We describe here an interdisciplinary lab science course for non-majors using the history of science as a curricular guide. Our experience with diverse instructors underscores the importance of the teachers and classroom dynamics, beyond the curriculum. Moreover, the institutional political context is central: are courses for non-majors valued and is support given to instructors to innovate? Two sample projects are profiled.

AimTo examine the relative cost-effectiveness of predictive genetic tests for familial breast and ovarian cancer provided by Genetic Services of Western Australia.MethodsThe relative cost-effectiveness was assessed using a decision analytic model.ResultsThe cost and outcomes of genetic testing was compared in first-degree relatives of known BRCA1/2 mutation-carriers who have a 50% risk of carrying the mutated gene (intervention group) to individuals with the same a priori risk but who do not undergo a genetic test (control subjects).Since genetic testing enables the restriction (...) of intensive surveillance to individuals with an identified BRCA1/2 gene mutation, net savings in the period observed (age 25-70) were $980-$1008 per woman in the ovarian intervention group and $1681-$1795 per woman in the breast intervention group, and delayed the onset of breast cancer (6mths BRCA1, 3mths BRCA2).Compared to control subjects undergoing population surveillance, it was estimated the onset of breast cancer could be delayed at a total net cost of $3055 (5.1yrs) to $3389 (3.2yrs) for women in the breast intervention group with BRCA1/2 mutations. Since population surveillance is not currently recommended for ovarian cancer, control subjects undergoing no surveillance were compared with the intervention group. The onset of ovarian cancer was delayed at a net cost of $1630 (3.5yrs) to $2509 (1.2years) for women with BRCA1/2 mutations.ConclusionsTesting allows targeted high-level surveillance for gene mutation carriers, which ensures the cost-effective use of resources and reduces cancer-related morbidity if clinical recommendations for intervention are adopted. (shrink)

Suicide among Veterans experiencing or at risk for homelessness remains a significant public health concern. Conducting research to understand and meet the needs of this at-risk population remains challenging due to myriad factors. To address this challenge, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs convened the Health Services Research and Development Suicide Prevention in Veterans Experiencing Homelessness: Research and Practice Development meeting, bringing together subject-matter experts in the fields of homelessness and suicide prevention, both from within and outside of VA. (...) During the meeting, attendees identified 10 potential research priorities at the intersection of suicide prevention and homelessness. After the meeting, Delphi methodology was used to achieve consensus on the relative importance of the identified research domains. Through this iterative Delphi process, agreement was reached regarding the need to increase understanding of barriers and facilitators to suicide risk assessment and emergency intervention for Veterans experiencing homelessness by examining the perspectives of both Veterans and healthcare providers. Elucidating the complex relationships between risk periods, subgroups, suicide means, and drivers of suicide among Veterans experiencing homelessness was also considered a top priority. This article documents the Delphi process and provides a research agenda for researchers, funding agencies, and policymakers to prioritize the most relevant and potentially impactful research domains aimed at preventing suicide among Veterans experiencing or at risk for homelessness. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

The blind bandit -- Zuko alone -- The chase -- Bitter work -- The library.

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Nonviolent movements have become a new form of human agency. Between 1900 and 2006, more than 100 such movements appeared, and more than half were successful in dissolving oppression or achieving people's rights. Movements self-organize to summon mass participation, develop cognitive unity in the midst of dissension, and build resilient force on the content of shared beliefs. Some movements may even be a new venue for consciousness that "grows to something of great constancy" as Shakespeare said about "minds transfigured so (...) together." Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

In this article, I examine Adam Smith's theory of the ways individuals in society bridge social and biological difference. In doing so, I emphasize the divisive effects of gender, race, and class to see if Smith's account of social unity can overcome such fractious forces. My discussion uses the metaphor of “proximity” to mean both physical and psychological distance between moral actors and spectators. I suggest that education – both formal and informal in means – can assist moral judgment by (...) helping agents minimize the effects of proximity, and, ultimately, learn commonality where difference may otherwise seem overwhelming. This article uses the methods of the history of philosophy in order to examine an issue within contemporary discourse. While I seek to offer an authentic reading of Smith representative of his eighteenth-century perspective, I do so with an eye towards determining the extent to which Smith anticipated central issues in modern multiculturalism. (Published Online April 18 2006) Footnotes1 I would like to thank Luc Bovens, Kim Donehower, David Levy, Elizabeth Sund, and Leah M. McClimans, for their help on previous drafts of this article. (shrink)

