Postmodernism and health economics are both concerned with questions about choices and values, risk and uncertainty. Postmodernists seek to respond to such questions in the context of a world of uncoordinated and often contradictory chances, a world devoid of clear-cut standards. Health economics seeks to respond using the constructs of modernity, including the application of reason to generate better order. In this article we present two sorts of voice. First we introduce postmodernism and those seeking to contribute to economics from (...) a postmodern perspective. Second, we consider critics of a prevalent neo-classicism within health economics both from outside that paradigm and from those more closely associated with it. It is increasingly evident that (health) economics, as presently constituted, is failing both in its descriptive powers and its prescriptive possibilities. Postmodernism offers not just an alternative theoretical approach but the possibility of both expanding the scope of health economics and grounding it more appropriately in the everyday experience of those engaging with health systems. (shrink)

The current study investigates how native speakers of a morphologically complex language handle uncertainty related to linguistic forms that have gaps in their inflectional paradigms. We analyze their strategies of dealing with paradigmatic defectivity and how these strategies are motivated by subjective contemporaneousness, frequency, acceptability, and other lexical and structural characteristics of words. We administered a verb production task with Finnish native speakers using verbs from a small non-productive inflectional type that has many paradigmatic gaps and asked participants to (...) inflect the verbs in a given context. Inflectional uncertainty was measured by the number of different forms the participants produced for each verb. We classified produced forms that were not expected as either synonymous or novel and measured their optimal string alignment distance to expected forms. Our analyses revealed that a usage-based approach to paradigmatic defectivity fits better with the obtained results than a classical approach typically met in dictionaries and descriptive grammars. Thus, we argue, that paradigmatic defectivity can be better described as a dynamic rather than a static system, where gaps represent a continuum of possible inflectional choices rather than a lack of an inflectional variant. (shrink)

In 1934, Admiral Richard E. Byrd retreated from his crew at the remote Little America encampment in Antarctica to an even more isolated setting: a small underground shack on ‘the dark immensity of the Ross Ice Barrier, on a line between Little America and the South Pole’. Byrd remained there in solitude for a little over four months and later wrote about his ordeal in Alone. This essay considers Byrd’s account alongside his earlier Antarctic writings in order to ask (...) what they reveal about the difficulties of retreating and maintaining critical distance from ‘civilisation’. (shrink)

Although the last decade has seen a proliferation of ontological approaches to arguments, many of them employ ad hoc solutions to representing arguments, lack interoperability with other ontologies, or cover arguments only as part of a broader approach to evidence. To provide a better ontological representation of arguments, we present the Arguments Ontology (ArgO), a small ontology for arguments that is designed to be imported and easily extended by researchers who work in different upper-level ontology frameworks, different logics, and (...) different approaches to argument evaluation. Unlike most ontological approaches to arguments, ArgO utilizes Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as an upper-level ontology, and may be used alongside other commonly used ontologies in the BFO framework, including boththe Information Artifact Ontology (IAO), and the Information Entity Ontology (INFO). Critically, our proposal is principled, based on rigorous definitions and formal axioms out of which characterizations of arguments naturally fall. It is our hope that ArgO may assist researchers in many projects, including: integrating heterogeneous sources of evidence, structuring the content of semantic wikis, and enhancing semantic reasoning. (shrink)

My research is centred upon how architecture is invigorated by cyberspace, the blurred boundary between the virtual and the actual, and how the different parameters of these spaces can be used to inform one another. My early experience in practice was that buildings are limited by the inert materials used to construct them and by the unimaginative ideas of what a building should look like and be. My research draws upon a variety of different disciplines to inform one architecture. The (...) areas of research are multidisciplinary and include the changing status of the architectural drawing, smart materials, computer-aided architectural drawing, computer-aided manufacture, emergent systems, responsive environments, the architectural design of cyberspace, interactivity, cybernetics and evolving systems and algorithmic design. To create responsive, non-prescriptive designs for architectural intervention was the starting point that led to an interest in the logic of algorithms and open-ended systems. These problem-solving diagrams used by computer programmers are very useful as a way of describing fluctuating conditions in responsive environments. This led to an interest in other computing paradigms such as cellular automata, complexity and emergence. These and other ideas I attempted to bring into the arena of architectural design to help architects cope with the rapid growth of computational technology, which is starting to revolutionize the way buildings are designed, drawn and built. We are at another of the important perturbations in technology and epistemology that seems to affect us so often these days. Cell biology is the new cyber-space and nanotechnology. Once we fully understand the exact nature of how our world makes us and, indeed how it sometimes kills us, we will be able to make true architectures of ecological connectability. This is our profession's future. Small steps have been made, but much more remains to be done. (shrink)

