Sarah Trimmer was an experienced Sunday and charity school educator, remembered for her popularization of images and fables in children's textbooks. Trimmer's ideas were already well respected during her lifetime and many of her books saw multiple editions, eliciting the interest of such figures as Queen Charlotte and the Dowager Countess Spencer. Her Reflections upon the Education of Children in Charity Schools, first published in 1792, was one of several books she wrote to advise her readers on (...) how to approach the Christian education of the poor. In it, Trimmer passionately advocated for the utility of charity schools, provided that they followed a more age-appropriate and critical curriculum, which she conveniently published as separate editions. Those interested in the history of education, social history, the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, or the changing voice of female authorship will benefit from this book. (shrink)

Traditional philosophical discussions of knowledge have focused on the epistemic status of full beliefs. In this book, Moss argues that in addition to full beliefs, credences can constitute knowledge. For instance, your .4 credence that it is raining outside can constitute knowledge, in just the same way that your full beliefs can. In addition, you can know that it might be raining, and that if it is raining then it is probably cloudy, where this knowledge is not knowledge of propositions, (...) but of probabilistic contents. -/- The notion of probabilistic content introduced in this book plays a central role not only in epistemology, but in the philosophy of mind and language as well. Just as tradition holds that you believe and assert propositions, you can believe and assert probabilistic contents. Accepting that we can believe, assert, and know probabilistic contents has significant consequences for many philosophical debates, including debates about the relationship between full belief and credence, the semantics of epistemic modals and conditionals, the contents of perceptual experience, peer disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, perceptual dogmatism, and transformative experience. In addition, accepting probabilistic knowledge can help us discredit negative evaluations of female speech, explain why merely statistical evidence is insufficient for legal proof, and identify epistemic norms violated by acts of racial profiling. Hence the central theses of this book not only help us better understand the nature of our own mental states, but also help us better understand the nature of our responsibilities to each other. (shrink)

This paper develops a precise understanding of the thesis of moral encroachment, which states that the epistemic status of an opinion can depend on its moral features. In addition, I raise objections to existing accounts of moral encroachment. For instance, many accounts fail to give sufficient attention to moral encroachment on credences. Also, many accounts focus on moral features that fail to support standard analogies between pragmatic and moral encroachment. Throughout the paper, I discuss racial profiling as a case study, (...) arguing that moral encroachment can help us identify one respect in which racial profiling is epistemically problematic. (shrink)

The increasing workplace use of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies has implications for the experience of meaningful human work. Meaningful work refers to the perception that one’s work has worth, significance, or a higher purpose. The development and organisational deployment of AI is accelerating, but the ways in which this will support or diminish opportunities for meaningful work and the ethical implications of these changes remain under-explored. This conceptual paper is positioned at the intersection of the meaningful work and ethical AI (...) literatures and offers a detailed assessment of the ways in which the deployment of AI can enhance or diminish employees’ experiences of meaningful work. We first outline the nature of meaningful work and draw on philosophical and business ethics accounts to establish its ethical importance. We then explore the impacts of three paths of AI deployment (replacing some tasks, ‘tending the machine’, and amplifying human skills) across five dimensions constituting a holistic account of meaningful work, and finally assess the ethical implications. In doing so we help to contextualise the meaningful work literature for the era of AI, extend the ethical AI literature into the workplace, and conclude with a range of practical implications and future research directions. (shrink)

