne’s letter to Ticknor . While she and Hart make much the same point, her longer explication is, of course, welcome. Additionally, her fine explanation of "what was so daring about Ruth Hall" further reinforces my argument that there are fascinating texts to be discovered in the "feminine fifties" - even if only one or two; certainly, that's better than condemning all the women writers of that decade to obscurity. Moreover, since we teach a number of male texts simply on the grounds of their historical or "sociological" interest, why not also include women's texts on these grounds as well?—especially if, as Voloshin suggests, they reveal "numerous covert rebellions against male authority." How fascinating! One looks forward to her doing more than this. Finally, my main point was not the "feminine fifties" per se, but a plea for the careful reconsideration "of texts by women which have, for one reason or another, been either lost or ignored" . Stretching the "feminine fifties" by only two years, for example, one discovers Rebecca Harding Davis' Life in the Iron Mills , recently reissued by the Feminist Press . Annette Kolodny, assistant professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, has been awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship for the study of women in society. She has written articles on American literature and culture and a feminist analysis of American pastoral, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. (shrink)

The history of the physics of pendular motion rightly begins with Galileo's discovery of the isochronous character of that motion. There is, however, a ‘pre-history’ of the pendulum, centering on its initial recognition as a significant special case requiring explanation. This occurred in the writings of Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme in the middle of the fourteenth century. Earlier works that might have been construed as discussing pendular motion are considered, as are the explanations for the scholastic ‘discovery’ of (...) pendular motion put forth by Thomas Kuhn and Piero Ariotti. In contrast to these writers, this paper seeks to account for the pendulum's emergence with reference to an imaginary experiment concerning a body moving past the earth's center, medieval theories of impetus, and the proximate physical model of pendular motion, the late medieval heavy suspended church bell. (shrink)

While I appreciate Annette Kolodny's attempt to clarify the aims of feminist criticism, I would like to correct a historical misconception in her recent article, "Some Notes on Defining A 'Feminist Literary Criticism.'" When Kolodny comes to defining a feminist criticism, near the end of the essay, she advocates applying to individual works, without preconceived conclusions, "rigorous methods for analyzing style and image.” . . . Kolodny implies that Hawthorne wrongly condemned domestic novels without having read them and that (...) once he began reading this body of fiction he reversed his views—in short, that his initial response was unthoughtful and, in current jargon, sexist. Second, Kolodny implies that the modern reader will find the domestic novels of the 1850s as fascinating as Hawthorne found Ruth Hall. Beverly Voloshin is a teaching associate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her current area of study is mid-nineteenth-century American domestic fiction. (shrink)

In these Carus Lectures, Annette Baier looks at the relation between individual and shared reasoning, intending, and moral reflection. In each case she emphasizes the interdependence of minds and the role of social practices in setting the norms governing these activities.

It is becoming more common that the decision-makers in private and public institutions are predictive algorithmic systems, not humans. This article argues that relying on algorithmic systems is procedurally unjust in contexts involving background conditions of structural injustice. Under such nonideal conditions, algorithmic systems, if left to their own devices, cannot meet a necessary condition of procedural justice, because they fail to provide a sufficiently nuanced model of which cases count as relevantly similar. Resolving this problem requires deliberative capacities uniquely (...) available to human agents. After exploring the limitations of existing formal algorithmic fairness strategies, the article argues that procedural justice requires that human agents relying wholly or in part on algorithmic systems proceed with caution: by avoiding doxastic negligence about algorithmic outputs, by exercising deliberative capacities when making similarity judgments, and by suspending belief and gathering additional information in light of higher-order uncertainty. (shrink)

David Hume's essay Of Moral Prejudices offers a spirited defense of "all the most endearing sentiments of the hearts, all the most useful biases and instincts, ...

The emergence of private authority has become a feature of the post-Cold War world. The contributors to this volume examine the implications of this erosion of the power of the state for global governance. They analyse actors as diverse as financial institutions, multinational corporations, religious terrorists and organised criminals. The themes of the book relate directly to debates concerning globalization and the role of international law, and will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, politics, sociology and (...) law. (shrink)

Currently, advanced art education is in the process of developing (doctorate or PhD) research programs throughout Europe. Therefore, it seems to us urgent to explore what the term research actually means in the topical practice of art. After all, research as such is often understood as a method stemming from the alpha, beta or gamma sciences directed towards knowledge production and the development of a certain scientific domain. How is artistic research connected with those types of scientific research, taking into (...) account that the artistic domain so far has tended to continually exceed the parameters of knowledge management? One could claim that the artistic field comprises the hermeneutic question of the humanities, the experimental method of the sciences, and the societal commitment of the social sciences. Will that knowledge influence the domain, the methodology, and the outcome of artistic research? Another major topic concerns not only the specificity of the object of knowledge of artistic research but above all whether and how artistic research and its institutional programs will influence topical visual art, its artworks and its exhibitions. These complex problematics with their various points of view and management models are mapped out through the contributions of theorists, curators, and institutions, from Belgium, France, Great-Britain, Italy, The Netherlands, Finland, Germany, and Sweden. May these contributions be a constructive impetus for a versatile debate which may influence the future role of advanced art institutions and the position of artistic research in the next decade. (shrink)

