This article considers conversations in and about education. To focus the discussion, it uses the scenario of a conversation between a trainee teacher and her mentor reflecting together on a lesson that the trainee has just taught. I begin by outlining the notion of reflective practice as popularised by Donald Schön, and show how, in the scenario, the reflective practice conversation leads to talk characterised by recourse to particular dominant discourses within education, and how this in turn can lead to (...) a certain voicelessness. I then consider what the possibilities for the reflective practice conversation might be, looking first at the Greek notion of parrhēsia and how this has been discussed in the work of Michel Foucault in contrast to other forms of talk such as rhetoric or chattering. I argue that, whilst the parrhēsiastic conversation may allow for the exploration of the relationships (between the mentor and the trainee, each participant and their words and a relationship of care for the self), such possibilities are fraught with difficulty. I then move to consider how such relationships might be developed through recognising the expressive aspects of language emphasised in Stanley Cavell's notion of passionate utterance. I first trace the development of Cavell's thought through John Austin's contrast in language between the constative and the performative. I then illustrate the idea of passionate utterance from the films Cavell describes as the ‘Hollywood comedies of remarriage’, and argue that the passionate utterance opens up opportunities for the kind of conversation in education that is itself educative. (shrink)

Amanda Fulford, Áine Mahon; The University as Sanctuary: Home and Unhomeliness, Journal of Philosophy of Education,, qhae037, https://doi.org/10.1093/jope.

In this paper Amanda Fulford addresses the issue of student writing in the university, and explores how the increasing dominance of outcome-driven modes of learning and assessment is changing the understanding of what it is to write, what is expected of students in their writing, and how academic writing should best be supported. The starting point is the increasing use of what are termed “technologies” of writing — “handbooks” for students that address issues of academic writing — that (...) systematize, and smooth the work of writing in, Fulford argues, an unhelpful way. This leads to a reconsideration of what it means to write in the university, and what it is to be a student who writes. Fulford explores etymologically the concept of “writing” and suggests that it might be seen metaphorically as physical labor. Writing as physical labor is explored further through the agricultural metaphors in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and through Stanley Cavell's reading of that text. In making a distinction between writing-as-plowing and writing-as-hoeing, Fulford argues that some technologies of writing deny voice rather than facilitate it, and she concludes by offering a number of suggestions for the teaching and learning of writing in the university that emphasize the value of being lost and finding one's own way out. These “lessons” are illustrated with reference to Thoreau's text Walden and to American literature and film. (shrink)

This paper considers what is at stake in the idea of universitas – a community of masters and scholars – in the context of the shifting landscape of higher education engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, we consider what it means to be together in a university community. We draw a distinction between the idea of ‘functioning’ as universitas and ‘being’ universitas, arguing that, that while universities have continued to function effectively through the pandemic, (...) something of what it means to be universitas has been lost. We explore, through Marcel’s concepts of disponibilité and indisponibilité (availability and unavailability), presence and communion, what is at stake in our being with others, and participating in their plenitude. We conclude that being bodily present to each other opens up possibilities for realising something of what it means to be universitas as a community of masters, scholars and students. (shrink)

This paper addresses both ‘student engagement’ in contemporary universities, and student ‘disengagement’ – where the latter is often seen as a failure of performance, or absence of will. In a bold move, the paper asks whether students should be engaged in their university education, and whether there is value in forms of disengagement. It finds an original way in which student disengagement can be understood by drawing on the writings of Stanley Cavell – on the philosophical appeal to what we (...) say, our search for criteria, and on ideas of acknowledgement and avoidance in his work on Shakespearian tragedy. It shows what is at stake in our attunement with, and dissent from, criteria, and how such dissent can be educative. The paper considers the film ‘Stella Dallas’, in which Stella’s aversion to, her disengagement from, her culture’s criteria, is not a passive withdrawal, but rather the finding of voice, her education as a grownup. The paper concludes that disengagement, understood as aversion, dissent and refusal of voice, is not to be seen always as a lack of action or of care, but as the opposite: the active voicing of what we will, or will not, consent to in our education. (shrink)

