Quinn presents a radical new perspective on the interrelationships between education and culture. Rather than viewing education in isolation from major cultural debates, she demonstrates how culture shapes education and education shapes culture. Cultural perspectives and rich empirical data from a wide range of research with learners in university, voluntary, community and work settings are used to provide a bridge between cultural theory and the embodied worlds of learners. Drawing vivid links with other cultural evidence from literature and popular (...) culture, this book convincingly shows how anti-realist theory can produce positive material changes both in education and society. (shrink)

With the blossoming of research on corporate social performance, the data produced by Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini have become the standard to measure firms’ social and stakeholder actions. However, to date, only a few studies have focused on examining the data directly, and have done so largely in terms of validating the concepts and methods in the data set’s construction. The present study seeks to complement these efforts by contributing knowledge about what the KLD data report on firms’ actions toward primary (...) and secondary stakeholders, and the dimensions of CSP that firms generally engage in, together or sequentially. With data on 3,073 firms over the period 2000-2010, results show that firms expend more resources on garnering strengths in primary stakeholder dimensions, although this trend is sharply deteriorating to the benefit of secondary stakeholders—notably the natural environment. Results also show that firms generally approach CSP with a mixed behavior, with strengths and concerns in the same dimensions, especially as it pertains to secondary stakeholders. These are the same dimensions in which firms show the longer, more intrinsic commitments, suggesting that secondary stakeholder strengths and concerns may be structural in nature. However, there is also evidence of relationships across dimensions, indicating that firms’ involvement in CSP can generate momentum. The rich implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Interventional clinical studies of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19 were predominantly funded and led by public sector actors, including blood services operators. We aimed to analyze the processes of clinical studies of convalescent plasma to understand alternatives to pharmaceutical industry biopharmaceutical research and development, particularly where public sector actors play a dominant role. We conducted a qualitative, critical case study of purposively sampled prominent and impactful clinical studies of convalescent plasma during 2020-2021.

This paper raises a slightly uncomfortable question: are some delusional subjects responsible for their delusions? This question is uncomfortable because we typically think that the answer is pretty clearly just ‘no’. However, we also accept that self-deception is paradigmatically intentional behavior for which the self-deceiver is prima facie blameworthy. Thus, if there is overlap between self-deception and delusion, this will put pressure on our initial answer. This paper argues that there is indeed such overlap by offering a novel philosophical account (...) of self-deception. The account offered is independently plausible and avoids the main problems that plague other views. It also yields the result that some delusional subjects are self-deceived. The conclusion is not, however, that those subjects are blameworthy. Rather, a distinction is made between blameworthiness and ‘attributability’. States or actions can be significantly attributable to a subject—in the sense that they are expressions of their wills—without it being the case that the subject is blameworthy, if the subject has an appropriate excuse. Understanding delusions within this framework of responsibility and excuses not only illuminates the ways in which the processes of delusional belief formation and maintenance are continuous with ‘ordinary’ processes of belief formation and maintenance, it also provides a way of understanding the innocence of the delusional subject that does not involve the denial of agency. (shrink)

It is a mistake to think that any philosophical contribution to the study of psychopathology is otiose. I identify three non-exhaustive roles that philosophy can and does occupy in the study of mental disorder, which I call the agenda-setting role, the synthetic role, and the regulative role. The three roles are illustrated via consideration of the importance of Jaspers' notion of understanding and its application to specific examples of mental disorder, including delusions of reference, Capgras delusion and other monothematic delusions, (...) and clinical depression. Together the three roles assign to philosophy of psychopathology the task of determining how to situate the varieties of mental disorder within the system of interpretive and evaluative concepts that partially make up the dynamic but indispensable manifest image. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against three leading accounts of self-deception in the philosophical literature and propose a heretofore overlooked route to self-deception. The central problem with extant accounts of self-deception is that they are unable to balance two crucial desiderata: (1) to make the dynamics of self-deception (e.g., the formation of self-deceptive beliefs) psychologically plausible and (2) to capture self-deception as an intentional phenomenon for which the self-deceiver is responsible. I argue that the three leading views all fail on (...) one or both counts. However, I claim that many or most cases of self-deception conform to a different model, which I call ‘Self-deception as Omission’. In these cases, the process of self-deceptive belief formation and the intentional act for which the self-deceiver is responsible come apart, allowing us to meet both desiderata. Self-deceptive beliefs are often formed by unconscious mechanisms closely analogous to the 'System 1' processes of dual-systems psychology, or by other mechanisms of motivated reasoning. The nascently self-deceptive subject then acquiesces in the comforting belief and commits an epistemic failure by allowing it to persist. If this is done for motivationally biased reasons — e.g., preferring that the belief in question be true — then the subject is self-deceived and is blameworthy for her epistemic omission. (shrink)

