Exploring nursing expertise: nurses talk nursing It has become increasingly important for practitioners to articulate their expertise in modern healthcare settings that demand high levels of accountability and evidence‐based practice. The material presented within this article has been interpreted drawing from discourse analysis1 to help explore the discourses that shape and influence understandings of nursing practice. What we present are extracts from four of the 35 participant nurses who applied to take part in the Royal College of Nursing Institute's Expertise (...) in Practice (pilot) Project (EPP). The material presented is used to provide a starting point for exploring how nurses talk about and construct expertise in nursing practice. The four nurse participants’ clinical practice areas cover palliative care, mental health, intensive care and fertility care. The material reveals high levels of intensity in the nurse–patient relationship, ‘maverick’ nursing practices and ongoing reflexivity. All of these aspects appear to capitalize on expertise as a ‘catalyst’ that alters treatment pathways and maximizes patient‐centred outcomes. Exploring a discourse of nursing expertise exposes the tacit situated nature of professional practice that is heterogeneous and most difficult to articulate and explain. It is proposed that expertise tends to be understood from traditional and dominant discourses of medicine, management and technology. Explaining expertise in practice exposes non‐conventional practice that in itself can be isolating and challenging to the status quo of contemporary health‐care. (shrink)

This paper is a review of the experiences gained whilst working with the ‘expertise in practice project’. The project was concerned with understanding the complex phenomenon of practitioners investigating and evaluating their own practice. The research intention was focused on making a difference to how those nurses practised, through introducing systematic practice‐based inquiry processes that could enable nurses to think more critically about their work and how their practice affects others. Particular attention is paid to the process of engaging people (...) who use healthcare services, as research participants in the evaluation of nursing practice expertise. We outline how the project incorporated practitioners’ concerns about asking people who use health care services opinions on nursing practice expertise and how a process of discovery emerged that enabled transformation of practice and consideration of the patient‐participants’ role as a sophisticated evaluator of health‐care. As a result, we present a case for transformational qualitative research. Such research is values‐driven and uses inclusive, collaborative and facilitative processes. It contributes to human flourishing, not only through its ‘ends’ (i.e. research products) but also, intentionally, through its ‘means’ (e.g. research processes and stakeholder involvement). Thus, transformational research is complex and requires that researchers engage in reflexivity (deep self‐reflection) to examine and critique their personal values. (shrink)

Drawing on calls by researchers to examine corporate scandals involving potential conflicts of interest or compromise to professional independence involving the actuarial profession, this article outlines one such case. The consulting actuaries – to a large Australian listed company, James Hardie Industries Limited – found themselves advising two parties in a corporate restructuring where the interests of each were sometimes competing and the interests of the public appeared to be ignored. The James Hardie case is instructive in a number of (...) ways: first, it demonstrates the subtlety with which conflicts of interest or pressures on professional independence can arise; second, it demonstrates how important professional issues can be obfuscated by more obvious and pressing financial and strategic issues; and finally it demonstrates that adherence to professional codes of conduct and the ease with which professional ethics can be compromised when those codes are vague and transgressions are rarely actionable. The James Hardie case highlights structural issues in the employment of consulting actuaries which presents risks to the profession. It demonstrates that the combination of an aggressive corporate management with a strategic agenda reliant on consulting actuaries that have a vested interest in promoting and maintaining valuable relationships, both financially and professionally, results in ethical challenges. (shrink)

Drawing on calls by researchers to examine corporate scandals involving potential conflicts of interest or compromise to professional independence involving the actuarial profession, this article outlines one such case. The consulting actuaries – to a large Australian listed company, James Hardie Industries Limited – found themselves advising two parties in a corporate restructuring where the interests of each were sometimes competing and the interests of the public appeared to be ignored. The James Hardie case is instructive in a number of (...) ways: first, it demonstrates the subtlety with which conflicts of interest or pressures on professional independence can arise; second, it demonstrates how important professional issues can be obfuscated by more obvious and pressing financial and strategic issues; and finally it demonstrates that adherence to professional codes of conduct and the ease with which professional ethics can be compromised when those codes are vague and transgressions are rarely actionable. The James Hardie case highlights structural issues in the employment of consulting actuaries which presents risks to the profession. It demonstrates that the combination of an aggressive corporate management with a strategic agenda reliant on consulting actuaries that have a vested interest in promoting and maintaining valuable relationships, both financially and professionally, results in ethical challenges. (shrink)

A philosophically useful account of social structure must accommodate the fact that social structures play an important role in structural explanation. But what is a structural explanation? How do structural explanations function in the social sciences? This paper offers a way of thinking about structural explanation and sketches an account of social structure that connects social structures with structural explanation.