Following an initial discussion of the general nature of interpretation in contemporary psychology, and social and natural science, relevant views of Charles Taylor and Thomas Kuhn are considered in some detail. Although both Taylor and Kuhn agree that interpretation in the social or human sciences differs in some ways from interpretation in the natural sciences, they disagree about the nature and origins of such difference. Our own analysis follows, in which we consider differences in interpretation between the natural and social (...) sciences in terms of Ian Hacking's use of Elizabeth Anscombe's conceptualization of actions as intentional acts under particular descriptions. We conclude that both Taylor and Kuhn are correct to point to differences in interpretation between the natural and social sciences. We also argue that in psychology, such interpretive differences, contra Kuhn and pro Taylor, are qualitative rather than quantitative. They arise from the nature of persons as self-interpretive, reactive beings who act under socioculturally sanctioned, linguistic descriptions. The actions of psychological persons may display qualitative differences over time and across contexts as these descriptions, including social scientific and psychological findings and interpretations, change. In contrast, even when descriptions in natural science change, such changes do not spawn changes in the self-interpretations and intentional actions of the focal phenomena of natural science. We also make the point that much current confusion surrounding interpretation in science arises from the unwarranted tendency of some commentators to treat interpretation as subjective, in ways that ignore the objective grounding of interpretation within regulated social practices, including scientific practices sanctioned by scientific communities. (shrink)

If Australasian philosophers constitute the kind of group to which a collective identity or broadly shared self-image can plausibly be ascribed, the celebrated history of Australian materialism rightly lies close to its heart. Jack Smart’s chapter in this volume, along with an outstanding series of briefer essays in A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (Forrest 2010; Gold 2010; Koksvik 2010; Lycan 2010; Matthews 2010; Nagasawa 2010; Opie 2010; Stoljar 2010a), effectively describe the naturalistic realism of Australian (...) philosophy of mind. In occasional semi-serious psychogeographic speculation, this long-standing and strongly-felt intellectual attitude has been traced back to the influences of our light, land, or lifestyle (Devitt 1996, x; compare comments by Chalmers and O’Brien in Mitchell, 2006). Australasian work in philosophy of mind and cognition has become more diverse in the last 40 years, but is almost all still marked, in one way or another, by the history of these debates on materialism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 689 Elizabeth Jean Hornbeck Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?: Domestic Violence in The Shining At first glance, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining seems to be a straightforward Gothic horror film. It starts with the Torrance family— Jack, Wendy, and Danny—moving from their Boulder, Colorado, apartment into the Overlook Hotel, where Jack ( (...) class='Hi'>Jack Nicholson) has accepted a job as the winter caretaker. By the film’s climax, an axe-wielding Jack says to his terrified wife and son (Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd), through the door to the bathroom where they are hiding, “Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in. Not by the hair on your chinny chin chin? Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!”1 Jack assumes the role of the Big Bad Wolf, the nightmarish, predatory beast of fairy tales. These lines, along with Nicholson’s exaggerated performance as a crazed killer, parody the Gothic horror genre and slasher films and even children ’s fairy tales in what is, at its core, a story about domestic violence. In both Kubrick’s film and Stephen King’s 1977 novel, from which the film was adapted, the Gothic genre becomes a vehicle for a serious tale about violence within the family. The “discovery” of child abuse in the 1960s, “the creation of the wife-beating problem” in the 1970s, and 1. The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick (1980; Warner Home Video, 2007), DVD. The line is from the fairytale of The Three Little Pigs. Geoffrey Cocks discusses the sources and ramifications of the fairytale in The Wolf at the Door: Stanley Kubrick, History and the Holocaust (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2004), 33–38. 690 Elizabeth Jean Hornbeck the feminist movement allowed viewers to perceive domestic violence with a new level of understanding.2 It is my contention that The Shining comments on domestic violence in a way that has been mostly overlooked by critics. While most analyses of both the novel and the film have come from literary and cinema studies perspectives, I offer a sociological approach focused on the profound effect of changing social mores on cultural production. I draw also on feminist and queer theorizing of audience identification, gender, and erotic pleasure in horror films to explain the significant contributions made by King, Kubrick, Duvall, and screenwriter Diane Johnson to the film’s intervention in US public discourse about domestic violence.3 The first scholar who argued that Kubrick’s film is essentially a domestic abuse narrative was James Hala, who based his analysis on a close reading of critical reviews of the film and a discussion of the performances, with no reference to its social, political, or historical context.4 But it is important to note that both the novel and the film came at the end of a decade when the recognition of domestic violence as a social problem was still relatively new. Sociologists and the medical and legal professions did not take “wife beating” seriously until the mid-1970s, when the women’s movement brought public attention to spousal abuse.5 2. Kathleen J. Tierney, “The Battered Women Movement and the Creation of the Wife Beating Problem,” Social Problems 29, no. 3 (1982): 207–20; Stephen J. Pfohl, “The ‘Discovery’ of Child Abuse,” Social Problems 24, no. 3 (1977): 310–23. 3. The theoretical works that I have drawn on most heavily are Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); and David Greven, Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman’s Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 4. James Hala, “Kubrick’s The Shining: The Specters and the Critics,” in The Shining Reader, ed. Anthony Magistrale (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990), 203–16. 5. In 1976, a national survey reported that “at least 1.8 million American women are severely beaten in their own homes every year.” Murray A. Straus, et al., Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family, as cited in “‘The Burning Bed’: TV... (shrink)

