Le module ESLO-Enfants est un corpus variationniste longitudinal issu du grand corpus de langue française : Enquêtes SocioLinguistiques à Orléans (ESLO). Variationniste car il s’appuie sur un public varié (enfants de 2 ans à 7 ans avec leur entourage proche) provenant de familles de différentes catégories socio-économico-culturelles et enregistré dans des situations naturelles variées formant le quotidien des enfants. Ce corpus, qui sera mis à disposition à la fois sur ESLO et Childes, a été créé dans le but d’étudier l’impact (...) de l’environnement langagier (input) sur les productions enfantines (output). Pour cette étude, la liaison, objet à la fois stable et variable, s’est révélée être un phénomène sociolinguistique propice pour observer sa transmission à des enfants en cours d’acquisition du langage mais aussi pour observer d’éventuelles différences entre les familles. (shrink)

Jennifer McKitrick offers an opinionated guide to the philosophy of dispositions. In her view, when an object has a disposition, it is such that, if a certain type of circumstance were to occur, a certain kind of event would occur. Since this is very common for this to be the case, dispositions are an abundant and diverse feature of our world.

Against recent work by Haslanger and Leslie, I argue that we do not yet have good reason to think that we should single out generics about social groups out as peculiarly destructive, or that we should strive to eradicate them from our usage. Indeed, I suggest they continue to serve a very valuable purpose and we should not rush to condemn them.

Jennifer Hornsby offers here detailed discussions of ontology, human agency, and everyday psychological explanation. In her distinctive view of questions about the mind's place in nature she argues for a particular position in philosophy of mind: naive naturalism.

This book employs contemporary philosophy, scientific research, and clinical reports to argue that pain, though real, is not an appropriate object of scientific generalisations or an appropriate target for medical intervention. Each pain experience is instead complex and idiosyncratic in a way which undermines scientific utility. In addition to contributing novel arguments and developing a novel position on the nature of pain, the book provides an interdisciplinary overview of dominant models of pain. The author lays the needed groundwork for improved (...) models and targeted treatments at a time when pain science, pain medicine, and philosophy are explicitly searching for both and failing to find them. The Complex Reality of Pain will be of interest to a broad range of researchers and students, including those working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive science, neuroscience, medicine, health, cognitive and behavioural psychology, and pain science. (shrink)

Background Few studies have been conducted to assess the quality of orientation practices for ethics advisory committees that conduct ethics consultation. This survey study focused on several Harvard teaching hospitals, exploring orientation quality and committee members’ self-evaluation in the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities ethics consultation competencies. Methods We conducted a survey study that involved 116 members and 16 chairs of ethics advisory committees, respectively. Predictor variables included professional demographics, duration on committees and level of training. Outcome variables included (...) familiarity with and preparedness in the ASBH competencies and satisfaction with orientations. We hypothesised that responses would be associated with both the aforementioned predictors and whether or not participants had encountered the ASBH competencies in training. Results A majority of respondents found their orientation curricula to be helpful, although a significant portion of respondents did not receive any orientation or were unsatisfied with their orientation. Familiarity with ASBH competencies was a statistically significant predictor of respondents’ self-evaluation in particular categories. Standard educational materials were reported as offered during orientation, such as readings and case studies ; different medium resources were less evidenced such as videos on ethics consultation. Conclusions Institutions should re-evaluate orientation practices for ethics committee members that perform ethics consultation. Integrating ASBH competencies and useful methods into a resourceful pedagogy will help improve both member satisfaction with orientation and preparation in consultation. (shrink)