Existing discussions of legal proof address a host of apparently disparate questions: What does it take to prove a fact beyond a reasonable doubt? Why is the reasonable doubt standard notoriously elusive, sometimes considered by courts to be impossible to define? Can the standard of proof by a preponderance of the evidence be defined in terms of probability thresholds? Why is statistical evidence often insufficient to meet the burden of proof? -/- This paper defends an account of proof that addresses (...) each of these questions. Where existing theories take a piecemeal approach to these puzzles, my theory develops an insight that unifies them—namely, the thesis that legal proof requires knowledge. Although this thesis may seem radical at first, I answer several common objections to it, and I argue that it does better than several competing accounts when it comes to making sense of our intuitions about what legal proof requires. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of full belief, including an account of its relationship to credence. Along the way, I address several familiar and difficult questions about belief. Does fully believing a proposition require having maximal confidence in it? Are rational beliefs closed under entailment, or does the preface paradox show that rational agents can believe inconsistent propositions? Does whether you believe a proposition depend partly on your practical interests? My account of belief resolves the tension between conflicting answers to (...) these questions that have been defended in the literature. In addition, my account complements fruitful probabilistic theories of assertion and knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter defines and defends time-slice epistemology, according to which there are no essentially diachronic norms of rationality. The chapter begins by distinguishing two notions of time-slice epistemology, and ends by defending time-slice theories of action under indeterminacy, i.e. theories about how you should act when the outcome of your decision depends on some indeterminate claim. In a recent chapter, J. Robert G. Williams defends a theory of action under indeterminacy which is subject to several objections. An alternative theory is (...) proposed in its place. The resulting discussion highlights a more general moral about action under indeterminacy, namely that time-slice theories are supported by strong analogies with ethical theories. In particular, our understanding of agents torn between interpretations of a decision situation should be guided by our theories of agents torn between incommensurable values. (shrink)

I use the psychological phenomenon of ‘attribute framing’ as a case study for exploring philosophical conceptions of semantics and the semantics-pragmatics divide. Attribute frames are pairs of sentences that use contradictory expressions to predicate the same property of an individual or object. Despite their equivalence, pairs of attribute frames have been observed to induce systematic variability in hearers’ responses. One explanation of such framing effects appeals to the distinct ‘reference point information’ conveyed by alternative frames. Although this information is taken (...) to be pragmatic, a live debate in the philosophy of language concerns the extent to which pragmatic information can really be held apart from semantics. Therefore, in this article I examine whether – and how – reference point information might be thought to intrude on the semantics of an attribute frame. I describe two ways in which the information might be considered broadly semantic, due to its being directly communicated or conventional. However, I argue that the framing data in fact support a narrower conception of semantics, and a semantics-pragmatics distinction that separates standing sentence meaning from enriched communicated meaning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmpathy has been taken to play a crucial role in ethics at least since the Scottish Enlightenment. More recently, a revival of moral sentimentalism and empirical research on moral behavior has prompted a renewed interest in empathy and related concepts and on their contribution to moral reasoning and to moral behavior. Furthermore, empathy has recently entered our public discourse as having the power to ameliorate our social and political interactions with others.The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent (...) to which such a role can be actually granted. Before focusing on a positive assessment, I will delve into a few problems our ordinary concept of empathy and our commonsensical way of conceiving its connection to ethics will need to face. Specifically, I will show how an exaggerated reliance on the ordinary concept of empathy could lead to an underestimation of its biases and potential limitations, how a naïve conception of its connection to morality can overlook relevant counterexam... (shrink)

This article outlines and develops the concept of ‘ethics work’ in social work practice. It takes as its starting point a situated account of ethics as embedded in everyday practice: ‘everyday ethics’. This is contrasted with ‘textbook ethics’, which focuses on outlining general ethical principles, presenting ethical dilemmas and offering normative ethical frameworks (including decision-making models). ‘Ethics work’ is a more descriptive account of ethics that refers to the effort people put into seeing ethically salient aspects of situations, developing themselves (...) as good practitioners, working out the right course of action and justifying who they are and what they have done. After identifying seven features of ethics work, including work on framing, roles, emotion, identity, reason, relationships and performance, each element is illustrated with reference to two case examples from social work practice. It is argued that the concept of ethics work, with its focus on the practitioners as moral agents in context, is an important antidote to the rules-based managerialism of much contemporary practice. (shrink)

The domain of professional ethics -- Virtue, ethics, and professional life -- Virtues, vices, and situations -- Professional wisdom -- Care -- Respectfulness -- Trustworthiness -- Justice -- Courage -- Integrity.