It is always awkward when someone asks me informally what I’m working on and I answer that I’m trying to figure out what gender is. For outside a rather narrow segment of the academic world, the term ‘gender’ has come to function as the polite way to talk about the sexes. And one thing people feel pretty confident about is their knowledge of the difference between males and females. Males are those human beings with a range of familiar primary and (...) secondary sex characteristics, most important being the penis; females are those with a different set, most important being the vagina or, perhaps, the uterus. Enough said. Against this background, it isn’t clear what could be the point of an inquiry, especially a philosophical inquiry, into “what gender is”. (shrink)

Racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice are more than just bad attitudes; after all, such injustice involves unfair distributions of goods and resources. But attitudes play a role. How central is that role? Tommie Shelby, among others, argues that racism is an ideology and takes a cognitivist approach suggesting that ideologies consist in false beliefs that arise out of and serve pernicious social conditions. In this paper I argue that racism is better understood as a set of practices, attitudes, (...) social meanings, and material conditions, that systematically reinforce one another. Attitudes play a role, but even the cognitive/affective component of ideologies should include culturally shared habits of mind and action. These habits of mind distort, obscure, and occlude important facts about subordinated groups and result in a failure to recognize their interests. How do we disrupt such practices to achieve greater justice? I argue that this is sometimes, but not always, best achieved by argument or challenging false beliefs, so social movements legitimately seek other means. (shrink)

Much contemporary social epistemology takes as its starting point individuals with sophisticated propositional attitudes and considers (i) how those individuals depend on each other to gain (or lose) knowledge through testimony, disagreement, and the like and (ii) if, in addition to individual knowers, it is possible for groups to have knowledge. In this paper I argue that social epistemology should be more attentive to the construction of knowers through social and cultural practices: socialization shapes our psychological and practical orientation so (...) that we perform local social practices fluently. Connecting practical orientation to an account of ideology, I argue that to ignore the ways in which cognition is socially shaped and filtered is to allow ideology to do its work unnoticed and unimpeded. Moreover, ideology critique cannot simply challenge belief, but must involve challenges to those practices through which we ourselves become the vehicles and embodiments of ideology.V. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin was one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century - a man who set ideas on fire. His defence of liberty and plurality was passionate and persuasive and inspired a generation. His ideas - especially his reasoned rejection of excessive certainty and political despotism - have become even more prescient and vital today.But who was the man behind such influential views? In Search of Isaiah Berlin tells the compelling story of a decades-long collaboration between Berlin and his (...) editor, Henry Hardy, who made it his vocation to bring Berlin's huge body of work into print. Hardy discovered that Berlin had written far more than people thought, much of it unpublished. As he describes his struggles with Berlin, who was almost on principle unwilling to have his work published, an intimate and revealing picture of the self-deprecating philosopher emerges. This is a unique portrait of a man who gave us a new way of thinking about the human predicament, and whose work had for most of his life remained largely out of view. (shrink)

Boldly contesting recent scholarship, Sallis argues that The Birth of Tragedy is a rethinking of art at the limit of metaphysics. His close reading focuses on the complexity of the Apollinian/Dionysian dyad and on the crossing of these basic art impulses in tragedy. "Sallis effectively calls into question some commonly accepted and simplistic ideas about Nietzsche's early thinking and its debt to Schopenhauer, and proposes alternatives that are worth considering."--Richard Schacht, Times Literary Supplement.

Gender is the social meaning of a person’s sex, and race is the social meaning of a person’s color. This paper reviews some accounts of these social meanings. It is argued that there are important differences between race and gender that count against treating them as parallel.

Are sagging pants cool? Are cows food? Are women more submissive than men? Are blacks more criminal than whites? Taking the social world at face value, many people would be tempted to answer these questions in the affirmative. And if challenged, they can point to facts that support their answers. But there is something wrong about the affirmative answers. In this chapter, I draw on recent ideas in the philosophy of language and metaphysics to show how the assertion of a (...) generic claim of the sort in question ordinarily permits one to infer that the fact in question obtains by virtue of something specifically about the subject so described, i.e., about women, or blacks, or sagging pants. In the examples I’ve offered, however, this implication inference is unwarranted. The facts in question obtain by virtue of broad system of social relations within which the subjects are situated, and are not grounded in intrinsic or dispositional features of the subjects themselves. The background relations are obscured, however, and as a result, the assertion is at least systematically misleading; a denial functions to block the problematic implication. Revealing such implications or presuppositions and blocking them is a crucial part of ideology critique. (shrink)

