Initial Teacher Education quality is often judged through the auspices of audit-style mechanisms designed to facilitate the identification of matters pertaining to the ‘readiness’ of student teachers to enter the world of the classroom as fully qualified. In this regard, quality of programmes is often determined by the knowledge and skills student teachers demonstrate. Whilst ontological aspects are not necessarily elided, they are often ignored in favour of such epistemological matters. While such knowledge-based positions do not describe the totality of (...) ITE quality evaluation they do predominate. This paper identifies a tripartite heuristic for the identification of ITE epistemology that explicitly refers to, and is requiring of, ontological matters in the development of student teachers: identifying teaching, doing teaching, knowing teaching. Whilst it is the result of a Scottish project, Measuring the Quality of Initial Teacher Education (MQuITE), its emphasis is notable for other countries. (shrink)

Initial Teacher Education quality is often judged through the auspices of audit-style mechanisms designed to facilitate the identification of matters pertaining to the ‘readiness’ of student teachers to enter the world of the classroom as fully qualified. In this regard, quality of programmes is often determined by the knowledge and skills student teachers demonstrate. Whilst ontological aspects are not necessarily elided, they are often ignored in favour of such epistemological matters. While such knowledge-based positions do not describe the totality of (...) ITE quality evaluation they do predominate. This paper identifies a tripartite heuristic for the identification of ITE epistemology that explicitly refers to, and is requiring of, ontological matters in the development of student teachers: identifying teaching, doing teaching, knowing teaching. Whilst it is the result of a Scottish project, Measuring the Quality of Initial Teacher Education, its emphasis is notable for other countries. (shrink)

Through two exchanges in this journal, a type of relativism has been advanced by a group of authors from Loughborough University with a view to demolishing what they see as ‘bottom line’ arguments for critical realism in the social sciences. Jauntily dismissing realism, they also soberly disown the supposed ‘extreme’ consequences that some realists insist follow naturally from relativist conceptions of social inquiry. In this article, I contest the Loughborough team’s arguments. Their presentation of relativism itself can be reconstructed in (...) at least three different ways, none of which suffices to undermine a generally realist account of explanatory endeavour. The most productive note in the critics’ conceptual register highlights the utility of rhetorical analysis; yet this can proceed effectively only if it is neutral with respect to different epistemic and ontological stances. The most productive thematic possibility raised in their articles, and shared with several other recent discussions, signals that realism and relativism may not be anything like fixed and opposed stances; yet the polemical thrust of their anti-realism compromises this insight. (shrink)

(2003). Contemporary ‘vehicularity’ and ‘romanticism’: debating the status of ideas and intellectuals. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 6, The Public Role of Intellectuals, pp. 51-66. doi: 10.1080/1369823042000241267.

BackgroundBioethics can play an important role in addressing diversity both in and outside of academia, setting precedents for meaningful contributions to public discourse, research, teaching, training, and policy development. However, in order to do so, these conversations also need to reflect on the issue of diversity within the field of bioethics across the globe. This study aims to examine current gender representation and diversity at medical ethics and humanities institutes in Germany, the German-speaking areas of Switzerland, and Austria.MethodsA total of (...) forty-nine medical ethics and humanities institutes from Germany (n=42), the German-speaking areas of Switzerland (n=5), and Austria (n=2) were included in the study. Institutes websites were reviewed in the first week of March 2021 and the details of each staff member listed on the website recorded.ResultsOverall, a total of 964 staff members were identified at the forty-nine German-speaking medical ethics and humanities institutes. Just over half (530/964; 55%) of all staff were female. There were significant differences between gender in some staff positions: 64.6 per cent (31/48) of directors were male (χ2(1)=4.1, P=.04); 62.7 per cent (84/134) of student assistants were female (χ2(1)=8.6, P=.003); and 83.7 per cent (77/92) of administrative staff were female (χ2(1)=41.8, P<.001). There were no significant differences between staff gender for researchers and lecturers, or associated researchers. In addition, 65.5 per cent (19/29) of researchers and lecturers who had a professor title were male, but the difference between genders was not found to be significant. However, significantly more of the researchers and lecturers who had completed a habilitation were male (75.8% (25/33); χ2(1)=8.8, P=.003). When comparing the institute director’s gender presentation with staff gender presentation, it was found that male-led institutes had 53.4 per cent (286/536) female staff overall but had 52.7 per cent (136/258) male researchers and lecturers. However, the difference between genders were not found to be significant. On the other hand, female-led institutes had significantly more female staff overall (59.9% (223/372); χ2(1)=14.7, P<.001) and also significantly more female researchers and lecturers (58.9% (119/202; χ2(1)=6.4, P=.01).ConclusionsThere has been a significant push to address gender diversity in German-speaking academia, and this study finds overall good gender parity in medical ethics and humanities institutes. However, there has not been a similar openness to discussing issues of systemic racism or how other forms of inequality affect academic diversity. Taking diversity seriously requires opening up conversations around intersectionality, including difficult conversations around race and cultural background that have long been taboo in German-speaking countries. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the nature of objective news and the debate regarding its possibility. It then assesses the main arguments for the unattainability of objective news. A close examination of these arguments shows that, contrary to widespread belief, journalists who try to provide objective news are not striving in vain. The chapter discusses the effect of competing journalistic aims and other limitations on our efforts to generate objective news. It suggests that the unwarranted skepticism regarding the possibility of objective news (...) is an artifact of the changing priorities of journalists and inadequate journalistic methods, and that the only real issue is how we can better train those journalists who want to generate objective news. (shrink)

