In this paper, we reflect on the disciplinary contours of contemporary sociology, and social science more generally, in the age of ‘big and broad’ social data. Our aim is to suggest how sociology and social sciences may respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by this ‘data deluge’ in ways that are innovative yet sensitive to the social and ethical life of data and methods. We begin by reviewing relevant contemporary methodological debates and consider how they relate to the emergence (...) of big and broad social data as a product, reflexive artefact and organizational feature of emerging global digital society. We then explore the challenges and opportunities afforded to social science through the widespread adoption of a new generation of distributed, digital technologies and the gathering momentum of the open data movement, grounding our observations in the work of the Collaborative Online Social Media ObServatory project. In conclusion, we argue that these challenges and opportunities motivate a renewed interest in the programme for a ‘public sociology’, characterized by the co-production of social scientific knowledge involving a broad range of actors and publics. (shrink)

The Impact of 9-11 on Religion and Philosophy is the sixth volume of the six-volume series The Day that Changed Everything? edited by Matthew J. Morgan. This volume features a foreword by John Esposito and contributors include Jean Bethke Elshtain, Philip Yancey, John Milbank, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, John Cobb and Martin Cook.

Purpose: Tolerance for ambiguity (TFA) is a character trait that is associated with a multitude of benefits for physicians, including increased empathy, greater desire to work in underserved areas, fewer medical errors, enhanced psychological well-being, and lower rates of burnout. Furthermore, it has been shown that TFA is a malleable trait that can be enhanced with interventions such as art courses and group reflection. This study describes the utility of a six-week medical ethics elective course in increasing TFA in first- (...) and second-year medical students.Methods: First- and second-year medical students were enrolled in an elective medical ethics course at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University that guided students in critical thinking, group discussion, and respectful debate regarding various ethical dilemmas in medicine. Students took a validated survey before and after course completion to measure TFA. The average pre- and post-course scores for each semester, as well as the total cohort of 119 students, were compared using paired t-tests.Results: A statistically significant improvement in TFA scores was observed in the overall cohort, as well as in each individual semester of the medical ethics elective course offering.Conclusion: A six-week elective course in medical ethics can significantly improve medical students’ TFA. (shrink)

In August 2021, Froese et al. published survey data collected from 2,543 respondents on their subjective experiences living under imposed social distancing measures during COVID-19 (1). The questionnaire was issued to respondents in the UK, Japan, and Mexico. By combining the authors’ expertise in phenomenological philosophy, phenomenological psychopathology, and enactive cognitive science, the questions were carefully phrased to prompt reports that would be useful to phenomenological investigation and theorizing (2–4). These questions reflected the various author’s research interests (e.g., technology, grief, (...) time). Between April 7th and July 31st, 2021, a second questionnaire with the same question set was issued to respondents of the original who had agreed to do a follow-up. This was intended to capture subjective reports of life under social distancing measures a year after the initial survey. By this time–depending on their country of residence and health status–respondents had potentially lived with repeated and prolonged lockdowns and a variety of other restrictions on their social lives. When taken together, Survey I and Survey II provide a cross-cultural and longitudinal dataset that allows for analysis of longer-term impacts of imposed social distancing measures on people’s experiences. For researchers working in diverse disciplines, this dataset offers a rich resource that reflects people’s reactions to the imposition of different social restrictions in different countries and over different time periods. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Can a Serial Killer Ever Be Good? Dexter on Trial Four Ethical Tests Dexter Dreams Darkly: An Overview of Showtime's Dexter Morgan Killing to Maximize Happiness Kant's Dark Champion A Virtuous Devil or a Moral Monster? Hypothetical Consent: Would You Want Dexter in Your Neighborhood? Closing Arguments.