The psychological contract refers to the implicit and subjective beliefs regarding a reciprocal exchange agreement, predominantly examined between employees and employers. While contemporary contract research is investigating a wider range of exchanges employees may hold, such as with team members and clients, it remains silent on a rapidly emerging form of workplace relationship: employees’ increasing engagement with technically, socially, and emotionally sophisticated forms of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies. In this paper we examine social robots (also termed humanoid robots) as likely (...) future psychological contract partners for human employees, given these entities transform notions of workplace technology from being a tool to being an active partner. We first overview the increasing role of robots in the workplace, particularly through the advent of sociable AI, and synthesize the literature on human–robot interaction. We then develop an account of a human-social robot psychological contract and zoom in on the implications of this exchange for the enactment of reciprocity. Given the future focused nature of our work we utilize a thought experiment, a commonly used form of conceptual and mental model reasoning, to expand on our theorizing. We then outline potential implications of human-social robot psychological contracts and offer a range of pathways for future research. (shrink)

Using artificial intelligence (AI) to make decisions in human resource management (HRM) raises questions of how fair employees perceive these decisions to be and whether they experience respectful treatment (i.e., interactional justice). In this experimental survey study with open-ended qualitative questions, we examine decision making in six HRM functions and manipulate the decision maker (AI or human) and decision valence (positive or negative) to determine their impact on individuals’ experiences of interactional justice, trust, dehumanization, and perceptions of decision-maker role appropriate- (...) ness. In terms of decision makers, the use of human decision makers over AIs generally resulted in better perceptions of respectful treatment. In terms of decision valence, people experiencing positive over negative decisions generally resulted in better perceptions of respectful treatment. In instances where these cases conflict, on some indicators people preferred positive AI decisions over negative human decisions. Qualitative responses show how people identify justice concerns with both AI and human decision making. We outline implications for theory, practice, and future research. (shrink)

Among the many practical failures that threaten us, weakness of will or akrasia is often considered to be a paradigm of irrationality. The eleven new essays in this collection, written by an excellent international team of philosophers, some well-established, some younger scholars, give a rich overview of the current debate over weakness of will and practical irrationality more generally. Issues covered include classical questions such as the distinction between weakness and compulsion, the connection between evaluative judgement and motivation, the role (...) of emotions in akrasia, rational agency, and the existence of the will. The also include new topics, such as group akrasia, strength of will, the nature of correct choice, the structure of decision theory, the temporality of prudential reasons, and emotional rationality. Because these questions cut across philosophy of mind and ethics, the collection will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates in both these fields. (shrink)

Over the past decade, investments in agricultural and food technology startups have grown to previously unknown dimensions. Mushrooming agri-food tech startups that promise to solve critical issues in the agri-food system through technological innovation are increasingly perceived as an attractive new investment opportunity for venture capitalists and investors. This paper investigates how digital agri-food technologies are narrated, constructed, and promoted for financial investment. Through qualitative content analysis of agri-food tech industry reports, articles, and commentaries we trace the logic, rationales, and (...) narratives of this most recent investment rush, and reveal its immanent techno-finance fixes. We conceptualize the agri-food imaginaries produced within the agri-food tech discourse as financialized imaginaries, and argue that they are specifically tailored to construct, incentivize, and legitimize this new agri-food tech space for financial investment. In their attempt to raise money from investors, venture capital firms further fuel this development by discursively creating an ‘agri-food tech investment rush’—similar to the land and gold rushes of the past. Investments in agri-food tech startups, however, are presented to investors as both a profitable investment opportunity as well as a moral obligation, allowing for food production to cope with neo-malthusian and environmental threats. This paper contributes to our understanding of digitization as a socio-technical project, which includes the active envisioning and promotion of desirable agri-food futures. (shrink)

