Philosophers of logic are particularly interested in understanding the aims, epistemology, and methodology of logic. This raises the question of how the philosophy of logic should go about these enquires. According to the practice-based approach, the most reliable method we have to investigate the methodology and epistemology of a research field is by considering in detail the activities of its practitioners. This holds just as true for logic as it does for the recognised empirical and abstract sciences. (...) If we wish to systematically understand the aims and epistemology of logic, we are best placed achieving this by looking at what logicians do, rather than reflecting upon the nature of logic itself. In this entry, we outline the motivations for a practice-based approach towards the philosophy of logic and highlight its advantages over more “top-down” approaches, which attempt to infer conclusions about the nature of logic and its methodology on the basis of traditional assumptions about knowledge, metaphysics, or logic itself. We end by addressing several prominent concerns raised against the practice-based approach. (shrink)

There is... something both intellectually and socially unresponsive in the appeal to self-evidence upon controverted issues. Over the last two decades philosophers have focused increasingly on the role of society and practices in shaping practical normativity.3 Contemporary moral and political philosophy remains fundamentally committed to individualistic and causal approaches to normativity, but a contrary trend has taken root—at least since Wittgenstein’s insights regarding the role of context, practices, and uses—with increasing appeals made to the “social” and to “practice” in (...) reaction to the over-individualistic and idealistic trends characterizing mainstream philosophy, especially in the.. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of fundamental entities in set theory. It takes up J. Hamkins’ claim that models of set theory are such fundamental entities and investigates it using the methodology of P. Maddy’s naturalism, Second Philosophy. In accordance with this methodology, I investigate the historical case study of the use of models in the introduction of forcing, compare this case to contemporary practice and give a systematic account of how set-theoretic practice can be said to introduce (...) models as new entities. In conclusion, I argue for a view that takes both sets and models to be fundamental entities in set theory. (shrink)

Paul Hager and I worked on a large number of research projects and publications throughout the 1990s. The focus of this work was on developing a competency-based approach to professional education and assessment. I review this work and its impact over the years. Notwithstanding the fact that most professional associations today have a competency framework and that most university courses use them in their courses for initial professional education, they still have a relatively naïve view of the relationship (...) between theory and practice. The second part of the article outlines how this might be theorized in health education. (shrink)

Housing has become a political problem in the vast majority of cities around the world, highlighting obvious injustices. The article pursues the question to what extent the existing human right to housing can be of any interest here. The practice-based approach of Charles Beitz can help against the background of some systematic supplements. A ‘negative’ approach that distinguishes forms of injustice is an important prerequisite for a substantial use of human rights. The negative approach makes (...) it possible to uncover injustices and shows the obstacles that stand in the way of a practice-based conception of human rights. The practice-based conception is, at the same time, necessary for the social analysis of the obstacles, in order to analyse human rights as well as to be able to justify human rights themselves. The current commodification of housing it is argued impedes the exercise of a practice-based conception of human rights in the way that Charles Beitz has suggested. (shrink)

Housing has become a political problem in the vast majority of cities around the world, highlighting obvious injustices. The article pursues the question to what extent the existing human right to housing can be of any interest here. The practice-based approach of Charles Beitz can help against the background of some systematic supplements. A ‘negative’ approach that distinguishes forms of injustice is an important prerequisite for a substantial use of human rights. The negative approach makes (...) it possible to uncover injustices and shows the obstacles that stand in the way of a practice-based conception of human rights. The practice-based conception is, at the same time, necessary for the social analysis of the obstacles, in order to analyse human rights as well as to be able to justify human rights themselves. The current commodification of housing it is argued impedes the exercise of a practice-based conception of human rights in the way that Charles Beitz has suggested. (shrink)

The effectiveness of a quality management program of medical care has to meet not just the quality management standards, but also has to be flexible, taking into account the features of a medical organization and the existing problems in the medical care support. The effectiveness of a quality management program is based on feedback, so the quality control of medical care is so important. The study of problems in medical care gives us the ability to improve both, the quality (...) management program of medical care and the quality and scope of medical services constantly. (shrink)