BackgroundArtificial intelligence has been described as the “fourth industrial revolution” with transformative and global implications, including in healthcare, public health, and global health. AI approaches hold promise for improving health systems worldwide, as well as individual and population health outcomes. While AI may have potential for advancing health equity within and between countries, we must consider the ethical implications of its deployment in order to mitigate its potential harms, particularly for the most vulnerable. This scoping review addresses the following question: (...) What ethical issues have been identified in relation to AI in the field of health, including from a global health perspective?MethodsEight electronic databases were searched for peer reviewed and grey literature published before April 2018 using the concepts of health, ethics, and AI, and their related terms. Records were independently screened by two reviewers and were included if they reported on AI in relation to health and ethics and were written in the English language. Data was charted on a piloted data charting form, and a descriptive and thematic analysis was performed.ResultsUpon reviewing 12,722 articles, 103 met the predetermined inclusion criteria. The literature was primarily focused on the ethics of AI in health care, particularly on carer robots, diagnostics, and precision medicine, but was largely silent on ethics of AI in public and population health. The literature highlighted a number of common ethical concerns related to privacy, trust, accountability and responsibility, and bias. Largely missing from the literature was the ethics of AI in global health, particularly in the context of low- and middle-income countries.ConclusionsThe ethical issues surrounding AI in the field of health are both vast and complex. While AI holds the potential to improve health and health systems, our analysis suggests that its introduction should be approached with cautious optimism. The dearth of literature on the ethics of AI within LMICs, as well as in public health, also points to a critical need for further research into the ethical implications of AI within both global and public health, to ensure that its development and implementation is ethical for everyone, everywhere. (shrink)

The traditional understanding of Kant and Kierkegaard is that their views on the good will and inwardness, respectively, commit them to denying moral luck in an attempt to isolate an omnipotent moral subject from involvement with the external world. This leaves them vulnerable to the criticism that their ethical thought unrealistically insulates morality from anything that happens in the world. On the interpretation offered here, inwardness and the good will are not contrasted with worldly happenings, but are instead a matter (...) of worldly happenings that exhibit a particular temporal structure. Kant and Kierkegaard should not be understood as denying moral luck. (shrink)

Analysis, 78: 737–53. doi:_ 10.1093/analys/any055 _.

Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy is one of the most distinctive achievements of the European Enlightenment. At its heart lies what Kant called the "strange thing": the free rational human will. This introduction explores the basis of Kant's anti-naturalis, secular, moral vision of the human good. Moving from a sketch of the Kantian will, with all its component parts and attributes, to Kant's canonical arguments for his categorical imperative, it shows why Kant thought his moral law the best summary expression of (...) both his own philosophical work on morality and his readers' deepest shared convictions about the good. Kant's central tenets, his key arguments, and core values are presented in an accessible and engaging way, making this book ideal for anyone eager to explore the fundamentals of Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

As a philosophy professor, one of my central goals is to teach students to think critically. However, one difficulty with determining whether critical thinking can be taught, or even measured, is that there is widespread disagreement over what critical thinking actually is. Here, I reflect on several conceptions of critical thinking, subjecting them to critical scrutiny. I also distinguish critical thinking from other forms of mental processes with which it is often conflated. Next, I present my own conception of critical (...) thinking, wherein it fundamentally consists in acquiring, developing, and exercising the ability to grasp inferential connections holding between statements. Finally, given this account of critical thinking, and given recent studies in cognitive science, I suggest the most effective means for teaching students to think critically. (shrink)

This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values assembles papers that consider relations among science, ethics, and justice. The papers are drawn from a 2011 National Science Foundation-sponsored workshop that brought together interdisciplinary scholars to consider, incorporate, and attend to the meanings, uses, and social consequences of ethical questions and justice ideals in technoscientific projects. The papers included in this special issue examine key areas that emerged from this workshop, including public participation, the production of knowledge, what counts as (...) consent, ownership of biomaterials, and others. Together, the papers raise questions about new directions and articulations of power, justice, and inequalities in science and technology studies. (shrink)

climate are both linked to an organization's ability to retain healthcare professionals and increase their level of job satisfaction, leaders have a corollary responsibility to address moral distress. We recommend that leaders should provide access to ethics education and resources, offer interventions such as ethics debriefings, establish ethics committees, and/or hire a bioethicist to develop ethics capacity and to assist with addressing healthcare provider moral distress....

Proponents of “the affective appeal” :787–812, 2014; Zagzebski in Philos Phenomenol Res 66:104–124, 2003) argue that we can make progress in the longstanding debate about the nature of moral motivation by appealing to the affective dimension of affective episodes such as emotions, which allegedly play either a causal or constitutive role in moral judgements. Specifically, they claim that appealing to affect vindicates a version of Motivational Internalism—roughly, the view that there is a necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation—that is (...) both more empirically respectable and less theoretically controversial than non-affective versions. We here argue that the affective appeal fails: versions of Internalism which appeal to affect are neither more empirically supported, nor clearly less controversial, than versions of Internalism which make no such appeal. Although affect doubtless has an important role to play in explaining moral motivation, we are sceptical that establishing any such role advances the debate. (shrink)

Jennifer Hornsby; V*—Which Physical Events are Mental Events?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 81, Issue 1, 1 June 1981, Pages 73–92, https://do.