Mind &Language, Volume 34, Issue 5, Page 667-680, November 2019.

In this article, I engage with three overlapping expressions of the increasingly postsecular cast of social and cultural theory. These currents — guided, respectively, by genealogical critique, neo-vitalist social philosophy and postcolonial anti-historicism — seek to problematize the frame of previous radical theorizing by exposing definite connections between the epistemological and political levels of secular understanding, and by assuming that the nature of those linkages counts heavily against secularism. As well as offering an interpretive overview of these contributions, I suggest (...) that they are traversed by a number of conceptual flaws and inconsistencies. The tensions, I argue, stem from the fact that in spite of appearing to be driven by a strong anti-secular thrust, these positionings remain thoroughly intra-secular in character. This needs to be more emphatically acknowledged if the ‘postsecular turn’ is to be productive. (shrink)

The emergence of ethical concerns surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) has led to an explosion of high-level ethical principles being published by a wide range of public and private organizations. However, there is a need to consider how AI developers can be practically assisted to anticipate, identify and address ethical issues regarding AI technologies. This is particularly important in the development of AI intended for healthcare settings, where applications will often interact directly with patients in various states of vulnerability. In this (...) paper, we propose that an ‘embedded ethics’ approach, in which ethicists and developers together address ethical issues via an iterative and continuous process from the outset of development, could be an effective means of integrating robust ethical considerations into the practical development of medical AI. (shrink)

Examining developments in two of the central traditions of social and political theory - Marxism and pluralism, this work investigates whether the relation between them is one of progressive convergence.

Transplantation is a field of perpetual innovation. In the last 15 years, novel surgical interventions include uterine, tracheal, hand, face, and penile allotransplantation, as well as cardiac xeno...

From machine learning and computer vision to robotics and natural language processing, the application of data science and artificial intelligence is expected to transform health care (Ce...

This article explores the interface between cultural studies and soci ology, as expressed through four scenarios which construe the 'debate' in particular ways. Two of these - 'cultural studies succession' and 'postmodernist conjuncturalist cultural studies' - unapologetically seek to dismiss sociology in favour of cultural studies, whilst a third - 'socio logical revenge' - appears to turn the tables entirely. A fourth and more productive scenario dwells synthetically on the 'cultural turn' across the whole 'field' of the social and human (...) sciences. All four postures dis cussed are found to share two problematical features. The first of these is that although rhetoric/discourse is crucial in the construction of iden tities, including disciplinary identities, over-rhetorical manifestos readily generate critical doubts about their consistency and appropri ateness. Second, the focus in the four scenarios is chiefly on disciplinary homes, fields, or turns rather than, as it perhaps should be, on substan tive theses or ideological positions within these. (shrink)

Postcolonial theory, particularly in its poststructuralist variant, presents important challenges to sociology's self-image, and open debate on these attempts to `unsettle' the modernist, Westernized disciplines is both conceptually and politically interesting. However, the postcolonial unsettling of sociology has to be actively extracted and reconstructed from the key texts of postcolonial theory - it is not transparently available as such - and this is the first main goal of the article. Particular attention is paid to the framings of these issues by (...) Stuart Hall, Homi Bhahba and Robert Young. Second, the article offers the elements of a counter-critique, pointing out where the anti-sociological impulses of postcolonialism are exaggerated or unfounded, and also indicating serious internal problems for postcolonial theory when it is pitched as a direct and superior alternative to the modernist sociological `imaginary'. The continuing centrality (and difficulty) of questions on the nature of and purpose of explanatory social theory and postcolonial cultural studies are discussed. (shrink)

