In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 294-298 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women The Changing Tradition: Women in the History of Rhetoric Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Andrea A. Lunsford. Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1995. Pp. xiv + 354. $22.95 paperback; $59.95 (...) cloth. Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women. Ed. Molly Meijer Wertheimer. University of South Carolina Series in Rhetoric/Communication. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 1997. Pp. xii + 408. NP. The Changing Tradition: Women in the History of Rhetoric. Ed. Christine Mason Sutherland and Rebecca Sutcliffe. Calgary, Alberta: U of Calgary P, 1999. Pp. 279. NP. These three books, all published within the last five years, are both reflections of and important contributions to the growing scholarship on women's roles in rhetorical history as theorists and as practitioners. Indeed, the titles listed in chronological order--Reclaiming Rhetorica, Listening to Their Voices, and The Changing Tradition--suggest the process of transformation that the study of rhetorical history has undergone in recent years. Both individually and together, these works are a healthful antidote to the rhetorical history most of us learned at our (male) professors' knees.The books share certain features. As edited volumes, they span rhetorical history, from its classical roots to modern feminist theories. Although some figures appear more than once in different volumes (e.g., Aspasia and Mary Astell), the constraints of brief chapters permit us only tantalizing glimpses of each woman and her activities. Like all edited collections, these books include a variety of viewpoints and voices. Despite the disparity that is inevitable in a collection of essays, the quality of the work in these volumes is uniformly high. The editors of all three collections have done a nice job of assuring that the contributors stay to the point and write well without sacrificing scholarly precision. For those seeking a simple history or detailed analysis of any particular figure or time, these books will not suffice. But for most readers who are unfamiliar with the full range [End Page 294] of women in rhetorical history, this reader among them, these volumes provide a delightful introduction to the resilience, creativity, and significance of women in our formerly unacknowledged rhetorical past.In her introduction to Reclaiming Rhetorica, Andrea Lunsford shares the intriguing history of the volume, which explains its eclecticism and its goals. Approached by students who wanted to explore the role of women in rhetorical history, Annette Kolodny offered a two-semester graduate seminar titled "Women Rhetoricians." For the class, the students did extensive archival recovery research, much of which is included in the published volume. Interestingly, the students were the ones who persisted in trying to bring their works, plus the other contributors' efforts, to publication. The resultant book is, then, as James J. Murphy says in his foreword, "not a history of women rhetoricians, or women orators, or women writers. It is, instead, a glimmer of possibilities, an array of glances,--an enthymeme."The essays range widely in time covered and in focus. For example, the first chapter is a consideration of Aspasia, who left no written record of her own. Her accomplishments and influence must, then, be constructed from references to her in the works of others. The authors, Susan Jarratt and Rory Ong, contend that both her gender and her non-Athenian roots played a role in the suppression of her memory. Returning to the theme of "dangerous femininity," the concluding chapter explores the work of a modern theorist, Julia Kristeva. In that chapter, Suzanne Clark demonstrates how Kristeva has challenged traditional notions of rhetoric and provides dialogism as an antidote to the constraints of earlier approaches to human interaction. The chapters between these two take a variety of directions. Mary Wollstonecraft's feminist dialogics stands alongside of the autobiographical The... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mother Earth, Mother City:Abjection and the AnthropoceneJanell WatsonIf the term “Anthropocene” designates the global influence of the human species over its terrestrial habitat, then its arrival profoundly changes a number of relations that have long occupied Western philosophy: that between humans and animals; between humans and nature; and between humans and their technologies. The possibility that humans have transformed not only the biology but also the geology of the (...) earth brings to the forefront the physical world, whose corporeal materiality was all but ignored by mid-twentieth-century continental philosophy, focused almost exclusively on language and politics. As Michel Serres put it in 1990, “Our a-cosmic philosophies, for almost half a century now, have been holding forth only on language or politics, writing or logic” (1995b, 29). Technicians and scientists have created a new world, observes Serres, while philosophers act as if they still live in the old one (2001, 4). By the time Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer formally introduced the term “Anthropocene” in 2000 (Crutzen and Steffen, 2003), Serres had developed a philosophy for the new human-dominated techno-scientific world. It is true that the physical world has in the meanwhile reappeared in continental philosophy thanks to object-oriented philosophy and various new materialisms, but Serres was among the first to formulate into a philosophical question the human impact on the physical and biological earth (2014, 63). He may well have been the very first to develop a philosophy of pollution. Serres complains that Plato, one of the few Western philosophers to even mention detritus, excludes residue and waste from metaphysics (2001, 185). Garbage, atmospheric emissions, and toxic waste not [End Page 269] only threaten life, but are also transforming biological and geological features of the earth. The philosophical dimension of pollution will be the topic of my paper.Philosophy has remained silent on this question of waste, with the notable exception of Julia Kristeva, whose theory of abjection brought the body and its discharges back into philosophy at the height of the linguistic turn. Although she presents abjection as a psychic formation, she derives the notion from the physical reaction of repugnance, vomiting, retching, and turning away when confronted with “filth, waste, or dung” and “defilement, sewage, and muck” (1982, 2). Both Serres and Kristeva portray pollution and abjection as remainders left behind by a subject-object dialectic that positions (male) humans as subjects, and everything else (and everyone) as objects to be mastered and appropriated. They both locate this oozing dialectic in Plato’s semiotic khôra, the mother’s womb. Read together, these philosophers of pollution expose the “materialist foundation” of “dialectical logic” by way of the maternal body (Kristeva 1984, 15). Kristeva focuses on the mother in order to demonstrate a corporeal basis for language and subjectivity. Although he shares the view that language comes from the body, Serres celebrates the womb as the first human habitat. He emphasizes the maternal functions of the earth: neonatal incubator, nurturer, habitat.However, waxing poetic about the sea, the riverside, and the wilderness, Serres writes very little about cities, even though they are the preferred human habitat of the new epoch. I therefore extend his reflections on human habitation in the Anthropocene epoch by considering the maternal aspects of the global megalopolis, which simultaneously sustains domestic life and produces deadly pollution. The maternal functions of reproduction, nourishment, and shelter are pushing the limits of the earth’s physical capacities. Maternity thus lies at the heart of the problem of the Anthropocene: the possibility that human domination of the earth will deplete its ability to sustain life.MatrixAlthough he grounds his philosophy in complexity, chaos, narrative, and anthropology, in his 1990 manifesto, The Natural Contract, Serres argues that science and technology have brought about a subject-object reversal between the human species and the earth (1995b). He bases his argument on a dialectical model in order to expose a struggle for domination, the classical confrontation between master and slave. Serres credits Descartes with foreseeing from his vantage point at the dawn of the scientific age that humans would go on to “dominate and appropriate” the natural world according... (shrink)