Can you disagree with someone without thinking that what they say is false? As we shall see, this is not only possible but quite frequent. Starting with the type of disagreement most familiar from the philosophical literature, we will progressively expand the circle of genuine disagreement until it encompasses even conceptual disagreement, which might sound like a contradiction in terms. For conceptual disagreement necessarily involves the parties' using different concepts, which one might think would preclude genuine disagreement. We shall argue (...) otherwise, adducing three different types of case in order to demonstrate the scope of this phenomenon. (shrink)

Disagreement and the implications thereof have emerged as a central preoccupation of recent analytic philosophy. In epistemology, articles on so-called peer disagreement and its implications have burgeoned and now constitute an especially rich subject of discussion in the field. In moral and political philosophy, moral disagreement has of course traditionally been a crucial argumentative lever in meta-ethical debates, and disagreement over conceptions of the good has been the spark for central controversies in political philosophy, such as the limits of legitimate (...) state authority and public reason. Philosophers of language have also been keen to take up disagreement as a tool, for instance in motivating or exploring the merits of contextualist or relativist semantics for certain areas of discourse, such as matters of taste, aesthetic evaluation, and epistemic discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, we theorize that the anticipation of guilt plays an important role in ethically questionable consumer situations. We propose an ethical decision-making framework incorporating anticipated guilt as partial mediator between consumers’ ethical beliefs (anteceded by ethical ideology) and intentions. In the first study, we compared several models using structural equation modeling and found empirical support for our research model. A second experiment was set up to illustrate how these new insights may be applied to prevent consumers from taking (...) advantage of the seller. Results showed that enhancing the anticipation of guilt (by making the interpersonal consequences of the unethical act more salient) increased consumers’ ethical intentions, controlling for ethical beliefs. Together these two studies might have important theoretical and managerial contributions. (shrink)

This paper uses some modest claims about knowledge to identify a significant problem for contemporary American trial procedure. First, suppose that legal proof requires knowledge. In particular, suppose that the defendant in a jury trial is proven guilty only if the jury knows that the defendant is guilty. Second, suppose that knowledge is subject to pragmatic encroachment. In particular, whether the jury knows the defendant is guilty depends on what’s at stake in their decision to convict, including the consequences that (...) the defendant may face if convicted. Then in order to know whether a defendant has been proven guilty, jurors may need to know something about the potential consequences of conviction. But in nearly every American criminal trial, this information is withheld from jurors. -/- In §1, I lay out the philosophical premises of my argument. In §2, I say more about why these premises present a problem for American trial procedure, and I identify social and political structures that exacerbate the problem. I describe the reasoning that has led courts to withhold sentencing information from jurors, and I diagnose the flaw in this reasoning. In §3, I expand my initial argument, strengthening its conclusions and offering alternative sets of premises that still entail them. I argue that the legal ramifications of pragmatic encroachment depend on highly controversial questions in epistemology, questions about the precise nature of practical stakes. In §4, I propose strategies for legal reform. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 103, Issue 3, Page 620-638, November 2021.

In this article, I will begin by describing recent divisive concepts legislation, which bans teaching about aspects of racism, sexism, and equity, speculating briefly on the motivations behind it and the implications resulting from it. I will then describe how discussing divisive concepts in classrooms may be a helpful way for students to better understand the particular concepts and for students to take a stand on them. While I will briefly argue for the importance of classroom discussion of divisive concepts, (...) my central claim will be that we must do more than merely discuss these concepts. Instead, we should engage in classroom inquiry about them. Inquiry positions students to not be silent regarding divisive concepts, as some legislation may cause, and inquiry positions students to not just talk about divisive concepts, but to solve social problems related to them in our world today. In other words, inquiry enables us to do something about divisive concepts, rather than just learning about them, as some educators currently advocate in calls for discussion. And inquiry is certainly more effective than banning divisive concepts or pushing them to the background, as recent legislation attempts to do. I argue that rather than excluding divisive concepts or the divisions they may provoke from our classrooms, we need educative spaces where we inquire into what divides us, why we are divided, and how we might respond to such division. Within that inquiry, we can better attend to our divisions while also taking up the specific concepts prohibited in recent legislation. (shrink)

