In _I Can Learn from You_, Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley—the authors of _Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys_—set out to probe deeply into the relational dynamics that help boys succeed as learners. Drawing on interviews with students and teachers in thirty-five schools across six countries, they examine the particular ways boys extend and receive empathy—modes of interaction that remain consistent across a wide range of schools, teachers, countries, and cultures. The book shows how teachers can help boys form productive (...) learning relationships and how schools can support the development of teachers’ relational capacities. At the heart of the book is the belief that educators must—and can—put relational teaching at the center of school life. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the ergodic hypothesis in the context of Boltzmann’s late work in statistical mechanics, where Boltzmann lays the foundations for what is today known as the typicality account. I argue that, based on the concepts of stationarity (of the measure) and typicality (of the equilibrium state), the ergodic hypothesis, as an idealization, is a consequence rather than an assumption of Boltzmann’s account. More precisely, it can be shown that every system with a stationary measure and an equilibrium state (...) (be it a typical state with respect to the phase space or the time average) behaves essentially as if it were ergodic. I claim that Boltzmann was aware of this fact as it grounds both his notion of equilibrium, relating it to the thermodynamic notion of equilibrium, and his estimate of the fluctuation rates. (shrink)

Die Erschütterungen neuzeitlicher Gewissheitsordnungen haben das menschliche Selbst- und Weltverständnis in eine tiefe Krise gestürzt. Darauf antworten Bertolt Brecht und Antonin Artaud wie auch ihr Rezipient Roland Barthes mit einem Theater des Nichtverstehens - sowohl auf der Bühne wie auch im Text. Dieses Theater zeigt, dass Kultur in erster Linie ein ästhetisches System und daher immer ein riskanter Prozess ist. Melanie Reichert überführt die drei bisher vor allem literatur- und kunstwissenschaftlich gelesenen Autoren in einen kulturphilosophischen Diskurs über Philosophie, Theater (...) und die Wiederentdeckung der Ambiguitätstoleranz nach dem Scheitern der Ideologiekritik. (shrink)

Formal control systems are a common instrument to align employees’ interests with those of managers and companies. However, research shows that employees perceive formal controls as a sign of distrust and restraint, which can lead to costs of control in the form of lower employee cooperation and effort. We propose that charitable giving reduces these costs of control. We draw on the halo effect and propose that corporate charitable giving alters employees’ perception of and reaction to formal controls. In a (...) laboratory experiment, we find that charitable giving by a company creates a higher level of employee trust in a manager who decides to implement a control and a more positive assessment of formal control. These positive effects of charitable giving lead to lower costs of control compared to the absence of charitable giving. We thereby provide an example of how charitable giving as a corporate social responsibility activity yields positive benefits by altering the behavior of internal company stakeholders. (shrink)

This book defends a form of ethical intuitionism, according to which (i) there are objective moral truths; (ii) we know some of these truths through a kind of immediate, intellectual awareness, or "intuition"; and (iii) our knowledge of moral truths gives us reasons for action independent of our desires. The author rebuts all the major objections to this theory and shows that the alternative theories about the nature of ethics all face grave difficulties.

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.

Although microfinance organizations are generally considered as inherently ethical, recent events have challenged the legitimacy of the sector. High interest rates and the excessive profitability of some market leaders have raised the question of how to define a fair profit level for social enterprise. In this article, we construct a fair profit framework based on four dimensions: profitability, social mission, pricing, and surplus distribution. We then apply this framework using an empirical sample of 496 microfinance institutions. Results indicate that satisfying (...) all four criteria is a difficult, although not impossible, task. According to our framework, 24 MFIs emerge as true double bottom line organizations. These MFIs are characterized by higher outreach to women, lower portfolio risk, and higher productivity in high-density environments such as South Asia. We argue that excessive profits can be better understood relative to pricing, the outreach of the MFI, and organizational commitment to clients in the form of reduced interest rates. (shrink)

Part I: The representation of life -- Can life be given a real definition? -- The representation of the living individual -- The representation of the life-form itself -- Part II: Naive action theory -- Types of practical explanation -- Naive explanation of action -- Action and time -- Part III: Practical generality -- Two tendencies in practical philosophy -- Practices and dispositions as sources of the goodness of individual actions -- Practice and disposition as sources of individual action.