In the vast literature on architectural theory and practice, the ways in which architectural knowledge is actually taught, debated, and understood are too often ignored. The essays collected in this groundbreaking volume address the current state of architecture as an academic and professional discipline. The issues considered range from the form and content of architectural education to the architect's social and environmental obligations and the emergence of a new generation of architects. Often critical of the current paradigm, these essays offer (...) a provocative challenge to accepted assumptions about the production, dissemination, and reception of architectural knowledge. Contributors: Sherry Ahrentzen, U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Stanford Anderson, MIT; Carol Burns, Harvard U; Russell Ellis, UC Berkeley; Thomas Fisher, U of Minnesota; Linda Groat, U of Michigan; Kay Bea Jones, Ohio State U; David Leatherbarrow, U of Pennsylvania; A. G. Krishna Menon, TVB School of Habitat Studies, India; Garth Rockcastle, U of Minnesota; Michael Stanton, American U, Beirut; Sharon E. Sutton, U of Washington; David J. T. Vanderburgh, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium; and Donald Watson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. (shrink)

The Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) literature tends to focus on bias as a problem that requires ex post solutions (e.g. fairness metrics), rather than addressing the underlying social and technical conditions that (re)produce it. In this article, we propose a complementary strategy that uses genealogy as a constructive, epistemic critique to explain algorithmic bias in terms of the conditions that enable it. We focus on XAI feature attributions (Shapley values) and counterfactual approaches as potential tools to gauge these conditions (...) and offer two main contributions. One is constructive: we develop a theoretical framework to classify these approaches according to their relevance for bias as evidence of social disparities. We draw on Pearl’s ladder of causation (Causality: models, reasoning, and inference. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, Causality, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511803161) to order these XAI approaches concerning their ability to answer fairness-relevant questions and identify fairness-relevant solutions. The other contribution is critical: we evaluate these approaches in terms of their assumptions about the role of protected characteristics in discriminatory outcomes. We achieve this by building on Kohler-Hausmann’s (Northwest Univ Law Rev 113(5):1163–1227, 2019) constructivist theory of discrimination. We derive three recommendations for XAI practitioners to develop and AI policymakers to regulate tools that address algorithmic bias in its conditions and hence mitigate its future occurrence. (shrink)

The majority of U.S. abortion patients are poor women, and Black and Hispanic women. Therefore, this article encourages bioethicists and equity advocates to consider whether the need for abortion c...