Doing Practical Ethics supports the deliberate practice of philosophical skills relevant to understanding, evaluating, and developing arguments in forms commonly used in the field of practical ethics. Each chapter includes an explanation of a specific moral reasoning skill, demonstration exercises with sample solutions that offer students immediate feedback on their initial practice attempts, and extensive sets of practice exercises. It is suitable for any ethics course that centrally features argument from principle, argument from analogy, or inference to (...) the best explanation. It may be used as a standalone text in a debate-focused course. Paired with an anthology in a readings-focused course, it will help students develop the skills they need to understand and evaluate the arguments in the assigned readings. (shrink)

“Law in Public Health Practice” is an interdisciplinary, practice-based course in which the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, its School of Law, and the Allegheny County Health Department work collaboratively to identify an issue needing the expertise of multiple disciplines. For the first iteration, students in over four disciplines explored the possible regulation of tattoo parlors. The lessons learned are adaptable to any topic that engages students in more than one discipline to address real-world (...) public health problems. (shrink)

More than resource allocations, evaluations of funding applications have become central instances for status bestowal in academia. Much attention in past literature has been devoted to grasping the status consequences of prominent funding evaluations. But little attention has been paid to understanding how the status-bestowing momentum of such evaluations is constructed. Throughout this paper, our aim is to develop new knowledge on the role of applicants in constructing certain funding evaluations as events with crucial importance for status bestowal. Using empirical (...) material from retrospective interviews with Sweden-based early-career scientists who, successfully or unsuccessfully, applied for European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants, our findings show how these scientists interlinked experiences from various practices to construct the ERC’s evaluations, in general, and the final-stage appointments at Brussels’ Madou Plaza Tower, in particular, as apex-esque, crescendo-like status-bestowing events. We discuss our findings as instructional, preparatory, and demarcative practices that, by extension, distribute responsibility for the construction and reinforcement of high-stakes, career-defining evaluations through which considerable stress and anxiety is generated in academia. (shrink)

Philosopher Michael Boylan and theologian James A. Donahue provide a framework_compatible with humanist and theist beliefs_that will enable college and university professors to address a full range of ethical issues as they arise in classroom discussion, both in the academic disciplines and in professional education.

Autonomous vehicle moral dilemmas matter less for the particular outcomes of potential accidents than for their role in defining the values of the society we wish to live in. Different approaches have been suggested to determine the ethical settings that autonomous vehicles should be implemented in and identify the legitimate agents for making such decisions. Most of these, however, fail on theoretical grounds, facing severe issues related to moral justifications and compliance to the law, or on practical grounds, being insufficiently (...) universal, action-guiding, or technically viable to be implemented. The analogy with the “trolley problem” has been extensively discussed. However, researchers have rarely tried to adapt this framework to autonomous vehicle cases or investigate how it could be used to address these issues. In doing so, this paper aims to answer the two key problems of autonomous vehicle dilemmas. With regards to the decision-maker, it rejects autonomous vehicle users’ choice-based models, showing the absurdity of both switch of control and adaptative preferences and arguing for common legislator-determined ethical settings. With regards to the decisions themselves, it criticizes both utilitarian views and those based on individuals’ criteria to suggest a deontologist rights-based approach. This allows for the defence of a morally coherent, regulatory compliant, explainable, and easily implementable framework capable of addressing all autonomous vehicle moral dilemma scenarios present in the literature. (shrink)

Notions of care for humans and more-than-humans appear at the margins of the sustainability transformations debate. This paper explores the merits of an ethics of care approach to sustainability tr...