Wherever philosophers disagree, one of the things at issue is likely to be what they disagree about, itself. In addition to asking whether moral realism is true, and which forms of moral realism are more likely to be true than others, we can also ask what it would mean for some form of moral realism to be true. The usual aspiration of such inquiry is to find definitions that all can agree on, so that we can use terms in a (...) uniform way. But we doubt that this aspiration is always possible, or even desirable. It will be our goal in this chapter to sketch out some of our reasons for such skepticism, and to lay out a picture of what philosophical inquiry can look like in metaethics and beyond, even when it is impossible to reach uniform agreement on the terms of the debate. (shrink)

Introduction -- From paideia to humanism -- Pietism and the problem of human craft (Menschen-Kunst) -- The harmonious harp-playing of humanity: J. G. Herder -- Ethical formation and the invention of the religion of art -- The rise of the Bildungsroman and the commodification of literature -- Authorship and its resignation in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister -- "The Bildung of self-consciousness itself towards science": Hegel.

One challenge posed by climate change education is that, despite the scientific consensus on human induced climate change, the issue is controversial and politicised. A recent poll conducted in the USA revealed that 45% of respondents did not believe that human activity is a key cause of climate change, while 8.3% denied that climate change was occurring at all. The poll also found that those with conservative political beliefs were far more likely to deny anthropogenic climate change. The controversial nature (...) of climate change is a double-edged sword for educators—offering both benefits and risks. Controversial topics can be engaging for students, allowing them to critically examine competing perspectives, justify opinions and, thus, develop and practice critical thinking skills. On the other hand, they may provoke classroom conflict and expose teachers to backlash from students, parents, colleagues or even members of the public, including accusations of indoctrination. This risk has resulted in some teachers adopting problematic approaches to teaching about climate change, such as presenting students with an impartial account of ‘both sides’ of the debate. Some climate change sceptics groups have even developed their own curriculum materials and lobbied for their implementation in schools in order to provide students with a ‘balanced’ account of the issue. These problems, and suggestions for overcoming them, are explored by several papers in this special issue. (shrink)

This article offers a new theory of suffering as significantly disrupted agency. In presenting it, I here make three significant contributions. First, I subject the leading account of suffering as undesired unpleasant experience (Brady, 2018) to its first dose of sustained scrutiny. Second and drawing on this discussion, I identify and liberate eight desiderata for any account of suffering. Third, I present the novel account of suffering as significantly disrupted agency and argue that it satisfies these desiderata. Moreover, I argue (...) that elaborating this proposal with a minimal model of agency allows us to capture both the suffering of a wide range of organisms and the complex dynamics of suffering as it is endured. I conclude by briefly highlighting some of the potential implications of the theory for further theoretical and practical inquiries. (shrink)

A stimulating and accessible introduction to feminist philosophy. The chapters are organised around key issues of practical significance. Clear arguments are provided for a variety of feminist positions, drawing upon up-to-date empirical research. No background in feminism or philosophy is needed, and the clarity of the narrative ensures that Feminism: Issues and Arguments will appeal to a wide audience.

Promiscuous realism is the thesis that there are many equally legitimate ways of classifying the world’s entities. Advocates of promiscuous realism are typically taken to hold the further the- sis, often undistinguished, that kind terms usefully deployed in scientific generalisations are no more natural than those deployed for any other purposes. Call this further thesis promiscuous nat- uralism. I here defend a version of promiscuous realism which denies promiscuous naturalism. To do so, I introduce the notion of a promiscuous kind: (...) a kind that is maximally usefully referenced in predictive and explanatory generalisations, none of which are scientific generalisations. I first defend the claim that pain is a promiscuous kind before extending these considerations to everyday mental kinds more generally. I draw on further reflections from both everyday life and contem- porary psychology to make credible the novel suggestion that our everyday theory of our minds is for the explanation and prediction of individuals. Combined with the complex idiosyncrasy of individual minds, this suggested aim of everyday theory gives us reason to think that promiscuity is prevalent among everyday mental kinds. (shrink)

