Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Dynamic Consent is both a model and a specific web-based tool that enables clear, granular communication and recording of participant consent choices over time. The DC model enables individuals to know and to decide how personal research information is being used and provides a way in which to exercise legal rights provided in privacy and data protection law. The DC tool is flexible and responsive, enabling legal and ethical requirements in research data sharing to be met and for online health (...) information to be maintained. DC has been used in rare diseases and genomics, to enable people to control and express their preferences regarding their own data. However, DC has never been explored in relationship to historical collections of bioscientific and genetic heritage or to contexts involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.In response to the growing interest by First Peoples throughout Australia in genetic and genomic research, and the increasing number of invitations from researchers to participate in community health and wellbeing projects, this article examines the legal and ethical attributes and challenges of DC in these contexts. It also explores opportunities for including First Peoples' cultural perspectives, governance, and leadership as a method for defining DC on cultural terms that engage best practice research and data analysis as well as respect for meaningful and longitudinal individual and family participation. (shrink)

Will it rain tomorrow? Will there be a sea battle tomorrow? Will my death be painful? Wondering about the future plays a central role in our cognitive lives. It is integral to our inquiries, our planning, our hopes, and our fears. The aim of this paper is to consider various accounts of future contingents and the implications that they have for wondering about the future. I argue that reflecting on the nature of wondering about the future supports an Ockhamist account (...) of future contingents according to which many of them are true. Alternative accounts which maintain that no future contingents are true, either by claiming that they are all false or by claiming that they are neither true nor false, face difficulties concerning why it is appropriate to wonder about them. Reflecting on wondering in general, and wondering about the future in particular, suggests that in wondering how the future will go, we implicitly assume that there is a determinate fact of the matter. After presenting an attractive account of interrogative attitudes that has been recently proposed by Jane Friedman and outlining some norms governing wondering, I argue that all accounts of future contingents except Ockhamism face difficulties concerning why it is appropriate to wonder about them. (shrink)

In this paper Jane Mansbridge reflects upon the role of resistance in democracy. Resistance “can cause inaction by focusing on stopping, rather than using, coercion.”’ Instead we should increase the legitimacy of democratic action and in that manner further the possibility of sanction through coercion. An improvement of democratic institutions and of the procedures of deliberation, which makes room for citizen input, would also make for a more efficacious and organized resistance, when necessary.

In this paper we describe a propagation experiment to measure the one-way velocity of electromagnetic radiation. The experiment utilizes the rotation of the earth to interchange the positions of two rubidium vapor frequency standards over12 h, thereby canceling initial clock phase differences. It is demonstrated that although the drift characteristics of modern rubidium atomic clocks may be large for long-term absolute timing requirements, the short-term random fluctuations are small. It is found that over a24-h period, the long-term drift can be (...) accurately parameterized in retrospect and removed, thereby permitting the detection of temporal variations less than1 nsec in magnitude. With coherent summing techniques this value may be significantly reduced, and it becomes realistic to consider an experiment where the clocks are separated by distances of the order of several hundreds of meters in order to detect velocities of the order of that of the solar system with respect to the center of the galaxy(≈10 5 m sec −1 ), thus ensuring that the rotational motion of the earth has a negligible effect in altering the relative inertial characteristics of the reference frames of each clock. It is demonstrated that under such conditions the measurement of the one-way speed of propagation of electromagnetic radiation is not only meaningful, but can be simply implemented with commercially available instrumentation. (shrink)

Paul Davidson has argued that there is little common ground between Post Keynesian analysis and the Austrian approach to economics. He claims that Post Keynesians (unlike Austrian economists) place great importance on the role of expectations and do not present a deterministic view of the economic system. In this essay the validity of such claims is examined.