I welcome many of the conclusions of May's book, but I offer a suggestion – and with it what I take to be a complementary strategy – concerning the core commitments of rationalism across the domains of moral psychology in the hopes of better illuminating why a rationalist picture of the mind can deliver us from pessimism.

The consideration of the problem of healthcare allocation as a special case of distributive justice is especially alluring when we only consider consequentialist theories. I articulate here an alternative Rawlsian non-consequentialist theory which prioritizes the fairness of healthcare allocation procedures rather than directly setting distributive parameters. The theory in question stems from Rawlsian commitments that, it is argued, have a better Rawlsian pedigree than those considered as such by Tännsjö. The alternative framework is worthy of consideration on its own merits, (...) but it also casts light on two related difficulties with Tännsjö’s approach: (i) the limits of his supposedly ecumenical methodology, which is revealed to be dialectically suspect and (ii) issues with the type of abstraction and idealization from actual judgements and preferences which the approach requires. (shrink)

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a serious condition with a large disease burden. It is often claimed that MDD is a “brain disease.” What would it mean for MDD to be a brain disease? I argue that the best interpretation of this claim is as offering a substantive empirical hypothesis about the causes of the syndrome of depression. This syndrome-causal conception of disease, combined with the idea that MDD is a disease of the brain, commits the brain disease conception of (...) MDD to the claim that brain dysfunction causes the symptoms of MDD. I argue that this consequence of the brain disease conception of MDD is false. It incorrectly rules out genuine instances of content-sensitive causation between adverse conditions in the world and the characteristic symptoms of MDD. Empirical evidence shows that the major causes of depression are genuinely psychological causes of the symptoms of MDD. This rules out, in many cases, the “brute” causation required by the brain disease conception. The existence of cases of MDD with non-brute causes supports the reinstatement of the old nosological distinction between endogenous and exogenous depression. (shrink)

This paper attempts three things. It invites you to engage critically with me in the adjudication of a particular controversy. It attempts to argue for and exemplify important procedures which distinguish good and bad thinking in a critical mode. And it argues the case for the separate teaching of critical thinking (henceforth CT).

This paper argues that many so-called digital technologies can be construed as notational technologies, explored through the example of Monegraph, an art and digital asset management platform built on top of the blockchain system originally developed for the cryptocurrency bitcoin. As the paper characterizes it, a notational technology is the performance of syntactic notation within a field of reference, a technologized version of what Nelson Goodman called a “notational system.” Notational technologies produce abstracted entities through positive and reliable, or constitutive, (...) tests of socially acceptable meaning. Accordingly, this account deviates from typical narratives of blockchains, instead demonstrating that blockchain technologies are effective at managing digital assets because they produce abstracted identities through the performance of notation. Since notational technologies rely on configurations of socially acceptable meaning, this paper also provides a philosophical account of how blockchain technologies are socially embedded. (shrink)

McCradden and colleagues' (2022) argues that machine learning in health care poses new challenges to appropriate evaluation for safe use in clinical care. It also claims that “the longstanding syst...