We discuss Boltzmann’s probabilistic explanation of the second law of thermodynamics providing a comprehensive presentation of what is called today the typicality account. Countering its misconception as an alternative explanation, we examine the relation between Boltzmann’s H-theorem and the general typicality argument demonstrating the conceptual continuity between the two. We then discuss the philosophical dimensions of the concept of typicality and its relevance for scientific reasoning in general, in particular for understanding the reduction of macroscopic laws to microscopic laws. Finally, (...) we reply to various common criticisms of the typicality account. (shrink)

Virtually all philosophers agree that for a belief to be epistemically justified, it must satisfy certain conditions. Perhaps it must be supported by evidence. Or perhaps it must be reliably formed. Or perhaps there are some other "good-making" features it must have. But does a belief's justification also require some sort of awareness of its good-making features? The answer to this question has been hotly contested in contemporary epistemology, creating a deep divide among its practitioners. Internalists, who tend to focus (...) on scientific or theoretical beliefs as the ideal, insist that such awareness is required for justification. Externalists, who think children's ordinary beliefs in obvious facts are paradigm cases of justified belief, say it isn't required. Michael Bergmann's book offers a decisive refutation of internalism and a sustained defense of externalism. (shrink)

At the University of Sheffield during 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume I: Metaphysics and Epistemology is comprised of two parts: “The Nature of Implicit Attitudes, Implicit Bias, (...) and Stereotype Threat,” and “Skepticism, Social Knowledge, and Rationality.” The first part contains chapters examining the relationship between implicit attitudes and “dual process” models of the mind; the role of affect in the formation and change of implicit associations; the unity (or disunity) of implicit attitudes; whether implicit biases are mental states at all; and whether performances on stereotype-relevant tasks are automatic and unconscious or intentional and strategic. The second part contains chapters examining implicit bias and skepticism; the effects of implicit bias on scientific research; the accessibility of social stereotypes in epistemic environments; the effects of implicit bias on the self-perception of members of stigmatized social groups as rational agents; the role of gender stereotypes in philosophy; and the role of heuristics in biased reasoning. (shrink)

Externalist theories of justification create the possibility of cases in which everything appears to one relevantly similar with respect to two propositions, yet one proposition is justified while the other is not. Internalists find this difficult to accept, because it seems irrational in such a case to affirm one proposition and not the other. The underlying internalist intuition supports a specific internalist theory, Phenomenal Conservatism, on which epistemic justification is conferred by appearances.

Investors with standard monetary preferences will give a fund manager incentives to increase firm profits, which can be achieved through a share in profits via carried interest. When investors have social preferences, it is not clear which incentives the manager should receive. We explore this puzzle by applying an agency theory perspective to impact investing, a practice where investors seek both financial returns and a measurable social or environmental impact. Using an inductive, qualitative approach, we identify and describe the ethical (...) tensions and challenges faced by fund managers to structure and implement impact-based variable compensation schemes. Our results indicate that economic incentives tied to non-financial objectives are useful to alleviate goal incongruity between principals and agents during fund creation but have the potential to lead to perverse effects during the fund lifecycle, where managers may exploit subjective non-financial metrics to maximize personal wealth. We introduce the concept of impact fidelity, a conceptual equivalent of fiduciary duty, to ensure that investment decisions reflect the asset owner’s impact preferences. (shrink)

In this engaging and spirited text, Michael Lynch argues that truth does matter, in both our personal and political lives. He explains that the growing cynicism over truth stems in large part from our confusion over what truth is.

Causation: A Realist Approach Traditional empiricist accounts of causation and laws of nature have been reductionist in the sense of entailing that given a complete specification of the non-causal properties of and relations among particulars, it is therefore logically determined both what laws there are and what events are causally related. It is argued here, however, that reductionist accounts of causation and of laws of nature are exposed to decisive objections, and thus that the time has come for empiricists to (...) break with that tradition. -/- The basic goal of this book, therefore, is to set out and defend realistic accounts of those concepts. In the case of causal relations, for example, Tooley maintains that causation is basically a matter of theoretical relations between states of affairs that underlie and explain relative frequencies. He also argues that such an approach avoids the objections that tell against reductionist accounts and that it does so without making causal relations epistemologically inaccessible. (shrink)