In this paper I consider one aspect of how student writing is supported in the university. I focus on the use of the 'writing frame', questioning its status as a vehicle for facilitating student voice, and in the process questioning how that notion is itself understood. I illustrate this by using examples from the story of the 1944 Hollywood film Gaslight and show that apparent means of facilitating voice can actually contribute to a state of voicelessness. The paper considers what (...) recovery of voice entails and the role of the 'voice coach' both in the film, and in the classroom. Drawing on the work of Stanley Cavell, his readings of Gaslight and of the American writers Thoreau and Emerson, I explore the themes of crisis and transformation in relation to the self and society. Thoreau's notion of the father tongue and his metaphor of the axe are considered in relation to the concept of voice and are shown to be suggestive of a mature relationship to language and of an Emersonian self-reliance that is denied by the mere technical skill and mastery learning of some current approaches to academic writing. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the tutorial conversation in Higher Education. To focus the discussion I use the scenario of a tutorial conversation between a lecturer and a student. I begin by suggesting that the increasing emphasis placed on student satisfaction in certain Higher Education Institutions tends to focus the tutorial conversation towards a form of settlement that I then consider in light of Thoreau's Walden. To explore what other conversation might be possible, I turn to the philosophical writing of (...) Martin Buber. I discuss his ‘life of dialogue’ in relation to the distinction he draws between I and Thou and between I and It and to how Nancy Vansieleghem and Jan Masschelein analyse this in relation to the 2002 film, Le Fils. With reference to the film adaptation of Alan Bennett's The History Boys, I suggest a different starting point for the tutorial conversation. I conclude that the tutorial discussion, seen as an invitation to speak, and as a form of exposition and dialogue, is the possibility of the opening up of a new dimension of thinking and acting. This is the invitation to a conversation in education that is itself truly educative. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on learning outside the classroom (LOtC) in places such as in museums and art galleries, in forests, and by natural water courses; this has bec...

The notions of literacy and citizenship have become technologised through the demands for measurable learning outcomes and the reduction of these aspects of education to sets of skills and competencies. Technologisation is understood here as the systematisation of an art, rather than as intending to understand technology itself in negative terms or to comment on the way technology is used in teaching and learning for literacy and citizenship. Technologisation is approached here in terms of the understanding of literacy and citizenship (...) as things that one has. Drawing on the phenomenology of Gabriel Marcel the understanding of literacy and citizenship in terms of having is problematised, as is the distinction between having and being. This opens the way for a richer understanding of being literate and being a citizen explored through the figures of the Hermit and the Poet in Thoreau's Walden. Being literate and being a citizen are brought together here in order to consider the implications of their technologisation for academic writing in the university. The question of what we write in the name of in the university is considered in the light of this and of a particular notion of the public. (shrink)

In this article I take as my starting point the economist, Jeremy Rifkin's, claims about the rise of what he calls the ‘collaborative commons’. For Rifkin, this is nothing less than the emergence of a new economic paradigm where traditional consumers exploit the possibilities of technology, and position themselves as ‘pro-sumers’. This emphasises their role in production rather than consumption alone, and shows how they aim to bypass a range of capitalist markets, from publishing to the music industry. In asking (...) how education is situated in relation to the collaborative commons, I consider the growth in technology-driven, cost-negative services as a response to the current market in higher education. This raises the issue of what we mean by ‘collaboration’ in the university, and how this might be different from, for example, cooperation or teamwork. In seeking to provide a richer conception of collaboration in higher education, I look to Martin Buber's concept of the relational act and the life of dialogue, and to some of the seminal work of Ronald Barnett on the philosophy and economics of higher education. The article suggests that these concepts afford a new perspective on collaboration that amount to a new economics for education. Such economics require a radical shift in how we perceive the role of responsibility, reciprocity and the educative possibilities of conversation. (shrink)

This paper explores three current notions of literacy, which underpin the theorisation and practice of teaching and learning for both children and adults in England. In so doing, it raises certain problems inherent in these approaches to literacy and literacy education and shows how Stanley Cavell's notions of reading, and especially his reading of Thoreau's Walden , help to construct a notion not of literacy, but of being literate. The paper takes four themes central to Cavell's work in his The (...) senses of Walden : awakening; estrangement and familiarity; conviction; and the obligation to read, and argues that these ideas offer an approach to language, and an understanding of reading in particular, that is different from current iterations of literacy. Such ideas, though alien to current - mainly empirical - work within literacy studies, have a resonance for literacy research and education today. (shrink)

