Low levels of public trust in data practices have led to growing calls for changes to data-driven systems, and in the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation provides a legal motivation for such changes. Data management is a vital component of data-driven systems, but what constitutes ‘good’ data management is not straightforward. Academic attention is turning to the question of what ‘good data’ might look like more generally, but public views are absent from these debates. This paper addresses this gap, (...) reporting on a survey of the public on their views of data management approaches, undertaken by the authors and administered in the UK, where departure from the EU makes future data legislation uncertain. The survey found that respondents dislike the current approach in which commercial organizations control their personal data and prefer approaches that give them control over their data, that include oversight from regulatory bodies or that enable them to opt out of data gathering. Variations of data trusts – that is, structures that provide independent stewardship of data – were also preferable to the current approach, but not as widely preferred as control, oversight and opt out options. These features therefore constitute ‘good data management’ for survey respondents. These findings align only in part with principles of good data identified by policy experts and researchers. Our findings nuance understandings of good data as a concept and of good data management as a practice and point to where further research and policy action are needed. (shrink)

This article seeks to develop the Marxist conception of social structure by incorporating developments within critical realist philosophy. It rejects forms of economic determinism such as the base-superstructure model and those reconstructions—like Cohen’s—that attribute primacy to productive forces in explaining history and society. It argues instead that society is the product of complex, often contradictory combinations of many different structures and mechanisms. They form a structural ensemble, hierarchically arranged, but where each element has its own dynamics and emergent powers. It (...) concludes that society is best understood through critical realist conceptions of stratification, emergence, transformation, and overdetermination. (shrink)

A test was administered to 102 engineering students to ascertain how engineering education influences their environmental knowledge and attitudes. Answers to definitional and factual questions in a forced-answer section demonstrated that students were improving their technical knowledge, but responses to more subtle questions were mixed. Answers to attitudinal questions exhibited a trend towards increased environmental awareness. For open-ended questions, posttest results showed an increase in knowledge of engineering work. Over 80% of the students considered themselves to have a caring attitude (...) toward the environment, with the “three R’s” and green transportation choices most commonly cited. Engagement in research, education, or advocacy doubled from pretest to posttest. Air pollution and solid waste disposal most frequently influenced students’ attitudes toward the environment. Outdoor experiences were the most frequently mentioned source of information; university courses rose from 4% to 15% on the posttest. Only 40% of the students could name an environmental role model. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology, the view that social identity is relevant to knowledge-acquisition, has been consigned to the margins of mainstream philosophy. In part, this is because the principles of standpoint epistemology are taken to be in opposition to those which guide traditional epistemology. One goal of this paper is to tease out the characterization of traditional epistemology that is at odds with standpoint epistemology. The characterization of traditional epistemology that I put forth is one which endorses the thesis of intellectualism, the (...) view that knowledge does not depend on non-epistemic features. I then suggest that two further components – the atomistic view of knowers and aperspectivalism – can be usefully interpreted as supporting features of intellectualism. A further goal of this paper is to show that we ought to resist this characterization of traditional epistemology. I use pragmatic encroachment as a dialectical tool to motivate the denial of intellectualism, and consequently, the denial of both supporting components. I then attempt to show how it is possible to have a view, similar to pragmatic encroachment, that takes social identity, rather than stakes, to be the feature that makes a difference to what a person is in a position to know. (shrink)

It is by now well known that Gödel first advocated the philosophy of Leibniz and then, since 1959, that of Husserl. This raises three questions:1.How is this turn to Husserl to be interpreted? Is it a dismissal of the Leibnizian philosophy, or a different way to achieve similar goals?2.Why did Gödel turn specifically to the later Husserl's transcendental idealism?3.Is there any detectable influence from Husserl on Gödel's writings?Regarding the first question, Wang [96, p.165] reports that Gödel ‘[saw] in Husserl's work (...) a method of refining and consolidating Leibniz' monadology’. But what does this mean? In what for Gödel relevant sense is Husserl's work a refinement and consolidation of Leibniz' monadology?The second question is particularly pressing, given that Gödel was, by his own admission, a realist in mathematics since 1925. Wouldn't the uncompromising realism of the early Husserl's Logical investigations have been a more obvious choice for a Platonist like Gödel?The third question can only be approached when an answer to the second has been given, and we want to suggest that the answer to the first question follows from the answer to the second. We begin, therefore, with a closer look at the actual turn towards phenomenology.Some 30 years before his serious study of Husserl began, Gödel was well aware of the existence of phenomenology. Apart from its likely appearance in the philosophy courses that Gödel took, it reached him from various directions. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology is committed to a cluster of views that pays special attention to the role of social identity in knowledge‐acquisition. Of particular interest here is the situated knowledge thesis. This thesis holds that for certain propositions p, whether an epistemic agent is in a position to know that p depends on some nonepistemic facts related to the epistemic agent's social identity. In this article, I examine two possible ways to interpret this thesis. My first goal here is to clarify (...) existing interpretations of this thesis that appear in the literature but that are undeveloped and often mistakenly conflated. In so doing, I aim to make clear the different versions of standpoint epistemology that one might accept and defend.This project is of significance, I argue, because standpoint epistemology provides helpful tools for understanding a phenomenon of recent interest: epistemic oppression. My second goal is to provide an analysis that makes clear how each of the readings I put forth can be used to illuminate forms of epistemic oppression. (shrink)