This is a first course in propositional modal logic, suitable for mathematicians, computer scientists and philosophers. Emphasis is placed on semantic aspects, in the form of labelled transition structures, rather than on proof theory. The book covers all the basic material - propositional languages, semantics and correspondence results, proof systems and completeness results - as well as some topics not usually covered in a modal logic course. It is written from a mathematical standpoint. To help the reader, the material is (...) covered in short chapters, each concentrating on one topic. These are arranged into five parts, each with a common theme. An important feature of the book is the many exercises and an extensive set of solutions is provided. (shrink)

This volume explores whether there can be a specific lesbian aesthetic, juxtaposed against reading as a 'woman' or as a 'heterosexual'. Contributors both explore the uses of recent theories such as post-structuralism and offer a lesbian critique of such methodologies. Close readings of contemporary lesbian fiction and popular culture focus on works such as _Zami, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Wanderground_, and _Desert of the Heart_ as well as on lesbian pornography. Together the essays point to lesbian culture's (...) ability to create new meanings for iteself and to foreground the intertextuality of lesbian identities.Contributors: Sonya Andemahr, Lisa Henderson, Hilary Hinds, Katie King, Reina Lewis, Sally Munt, Gillian Spraggs, Angela Weir, Anna Wilson, Elizabeth Wilson, and Bonnie Zimmerman. (shrink)

The paper indicates how social kinds may be internally and objectively unified in a way continuous with physical kinds. It argues that the practice of theorizing is continuous with other practices to the extent that theorists, like anyone engaged in a practice, needs to make choices that are responsive to purposes (and corresponding values) guiding the practice. The paper discusses Epstein's theory of anchoring, and argues for a theory of scaffolding social kinds.

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals of 1785 is one of the most profound and important works in the history of practical philosophy. In this introduction to the Groundwork, Sally Sedgwick provides a guide to Kant's text that follows the course of his discussion virtually paragraph by paragraph. Her aim is to convey Kant's ideas and arguments as clearly and simply as possible, without getting lost in scholarly controversies. Her introductory chapter offers a useful overview of Kant's (...) general approach to practical philosophy, and she also explores and clarifies some of the main assumptions which Kant relies on in his Groundwork but defends in his Critique of Pure Reason. The book will be a valuable guide for all who are interested in Kant's practical philosophy. (shrink)

It is a great honor to have such excellent commentary on my book, and I am happy to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with others who have done such important work on the topics. I will reply to the commentaries separately, beginning with the critique by Charles Mills (2013) and moving on to Karen Jones’s (2013). Reply to MillsRevisiting my projectMills considers four views that pose challenges to my account of race as a hierarchical social category.(1) Kitcher (2007) (...) and Andreasen (1998) (and others) argue that there is a biological reality to race. If, as I argue, it is not helpful to draw a sharp boundary between the social and the natural, should we embrace their framework and allow that race is both social and biological? Or is biologism’s history too troublesome for that? Am I implicitly committed to a problematic naturalism about race myself, given that I embrace a broad naturalism?So a remapping of this contrast would be something like the “natural” unmediated by hum .. (shrink)

In this collection of previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory and on the resources of contemporary analytic philosophy to develop the idea that gender and race are positions ...

This volume represents the first sustained effort to relate Derrida's work to the Western philosophical tradition from Plato to Heidegger. Bringing together twelve essays by twelve leading Derridean philosophers and an important paper by Derrida previously unpublished in English, the collection retrieves the significance of deconstruction for philosophy.

Predatory grooming is a form of abuse most familiar from high-profile cases of sexual misconduct, for example, the Nassar case at Michigan State. Predatory groomers target individuals in a systematic effort to lead them into relationships in which they are vulnerable to exploitation. This is an example of a broader form of epistemic misconduct that Leydon-Hardy describes as epistemic infringement, where this involves the contravention of social and epistemic norms in a way that undermines our epistemic agency. In this (...) chapter, Leydon-Hardy looks at the distinctive epistemic harm caused by epistemic infringement. She argues that this harm cannot be understood simply as the victim’s having a false belief, or even as her being alienated from her belief-forming mechanisms. A deeper understanding of the harm caused by infringement shows that it stems from damage to one’s epistemic agency, and indeed, to one’s personhood. (shrink)