This article responds to certain objections Jeffrey Morgan raises against the theory of liberal education defended in Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing. First, it replies to his claim that the theory is too individualistic and pays insufficient attention to considerations of ‘care’. Second, it recapitulates and clarifies the argument that the ideal of autonomy supports the conclusion that it is illegitimate for parents to enrol their children into controversial conceptions of the good life, and seeks to rebut Morgan's (...) criticisms of that argument. (shrink)

Matthew Babb offers a strikingly elegant argument for, and explanation of, the essential indexicality of intentional argument. His two key thoughts are that intentional action always involves intentions, and intentions are essentially indexical. In particular, every intention is indexically about the agent whose intention it is, i.e. de se. In this paper, I set out two models on which at least some intentions are not de se—they are impersonal—and I show that these models are compatible with the data Babb (...) points to. I also set out some more data that an account of essential indexical cases ought to be responsive to. Its span suggests that the claim that all intentions are de se, even if true, cannot be what explains what is going on in essential indexical cases involving intention. (shrink)

Epistemic modals have peculiar logical features that are challenging to account for in a broadly classical framework. For instance, while a sentence of the form ‘p, but it might be that not p’ appears to be a contradiction, 'might not p' does not entail 'not p', which would follow in classical logic. Likewise, the classical laws of distributivity and disjunctive syllogism fail for epistemic modals. Existing attempts to account for these facts generally either under- or over-correct. Some theories predict that (...) 'p and might not p', a so-called epistemic contradiction, is a contradiction only in an etiolated sense, under a notion of entailment that does not allow substitution of logical equivalents; these theories underpredict the infelicity of embedded epistemic contradictions. Other theories savage classical logic, eliminating not just rules that intuitively fail, like distributivity and disjunctive syllogism, but also rules like non-contradiction, excluded middle, De Morgan’s laws, and disjunction introduction, which intuitively remain valid for epistemic modals. In this paper, we aim for a middle ground, developing a semantics and logic for epistemic modals that makes epistemic contradictions genuine contradictions and that invalidates distributivity and disjunctive syllogism but that otherwise preserves classical laws that intuitively remain valid. We start with an algebraic semantics, based on ortholattices instead of Boolean algebras, and then propose a more concrete possibility semantics, based on partial possibilities related by compatibility. Both semantics yield the same consequence relation, which we axiomatize. Then we show how to extend our semantics to explain parallel phenomena involving probabilities and conditionals. The goal throughout is to retain what is desirable about classical logic while accounting for the non-classicality of epistemic vocabulary. (shrink)

Walter Bagehot , the notable Victorian journalist, economist, and historian, was a prolific author of both books and magazine articles. Along with Matthew Arnold he was one of the most lucid and discerning critics of that time. He contributed to many journal articles, notably to the Prospective and National Reviews and The Economist , with a lively and witty style. Widely considered to be a great authority on banking and finance, Bagehot was consulted by Chancellors of the Exchequer of (...) both parties. His outlook, although never hostile to the working classes or trade unions, was openly sympathetic to the capitalist employers - a group that had never before such a brilliant spokesman. His most enduring publications, The English Constitution and Lombard Street are both republished here, as are his Letters on the French Coup D'Etat, Literary Studies, and Physics and Politics. (shrink)

The focus of this article will be sport predicated on contests between nation-states, or what we will call inter-national sport, at the elite level. While much literature on the politics of sport has focused on the proper role of the nation-state in regards to specific sport issues, few have questioned whether elite sport ought to involve nationalism as part of its competition. Most who have defended such sport argue that the benefits of nationalism and the national identity outweigh any potential (...) unintended harm. In this article, we question these conclusions by arguing that both lusory and ethical considerations undermine elite sport’s emphasis on inter-national contests. We will be trying to argue that these artifacts no longer should play a primary role in determining eligibility or serving as the basis for determining competitive sides. We will make this argument by focusing on the ethical dilemmas posed specifically by inter-national competition including international discord and reduced quality of competition. We also argue that promoting national differences does not serve a useful lusory role in elite sport. However, we will concede that Morgan’s respect for the narratives associated with sport indicate that national identity may continue playing a limited role in elite sporting contests. So while we make an exception for a soft national cultural narrative, we conclude that such arguments taken together indicate that national identities ought to have a much diminished role, if any at all, in elite sport. (shrink)

This book provides a clear and helpful overview of the philosophical core of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, one of the most significant and interesting philosophers of the late twentieth century.

