The fact that social welfare professions including social work, youth work and community work deal with the lives and relationships of human beings is far from controversial. What is contentious is that in light of increasing intellectual work on the nature of social practices there is a failure in the human services literature to adequately examine the interdependencies and entanglements between conceptualisations of the stuff that the helping professions deals with and understandings of practice. This article examines the nexus and (...) mediations between the phenomena and practice of social service work. The case is made that human services and the human beings they deal with are often imagined and represented in one-dimensional, unambiguous, calculable and orderable ways that align with neo-liberal inspired and technical approaches to practice. I argue that these accounts are inadequate and I suggest that practices of care and the people engaged in such practices should be constituted as complex, unpredictable, wicked and emergent. A key to good practice in the people professions is acknowledging and attending to this complexity and aporia. (shrink)

One thing an examination of the literature on youth work makes clear is a lack of clarity on youth work's purpose. This study investigated the value of using the concept of telos as an analytical tool to orient youth work towards the right ends. Relevant literature was systematically reviewed. The value of telos in understanding youth work was examined. Common aims of youth work were described. The merits of different goals were assessed to figure out which, if any, is youth (...) work's proper purpose. A telos would provide youth work a clear and cohesive definition, act as a useful guide for good practice, and distinguish youth work from other interventions into young people's lives. The case was made for the telos of youth work to be 'enabling young people to live the good life'. (shrink)

Technology is fundamental to and embedded in the way practice is conceptualized and institutionalized in social service work. Many scholars assume and expect that good practices of care are achieved with the correct application of theory produced by rigorous scientific research. However, there are significant critiques of this viewpoint. We examine the work of Donald Schön and Martin Heidegger and agree with these authors' suggestions that technical rationality and modern technology are not the way to achieve good practice in the (...) human services. At the same time, we are not convinced that the alternatives offered by Schön and Heidegger provide what good practice requires. We draw on Aristotle's account of the intellectual virtues and make the case for phronesis and praxis as other possibilities for inspiring new kinds of social welfare practice in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

In Australia young people have emerged as a popular target for social enterprises and enterprising activities (Barraket, Mason and Blain, 2016). The reasons for engaging young people in enterprise-based projects include claims that they help address young people's deficits in entrepreneurialism and risk-taking as well as prepare young people to thrive in risky futures characterised by uncertain labour markets and precarious work (Foundation for Young Australians, 2015, 2016a, 2017a). The risk category is also central to a good deal of policy (...) concerning young people and underpins many agendas and programmes that aim to govern what many people claim to be young people's 'natural' tendencies to experiment and take risks (Bessant, 2008). This article explores how differing and arbitrary accounts of the relationships between young people and risk help to justify enterprise-based initiatives into young lives that might not serve young people's best interests. (shrink)

This article explores the opportunities afforded by Ursula Le Guin’s allegory ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ for thinking about the role of youth work in modern cities and societies that are deemed to be successful but at the same time fail some young people. Using Melbourne and Australia as examples and following Le Guin the case is made that the prosperity of ‘liveable’ cities and ‘lucky’ countries coincides with the neglect and mistreatment of some young people. The same (...) cultural, economic and political practices and processes that produce the beauty and abundance also produce the inequalities and hardships, and these include policies inspired by neoliberalism, processes of individualisation, and utilitarianism. Unlike the ones who walk away from Omelas youth workers can stay and fight adversity and injustice, however alleviating problems young people experience is more complex than it is often thought to be. One reason this is the case is because youth work is entangled with the same range of ethical, emotional, intellectual, political, and economic circumstances that generate thriving places and disadvantaged young lives, and inadvertently youth workers can reproduce the challenging and limiting conditions faced by some young people. (shrink)