The roles of small and great books, and passionate yet well-considered writings in the general education of a “college” or “university” trained teacher are questions which should be turned back upon the historian as teacher and writer. Where resides the historian's classroom? Who are the students and how do teachers come to be? What subject matter should be used to prod and provoke an often dormant humanity awake? Professor Marc Bloch's work, his passion for history's rôles and its voices (...) from the past speaking to the present, had a Renaissance in the cauldron of World War II. Bloch's commitment to teaching and writing history, teaching about the forceful, or surprising and shocking, “presences” of history's supposed past-tense experiences, remains seminal to the historian's craft. Bloch's own voice from the past was forged in an intensity of present-time experience. Reflection was searing experience. Memory was “now” and remembrance was an accident of preservation for futures then unknown. These futures need to know of the experiences of former, fragile, personal and generational memories if the very same futures were to be lived more surely and securely. Marc Bloch's The Historian's Craft, remains a vindication of the human-centred, purposive roles of history in a general education. Moreover, this general education can now be said to cover the broad sweep of “secondary schooling” experiences. This sweep of schooling and post-schooling experiences is beginning, however tentatively and problematically, to extend itself into worlds of work, the futures of work and the academic futures or courses of higher education: the arena of tertiary and university education. In a not dissimilar fashion but in an even more intense spirit, Bloch's work, L’étrange défaite, examines the explosion and implosion of France and, in effect, Western Europe in the years, months and days leading up to the German offensive in the West of 10 May 1940. Bloch recognized that education and the failures to harness intellect, true intellectual freedom and innovative teaching weighed heavily upon the disastrous course of events in 1940. Professor Bloch's texts can serve two complementary purposes. First, his works, Strange Defeat and The Historian's Craft remain as significant, contemporary records of personal thoughts, argumentative methodologies, and recollections of world-shattering events. They constitute, quite literally, an historian's craft in action. Second, Bloch's texts can serve an equally valuable role where the writer seeks to take his reader through and beyond the immediate historical question, methodology or series of unravelling events into an intellectual duel which stands upon the historian's engagement with worlds, past and present. Questions and actions, makings and doings matter in this world. Understanding is not only a prime responsibility of the historian; it is a duty which might well prove dangerous. Given the above observations, this essay will seek to emphasize that world history and the teaching of broad histories of humanity recognizes few, if any, borders which seek to block or hold at bay the presentation of the “passport” known as understanding. Teaching history is much more than teaching civics or recognizing civilizational variety and its barbarous opposites. Teaching history is an act, however imperfect, of recognizing ourselves in time. My brother “schoolmasters”—when it came to the point, you did, for the most part, put up a magnificent fight. It was your goodwill which managed to create in many a sleepy secondary school, in many universities—prisoners of the worse routines the only form of education of which, perhaps, we can feel genuinely proud. I only hope that a day will come, and come soon, a day of glory and of happiness for France, when, liberated from the enemy, and freer than ever in our intellectual life, we may meet again for the mutual discussion of ideas. And when that happens, do you not think that, having learned from an experience so dearly purchased, you will find much to alter in the things you were teaching only a few years back? Strange Defeat, 142).1 What was at stake was a geological upheaval of thought …2. (shrink)

Which is worse: Doing evil or being evil? If we are free to define ourselves through our choices, as existentialism posits, then the latter is worse. This paper attempts to resolve the issue of the difference between religious (group) ethics and the ethics of a person of faith that embraces individuals with an existential understanding. In the existential view, the individual (whether the self or the other) is the primary concern, and so the issue of personal relational morality supersedes religious (...) narratives, social morality and popular ethics (White, 2002). If we think and choose, there is the possibility that we may occasionally make a mistake and do evil. However, if we do not think about our choices, and if the conventions we hold happen to be flawed in some way, then we become defined by a continual cycle of mistakes. Existentialism teaches that we become who we are in the process of making choices; therefore the difference between doing evil and being evil can be found in the small but important flow of thinking, relating and choosing. (shrink)