Artificially intelligent (AI) technologies are increasingly being used in many workplaces. It is recognised that there are ethical dimensions to the ways in which organisations implement AI alongside, or substituting for, their human workforces. How will these technologically driven disruptions impact the employee–employer exchange? We provide one way to explore this question by drawing on scholarship linking Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the psychological contract (PC). Using ISCT, we show that the macrosocial contract’s ethical AI norms of beneficence, non-maleficence, (...) autonomy, justice, and explicability can feed into national- and organisational-level microsocial contracts. We also outline the role of employees’ technology frames in this process. We then use an illustrative example to demonstrate how this multilevel normative background helps to inform the content of individuals’ PCs in the context of working with AI technologies. (shrink)

This book explores the far-reaching ethical implications of recent changes in the organization and practice of the social professions, including social work, community and youth work. Drawing on moral philosophy, professional ethics and new empirical research, the author explores such questions as: * Can any occupation justifiably claim a special set of ethics? * What is the impact of the new 'ethics of distrust' on the autonomy discretion and creativity of practitioners? * How does inter-professional working challenge conceptions of professional (...) identities and roles? * Do 'professional ethics' act as an obstruction to constructive developments? Combing interviews with practitioners with developments in ethical theory, Ethics, Accountability and the Social Professions shows the complexity and range of issues at stake. (shrink)

Carens has done more than any other political theorist or philosopher to develop the normative perspective of prospective migrants from within the liberal democratic tradition, but he has not sufficiently engaged with the other side of the argument – in particular, with the value of political community and the principle of collective self-determination. What is at stake for the immigrant-receiving country that might justify its claim to control immigration? I first examine Carens’ theory of social membership and its connection to (...) political community. I then discuss his method of ‘political theory from the ground up’ and his interpretation of democratic principles. I conclude with a discussion of the principle of collective self-determination. (shrink)

Drawing on recent research in the philosophy of the emotions and empirical evidence from social psychology, this paper argues that the concept of loss of self-control at common law mischaracterises the relationship between the emotions and their effects on action. Emotions do not undermine reason in the ways offenders describe ; nor do they compel people to act in ways they cannot control. As such, the idea of ‘loss of self-control’ is an inaccurate and misleading description of the psychological mechanisms (...) at play in cases of emotionally motivated killing, where there may not be any ‘loss of self-control’ as such. (shrink)

This chapter explores the practice of Body Weather (BW), a postmodern dance methodology, addressing how BW performers experience and enact agency in this context of practice. Adopting a cognitive ecological, ethnographic, and phenomenological approach, this work focuses on the creation of AURA NOX ANIMA (2016) – a short dance film directed by Sydney-based visual artist Lux Eterna and filmed on the sandy dunes in Anna Bay, New South Wales, Australia – to underscore the role played by the physical and cultural (...) environment in shaping BW performers’ sense of agency. Through the analysis of salient features of BW methodology, that include the practice of bisoku, slow movement, and the cultivation of an attention to the changing ‘weather’ of the performance ecology, this chapter suggests an ecological notion of agency as a key concept in the study of embodied cognition in performance. The chapter emphasises the relevance of addressing the environment-culture-context situatedness in the study of performance practices. (shrink)