This critique of some of the prevailing approaches to youth work argues that theories of practice offer better ways of understanding and achieving good practice. A significant body of literature suggests good youth work involves engaging young people in education and training, implementing a practice model, or acting upon young people's feedback. However, criticisms of these accounts suggest they are inadequate. This article makes the case that we need to think about the problems youth work is trying to address as (...) 'wicked problems' that call for 'wicked solutions' and argues that practice theories missing from the youth work literature provide more in the way of wicked solutions compared to the conventional approaches to youth work. Three practice theories - from Arendt, Bourdieu and Shove, Pantzar and Watson - are examined together with discussion of their implications for conceptualising and realising good practice. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that what we tend to see in contemporary accounts of human service practice in the relevant literature is a ‘common-sense’ informed by a complex mix of neoliberal political and policy imperatives and various kinds of technical-rational styles of administration and management. These accounts of practice can inadvertently contribute to the problems they are meant to address and can do more harm than good. Common-sense accounts of practice also align with how human services are typically regulated (...) and they align with prevailing ways the education of human services takes place, including in universities. Consequently, the same types of problems that take place with human service practice also take place with the institutionalisation and reproduction of human services. If we are serious about achieving good practice in human services, then we need to think more clearly about what practice in human services is. <br /><br />There is a good case for articulating a theory of human service practice to inspire new and better ways of achieving good practice. The theory of good practice outlined here draws on the philosophy of Aristotle and neo-Aristotelian accounts of practice. It draws especially on Dunne who argues that a theory of practice should offer a defensible account of how we should conceptualise the stuff that human services deal with, and the sorts of knowing, action and ends that best accord with such conceptualisations. <br /><br />I argue that the beings at the centre of human services should be understood as complex, emergent, unpredictable, and ‘wicked’ in the sense that Rittel and Webber talk about. This highlights the possibility that the people, problems and practices of human services can be revealed in multiple and contrary ways. Accordingly, human services hold both promises and dangers for people and good practice is far from self-evident and is highly contestable in each individual case. <br /><br />I argue that phronesis (practical wisdom) is the way of knowing that best corresponds to and is most suited to deal with the uncertain, messy, contingent and context-dependent beings of human services, which require and deserve ongoing deliberations and good determinations on each occasion that are at the same time always tentative and remain open to other suggestions and modification especially because our knowledge may be erroneous and incomplete. I argue that good practice also requires reflexivity and value rationality to help identify and alleviate the problems associated with neoliberal approaches to practice and as an alternative to technical rationality and value neutrality. <br /><br />I make the case for praxis (good action) along with a range of other human activities including value-rational deliberation as the forms of action that best align with and are most appropriate for dealing with the ever-changing, often inexplicable and always difficult beings of human services. Praxis is in accordance with phronesis and can be understood in part as durable practice and in part as responding to each case in new ways. In particular, it involves figuring out and enacting the most desirable course of action in each instance of practice while at the same time remaining receptive to other possibilities and to doing things differently particularly because we might not always be immediately aware of what we are doing, and our actions could be doing more harm than good. <br /><br />I show that clarity about our telos will help to re-orient human services to pursuing preferred ends and securing goods that are better suited to the entities of human services compared to instrumentally designed relations between widely applicable and transferable techniques and pre-determined outcomes. I argue for the telos of youth work to be enabling young people to live the good life. Following my accounts of phronesis and praxis this orientation of human services towards more desirable and ethical purposes takes the form of a commitment that is always carefully reconsidered at the same time as determinedly pursued. However, unlike outputs that can be wholly predetermined, efficiently sought after and completely achieved, this is an end that is never fully attained. This is especially the case because there is always more that can be known and done and because there are always disagreements on the goods to be secured. <br /><br />This theory of practice should correspond to and supports the education of people for professional practice. In particular, the education of human services needs to reproduce how the beings of human services are to be conceptualised and the ways of knowing, forms of action and ends that cohere. At the same time, university-based human service education should support the development, exercise and experience of good practice-as-praxis guided by phronesis. <br />. (shrink)

This book, based on a critical/collective/auto/ethnographic research project, describes an assemblage of theoretically informed, arts-based methods that aim to promote multiplicity and thinking. It explores multiplicities of knowing, sensing, doing and being, generated by analyzing knowing frames, poetry, reading aloud, fableing, playwriting and other inventive, playful and scholarly ways of working with experiences and stories. By offering engaging and inspiring strategies that can disturb standardizations and interrupt cultural normativities, the book sheds light on the conditions that might be present in (...) cultural contexts that enable diversity and creativity. The research project on which this book is based originated from a contradictory set of conditions characterized on the one hand by a marked interest in creative research methods and novel knowledge practices and, on the other hand, by a widespread concern that we live in increasingly standardized times, featuring systems that specify objectives ahead of time, demand compliance and narrow the possibilities for human action. The book takes readers on an arts-based journey designed to enhance the opportunities for imaginative and ethical professional practice in education, human services and the arts. (shrink)

Ibn al-ʻArabī, 1165-1240; views on freedom; Sufism; Islamic philosophy.

Contrary to Vaesen's argument that humans are unique with respect to nine cognitive capacities essential for tool use, we suggest that although such cognitive processes contribute to variation in tool use, it does not follow that these capacities arenecessaryfor tool use, nor that tool use shaped cognition per se, given the available data in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral biology.