Michael L. Morgan is Emeritus Chancellor Professor at Indiana University and the Grafstein Visiting Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He has written extensively on ancient Greek philosophy, modern Jewish philosophy, and post-Holocaust theology and ethics.

The first edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy took the dialogue of science and philosophy from Aristotle through to Newton. This second edition adds eight chapters, taking the dialogue through the Enlightenment and up to Darwin. This anthology is an attempt to help bridge the gap between the history of science and the history of philosophy.

Imagine I hold up a Granny Smith apple for all to see. You would thereby gain justified beliefs that it was green, that it was apple, and that it is a Granny Smith apple. Under classical foundationalism, such simple visual beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning your experience. Under dogmatism, some or all of these beliefs are justified immediately by your experience and not by reasons you possess. This paper argues for what I call the looks (...) view of the justification of simple visual beliefs. According to the looks view, such beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning how the relevant things look. Unlike under classical foundationalism, under the looks view as I develop it, these reasons are public. They are public with respect to both their content and possession: with respect to content, they are not about ourselves and our experiences, and with respect to their possession, many people can have the very same looks-related reasons. (shrink)

This book advocates for the philosophical import of care in re-evaluating problems of humanitarianism in the context of the ongoing international refugee and forced migration situation. In doing so, it rethinks the human capacity to care about the suffering of distant others. At a time when emotional resources are running low, there is a need to recast what it means to care, with the aim of generating a productive movement against the rise of value fundamentalism globally—embraced in mantras of ‘good (...) and evil’ and ‘us and them’—and to confront xenophobia and oppressive politics. The author draws upon a wide array of rich traditions, including historical and contemporary writings on self-care and care of the other, to re-examine the intersection of care ethics and justice. She also rethinks the relationship between care and contestation, here analyzed in the aesthetic, ethical, political, and religious domains of human experience. From within the context of this contingent historical repetition of political oppression, the book constructs a reminder not only of what it feels like to care, but how and why we should act upon our care. Care Ethics and the Refugee Crisis is an important contribution to the growing literatures on care ethics and immigration/forced migration in philosophy. It will also appeal to scholars and advanced students working in other disciplines such as political science, refugee and migration studies, and social anthropology. (shrink)

I. Diverse interpretations.--II. Purpose and naturalism.--III. The realities of experience.--IV. An historical controversy.--V. The ideal construction of naturalism.--VI. The web of causation.--VII. The problem of life.--VIII. Mind and mechanism.--IX. The science of metaphysics of will.--X. Genetic psychology.--XI. The metaphysical postulate.--XII. Determinism and purpose.

This paper focuses on Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of the modern self, arguing that we are not as bereft of the resources to engage in rational thought about value as he makes out. I claim that MacIntyre’s argument presumes that philosophy has a much greater power to shape individuals and cultures than it in fact has. In particular, he greatly exaggerates the extent to which the character of the modern self has been an effect of the philosophical views of the self (...) that have been influential during the period, leading him to be overly pessimistic about its nature and powers. Finally, I argue that MacIntyre has provided us with no strong reason for thinking that a moral tradition structured by modern values could not be viable. (shrink)

In this book, Joseph G. Morgan examines the career of Wesley Fishel, a political scientist who vigorously supported American intervention in the Vietnam War, which he deemed a "great, and tragic, American experiment." Morgan demonstrates how Fishel continued to champion the prospect of an independent South Vietnam, even when Vietnamese resistance and infighting among American and Vietnamese leaders undermined this effort. Morgan also analyzes how opponents of the war questioned Fishel's scholarly integrity and his academic collaboration with (...) the US government in implementing Cold War policies. (shrink)