I am to grateful to Geoff Keeling for his perceptive response1 to my paper.2 In this brief reply, I will argue that he does not succeed in his goal of showing that nudges to reason do not respect autonomy. At most, he establishes only that such nudges may threaten autonomy when used in certain ways and in certain circumstances. As I will show, this is not a conclusion that should give us grounds for particular concerns about nudges. Before turning to (...) this issue, let me correct some small issues of interpretation of my paper. Keeling takes me to be committed to three descriptive claims: that we have entered a post-truth era, that our problem with the rational assessment of evidence is explained by or stems from the backfire effect and that nudges to reason work by exploiting affective mechanisms. I am not committed to accepting any of these claims. …. (shrink)

We present a logically detailed case-study of Darwinian evolutionary explanation. Special features of Darwin’s explanatory schema made it an unusual theoretical breakthrough, from the point of view of the philosophy of science. The schema employs no theoretical terms, and puts forward no theoretical hypotheses. Instead, it uses three observational generalizations—Variability, Heritability and Differential Reproduction—along with an innocuous assumption of Causal Efficacy, to derive Adaptive Evolution as a necessary consequence. Adaptive Evolution in turn, with one assumption of scale (‘Deep Time’), implies (...) the observational generalization of Adaptation. It is a fascinating methodological task to regiment the premises and make the reasoning both rigorous and clear. Doing so reveals how surprisingly small an amount of mathematics is needed in order to carry out the argument. The investigation also reveals the crucial role played by heritability, and how heritability itself admits of Darwinian explanation. (shrink)

Proponents of evolutionary psychology take the existence of humanuniversals to constitute decisive evidence in favor of their view. Ifthe same social norms are found in culture after culture, we have goodreason to believe that they are innate, they argue. In this paper Ipropose an alternative explanation for the existence of humanuniversals, which does not depend on them being the product of inbuiltpsychological adaptations. Following the work of Brian Skyrms, I suggestthat if a particular convention possesses even a very small (...) advantageover competitors, whatever the reason for that advantage, we shouldexpect it to become the norm almost everywhere. Tiny advantages aretranslated into very large basins of attraction, in the language of gametheory. If this is so, universal norms are not evidence for innatepsychological adaptations at all. Having shown that the existence ofuniversals is consistent with the so-called Standard Social ScienceModel, I turn to a consideration of the evidence, to show that thisstyle of explanation is preferable to the evolutionary explanation, atleast with regard to patterns of gender inequality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 261-282 [Access article in PDF] The "Progress of Ambition": Character, Narrative, and Philosophy in the Works of William Robertson Neil Hargraves In his biography of William Robertson, Dugald Stewart claimed that by "few writers of the present age has [the] combination of philosophy with history been more often attempted than by Dr. Robertson; and by none have the inconveniences which (...) it threatens been more successfully avoided." 1 At first sight Stewart's assertion seems puzzling. Arnaldo Momigliano considered Robertson to be less successful than Edward Gibbon in his integration of the three elements of eighteenth-century historical writing, philosophy, narrative, and erudition. 2 Despite Robertson's stated belief that "arrangement" was the principal task of the historian, his organizational framework appeared to foster separation rather than integration. 3 Thus, his central work, The History of the Reign of Charles V (1769), is divided into three discrete parts. An apparently conventional narrative of high politics and diplomacy is prefaced by an essay on medieval Europe, A View of the Progress of Society in Europe, which was regarded by his contemporaries as a classic of "philosophical" history, 4 while [End Page 261] Robertson appended to both copious "Proofs and Illustrations." The structure of The History of America (1777) is even less integrated, despite criticalpraise of its "regular plan... complete narration and perfect whole." 5 To other critics his interpolation of dissertations upon the "condition and character" of the Americans, Mexicans, and Peruvians, seemed to sever the thread of the narrative and consequently to break up the unity of the work. 6 Yet as this paper will seek to demonstrate, there was a vital connection between the narrative and "philosophical" components of Robertson's major histories: the theoretical dissertations served recognizably narrative purposes. The bridge between them lies in the complex notion of character created by the expansion of historical forms in the eighteenth century."Philosophical" history defined itself in opposition to the vacuities and muddles of conventional political-diplomatic historical narrative. Its advantages over narrative were various: the revelation of general rather than particular causes, grounding the history on more certain and less random principles: 7 the penetration of causes "insensible" and invisible to the eyes of a careless observer, obscured by the "great theatre of the world"; 8 a broadening of the subject-matter, away from the mere rehearsal of the struggles between crown and nobility or fixation with constitution and government, towards a more inclusive and heterogeneous history of "manners, including arts, sciences, society" and what today would be termed "mentalities," and, related to the last point, a principle of organization that would reduce the apparent chaos and multiplicity of the past to a simple and luminous plan of arrangement. 9 This was the most exacting requirement for the philosophical historian. As a critic wrote of Robertson's View, its value lay most in its "vast and magnificent plan... that profound and easy art of classing [facts], in such a manner that... the accumulated multiplicity of events is gradually reduced to a small number." It [End Page 262] required a more "elevated view... above all discussions and disputes." 10 Philosophic history aimed to strip away the illusion of appearances and substitute an unseen but more regular and systematic history. In its more ambitious formulations it aimed not simply at a universal history of mankind but at no less than a "history of the human mind": an attempt to explain through historical description the enormous gulf that separated modern man from his savage ancestor. As Robertson himself famously declared in Book IV of America, In order to complete the history of the human mind, and attain to a perfect knowledge of its nature and operations, we must contemplate man in all those various situations wherein he has been placed. We must follow him in his progress through the different stages of society, as he gradually advances from the infant state of civil life towards its maturity and decline. (VIII, 49-50) This was a history of progress... (shrink)