Do the ethical features of an artwork bear on its aesthetic value? This movie endorses misogyny, that song is a civil rights anthem, the clay constituting this statue was extracted with underpaid labor—are facts like these the proper bases for aesthetic evaluation? I argue that this debate has suffered from a false presupposition: that if the answer is yes (for at least some such ethical features), such considerations feature as pro tanto contributions to an artwork's overall aesthetic value, i.e., as (...) merits or flaws which make something have more or less overall aesthetic value. As the case of ethically laden, aesthetic evaluation makes clear, however, good aesthetic judgement is irreducibly multi-dimensional, e.g., "the movie has an engaging soundtrack, tasteful camera work, and takes a misogynistically prurient perspective on its female lead.'' Such a "non-summative" judgement refuses to reduce those various dimensions of aesthetic value to a single aggregate aesthetic evaluation, like "it's a 6/10" or "it's a pretty good movie!" I defend both the modest claim that such non-summative evaluations are not mistaken and the extremist claim that summative (i.e., unidimensional) aesthetic evaluation is defective by considering other domains of normative assessment in which summing seems inappropriate, notably including evaluations of people's character. (shrink)

Despite how he begins, suggesting that it is somehow a problem for me that I think "there is such a thing as philosophy, which could then be useful for psychopathology," ultimately it is clear that the possibility of philosophy is not the issue for Ghaemi. Rather, his issue is with academic philosophy of psychiatry, as he sees it, and with my failure to ask what underlying assumptions typically operate in it.I do not dispute that someone like Jaspers would want to (...) ask such a question, nor do I dispute that it is, in general, a perfectly good question. But Ghaemi thinks that my paper is missing out on something by not posing it. The reason he thinks this is because he thinks my paper is an instance of a pattern in the discipline against which he evidently has an axe to grind. In particular, he thinks philosophy in general should be more attendant to the ways in which Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) categories are (problematically) socially constructed. The fact that philosophers have failed to critically point this out allegedly shows philosophy of psychiatry's— and my—unexamined sympathy with the postmodern tendencies—understood as tendencies toward "relativism about truth" and "skepticism about science"—of psychiatry itself. This is odd for a number of reasons, especially in the present context. Firstly, I am not presently in a position to exhaustively defend all of philosophy of psychiatry on the charge of 'postmodernism,' or on the charge of failure to critically engage with the DSM, but it is worth simply stating that I find these to be rather patently unsubstantiated charges. Prominent works that falsify the latter and easily come to mind are by Tsou (2011), Cooper (2004, 2007), Horwitz and Wakefield (2007), Murphy (2006), Poland and von Eckhardt (2013), and Lalumera (2016). Of these, only Lalumera is interested in defending a DSM-style descriptivism (which perhaps Ghaemi would call a kind of "social constructionism"), but even she limits her defense of DSM categories to their role as reference-fixing representations. It is also true that Tsou's paper is an argument that the practical considerations which go into shaping the DSM categories sometimes represent values that permissibly operate in psychiatry. Perhaps this could be construed as a kind of social constructionism as well, and presumably Ghaemi would disagree with it, but no one here is guilty of a failure to engage critically with the DSM and its history. Further, whichever position is taken by these theorists on whether the DSM does, or even one day could, cut nature at its joints, or whether some of the values that shape its construction do so permissibly or impermissibly, one's acceptance or rejection of relativism about truth is an entirely logically independent matter. (shrink)