Consequentialism is the view that the rightness or wrongness of actions depend solely on their consequences. It is one of the most influential, and controversial, of all ethical theories. In this book, Julia Driver introduces and critically assesses consequentialism in all its forms. After a brief historical introduction to the problem, Driver examines utilitarianism, and the arguments of its most famous exponents, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, and explains the fundamental questions underlying utilitarian theory: what value is to (...) be specified and how it is to be maximized. Driver also discusses indirect forms of consequentialism, the important theories of motive consequentialism and virtue consequentialism, and explains why the distinction between subjective and objective consequentialism is so important. Including helpful features such as a glossary, chapter summaries, and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Consequentialism is ideal for students seeking an authoritative and clearly explained survey of this important problem. (shrink)

This paper explains some of the reasoning behind “Can a Good Philosophical Contribution Be Made Just by Asking a Question?,” a paper which consists solely in its title and which is published in the same issue of the journal as the present paper. The method for explaining that reasoning consists in making available a lightly edited version of a letter the authors sent to the editors when submitting the title-only paper. The editors permitted publication of that paper on the condition (...) that the authors also separately publish a version of that letter; the present paper aims to fulfil that condition. (shrink)

On the whole, the US Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022 (US AAA) is a pragmatic approach to balancing the benefits and risks of automated decision systems. Yet there is still room for improvement. This commentary highlights how the US AAA can both inform and learn from the European Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AIA).

The recent literature abounds with accounts of the semantics and pragmatics of so-called predicates of personal taste, i.e. predicates whose application is, in some sense or other, a subjective matter. Relativism and contextualism are the major types of theories. One crucial difference between these theories concerns how we should assess previous taste claims. Relativism predicts that we should assess them in the light of the taste standard governing the context of assessment. Contextualism predicts that we should assess them in the (...) light of the taste standard governing the context of use. We show in a range of experiments that neither prediction is correct. People have no clear preferences either way and which taste standard they choose in evaluating a previous taste claim crucially depends on whether they start out with a favorable attitude towards the object in question and then come to have an unfavorable attitude or vice versa. We suggest an account of the data in terms of what we call hybrid relativism. (shrink)

Among social epistemologists, having a certain proportion of reliably formed beliefs in a subject matter is widely regarded as a necessary condition for cognitive expertise. This condition is motivated by the idea that expert testimony puts subjects in a better position than non-expert testimony to obtain knowledge about a subject matter. I offer three arguments showing that veritism is an inadequate account of expert authority because the reliable access condition renders expertise incapable of performing its social role. I then develop (...) an alternative explanation of expert authority that I call the epistemic facility account, arguing that having a certain type of competence in a subject matter or domain of subject matters is sufficient for explaining expert authority while avoiding the problems with veritistic accounts. (shrink)

How could ectogestative technology disrupt gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘body’, or ‘parent’? In this chapter, we situate this emerging technology in the context of the history of reproductive technologies and analyse the potential social and conceptual disruptions to which it could contribute. An ectogestative device, better known as ‘artificial womb’, enables the extra-uterine gestation of a human being, or mammal more generally. It is currently developed with the main goal of improving the survival chances of (...) extremely premature neonates. We argue that the intended use of the technology in neonatal intensive care units, as an alternative to current incubators (’partial-ectogestation’), challenges concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘fetus’, and ‘neonate’, and has several ethico-legal implications. We moreover address a more futuristic scenario where the entire embryological and fetal development could happen within an artificial womb (’full-ectogestation’). Such a scenario reveals the disruption of gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘mother’, ‘father’, and ‘parent’. Both full- and partial-ectogestation would have implications for engineering and design, law-making, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