Dignity plays a central role in current thinking about law and human rights, but there is sharp disagreement about its meaning. Combining conceptual precision with a broad historical background, Michael Rosen puts these controversies in context and offers a novel, constructive proposal. “Penetrating and sprightly...Rosen rightly emphasizes the centrality of Catholicism in the modern history of human dignity. His command of the history is impressive...Rosen is a wonderful guide to the recent German constitutional thinking about human dignity...[Rosen] is in (...) general an urbane and witty companion, achieving his aim of accessibly written philosophy.” —Samuel Moyn, The Nation “[An] elegant, interesting and lucid exploration of the concept of dignity...Drawing on classical, liberal and Catholic traditions, Rosen hopes to rehabilitate dignity to its rightful place near the centre of moral thought...Rosen's admirable book deserves wide attention from political theorists, jurisprudes and political philosophers.” —Simon Blackburn, Times Higher Education “Dignity deserves to be widely read, not only for its intrinsic interest, but also as a corrective to the habit of discussing such topics in abstraction from their social context. Whether or not one agrees with Rosen's arguments, there can be no doubt he has widened our horizons.” —Rae Langton, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Michael G. Titelbaum presents a new Bayesian framework for modeling rational degrees of belief—the first of its kind to represent rational requirements on agents who undergo certainty loss.

The paper discusses recent proposals by Carroll and Chen, as well as Barbour, Koslowski, and Mercati to explain the arrow of time without a Past Hypothesis, i.e. the assumption of a special initial state of the universe. After discussing the role of the Past Hypothesis and the controversy about its status, we explain why Carroll's model - which establishes an arrow of time as typical - can ground sensible predictions and retrodictions without assuming something akin to a Past Hypothesis. We (...) then propose a definition of a Boltzmann entropy for a classical N-particle system with gravity, suggesting that a Newtonian gravitating universe might provide a relevant example of Carroll's entropy model. This invites comparison with the work of Barbour, Koslowski, and Mercati that identifies typical arrows of time in a relational formulation of classical gravity on shape space. We clarify the difference between this gravitational arrow in terms of shape complexity and the entropic arrow in absolute spacetime, and work out the key advantages of the relationalist theory. We end by pointing out why the entropy concept relies on absolute scales and is thus not relational. (shrink)

edition (unseen), $12.95. traditions, bringing into being new modes of understanding. Paper Anthropology, and particularly ethnography, is torn between two quests, one to capture the diversity of social life and the other to discover universal principles structuring that diversity. Jackson examines these quests within the context of ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on the relationship between ethnographers and the people they study. He is concerned with defining the anthropological project as something more than the projection of the anthropologist's traditions and concerns onto (...) an alien culture. Rather, he would have the project open a genuine dialogue between people from different cultures or Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Despite the rapid adoption of technology in human resource departments, there is little empirical work that examines the potential challenges of algorithmic decision-making in the recruitment process. In this paper, we take the perspective of job applicants and examine how they perceive the use of algorithms in selection and recruitment. Across four studies on Amazon Mechanical Turk, we show that people in the role of a job applicant perceive algorithm-driven recruitment processes as less fair compared to human only or algorithm-assisted (...) human processes. This effect persists regardless of whether the outcome is favorable to the applicant or not. A potential mechanism underlying algorithm resistance is the belief that algorithms will not be able to recognize their uniqueness as a candidate. Although the use of algorithms has several benefits for organizations such as improved efficiency and bias reduction, our results highlight a potential cost of using them to screen potential employees during recruitment. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new way of defining sport that I call a ‘core-periphery’ model. According to a core-periphery model, sport comes in degrees – what I refer to as ‘sport-likeness’ – and the aim of the philosopher of sport is to chart those dimensions along which an activity can be more or less a sport. By introducing the concept of sport-likeness, the core-periphery model complicates the picture of what is or is not a sport and encourages philosophers (...) interested in defining sport to engage with the social sciences in exploring the extension of the term sport in common usage. In this paper I present the results of a small survey about attitudes to sport, and use it to illustrate how a core-periphery definition of sport would proceed. (shrink)

Why are some autocrats able to personalize power within their regimes while others are not? Past studies have focused on the balance of power between the autocrat and his or her supporting coalition of peer or subordinate elites, but we find that often the crucial relationship is between the autocrat and the “old guard”—retired leaders, party elders, and other elites of the outgoing generation. Using an original data set of authoritarian leadership transitions, we argue that when members of the old (...) guard retain oversight capacity over their incoming successor, he or she is less likely to overturn power-sharing arrangements and consolidate individual power. We illustrate this argument with a case study of three leadership transitions in China between 1989 and 2012. This study’s findings advance our understanding of elite politics and intergenerational conflict in authoritarian regimes. (shrink)