This paper empirically supports school food as a site of contested values, where corporate interests can come into direct conflict with those of communities. This is a story about the experience of a small group of activist parents going up against a major food service corporation contracted by their school district. The analysis considers their experiences as dedicated and knowledgeable parent activists who, after years of trying to work with employees of the global food service corporation, grow weary, aim to (...) overthrow it, and finally, after a decade, succeed. In response to the parents’ struggles, I apply a food sovereignty lens to school food, introducing the concept of school food sovereignty. I propose that school food sovereignty requires community participation and consideration of the health and welfare of students, environmental sustainability, local economic benefits, cultural congruence, and attention to food-related justice. (shrink)

Over the past decade land has again moved to the centre of resource conflicts, agrarian struggles, and competing visions over the future of food and farming. This renewed interest in land necessitates asking the seemingly simple, but pertinent, question ‘whatisland?’ To reach a more profound understanding of the uniqueness of land, and what distinguishes land from other resources, this symposium suggests the notion of ‘land imaginaries’ as a crucial lens in the study of current land transformations. Political-economy, and the particular (...) economic, financial, or political interests of various actors involved in land projects do not directly result in, or translate into, outcomes, such as dispossession and enclosure, increased commodification, financialization, and assetization, or mobilization and resistance. All these processes are informed by different imaginaries of land—the underlying understandings, views, and visions of what land is, can, and should be—and associated visions, hopes, and dreams regarding land. Drawing on a variety of case studies from across the world, crossing Global North/South and East/West, and including contemporary and historical instances of land transformation, this symposium addresses the multifaceted ways in which implicit, explicit, and emergent understandings of land shape current land transformations. (shrink)

"--Everett K. Rowson, New York University"This is a serious piece of scholarship filled with many very fine insights.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly inputting into various human resource management functions, such as sourcing job applicants and selecting staff, allocating work, and offering personalized career coaching. While the use of AI for such tasks can offer many benefits, evidence suggests that without careful and deliberate implementation its use also has the potential to generate significant harms. This raises several ethical concerns regarding the appropriateness of AI deployment to domains such as HRM, which directly deal with managing sometimes sensitive aspects of (...) individuals’ employment lifecycles. However, research at the intersection of HRM and technology continues to largely center on examining what AI can be used for, rather than focusing on the salient factors relevant to its ethical use and examining how to effectively engage human workers in its use. Conversely, the ethical AI literature offers excellent guiding principles for AI implementation broadly, but there remains much scope to explore how these principles can be enacted in specific contexts-of-use. By drawing on ethical AI and task-technology fit literature, this paper constructs a decision-making framework to support the ethical deployment of AI for HRM and guide determinations of the optimal mix of human and machine involvement for different HRM tasks. Doing so supports the deployment of AI for the betterment of work and workers and generates both scholarly and practical outcomes. (shrink)

Corporate sustainability introduces multiple tensions or paradoxes into organisations which defy traditional approaches such as trading-off contrasting options. We examine an alternative approach: to manage corporate sustainability with a paradoxical lens where contradictory elements are managed concurrently. Drawing on paradox theory, we focus on two specific pathways: to the organisation-wide acceptance of paradox and to paradoxical resolution. Introducing the concept of strategic agility, we argue that strategically agile organisations are better placed to navigate these paradox pathways. Strategic agility comprises three (...) organisational meta-capabilities: strategic sensitivity, collective commitment, and resource fluidity. We propose that strategically agile organisations draw on strategic sensitivity and collective commitment to achieve organisation-wide acceptance of paradox, and collective commitment and resource fluidity to achieve paradoxical resolution. For each of these meta-capabilities, we identify three organisational practices and processes specifically related to corporate sustainability that organisations can leverage in pursuit of strategic agility. We offer a conceptual framework depicting the strategic agility meta-capabilities, and associated practices and processes, which organisations draw on to successfully manage corporate sustainability with a paradoxical lens. (shrink)