Abstract I provide an account of the nature of seemings that explains why they are necessary for justification. The account grows out of a picture of cognition that explains what is required for epistemic agency. According to this account, epistemic agency requires (1) possessing the epistemic aims of forming true beliefs and avoiding errors, and (2) having some means of forming beliefs in order to satisfy those aims. I then argue that seeming are motives for belief characterized by their role (...) of providing us with doxastic instructions guided by our epistemic aims. Understanding the nature of seemings allows us to underwrite recent epistemological work by Michael Huemer, and shows why he was right to claim that seemings are the source of all justification. I then look at some objections both to my arguments regarding the connection between seemings and justification, and to Huemer’s related “Principle of Phenomenal Conservatism”. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9830-2 Authors Matthew Skene, Syracuse University, 8330 E. Quincy Ave., I-307, Denver, CO 80237, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

This book equips readers with a sound understanding of the value-base of mental health care and provides them with the skills and knowledge to demystify complex values in decision-making in order to reach outcomes which are focused on the needs of service users. Engaging case examples and exercises link theory and practice throughout.

In this chapter, I present an analysis that re‐examines and reconstructs how Adorno reads Kierkegaard in his 1933 Habilitationsshrift, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic and why he reads him in the manner he does, and inquire what the Kierkegaard book may teach us about Adorno's later philosophic development. In the process of my analysis and in light of my answer to the latter question, we will come to understand Adorno's Kierkegaard reading through the following argument: (i) both a negative and (...) positive theology are present in Kierkegaard; (ii) Adorno embraces only the negative, apophatic and rejects the positive, cataphatic theology because Adorno reads the latter as an escape from worldly needs and action; and (iii) the negative theology that Adorno accepts is instructive of and bears an important relation to Adorno's 1970 Aesthetic Theory. The present chapter thus provides a summary of the most insightful and relevant scholarship on Adorno's intersection with Kierkegaard as well as a new argument about Adorno's Aesthetic Theory from rethinking this intersection. (shrink)

One’s account of the meaning of ethical sentences should fit – roughly, as part to whole – with one’s account of the meaning of sentences in general. When we ask, though, where one widely discussed account of the meaning of ethical sentences fits with more general accounts of meaning, the answer is frustratingly unclear. The account I have in mind is the sort of metaethical expressivism inspired by Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare, and defended and worked out in more detail recently (...) by Blackburn, Gibbard, and others. So, my first aim (§1) in this paper is to pose this question about expressivism’s commitments in the theory of meaning and to characterize the answer I think is most natural, given the place expressivist accounts attempt to occupy metaethics. This involves appeal to an ideationalist account of meaning. Unfortunately for the expressivist, however, this answer generates a problem; it’s my second aim (§2) to articulate this problem. Then, my third aim (§3) is to argue that this problem doesn’t extend to the sort of account of the meaning of ethical claims that I favor, which is like expressivism in rejecting a representationalist order of semantic explanation but unlike expressivism in basing an alternative order of semantic explanation on inferential role rather than expressive function. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Categorical Prescriptiveness Uniformity as a Moral Matter Uniformity Contrasted with Neutrality The Overridingness of Moral Principles.

This paper explores some surprising effects of psychological trauma on memory and develops the puzzle of observer memory for trauma. Memory for trauma tends to have a third-person perspective, or observer perspective. But it appears observer memory, by having a novel visual point of view, tends to misrepresent the past. And many find it plausible that if a memory type tends to misrepresent, it cannot yield knowledge of, or justification for believing, details of past events. But it is also plausible (...) that, with respect to details of past trauma, observer memory can yield knowledge or justification. I argue for a novel set of views that offers a way out of the puzzle: observer memory does tend to misrepresent, but it still has epistemic power regarding details of the past, although with special limits; but observer memory for trauma has other epistemic powers too, in that it allows for a kind of self-awareness. (shrink)