Through two exchanges in this journal, a type of relativism has been advanced by a group of authors from Loughborough University with a view to demolishing what they see as ‘bottom line’ arguments for critical realism in the social sciences. Jauntily dismissing realism, they also soberly disown the supposed ‘extreme’ consequences that some realists insist follow naturally from relativist conceptions of social inquiry. In this article, I contest the Loughborough team’s arguments. Their presentation of relativism itself can be reconstructed in (...) at least three different ways, none of which suffices to undermine a generally realist account of explanatory endeavour. The most productive note in the critics’ conceptual register highlights the utility of rhetorical analysis; yet this can proceed effectively only if it is neutral with respect to different epistemic and ontological stances. The most productive thematic possibility raised in their articles, and shared with several other recent discussions, signals that realism and relativism may not be anything like fixed and opposed stances; yet the polemical thrust of their anti-realism compromises this insight. (shrink)

What, if anything, do we epistemically owe to each other? Various “traditional” views of epistemology might hold either that we don’t epistemically owe anything to each other, because “what we owe to each other” is the realm of the moral, or that what we epistemically owe to each other is just to be epistemically responsible agents. Basu (2019) has recently argued, against such views, that morality makes extra-epistemic demands upon what we should believe about one another. So, what we owe (...) to each other is not just a matter of word and deed, but also of belief. And in fact, Basu argues, sometimes those moral demands require us to believe in ways that cut against orthodox epistemic norms. This paper has three aims. First, to offer two strategies for accommodating the kinds of cases Basu discusses while nonetheless holding that only epistemic normativity makes demands on belief. Second, to offer an alternative account of what we owe to each other that does not hold that morality demands that we sometimes believe against our evidence or in violation of epistemic norms. And third, to give a brief diagnosis of why it seems intuitive that morality makes extra-epistemic doxastic demands on us. Ultimately, I argue that what we epistemically owe to each other does not require us to violate orthodox, invariantist epistemic norms. Morality demands that we have a proper regard for others, not that we sometimes believe against our evidence. (shrink)

Background: New Zealand health and disability providers are expected to have local open disclosure policies in place, however, empirical analysis of these policies has not been undertaken. Aim: This study aims to examine the scope and content of open disclosure policies in New Zealand compare open disclosure policies in New Zealand, and provide baseline results for future research. Methods: Open disclosure policies were requested from all twenty New Zealand District Health Boards in June 2016. A total of twenty-one policies were (...) received, with nineteen policies included in the review. The data were analysed using conventional content analysis. Areas of identified guidance were categorised categorized under the headings: 1) identification of an adverse event, 2) actions before disclosure, 3) disclosure of harm, and 4) actions after disclosure. Results: A total of forty-six distinct areas of guidance could be categorized under the different phases of the open disclosure life-cycle. Conclusion: This review has identified significant unwarranted heterogeneity and important gaps in open disclosure documents in New Zealand which urgently needs to be addressed. Open disclosure policies which are both flexible and specific should enhance the likelihood that injured patients’ needs will be met. (shrink)

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable for (...) our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

This article critically examines the structure and content of the ‘New American Cultural Sociology’, through an engagement with the recent writings of its main representative, Jeffrey Alexander. Alexander’s project to retool sociology and cultural studies alike is coherent and ambitious, and his transition from theory scholar to public intellectual makes an assessment of that project additionally necessary. I argue, however, that while it gives a necessary jolt to conventional thinking around culture and meaning, major weaknesses and problems can be identified (...) in each of the three main levels of analysis: the articulation of the theoretical programme of cultural sociology, its application in substantive cultural exploration, and its emerging political ideology of civil society multiculturalism. Overall, the key theme of the critique is that Alexander’s long-standing concern, and talent, for ‘multidimensional’ social theory is heavily compromised by his equally strong inclination towards excessive culturalism and idealism. (shrink)

Under the impact of `postcolonial' critique, it is increasingly assumed in radical social theory that traditional disciplines like sociology remain palpably Eurocentric. However, this important challenge is typically advanced at a very general level, often lacking adequate instantiation. In this article some general formulations of the problem of Eurocentrism are connected to the work of three pairs of theorists in historical sociology. Foregrounding recent approaches to the classic `rise of the West' question, these authors are probed for either substantive or (...) `meta-theoretical' expressions of Eurocentrism. Overall I argue that charging sociology with Eurocentrism is problematical, partly due to continuing uncertainty about the status of the concept of ideology in social science. (shrink)

Carrie Figdor presents a critical assessment of how psychological terms are used to describe the non-human biological world. She argues against the anthropocentric attitude which takes human cognition as the standard against which non-human capacities are measured, and offers an alternative basis for naturalistic explanation of the mind.