We discuss the variety of sorts of sympathy Hume recognizes, the extent to which he thinks our sympathy with others’ feelings depends on inferences from the other’s expression, and from her perceived situation, and consider also whether he later changed his views about the nature and role of sympathy, in particular its role in morals.

Causation is a deeply intuitive and familiar relation, gripped powerfully by common sense. Or so it seems. As is typical in philosophy, however, that deep intuitive familiarity has not led to any philosophical account of causation that is at once clean, precise, and widely agreed upon. Not for lack of trying: the last thirty years or so have seen dozens of attempts to provide such an account, and the pace of development is, if anything, accelerating. (See Collins et al. [2003a] (...) for a comprehensive sampling of the latest work.). (shrink)

The influence of liberal political ideology on nursing sciencePrevious notions of science as impartial and value-neutral have been refuted by contemporary views of science as influenced by social, political and ideological values. By locating nursing science in the dominant political ideology of liberalism, the author examines how nursing knowledge is influenced by liberal philosophical assumptions. The central tenets of liberal political philosophy — individualism, egalitarianism, freedom, tolerance, neutrality, and a free-market economy — are primarily manifested in relation to: (i) the (...) individualistic focus of our science; (ii) our view of society as essentially egalitarian and equitable; (iii) our preference for politically neutral knowledge development, and (iv) an economy of knowledge development that supports rather than challenges the status quo. I argue that exposing, rather than ignoring, the liberal ideological values inherent in nursing science will render these assumptions open to debate, stimulate ongoing development of critically oriented knowledge, and increase our capacity to influence the social, political and economic determinants of health. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a theoretical and political role for ‘white ignorance’, present three alternative accounts of white ignorance, and assess how well each fulfils this role. On the Willful Ignorance View, white ignorance refers to white individuals’ willful ignorance about racial injustice. On the Cognitivist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources. On the Structuralist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance that results as part of a social process that systematically (...) gives rise to racial injustice, and is an active player in the process. I argue that, because of its greater power and flexibility, the Structuralist View better explains the patterns of ignorance that we observe, better illuminates the connection to white racial domination, and is overall better suited to the project of ameliorating racial injustice. As such, the Structuralist View should be preferred. (shrink)

This provocative, interdisciplinary, and transnational collection delves deeply into the educational and public intellectual hallmarks of Stuart M. Hall, a core figure in the development of the post-War British New Left, of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and later, of the Open University. It opens new vistas on both critical educational studies and cultural studies through interviews with, and essays by, leading writers, shedding light on the under-appreciated public pedagogical and cultural politics of the New (...) Left, of Thatcherism, and of Rightist, neo-colonial, diasporic, and neo-liberal formations in Jamaica, the UK, Australia, North America, and Brazil. Intimate and moving, the contributors describe Hall’s diasporic formation as a courageous ‘artist’ and educator of cultural politics and social movements, showing both the reach and the relevance of his public pedagogies in the construction of alternatives to essentialist racial politics and the despairing cynicism of neo-liberalism. With contributors and interviewees including Leslie G. Roman, Michael W. Apple, Avtar Brah, John Clarke, Annette Henry, Lawrence Grossberg, Luis Gandin, and Fazal Rizvi, _Hallmarks: The Cultural Politics and Public Pedagogies of Stuart Hall_ reveals that neither cultural politics nor public pedagogies are stable or self-evident constructs. Each legitimates and requires the other as part of a longer radical democratic project for social justice. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. _. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a theoretical and political role for ‘white ignorance’, present three alternative accounts of white ignorance, and assess how well each fulfils this role. On the Willful Ignorance View, white ignorance refers to white individuals’ willful ignorance about racial injustice. On the Cognitivist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources. On the Structuralist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance that (1) results as part of a social process that (...) systematically gives rise to racial injustice, and (2) is an active player in the process. I argue that, because of its greater power and flexibility, the Structuralist View better explains the patterns of ignorance that we observe, better illuminates the connection to white racial domination, and is overall better suited to the project of ameliorating racial injustice. As such, the Structuralist View should be preferred. (shrink)

