In introducing the works included in this special issue, this essay identifies some general ways that these and other narratives can function in ethical explorations in the field of education. The essay not only articulates ways that narratives can be useful to education scholars, but it also provides pedagogical reasons to connect stories with ethics in classrooms. It concludes with a brief nod to the dangers that Plato, contemporary scholars and teachers have about combining narratives with ethical inquiry, and touches (...) upon some ways to temper them. (shrink)

This essay explores the question Is Nel Noddings a visionary who sees past the constraints of contemporary education or is she, like Don Quixote, madly tilting at windmills in her description and defense of happiness as an educational aim?Viewing the educational aim of happiness as an ideal raises substantial challenges for the practicality of Noddings’s ideas.

This essay focuses on the value of self-doubt in moral inquiry and in moral education. Using John Patrick Shanley’s play, Doubt: A parable, as illustration, it shows how self-doubt initiates and extends moral inquiry, highlights one’s epistemic fallibility and connects the inquirer to the virtue of humility. The essay draws on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, Hullett, Nussbaum, Thayer-Bacon and Elbow to support the idea that the question ‘Am I wrong?’ is important for moral inquiry and for moral education.

Liz JacksonEducation University of Hong KongNel Noddings is known around the world for her contributions to philosophy and philosophy of education. Her work on caring and relational ethics broke ne...

Studies of the association between wealth and fertility in industrial populations have a rich history in the evolutionary literature, and they have been used to argue both for and against a behavioral ecological approach to explaining human variability. We consider that there are strong arguments in favor of measuring fertility (and proxies thereof) in industrial populations, not least because of the wide availability of large-scale secondary databases. Such data sources bring challenges as well as advantages, however. The purpose of this (...) article is to illustrate these by examining the association between wealth and reproductive success in the United States, using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979. We conduct a broad-based exploratory analysis of the relationship between wealth and fertility, employing both cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches, and multiple measures of both wealth (income and net worth) and fertility (lifetime reproductive success and transitions to first, second and third births). We highlight the kinds of decisions that have to be made regarding sample selection, along with the selection and construction of explanatory variables and control measures. Based on our analyses, we find a positive effect of both income and net worth on fertility for men, which is more pronounced for white men and for transitions to first and second births. Income tends to have a negative effect on fertility for women, while net worth is more likely to positively predict fertility. Different reproductive strategies among different groups within the same population highlight the complexity of the reproductive ecology of industrial societies. These results differ in a number of respects from other analyses using the same database. We suggest this reflects the impossibility of producing a definitive analysis, rather than a failure to identify the “correct” analytical strategy. Finally, we discuss how these findings inform us about (mal)adaptive decision-making. (shrink)

The concept of self-motion is not only fundamental in Aristotle's argument for the Prime Mover and in ancient and medieval theories of nature, but it is also central to many theories of human agency and moral responsibility. In this collection of mostly new essays, scholars of classical, Hellenistic, medieval, and early modern philosophy and science explore the question of whether or not there are such things as self-movers, and if so, what their self-motion consists in. They trace the development of (...) the concept of self-motion from its formulation in Aristotle's metaphysics, cosmology, and philosophy of nature through two millennia of philosophical, religious, and scientific thought. This volume contains "Self-Movers" (David Furley), "Aristotle on Self-Motion" (Mary Louise Gill), "Aristotle on Perception, Appetition, and Self-Motion" (Cynthia Freeland), "Self-Movement and External Causation" (Susan Sauvé Meyer), "Aristotle on the Mind's Self-Motion" (Michael Wedin), "Mind and Motion in Aristotle" (Christopher Shields), "Aristotle's Prime Mover" (Aryeh Kosman), "The Transcendence of the Prime Mover" (Lindsay Judson), "Self-Motion in Stoic Philosophy" (David Hahm), "Duns Scotus on the Reality of Self-Change" (Peter King), "Ockham, Self-Motion, and the Will" (Calvin Normore), and "Natural Motion and Its Causes: Newton on the 'Vis Insita' of Bodies" (J. E. McGuire). Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

(2007). Youth and Sexualities: Pleasure, Subversion, and Insubordination In and Out of Schools. Edited by Mary Louise Rasmussen, Eric Rofes, and Susan Talburt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 250 pp. $75.00 (hardcover), $24.95 (paper) Educational Studies: Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 88-92.