Without respecting and nurturing ‘place’ we cannot achieve a state of ecological sustainability. Place-based organizations are not run on a purely materialistic basis. The non-materialistic features of a place, its aesthetics, cultural heritage, community feelings, transcendence, should be integrated into sustainability management. This far-reaching two-volume work breaks with the economic logic of efficiency and profit maximization, and suggests that organizations should inform their sustainability by encompassing feelings of identity with and attachment to place. According to this vision, the editors (...) have compiled scholarly contributions aimed to support the ecological transformation of humankind by exploring both theoretical and practical models that integrate the sense of the place, ethics and spirituality in new ways of organizing of economic and social life. This first volume sets the theoretical direction of the volumes, asking broad aesthetic questions around the ethical and spiritual foundations of sustainability. It will be of interest to scholars, practitioners and students of sustainability, business ethics and spirituality. (shrink)

Without respecting and nurturing ‘place’ we cannot achieve a state of ecological sustainability. Place-based organizations are not run on a purely materialistic basis. The non-materialistic features of a place, its aesthetics, cultural heritage, community feelings, transcendence, should be integrated into sustainability management. This far-reaching two-volume work breaks with the economic logic of efficiency and profit maximization, and suggests that organizations should inform their sustainability by encompassing feelings of identity with and attachment to place. According to this vision, the editors (...) have compiled scholarly contributions aimed to support the ecological transformation of humankind by exploring both theoretical and practical models that integrate the sense of the place, ethics and spirituality in new ways of organizing of economic and social life. This second volume takes the theoretical direction, established in the first model, and puts it into practice with cases from business and society. It will be of interest to scholars, practitioners and students of sustainability, business ethics and spirituality. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has thus far failed to adequately account for the appropriate incorporation of other potential warrants for medical decision making into clinical practice. In particular, EBM has struggled with the value and integration of other kinds of medical knowledge, such as those derived from clinical experience or based on pathophysiologic rationale. The general priority given to empirical evidence derived from clinical research in all EBM approaches is not epistemically tenable. A casuistic alternative to EBM approaches (...) recognizes that five distinct topics, 1) empirical evidence, 2) experiential evidence, 3) pathophysiologic rationale, 4) patient goals and values, and 5) system features are potentially relevant to any clinical decision. No single topic has a general priority over any other and the relative importance of a topic will depend upon the circumstances of the particular case. The skilled clinician must weigh these potentially conflicting evidentiary and non-evidentiary warrants for action, employing both practical and theoretical reasoning, in order to arrive at the best choice for an individual patient. (shrink)

Mindfulness for the High Performance World provides a unique approach to mindfulness training, built upon the principles of Buddhist philosophy written in line with the Dalai Lama’s description of meditation and mindfulness as “Science of the Mind”. This unique volume explores mindfulness as a learnable skill in context with the underpinnings of the teachings of Eastern psychology. The authors, Norm, a physician, cancer researcher and triathlete and Karolynn, a psychotherapist, mindfulness meditation teacher and marathoner, live and work in a (...) high-stress, high-expectation world. Their approach is rooted in an understanding that thoughts produce biochemical and physiological changes and provides a strategic framework to instruct an individual on how to categorize types of thoughts. After harnessing this ability, one is positioned to become both more aware of his or her thoughts as well as the specific patterns of sensations they produce, or Sentinel SitesSM. The awareness of what the mind is doing and the ability to interrupt a thought pattern and/or control the response almost instantly leads one to having a healthier life, improved relationships with others and better adaptability to one’s environment. Emphasizing the importance of physical activity and nutrition, the authors present a systematic approach for people who want to learn and incorporate mindfulness and transform how they live without having to divert their lives and careers. Offering itself as an accessible and skill-based introduction to the principles, practices, and benefits of mindfulness, Mindfulness for the High Performance World is a useful resource for students, athletes and professionals living and working in high-performance, high-stress environments and also for mindfulness practitioners seeking to deepen their skill level. (shrink)

This book investigates transdisciplinary, arts-based approaches to developing innovative and pertinent higher education pedagogy. Introducing timely critical thinking strategies, the author addresses some of the key issues facing educators today in an increasingly complex digital, technological and ecological world. The author combines emerging ideas in the New Materialism and Posthumanism schools of thought with arts-based teaching and learning, including Practice-as-Research, for Social Science contexts, thus exploring how this approach can be used to productively create new pedagogical (...) strategies. Drawing on a rich repertoire of real-life examples, the volume suggests transferrable routes into practice that are suitable for lecturers, researchers and students. This practical and innovative volume will appeal to researchers and practitioners interested in Posthuman and New Materialist theories, and how these can be applied to the educational landscape in future. (shrink)