Cultural safety is a relatively new concept that has emerged in the New Zealand nursing context and is being taken up in various ways in Canadian health care discourses. Our research team has been exploring the relevance of cultural safety in the Canadian context, most recently in relation to a knowledge-translation study conducted with nurses practising in a large tertiary hospital. We were drawn to using cultural safety because we conceptualized it as being compatible with critical theoretical perspectives that foster (...) a focus on power imbalances and inequitable social relationships in health care; the interrelated problems of culturalism and racialization; and a commitment to social justice as central to the social mandate of nursing. Engaging in this knowledge-translation study has provided new perspectives on the complexities, ambiguities and tensions that need to be considered when using the concept of cultural safety to draw attention to racialization, culturalism, and health and health care inequities. The philosophic analysis discussed in this paper represents an epistemological grounding for the concept of cultural safety that links directly to particular moral ends with social justice implications. Although cultural safety is a concept that we have firmly positioned within the paradigm of critical inquiry, ambiguities associated with the notions of 'culture', 'safety', and 'cultural safety' need to be anticipated and addressed if they are to be effectively used to draw attention to critical social justice issues in practice settings. Using cultural safety in practice settings to draw attention to and prompt critical reflection on politicized knowledge, therefore, brings an added layer of complexity. To address these complexities, we propose that what may be required to effectively use cultural safety in the knowledge-translation process is a 'social justice curriculum for practice' that would foster a philosophical stance of critical inquiry at both the individual and institutional levels. (shrink)

English summary: Medicine is not only a technique or skill for obtaining or restoring health in the face of illness and death; it strives to be a component of life that has learned to deal with the inevitability of suffering and death. As meditatio vitae et mortis, it can become a field of reflection on being human par excellence. The increasing possibility of anti-aging, plastic surgery and enhancement procedures, however, again bring about questions of the limits of human medicine, even (...) moreso if, as in transhumanist utopia and cryonic practice, the possibility of postponement or even of overcoming human finitude becomes possible. Medicine, society and the presence of death and dying must respond to these challenges. Herein ies the focus of this volume: the authors reflect on finiteness and immortality in medicine from historical, philosophical, social science, and ethical perspectives. German text. German description: Die Medizin ist nicht nur Technik oder Kunst, das Leben und die Gesundheit angesichts von Krankheit und Tod zu erhalten bzw. wiederherzustellen, sondern strebt eine Praxis der Lebensfuehrung an, die mit der Unvermeidbarkeit von Leiden und Sterben umzugehen lernt. Als meditatio vitae et mortis kann sie zu einem Feld der Reflexion ueber das Menschsein par excellence werden. Die zunehmenden Moglichkeiten von Anti-Aging, Plastischer Chirurgie und Enhancement stellen dabei die Fragen nach Grenzen einer humanen Heilkunde wieder neu, noch dazu, wenn - wie in transhumanistischen Utopien und kryonischer Praxis - die Moglichkeit der Verschiebung oder gar Uberwindung menschlicher Endlichkeit in Aussicht gestellt wird. Medizin, Gesellschaft und Sterbekultur der Gegenwart muessen auf die Herausforderungen reagieren. In diesem Themenfeld liegt der Schwerpunkt des Bandes: Die Autoren reflektieren Endlichkeit und Unsterblichkeit in der Medizin aus historischer, philosophischer, sozialwissenschaftlicher wie auch ethischer Perspektive. (shrink)

" By the end, we can see the cause to which Hume has been true throughout the work.

Annette Baier's aim is to make sense of David Hume's Treatise as a whole. Hume's family motto, which appears on his bookplate, was True to the End. Baier argues that it is not until the end of the Treatise that we get his full story about truth and falsehood, reason and folly. By the end, we can see the cause to which Hume has been true throughout the work. Baier finds Hume's Treatise of Human Nature to be a carefully (...) crafted literary and philosophical work which itself displays a philosophical progress of sentiments. His starting place is an overly abstract intellectualism that deliberately thrusts passions and social concerns into the background. In the three interrelated books of the Treatise, his self-understander proceeds through partial successes and dramatic failures to emerge with new-found optimism, expecting that the exact knowledge the morally self-conscious anatomist of human nature can acquire will itself improve and correct our vision of morality. Baier describes how, by turning philosophy toward human nature instead of toward God and the universe, Hume initiated a new philosophy, a broader discipline of reflection that can embrace Charles Darwin and Michel Foucault as well as William James and Sigmund Freud. Hume belongs both to our present and to our past. (shrink)