One winter’s Saturday Clarence wakes up. He realises he has left his umbrella at work. The office is locked, and he can’t get in. Being one of those people who punish themselves for their mistakes, he can’t bring himself to buy a replacement. He has an engagement six kilometres down the road and starts wondering whether it will rain. Normally, this would not be a problem, but his motor vehicle has broken down because he forgot to have it serviced. And (...) of course, he blames himself for this mistake, so it is only natural that he can’t bring himself to hire a cab or take a bus. He really should hope that it rains and that he gets drenched on the way to his engagement, but he is only human after all, and a small part of himhopes that it is a sunny day. (shrink)

There is an extensive literature comparing the politics, sociology and economics of the United States and Canada, but very little work comparing the role that public intellectuals play in the space of public opinion and how their ideas are received in both nations simultaneously. Noam Chomsky provides a theoretically useful example of an established academic and public intellectual whose reputation is deeply contested in both countries. Our comparative case study offers leverage to contribute to debates on the sociology of knowledge, (...) reputations, intellectuals, and the politics of professors using data from six major Canadian and American newspapers from 1995–2009 and an innovative coding of media portrayal. Earlier work has demonstrated that Chomsky is discussed as a public intellectual more prominently in Canada than in the United States (McLaughlin and Townsley in Canadian Review of Sociology, 48(4):341–368, 2011). Here we examine the comparative construction of a “public intellectual” reputation in the context of significant political change. We document small differences between the Canadian and American receptions of Chomsky, show change in the patterns of portrayal and number of publications over time, and offer an analysis of differences between political attacks and consecrations. We demonstrate more engagement with Chomsky’s political view in Canada than in the United States, a rise in Chomsky’s fame post 9/11, and illustrate clear political patterns in attempts to marginalize him. (shrink)

A Bayesian network (BN) is a graphical model of uncertainty that is especially well suited to legal arguments. It enables us to visualize and model dependencies between different hypotheses and pieces of evidence and to calculate the revised probability beliefs about all uncertain factors when any piece of new evidence is presented. Although BNs have been widely discussed and recently used in the context of legal arguments, there is no systematic, repeatable method for modeling legal arguments as BNs. Hence, where (...) BNs have been used in the legal context, they are presented as completed pieces of work, with no insights into the reasoning and working that must have gone into their construction. This means the process of building BNs for legal arguments is ad hoc, with little possibility for learning and process improvement. This article directly addresses this problem by describing a method for building useful legal arguments in a consistent and repeatable way. The method complements and extends recent work by Hepler, Dawid, and Leucari (2007) on object-oriented BNs for complex legal arguments and is based on the recognition that such arguments can be built up from a small number of basic causal structures (referred to as idioms). We present a number of examples that demonstrate the practicality and usefulness of the method. (shrink)