The most prevalent approach to understanding recreation experiences in resource management has been a motivational research program that views satisfaction as an appropriate indicator of experience quality. This research explores a different approach to studying the quality of recreation experiences. Rather than viewing recreation experiences as a linear sequence of events beginning with expectations and ending with outcomes that are then cognitively compared to determine experience quality, this alternative approach views recreation as an emergent experience motivated by the not very (...) well-defined goal of acquiring stories that ultimately enrich one's life. Further, it assumes that the nature of human experience is best characterized by situated freedom in which the environment sets boundaries that constrain the nature of the experience, but that within those boundaries recreationists are free to experience the world in unique and variable ways. Therefore this alternative approach seeks a more context specific description of the setting/experience relationship that is intended to complement more general management frameworks (e.g., the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum) developed in conjunction with the motivational research program. (shrink)

During the turbulent last years of the fifth century BC, Athens twice suffered the overthrow of democracy and the subsequent establishment of oligarchic regimes. In an in-depth treatment of both political revolutions, Julia Shear examines how the Athenians responded to these events, at the level both of the individual and of the corporate group. Interdisciplinary in approach, this account brings epigraphical and archaeological evidence to bear on a discussion which until now has largely been based on texts. Dr Shear (...) particularly focuses on the recreation of democracy and the city, both ritually and physically, in the aftermath of the coups and demonstrates that, whilst reconciliation after civil strife is difficult and contentious, it is also crucial for rebuilding a united society. Theories of remembering and forgetting are applied and offer a new way of understanding the dynamics in Athens at this time. (shrink)

In 2009, Greenpeace launched an aggressive campaign against Nestlé, accusing the organization of driving rainforest deforestation through its palm oil suppliers. The objective was to damage the brand image of Nestlé and, thereby, force the organization to make its supply chain more sustainable. Prominent cases such as these have led to the prevailing view that sustainable supply chain management is primarily reactive and propelled by external pressures. This research, in contrast, assumes that SSCM can contribute positively to the reputation of (...) an organization as a “good citizen” and, thereby, counter the impression that external stakeholder pressure is the only driver of SSCM. The study draws on Resource Dependence Theory in analyzing the three competing models of the potential stakeholder, SSCM and the corporate sustainability performance relationship. A dataset of 1,621 organizations allows the statistical comparison of these three models. Findings suggest that stakeholder pressure and SSCM both contribute to an organization’s sustainability performance. Thus, supply chain managers will perceive benefits from SSCM other than merely the reduction of risk from reputational damage through stakeholder activism. (shrink)

In today’s highly dynamic societies, moral norms and values are subject to change. Moral change is partly driven by technological developments. For instance, the introduction of robots in elderly care practices requires caregivers to share moral responsibility with a robot (see van Wynsberghe 2013 ). Since we do not know what elements of morality will change and how they will change (see van der Burg 2003 ), moral education should aim at fostering what has been called “moral resilience” (Swierstra 2013 (...) ). We seek to fill two gaps in the existing literature: (i) research on moral education has not paid enough attention to the development of moral resilience; (ii) the very limited literature on moral resilience does not conceptualise moral resilience in relation to new technological developments. We argue that philosophical accounts of moral education need to do justice to the importance of moral resilience, and that a specific form of moral resilience should be conceptualised as “technomoral resilience” to underline the added value of cultivating moral resilience in relation to technomoral change. We illustrate the role of technomoral resilience in practice by looking at the context of elderly care. To make the first step towards an account of how technomoral resilience can be fostered in moral education, we propose that moral education shall focus on a triangle of capacities: (1) moral imagination, (2) a capacity for critical reflection, and (3) a capacity for maintaining one’s moral agency in the face of disturbances. (shrink)

Questions are, in many respects, the hallmarks of the philosopher's trade. They are passed down from one generation to the next and yet, throughout history, philosophers have had relatively little to say about questions. In particular, few have asked or tried to answer the question ‘what is a question'. I call this the ‘Question Question’ and I offer an answer to it in this paper, furnishing philosophical analysis with the results of a large online survey, which has been running for (...) more than a decade. (shrink)

Long‐term potentiation (LTP) of excitatory synapses is a leading model to explain the concept of information storage in the brain. Multiple mechanisms contribute to LTP, but central amongst them is an increased sensitivity of the postsynaptic membrane to neurotransmitter release. This sensitivity is predominantly determined by the abundance and localization of AMPA‐type glutamate receptors (AMPARs). A combination of AMPAR structural data, super‐resolution imaging of excitatory synapses, and an abundance of electrophysiological studies are providing an ever‐clearer picture of how AMPARs are (...) recruited and organized at synaptic junctions. Here, we review the latest insights into this process, and discuss how both cytoplasmic and extracellular receptor elements cooperate to tune the AMPAR response at the hippocampal CA1 synapse. (shrink)