What is it to deceive someone? And how is it possible to deceive oneself? Does self-deception require that people be taken in by a deceitful strategy that they know is deceitful? The literature is divided between those who argue that self-deception is intentional and those who argue that it is non-intentional. In this study, Annette Barnes offers a challenge to both the standard characterisation of other-deception and current characterizations of self-deception, examining the available explanations and exploring such questions as (...) the self-deceiver's false consciousness, bias, and the irrationality and objectionability of self-deception. She arrives at a non-intentional account of self-deception that is deeper and more complete than alternative non-intentional accounts and avoids the reduction of self-deceptive belief to wishful belief. (shrink)

Kaum ein Zeitabschnitt war von solch grundlegenden technischen, politischen und philosophischen Umbruchen gepragt wie die 100 Jahre bis zur Jahrtausendwende - vom Kaiserreich zur globalen Weltgesellschaft, vom Idealismus zum Werterelativismus. Die juristische Grundlagenforschung - auch die Rechtsphilosophie - ist gegenwartig in keiner guten Verfassung: Ihr fehlt die gesellschaftliche Resonanz, und damit einhergehend der qualifizierte wissenschaftliche Nachwuchs. Der Band mochte einen Anstoss geben, durch eine Ruckbesinnung auf die grossen Leistungen in der Rechtsphilosophie des letzten Jahrhunderts an diese anzuknupfen, Problemlosungen fur die (...) Zukunft zu suchen und die Unverzichtbarkeit der Rechtsphilosophie dabei wieder ernst zu nehmen. (shrink)

This is an essay at the intersection of metaethics and the history of contemporary analytic philosophy. It explores the relationships between Allan Gibbard’s mature quasi-realist expressivism and (i) three non-naturalistic varieties of what I call “non-inflationary realism” and (ii) moral fictionalism. Moral or normative realism is frequently (if mistakenly) taken to involve certain existence-affirming external assumptions about the metaphysical status of substantive normative thought and discourse. The non-inflationary realists seek to embrace moral or normative objectivity and truth without any distinctly—as (...) they see it, “inflated”—moral or normative ontology. This position, along with a shared emphasis on the primacy of substantive moral or normative thought and discourse, brings them very close to Gibbard, and so to what it is tempting to treat as a strikingly different metaethical account. Focusing on the non-inflationary realists Ronald Dworkin, T.M. Scanlon, and Derek Parfit, I examine similarities among their views, and between each of these views and Gibbard’s. I argue that the non-inflationary realist project should be understood as including the work not only of these figures, characteristically seen as among its paradigmatic representatives, but also, crucially, that of Gibbard. They all agree that our moral or normative claims purport to state normative truths and that such claims are capable of being true or false and that when true they do not depend on the particular standpoint anyone happens to take. Our moral or normative thoughts can be characterized as beliefs. We can have moral knowledge. There are substantive moral and normative facts. These facts are not reducible to non-normative facts. Normative concepts cannot be analyzed in purely naturalistic terms; and normative facts do not depend on any robustly existent truth-makers. Focusing on these shared commitments enables me to home in on the apparent differences that nonetheless remain. They differ in significant respects, for instance, about whether—and, if so, to what extent—we can make any meaningful external (non-substantive) judgments about the moral or normative and about whether there is a role for property-based explanations that minimalism about the normative fails to capture. By investigating these and other differences, I shed light on what is at stake in giving an adequate account of our moral and normative thought and talk. I pursue this aim further by considering why it might seem that quasi-realist expressivism was a form of normative fictionalism or error theory—though it is not. I attempt here to clear up confusions stemming from common assumptions associated with terms like “realism,” “cognitivism,” or “fictionalism” with respect to morality or normativity. I distinguish some differences in the ways in which normative properties can be understood by non-inflationary realists and the roles they can play in explaining normativity. I underscore the implausibility of treating the moral domain as completely autonomous. And I attempt to offer suggestions regarding some conceptual options that remain to be further explored. I maintain that Gibbard makes explicit otherwise unacknowledged implications of Scanlon’s or Dworkin’s accounts, implications regarding deep differences between normative or moral and other domains, implications which might help explain the uneasiness that prompts Scanlon and Dworkin to resist Gibbard’s account and that pushes Parfit toward what seems to be a sort of intermediate position between non-inflationary and more ontologically committed realism. Non-inflationary realism forces us to rethink metaethics in interesting and promising ways. (shrink)

This contribution is concerned with what Hume means by reflection and sentiment. Hume’s Treatise is devoted to an account of the extent to which the mind is able to bear its own reflexion or turn mental states on themselves. This theme is likely the “new scene of thought” that inspired Hume’s major concerns in the Treatise. Although Hume found that the understanding fails to understand itself, the passions do better in satisfying curiosity about curiosity, and, most importantly, moral sentiment is (...) able to approve of itself. The author contends that the whole task of the moral sentiment is to get us to fulfill our part to mankind and society, and that, according to Hume, the sentiments are the noble source of morality itself. (shrink)