In her paper, The case for physician assisted suicide: not proven, Bonnie Steinbock argues that the experience with Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act fails to demonstrate that the benefits of legalising physician assisted suicide outweigh its risks. Given that her verdict is based on a small number of highly controversial cases that will most likely occur under any regime of legally implemented safeguards, she renders it virtually impossible to prove the case for physician assisted suicide. In this brief paper, (...) we suggest some ways that may enable us to weigh the risks and benefits of legalisation more fairly and, hopefully, allow us to close the case for physician assisted suicide. (shrink)

We give a new characterization of the strict $$\forall {\Sigma^b_j}$$ sentences provable using $${\Sigma^b_k}$$ induction, for 1 ≤ j ≤ k. As a small application we show that, in a certain sense, Buss’s witnessing theorem for strict $${\Sigma^b_k}$$ formulas already holds over the relatively weak theory PV. We exhibit a combinatorial principle with the property that a lower bound for it in constant-depth Frege would imply that the narrow CNFs with short depth j Frege refutations form a strict hierarchy (...) with j, and hence that the relativized bounded arithmetic hierarchy can be separated by a family of $$\forall {\Sigma^b_1}$$ sentences. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore various pedagogical tools that facilitate productive and effective classroom discussion in philosophy courses. Adequate preparation for classroom discussion is not merely a matter of doing the assigned reading, but requires students to take careful notes on the reading, to read the text systematically, and to compose questions. Instead of teaching students remedial reading skills, the author suggests a series of assignments (in and outside of class) that help students develop critical reading skills. (...) The author recommends that students hone their engagement with philosophical themes and discussion topics by completing writing assignments prior to class and by working in class with small discussion groups. Teachers can supplement this practice by utilizing the blackboard to outline questions, assignments, and important ideas from the text. The more students engage with the material from various angles, the better they are equipped to effectively contribute to classroom discussion and the easier it is for instructors to facilitate their philosophical growth. (shrink)

There appears to be a growing disquiet amongst academics surrounding the ascendancy of 'responsible' investment that is egoist or self-interested in character — 'business case' responsible investment. This ascendancy has in no small measure been associated with the uptake of United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) as a de facto standard for mainstream responsible investment. This article contributes to this disquiet. It does this by examining how egoist 'responsible' investors (as endorsed by the PRI) might have behaved had (...) they been around in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s during days of the anti-apartheid socially responsible investment (SRI) movement. Armed with near perfect (hindsight grade) enhanced analytics, it is clear that the signals that such egoist ' responsible' investors would have sent to company management in terms of the apartheid issue would have been highly muddled and therefore ineffective. The net conclusion is that there is nothing inherently or inevitably ' responsible' about egoist investment and that the aversion to behaving ethically amongst institutional investors must be challenged and not swept under a carpet of rhetoric. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultants are inevitably called to participate in and bear witness to emotionally challenging cases. With the move toward the professionalization of ethics consultants, the responsibility to respond to and address difficult ethical dilemmas is likely to fall to a small set of people or a single clinical ethicist. Combined with time constraints, the urgent nature of these cases, and the moral distress of clinicians and staff encountered during consultation, like other healthcare professionals such as physicians and nurses, (...) clinical ethics consultants could risk burnout. If it is true that clinical ethicists are at risk for burnout, an important strategy to avoid burnout is to develop sound self-care practices. This article reviews the goals and skills of ethics consultation and the role-specific reasons that clinical ethicists may be at risk for burnout, and argues that clinical ethicists may need to engage in self-care practices. Strategies to address burnout are reviewed and opportunities for future research are identified. (shrink)

Which is worse: Doing evil or being evil? If we are free to define ourselves through our choices, as existentialism posits, then the latter is worse. This paper attempts to resolve the issue of the difference between religious (group) ethics and the ethics of a person of faith that embraces individuals with an existential understanding. In the existential view, the individual (whether the self or the other) is the primary concern, and so the issue of personal relational morality supersedes religious (...) narratives, social morality and popular ethics (White, 2002). If we think and choose, there is the possibility that we may occasionally make a mistake and do evil. However, if we do not think about our choices, and if the conventions we hold happen to be flawed in some way, then we become defined by a continual cycle of mistakes. Existentialism teaches that we become who we are in the process of making choices; therefore the difference between doing evil and being evil can be found in the small but important flow of thinking, relating and choosing. (shrink)