According to proponents of irreducible cognitive phenomenology some cognitive states put one in phenomenal states for which no wholly sensory states suffice. One of the main approaches to defending the view that there is irreducible cognitive phenomenology is to give a phenomenal contrast argument. In this paper I distinguish three kinds of phenomenal contrast argument: what I call pure--represented by Strawson’s Jack/Jacques argument --hypothetical-- represented by Kriegel’s Zoe argument --and glossed-- first developed here. I argue that pure and hypothetical (...) phenomenal contrast arguments face significant difficulties, but that there is a sound glossed phenomenal contrast argument for irreducible cognitive phenomenology. (shrink)

Many liberal philosophers view elite education as a virtue of political leaders and, in addition, hold that an important role of a just education system is to create better elites. A compelling and influential articulation of this view has been offered by Elizabeth Anderson. However, this view is in conflict with a commitment to substantive democracy, given the background conditions of the United States today. This article will argue, contra Anderson, that having the highly educated disproportionately represented in political (...) leadership is incompatible with egalitarian principles of democracy. The key reason for this is that it systematically shuts out the working class from full political participation. Therefore, in order to satisfy the constraints of democracy, we must sever the connection between elite education and political office. (shrink)

There is an increasingly widespread belief, both within and outside the discipline, that modern economics is irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. Economics and Reality traces this irrelevance to the failure of economists to match their methods with their subject, showing that formal, mathematical models are unsuitable to the social realities economists purport to address. Tony Lawson examines the various ways in which mainstream economics is rooted in positivist philosophy and examines the problems this causes. It focuses (...) on human agency, social structure and their interaction and explores how the understanding of this social phenomena can be used to transform the nature of economic practice. Economics and Reality concludes by showing how this newly transformed economics might set about shaping economic policy. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Aristotle's probing inquiry into some of the fundamental problems of philosophy, The Metaphysics is one of the classical Greek foundation-stones of western thought, translated from the with an introduction by Hugh Lawson-Tancred in Penguin Classics. The Metaphysics presents Aristotle's mature rejection of both the Platonic theory that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of reality and the hard-headed view that all processes are ultimately material. He argued instead that the reality or substance of things lies (...) in their concrete forms, and in so doing he probed some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? And are there certain things that must exist for anything else to exist at all? The seminal notions discussed in The Metaphysics - of 'substance' and associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident, potentiality and actuality - have had a profound and enduring influence, and laid the foundations for one of the central branches of Western philosophy. Hugh Lawson-Tancred's lucid translation is accompanied by a stimulating introduction in which he highlights the central themes of one of philosophy's supreme masterpieces. Aristotle (384-22 BC) studied at the Academy of Plato for 20 years and then established his own school and research institute, 'The Lyceum'. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy and are still eagerly studied and debated by philosophers today. (shrink)

Book synopsis: For the Pre-Socratic philosophers the soul was the source of movement and sensation, while for Plato it was the seat of being, metaphysically distinct from the body that it was forced temporarily to inhabit. Plato's student Aristotle was determined to test the truth of both these beliefs against the emerging sciences of logic and biology. His examination of the huge variety of living organisms - the enormous range of their behaviour, their powers and their perceptual sophistication - convinced (...) him of the inadequacy both of a materialist reduction and of a Platonic sublimation of the soul. In De Anima, he sought to set out his theory of the soul as the ultimate reality of embodied form and produced both a masterpiece of philosophical insight and a psychology of perennially fascinating subtlety. (shrink)