In recent years, the intellectual tide has moved strongly against the kind of secular thinking that characterized Gellner’s work. Whether couched in terms of postcolonialism, multiculturalism, genealogy, global understanding, political theology, or the revival of normative, metaphysical and openly religious perspectives, today’s postsecular and even anti-secular mood in social theory seems to consign Gellner’s project to the dustbin of history: a stern but doomed attempt to shore up western liberal rationalism. Under some revisionary lights, it has even become pointless to (...) distinguish flexible secular thinking which still retains some firm ‘bottom lines’ from what is routinely portrayed as rampant ideological secularism. Unconvinced by key assumptions and motivations on this terrain, I reactivate Gellner’s essential concerns and propositions around secularity and secularism, feeding these into the current debates. Whilst Gellner’s stringent, unrivalled exposure of intellectual cant continues to be hugely valuable, and his sense of the utter historicity of social life and thought indispensable, Gellner’s critical positivism could not, by his own admission, produce a coherent cultural politics. (shrink)

Looking at the breadth of Joan Didion's writing - from journalism, essays, fiction, memoir and screen plays - it may appear that there is no unifying thread, but in this original exploration of her work Matthew R. McLennan argues that 'the ethics of memory' - the question of which norms should guide public and private remembrance - offers a promising vision of what is most characteristic and salient in Didion's works. By framing her universe as indifferent and essentially precarious, (...) McLennan demonstrates how this outlook guides Didion's reflections on key themes linked to memory: namely witnessing and grieving, nostalgia, and the paradoxically amnesiac qualities of our increasingly archived public life that she explored in famous texts like Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Year of Magical Thinking and Salvador. McLennan moves beyond the interpretive value of such an approach and frames Didion as a serious, iconoclastic philosopher of time and memory. Through her encounters with the past, the writer is shown to offer lessons for the future in an increasingly perilous and unsettled world. (shrink)

The article explores the irreflexivity of metaphysical dependence in the physical structure of reality. It stresses that the word dependence denotes quasi-ireflexivity which affects the metaphysical relations of a physical structure. It focuses on the view that irreflexivity assumption has been made without discussion of the dependence relations on the structure of reality.

SOME years ago Giangrande acutely suggested1 that we should read at the beginning of this line έσтààθη δ’ φθοολλος in place of Buttmann' proposal έσàκη δ’ θολλος accepted by Pfeiffer. Giangrande' emendation received upport from Meillier, who wrote:2 ‘Giangrande … a trouvé de bonnes raisons pour conserver έσтààθη … et propose έσтààθη δ’ φθοολλος.’ No one seems to have realized that there is a metrical difficulty involved in Buttmann' emendation—an ironic fact, as his original intention was, of course, to restore (...) the metre of the line. According to Buttmann' text, the first five feet of the line, in terms of dactyls and spondees, emerge as S S D S D. Callimachus does not seem to use this formation either in the elegiac metre of this hymn or in his Epigrams.3 The figures given by Beneke, based on Schneider' text, need correction in that there is only one example of an S S D S D line in the Epigrams of Callimachus , not two. That such hexameters occur in the Aitia6 is of no consequence. Callimachus clearly regarded the distichs of the Aitia as bound by less strict metrical rules than the distichs of the Epigrams and Hymn 5, as his employment of σπονδєιàζονтєς indicates. From all the above it follows that Giangrande' restoration is the more convincing as it is the first to be metrically acceptable.7. (shrink)

SOME years ago Giangrande acutely suggested1 that we should read at the beginning of this line έσтààθη δ’ φθοολλος in place of Buttmann' proposal έσàκη δ’ θολλος accepted by Pfeiffer. Giangrande' emendation received upport from Meillier, who wrote:2 ‘Giangrande … a trouvé de bonnes raisons pour conserver έσтààθη … et propose έσтààθη δ’ φθοολλος.’ No one seems to have realized that there is a metrical difficulty involved in Buttmann' emendation—an ironic fact, as his original intention was, of course, to restore (...) the metre of the line. According to Buttmann' text, the first five feet of the line, in terms of dactyls and spondees, emerge as S S D S D. Callimachus does not seem to use this formation either in the elegiac metre of this hymn or in his Epigrams.3 The figures given by Beneke, based on Schneider' text, need correction in that there is only one example of an S S D S D line in the Epigrams of Callimachus, not two.That such hexameters occur in the Aitia6 is of no consequence. Callimachus clearly regarded the distichs of the Aitia as bound by less strict metrical rules than the distichs of the Epigrams and Hymn 5, as his employment of σπονδєιàζονтєς indicates. From all the above it follows that Giangrande' restoration is the more convincing as it is the first to be metrically acceptable.7. (shrink)