This paper considers concepts of expectation and responsibility, and how these drive dialogic interactions between tutor and student in an age of marketised Higher Education. In thinking about such interactions in terms of different forms of exchange, the paper considers the philosophy of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas on dialogic intersubjectivity, and an ethics of responsibility. This enables a richer understanding of the tutorial dialogue in particular, as both teaching and encounter. This has significant implications for education and for the (...) idea of the tutorial as a space for encounter with the other through language. The paper argues that the university tutorial, rather than being considered a place only for the meeting of expectations, might be envisioned as a space for encounter with the unexpected. In considering the nature of the educational encounter in relation to an example from the film adaptation of Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’, the paper concludes that the tutorial opens up the possibility for a mutual encounter with otherness. This positions the tutorial as a space of educational otherness—a Foucauldian heterotopia which rejects the expectation-bound economy of exchange, and which offers instead the possibility of an education marked by an economy of excess. (shrink)

_Philosophy and Theory in Educational Research: Writing in the Margin_ explores the practise of reading and writing in philosophy of education and education theory. Showing that there is no ‘right way’ to approach research in educational philosophy, but illustrating its possibilities, this text invites an engagement with philosophy as a possibility for educational research. Drawing on their own research, theoretical and philosophical sources, the authors investigate the important issue of what it means to read and write when there is no (...) prescribed structure. Innovative in its contribution to the literature, this edited volume enlightens readers in three ways. The volume focuses on the practices of reading and writing that are central to research in educational philosophy, suggesting that these practices constitute the research, rather than that they simply support the research. It is not a prescriptive guide and should not be read procedurally. Rather, it is intended to illustrate the possibilities for this kind of research, and to suggest starting points for those interested in pursuing research projects. Finally, attention is given to the ways in which conducting educational philosophy can be educative in itself, both to the researcher in writing it, and to its audience in reading it. With contributions from international scholars in the field of philosophy of education, this book forms a valuable guide for practitioner-researchers, taught postgraduate and doctoral students, and early career researchers in university education departments. Academic staff seeking to introduce their students to philosophy-as-research without wishing to offer a prescriptive ‘how to’ guide will also find this book of particular interest. (shrink)

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to show that the framework of embedded, distributed, or extended cognition offers new perspectives on social cognition by applying it to one specific domain: the psychology of memory. In making our case, first we specify some key social dimensions of cognitive distribution and some basic distinctions between memory cases, and then describe stronger and weaker versions of distributed remembering in the general distributed cognition framework. Next, we examine studies of social influences on memory in cognitive (...) psychology, and identify the valuable concepts and methods to be extended and embedded in our framework; we focus in particular on three related paradigms: transactive memory, collaborative recall, and social contagion. Finally, we sketch our own early studies of individual and group memory developed within our framework of distributed cognition, on social contagion of autobiographical memories, collaborative flashbulb memories, and memories of high school at a high school reunion. We see two reciprocal benefits of this conceptual and empirical framework to social memory phenomena: that ideas about distributed cognition can be honed against and tested with the help of sophisticated methods in the social cognitive psychology of memory; and conversely, that a range of social memory phenomena that are as yet poorly understood can be approached afresh with theoretically motivated extensions of existing empirical paradigms. (shrink)

It is possible that the world contains infinitely many agents that have positive and negative levels of well-being. Theories have been developed to ethically rank such worlds based on the well-being levels of the agents in those worlds or other qualitative properties of the worlds in question, such as the distribution of agents across spacetime. In this thesis I argue that such ethical rankings ought to be consistent with the Pareto principle, which says that if two worlds contain the same (...) agents and some agents are better off in the first world than they are in the second and no agents are worse off than they are in the second, then the first world is better than the second. I show that if we accept four axioms – the Pareto principle, transitivity, an axiom stating that populations of worlds can be permuted, and the claim that if the ‘at least as good as’ relation holds between two worlds then it holds between qualitative duplicates of this world pair – then we must conclude that there is ubiquitous incomparability between infinite worlds. I show that this is true even if the populations of infinite worlds are disjoint or overlapping, and that we cannot use any qualitative properties of world pairs to rank these worlds. Finally, I argue that this incomparability result generates puzzles for both consequentialist and non-consequentialist theories of objective and subjective permissibility. (shrink)