Though addiction is a complex empirical phenomenon, some of the most pressing questions about it concern how we should evaluate agents who are living with it. To that end, a fruitful methodology is to tease out from our best sciences consequences at the level of moral psychology. Taking account of epidemiology, behavioral science, animal studies and, chiefly, neuroscience, I argue for a view according to which addiction involves dysfunctional motivational states (which I call “hybrid intentions”) as well as cognitive distortions. (...) This argument can be made without needing to settle the traditional debate about whether addiction is a disease. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Understanding, The Manifest Image, and 'Postmodernism' in Philosophy of PsychiatryThe author reports no conflicts of interest.Despite how he begins, suggesting that it is somehow a problem for me that I think "there is such a thing as philosophy, which could then be useful for psychopathology," (Ghaemi, 2024 p. 17, emphasis added), ultimately it is clear that the possibility of philosophy is not the issue for Ghaemi. Rather, his issue (...) is with academic philosophy of psychiatry, as he sees it, and with my failure to ask what underlying assumptions typically operate in it.I do not dispute that someone like Jaspers would want to ask such a question, nor do I dispute that it is, in general, a perfectly good question. But Ghaemi thinks that my paper is missing out on something by not posing it. The reason he thinks this is because he thinks my paper is an instance of a pattern in the discipline against which he evidently has an axe to grind. In particular, he thinks philosophy in general should be more attendant to the ways in which Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) categories are (problematically) socially constructed. The fact that philosophers have failed to critically point this out allegedly shows philosophy of psychiatry's— and my—unexamined sympathy with the postmodern tendencies—understood as tendencies toward "relativism about truth" and "skepticism about science"—of psychiatry itself.This is odd for a number of reasons, especially in the present context. Firstly, I am not presently in a position to exhaustively defend all of philosophy of psychiatry on the charge of 'postmodernism,' or on the charge of failure to critically engage with the DSM, but it is worth simply stating that I find these to be rather patently unsubstantiated charges. Prominent works that falsify the latter and easily come to mind are by Tsou (2011), Cooper (2004, 2007), Horwitz and Wakefield (2007), Murphy (2006), Poland and von Eckhardt (2013), and Lalumera (2016). Of these, only Lalumera is interested in defending a DSM-style descriptivism (which perhaps Ghaemi would call a kind of "social constructionism"), but even she limits her defense of DSM categories to their role as reference-fixing representations. It is also true that Tsou's paper is an argument that the practical [End Page 21] considerations which go into shaping the DSM categories sometimes represent values that permissibly operate in psychiatry. Perhaps this could be construed as a kind of social constructionism as well, and presumably Ghaemi would disagree with it, but no one here is guilty of a failure to engage critically with the DSM and its history.Further, whichever position is taken by these theorists on whether the DSM does, or even one day could, cut nature at its joints, or whether some of the values that shape its construction do so permissibly or impermissibly, one's acceptance or rejection of relativism about truth is an entirely logically independent matter. I am certainly not committed to relativism about truth by anything that I say in the paper.Ghaemi is motivated to target these general criticisms at me largely because he sees me invoking the DSM conception of clinical depression. It is worth pointing out that what I say about clinical depression is somewhat secondary to the paper's main argument, about which Ghaemi has nothing to say. But more puzzling still, the terms to which he seems to be reacting, namely, 'major depressive disorder' and 'MDD,' do not actually appear in my paper, so even the connection between my work and the (unsubstantiated) general trends he wishes to indict is obscure. (Those terms do appear in other work of mine, some of which I cite, so perhaps he is somehow reacting to what I have written there, but he does not say this.) In the present context, I use 'depression' and 'clinical depression,' terms that were chosen for their theoretical neutrality and independence from the DSM. The point in that section is simply that whatever purely descriptive conception of clinical depression one is working with, a fair number of problematic ideas will need to be invoked to get to the conclusion that there is anything disordered or dysfunctional about... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Good and Evil: Interpreting a Human Condition. By EDWARD FARLEY. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1990. Pp. xxi + 295. The Evils of Theodicy. By TERRENCE W. TILLEY. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990. Pp. xii + 277. The Co-Existence of God and Evil. By JANE MARY TRAU. New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, 1991. Pp. 109. Evil is deeply and endlessly fascinating to the religious mind. On the (...) one hand, it challenges religion. The existence of the evils within our ken poses a threat to the rationality of central tenets of theism; the presence of overwhelming evils within our lives can threaten the viabil· ity of our religious attitudes and practices. On the other hand, religions typically offer strategies for coping with evil. They propose explanations of its origins that may aid us in understanding it, and they con· tain salvific practices that are meant to lead to redemption from sin or the cessation of suffering. So religious responses to evil are bound to be complex, and this complexity will inevitably be reflected in the treatment of evil in academic discourses. In addition, the present academic division of labor results in religion being studied in many disciplines. Each of them has its own traditions and agendas, and this often leads to a diversity of approaches that gives interdisciplinary dis· cussion of religious responses to evil something of the air of conversa· tion after Babel. The three books under review here, which represent the disciplines of philosophy, religious studies, and theology, illustrate nicely both the complexity and the diversity. Jane Mary Trau, who is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Barry University, has written a short essay in analytic philosophy of religion proposing a solution to the logical problem of evil. The problem arises from the fact that there are arguments purporting to show that the proposition that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent is inconsistent with the proposition that evil exists. One way to solve the problem would be to find a possibly true proposition such that it is consistent with the proposition ·that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent and together with that proposition entails that evil exists. Alvin Plantinga's celebrated free-will defense offers a solution of this sort. Trau's alternative solution is a version of the familiar greater-goods defense. Trau's main claim is that it is possible that evil has positive value. An evil has positive value if it is logically necessary for some greater 525 526 BOOK REVIEWS good, and it certainly seems to he possible that some evils have positive value. Thus, for example, suppose God creates nothing other than two angels, A and B. Nothing interrupts the felicity of either hut a mild pang of sorrow felt by A, to which B responds with compassion. A's sorrow is logically necessary for the greater good of B's compassionate response to A's sorrow. Hence A's sorrow is an evil that has positive value. Moreover, the proposition that evils with positive value exist is consistent with the proposition that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnihenevolent. So the existence of evil is consistent with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnihenevolent deity. In other words, Trau's version of the greater-goods defense does seem to provide a solution to the logical problem of evil. But that is not to say that all the evils there actually are or even all those we know about do or could have positive value. Thus it does not follow, without further assumptions, that the existence of all the evils there actually are is consistent with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnihenevolent deity. In a discussion of natural evil near the end of her hook, Trau acknowledges the need for such additional assumptions. She says: "Four assumptions underlie the claim that natural evils have positive value: (1) The material universe has positive value. (2) The material universe must function in a way that requires the occurrence of natural evils as secondary effects. (3) The material universe is either the best or the only possible universe. (4) If the universe as we know it did not function the way it does... (shrink)