Galvanised by events outside of his consulting room, David Morgan began The Political Mind seminars at the British Psychoanalytical Society in 2015 and their successful run continues today. A series of superlative seminars that examine the effects of the current upheaval going on worldwide, this book is the second to bring these seminars from leading thinkers to a wider audience. Leading politicians, writers, educators, psychoanalysts, psychologists, philosophers, psychotherapists, and psychologists are gathered together in this fascinating volume that investigates social (...) upheaval on the worldwide stage. Stimulating and thought-provoking, this is a must-read for every citizen asking just what is happening in the world today."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Though underexplored in contemporary scholarship, the Victorian attempts to turn aesthetics into a science remain one of the most fascinating aspects of that era. In The Outward Mind, Benjamin Morgan approaches this period of innovation as an important origin point for current attempts to understand art or beauty using the tools of the sciences. Moving chronologically from natural theology in the early nineteenth century to laboratory psychology in the early twentieth, Morgan draws on little-known archives of Victorian intellectuals (...) such as William Morris, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and others to argue that scientific studies of mind and emotion transformed the way writers and artists understood the experience of beauty and effectively redescribed aesthetic judgment as a biological adaptation. Looking beyond the Victorian period to humanistic critical theory today, he also shows how the historical relationship between science and aesthetics could be a vital resource for rethinking key concepts in contemporary literary and cultural criticism, such as materialism, empathy, practice, and form. At a moment when the tumultuous relationship between the sciences and the humanities is the subject of ongoing debate, Morgan argues for the importance of understanding the arts and sciences as incontrovertibly intertwined. (shrink)

Traumatic events happen in every age, yet there is a particularly cataclysmic feeling to our own epoch that is so attractive to some and so terrifying to others. The terrible events of September 11th 2001 still resonate and the repercussions continue to this day: the desperation of immigrants fleeing terror, the uncertainty of Brexit, Donald Trump in the White House, the rise of the alt-right and hard left, increasing fundamentalism, and terror groups intent on causing destruction to the Western way (...) of life. If that were not enough, we also have to grapple with the enormity of climate change and the charge that if we do not act now, it will be too late. Is it any wonder many are left overwhelmed by the events they see on the news? Galvanised by the events outside of his consulting room, in 2015, David Morgan began The Political Mind seminars at the British Psychoanalytical Society and their successful run continues today. A series of superlative seminars, mostly presented by colleagues from the British Society plus a few select external experts, that examine a dazzling array of relevant topics to provide a psychoanalytic understanding of just what is going on in our world. This book is the first in The Political Mind series to bring these seminars to a wider audience. The Unconscious in Political and Social Life contains compelling contributions from Christopher Bollas, Michael Rustin, Jonathan Sklar, David Bell, Philip Stokoe, Roger Kennedy, David Morgan, M. Fakhry Davids, Ruth McCall, R. D. Hinshelwood, Renée Danziger, Josh Cohen, Sally Weintrobe, and Margot Waddell. They investigate so many vital issues affecting us today: the evolution of democracy, right-wing populism, prejudice, the rise of the far right, attitudes to refugees and migrants, neoliberalism, fundamentalism, terrorism, the Palestine-Israel situation, political change, feminism, austerity in the UK, financial globalisation, and climate change. This book needs to be read by all who are concerned by the state of the world today. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts with their awareness of what motivates human beings bring clarity and fresh insight to these matters. A deeper understanding of humanity awaits the reader of The Unconscious in Political and Social Life. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the inheritance of human handedness and cerebral lateralization within the more general context of structural biological asymmetries. The morphogenesis of asymmetrical structures, such as the heart in vertebrates, depends upon a complex interaction between information coded in the cytoplasm and in the genes, but the polarity of asymmetry seems to depend on the cytoplasmic rather than the genetic code. Indeed it is extremely difficult to find clear-cut examples in which thedirectionof an asymmetry is under genetic control. (...) As one possible case, there is some evidence that the direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, of rotation of the abdomen in certain mutant strains ofDrosophilais controlled by a particular gene locus, although there appears to be some degree of confusion on this point. By contrast, it is much easier to find examples in which thedegreebut not the direction of asymmetry is under genetic control. For instance, there is a mutant strain of mice in which half of the animals displaysitus inversusof the viscera. The proportion has remained at one half despite many years of inbreeding, suggesting that the mutant allele effectively cancels the normalsitusand allows the asymmetry to be specified in random fashion.Although this account does not deny that the right hemisphere of humans may be the more specialized for certain functions, it does attribute a leading or dominant role to the left hemisphere (at least in most individuals). We suggest that so-called “right-hemisphere” functions are essentially acquired by default, due to the left hemisphere's prior involvement with speech and skilled motor acts; we note, for instance, that these right-hemisphere functions include rather elementary perceptual processes. But perhaps the more critical prediction from our account is that the phenomenon of equipotentiality should be unidirectional: the right (lagging) hemisphere should be more disposed to take over left-hemisphere functions following early lesions than is the left (leading) hemisphere to take over right-hemisphere functions. We note preliminary evidence that this may be so. (shrink)