Philosophical arguments usually are and nearly always should be abductive. Across many areas, philosophers are starting to recognize that often the best we can do in theorizing some phenomena is put forward our best overall account of it, warts and all. This is especially true in esoteric areas like logic, aesthetics, mathematics, and morality where the data to be explained is often based in our stubborn intuitions. -/- While this methodological shift is welcome, it's not without problems. Abductive arguments involve (...) significant theoretical resources which themselves can be part of what's being disputed. This means that we will sometimes find otherwise good arguments which suggest their own grounds are problematic. In particular, sometimes revising our beliefs on the basis of such an argument can undermine the very justification we used in that argument. -/- This feature, which I'll call self-effacingness, occurs most dramatically in arguments against our standing views on the esoteric subject matters mentioned above: logic, mathematics, aesthetics, and morality. This is because these subject matters all play a role in how we reason abductively. This isn't an idle fact; we can resist some challenges to our standing beliefs about these subject matters exactly because the challenges are self-effacing. The self-effacing character of certain arguments is thus both a benefit and limitation of the abductive turn and deserves serious attention. I aim to give it the attention it deserves. (shrink)

Disability is primarily a social phenomenon -- a way of being a minority, a way of facing social oppression, but not a way of being inherently or intrinsically worse off. This is how disability is understood in the Disability Rights and Disability Pride movements; but there is a massive disconnect with the way disability is typically viewed within analytic philosophy. The idea that disability is not inherently bad or sub-optimal is one that many philosophers treat with open skepticism, and sometimes (...) even with scorn. The goal of this book is to articulate and defend a version of the view of disability that is common in the Disability Rights movement. To be physically disabled is not to have a defective body, but simply to have a minority body. (shrink)

This book offers solutions to two persistent and I believe closely related problems in epistemology. The first problem is that of drawing a principled distinction between perception and inference: what is the difference between seeing that something is the case and merely believing it on the basis of what we do see? The second problem is that of specifying which beliefs are epistemologically basic (i.e., directly, or noninferentially, justified) and which are not. I argue that what makes a belief a (...) perceptual belief, or a basic belief, is not any introspectible feature of the belief but rather the nature of the cognitive system, or "module", that is causally responsible for the belief. Thus, even zombies, who in the philosophical literature lack conscious experiences altogether, can have basic, justified, perceptual beliefs. -/- The theories of perceptual and basic beliefs developed in the monograph are embedded in a larger reliabilist epistemology. I use this theory of basic beliefs to develop a detailed reliabilist theory: Inferentialist Reliabilism, which offers a reliabilist theory of inferential justification and which solves some longstanding problems for other reliabilist views by demanding inferential support for some—but not all—beliefs. The book is an instance of a thoroughgoingly naturalistic approach to epistemology. Many of my arguments have an empirical basis, and the view that I endorse reserves a central role for the cognitive sciences—in particular, cognitive neuroscience—in filling in the details of an applied epistemological theory. (shrink)

Social constructionism is often considered a form of anti-realism. But in contemporary feminist philosophy, an increasing number of philosophers defend views that are well-described as both realist and social constructionist. In this paper, I use the work of Sally Haslanger as an example of realist social constructionism. I argue: that Haslanger is best interpreted as defending metaphysical realism about social structures; that this type of metaphysical realism about the social world presents challenges to some popular ways of understanding metaphysical realism.

This new and important study of semantic change examines how new meanings arise through language use, especially the various ways in which speakers and writers experiment with uses of words and constructions in the flow of strategic interaction with addressees. In the last few decades there has been growing interest in exploring systemicities in semantic change from a number of perspectives including theories of metaphor, pragmatic inferencing, and grammaticalization. Like earlier studies, these have for the most part been based on (...) data taken out of context. This book is the first detailed examination of semantic change from the perspective of historical pragmatics and discourse analysis. Drawing on extensive corpus data from over a thousand years of English and Japanese textual history, Traugott and Dasher show that most changes in meaning originate in and are motivated by the associative flow of speech and conceptual metonymy. (shrink)

I read Dr Cherniack’s article regarding do not resuscitate orders with interest.1 One of the problems with DNR orders is the patients’ assumption that if there is no DNR order they will survive resuscitative efforts. This of course is far from the truth. In my hospital these orders have been modified to “do not attempt to resuscitate” orders. One cannot be truly autonomous without being informed. Long term survival, as measured only by being alive, following inhouse cardiac arrest, is about (...) 15% over all age groups.2 In sick elderly patients over 70 years of age who survive a cardiac arrest, the subsequent hospital mortality approaches 100%. This fact, and concerns about harm, influence physicians’ attitudes, …. (shrink)

In this project I am concerned with the extent to which conceptual engineering happens in domains outside of philosophy, and if so, what that might look like. Specifically, I’ll argue that...

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

Lawson provides a comprehensive look at the history of western thought, the evolution of science and its attempts to provide us with a "theory of everything" and an evaluation of the relativist multiple truths. He discusses why this scientific mind-set no longer works and why relativist truths are no longer sustainable. He then offers a new theory to help us better understand ourselves and our world.