In the acknowledgments at the beginning of Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics, Robert Merrihew Adams remarks that he has “taught and written about the topics of this book for approximately thirty years.” He lists there eighteen previously published journal articles or book chapters on which the book draws; it integrates material from these publications into the framework of its subtitle. The book deserves a holistic evaluation. Unfortunately, for lack of space, I cannot perform that task here. Being (...) forced to focus more narrowly, I shall discuss only the divine command account of obligation formulated and defended in the book’s third section. My aim is to raise but not to settle issues both about the way Adams formulates his account and about the defense of it he offers. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that warrant for Lewis’ principle of recombination presupposes warrant for a combinatorial analysis of intrinsicality, which in turn presupposes warrant for the principle of recombination. This, I claim, leads to a vicious circularity: warrant for neither doctrine can get off the ground.

This book provides a unique examination on the ways in which educating the whole child in the community school serves to ameliorate the conditions of poverty and obstacles to learning faced by students. Using a case study approach the book will highlight the successful journey of one school that transformed itself into a "community" school.

Management Ethics: Integrity at Work redefines what it means for a manager to function with integrity in the private and public sectorsùdomestically and globally. It integrates the latest theoretical work in both descriptive and normative ethics, and incorporates legal, communication, quality, and organizational theories into a conceptual framework that improves managerial judgment in the handling of moral complexity at work. The authors use their organizational ethics consulting and academic research experience to provide practical assessment and decision-making tools that convert ethics (...) theories into sound action steps. The book examines three key dimensions of management integrityùjudgment, process, and developmental dimensionsùand applies them to individual chapters devoted to the subprocesses of ethical planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. The authors focus their theories and tools on 28 ethics minicases related to each management function in seven allied management application clusters: accounting, auditing management; finance, investment management; marketing, advertising management; business management, business law, human resource management; technology, quality operations, organizational behavior management; public, nonprofit, health care management; and international, environmental, public policy management. Management Ethics: Integrity at Work builds management integrity by linking and enhancing both ethics and management competence in responsible planning, organizing, leading, and controlling for use by professionals and students in the private and public sectorsùdomestically and globally. (shrink)