The contribution of inherited non‐genetic factors to complex diseases is of great current interest. The ways in which mothers and fathers can affect their offspring's health clearly differ as a result of the intimate interactions between mother and offspring during pre‐ and postnatal life. There is, however, potential for some overlap in mechanisms, particularly epigenetic mechanisms. A small number of epidemiological studies and animal models have investigated the non‐genetic contribution of the parents to offspring health. Discovering new mechanisms of (...) disease inheritance is technically difficult, especially in genetically, socially and environmentally heterogeneous human populations. Therefore, rigorous experimental design, appropriate sample numbers and the use of high‐throughput technologies are necessary to provide convincing evidence. Based on recent examples from the literature, here we propose several ways to improve human studies that aim to identify the underlying mechanisms of transgenerational inheritance of metabolic disease. (shrink)

Why do we watch and like horror films? Despite a century of horror film-making and en-tertainment, little research has examined the human motivation to watch fictional horror and how horror film influences individuals’ behavioural, cognitive and emotional re-sponses. This review provides the first synthesis of the empirical literature on the psy-chology of horror film using multi-disciplinary research from psychology, psychotherapy, communication studies, development studies, clinical psychology, and media studies. The paper considers the motivations for people’s decision to watch horror, why (...) people enjoy horror, how individual differences influence responses to, and preference for, hor-ror film, how exposure to horror film changes behaviour, how horror film is designed to achieve its effects, why we fear and why we fear specific classes of stimuli, and how lik-ing for horror develops during childhood and adolescence. The literature suggests that (1) low empathy and fearfulness are associated with more enjoyment and desire to watch horror film but that specific dimensions of empathy are better predictors of people’s re-sponses than are others; (2) there is a positive relationship between sensation-seeking and horror enjoyment/preference but this relationship is not consistent; (3) men and boys prefer to watch, enjoy and seek our horror more than do women and girls; (4) women are more prone to disgust sensitivity or anxiety than are men and this may mediate the sex difference in the enjoyment of horror; (5) younger children are afraid of symbolic stimuli whereas older children become afraid of concrete or realistic stimuli; (6) in terms of coping with horror, physical coping strategies are more successful in younger children; priming with information about the feared object reduces fear and increases children’s enjoyment of frightening television and film. A number of limitations in the literature are identified, including the multifarious range of horror stimuli used in studies, disparities in methods, small sample sizes, and a lack of research on cross-cultural differences and similarities. Ideas for future research are explored. (shrink)

This paper presents an oral history of farming in the Southern Yangtze Valley in China, covering the period from pre-liberation to recent market liberalization. Using the stories and observations of 31 elderly residents of a small water town, the paper describes the hard labor of traditional farming practices and the acquiescence of many when, post-liberation, they could leave farming for better-paid factory work. However, in a departure from conventional analyses, these oral histories suggest that the co-dependency culture of traditional (...) farming has broken down, and farmers are unwilling to return to the land and continue farming. The changes in knowledge cultures of local farmers in recent decades are not likely to lead to pathways to working with incoming modern “outsider farmers,” nor able to be blended with potential new “urbanite” knowledges of those who might wish to increase organic farming. The current knowledge cultures of these farmers has shifted as needed to the optimization of family unit needs, naturally leading them to urbanization and the relinquishing of their ties to the land. For cultural rather than economic reasons, these farmers see themselves as the last peasant farmers of Tianshanzhuang. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty is an insidious problem that besets most tertiary institutions, where considerable resources are expended to prevent and manage students' dishonest actions within academia. Using a mixed retrospective and prospective design this research investigated Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control theory as a possible explanation for academic dishonesty in 264 university students. The relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was also examined. A significant but small to moderate relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was present, including correlations with (...) general dishonesty, violent crime and drug offending subcategories. These findings suggested that a general criminological theory may be of use in explaining academic dishonesty, but the overall ability of self-control variables to explain academic dishonesty was not strong. Controlled logistic regressions indicated that a significant positive association with academic dishonesty was only present for one of 6 self-control subscales (self-centeredness), and even this association was only present in the prospective study component. A strong relationship between past and future academic dishonesty was present. Implications of the study for institutions are discussed. (shrink)