Normal child and normal adult alike, in other words, are engaged in growing. The difference between them is not the difference between growth and no growth, but between the modes of growth appropriate to different conditions. With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say the child should be growing in manhood [sic]. With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should (...) be growing in childlikeness. One statement is as true as the other.The quiet revolution that Matthew Lipman inaugurated in educational theory and practice in his Philosophy for Children program has two inseparable .. (shrink)

On Friday, November 15, 1940, Kurt Gödel gave a talk on set theory at Brown University. The topic was his recent proof of the consistency of Cantor’s Continuum Hypothesis with the axiomatic system ZFC for set theory. His friend from their days in Vienna, Rudolf Carnap, was in the audience, and afterward wrote a note to himself in which he raised a number of questions on incompleteness.

This article shows how there is a great kinship between Polanyi's thought and that of Bernard Haring, "the father of modern moral theology" in the Roman Catholic Church. Haring advocated an ethics of personal responsibility that calls for an epistemology such as Polanyi developed for history and social sciences in The Study of Man.

Philosophy, like the IAPC Mendham seminar itself, is a place apart. I don't mean by this that philosophy is a realm of timeless ideas, or a dream time, or a place of the ancestors where all the seminal ideas are, although it may very well be that; what I mean is that when we do philosophy, everything stops. Everything stops, I think, because if, as we are flowing along in life and language, we encounter a problem, and we don't smooth (...) it over or push it to the side and go on, we discover that it actually represents a question. And if we follow the question to ask itself, it often turns out that: 1) it seems to be a very important question about meaning; 2) it doesn't have an answer, although it may promise one; and 3) it tends to raise even other such questions. (shrink)

It used to be that the touchstone of objectivity was the elimination of subjective features, like our values, biases, assumptions, and so on. Part of what motivates this narrow conception of objectivity is the thought that objective reality is the way that it is regardless of our relationship to it, and that our ability to accurately describe or depict this reality is distorted by this relationship. But what if that understanding is wrong, and removing these features takes us farther away (...) from truth and knowledge, rather than closer to them? This is the claim I advance. In this article, I trace this narrow conception to its political origins, and advance a broader understanding of objectivity that reimagines a new use for, rather than ignoring entirely, features that are thought to be subjective. (shrink)

Within the last decade, burgeoning interest in the intersection of epistemology and social issues has generated a new set of research questions. These questions range from the relevance of social identity, to peer disagreement, to debates on the significance of moral considerations to epistemic evaluations, to discussions of our epistemic practices and how those practices exclude certain agents and certain bodies of knowledge. Central in this new and emerging body of work is the realization that epistemology has more to do (...) than simply answer questions about what knowledge consists in; it must also acknowledge that our answers to these questions might be influenced by features we have previously failed to make space for. It is in this respect that we are witnessing a renewed interest in a theoretical approach long consigned to the margins of epistemology – that of standpoint epistemology. (shrink)

In her book, Down Girl, Manne proposes to uncover the “logic” of misogyny, bringing clarity to a notion that she describes as both “loaded” and simultaneously “politically marginal.” Manne is aware that full insight into the “logic” of misogyny will require not just a “what” but a “why.” Though Manne finds herself largely devoted to the former task, the latter is in the not-too-distant periphery. -/- Manne proposes to understand misogyny, as a general framework, in terms of what it does (...) to women. Misogyny, she writes, is a system that polices and enforces the patriarchal social order (33). That’s the “what.” As for the “why,” Manne suggests that misogyny is what women experience because they fail to live up to the moral standards set out for women by that social order. I find Manne’s analysis insightful, interesting, and well argued. And yet, I find her account incomplete. While I remain fully convinced by her analysis of what misogyny is, I am less persuaded by her analysis of why misogyny is. For a full analysis of the “logic” of misogyny, one needs to understand how the patriarchy manifests in men an interest in participating in its enforcement. Or so I hope to motivate here. I aim to draw a line from the patriarchy to toxic masculinity to misogyny so that we have a clearer picture as to why men are invested in this system. I thus hope to offer here an analysis that is underdeveloped in Manne’s book, but is equally worthy of attention if we want fully to understand the complex machinations underlying misogyny. (shrink)