This volume argues that educational problems have their basis in an ideology of binary opposites often referred to as dualism, and that it is partly because mainstream schooling incorporates dualism that it is unable to facilitate the thinking skills, dispositions and understandings necessary for autonomy, democratic citizenship and leading a meaningful life. Bleazby proposes an approach to schooling termed social reconstruction learning, in which students engage in philosophical inquiries with members of their community in order to reconstruct real social problems, (...) arguing that this pedagogy can better facilitate independent thinking, imaginativeness, emotional intelligence, autonomy, and active citizenship. (shrink)

Kieran Egan states that imagination "is a concept that has come down to us with a history of suspicion and mistrust" (2007, p. 4). Like experience and the emotions, the imagination is frequently thought to be an obstacle to reason. While reason is conceived of as an abstract, objective and rule-governed method of delivering absolute truths, the imagination is considered "unconstrained, arbitrary, and fanciful," as well as "particular, subjective, and idiosyncratic" (Jo 2002, p. 39). This negative view of the imagination (...) can be traced back at least as far as Plato, and it is still evident in contemporary educational ideas and practices. Dominant approaches to schooling emphasize the accumulation of facts and the .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 57-62 [Access article in PDF] Listening to People Or Listening to Prozac?Another Consideration of Causal Classifications Jennifer Hansen Keywords causal classification, descriptivism, melancholia, neurasthenia, depression, cultural relativism. The shape and detail of depression have gone through a thousand cartwheels, and the treatment of depression has alternated between the ridiculous and the sublime, but the excessive sleeping, inadequate eating, suicidiality, withdrawal from social (...) interaction, and relentless despair are all as old as the hill tribes, if not as old as the hills. In the years since man achieved the capacity for self-reference, shame has come and gone; treatments for bodily complaints have alternated and crossed with treatments for spiritual ones; pleas to external gods have echoed pleas to internal demons. To understand the history of depression is to understand the invention of human being as we now know and are him. Our Prozac-popping, cognitively focused, semi-alienated postmodernity is only a stage in the ongoing understanding and control of mood and character. (Solomon 2001, 286) ALTHOUGH ANDREW SOLOMON clearly believes that "the shape and detail of depression have gone through a thousand cartwheels," Jennifer Radden gives us pause before assuming that depression is just another name for Dame Melancholy. Solomon's claim depends on a deeper metaphysical claim about the nature of depression and its causes. The current method of psychiatric nosology, descriptivism, does not necessarily support equating melancholia and depression. Furthermore, it appears that adopting descriptivism as the sole method of classifying mental disorders commits us to cultural relativist psychiatry. Below I reconsider whether we want to rule out causal classifications and suggest that embracing both descriptivism and causal classifications offer us greater possibilities in understanding human illness and culture.Although the occasion for Jennifer Radden's essay is to investigate whether or not melancholia and depression refer to the same thing, her essay detours into a consideration of extra-descriptivist models of psychiatric illness versus the descriptivism of current psychiatric nosology. This detour turns out to be warranted; her purely academic question yields to a timelier question concerning the proper methodology for classifying mental disorders. Whereas debates about psychiatric nosology are perennial, the recent success of the new generation of antidepressants [End Page 57] is reviving biological psychiatry and its search for the neurochemical origins of depression. Hence, embedded in Radden's question concerning whether or not melancholia is the same thing as clinical depression, is another important question concerning the causes of mental illness, particularly depression.Currently, with its descriptivist approach, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) does not classify mental illness, such as clinical depression, based on underlying causes. The cluster of symptoms and behavioral signs that lead a clinician to diagnose one as depressed that are contained in either the DSM or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) may be too fuzzy or elusive to give any clear distinction between major depression, mild depression, and the blues. For example, one group of epidemiologists points out that [t]he DSM-III, DSM-III-R, and DSM-IV acknowledge that depression, like many mental disorders, has no currently obvious natural classes... If natural classes of depression exist, then their nosology awaits the discovery of distinct and reliable genetic, biological, clinical, or other predictors of risk, severity, or clinical course. Clinicians have a tradition of separating depressions into subtypes; however, this subtyping has not yet led to clear-cut delineations of syndromes in populations. (Kaelber 1995, 4) The evidence is still insufficient to establish the biological or psychological origins of depression. Although many theories exist that explain why people become depressed, scientifically we are not yet in a position to determine which is the right theory. From a pragmatic perspective, however, whether or not we know what causes depression, we can nonetheless attempt to alleviate suffering from depression. And it is with this goal in mind that the DSM-IV and ICD-10 classify mental disorders.Now, given that our current methodology for psychiatric nosology does not establish causes, it is also insufficient for determining what... (shrink)