As the cognitive revolution was slow to come to the study of animal behavior, the vast majority of what we know about primate cognition has been discovered in the last 30 years. Building on the recognition that the physical and social worlds of humans and their living primate relatives pose many of the same evolutionary challenges, programs of research have established that the most basic cognitive skills and mental representations that humans use to navigate those worlds are already possessed by (...) other primates. There may be differences between humans and other primates, however, in more complex cognitive skills, such as reasoning about relations, causality, time, and other minds. Of special importance, the human primate seems to possess a species-unique set of adaptations for “cultural intelligence,” which are broad reaching in their effects on human cognition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Truth in WritingAmandaAn excerpt from my journal during a dark period in my life reads:I am a survivor of sexual mutilation, of coerced gender roles, and of perpetual lies all in the name of normalization. Sometimes I have a hard time even thinking about the true extent of what all happened. It’s like my mind doesn’t have that type of scope, like when I think about the word (...) “eternity.”I wrote this after combing through old medical records, reading comments like “her introitus has healed nicely and looks normal, but my exam suggests that her vagina is shortened,” and “reduction clitoroplasty... removal of testes.” The records go on to say that my “external genitalia is quite satisfactory,” and “on perineal exam, her neovaginal orifice is quite compliant and easily accepts my second and third digits.”My journal continues:I chose this fake hole when I was a teenager because I didn’t know there was another option. I was told from day one to be a female, to be heteronormative, to act like all the other girls, and the only way I could fully accomplish this is by looking the part. A fake hole would be necessary, I thought, to go along with the rest of the lies. Sometimes I think about how the doctors told me to lie about my surgeries and my scars. Sometimes I wonder what my parents would have told the world if I had died during one of surgeries. Maybe they would have said “we were just trying to make her fuckable.”My strength is growing from the stories and experiences I write and share. My journal started about four years ago, when I was in my early 20s, near the beginning of medical school. My initial purpose in writing the journal was to help sort through my feelings and experiences related to a newly discovered sexuality and a changing gender identity. Medical school was thousands of miles away from my previous life, my family, and my friends. Away from my old social network, I was free to self–discover on my own terms. In the first journal entry, I lay out reasons why I decided to get in contact with a therapist, something I had not done previously. Some of the reasons were fairly standard reasons one seeks out a therapist, such as moving away from home. But the fundamental reasons I sought out a therapist, and why I chose to journal, had to do with exploring feelings after my first sexual encounter with a woman, and then [End Page 98] accepting my intersexuality. My relationship with that therapist did not last, but the journaling did.In the beginning of the journal, I write:I am from a small, religious, white, non–diverse, family oriented suburb of Milwaukee. I was raised to be the picture–perfect daughter in a household that did not talk about feelings, sex, cultural or religious differences, etc. My brother and I also never talked about personal issues (and still don’t), which is quite remarkable since we are twins, and have grown up doing most everything together, from sharing birthday parties, to being locker buddies... [When my mother told me about having Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS)] knowing this little fact about my body kept me wanting to become as perfectly female in all ways possible.Growing up without being able to talk about having AIS was stifling to say the least. Closing communication implied great shame, and with the shame came even greater repression. My skate-boarding, baseball card collecting, and model car building interests disappeared after learning about my AIS, which I believe was when I was 12 years old, but I cannot remember exactly. Granted, it’s tough to say whether my interests just changed as I grew older, but I do remember having a fear of portraying any masculine tendencies that other girls in my town weren’t displaying (for example, playing soccer was okay, but I had to shave my legs). I also had crafted some pretty good covers for my AIS, including stories about when I first had my (fake) period, or how I acted fearful about a... (shrink)

This paper aims to better motivate the naturalization of metaphysics by identifying and criticizing a class of theories I call ’free range metaphysics’. I argue that free range metaphysics is epistemically inadequate because the constraints on its content—consistency, simplicity, intuitive plausibility, and explanatory power—are insufficiently robust and justificatory. However, since free range metaphysics yields clarity-conducive techniques, incubates science, and produces conceptual and formal tools useful for scientifically engaged philosophy, I do not recommend its discontinuation. I do recommend, however, ending the (...) discipline’s bad faith. That is, I urge that free range metaphysics not be taken to have fully satisfactory epistemic credentials over and above its pragmatic ones. (shrink)