Research on individuals at clinical high risk for psychological and physical disorders has grown exponentially in recent years, with a variety of new screening tools and early intervention techniques being implemented. One recent example is Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome, a diagnosis for individuals who are at clinical high risk for psychosis, which was recently included in Section III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Given the focus on prevention at early stages, at-risk individuals will continue to be a (...) topic of significance not only in psychosis research but also in other illnesses. This document provides a comprehensive summary of the ethical dilemmas that clinicians or researchers may encounter in this domain, and possible actions consistent with the current Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists. We use clinical high risk for psychosis and the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists as a way to illuminate these ethical issues; however, application to other jurisdictions and disciplines, as well as other high-risk populations, is also of relevance. (shrink)

Our ability to dismantle white supremacy is compromised by the fact that we don’t fully appreciate what, precisely, white supremacy is. In this chapter, I suggest understanding white supremacy as an epistemological system – an epistemic frame that serves as the foundation for how we understand and interact with the world. The difficulty in dismantling an epistemological system lies in its resilience – a system’s capacity to resist change to its underlying structure while, at the same time, offering the appearance (...) of large-scale reform. Using white supremacy as a case study, here I explore what features enable this resilience. An analysis of white supremacy that presents it as more than a tool of social and political oppression, but as an epistemic system that makes this oppression possible, allows us to better understand, and eventually overthrow, such systems. (shrink)

_Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories_ Edited by Janet Bergstrom Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 ISBN 0-520-20747-5 (hbk); 0-520-20748-3 (pbk) 307 pp.

The health of farm owners and farmworkers has significant impacts on farm businesses, farming families, and local rural communities where agriculture is an important driver of social and economic activity. Rural residents and farmworkers have higher rates of food insecurity, but little is known about food insecurity among farm owners and the collective experiences of farm owners and farmworkers. Researchers and public health practitioners have stressed the need for policies that target the health and well-being of farm owners and farmworkers (...) while remaining sensitive to the nature of life on the farm, yet farm owner and farmworker lived experiences have been understudied, especially in relation to one another. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 farm owners and 18 farmworkers in Oregon. Modified grounded theory was used to analyze interview data. Data were coded using a three-stage process to identify salient core characteristics of food insecurity. Farm owner and farmworker meanings and interpretations of their food insecurity were often contradicted by evaluated food security scores using validated quantitative measures. According to such measures, 17 experienced high food security, 3 had marginal food security, and 11 had low food security, but narrative experiences suggested higher rates. Narrative experiences were categorized by core characteristics of food insecurity, including seasonal food shortages, resource stretching, working extended hours most days of the week, limited use of food assistance, and the tendency to downplay hardship. These unique factors have important implications for developing responsive policies and programs to support the health and well-being of farm livelihoods whose work enables health and well-being among consumers. Future studies to test the relationships between the core characteristics of food insecurity identified in this study and farm owner and farmworker meanings and interpretations of food insecurity, hunger, and nourishment are warranted. (shrink)

Ethical dilemmas are often not discussed in the dissemination of educational research. While the ethical guidelines for research seem clear at first glance, a closer look at the intimate nature of qualitative research reveals that there are many ambiguities or ‘grey’ areas where researchers must rely on their personal value systems. This article discusses the challenges faced by an experienced educator, although novice researcher, in considering the ethical parameters of her own research with adolescents with hearing loss. In particular, the (...) grey ethical areas identified by the researcher include: (a) vulnerable population; (b) researcher role confusion; (c) consent; (d) privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity; as well as (e) the nature of risk. Based on the author’s own reflections on beginning the research process, the article presents possible pitfalls and ways of overcoming the possibility of becoming immobilized by the ethical enigmas of research. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology is committed to the view that some epistemic advantage can be drawn from the position of powerlessness. Call this theepistemic privilege thesis. This thesis stands in need of explication and support. In providing that explication and support, I first distinguish between two readings of the thesis: the thesis that marginalized social locations confer some epistemic advantages (the epistemic advantage thesis) and the thesis that marginalized standpoints generate better, more accurate knowledge (the standpoint thesis). I then develop the former (...) by appealing to the notion of epistemic peers available in the disagreement literature. I next turn to the latter thesis, arguing that consciousness-raising plays an analogous role in the achievement of a standpoint as training does in the achievement of expertise. The upshot of this analysis is that it clarifies that while marginalization is necessary (though not sufficient) for epistemic advantage, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for epistemic privilege. (shrink)

Objectivity may be a useful regulative ideal for inquiry, but here I ponder to what extent it may be thought of more as a political ideology than an epistemological methodology. By tracing objectivity to its political origins, I aim to problematize this ideal as we tend to understand it - as one demanding that we eliminate the influence of certain subjective features - and to sketch a new conception of this ideal that accommodates (rather than dismisses) the role of these (...) features in inquiry. (shrink)