This self-contained introduction to natural language semantics addresses the majortheoretical questions in the field. The authors introduce the systematic study of linguistic meaningthrough a sequence of formal tools and their linguistic applications. Starting with propositionalconnectives and truth conditions, the book moves to quantification and binding, intensionality andtense, and so on. To set their approach in a broader perspective, the authors also explore theinteraction of meaning with context and use (the semantics-pragmatics interface) and address some ofthe foundational questions, especially in connection (...) with cognition in general. They also introducea few of the most accessible and interesting ideas from recent research to give the reader a bit ofthe flavor of current work in semantics. The organization of this new edition is modular; after theintroductory chapters, the remaining material can be covered in flexible order. The book presupposesno background in formal logic (an appendix introduces the basic notions of set theory) and only aminimal acquaintance with linguistics. This edition includes a substantial amount of completely newmaterial and has been not only updated but redesigned throughout to enhance itsuser-friendliness. (shrink)

The period from Kant to Hegel is one of the most intense and rigorous in modern philosophy. The central problem at the heart of it was the development of a new standard of theoretical reflection and of the principle of rationality itself. The essays in this volume, published in 2000, consider both the development of Kant's system of transcendental idealism in the three Critiques, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and the Opus Postumum, as well as the reception and transformation (...) of that idealism in the work of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. (shrink)

What is the point of language? If we begin with that abstract question, we may be tempted towards a high-minded answer: “People say things to get other people to come to know things that they didn't know before” (Stalnaker, 2002, 703). The point is truth, knowledge, communication. If we begin with a concrete question, “What has language to do with race?” we find a different point: to attack, spread hatred, create racial hierarchy. The mere practice of racial categorization is controversial: (...) are race terms natural or social kind terms? What does categorization do to the categorized? (Outlaw, 1990; Omi and Winant, 1994; Appiah, 1996; Andreason, 1998; Kitcher, 1999; Zack, 2002; Haslanger, 2008; Glasgow, 2009). But there is worse than mere categorization to contend with. (shrink)

Where does philosophy begin, and where does it end? For John Sallis, philosophy’s many starting points all lead back to Plato’s cave, a reminder that no matter how rigorous our thought, we can never quite escape to pure understanding. We remain always on the verge, at the limits of philosophy—but the verge, Sallis argues, is where the most decisive philosophical thinking takes place. The Verge of Philosophy is in one sense a memorial for Sallis’s longtime friend and interlocutor Jacques Derrida. (...) The centerpiece of the book is an extended examination of three sites in Derrida’s thought: his interpretation of Heidegger regarding the privileging of the question, Derrida’s account of the Platonic figure of the good, and his interpretation of Plato’s discourse on the crucial concept of the chora , the originating space of the universe. Sallis’s explorations are given added weight—even poignancy—by his discussion of his many public and private philosophical conversations with Derrida over the decades of their friendship. The Verge of Philosophy thus simultaneously serves to mourn and remember a friend and to push forward the deeply searching discussions that lie at the very heart of that friendship. Rounded out with examinations of the myth of Orpheus and the parameters of a politics of music, Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato, and the question of a new beginning for philosophy, The Verge of Philosophy is a wholly original work by a master thinker and will be essential to all those who treasure philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

In this article we examined the ways in which strategic ambiguity in the use of keywords served an enabling function within a discourse marked by conflict and ideological divisions. Our analysis focused on the intertextual relationships between five documents intended by the government to guide the development of biotechnology in New Zealand. Through our analysis we identified ‘sustainability’ as a keyword and three major roles for the deployment of the discourse strategy of strategic ambiguity in the use of this keyword. (...) First, strategic ambiguity lent an internal and intertextual coherence to the texts. Second, it allowed multiple perspectives and objectives to co-exist. Third, strategic ambiguity facilitated the participation of discourse actors who subscribed to ideologies that were more or less incommensurable. (shrink)

The book features: Simple explanations of big ethical ideas. Case studies to bring ethics to life, and show how bad it can be when ethics go wrong.