Philip Quinn, John A. O’Brien Professor at the University of Notre Dame from 1985 until his death in 2004, was well known for his work in the philosophy of religion, political philosophy, and core areas of analytic philosophy. Although the breadth of his interests was so great that it would be virtually impossible to identify any subset of them as representative, the contributors to this volume provide an excellent introduction to, and advance the discussion of, some of the questions (...) of central importance to Quinn in the last years of his working life. Paul J. Weithman argues in his introduction that Quinn’s interest and analyses in many areas grew out of a distinctive and underlying sensibility that we might call “liberal faith.” It included belief in the value of a liberal education and in rigorous intellectual inquiry, the acceptance of enduring religious, cultural, and political pluralism, along with a keen awareness of problems posed by pluralism, and a deeply held but non-utopian faith in liberal democratic politics. These provocative essays, at the cutting edge of epistemology, the philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and political philosophy, explore the tenets of liberal faith and invite continuing engagement with the philosophical issues. “Philip Quinn was admired enormously throughout the world of professional philosophy.... His reputation for rigor, his tireless service to the profession, and his essentially ‘non-dogmatic,’ but philosophically sophisticated faith is widely admired... The essays in this volume are first-rate contemporary philosophy along with an excellent introduction to Quinn’s work.” —_Charles Taliaferro, St. Olaf College_ "The papers that form _Liberal Faith_ give insightful treatments of three types of questions: first, how can we conscientiously believe something when there are many people we admire who do not believe it, and what is the underlying relation here between justification and rationality; second, what does it mean to desire union with God, and can Christians properly believe in the possibility of eternal self-annihilation; third, how should liberal democracy accommodate the religious convictions of its members, whether some comprehensive doctrine such as a religion is required to justify a commitment to human equality, and whether there is an absolute moral prohibition on the state use of torture. The volume has an unusually good introduction putting the papers into dialog with each other and with the work of Philip Quinn. The papers are cohesive because the central themes of Philip Quinn's work hold together into a picture of how Christianity and Liberal Democracy fit together." —_John Hare, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology, Yale Divinity School _ “This is a collection of high quality essays dealing with various topics related to Philip Quinn’s work. The book makes an original contribution by virtue of its individual papers, each of which is new. These essays will be of interest to scholars and students who followed Quinn’s work, especially in philosophy of religion and political philosophy.“ —_John Greco, The Leonard and Elizabeth Eslick Chair in Philosophy, Saint Louis University _. (shrink)

Warren Quinn was widely regarded as a moral philosopher of remarkable talent. This collection of his most important contributions to moral philosophy and the philosophy of action has been edited for publication by Philippa Foot. Quinn laid out the foundations for an anti-utilitarian moral philosophy that was critical of much contemporary work in ethics, such as the anti-realism of Gilbert Harman and the neo-subjectivism of Bernard Williams. Quinn's own distinctive moral theory is developed in the discussion of (...) substantial, practical moral issues. For example, there are important pieces here on the permissibility of abortion, the justification of punishing criminals when no particular good seems likely to result, and on the distinction between killing and allowing to die, a distinction crucial to the subject of euthanasia and other topics in medical ethics. The volume would be ideally suited to upper-level undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on the foundations of ethics. (shrink)

Polynomial clone reducibilities are generalizations of the truth-table reducibilities. A polynomial clone is a set of functions over a finite set X that is closed under composition and contains all the constant and projection functions. For a fixed polynomial clone ${\fancyscript{C}}$ , a sequence ${B\in X^{\omega}}$ is ${\fancyscript{C}}$ -reducible to ${A \in {X}^{\omega}}$ if there is an algorithm that computes B from A using only effectively selected functions from ${\fancyscript{C}}$ . We show that if A is Kurtz random and ${\fancyscript{C}_{1} (...) \nsubseteq \fancyscript{C}_{2}}$ are polynomial clones, then there is a B that is ${\fancyscript{C}_{1}}$ -reducible to A but not ${\fancyscript{C}_{2}}$ -reducible to A. This implies a generalization of a result first proved by Lachlan (Z Math Logik Grundlagen Math 11:17–44, 1965) for the case |X| = 2. We also show that the same result holds if Kurtz random is replaced by Kolmogorov–Loveland stochastic. (shrink)