Literature and Philosophical Play in Early Childhood Education explores the role of philosophy and the humanities as pedagogy in early childhood educational research and practice, arguing that research should attend to questions about education and growth that concern social structures, individual development and existential aspects of learning. It demonstrates how we can think of pedagogy and educational practices in early childhood as artistic, poetic and philosophical, and exemplifies a humanities-based approach by giving literature and artful play a (...) place in shaping the ground of practice and research. (shrink)

One of the Top 10 Books That Will Change Your Life in 2017 - Live Happy Magazine Grow Your Grit—How You Can Develop the Critical Ingredient for Success Grit—defined as our perseverance and passion for long-term goals—is now recognized as one of the key determinants for achievement and life satisfaction. In an age that provides us with a never-ending stream of distractions and quick-and-easy solutions, how do we build this essential quality? "This book is designed to help you screen out (...) the spam of life and cultivate authentic grit in every setting," writes Caroline Miller. With Getting Grit, this bestselling author brings you an information-rich and practical guide for developing the qualities needed to persevere over obstacles—not just toughness and passion, but also humility, patience, and kindness. Join her as she shares research-based insights and practices on: • Learning grit—how you can enhance your willpower and rewire your brain for resilience • The key traits of gritty people—what the latest research reveals • The three kinds of "false grit" and how to recognize them in yourself • The courage to fail—tools for turning your setbacks into your greatest teachers • Daring to dream big—guidance for building your capacity to take risks and aim higher • No one succeeds alone—tips for gathering your support team and inspiring others • The role of self-compassion, gratitude, and spirituality in building grit "I’ve come to believe that gritty behavior is a positive force that does more than help us rise to our own challenges," writes Caroline Miller. "When we embody the best qualities of grit, we become a role model for others who want to become better people, and help them awaken greater possibilities for themselves." Whether you’re seeking to grow beyond your limits at work, at home, on the sporting field, or in any leadership role, Getting Grit is a powerful resource to help you bring out the qualities that will help you succeed and thrive. (shrink)

Engineering, as a complex and multidimensional practice of technology development, has long been a source of ethical concerns. These concerns have been approached from various perspectives. There are ongoing debates in the literature of the philosophy of engineering/technology about how to organize an optimized view of the values entailed in technology development processes. However, these debates deliver little in the way of a concrete rationale or framework that could comprehensively describe different types of engineering values and their multi-aspect interrelations (...) in real engineering practices. Approaching engineering values from a meaning-based perspective, as in this paper, can be a reliable method of tackling such a controversial problem. This paper therefore proposes that technology development be considered a systemic normative practice and attempts to provide a comprehensive view of various built-in values, their different origins and features, and a way of prioritizing them in real engineering processes. Studying two cases of the Zayandeh Rood Dam and the Abbasi Dam will lead to practical insights into how to understand norms in technology development and incorporate them into engineering practice. (shrink)

Engineering, as a complex and multidimensional practice of technology development, has long been a source of ethical concerns. These concerns have been approached from various perspectives. There are ongoing debates in the literature of the philosophy of engineering/technology about how to organize an optimized view of the values entailed in technology development processes. However, these debates deliver little in the way of a concrete rationale or framework that could comprehensively describe different types of engineering values and their multi-aspect interrelations (...) in real engineering practices. Approaching engineering values from a meaning-based perspective, as in this paper, can be a reliable method of tackling such a controversial problem. This paper therefore proposes that technology development be considered a systemic normative practice and attempts to provide a comprehensive view of various built-in values, their different origins and features, and a way of prioritizing them in real engineering processes. Studying two cases of the Zayandeh Rood Dam and the Abbasi Dam will lead to practical insights into how to understand norms in technology development and incorporate them into engineering practice. (shrink)