The philosophical debate on miracles in Enlightenment England shows the composite and evolutionary character of the English Enlightenment and, more generally, of the Enlightenment’s relation to religion. In fact, that debate saw the confrontation of divergent positions within the Protestant field and led several deists and freethinkers to resolutely deny the possibility of “things above reason” (i.e. things that, according to such Protestant philosophers as Robert Boyle and John Locke, human reason can neither comprehend nor refute, and that humanity must (...) thus receive as supernatural). In their attacks on miracles, the deists adopted various strategies, which can be classified in two main groups. On the one hand, Charles Blount, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Thomas Woolston, and Peter Annet, although employing different concepts of reason and having different views of God and nature, rejected miracles on the basis that God is unable to contravene the eternal, immutable, and mechanical laws of nature. On the other, William Wollaston, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Chubb, and Thomas Morgan, whose theories on natural religion presented striking similarities, saw God as unwilling to interpose in human or natural affairs. They shunned the possibility of miraculous events while simultaneously acknowledging the presence and efficacy of divine providence in the government of the universe. In other words, they considered God as the active governor of the universe, rather than a distant and inert clockmaker removed from his Creation, but they held that God would not suspend the laws of nature, in which his impartial wisdom, forethought, and goodness found perfect expression. (shrink)

Deleuze & Guattari, Politics and Education mobilizes Deleuzian-Guattarian philosophy as a revolutionary alternative to the lingering forms of transcendence, identity politics, and nihilism endemic to Western thought. Operationalizing Deleuze and Guattari's challenge to contemporary philosophy, this book presents their view as a revolutionary alternative to the lingering forms of transcendence, identity politics, and nihilism endemic to the current state of Western formal education. This book offers an experimental approach to theorizing, creating an entirely new way for educational theorists to approach (...) their work as the task of revolutionizing life itself. Examining new conceptual resources for grappling with and mapping a sustainable political alternative to the cliche's that saturate contemporary educational theory, this collection of essays works toward extracting a genuine image of education and learning that exists in sharp contrast to both the neo-liberal educational project and the critical pedagogical tradition. (shrink)

We regularly appeal to claims of the form it seems that p in defense of a claim p. When we do so, we typically take it seems that p to be a reason for thinking that p but also a reason that “gets at” a relevant body of facts and its support for p. Other things being equal, we should want to vindicate our ordinary beliefs on this matter. We should want to vindicate the claim that facts about things seeming (...) certain ways can be reasons to think that things are that way while at the same time being somehow derivative reasons, that is, reasons only because they “get at” support from a certain body of facts. However, on the dominant view of how things seem—subjectivism—it is hard to see how to secure this result. Subjectivism takes how things seem to be a matter of how things do or would seem to some relevant subject. What we need is a defensible, nonsubjectivist account of how things seem. I propose and defend an account according to which, roughly, it seems that p iff the body of facts in the relevant perspective supports that p. (shrink)