Reagan, Lawson This article will argue that a Humanist future is a technoprogressive one. It will first give an overview of the emerging third dimension of 21st century politics, that of biopolitics. It will define the broad differences between the transhumanist and bioconservative movements. Then it will turn to the two main ideologically competing strands of the transhumanist movement: that of right wing 'Libertarian Transhumanism' and left wing 'Technoprogressivism'.

Feminist epistemology has often been understood as the study of feminine "ways of knowing." But feminist epistemology is better understood as the branch of naturalized, social epistemology that studies the various influences of norms and conceptions of gender and gendered interests and experiences on the production of knowledge. This understanding avoids dubious claims about feminine cognitive differences and enables feminist research in various disciplines to pose deep internal critiques of mainstream research.

This paper develops an argument against causal decision theory. I formulate a principle of preference, which I call the Guaranteed Principle. I argue that the preferences of rational agents satisfy the Guaranteed Principle, that the preferences of agents who embody causal decision theory do not, and hence that causal decision theory is false.

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) are at last coming to be recognised as serious global public health problems. Nevertheless, many women with personal histories of DVA decline to disclose them to healthcare practitioners. In the health sciences, recent empirical work has identified many factors that impede DVA disclosure, known as barriers to disclosure. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology on testimonial silencing, we might wonder why so many people withhold their testimony and whether there is some kind of epistemic (...) injustice afoot here. In this paper, I offer some philosophical reflections on DVA disclosure in clinical contexts and the associated barriers to disclosure. I argue that women with personal histories of DVA are vulnerable to a certain form of testimonial injustice in clinical contexts, namely, testimonial smothering, and that this may help to explain why they withhold that testimony. It is my contention that this can help explain the low rates of DVA disclosure by patients to healthcare practitioners. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Barry Loewer attempts to defend Humeanism about laws of nature from a charge that Humean laws are not adequately explanatory. Central to his defense is a distinction between metaphysical and scientific explanations: even if Humeans cannot offer further metaphysical explanations of particular features of their “mosaic,” that does not preclude them from offering scientific explanations of these features. According to Marc Lange, however, Loewer’s distinction is of no avail. Defending a transitivity principle linking scientific explanantia to (...) their metaphysical grounds, Lange argues that a charge of explanatory inadequacy resurfaces once this intuitive principle is in place. This paper surveys, on behalf of the Humean, three strategies for responding to Lange’s criticism. The ready availability of these strategies suggests that Lange’s argument may not bolster anti-Humean convictions, since the argument rests on premises that those not antecedently sharing these convictions may well reject. The three strategies also correspond to three interesting ways of thinking about relations of grounding linking Humean laws and their instances, all of which are consistent with theses of Humean supervenience, and some of which have been heretofore overlooked. (shrink)

This paper develops a form of moral actualism that can explain the procreative asymmetry. Along the way, it defends and explains the attractive asymmetry: the claim that although an impermissible option can be self-conditionally permissible, a permissible option cannot be self-conditionally impermissible.

I argue that the social dimension of alienation, as discussed by Williams and Railton, has been underappreciated. The lesson typically drawn from their exchange is that moral theory poses a threat to the internal integrity of the agent, but there is a parallel risk that moral theory will implicitly construe agents as constitutively alienated from one another. I argue that a satisfying account of agency will need to make room for what I call ‘genuine ethical contact’ with others, both as (...) concrete objects in the world external to ourselves and as subjects who can recognize us reciprocally. (shrink)

Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure takes sociology in a new direction. It examines key aspects of social structure by using a fresh understanding of emotions categories. Through that synthesis emerge new perspectives on rationality, class structure, social action, conformity, basic rights, and social change. As well as giving an innovative view of social processes, J. M. Barbalet's study also reveals unappreciated aspects of emotions by considering fear, resentment, vengefulness, shame, and confidence in the context of social structure. While much (...) has been written on the social consequences of excessive or pathological emotions, this book demonstrates the centrality of emotions to routine operations of social interaction. Dr Barbalet also re-evaluates the nature of social theory, for once the importance of emotions to social processes becomes clear, the intellectual constitution of sociology, and therefore its history, must be rethought. (shrink)

Consequentialists often assume rational monism: the thesis that options are always made rationally permissible by the maximization of the selfsame quantity. This essay argues that consequentialists should reject rational monism and instead accept rational pluralism: the thesis that, on different occasions, options are made rationally permissible by the maximization of different quantities. The essay then develops a systematic form of rational pluralism which, unlike its rivals, is capable of handling both the Newcomb problems that challenge evidential decision theory and the (...) unstable problems that challenge causal decision theory. (shrink)