This unique textbook utilizes an integrated, case-based approach to explore how the domains of bioethics, public health and the social sciences impact individual patients and populations. It provides a structured framework suitable for both educators (including course directors and others engaged in curricular design) and for medical and health professions students to use in classroom settings across a range of clinical areas and allied health professions and for independent study. The textbook opens with an introduction, describing the intersection (...) of ethics and public health in clinical practice and the six key themes that inform the book's core learning objectives, followed by a guide to using the book. It then presents 22 case studies that address a broad spectrum of patient populations, clinical settings, and disease pathologies. Each pair of cases shares a core concept in bioethics or public health, from community perspectives and end-of-life care to medical mistakes and stigma and marginalization. They engage learners in rigorous clinical and ethical reasoning by prompting readers to make choices based on available information and then providing additional information to challenge assumptions, simulating clinical decision-making. In addition to providing a unique, detailed clinical scenario, each case is presented in a consistent format, which includes learning objectives, questions and responses for self-directed learning, questions and responses for group discussion, references, and suggested further reading. All cases integrate the six themes of patient- and family-centered care; evidence-based practice; structural competency; biases in decision-making; cultural humility and awareness of the culture of medicine; and justice, social responsibility and advocacy. The final section discusses some challenges to evaluating courses and learning encounters that adopt the cases and includes a model framework for learner assessment. (shrink)

Responsible conduct of research training typically includes only a subset of the issues that ought to be included in science ethics and sometimes makes ethics appear to be a set of externally imposed rules rather than something intrinsic to scientific practice. A new approach to science ethics training based upon Pennock’s notion of the scientific virtues may help avoid such problems. This paper motivates and describes three implementations—theory-centered, exemplar-centered, and concept-centered—that we have developed in courses and workshops (...) to introduce students to this scientific virtue-based approach. (shrink)

Despite the acknowledged importance of strategic planning in business and other organizations, there are few studies focusing on strategy texts and the related processes of their production and consumption. In this article, we attempt to partially fill this research gap by examining the institutionalized aspects of strategy discourse: what strategy is as genre. Combining textual analysis and analysis of conversation, the article focuses on the official strategy of the City of Lahti in Finland. Our analysis shows how specific communicative purposes (...) and lexico-grammatical features characterize the genre of strategy and how the actual negotiations over strategy text involve particular kinds of intersubjectivity and intertextuality. (shrink)

Because it is often argued that surrogacy should not be treated as contractual, the question arises in which terms this practice might then be couched. In this article, I argue that a phenomenology of surrogacy centering on the notion of trust provides a description that is illuminating from the moral point of view. My thesis is that surrogacy establishes a complex and extended reproductive unit––the “surrogacy triad” consisting of the surrogate mother, the child, and the intending parents––whose constituents are (...) bound together by mutual trustful commitments. Even though a trust-based approach does not provide an ultimate answer to whether surrogacy should be sanctioned or prohibited, it allows for at least some practical suggestions. In particular, I will argue that, under certain conditions, surrogacy is tenable within familial or other significant relationships, and I will stress the necessity of acknowledging the new relationships and moral commitments that result from this practice. (shrink)

In recent years, several systematic theories of linguistic meaning have been offered that give pride of place to linguistic practice, or the process of linguistic communication. Often these theories are referred to as neo-pragmatist or new pragmatist; I call them 'practice-based'. According to practice-based theories of meaning, the process of linguistic communication is somehow constitutive of, or otherwise essential for the existence of, propositional linguistic meaning. Moreover, these theories disavow, or downplay, the semantic importance of (...) inflationary notions of representation. I introduce the basic ideas and motives behind some practice-based theories of meaning, and offer some reasons why an eliminativist, non-quietist, epistemic practice-based approach to meaning that 1) disavows any explanatory role for the linguistic community as such, 2) prioritizes sentence meaning over word meaning, and 3) may , in the end, be naturalistic, should be favored over its practice-based competitors. (shrink)