Abstract In this paper I undertake an in-depth examination of an oft mentioned but rarely expounded upon state: suspended judgment. While traditional epistemology is sometimes characterized as presenting a “yes or no” picture of its central attitudes, in fact many of these epistemologists want to say that there is a third option: subjects can also suspend judgment. Discussions of suspension are mostly brief and have been less than clear on a number of issues, in particular whether this third option should (...) be thought of as an attitude or not. In this paper I argue that suspended judgment is (or at least involves) a genuine attitude. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-17 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9753-y Authors Jane Friedman, St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3UJ UK Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Each book covers all the necessary information a beginner needs to know about a particular topic, providing an index for easy reference and using the series' ...

This article, which was originally presented at the annual conference of the Venerable John Henry Newman Association at Villanova University in July 2005, examines the “religious formation” of students at the Catholic University of Ireland as presented by Newman in his university sermons and discourses. Newman wanted the students to develop not only intellectually, but also religiously and morally. He saw tutors as critical to this process of formation.

The essays trace, from the ancient Greeks to the present, the use of self-interest to explain political life.

In this paper I revisit Gilbert Harman's arguments for a "clutter avoidance" norm. The norm -- which says that we ought to avoid cluttering our minds with trivialities -- is widely endorsed. I argue that it has some fairly dramatic consequences for normative epistemology.

Philosophers and psychologists have often maintained that in order to attribute mental states to other people one must have a ‘theory of mind’. This theory facilitates our grasp of other people’s mental states. Debate has then focussed on the form this theory should take. Recently a new approach has been suggested, which I call the ‘Direct Perception approach to social cognition’. This approach maintains that we can directly perceive other people’s mental states. It opposes traditional views on two counts: by (...) claiming that mental states are observable and by claiming that we can attribute them to others without the need for a theory of mind. This paper argues that there are two readings of the direct perception claims: a strong and a weak one. The Theory-theory is compatible with the weak version but not the strong one. The paper argues that the strong version of direct perception is untenable, drawing on evidence from the mirror neuron literature and arguments from the philosophy of science and perception to support this claim. It suggests that one traditional ‘theory of mind’ view, the ‘Theory-theory’ view, is compatible with the claim that mental states are observable, and concludes that direct perception views do not offer a viable alternative to theory of mind approaches to social cognition. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has had a mistaken conception of the nature of psychological concepts. It has assumed too much similarity between psychological judgments and those of natural science and has thus overlooked the fact that other people are not just objects whose thoughts we may try to predict and control but fellow creatures with whom we talk and co-operate. In this collection of essays, Jane Heal argues that central to our ability to arrive at views about others' thoughts (...) is not knowledge of some theory of the mind but rather an ability to imagine alternative worlds and how things appear from another person's point of view. She then applies this view to questions of how we represent others' thoughts, the shape of psychological concepts, the nature of rationality and the possibility of first person authority. This book should appeal to students and professionals in philosophy of mind and language. (shrink)

Effective corporate social responsibility policies are a requirement for today's companies. Policies have not only to be formulated, they also have to be delivered by corporate employees. This paper uses existing research findings to identify two types of factors that may impact on employee motivation and commitment to CSR ‘buy-in’. The first of these is contextual: employee attitudes and behaviours will be affected by organizational culture and climate, by whether CSR policies are couched in terms of compliance or in terms (...) of values, and by whether such policies are integrated into business processes or simply an ‘add-on’ that serves as window-dressing. The second set of factors is perceptual. Motivation and commitment will be affected by the extent to which they can align personal identity and image with that of the organization, by their perceptions of justice and fairness both in general and in terms of how CSR performance is rewarded, and by their impressions concerning the attitude of top management to CSR issues and performance. (shrink)

This essay seeks to give philosophical expression to the vitality, willfullness, and recalcitrance possessed by nonhuman entities and forces. It also considers the ethico-political import of an enhanced awareness of "thing-power." Drawing from Lucretius, Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, and others, it describes a materialism of lively matter, to be placed in conversation with the historical materialism of Marx and the body materialism of feminist and cultural studies. Thing-power materialism is a speculative onto-story, an admittedly presumptuous attempt to depict the (...) nonhumanity that flows around and through humans. The essay concludes with a preliminary discussion of the ecological implications of thing-power. (shrink)