Although early emotion theorists posited that bodily changes contribute to emotion, the primary view in affective science over the last century has been that emotions produce bodily changes. Recent findings from physiology, neuroscience, and neuropsychology support the early intuition that body representations can help constitute emotion. These findings are consistent with the modern psychological constructionist hypothesis that emotions emerge when representations of bodily changes are conceptualized as an instance of emotion. We begin by introducing the psychological constructionist approach to emotion. (...) With Schachter as inspiration, we next examine how embodied representations contribute to affective states, and ultimately emotion, with inflammation as a key example. We close by looking forward to future research on how body representations contribute to human experience. (shrink)

Ethical codes have been hailed as an explicit vehicle for achieving more sustainable and defensible organizational practice. Nonetheless, when legal compliance and corporate governance codes are conflated, codes can be used to define organizational interests ostentatiously by stipulating norms for employee ethics. Such codes have a largely cosmetic and insurance function, acting subtly and strategically to control organizational risk management and protection. In this paper, we conduct a genealogical discourse analysis of a representative code of ethics from an international corporation (...) to understand how management frames expectations of compliance. Our contribution is to articulate the problems inherent in codes of ethics, and we make some recommendations to address these to benefit both an organization and its employees. In this way, we show how a code of ethics can provide a foundation for ethical sustainability, while addressing management intentions and employees’ ethical satisfaction. (shrink)

Jennifer Homsby; The Facts in Question: A Response to Dodd and to Candlish, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1, 1 June 1999, Pages 241–.

Industrial agriculture has extensive environmental and social costs, and efforts to create alternative farming systems are widespread if not yet widely successful. This study explored how a set of grain farmers and rotational graziers in Iowa transitioned to agroecological management practices. Our focus on the resources and strategies that farmers mobilized to develop opportunities for, and overcome barriers to, transitioning to alternative practices allows us to go beyond the existing literature focused on why farmers transition. We attend to both the (...) ecological and socioeconomic context of innovation by comparing processes of technical change in two contrasting regions of Iowa. Farmers cultivated farm-level biodiversity and enterprise diversity, developed new cognitive and psychological competencies, and overcame barriers to innovation by developing external network linkages with peers, knowledge organizations, and federal policies. Our research provides insights into how biophysical, cognitive, structural and market considerations can be integrated into research efforts that aim to make sense of innovation toward sustainable agriculture. (shrink)

This collection provides readings from five classic thinkers with importantly distinct approaches to virtue theory, along with five new essays from contemporary thinkers that apply virtue theories to the resolution of practical moral problems. Jennifer Welchman's Introduction discusses the history of virtue theory. A short introduction to each reading highlights the distinctive aspects of the view expressed.

It is well established that language production and comprehension are influenced by information status, for example, whether information is given, new, topical, or predictable, and many scholars suggest that an important component of information status is keeping track of what information is in common ground, and what is not. Information status affects both speakers' choices and how listeners interpret the speaker's meaning. Although there is a wealth of scholarly work on information status, there is no consensus on the mechanisms by (...) which it is used, and in fact relatively little discussion of the underlying representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms. Moreover, a major challenge to understanding information status is that its effects are notoriously variable. This study considers existing proposals about information status, focusing on two questions: how is it represented; and by what mechanisms is it used? I propose that it is important to consider whether representations and mechanisms can be classified as either explicit or emergent. Based on a review of existing evidence, I argue that information status representations are most likely emergent, but the mechanisms by which they are used are both explicit and emergent. This review provides one of the first considerations of information status processing across multiple domains. (shrink)