Data protection law has a linear logic, in that it purports to trace the lifecycle of personal data from creation to collection, processing, transfer, and ultimately its demise, and to regulate each step so as to promote the data subject’s control thereof. Big data defies this linear logic, in that it decontextualizes data from its original environment and conducts an algorithmic nonlinear mix, match, and mine analysis. Applying data protection law to the processing of big data does not work well, (...) to say the least. This Article examines the case of big medical data. A survey of emerging research practices indicates that studies either ignore data protection law altogether or assume an ex post position, namely that because they are conducted after the data has already been created in the course of providing medical care, and they use de-identified data, they go under the radar of data protection law. These studies focus on the end-point of the lifecycle of big data: if sufficiently anonymous at publication, the previous steps are overlooked, on the claim that they enjoy immunity. I argue that this answer is too crude. To portray data protection law in its best light, we should view it as a process-based attempt to equip data subjects with some power to control personal data about them, in all phases of data processing. Such control reflects the underlying justification of data protection law as an implementation of human dignity. The process-based approach fits current legal practices and is justified by reflecting dignitarian conceptions of informational privacy. (shrink)

The renewed engagement with Aristotle’s concept of practical wisdom in management and organization studies is reflective of the wider turn towards practice sweeping across many disciplines. In this sense, it constitutes a welcome move away from the traditional rationalist, abstract, and mechanistic modes of approaching ethical decision-making. Within the current engagement, practical wisdom is generally conceptualized, interpreted or read as a form of deliberation or deliberative judgement that is also cognizant of context, situatedness, particularity, lived experience, and so on. (...) We argue that while this way of conceptualizing practical wisdom moves closer to practice in accounting for the concrete and particular reality within which individuals enact ethics, it does not adequately account for practice in the ontological and relational sense posited in practice theories. Practical wisdom conceptualized on the _deliberative_ dimension still retains a higher emphasis on distinct entities (individuals/institutions), reflexive agency, conscious mental states, goal-directed action, and intentionality. In other words, it puts a higher stress on individual _wisdom_, as opposed to _practice_ or the relational interaction of the individual and social inhering in practice. We offer an alternative conceptualization of practical wisdom based on the _dispositional_ mode of being in the world which is rarely deliberate, intentional, or reflective. Our conceptualization integrates Aristotle’s original ethical framework, which is already embedded in a practice-based ontology, with insights from practice theories to show how practical wisdom is intuitively channelled in the _dispositional_ mode in a given social configuration of virtues/ends. (shrink)

Reacting against the dominance of obligation-based moral theories in both general and nursing ethics, the author proposes a 'strong' (action-guiding) account of a virtue-based approach to moral decision-making within contemporary nursing practice. Merits and criticisms of obligation and virtue-based approaches to morality are identified and examined. One of the author's central premises is that the notions of moral goodness and badness carry more moral weight than the traditionally important notions of moral rightness and wrongness. Therefore, (...) the author argues that in order to deliver morally good care, it is vital to consider the kind of nurse one is and this means examining one's moral character. This book will be rewarding reading for a wide range of readers including clinical nurses, nurse educators and nurse ethicists; indeed, anyone interested in morality and ethics and the work of nurses will find this book stimulating reading. (shrink)

A Case-Based Approach to Learning Ethics in Physical Therapy. Ethics in Physical Therapy utilizes a unique case-based approach to teach students and clinicians how to apply theoretical concepts to real-world situations. The cases were carefully selected to encourage thinking and discussion. The accompanying text provides a framework to answer the "should" questions, such as "What should I do?" and "How should I act?" The format provides the opportunity to move beyond the individual realm, when appropriate, resolving (...) issues within an institutional or societal perspective. The text is divided into two sections: "Ethics for the Physical Therapist" and "Types of Ethical Decisions: Case Analysis." They are designed to integrate with one another, but, each section can also be used separately. Part I provides more didactic, foundational material, while Part II strives to apply ethical decision-making tools to relevant cases in physical therapy practice, with the second section focusing on case analyses. The purpose of Ethics in Physical Therapy is to give students and clinicians a lens through which to analyze contemporary ethical challenges. Philosophical theory within the text is limited to that which can be applied practically in the clinical setting. This book is not intended to be a work on ethical behavior, rather, it is designed to provide students and clinicians with a framework in which to approach the uncertainty of ethical decision making with tools to aid their inherent judgment. (shrink)