Effective corporate social responsibility policies are a requirement for today's companies. Policies have not only to be formulated, they also have to be delivered by corporate employees. This paper uses existing research findings to identify two types of factors that may impact on employee motivation and commitment to CSR ‘buy-in’. The first of these is contextual: employee attitudes and behaviours will be affected by organizational culture and climate, by whether CSR policies are couched in terms of compliance or in terms (...) of values, and by whether such policies are integrated into business processes or simply an ‘add-on’ that serves as window-dressing. The second set of factors is perceptual. Motivation and commitment will be affected by the extent to which they can align personal identity and image with that of the organization, by their perceptions of justice and fairness both in general and in terms of how CSR performance is rewarded, and by their impressions concerning the attitude of top management to CSR issues and performance. (shrink)

In a recent paper [J. G. Vargas and D. G. Torr, Found. Phys. 27, 599 (1997)], we have shown that a subset of the differential invariants that define teleparallel connections in spacetime generates a teleparallel Kaluza-Klein space (KKS) endowed with a very rich Clifford structure. A canonical Dirac equation hidden in this structure might be uncovered with the help of a teleparallel Kähler calculus in KKS. To bridge the gap to such a calculus from the existing Riemannian Kähler calculus (...) in spacetime, we commence the construction of a teleparallel Kähler calculus in spacetime. In the process, we notice: (a) Unknown to him, one of Einstein's equations in his attempt at unification with teleparallelism states that the interior covariant derivative of the torsion is zero. (b) A mechanism exists in the tangent bundle of teleparallel spaces for producing confinement (in the applicable cases, one would have to show why nonconfinement also occurs, rather than the other way around). (c) When the torsion is not zero, the interior covariant derivative in the sense of Kähler, δF, does not coincide with *d*F. The system (dF = 0, δF = j) rather than (dF = 0, *d*F = j) should then be used for generalizations of Maxwell's electrodynamics. (shrink)

A longstanding problem in the teacher workforce, internationally and in the UK, is the continuing and substantial numbers of qualified teachers who leave the profession within five years. This paper uses data collected from a survey to the last five years of teacher education graduates of UCL Institute of Education (IOE) in London, to explore what originally motivated them to teach, and the reasons why they have left or may consider leaving in the future. We discovered that despite claiming to (...) be aware of the challenges of workload before entering teaching, workload was the most frequently cited reason for having left, or for leaving in the future. The data spoke to the reality of teaching being worse than expected, and the nature (rather than the quantity) of the workload, linked to notions of performativity and accountability, being a crucial factor. This paper draws on a substantial new source of data and explores reasons for leaving in the context of reported initial motivation of individuals who have left teaching, individuals who are planning to leave and individuals who are planning to stay in teaching. (shrink)

Examines the theories of Plato, Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Beecher, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman concerning the education of women.

Clicks, comments, transactions, and physical movements are being increasingly recorded and analyzed by Big Data processors who use this information to trace the sentiment and activities of markets and voters. While the benefits of Big Data have received considerable attention, it is the potential social costs of practices associated with Big Data that are of interest to us in this paper. Prior research has investigated the impact of Big Data on individual privacy rights, however, there is also growing recognition of (...) its capacity to be mobilized for surveillance purposes. Our paper delineates the underlying issues of privacy and surveillance and presents them as in tension with one another. We postulate that efforts at controlling Big Data may create a trade-off of risks rather than an overall improvement in data protection. We explore this idea in relation to the principles of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation as it arguably embodies the new ‘gold standard’ of cyber-laws. We posit that safeguards advocated by the law, anonymization and pseudonymization, while representing effective counter measures to privacy concerns, also incentivize the use, collection, and trade of behavioral and other forms of de-identified data. We consider the legal status of these ownerless forms of data, arguing that data protection techniques such as anonymization and pseudonymization raise significant concerns over the ownership of behavioral data and its potential use in the large-scale modification of activities and choices made both on and offline. (shrink)

