Evidence-based medicine’s (EBM) quantitative methodologies reflect medical science’s long-standing mistrust of the imprecision and subjectivity of ordinary descriptive language. However, EBM’s attempts to replace subjectivity with precise empirical methods are problematic when clinicians must negotiate between scientific medicine and patients’ experience. This problem is evident in the case of bibliotherapy (patient reading as treatment modality), a practice widespread despite its reliance on anecdotal evidence. While EBM purports to replace such flawed practice with reliable evidence-based methods, this essay argues that its (...) aversion to subjective language prevents EBM from effectively evaluating bibliotherapy or making it amenable to clinical and research governance. (shrink)

A UN report, which comprehensively documents the advance of global population ageing, was released on 1 October 2012, the International Day of Older Persons. In the West, this development has been accelerated by and will be profoundly experienced by the baby boomers. As they reach ages historically linked with retirement their numbers are rising, as are expectations for annual age-related public spending. Vulnerabilities are regularly being exposed in terms of medical care, social care and inadequate retirement planning. This makes acceptance (...) of the traditional narrative for ageing, including passivity, complacency and accelerating dependency, patently unsustainable. Medical and technological advancements have given this cohort an achievement award in terms of longer, healthier lives and there is a choice to make. Either substantive changes to redefine this life stage are made or the salutary lesson afforded by the new longevity could be squandered. (shrink)

This chapter is reprinted from our lead essay in the Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics, ed. C. Mitcham, Gale, 2005.

In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups literally (...) intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. _Groups as Agents_ will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time. (shrink)

In two studies, we examined how expressions of guilt and shame affected person perception. In the first study, participants read an autobiographical vignette in which the writer did something wrong and reported feeling either guilt, shame, or no emotion. The participants then rated the writer's motivations, beliefs, and traits, as well as their own feelings toward the writer. The person expressing feelings of guilt or shame was perceived more positively on a number of attributes, including moral motivation and social attunement, (...) than the person who reported feeling no emotion. In the second study, the writer of the vignette reported experiencing (or not experiencing) cognitive and motivational aspects of guilt or shame. Expressing a desire to apologise (guilt) or feelings of worthlessness (private shame) resulted in more positive impressions than did reputational concerns (public shame) or a lack of any of these feelings. Our results indicate that verbal expressions of moral emotions such as guilt and shame influence perception of moral character as well as likeability. (shrink)

Abstract Curiously missing in the vast literature on Hilary Putnam's so-called model-theoretic argument against semantic realism is any response from would-be proponents of what Putnam would call magical theories of reference. Such silence is surprising in light of the fact that such theories have occupied a significant position in the history of philosophy and the fact that there are still several prominent thinkers who would, no doubt, favor such a theory. This paper develops and examines various responses to Putnam's argument (...) on behalf of the proponent of a magical theory of reference. While Putnam's explicit replies to such responses to his argument seem to involve little more than name calling, I develop arguments that show that there are significant problems facing any would-be proponent of such a view. While magical theories of reference are far from the strawmen Putnam seems to take them to be, there are, I argue, genuine reasons for a semantic realist to prefer a non-magical theory of reference. (shrink)

Meta-analytic findings have suggested that individual differences are relatively weaker predictors of academic dishonesty than are situational factors. A robust literature on deviance correlates and workplace integrity testing, however, demonstrates that individual difference variables can be relatively strong predictors of a range of counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs). To the extent that academic cheating represents a kind of counterproductive behavior in the work role of "student", employment-type integrity measures should be strong predictors of academic dishonesty. Our results with a college student (...) sample showed that integrity test scores were moderate to strong correlates of self-reported academic cheating and that these relationships persisted even after controlling for a variety of measurement concerns such as item format similarity, concurrent assessment, and socially desirable responding. Implications for institutional honor codes and the broader relations between educational and workplace dishonesty are discussed. (shrink)

We tend to want to avoid and ignore our dark or difficult emotions, biases, and tendencies-and we eschew them on a cultural and societal level because they reveal painful, ugly truths. The labeling of darkness as "negative" becomes a collective excuse to justify avoiding everything that makes humans uncomfortable: racism, spiritual bypass, environmental destruction. Welcoming darkness with curiosity and reverence, rather than fear or judgment, enables us to access our innate capacity for compassion and collective healing. In Seeing with the (...) Heart, dharma teacher, shaman, and deep ecologist Deborah Eden Tull asks us to recognize, explore, and engage with the darkness we experience in our lives in order to learn important lessons and tools for bringing awakening, healing, and compassion to ourselves-and to our world. In an age of global uncertainty, Tull presents the radical teaching of endarkenment--that we can only awaken to wholeness through fully embracing the dark. Darkness, she posits, is not the absence of light, but an intrinsic, vital, healing, and restorative aspect of nature. Tull addresses the spiritual, ecological, psychological, and interpersonal ramifications of our bias towards light over dark. She offers a radical path to wholeness that can be found only through learning to embrace the interplay of both darkness and light, within ourselves and within our world. She offers inspiring teachings, meditations, and mindful inquiry questions to integrate into our daily practice an experiential understanding of endarkenment. (shrink)