A common philosophical account of expertise contends that (a) the good of expertise lies in the fact that it is grounded in reliably true beliefs or knowledge in a domain and (b) rejecting this truth-linked view threatens the authority of experts and opens one to epistemic relativism. I argue that both of these claims are implausible, and I show how epistemic authority and objectivity can be grounded in the current state of understanding and skill in a domain. Further, I argue (...) that what I call a ‘cognitive systems’ approach is consistent with this domain-linked account of expert authority, is empirically supported, and provides a philosophical foundation for both empirical and conceptual work on the nature and scope of expertise. (shrink)

This article reexamines the classical distinction between professional and organizational work orientations for the case of engineers. Based on data from a survey questionnaire mailed to a sample of 800 engineers in the Rochester, New York, area in 1986, it argues that the two orientations are not opposites. Instead, it is possible to score high on measures of both orientations, or to score low on both. The result is a more complex, fourfold typology of engineers' work orientations. This fourfold typology (...) is then applied to the analysis of engineers' job satisfaction. The most important finding is that the content of engineers' work—that is, the level of challenge and the intrinsic interest of the work—is the central predictor of their satisfaction. The results thus support the conjecture that contemporary engineers have become highly focused—perhaps overly focused—on the gratifications derived from technical work as a process. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the role of curiosity as a key motivating factor in successful collaboration for interdisciplinary research. I argue that curiosity is an important, perhaps essential component of successful collaboration for interdisciplinary teams. I begin by defining curiosity and highlighting the significance of the characteristic motivation of the virtue for successful collaboration. I argue that curiosity initiates, maintains, and coordinates successful collaborative interdisciplinary research. Moreover, if curiosity is a foundational intellectual virtue, then it is not only (...) important but essential for successful collaboration. I then draw attention to a specific type of curiosity, namely inquisitiveness, and argue that the defining feature of inquisitiveness – good questioning – renders it a particularly valuable form of curiosity for collaborative projects, including (although not limited to) interdisciplinary research. I conclude by deriving some practical recommendations for successful collaboration in interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

Abstract: Hegel's theory of tragedy is often considered to be primarily a theory of the objective powers involved in tragic conflicts—for Hegel, these are paradigmatically competing ethical notions—and of the rationality which underlies and drives such conflicts. Such a view follows naturally from a close reading of Hegel's discussion of classical Greek tragedy in his Lectures on Aesthetics. However, this view gives rise to the question of whether Hegel's theory of tragedy can account for the significance of tragic experience, in (...) particular the experience of tragic suffering; it has been argued repeatedly that it cannot. In contrast, I want to suggest in this paper that a theory of tragic experience can be derived from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. This Hegelian theory of tragic experience, I argue, should be understood as complementing rather than challenging Hegel's theory of objective tragic conflict. (shrink)

With contributions by scholars from different religions and specializations, this volume explores the potential of nondualism as a fundamentally unifying concept. In every case, we find that nondualism is universal in its relevance yet distinctive and original in its contribution.

Organisations that design and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly commit themselves to high-level, ethical principles. However, there still exists a gap between principles and practices in AI ethics. One major obstacle organisations face when attempting to operationalise AI Ethics is the lack of a well-defined material scope. Put differently, the question to which systems and processes AI ethics principles ought to apply remains unanswered. Of course, there exists no universally accepted definition of AI, and different systems pose different ethical (...) challenges. Nevertheless, pragmatic problem-solving demands that things should be sorted so that their grouping will promote successful actions for some specific end. In this article, we review and compare previous attempts to classify AI systems for the purpose of implementing AI governance in practice. We find that attempts to classify AI systems proposed in previous literature use one of three mental models: _the Switch_, i.e., a binary approach according to which systems either are or are not considered AI systems depending on their characteristics; _the Ladder_, i.e., a risk-based approach that classifies systems according to the ethical risks they pose; and _the Matrix_, i.e., a multi-dimensional classification of systems that take various aspects into account, such as context, input data, and decision-model. Each of these models for classifying AI systems comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. By conceptualising different ways of classifying AI systems into simple mental models, we hope to provide organisations that design, deploy, or regulate AI systems with the vocabulary needed to demarcate the material scope of their AI governance frameworks. (shrink)