This paper is devoted to the study of some subvarieties of the variety Qof Q-Heyting algebras, that is, Heyting algebras with a quantifier. In particular, a deeper investigation is carried out in the variety Q 3 of three-valued Q-Heyting algebras to show that the structure of the lattice of subvarieties of Qis far more complicated that the lattice of subvarieties of Heyting algebras. We determine the simple and subdirectly irreducible algebras in Q 3 and we construct the lattice of subvarieties (...) (Q 3 ) of the variety Q 3. (shrink)

Traditional Chinese commentators rightly see that understanding Zhuangzi's way with words is the presupposition for understanding Zhuangzi at all. They are not sure, however, if Zhuangzi's words are super-effective or pure nonsense. I consider Zhuangzi's experience with language, and then turn to Heidegger's word of being to see if it may throw light on Zhuangzi's way of saying. I argue that a conversation between Heidegger and Zhuangzi on language is possible, but only by expanding Heidegger's notion of Gestell and through (...) a destruction of the dominant Confucian discourse that obscures Zhuangzi's way of saying. (shrink)

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.

Hubert Dreyfus has argued that cases of absorbed bodily coping show that there is no room for self-awareness in flow experiences of experts. In this paper, I argue against Dreyfus’ maxim of vanishing self-awareness by suggesting that awareness of agency is present in expert bodily action. First, I discuss the phenomenon of absorbed bodily coping by discussing flow experiences involved in expert bodily action: merging into the flow; immersion in the flow; emergence out of flow. I argue against the claim (...) that flow experience does not involve an awareness of agency for each of these features, while conceding that fluent agency does not involve self-awareness in the thetic sense. I challenge the assumption that the awareness of fluent agency must be understood in terms of a thetic awareness of agency. Instead, I develop an Anscombean account of the awareness of fluent agency in terms of the phenomenal character of knowing one’s aims. I respond to the challenge that if an Anscombean account of the awareness of agency is to succeed, then agents must be able to answer Anscombean questions. I consider the objection that awareness of agency is not a form of self-awareness by outlining an account of self-awareness as self-synthesis that is distinct from self-perception and self-ascription, but which makes room for self-awareness in expert bodily action. (shrink)

Collected for the first time in a single volume are essays which examine the developments in three fundamental biological disciplines - embryology, evolutionary biology, and genetics. These disciplines were in conflict for much of the twentieth century and the essays in this collection examine key methodological problems within these disciplines and the difficulties faced in overcoming the conflicts between them. Burian skilfully weaves together historical appreciation of the settings within which scientists work, substantial knowledge of the biological problems at stake (...) and the methodological and philosophical issues faced in integrating biological knowledge drawn from disparate sources. The final chapter describes what recent findings in development biology and genetics can tell us about the history and development of animals. Written in a clear, accessible style this collection should appeal to students and professionals in philosophy of science, and the philosophy and history of biology. (shrink)

Rescued in 1972 from a storeroom in which rats and seeping water had severely damaged the fifty-year-old manuscript, this text is the earliest major work (1919-1921) of the great Russian philosopher M. M. Bakhtin. Toward a Philosophy of the Act contains the first occurrences of themes that occupied Bakhtin throughout his long career. The topics of authoring, responsibility, self and other, the moral significance of "outsideness," participatory thinking, the implications for the individual subject of having "no-alibi in existence," the difference (...) between the world as experienced in actions and the world as represented in discourse--all are broached here in the heat of discovery. This is the "heart of the heart" of Bakhtin, the center of the dialogue between being and language, the world and mind, "the given" and "the created" that forms the core of Bakhtin's distinctive dialogism. A special feature of this work is Bakhtin's struggle with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Put very simply, this text is an attempt to go beyond Kant's formulation of the ethical imperative. Toward a Philosophy of the Act will be important for scholars across the humanities as they grapple with the increasingly vexed relationship between aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

In this paper I interrogate the notion of `debunking conspiracy theories’, arguing that the term `debunk’ carries with it pejorative implications, given that the verb `to debunk’ is commonly understood as `to show the wrongness of a thing or concept’. As such, the notion of `debunking conspiracy theories’ builds in the notion that such theories are not just wrong but ought to be shown as being wrong. I argue that we should avoid the term `debunk’ and focus on investigating conspiracy (...) theories. Looking at recent research work in epistemology on conspiracy theory, I argue that the best way to avoid talk of `debunking’ conspiracy theories is by working with a non-pejorative definition of `conspiracy theory’, and forming communities of inquiry which allow us to investigate the warrant of such theories without the prejudice associated with working with a pejorative definition. (shrink)