The Australian government's response to the Millennium Drought (1997–2010) has been met with praise and contestation. While proponents saw the response as timely and crucial, critics claimed it was characterized by government overreach and mismanagement. Five months of field research in farm communities in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) identified two dominant discourses: administrative rationalism and a local community-based discourse I have termed community-centrism. Administrative rationalism reflects the value of scientific inquiry in service to the state and is the dominant (...) research-based problem-solving model used by water and natural resource agencies (Dryzek in The politics of the earth: environmental discourses, Oxford University Press, 2013; Colloff and Pittock in Aust J Water Resour, 23(2):88–98, 2019). Community-centrism was identified through discussions with farmers and represents a bottom-up approach to environmental planning and management that seeks to incorporate local knowledge, planning, and direct participation. This investigation reveals how discourses define problems and policy choices. While market-based government interventions were likely necessary to address the crisis in the MDB, community-centred responses could have enhanced the government’s capacity to respond to problems. This paper argues that the long-term sustainability of water management in the Basin will require a reorientation on the part of farmers, academics, and governments to develop a community-centred approach to water policies impacting agriculture. (shrink)

Many real-world agents recognise that they impose harms by choosing to emit carbon, e.g., by flying. Yet many do so anyway, and then attempt to make things right by offsetting those harms. Such offsetters typically believe that, by offsetting, they change the deontic status of their behaviour, making an otherwise impermissible action permissible. Do they succeed in practice? Some philosophers have argued that they do, since their offsets appear to reverse the adverse effects of their emissions. But we show that (...) they do not. In practice, standard carbon offsetting does not reverse the harms of the original action, nor does it even benefit the same group as was harmed. Standard moral theories hence deny that such offsetting succeeds. Indeed, we show that any moral theory that allows offsetting in this setting faces a dilemma between allowing any wrong to be offset, no matter how grievous, and recognising an implausibly sharp discontinuity between offsettable actions and non-offsettable actions. The most plausible response is to accept that carbon offsetting fails to right our climate wrongs. (shrink)

How do the ways we argue represent a practical philosophy or a way of life? Are concepts of character and ethos pertinent to our understanding of academic debate? In this book, Amanda Anderson analyzes arguments in literary, cultural, and political theory, with special attention to the ways in which theorists understand ideals of critical distance, forms of subjective experience, and the determinants of belief and practice. Drawing on the resources of the liberal and rationalist tradition, Anderson interrogates the limits (...) of identity politics and poststructuralism while holding to the importance of theory as a form of life. Considering high-profile trends as well as less noted patterns of argument, The Way We Argue Now addresses work in feminism, new historicism, queer theory, postcolonialism, cosmopolitanism, pragmatism, and proceduralism. The essays brought together here--lucid, precise, rigorously argued--combine pointed critique with an appreciative assessment of the productive internal contests and creative developments across these influential bodies of thought. Ultimately, The Way We Argue Now promotes a revitalized culture of argument through a richer understanding of the ways critical reason is practiced at the individual, collective, and institutional levels. Bringing to the fore the complexities of academic debate while shifting the terms by which we assess the continued influence of theory, it will appeal to readers interested in political theory, literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and the place of academic culture in society and politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spiritual Experience and PsychopathologyMike Jackson and K. W. M. Fulford (bio)AbstractA recent study of the relationship between spiritual experience and psychopathology (reported in detail elsewhere) suggested that psychotic phenomena could occur in the context of spiritual experiences rather than mental illness. In the present paper, this finding is illustrated with three detailed case histories. Its implications are then explored for psychopathology, for psychiatric classification, and for our understanding (...) of the concept of mental illness. It is argued that pathological and spiritual psychotic phenomena cannot be distinguished by 1) form and content alone (as in traditional psychopathology), 2) by their relationship either with other symptoms or with pathological causes (as in psychiatric classification), or 3) by reference to the descriptive criteria of mental illness implied by the “medical” model. The distinction is shown to depend, rather, on the way in which psychotic phenomena themselves are embedded in the values and beliefs of the person concerned. This in turn is shown to have implications for diagnosis (it shows the need for clinicians to attend to the values and beliefs of individual patients), for treatment (it points to a cognitive problem-solving model), and for research in psychopathology (especially as related to the emerging sciences of dynamic brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience).Keywordsfirst rank symptoms, schizophrenia, delusion, hallucination, thought disorder, religious experience, mystical experienceIntroductionThis paper explores some of the conceptual and practical implications of the finding that phenomena which in a medical context would probably be diagnosed as psychotic symptoms, may occur in the context of non-pathological, and indeed essentially benign, spiritual experiences.The existence of non-pathological psychotic experiences of this kind (we will call them “psychotic phenomena” as distinct from “psychotic symptoms”—see also Endnote 1, terminology) was a key finding in a study carried out by one of us (MJ) at the Alister Hardy Research Centre (AHRC) in Oxford. Details are given elsewhere both of the overall empirical findings of the study, including the relationship between spiritual experience and personality variables, and of a hypothetical cognitive problem-solving model of these phenomena (Jackson 1991, and forthcoming a and b). In the present paper, 1) the background to the study is described briefly in relation to earlier work on the possible links between spiritual experience and psychopathology; 2) some of the psychotic phenomena identified are illustrated with three detailed case histories; 3) the significance of these phenomena is reviewed for our understanding respectively of psychopathology, of diagnostic syndromes, and of the concept of mental illness; and 4) some of the practical implications of the study for clinical work and research in psychiatry are indicated.BackgroundIt has long been recognized that there are similarities between spiritual and psychotic experiences. [End Page 41] William James (1902), for example, argued that “in delusional insanity, paranoia as they sometimes call it, we may have a kind of diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down” (426). Other commentators have noted a wide variety of phenomena, such as time distortion, synesthesias, loss of self-object boundaries and the transition from a state of conflict and anxiety to one of sudden “understanding,” all of which are reported in both spiritual and psychotic experiences (Buckley 1981; Watson 1982; Wapnick 1969; and Wootton and Allen 1983).Yet the similarities notwithstanding, the distinction between these two kinds of experience can be crucially important. Spiritual experiences, whether welcome or unwelcome, and whether or not they are psychotic in form, have nothing (directly) to do with medicine (Fulford 1996a). It would be quite wrong, then, to “treat” spiritual psychotic experiences with neuroleptic drugs, just as it is quite wrong to “treat” political dissidents as though they were ill (Fulford, Smirnoff and Snow, 1993). Pathological psychotic experiences, on the other hand, or psychotic symptoms, are by definition a proper object of medical treatment, sometimes even against the wishes of the person concerned. Hence it would be both negligent and, as Wing (1978) put it, morally “repellent,” to leave untreated someone who is genuinely ill (244).Given how much turns on the distinction between spiritual experience and psychopathology, it is perhaps not surprising that scholarly discussion of the relationship between them has at times... (shrink)