Abstract The typical explanation of an event or process which attracts the label ‘conspiracy theory’ is an explanation that conflicts with the account advanced by the relevant epistemic authorities. I argue that both for the layperson and for the intellectual, it is almost never rational to accept such a conspiracy theory. Knowledge is not merely shallowly social, in the manner recognized by social epistemology, it is also constitutively social: many kinds of knowledge only become accessible thanks to the agent's embedding (...) in an environment that includes other epistemic agents. Moreover, advances in knowledge typically require ongoing immersion in this social environment. But the intellectual who embraces a conspiracy theory risks cutting herself off from this environment, and therefore epistemically disabling herself. Embracing a conspiracy theory therefore places at risk the ability to engage in genuine enquiry, including the enquiry needed properly to evaluate the conspiracy theory. (shrink)

What is posthumanism and why does it matter? This book offers an introduction to the ways in which humanism's belief in the natural supremacy of the Family of Man has been called into question at different moments and from different theoretical positions. What is the relationship between posthumanism and technology? Can posthumanism have a politics—postcolonial or feminist? Are postmodernism and poststructuralism posthumanist? What happens when critical theory meets Hollywood cinema? What links posthumanism to science fiction. Posthumanism addresses these and other (...) questions in an attempt to come to terms with one of the most pressing issues facing contemporary society. (shrink)

McKenna’s critique (rather than criticisms) of idealized approaches to epistemology is an important contribution to the literature. In this brief discussion, I set out his main concerns about more idealized approaches, within and beyond social epistemology, before turning to some issues I think he neglects. I suggest that it’s important to pay attention to the prestige hierarchy in philosophy, and to how that hierarchy can serve ideological purposes. The greater prestige of more abstract approaches plays a role in determining what (...) issues and what voices we attend to. (shrink)

How may we characterize the intrinsic structure of physical quantities such as mass, length, or electric charge? This article shows that group-theoretic methods—specifically, the notion of a free and transitive group action—provide an elegant way of characterizing the structure of scalar quantities, and uses this to give an intrinsic treatment of vector quantities. It also gives a general account of how different scalar or vector quantities may be algebraically combined with one another. Finally, it uses this apparatus to give a (...) simple intrinsic treatment of Newtonian gravitation. (shrink)

Informed consent is a central topic in contemporary biomedical ethics. Yet attempts to set defensible and feasible standards for consenting have led to persistent difficulties. In Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics Neil Manson and Onora O'Neill set debates about informed consent in medicine and research in a fresh light. They show why informed consent cannot be fully specific or fully explicit, and why more specific consent is not always ethically better. They argue that consent needs distinctive communicative transactions, by (...) which other obligations, prohibitions, and rights can be waived or set aside in controlled and specific ways. Their book offers a coherent, wide-ranging and practical account of the role of consent in biomedicine which will be valuable to readers working in a range of areas in bioethics, medicine and law. (shrink)

The Taming of the True poses a broad challenge to realist views of meaning and truth that have been prominent in recent philosophy. Neil Tennant argues compellingly that every truth is knowable, and that an effective logical system can be based on this principle. He lays the foundations for global semantic anti-realism and extends its consequences from the philosophy of mathematics and logic to the theory of meaning, metaphysics, and epistemology.

Multiverse Views in set theory advocate the claim that there are many universes of sets, no-one of which is canonical, and have risen to prominence over the last few years. One motivating factor is that such positions are often argued to account very elegantly for technical practice. While there is much discussion of the technical aspects of these views, in this paper I analyse a radical form of Multiversism on largely philosophical grounds. Of particular importance will be an account of (...) reference on the Multiversist conception, and the relativism that it implies. I argue that analysis of this central issue in the Philosophy of Mathematics indicates that Radical Multiversism must be algebraic, and cannot be viewed as an attempt to provide an account of reference without a softening of the position. (shrink)

Parents play a critical role in their child’s personal development and day-to-day experiences. However, as digital technologies are increasingly embedded in most New Zealand children’s everyday life activities parents face the task of ensuring their child’s online safety. To do so, they need to understand the way their child engages with and through these tools and make sense of the rapidly changing, and more technically complex, nature of digital devices. This presents a digital parenting dilemma: maximising children’s online opportunities while (...) minimising online risks and potential harm. This factsheet presents evidence about digital parenting in New Zealand based on nationally representative data collected from parents, caregivers and whānau and their children aged 9-17. It uses measures from the Global Kids Online project to explore the prevalence of different practices used by New Zealand parents to influence or mediate children’s internet use. (shrink)