Consecutive measurements performed on the same quantum system can reveal fundamental insights into quantum theory’s causal structure, and probe different aspects of the quantum measurement problem. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, measurements affect the quantum system in such a way that the quantum superposition collapses after each measurement, erasing any memory of the prior state. We show here that counter to this view, un-amplified measurements have coherent ancilla density matrices that encode the memory of the entire set of quantum measurements (...) that came before, and that the chain of this entire set is therefore non-Markovian. In contrast, sequences of amplified measurements are equivalent to a quantum Markov chain. We argue that the non-Markovian nature of quantum measurement has empirical consequences that are incompatible with the assumption of wave function collapse, thus elevating the collapse assumption into a testable hypothesis. Finally, we find that all of the information necessary to reconstruct an arbitrary non-Markovian quantum chain of measurements is encoded on the boundary of that chain, reminiscent of the holographic principle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 63-66 [Access article in PDF] The Pragmatics of Psychiatry and the Psychiatry of Cross-Cultural Suffering Jennifer Radden I AM IN SUBSTANTIAL AGREEMENT with many of the conclusions David Brendel draws in his thoughtful discussion. Misleading language aside, I particularly applaud his use of my plea for ontological descriptivism to support clinical practice, which respects, as he puts it, the subjectively "melancholic" person (...) living behind the objectively "depressed" clinical presentation.Brendel offers two main critiques of my discussion about the relationship between today's depression and melancholia of past eras. First, he asserts that I neglect the relevance of causal reasoning in my preference for a descriptivist over a causal ontology. Second, arguing that pragmatic considerations ought to be, as he says, front and center when philosophers and psychiatrists "grapple with the complexities of psychiatric explanation," (Brendel 2003, 54) he questions what he sees as my too ready dismissal of pragmatism in this discussion. Allegiance to pragmatism seems to me to sit strangely with support for a causal ontology, as I shall try to demonstrate. But first let me comment on these two sides of Brendel's commentary.The case of Van Gogh's alleged melancholia is particularly well chosen because there has been continuing debate about Van Gogh's condition, including scholarly work attributing it to an inherited metabolic disorder (Arnold 1992). Brendel's suggestion that a causal ontology might allow us to use historical evidence to throw light on the relation between depression and melancholia is an interesting and fruitful one that I had overlooked. Brendel also holds hope for drug cartography as a means of determining the causes of mental disorders. I admit to the initial plausibility of the approach to classification employed by drug cartography, of course. Diagnostic maps must be evaluated according to their effectiveness for the purposes they serve, and cannot—or should not—be seen as mere descriptions of natural phenomena. And maps based on psychopharmacological effects will serve one of the most important purposes we can have in relation to mental disorders: their successful treatment. Nonetheless, as I indicated in my essay, there are conceptual limitations to drug cartography. That several different syndromes respond to the same drug is suggestive, but it does not tell us anything definitive about structural similarities or differences between those different disorders. Nor, from the fact that a condition is alleviated by drugs, does it follow that a particular brain state was the initiating cause of that condition.My dismissal of a pragmatic approach in the foregoing discussion may have been overly hasty. [End Page 63] But in trying to make good this omission, I find myself struck by the complexity of the task. There appear to be at least five different places where a pragmatic response might be called for: (1) in deciding what to say about the relationship between depression and melancholia; (2) in determining the structure of any given psychiatric classification; (3) in choosing between what I have called descriptivist and causal ontologies; (4) in electing a course or method of treatment in the clinical context; and (5) in evaluating psychiatric explanations.With regard to (1), I have sketched in a note one pragmatic consideration in favor of equating melancholia and depression: by so doing, we might reinvest depressive states with some of the glamorous associations from the past and so diminish the stigma and provide some compensation and consolation for the suffering attaching to depression. Pragmatic reasoning may be perfectly appropriate here. I beg to point out that pragmatic considerations let me neglect it.With regard to (2), I recognize that psychiatric classifications are not so much identifications of natural kinds as responses to our various purposes; indeed, this point is offered as one drawback of adopting a causal analysis, because there is little reason to expect our purposes, which are a product of culture, to correspond to natural arrangements, which are not.With regard to (3), if there were overriding pragmatic considerations that favored accepting one or the other of these ontologies, then perhaps this would be... (shrink)

Henry et al. (2007) claim they are concerned with the overmedicalization of bad memories and its subsequent exploitation by the pharmaceutical industry. However, they downplay the contributing role...