This chapter considers the assumptions required to make scientisms of different forms genuinely threatening to philosophers, where a genuine threat would consist of a concrete risk to their statuses, the value of their teaching and research, their livelihoods, their preferred research methods, or the health of the discipline. I will find that strong and weak forms of scientism alike require substantive assumptions to make them threatening in those regards. In particular, they require sometimes heavy-handed circumscriptions of philosophy and science, as (...) well as their epistemic credentials and achievements, methods, and subject matters. They also require restrictive pronouncements upon the epistemic and non-epistemic goods that are valuable, worth promoting in academic contexts, and relevant to disciplinary health. My aim in this chapter will not to be defeat those assumptions but rather to make them explicit and to emphasize their frequent strength and contentiousness. (shrink)

This chapter considers potential applications of grounding to the formulation of physicalism. I begin with an overview of competing conceptions of the physical and of physicalism. I then consider whether grounding physicalism overcomes well-known and seemingly fatal problems with supervenience physicalism. I conclude that while grounding physicalism improves upon supervenience physicalism in certain respects, it arguably falls victim to some of the same difficulties.

The growing proportion of elderly people in society, together with recent advances in robotics, makes the use of robots in elder care increasingly likely. We outline developments in the areas of robot applications for assisting the elderly and their carers, for monitoring their health and safety, and for providing them with companionship. Despite the possible benefits, we raise and discuss six main ethical concerns associated with: (1) the potential reduction in the amount of human contact; (2) an increase in the (...) feelings of objectification and loss of control; (3) a loss of privacy; (4) a loss of personal liberty; (5) deception and infantilisation; (6) the circumstances in which elderly people should be allowed to control robots. We conclude by balancing the care benefits against the ethical costs. If introduced with foresight and careful guidelines, robots and robotic technology could improve the lives of the elderly, reducing their dependence, and creating more opportunities for social interaction. (shrink)