The article concerns a mediaeval Indian debate over whether, and if so how, we can know that a self exists, understood here as a subject of cognition that outlives individual cognitions, being their common substrate. A passage that has not yet been translated from Sanskrit into a European language, from Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamañjarī, ‘Blossoms of Reasoning’, is examined. This rich passage reveals something not yet noted in secondary literature, namely that Mīmāṃsakas advanced four different models of what happens when the (...) self perceives itself. The article clarifies the differences between the four, and the historical and logical relationships between them. It also hypothesizes pressures that constituted the need for the creation of the newer views, i.e. perceived problems with the earlier views, which the proponents of the newer views saw themselves as overcoming. (shrink)

The distinguished historian and author of The Medici Conspiracy examines atheism as a modern intellectual achievement that has motivated individuals to pursue invention and self-reliance, citing the accomplishments of secular philosophers, scientists and artists who have worked in the absence of religious belief.

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 80-82.

What is the definition of that which is named "soul"? Can we give it any other definition than "the motion able to move itself" (Laws 895e)? The essays in this volume touch upon the central theme in Plato's late dialogues of the soul as the principle of self-motion and vitality. They discuss in particular the soul's relation to the intelligible world and understanding, as well as its cosmic and socio-political dimensions.

What's Good on TV? Understanding Ethics Through Television presents an introduction to the basic theories and concepts of moral philosophy using concrete examples from classic and contemporary television shows. Utilizes clear examples from popular contemporary and classic television shows, such as The Office, Law and Order, Star Trek and Family Guy, to illustrate complex philosophical concepts Designed to be used as a stand-alone or supplementary introductory ethics text Features case studies, study questions, and suggested readings Episodes mentioned are from a (...) wide variety of television shows, and are easily accessible Offers a balanced treatment of a number of controversial ethical issues including environmental ethics, animal welfare, abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment, assisted suicide, censorship and the erosion of values Includes a companion website at http://whatsgoodontv.webs.com. (shrink)

El coraje de la ternura es una aproximación a la obra poética de Julia Valiente que, partiendo de dos poemas de su primer libro, hasta llegar a su producción actual aún inédita, pretende dar cuenta de cómo ha construido una voz propia desde la honestidad de una mirada cuya desnudez nos muestra quienes somos.

Legal theorists tend to focus on disagreement over the law, and yet a theory of law should also explain why lawyers and judges agree on the law as often as they do. To that end, this article first pins down a precise sense in which there can be pervasive agreement on the law. It then argues that such agreement obtains in the United States and likely in many other jurisdictions as well. Finally, it contends that Hartian Positivism offers a straightforward (...) explanation of this phenomenon and, indeed, a better explanation than rival theories, like Ronald Dworkin’s Law as Integrity or Scott Shapiro’s Planning Theory. Given the ubiquity of legal agreement, Hartian Positivism’s explanatory superiority in this regard is a strong, albeit still not dispositive, consideration in its favour. The broader lesson is that theories of law should give greater priority to explaining legal agreement than many theories now do. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin’s argument from theoretical disagreement remains a pressing challenge for legal positivists. In this paper, I show how positivists can answer Dworkin’s argument without having to attribute confusion or disingenuity to legal officials. I propose that the argument rests on two errors. The first is to assume that positivism requires legal officials to converge on precise grounds of law when convergence on more general grounds will do. The second is to construe judicial speech too literally. If we pay attention (...) to the pragmatics of judicial speech, we see that judges do not disagree over what the grounds of law are; they at most disagree over how courts should proceed when agreed-upon, though imprecise, grounds of law underdetermine what the content of the law directs in the case at hand. (shrink)

Prior to any research data collection a proposal outlining methods and protocols is required to undergo ethical scrutiny. The issues surrounding a research ethics review process within sport and exercise science departments are not dissimilar to other subject areas. In particular, the ethical review process may be unclear to the researcher and can either present a difficult and time-consuming challenge or be merely perceived as a tick-box exercise. The aim of this study was to explore and compare research ethics processes (...) and decisions within sport and exercise science departments and institutions across the UK. Participants were asked to provide decisions and justification of those decisions on ten typical sports and exercise science proposals. Results found that all respondents cited evidence of informed consent and subject information sheets, detailed methodology and data protection procedures as highly important across all scenarios. Additionally it was found that similar processes occur regarding research ethical scrutiny and similar decisions are made at the departmental level. However, confidence fluctuates for individuals when reviewing in non-specialist subject areas and qualitative data collected calls for more research ethics training. (shrink)