James Frederick Ferrier developed his philosophy from a common sense background. However, his rejection of common sense philosophy in particular and Enlightenment philosophy in general results in the development of a system of idealism. In his series of lectures ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness - Parts I to VII’, which appeared in Blackwoods Magazine (1838–39), he outlines the problem with modern philosophy and argues that philosophy should follow a new direction. In his view, the most peculiar and interesting (...) aspect of humanity is consciousness. He contends that the attempt to develop a ‘science of man’ is impossible because it transforms a person into an object of study and thereby fails to capture the most distinctive aspect of humanity, namely, consciousness. According to Ferrier, philosophy should be an extension of consciousness itself; it is: ‘consciousness sublimed’. This paper will outline the central arguments in ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness’ and show that an early example of British idealism was not only developed out of the common sense tradition but shares with common sense philosophy a focus on the immediate evidence of consciousness, placing the relationship between thought and world at the centre of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that reference to a developmental account of agency can help explain, and in cases also alter, our current practices when it comes to the non-consensual medical treatment of children. It does this through its explanation of how stages of development impact the types of interests we have.

Despite the scientific consensus, climate change continues to be socially and politically controversial. Consequently, teachers may worry about accusations of political indoctrination if they teach climate change in their classrooms. Research shows that many teachers are using the ‘teaching the controversy’ approach to teach climate change, essentially allowing students to make up their own mind about climate change. Drawing on some philosophical literature about indoctrination and controversial issues, we argue that such an approach is inappropriate and, given the escalating crisis (...) that is climate change, potentially dangerous. Instead, we propose integrating three well-established educational practices, Philosophy for Children, place-responsive pedagogies, and Critical Indigenous Pedagogy, to help teachers and students critically examine climate change controversy while still meeting the key goals of climate change education. (shrink)

The increased use of anonymous digital platforms raises substantive concerns about accountability in digital spaces. However, contemporary evaluations of anonymity focus too narrowly on its protective function: its ability to protect a diversity of speakers and ideas. Drawing on two examples of anonymous political engagements – Publius’s writing of the Federalist Papers and college students’ use of the social media platform Yik Yak – we develop an account of anonymity’s associational function: the processes by which people generate and negotiate collective (...) identities, discussions, and actions in wider publics. As we argue, anonymity’s associational function can generate conditions under which individuals develop collective interests and identities to foster collective action, and enable novel interactions between these individuals and communities and the larger publics of which they are part. We conclude with a discussion of how attention to associational anonymity can contribute to a more nuanced account of democracy in practice. (shrink)

This chapter examines key arguments for and against the teaching of religion, atheism, and philosophy‐based ethics in schools. These arguments are examined within the context of the controversy that erupted when an ethics curriculum was introduced into state primary schools in New South Wales, Australia, in 2010. This ethics curriculum is an alternative to special religious education (i.e., religious education that aims to inculcate students with the beliefs of one faith). During the debate that ensued, well‐known arguments relating to the (...) teaching of religion, atheism, and ethics in schools were presented. An analysis of this case demonstrates the relevance of these arguments within a contemporary, largely secularized society. A Deweyian theoretical framework is used to evaluate the educational value of these two curricula and to argue that all students should partake in a general philosophy course where a range of religious beliefs are critically examined and compared to atheism. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 8, Page 33-35, August 2011.

This article examines the concerns and debates that have arisen in African philosophy over the last few decades, and asks whether it continues to be necessary for African philosophy to take on what the author calls “perverse questions” or “perverse preoccupations” with the West. The author argues that to engage and respond to questions about the intellectual capabilities of African thinkers or the possible existence of philosophical resources in African cultures is to respond to perverse questions. To engage in academic (...) dialogues implicitly or explicitly guided by a request or a felt need to justify and defend the very possibility of African philosophy or African rationality is to engage in perverse and unnecessary dialogues. Because these perverse debates often precede, prevent, or condition the formulation of what count as necessary debates, it is important that they be identified and critically assessed, and when possible, dispensed with. Only then can African philosophy pursue necessary and fruitful debates. (shrink)