This chapter examines the normative question of whether the cultivation of patriotic and nationalist ideals and attachments should have a central place in programs of civic education. It argues that the most useful way to draw the distinction between patriotism and nationalism focuses on their respective objects of loyalty; patriotism is loyalty to a country while nationalism is loyalty to a people. This way of distinguishing between patriotism and nationalism forms the background for the discussion of a variety of instrumental (...) and non-instrumental arguments for cultivating patriotic and nationalist political attachments in schools. It also examines an assumption common to these programs of civic education: that a shared identity is crucial for citizens to have a sense of belonging that supports social stability and desirable forms of political change. The final part of the chapter introduces a number of alternative educational proposals that aim to avoid some of the difficulties faced by patriotic and nationalist strategies. These alternative proposals aim to encourage good citizenship while taking into account new challenges generated by the political, social, and economic conditions of an increasingly globalized world. (shrink)

The recent global increase in environmental regulation does not necessarily signal improvement in firms’ ecological imprints. Like many markets, the Arab world is struggling to implement environmental compliance measures among local firms. For Arab countries, the reliance solely on formal policies to improve local firms’ ecological footprints may be risky given the evident institutional challenges to enforce environmental regulations, specially post the Arab Spring. Drawing from the literature highlighting the merits of combining formal and informal controls to ensure successful implementation (...) of a strategy, we argue that the emphasis for regulation must be accompanied by an emphasis for developing environmental ethics of individuals, who are the expected implementers of any environmental policy. In that light, we propose that the Eco-Islam phenomenon can serve as an influential and effective foundation for building organizational cultures with stronger environmental ethics among local small and medium enterprises. We explain the underlying maxims of Eco-Islam then conduct qualitative research among experts preaching or practicing the concept to gain better insights into the potential of leveraging it in Muslim-majority Arab countries. Finally, we conclude with insightful implications for local SMEs in the region. (shrink)

One of the most influential contemporary philosophers, Hilary Putnam's involvement in philosophy spans philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, ontology and epistemology and logic. This specially commissioned collection discusses his contribution to the realist and pragmatist debate. Hilary Putnam comments on the issues raised in each article, making it invaluable for any scholar of his work.

Consider orthodox motivational judgment internalism: necessarily, A’s sincere moral judgment that he or she ought to φ motivates A to φ. Such principles fail because they cannot accommodate the amoralist, or one who renders moral judgments without any corresponding motivation. The orthodox alternative, externalism, posits only contingent relations between moral judgment and motivation. In response I first revive conceptual internalism by offering some modifications on the amoralist case to show that certain community-wide motivational failures are not conceptually possible. Second, I (...) introduce a theory of moral motivation that supplements the intuitive responses to different amoralist cases. According to moral judgment purposivism (MJP), in rough approximation, a purpose of moral judgments is to motivate corresponding behaviors such that a mental state without this purpose is not a moral judgment. MJP is consistent with conceptual desiderata, provides an illuminating analysis of amoralist cases, and offers a step forward in the internalist-externalist debates. (shrink)

This volume offers the first-ever complete English translation of Leibniz’s Dissertatio De Arte Combinatoria together with a critical edition of the original Latin text on fa...

The Confucian notion of civility has for thousands of years guided all aspects of socio-ethical life in East Asia. Confucians express their central concern for civility in their notion of li, which is commonly translated ?ritual? and refers to the conventions and courtesies through which we submit to the socio-ethical order, as we do, for example, in performing sacrifices, weddings, and funerals, and various daily acts of deference. Since the rise of China and other East Asian countries as economic powers, (...) it has been suggested that we have in East Asia a ?Confucian? ritual-based culture that is opposed to the law-based culture of the West, a culture of rites opposed to a culture of rights, and that this ritual-based culture can be carried into modernity as another way to secure social harmony. I argue that the values central to Confucian ritual ? deference, repayment, and harmony ? are incompatible with the freedom enacted in modern civility. It is unlikely, therefore, that Confucian ritual can be carried into modernity and, as some suggest, remedy the fragmentation, and indeed lack of civility, characteristic of modern societies. (shrink)