This paper explicates Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of “decline” in ageing and assesses both its plausibility and its ethical and political promise. Though I maintain that the concept is largely plausible, and that it helps us to envision social justice for the aged, I also note certain limitations, and these lead me to suggest philosophical and ethical caution as to its range of application. Briefly, both in theory and in practice, Beauvoir appears to questionably conflate the decline of the phenomenological (...) subject with that of a younger adult version of the psychological self or structure of the personality. Through examinations of Beauvoir’s account of dementia and her paternalism towards her dying mother and the declining Jean-Paul Sartre, I suggest how her concept of decline may fall short, but also how her rich phenomenological descriptions point the way to a pluralistic approach to ageing as a social justice issue. (shrink)

Review of Claire Pagès, Lyotard et l'aliénation.

Žižek is not a legal theorist, nonetheless, he has written about the law throughout his work. This essay builds on Jodie Dean’s work in ‘Žižek and Law’ which sets out a theory of law, preferable to most critical legal theories because it retains the belief that law can serve emancipatory aims. My aim in is to apply this Žižekian theory of law to copyright, in the hopes of presenting an alternative framework that retains the initial promise of copyright: that cultural (...) material may be dis-alienated public property. This is necessary in a music-focused issue, because copyright law dictates the forms in which music, and cultural products, are created and consumed. The argument is presented in three parts: the founding of copyright, its obscene supplement, and its paradoxical future from within. I argue that future copyright legislative proposals should not focus on extending or limiting any overall term, or what marginal increase in revenues a creator should be entitled to; rather, creators should be given a renewal right. In this way, an author has the ability to constantly renegotiate the terms on which their work is commoditized. (shrink)

The author argues thatJean-François Lyotard’s later antihumanism may be plausibly read as aradicalization of Heidegger’s, on the grounds that a) the philosophy of Beingas Event or Ereignis forms theontological basis of Lyotard’s antihumanism, and b) Lyotard reconfigures theplace of the human being vis-à-vis the revelation of Being – specifically,denying that humankind is the clearing in which Being reveals itself, andtherefore a privileged zone of dispensation. Rather, Being as Ereignis – linguistically cashed out forLyotard, as phrases – structures the human being (...) completely, denying humanmastery of language and thereby decentring human beings as subjects of ethics. (shrink)

Explores the often elided and interesting relationship between Badiou and Lyotard.

This article offers a definition of medical humanism and identifies four key contemporary medical humanists in France. It then makes two claims about the historical provenance of their humanism. First, they define it in opposition to a process of iatric medicalization that they trace to certain conceptual errors made by Descartes. But second, they remain more Cartesian than they seem to realize because they accept Descartes's knotting together of humanity, ethics and language. By looking at Gori and Del Volgo, Roudinesco (...) and Ricoeur, the author is able to show how French medical humanism repeats the Cartesian gesture of locating humanity in language - thus facing the problem of the moral standing of so-called "marginal" human persons and non-human animal persons. The author concludes with a call to radicalize French medical humanism in pursuit of a more inclusive medical "personism". (shrink)

This article argues that the long-standing tension in Jeffrey Alexander’s work between theoretical multidimensionality and socio-cultural idealism has intensified in his recent writings, to problematical effect. Whilst Alexander has shifted of late towards a more substantive and normative style of thinking, his new emphases continue to be grounded in arguments pitched at the general theoretical level. One of these involves a particular reading of the nature of post-positivist meta-theory today, and the other, within this, is a determined effort to distinguish (...) a project of ‘cultural sociology’ from ‘sociology of culture’ approaches. I take issue with both of these theoretical moves, showing that they are rhetorically and conceptually flawed, and of a strongly idealist cast. They also run counter to those aspects of Alexander’s outlook that do seem more robustly multidimensional and sociologically promising. (shrink)

The issue of apologising to patients harmed by adverse events has been a subject of interest and debate within medicine, politics, and the law since the early 1980s. Although apology serves several important social roles, including recognising the victims of harm, providing an opportunity for redress, and repairing relationships, compelled apologies ring hollow and ultimately undermine these goals. Apologies that stem from external authorities’ edicts rather than an offender’s own self-criticism and moral reflection are inauthentic and contribute to a “moral (...) flabbiness” that stunts the moral development of both individual providers and the medical profession. Following a discussion of a recent case from New Zealand in which a midwife was required to apologise not only to the parents but also to the baby, it is argued that rather than requiring health care providers to apologise, authorities should instead train, foster, and support the capacity of providers to apologise voluntarily. (shrink)