A central area of current philosophical debate in the foundations of mathematics concerns whether or not there is a single, maximal, universe of set theory. Universists maintain that there is such a universe, while Multiversists argue that there are many universes, no one of which is ontologically privileged. Often forcing constructions that add subsets to models are cited as evidence in favour of the latter. This paper informs this debate by analysing ways the Universist might interpret this discourse that seems (...) to necessitate the addition of subsets to V. We argue that despite the prima facie incoherence of such talk for the Universist, she nonetheless has reason to try and provide interpretation of this discourse. We analyse extant interpretations of such talk, and analyse various tradeoffs in naturality that might be made. We conclude that the Universist has promising options for interpreting different forcing constructions. (shrink)

The independence phenomenon in set theory, while pervasive, can be partially addressed through the use of large cardinal axioms. A commonly assumed idea is that large cardinal axioms are species of maximality principles. In this paper I question this claim. I show that there is a kind of maximality (namely absoluteness) on which large cardinal axioms come out as restrictive relative to a formal notion of restrictiveness. Within this framework, I argue that large cardinal axioms can still play many of (...) their usual foundational roles. (shrink)

Often philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians employ a notion of intended structure when talking about a branch of mathematics. In addition, we know that there are foundational mathematical theories that can find representatives for the objects of informal mathematics. In this paper, we examine how faithfully foundational theories can represent intended structures, and show that this question is closely linked to the decidability of the theory of the intended structure. We argue that this sheds light on the trade-off between expressive power (...) and meta-theoretic properties when comparing first-order and second-order logic. (shrink)

We explain and explore class-theoretic potentialism—the view that one can always individuate more classes over a set-theoretic universe. We examine some motivations for class-theoretic potentialism, before proving some results concerning the relevant potentialist systems (in particular exhibiting failures of the $\mathsf {.2}$ and $\mathsf {.3}$ axioms). We then discuss the significance of these results for the different kinds of class-theoretic potentialists.

In the contemporary philosophy of set theory, discussion of new axioms that purport to resolve independence necessitates an explanation of how they come to be justified. Ordinarily, justification is divided into two broad kinds: intrinsic justification relates to how `intuitively plausible' an axiom is, whereas extrinsic justification supports an axiom by identifying certain `desirable' consequences. This paper puts pressure on how this distinction is formulated and construed. In particular, we argue that the distinction as often presented is neither well-demarcated nor (...) sufficiently precise. Instead, we suggest that the process of justification in set theory should not be thought of as neatly divisible in this way, but should rather be understood as a conceptually indivisible notion linked to the goal of explanation. (shrink)

Zero provides a challenge for philosophers of mathematics with realist inclinations. On the one hand it is a bona fide cardinal number, yet on the other it is linked to ideas of nothingness and non-being. This paper provides an analysis of the epistemology and metaphysics of zero. We develop several constraints and then argue that a satisfactory account of zero can be obtained by integrating an account of numbers as properties of collections, work on the philosophy of absences, and recent (...) work in numerical cognition and ontogenetic studies. (shrink)

This paper assessed whether belief in conspiracy theories was associated with a particularly cognitive style (worldview). The sample comprised 223 volunteers recruited via convenience sampling and included undergraduates, postgraduates, university employees and alumni. Respondents completed measures assessing a range of cognitive-perceptual factors (schizotypy, delusional ideation and hallucination proneness) and conspiratorial beliefs (general attitudes towards conspiracist thinking and endorsement of individual conspiracies). Positive symptoms of schizotypy, particularly the cognitive-perceptual factor, correlated positively with conspiracist beliefs. The best predictor of belief in conspiracies (...) was delusional ideation. Consistent with the notion of a coherent conspiratorial mindset, scores across conspiracy measures correlated strongly. Whilst findings supported the view that belief in conspiracies, within the sub-clinical population, was associated with a delusional thinking style, cognitive-perceptual factors in combination accounted for only 32% of the variance. (shrink)