This book examines the intersections of bioethics, human rights and health equity. It does so through the contextual lenses of nation states while presenting global themes on rights, colonialism and bioethics. The book is framed by the following propositions on indigenous health: it is a human rights issue; it is located within the politics of colonization; and subjugated indigenous knowledges require restoring.

It is sometimes said that reasoning, thought and judgement essentially involve action. It is sometimes said that they involve spontaneity, where spontaneity is taken to be connected in some constitutive way with action-intentional, voluntary and indeed free action. There is, however, a fundamental respect in which reason, thought and judgement neither are nor can be a matter of action; and any spontaneity they involve can be connected with freedom only when the word 'freedom' is used in the Spinozan-Kantian sense according (...) to which freedom is a matter of 'rational necessitation', determination by reason. (shrink)

Fiction has been of concern to both the aesthetician and the ontologist. The former is concerned with the criteria or standards by which we judge the aesthetic worth of a fictional work, the latter with whether our ontology must be enlarged to include possible or imaginary worlds in which are housed the characters and incidents referred to and depicted in such works. This is a paper on the ontology of fiction. It will attempt to answer these ontological questions concerning truth (...) and reference in fiction by clarifying the use of language. Our paradigm case of the fictive use of language will be one in which the story-teller orally relates the fictional story in the presence of his audience, rather than one in which he inscribes his story so that it may be read at a later date. The value of considering the use of language in a face-to-face situation is that it brings before us in their full explicitness all of the different facets of a speech act, many of which often lie dormant in non-face-to-face uses and therefore are hard to discover from a consideration of such uses. (shrink)

This volume brings together a distinguished, international list of scholars to explore the role of the learner's intention in knowledge change. Traditional views of knowledge reconstruction placed the impetus for thought change outside the learner's control. The teacher, instructional methods, materials, and activities were identified as the seat of change. Recent perspectives on learning, however, suggest that the learner can play an active, indeed, intentional role in the process of knowledge restructuring. This volume explores this new, innovative view of conceptual (...) change learning using original contributions drawn from renowned scholars in a variety of disciplines. The volume is intended for scholars or advanced students studying knowledge acquisition and change, including educational psychology, developmental psychology, science education, cognitive science, learning science, instructional psychology, and instructional and curriculum studies. (shrink)

In discussing Socrates's argument for Plato's principle of change in the Phaedo, Syrianus asks, To what kind of opposites is Socrates referring? I offer a new answer to Syrianus's question. I start from David Sedley's view that the opposites in question are converse contraries, which behave as converses in comparative contexts. I show that the quantitative pairs that Socrates cites fit Sedley's view because they are implicit comparatives. Nonetheless, I argue that Socrates's evaluative pairs are better understood as asymmetrical opposites (...) because the Phaedo and the Republic reveal that these pairs have independent, not relational, meanings. So my answer to Syrianus's question is that implicit comparatives and asymmetrical opposites are the kinds of opposites to which Socrates is referring. (shrink)

Narrative ambiguity is a deliberate stylistic device which engages the reader, seizes the imaginative processes, and creates an interaction with the characters of the story that a more explicitly detailed account does not allow to happen.

Three of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to eradicate poverty are very much inter-related: ‘Promote gender equality and empower women,’ ‘Reduce child mortality,’ and ‘Improve maternal health.’ Although the biblical text has often been used to subordinate and oppress women, it can be a resource to empower women who live and give birth in conditions of grinding poverty. Put in the mouths of pregnant women, the Song of Hannah and Mary’s Magnificat envision a reversal of hierarchies, in which ‘The (...) Lord raises up the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.’ Attention will be paid to the social pre-exilic and Palestinian contexts of exploitation to which these songs speak. (shrink)