Contingency is the presence of non-actualized possibility in the world. Fatalism is a view of reality on which there is no contingency. Since it is contingency that permits agency, there has traditionally been much interest in contingency. This interest has long been embarrassed by the contention that simple and plausible assumptions about the world lead to fatalism. I begin with an Aristotelian argument as presented by Richard Taylor. Appreciation of this argument has been stultified by a question pertaining to the (...) source of necessity and possibility and a closely related one regarding the nature of metaphysics itself. Answering these questions reveals the crucial issue here, to wit, necessity and possibility in a temporal world. This issue is investigated through an important later criticism of Taylor by David Foster Wallace. Wallace’s critique is significant because it brings to the fore the pivotal notion for understanding contingency in a temporal world, that of synchronic possibility, the idea that incompatible states of affairs are possible at a single moment. This notion provides the basis of distinguishing two systematic accounts of truth, modality and time: two metaphysics of contingency. On one account, Taylor’s Aristotelian argument is straightforwardly valid and compelling; on the other, it is fallacious. In closing, I present reasons why the former account, supporting the Aristotelian views of time and truth, is correct and make some comments to ameliorate this conclusion. (shrink)

This paper explores R. D. Laing's application of existential and phenomenological tradtions, specifically Hegel and Heidegger, to his groundbreaking work with psychotic process as well as psychotherapeutic practice more generally.

Though there has been much debate about whether Abelard's ethics are dangerously subjective or surprisingly absolutist, one thing is unanimous: they are intentionalist. The goal of this article is to parse out what should be meant by this claim, distancing his ethical account from the popular Kantian appraisal. Though much of the secondary literature on Abelard likens him to Kant, I argue that this is mistaken. For Abelard, an agent's intentions are informed by their affections—whether carnal or spiritual. This becomes (...) clear when contextualizing Abelard's use of intentio with a view to his Commentary on Romans. Using the account of intention I suggest—one nuanced by Abelard's own theological commitments and biblical exegesis—it will be clear that Abelard's ethics is not a case for the moral neutrality of the passions nor an ethic of pure reason. (shrink)

"M. F. Simone Roberts's A Poetics of Being-Two is animated by a lively and engaging voice, drawing readers in with a sense of serious purpose working (delightfully) in tandem with a sense of humor. Roberts's aesthetics and her close readings of Yves Bonnefoy, St-John Perse, and Jorie Graham clearly demonstrate the literary effectiveness of Irigarayan sexual difference as an analytic trope, even as they emphasize the philosophical and political possibilities sexual difference opens up for feminism, environmentalism, and all levels of (...) contemporary cultural critique and activism."—Gail M. Schwab, Hofstra University -/- In An Ethics of Sexual Difference, Irigaray calls for a new poetics in the sense of both art and life. Rather than a critique from within philosophy, A Poetics of Being-Two tests Irigaray's ethics by extending it to other sites of cultural production. Where Irigaray's method finds stirrings and repressions of sexual difference in philosophy, this project explores that tension in poetics. Building from Irigaray's ethics, the book describes a poetics of being-two as concerns gendered subjectivity in literary poetics and then traces the on-going emergence of a poetics of being-two in the post-symbolist poetic tradition. Irigaray scholars will be interested in the sustained interpolation of Irigaray's ethical concepts as principles for a critical aesthetics and in their hermeneutic application in reading a literary tradition. Readers in comparative literature will find the first sustained feminist engagements with the major French poets Bonnefoy and Perse and an elucidation of their influence on the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jorie Graham. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore how nurses perceive patient participations of patients over 75 years old undergoing hemodialysis treatment in dialysis units, and of their next of kin. Ten nurses told stories about what happened in the dialysis units. These stories were analyzed with critical discourse analysis. Three discursive practices are found: (1) the nurses’ power and control; (2) sharing power with the patient; and (3) transferring power to the next of kin. The first and the predominant (...) discursive practice can be explained with an ideology of paternalism, in which the nurses used biomedical explanations and the ethical principle of benefice to justify their actions. The second can be explained with an ideology of participation, in which the nurses used ethical narratives as a way to let the patients participate in the treatment. The third seemed to involve autonomous decision-making and the ethical principle of autonomy for the next of kin in the difficult end-of-life decisions. (shrink)

This work presents the concepts of translation and conservative translation between logics. By using algebraic semantics we introduce several conservative translations involving the classical propositional calculus and the many-valued calculi of Post and Lukasiewicz.

We offer a scientific approach to the philosophical 'hard problem' of consciousness, as formulated by David Chalmers in this journal. Our treatment is based upon two recent insights concerning the endogenous nature of consciousness and the minimal thermodynamic conditions for being alive. We suggest that a combination of these insights specifies sufficient conditions for attributing feeling to being.