The nature of farming is – still – an essentially biological, and thus volatile, system, which poses substantial challenges to its integration into financialized capitalism. Financial investors often seek stability and predictability of returns that are hardly compatible with agriculture – but which are increasingly seen as achievable through data and digital farming technologies. This paper investigates how farmland investment brokers engage with, perceive, and produce farming data for their investors within a co-constructive process. Tackling land’s ‘stubborn materiality’ for investment, (...) I argue, has material and immaterial components: it includes the re-imagination of farming as a financial asset that delivers reliable income streams for investors; and the re-engineering of farmland’s concrete materialities with digital farming technologies. Farmland investment brokers develop investor-suitable farmland imaginaries, underpinned by storytelling as well as the calculative ‘evidence’ of (digital) data. At the same time, digital technologies have become a key tool for transforming farms into ‘investment grade assets’ endowed with the rich data on farm performance and financial returns requested by investors. I conclude that the assetization and digitization of farmland need to be seen as closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing processes and identify key areas for future research on this intersection. (shrink)

This article explores the gender dynamics of ‘causing or allowing a child to die’, contrary to the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, section 5. This offence was intended to allow for prosecution where a child had been killed and it was uncertain who had killed him/her, but also to allow for prosecution of non-violent defendants who failed to protect him/her. More women than men have been charged and convicted of this offence signifying a reversal of usual patterns of (...) prosecution and conviction. This analysis interrogates how section 5 criminalises women who have experienced domestic abuse. Drawing on a case observation, reported cases and media reports of cases, I suggest this offence derives from and perpetuates patriarchal constructs of motherhood. Grounded in a feminist approach building on women’s concrete experiences of law, I conclude that section 5 should be amended so that it is only used where it cannot be ascertained which defendant actively harmed a child. (shrink)

Dance as a complex human activity is a rich test case for exploring perception in action. In this article, we explore a 4E approach to perception/action in dance, focussing on the intersubjective and ecological aspects of kinaesthetic attunement and their capacity to expand empathic and perceptive experience. We examine the question: what are the ways in which the performance ecology co-created in different dance practices influences empathic and perceptive experience? We adopt an enactive ethnographic and phenomenological approach to explore two (...) distinct dance forms: Contact Improvisation [CI], a duet-system based practice aimed at fostering interkinaesthetic awareness and challenging habits of movement; and Body Weather [BW], an anti-hierarchical movement practice sensitive to the surrounding environment. We argue that through intersubjective kinaesthetic attunement, CI scaffolds the development of perceptive awareness of subtle shifts within ourselves and others, allowing the cultivation of a capacity for flexibly traversing between conscious initiation of action, attuned responding, and the intersection between them. Similarly, we investigate the expansion of perceptive experience through kinaesthetic attunement in BW. We suggest that the capacity for empathy is enhanced in BW through drawing attention to, and perception of, the fullness of a place in a way that we do not typically experience. By focussing on the variations in which embodied perceptual skills are enacted in specific dance forms and the expansion of perceptive experience through kinaesthetic attunement, we stress the potential of the performing arts to cultivate and create new ways of empathic engagement with the world in which we find ourselves. (shrink)

Artificially intelligent (AI) technologies are increasingly being used in many workplaces. It is recognised that there are ethical dimensions to the ways in which organisations implement AI alongside, or substituting for, their human workforces. How will these technologically driven disruptions impact the employee–employer exchange? We provide one way to explore this question by drawing on scholarship linking Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the psychological contract (PC). Using ISCT, we show that the macrosocial contract’s ethical AI norms of beneficence, non-maleficence, (...) autonomy, justice, and explicability can feed into national- and organisational-level microsocial contracts. We also outline the role of employees’ technology frames in this process. We then use an illustrative example to demonstrate how this multilevel normative background helps to inform the content of individuals’ PCs in the context of working with AI technologies. (shrink)