Community engagement to protect and empower participating individuals and communities is an ethical requirement in research. There is however limited evidence on effectiveness or relevance of some of the approaches used to improve ethical practice. We conducted a study to understand the rationale, relevance and benefits of community engagement in health research. This paper draws from this wider study and focuses on factors that shaped Community Advisory Group members’ selection processes and functions in Malawi. A qualitative research design was used; (...) two participatory workshops were conducted with CAG members to understand their roles in research. Workshop findings were triangulated with insights from ethnographic field notes, key informant interviews with stakeholders, focus group discussions with community members and document reviews. Data were coded manually and thematic content analysis was used to identify main issues. Results have shown that democratic selection of CAG members presented challenges in both urban and rural settings. We also noted that CAG members perceived their role as a form of employment which potentially led to ineffective representation of community interests. We conclude that democratic voting is not enough to ensure effective representation of community's interests of ethical relevance. CAG members’ abilities to understand research ethics, identify potential harms to community and communicate feedback to researchers is critical to optimise engagement of lay community and avoid tokenistic engagement. (shrink)

In this paper, I make a case for interpreting the Lysis as a dialogue of definition, designed to answer the question of “What is a friend?” The main innovation of my interpretation is the contention – and this is argued for in the paper – that Socrates hints towards a definition of being a friend that applies equally to mutual friendship and one-way attraction – the two kinds of friend relation very clearly identified by Socrates in the dialogue. The key (...) to understanding how the two different kinds of friendship can have a common definition is to appreciate that the property of being a friend has a relational character. (shrink)

Humans have become increasingly datafied with the use of digital technologies that generate information with and about their bodies and everyday lives. The onto-epistemological dimensions of human–data assemblages and their relationship to bodies and selves have yet to be thoroughly theorised. In this essay, I draw on key perspectives espoused in feminist materialism, vital materialism and the anthropology of material culture to examine the ways in which these assemblages operate as part of knowing, perceiving and sensing human bodies. I draw (...) particularly on scholarship that employs organic metaphors and concepts of vitality, growth, making, articulation, composition and decomposition. I show how these metaphors and concepts relate to and build on each other, and how they can be applied to think through humans’ encounters with their digital data. I argue that these theoretical perspectives work to highlight the material and embodied dimensions of human–data assemblages as they grow and are enacted, articulated and incorporated into everyday lives. (shrink)

Australia has one of the harshest regimes for the processing of asylum seekers, people who have applied for refugee status but are still awaiting an answer. It has received sharp rebuke for its policies from international human rights bodies but continues to exercise its resolve to protect its borders from those seeking protection. One means of doing so is the detention of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat. Health care providers who care for asylum seekers in these conditions (...) experience a conflict of “dual loyalty,” whereby their role in preserving and maintaining the health of patients can run counter to their employment in detention facilities. Many psychiatrists who have worked in the detention setting engage in forms of political activism in order to change the process of seeking refuge. (shrink)

I am concerned that, in our quest to end discrimination, we as feminists may be concentrating too much on equality and ignoring more basic issues of social justice. I argue that we must not lose sight of where we as a society are going in the effort to make sure we all get there together. The primary goal, after all, is not simply for women to get what men have, but justice for all.

What is the trouble with schools and why should we want to make ‘school trouble’? Schooling is implicated in the making of educational and social exclusions and inequalities as well as the making of particular sorts of students and teachers. For this reason schools are important sites of counter- or radical- politics. In this book, Deborah Youdell brings together theories of counter-politics and radical traditions in education to make sense of the politics of daily life inside schools and explores (...) a range of resources for thinking about and enacting political practices that make ‘school trouble’. The book offers a solid introduction to the much-debated issues of ‘intersectionality’ and the limits of identity politics and the relationship between schooling and the wider policy and political context. It pieces together a series of tools and tactics that might destabilize educational inequalities by unsettling the knowledges, meanings, practices, subjectivities and feelings that are normalized and privileged in the ‘business as usual’ of school life. Engaging with curriculum materials, teachers’ lesson plans and accounts of their pedagogy, and ethnographic observations of school practices, the book investigates a range of empirical examples of critical action in school, from overt political action pursued by educators to day-to-day pedagogic encounters between teachers and students. The book draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to make sense of these practices and identify the political possibilities for educators who refuse to accept the everyday injustices and wide-reaching social inequalities that face us. _School Trouble_ appears at a moment of political and economic flux and uncertainty, and when the policy moves that have promoted markets and private sector involvement in education around the globe have been subject to intense scrutiny and critique. Against this backdrop, renewed attention is being paid to the questions of how politics might be rejuvenated, how societies might be made fair, and what role education might have in pursing this. This book makes an important intervention into this terrain. By exploring a politics of discourse, an anti-identity politics, a politics of feeling, and a politics of becoming, it shows how the education assemblage can be unsettled and education can be re-imagined. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of education, sociology, cultural studies, and social and political science as well as to critical educators looking for new tools for thinking about their practice. (shrink)