In a quiet London office, a software designer muses on the algorithms that will make possible the risk flags to be visualized on the screens of border guards from Heathrow to St Pancras International. There is, he says, ‘real time decision making’ – to detain, to deport, to secondarily question or search – but there is also the ‘offline team who run the analytics and work out the best set of rules’. Writing the code that will decide the association rules (...) between items of data, prosaic and mundane – flight route, payment type, passport – the analysts derive a novel preemptive security measure. This paper proposes the analytic of the data derivative – a visualized risk flag or score drawn from an amalgam of disaggregated fragments of data, inferred from across the gaps between data and projected onto an array of uncertain futures. In contrast to disciplinary and enclosed techniques of collecting data to govern population, the data derivative functions via ‘differential curves of normality’, imagining a range of potential futures through the association rule, thus ‘opening up to let things happen’. In some senses akin to the risk orientation of the financial derivative, itself indifferent to actual underlying people, places or events by virtue of modulated norms, the contemporary security derivative is not centred on who we are, nor even on what our data say about us, but on what can be imagined and inferred about who we might be – on our very proclivities and potentialities. (shrink)

In a 1955 lecture the physicist Richard Feynman reflected on the place of doubt within scientific practice. ‘Permit us to question, to doubt, to not be sure’, proposed Feynman, ‘it is possible to live and not to know’. In our contemporary world, the science of machine learning algorithms appears to transform the relations between science, knowledge and doubt, to make even the most doubtful event amenable to action. What might it mean to ‘leave room for doubt’ or ‘to live and (...) not to know’ in our contemporary culture, where the algorithm plays a major role in the calculability of doubts? I propose a posthuman mode of doubt that decentres the liberal humanist subject. In the science of machine learning algorithms the doubts of human and technological beings nonetheless dwell together, opening onto a future that is never fully reduced to the single output signal, to the optimised target. (shrink)

Introduction: Philosophy in a Feminist Voice? /​ Janet A. Kourany History of Philosophy: Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History /​ Eileen O’Neill Philosophy of Persons: "Human Nature" and Its Role in Feminist Theory /​ Louise M. Antony Ethics: Feminist Reconceptualizations in Ethics /​ Virginia Held Political Philosophy: Feminism and Political Theory /​ Susan Moller Okin Aesthetics: Perceptions, Pleasures, Arts: Considering Aesthetics /​ Carolyn Korsmeyer Philosophy of Religion: Philosophy of Religion in Different Voices /​ (...) Nancy Frankenberry Epistemology: Voice and Voicelessness: A Modest Proposal? /​ Lorraine Code Philosophy of Science: A New Program for Philosophy of Science, in Many Voices /​ Janet A. Kourany Philosophy of Language: Semantics in a New Key /​ Andrea Nye Afterword: The Feminist as Other /​ Susan Bordo. (shrink)

This paper discusses the relationship between internationalisation, mobility, quality and equality in the context of recent developments in research policy in the European Research Area (ERA). Although these developments are specifically concerned with the growth of research capacity at European level, the issues raised have much broader relevance to those concerned with research policy and highly skilled mobility. The paper draws on a wealth of recent research examining the relationship between mobility and career progression with particular reference to a recently (...) completed empirical study of doctoral mobility in the social sciences (Ackers et al. Doctoral Mobility in the Social Sciences. Report to the NORFACE ERA-Network, 2007). The paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces recent policy developments including the European Charter for Researchers and Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers and the European Commission’s Green Paper on the ERA. The discussion focuses on concerns around the definition of ‘mobility’ and the tendency (in both policy circles and academic research) to conflate different forms of mobility and to equate these with notions of excellence or quality. Scientific mobility is shaped as much by ‘push’ factors (limited opportunity) as it is by the ‘draw’ of excellence. Scientists are exercising a degree of ‘choice’ within a specific and individualised framework of constraints. The following sections consider some of the ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ factors shaping scientific mobility and the influence that these have on the relationship between mobility, internationalisation and excellence. The paper concludes that mobility is not an outcome in its own right and must not be treated as such (as an implicit indicator of internationalisation). To do so contributes to differential opportunity in scientific labour markets reducing both efficiency and equality. (shrink)