This essay explores the contemporary experiences of women who live with pain, given the complex responses they encounter within Western medical systems, including pervasive stigma, bias, clinician disbelief, and poor health outcomes. In response to these realities, as highlighted within recent literature and exemplified in a first-person account provided by the paper’s author, this essay explores the Christian practice of the Stations of the Cross as a faithful response to women living with pain. The Stations provide a distinctive Christian practice (...) that invites women living with pain, as well as their clinicians and loved ones, into faithful care marked by prayer, solidarity, and hospitable listening. Practicing the Stations provides one faithful response that Christian clinicians and those who live with pain might engage in the clinic and beyond. (shrink)

Background During the pandemic, social and health care professionals operated in ‘crisis conditions’. Some existing rules/protocols were not operational, many services were closed/curtailed, and new ‘blanket’ rules often seemed inappropriate or unfair. These experiences provide fertile ground for exploring the role of virtues in professional life and considering lessons for professional ethics in the future. Research design and aim This article draws on an international qualitative survey conducted online in May 2020, which aimed to explore the ethical challenges experienced by (...) social workers during Covid-19. Participants and research context 607 social workers responded from 54 countries, giving written online responses. This article first summarises previously published findings from the survey regarding the range of ethical challenges experienced, then develops a new analysis of social workers’ accounts of ethically challenging situations from a virtue ethics perspective. This analysis took a narrative ethics approach, treating respondents’ accounts as stories featuring the tellers as moral agents, with implicit or explicit implications for their professional ethical identity and character. The article is illustrated with accounts from the 41 UK respondents, drawing particularly on two case examples. Ethical considerations Ethical approval was gained from Durham University and anonymity was ensured for participants. Findings/results This article explores the nature of the ethical space created during the pandemic showing how practitioners were able to draw more on ‘inner resources’ and professional discretion than usual, displaying virtues such as professional wisdom, care, respectfulness and courage as they took account of the specific contexts of their work, rather than simply adhering to blanket rules. Conclusion Exploring practice through a virtue ethical lens provides valuable lessons for ‘building back better’ in social and health care professions. (shrink)

I can only speculate about the echo of slavery and its impact upon how theories of race are disconnected from theories of mental illness.Haunting belongs to the structure of every hegemony.Why might psychiatry need postcolonial theories? Critical discourse on psychiatry and clinical psychology—itself quite heterogeneous across the humanities and the so-called psy disciplines—has intermittently focused on the redress of power in clinical encounters, which are often constituted by an interaction between persons in very different life circumstances and with divergent positions (...) in relation to authority and privilege, or social capital and capital itself. Postcolonial theories are relevant to this topic because they... (shrink)

In this reflection, I respond to Anthony Reddie's reflections and assertions about the sacramentality of black flesh in a world shaped by white supremacy. I locate myself as Korean American and refer to my experience of ministering to university students during the rise of Black Lives Matter in the US. Instead of offering cognate claims for the sacramentality of Asian flesh, I ask what theological repentance should look like in light of the historical profaning of the black body. Using the (...) work of two black American artists, jazz musician Robert Glasper and painter Titus Kaphar, I offer beginning reflections on how our liturgies and practices need to change as part of theological repentance—including lament. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The political works of Adam Blackwood offer a powerful defence of absolute monarchy, and one which explicitly sets political power within a religious framework. Critiquing the resistance theories of his contemporaries, Blackwood was sceptical about the political value of natural law and of any appeal to popular sovereignty, at least in contemporary Europe. Blackwood was deeply troubled by the way Christianity was being used to justify resistance, often in Protestant texts that aligned Christianity and natural law, and he insisted (...) that true Christianity taught obedience. Though he has often been likened to his contemporary Jean Bodin, a closer examination of Blackwood’s writing reveals significant differences, especially on the linked issues of natural law, the value of historical argument, and religion. For Blackwood, sovereign power in general had to be underpinned by religion, the one constant in a world of diverse and mutable social practices, and its particular, local manifestation had to be understood historically, as the product of conquest and force. Aware of the potential tensions between Catholic Christianity and monarchical authority, Blackwood also developed a distinctive piety in an attempt to bolster the alliance he advocated between religious and political authority. (shrink)