Introduction: our environment is out of control -- The foundation: your environment shapes you -- Every hero is the product of a situation : understanding the proximity effect -- How your environment shapes you : the myth of willpower -- Use positive-stress environments to promote change -- Create enriched environments : the key of "forcing functions" to promote change -- More than good intentions : how to adapt to new and difficult environments -- Grow into your goals : outsource your (...) motivation to high pressure environments -- Optimal environments for rapid learning : shortcuts to success -- Rotate your environments : change it up based on the work you're doing -- Find unique collaborations : design your world through transformational relationships -- Never forget where you came from : remember the environment where you began -- Pse rejuvinating environments to promote recovery and growth -- Establish your value system : the clearer you get, the more successful you'll be -- Remove everything that conflicts with your values : how to make tough choices -- Change your defaults : outsource your behavior to your environment -- Create triggers to prevent self-sabotage : putting failure-planning to work -- Shock your routine : the power of regular sabbaticals -- Reset your body and brain every week: the power of a fast -- Designate a sacred space : create an environment to stay on course -- Conclusion: no matter where you are, you can change -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- About the author. (shrink)

Ethical challenges that arise within healthcare delivery institutions are currently categorized as either clinical or organizational, based on the type of issue. Despite this common binary issue-based methodology, empirical study and increasing academic dialogue indicate that a clear line cannot easily be drawn between organizational and clinical ethics. Disagreement around end-of-life treatments, for example, often spawn value differences amongst parties at both organizational and clinical levels and requires a resolution to address both the case at hand and large-scale underlying system-level (...) confounders. I refer to issues that contain elements of both clinical and organizational issues as hybrids and propose a new taxonomy to characterize hybrid cases. I contend that salient contextual features of an ethical issue, such as where it is identified, who it impacts and where it is ideally resolved in relation to its scope of impact, should inform procedure. Implementation of a Hybrid taxonomy viewing ethical issues as existing on a continuum furthers that end. The primary goals are to 1) systematize thinking about ethical issues that arise within healthcare delivery institutions and 2) allow the content of the ethical challenge to drive the process, rather than continuing to rely on the traditional binary issue-based choice. Failure to capture the complexity of hybrid situations perpetuates incomplete information and ultimately an inchoate resolution that creates more questions than answers. (shrink)

On Beauty and Measure features renowned philosopher John Sallis' commentaries on Plato's dialogues the Symposium and the Statesman. Drawn from two lecture courses delivered by Sallis, they represent his longest and most sustained engagement to date with either work. Brilliantly original, Sallis's close readings of Plato's dialogues are grounded in the original passages and also illuminate the overarching themes that drive the dialogues.

The authoranalyzes the types of metaphors that are used to describe the Internetin issues of Wired magazine from before and after the dot-com collapse to understand the perceptions and expectations of some of the actors involved in the shaping of the Internet. In addition, the metaphors deployed in economics and geophysiology are used to demonstrate how metaphors can influence public debate, policy, and theory. The author argues that metaphors do not simply have a descriptive function but that they also carry (...) normative connotations. Language, alongside social practices and material objects, is an important tool in attempts to construct the future. Six overlapping metaphorical themes are identified: revolution, evolution, salvation, progress, universalism, and the “American dream.” A critical analysis of these metaphors, informed by a critique of the metaphors used in economics and geophysiology, leads the author to challenge the universalist claims made by some Internet enthusiasts for the inclusive potential of the Internet. (shrink)

This book is about the ethical issues arising in the course of business, especially those affecting people working in Asia. Each chapter offers a different perspective and the positions taken vary greatly from one writer to another.

Across the humanities and social sciences it has become commonplace for scholars to argue that categories once assumed to be “natural” are in fact “social” or, in the familiar lingo, “socially constructed”. Two common examples of such categories are race and gender, but there many others. One interpretation of this claim is that although it is typically thought that what unifies the instances of such categories is some set of natural or physical properties, instead their unity rests on social features (...) of the items in question. Social constructionists pursuing this strategy—and it is these social constructionists I will be focusing on in this paper—aim to “debunk” the ordinary assumption that the categories are natural, by revealing the more accurate social basis of the classification.2 To avoid confusion, and to resist some of the associations with the term ‘social construction’, I will sometimes use the term ‘socially founded’ for the categories that this sort of constructionist reveals as social rather than natural. (shrink)

En el escrito Vorläufige Thesen zur Refomation der Philosophie, Ludwig Feuerbach atribuye a Spinoza la autoría de la filosofía especulativa. A la zaga queda Schelling, considerado por Feuerbach únicamente como el restaurador de la misma. En la secuencia establecida por éste, Hegel sería, por su parte, solo un elemento más en la constitución de la filosofía especulativa, aunque tiene el mérito de completar tal sistema de pensamiento. En el presente artículo pretendo determinar en qué medida el autor de esta filosofía (...) se halla presente en el que la consuma. Esbozaré la forma y grado de esa presencia poniendo el foco en un aspecto nuclear, que, al mismo tiempo, servirá de guía del trabajo aquí propuesto: la negación. (shrink)