____The Rejected Body__ argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, discussions of bodily life, and criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. Among the topics it addresses are who should be identified as disabled; whether disability is biomedical, social or both; what causes disability and what could 'cure' it; and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. Wendell (...) provides a remarkable look at how cultural attitudes towards the body contribute to the stigma of disability and to widespread unwillingness to accept and provide for the body's inevitable weakness. (shrink)

In this book, Janet Kourany offers an antidote to the pervasive and pernicious strains in Western philosophy that discount women. Most areas of Western philosophy tend not only to ignore women, but also to perpetuate long-standing antifeminine biases of the society as a whole. It does not have to be this way. Rather than be part of the problem, philosophy can be a powerful force for much needed social change. In this collection of essays by some of the most noted (...) feminist philosophers, Kourany showcases ideas on the newest work of Western philosophy that is benefiting women as well as men. Included here are articles by Eileen O'Neill, Louise Antony, Virginia Held, Susan Okin, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Nancy Frankenberry, Lorraine Code, Janet Kourany, Andrea Nye, and Susan Bordo, all of whom show further directions in which philosophy ought to proceed.This book demonstrates that feminist philosophy is not a separate area of philosophy that can safely be ignored by philosophers not "in" it. Rather, it relates to at least most of the major areas of philosophy, and its gains will stand to benefit all philosophers, no matter what their field. (shrink)

In our contemporary moment, when machine learning algorithms are reshaping many aspects of society, the work of N. Katherine Hayles stands as a powerful corpus for understanding what is at stake in a new regime of computation. A renowned literary theorist whose work bridges the humanities and sciences among her many works, Hayles has detailed ways to think about embodiment in an age of virtuality, how code as performative practice is located, and the reciprocal relations among human bodies and technics. (...) This special issue follows the 2017 publication of her book Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious, in which Hayles traces the nonconscious cognition of biological life-forms and computational media. The articles in the special issue respond in different ways to Hayles’ oeuvre, mapping the specific contours of computational regimes and developing some of the ‘inflection points’ she advocates in the deep engagement with technical systems. (shrink)

While information technologies present organizations with opportunities to become more competitive, unsettled social norms and lagging legislation guiding the use of these technologies present organizations and individuals with ethical dilemmas. This paper presents two studies investigating the relationship between intellectual property and privacy attitudes, Machiavellianism and Ethical Ideology, and working in R&D and computer literacy in the form of programming experience. In Study 1, Machiavellians believed it was more acceptable to ignore the intellectual property and privacy rights of others. Programmers (...) and R&D workers considered violating intellectual property rights more acceptable. Programmers did not consider violating privacy rights more acceptable, but R&D workers did. Finally, there was an interaction between Machiavellianism, programming and R&D. Machiavellians who also had programming experience or worked in R&D found violations of intellectual property much more acceptable. The effect of Machiavellianism on attitudes toward violations of privacy was enhanced by working in R&D, but not by programming experience. In Study 2, idealists believed it was less acceptable to ignore the intellectual property and privacy rights of others. Relativists found it more acceptable to violate intellectual property rights, though they did not consider it more acceptable to violate privacy rights. Those with programming experience were more accepting of intellectual property rights violations, but not of privacy violations. Finally, programming experience moderated the relationship between idealism, relativism and attitudes toward these unethical information practices. Implications for diminishing unethical behavior among Machiavellians, Relativists, programmers and those in R&D are discussed. (shrink)

Policy discussions and corporate strategies on machine learning are increasingly championing data reuse as a key element in digital transformations. These aspirations are often coupled with a focus on responsibility, ethics and transparency, as well as emergent forms of regulation that seek to set demands for corporate conduct and the protection of civic rights. And the Protective measures include methods of traceability and assessments of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ datasets and algorithms that are considered to be traceable, stable and contained. However, (...) these ways of thinking about both technology and ethics obscure a fundamental issue, namely that machine learning systems entangle data, algorithms and more-than-human environments in ways that challenge a well-defined separation. This article investigates the fundamental fallacy of most data reuse strategies as well as their regulation and mitigation strategies that data can somehow be followed, contained and controlled in machine learning processes. Instead, the article argues that we need to understand the reuse of data as an inherently entangled phenomenon. To examine this tension between the discursive regimes and the realities of data reuse, we advance the notion of reuse entanglements as an analytical lens. The main contribution of the article is the conceptualization of reuse that places entanglements at its core and the articulation of its relevance using empirical illustrations. This is important, we argue, for our understanding of the nature of data and algorithms, for the practical uses of data and algorithms and our attitudes regarding ethics, responsibility and regulation. (shrink)