A high profile context in which physics and biology meet today is in the new field of systems biology. Systems biology is a fascinating subject for sociological investigation because the demands of interdisciplinary collaboration have brought epistemological issues and debates front and centre in discussions amongst systems biologists in conference settings, in publications, and in laboratory coffee rooms. One could argue that systems biologists are conducting their own philosophy of science. This paper explores the epistemic aspirations of the field by (...) drawing on interviews with scientists working in systems biology, attendance at systems biology conferences and workshops, and visits to systems biology laboratories. It examines the discourses of systems biologists, looking at how they position their work in relation to previous types of biological inquiry, particularly molecular biology. For example, they raise the issue of reductionism to distinguish systems biology from molecular biology. This comparison with molecular biology leads to discussions about the goals and aspirations of systems biology, including epistemic commitments to quantification, rigor and predictability. Some systems biologists aspire to make biology more similar to physics and engineering by making living systems calculable, modelable and ultimately predictable—a research programme that is perhaps taken to its most extreme form in systems biology’s sister discipline: synthetic biology. Other systems biologists, however, do not think that the standards of the physical sciences are the standards by which we should measure the achievements of systems biology, and doubt whether such standards will ever be applicable to ‘dirty, unruly living systems’. This paper explores these epistemic tensions and reflects on their sociological dimensions and their consequences for future work in the life sciences. (shrink)

Calls for the “translation” of research from bench to bedside are increasingly demanding. What is translation, and why does it matter? We sketch the recent history of outcome-oriented translational research in the United States, with a particular focus on the Roadmap Initiative of the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD). Our main example of contemporary translational research is stem cell research, which has superseded genomics as the translational object of choice. We explore the nature of and obstacles to translational research (...) and assess the ethical and biomedical challenges of embracing a translational ethos. (shrink)

Abstract:The aim of this paper is to create a framework which can serve as a guide to the understanding of organizational ethicality. This is done by linking ethical and organizational theory. Organizational ethicality is about “being” as well as “doing”: relevant ethical theory is therefore both substantive (agent-centred, concerned with the “good”) as well as procedural (act-centred, concerned with the “right” in the sense of the moral or just thing to do). The ethical theories of Alasdair MacIntyre and Jurgen Habermas, (...) as representatives of these two traditions, are mapped onto a framework which characterises organizations as assemblages of practices supported by a climate embedded within an organizational culture. Organizational practice is articulated and given meaning within a discourse of “sensemaking” in which narrative creates space-time links between people and events. Within that same communicative climate practices are evaluated and decisions taken. This theoretical framework is specified in such a way as to highlight the parallels with the ethical theories of MacIntyre, who uses notions of practice, tradition and the narrative unity of moral experience to create an ethical theory of the “good,” and Habermas, who spells out the process of moral argumentation by which consensus on the “just” or “right” is reached. Some possibilities for further research are suggested at the end of the paper. (shrink)

Effective corporate social responsibility policies are a requirement for today's companies. Policies have not only to be formulated, they also have to be delivered by corporate employees. This paper uses existing research findings to identify two types of factors that may impact on employee motivation and commitment to CSR ‘buy‐in’. The first of these is contextual: employee attitudes and behaviours will be affected by organizational culture and climate, by whether CSR policies are couched in terms of compliance or in terms (...) of values, and by whether such policies are integrated into business processes or simply an ‘add‐on’ that serves as window‐dressing. The second set of factors is perceptual. Motivation and commitment will be affected by the extent to which they can align personal identity and image with that of the organization, by their perceptions of justice and fairness both in general and in terms of how CSR performance is rewarded, and by their impressions concerning the attitude of top management to CSR issues and performance. (shrink)

The Aesthetics of Design offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics, challenging the discipline to broaden its scope to include the quotidian objects and experiences of our everyday lives and concerns ...