The law of informed consent to medical treatment has recently been extensively overhauled in England. The 2015 Montgomery judgment has done away with the long-held position that the information to be disclosed by doctors when obtaining valid consent from patients should be determined on the basis of what a reasonable body of medical opinion agree ought to be disclosed in the circumstances. The UK Supreme Court concluded that the information that is material to a patient’s decision should instead be judged (...) by reference to a new two-limbed test founded on the notions of the ‘reasonable person’ and the ‘particular patient’. The rationale outlined in Montgomery for this new test of materiality, and academic comment on the ruling’s significance, has focused on the central ethical importance that the law now accords to respect for patient autonomy in the process of obtaining consent from patients. In this paper, we dispute the claim that the new test of materiality articulated in Montgomery equates with respect for autonomy being given primacy in re-shaping the development of the law in this area. We also defend this position, arguing that our revised interpretation of Montgomery’s significance does not equate with a failure by the courts to give due legal consideration to what is owed to patients as autonomous decision-makers in the consent process. Instead, Montgomery correctly implies that doctors are ethically obliged to attend to a number of relevant ethical considerations in framing decisions about consent to treatment, which include subtle interpretations of the values of autonomy and well-being. Doctors should give appropriate consideration to how these values are fleshed out and balanced in context in order to specify precisely what information ought to be disclosed to a patient as a requirement of obtaining consent, and as a core component of shared decision-making within medical encounters more generally. (shrink)

This “open letter” to Christopher Boorse is a response to his influential naturalist analysis of disease from the perspective of linguistic-analytic value theory. The key linguistic-analytic point against Boorse is that, although defining disease value free, he continue to use the term with clear evaluative connotations. A descriptivist analysis of disease would allow value-free definition consistently with value-laden use: but descriptivism fails when applied to mental disorder because it depends on shared values whereas the values relevant to mental disorders are (...) highly diverse. A part-function analysis, similarly, although initially persuasive for physical disorders, fails with the psychotic mental disorders because these, characteristically, involve disturbances of the rationality of the person as a whole. The difficulties encountered in applying naturalism to mental disorders point, linguistic-analytically, to the possibility that there is, after all, an evaluative element of meaning, deeply hidden but still logically operative, in the concept of disease. (shrink)

This paper surveys some of the grounding literature searching for points of contact between theories of ground and science. I find that there are some places where a would-be naturalistic grounding theorist can draw inspiration. I synthesize a list of recommendations for how science may be put to use in theories of ground. I conclude that the prospects for naturalizing the metaphysics of ground are bright.

Generic statements express generalizations about categories and present a unique semantic profile that is distinct from quantified statements. This paper reports two studies examining the development of children's intuitions about the semantics of generics and how they differ from statements quantified by all, most, and some. Results reveal that, like adults, preschoolers recognize that generics have flexible truth conditions and are capable of representing a wide range of prevalence levels; and interpret novel generics as having near-universal prevalence implications. Results further (...) show that by age 4, children are beginning to differentiate the meaning of generics and quantified statements; however, even 7- to 11-year-olds are not adultlike in their intuitions about the meaning of most-quantified statements. Overall, these studies suggest that by preschool, children interpret generics in much the same way that adults do; however, mastery of the semantics of quantified statements follows a more protracted course. (shrink)

This paper employs the methodological framework of linguistic analytic philosophy to explore the conceptual issues arising from a study of the different models of disorder implicit in five groups of stakeholders concerned in the community care of people with a diagnosis of long-term schizophrenia. Linguistic analysis, gives a precise fix on the nature of the practical difficulties presented by such models, suggests a powerful heuristic for displaying and comparing models, is the basis of a methodology which is neutral as between (...) users and providers of services, provides an intuitively powerful way of understanding the results of work of this kind, and facilitates the translation of research into practice. (shrink)

Quarantine and spatial distancing measures associated with COVID-19 resulted in substantial changes to individuals’ everyday lives. Prominent among these lifestyle changes was the way in which people interacted with media—including music listening. In this repeated assessment study, we assessed Australian university students’ media use throughout early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, and determined whether media use was related to changes in life satisfaction. Participants were asked to complete six online questionnaires, capturing pre- and during-pandemic experiences. The results indicated (...) that media use varied substantially throughout the study period, and at the within-person level, life satisfaction was positively associated with music listening and negatively associated with watching TV/videos/movies. The findings highlight the potential benefits of music listening during COVID-19 and other periods of social isolation. (shrink)