This paper is a study of a social-justice, arts-based literacy curriculum in a low income, working-class, predominately African-American school district in Newark, New Jersey. Participating students studied photography and poetry of established artists and took and developed their own photographs accompanied by written narratives. As a part of the curriculum students also wrote poetry and analytical essays. I present my findings within the context of a Vygotskian pedagogical approach that takes social consciousness and metaphor as its central concepts. The paper (...) lays out this conceptual apparatus and deploys it to analyze the curriculum and student work. The paper argues for curriculum that develops social consciousness as the most effective for preparing students to create and participate in democratic societies. The research and analysis show that an arts based curriculum, in addition to successfully teaching literacy, is one of the most effective ways of bringing students’ life experience into the classroom for analysis and discussion, making activity at school relevant for students lives, especially those whose daily activities regularly confronts issues of life and death. (shrink)

Many philosophers have been persuaded that if we don’t create our own characters, we cannot be responsible for acts that flow from our characters; they also raise doubts about whether acts that do not flow from our characters can fairly be attributed to us. Both these concerns, however, reflect a simplistic and implausible conception of character and of its relation to our actions and our selves. I suggest a different relationship between character and responsibility: We can be responsible for acts (...) that are in character and also for acts that are out of character, but to be capable of being responsible at all is closely related to the capacity to have a character. I relate this capacity to the exercise of active intelligence—a capacity that is manifested in actions in or out of character, but not in the display of many psychological conditions or disorders. (shrink)

During the mid-twentieth century, Soviet scientists developed the “natural focus” theory–practice framework to explain outbreaks of diseases endemic to wild animals and transmitted to humans. Focusing on parasitologist-physician Evgeny N. Pavlovsky and other field scientists’ work in the Soviet borderlands, this article explores how the natural focus framework’s concepts and practices were entangled in political as well as material ecologies of knowledge and practice. We argue that the very definition of endemic plague incorporated both hands-on materialist experience and ideological concepts (...) that supported Soviet colonization. Theorizing and fighting plague assisted with the goals of controlling and improving landscapes and peoples in southern Russia and Central Asia. The history of the natural focus framework illustrates how Soviet disease ecology co-developed with the needs of local and central political powers in the Soviet borderlands. (shrink)

This book is a critically informed challenge to the traditional histories of rhetoric and to the current emphasis on Aristotle and Plato as the most significant classical voices in rhetoric.

Re-consent in research, the asking for a new consent if there is a change in protocol or to confirm the expectations of participants in case of change, is an under-explored issue. There is little clarity as to what changes should trigger re-consent and what impact a re-consent exercise has on participants and the research project. This article examines applicable policy statements and literature for the prevailing arguments for and against re-consent in relation to longitudinal cohort studies, tissue banks and biobanks. (...) Examples of re-consent exercises are presented, triggers and non-triggers for re-consent discussed and the conflicting attitudes of commentators, participants and researchers highlighted. We acknowledge current practice and argue for a greater emphasis on ‘responsive autonomy,’ that goes beyond a one-time consent and encourages greater communication between the parties involved. A balance is needed between respecting participants' wishes on how they want their data and samples used and enabling effective research to proceed. (shrink)

Developing ethical standards for clinical use of large-scale genome and exome sequencing has proven challenging, in part due to the inevitability of incidental or secondary findings. Policy of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics has evolved but remains problematic. In 2013, ACMG issued policy recommending mandatory analysis of 56 extra genes whenever sequencing was ordered for any indication, in order to ascertain positive findings in pathogenic and actionable genes. Widespread objection yielded a 2014 amendment allowing patients to opt-out (...) from analysis of the extra genes. In 2015, ACMG published the amended policy, providing that patients could opt out of the full set of extra genes, but not a subset. In 2016, ACMG enlarged the set and indicated planned expansion of the roster of extra genes to include pharmacogenetic findings. ACMG policy does not protect the respect for patient choice that prevails in other domains of clinical medicine, where informed consent allows patients to opt in to desired testing. By creating an expanding domain of genomic testing that will be routinely conducted unless patients reject the entire set of extra tests, ACMG creates an exceptional domain clinical practice that is not supported by ethics or science. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Since its publication in 1677, Spinoza’s Ethics has fascinated philosophers, novelists, and scientists alike. It is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and contested works of Western philosophy. Written in an austere, geometrical fashion, the work teaches us how we should live, ending with an ethics in which the only thing good in itself is understanding. Spinoza argues that only that which hinders us from understanding is bad and shows that those endowed with a human mind should devote (...) themselves, as much as they can, to a contemplative life. This Companion volume provides a detailed, accessible exposition of the Ethics. Written by an internationally known team of scholars, it is the first anthology to treat the whole of the Ethics and is written in an accessible style. (shrink)