Contemporary democratic theory, in its focus on the distinction between a private and a public sphere, tends to exclude emotions from political life. Arendt, Habermas, and Angus present critical theories of politi­cal action and deliberation that demand that emotions be left behind in favour of a narrower rationality. On the basis of a first step toward incorporating emotions into political life as accomplished by Martha Nussbaum – despite its limitations – and of a second step taken by Sara Ahmed, an (...) outline of a theory of emotions becomes possible, and brings into question the distinction between private and public life. Emotions act as motivations that accompany every instance of participation or for non-participation, be it because of apathy or of disengagement. (shrink)

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

I prove a theorem on the precise connection of the time and phase-space average of the Boltzmann equilibrium showing that the behaviour of a dynamical system with a stationary measure and a dominant equilibrium state is qualitatively ergodic. Explicitly, I show that given a dynamical system with a stationary measure and a region of overwhelming phase-space measure, almost all trajectories spend almost all of their time in that region. Conversely, given that almost all trajectories spend almost all of their time (...) in a certain region, that region is of overwhelming phase-space measure. In total, the time and phase-space average of the equilibrium state approximately coincide. Consequently, equilibrium can be defined equivalently in terms of the time or the phase-space average. Moreover, since the two averages are almost equal, the behaviour of the system is essentially ergodic. While this does not explain the approach to equilibrium, it provides a means to estimate the fluctuation rates. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of the most influential recent discussions of the crucial metaphysical questions: what is it for one event to cause another? The subject of causation bears on many topics, such as time, explanation, mental states, the laws of nature, and the philosphy of science.

Time may be infinite in both directions. If it is, then, if persons could live at most once in all of time, the probability that you would be alive now would be zero. But if persons can live more than once, the probability that you would be alive now would be nonzero. Since you are alive now, with certainty, either the past is finite, or persons can live more than once.

In previous work I have argued against internalism by means of a dilemma intended to force all internalists to accept one of two undesirable options: either their internalism is unmotivated or it is saddled with vicious regress problems. Recently it has been argued that Phenomenal Conservatism—a theory of justification according to which justification depends on seemings—is a kind of internalism that can escape this dilemma. In this paper, I argue that Phenomenal Conservatism cannot escape my dilemma for internalism. In order (...) to do this, it is helpful to get clear on what Phenomenal Conservatism is saying, and for that reason I begin, in section I, by examining in some detail what seemings are. I then argue, in the remainder of the paper, that, whichever horn of the dilemma for internalism they take, Phenomenal Conservatives are in trouble. (shrink)

Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the contexts where such experiments tend to be deployed, low aesthetic value correlates with high epistemic value. In other words, ugly experiments can be good. Given this, we should conclude (...) that beauty is not generally necessary or sufficient for epistemic value, and increasing beauty will not generally tend to increase epistemic value. (shrink)

At the University of Sheffield between 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume II: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics is comprised of three parts. “Moral Responsibility for Implicit (...) Bias” contains chapters examining the relationship of implicit biases to concepts that are central to moral responsibility, including control, awareness, reasons-responsiveness, and alienation. The chapters in the second part—“Structural Injustice”—explore the connections between the implicit biases held by individuals and the structural injustices of the societies in which they are situated. And finally, the third part—“The Ethics of Implicit Bias: Theory and Practice”—contains chapters examining strategies for implicit attitude change, the ramifications of research on implicit bias for philosophers working in ethics, and suggestions for combating implicit biases in the fields of philosophy and law. (shrink)

Using an approach deeply informed by philosophy of art, art history and perceptual psychology, this book places seeing at the centre of an original theory of pictorial representation and explores the ramifications such a theory has for the visual arts.

Begins by explaining then proving a generalized language dependence result similar to Goodman's "grue" problem. I then use this result to cast doubt on the existence of an objective evidential favoring relation (such as "the evidence confirms one hypothesis over another," "the evidence provides more reason to believe one hypothesis over the other," "the evidence justifies one hypothesis over the other," etc.). Once we understand what language dependence tells us about evidential favoring, our options are an implausibly strong conception of (...) the a priori, a hard externalism on which agents are unable to determine what their evidence favors, or a subjectivist view that makes evidential favoring relative to features of the agent. (shrink)