The word ‘naturalism’ has a bewildering array of uses in philosophy. Roughly speaking, it connotes pro-scientific attitudes and approaches. This article introduces the subject of naturalism by sketching a history of pro-scientific attitudes and approaches in philosophy, from their origins in the early modern period through to the present day. It then distinguishes a number of distinct families of naturalism: metaphysical, logico-linguistic, epistemological, and methodological. The resulting taxonomy encompasses a plurality of loosely related views rather than a number of variations (...) on a single clear and unified theme. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between dignity and robot care for older people. It highlights the disquiet that is often expressed about failures to maintain the dignity of vulnerable older people, but points out some of the contradictory uses of the word ‘dignity’. Certain authors have resolved these contradictions by identifying different senses of dignity; contrasting the inviolable dignity inherent in human life to other forms of dignity which can be present to varying degrees. The Capability Approach (CA) is introduced (...) as a different but tangible account of what it means to live a life worthy of human dignity. It is used here as a framework for the assessment of the possible effects of eldercare robots on human dignity. The CA enables the identification of circumstances in which robots could enhance dignity by expanding the set of capabilities that are accessible to frail older people. At the same time, it is also possible within its framework to identify ways in which robots could have a negative impact, by impeding the access of older people to essential capabilities. It is concluded that the CA has some advantages over other accounts of dignity, but that further work and empirical study is needed in order to adapt it to the particular circumstances and concerns of those in the latter part of their lives. (shrink)

This is a preprint draft. Please cite published version (DOI: 10.1111/mila.12385). The aim of this paper is to provide a novel analysis of anorexia nervosa (AN) in the context of the sense of agency literature. I first show that two accounts of anorexia nervosa that we ought to take seriously— i.e., the first personal reports of those who have experienced it firsthand as well as the research that seeks to explain anorexic behavior from an empirical perspective— appear to be thoroughly (...) in tension with one another in their descriptions of anorexic actions. Rather than proceeding at this point by way of disregarding anorexic testimony as meaningless or insincere, I instead offer a positive account of the sense of agency in anorexia nervosa that renders these two depictions compatible. The resultant picture of anorexic behavior is one that accommodates current empirical findings while also providing valuable insight into how it is that anorexics can sincerely report feeling fully in control over their food restriction. (shrink)

Many have offered moral objections to video games, with various critics contending that they depict and promote morally dubious attitudes and behaviour. However, few have offered moral arguments in favour of video games. In this chapter, we develop one such positive moral argument. Specifically, we argue that video games offer one of the only morally acceptable methods for acquiring some ethical knowledge. Consequently, we have (defeasible) moral reasons for creating, distributing, and playing certain morally educating video games.

The focus on the everyday in this Special Issue reveals different kinds of emotional practices, their political effects and their political contestation within both micro- and macro-politics in int...

"In The Ethics of Earth Art, Amanda Boetzkes analyzes the development of the earth art movement, arguing that such diverse artists as Robert Smithson, Ana Mendieta, James Turrell, Jackie Brookner, Olafur Eliasson, Basia Irland, and Ichi ...

Children and adults commonly produce more generic noun phrases (e.g., birds fly) about animals than artifacts. This may reflect differences in participants’ generic knowledge about specific animals/artifacts (e.g., dogs/chairs), or it may reflect a more general distinction. To test this, the current experiments asked adults and preschoolers to generate properties about novel animals and artifacts (Experiment 1: real animals/artifacts; Experiments 2 and 3: matched pairs of maximally similar, novel animals/artifacts). Data demonstrate that even without prior knowledge about these items, the (...) likelihood of producing a generic is significantly greater for animals than artifacts. These results leave open the question of whether this pattern is the product of experience and learned associations or instead a set of early-developing theories about animals and artifacts. (shrink)

A naturalistic impulse has taken speculative analytic metaphysics in its critical sights. Importantly, the claim that it is desirable or requisite to give metaphysics scientific moorings rests on underlying epistemological assumptions or principles. If the naturalistic impulse toward metaphysics is to be well-founded and its prescriptions to have normative force, those assumptions or principles should be spelled out and justified. In short, advocates of naturalized or scientific metaphysics require epistemic infrastructure. This paper begins to supply it. The author first sketches (...) her conception of suitably naturalized or scientific metaphysics. She then lays out a number of candidate epistemic principles centring around the notion of theoretical constraint. The author offers several arguments for the principles, based on statistical likeliness, agreement, falsity avoidance, and methodological efficiency and inefficiency. Finally, she shows how scientific metaphysics satisfies the epistemic principles and is therefore preferable to its traditional rivals. (shrink)