In an age when "we are all multiculturalists now," as Nathan Glazer has said, the politics of identity has come to pose new challenges to our liberal polity and the presuppositions on which it is founded. Just what identity means, and what its role in the public sphere is, are questions that are being hotly debated. In this book Susan Hekman aims to bring greater theoretical clarity to the debate by exposing some basic misconceptions—about the constitution of the self (...) that defines personal identity, about the way liberalism conceals the importance of identity under the veil of the "abstract citizen," and about the difference and interrelationship between personal and public identity. Hekman’s use of object relations theory allows her to argue, against the postmodernist resort to a "fictive" subject, for a core self that is socially constructed in the early years of childhood but nevertheless provides a secure base for the adult subject. Such a self is social, particular, embedded, and connected—a stark contrast to the neutral and disembodied subject posited in liberal theory. This way of construing the self also opens up the possibility for distinguishing how personal identity functions in relation to public identity. Against those advocates of identity politics who seek reform through the institutionalization of group participation, Hekman espouses a vision of the politics of difference that eschews assigning individuals to fixed groups and emphasizes instead the fluidity of choice arising from the complex interaction between the individual’s private identity and the multiple opportunities for associating with different groups and the public identities they define. Inspired by Foucault’s argument that "power is everywhere," Hekman maps out a dual strategy of both political and social/cultural resistance for this new politics of identity, which recognizes that with significant advances already won in the political/legal arena, attitudinal change in civil society presents the greatest challenge for achieving more progress today in the struggle against racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. (shrink)

Where research was once strictly confined to one laboratory or office, investigators now widely share and compare their plans, analyses, and results. With the advent of genomic knowledge, researchers are seeking to understand the genetics and genomics of complex human disease. They are combining their efforts into international consortia in order to take on problems that face individuals around the world, such as cancer and malaria — problems that are too large to solve by one country alone. These consortia bring (...) together diverse research groups from different parts of the world to focus on a common goal. Their projects may all focus on one disease or condition, but examine it from different perspectives and share the newly gained information with each other and the wider scientific community. (shrink)

In an age when "we are all multiculturalists now," as Nathan Glazer has said, the politics of identity has come to pose new challenges to our liberal polity and the presuppositions on which it is founded. Just what identity means, and what its role in the public sphere is, are questions that are being hotly debated. In this book Susan Hekman aims to bring greater theoretical clarity to the debate by exposing some basic misconceptions—about the constitution of the self (...) that defines personal identity, about the way liberalism conceals the importance of identity under the veil of the "abstract citizen," and about the difference and interrelationship between personal and public identity. Hekman’s use of object relations theory allows her to argue, against the postmodernist resort to a "fictive" subject, for a core self that is socially constructed in the early years of childhood but nevertheless provides a secure base for the adult subject. Such a self is social, particular, embedded, and connected—a stark contrast to the neutral and disembodied subject posited in liberal theory. This way of construing the self also opens up the possibility for distinguishing how personal identity functions in relation to public identity. Against those advocates of identity politics who seek reform through the institutionalization of group participation, Hekman espouses a vision of the politics of difference that eschews assigning individuals to fixed groups and emphasizes instead the fluidity of choice arising from the complex interaction between the individual’s private identity and the multiple opportunities for associating with different groups and the public identities they define. Inspired by Foucault’s argument that "power is everywhere," Hekman maps out a dual strategy of both political and social/cultural resistance for this new politics of identity, which recognizes that with significant advances already won in the political/legal arena, attitudinal change in civil society presents the greatest challenge for achieving more progress today in the struggle against racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. (shrink)