The premise of environmental management pivots on managing the people-environment relationship. Yet this field remains dominated by the idea of managing the environment not the relationship, and as such continues to enact dualistic and reductionist traditions. Deep ecology's relational ontology offers a means of moving beneath and beyond such traditions. Specifically, the theory of internal relations as manifest within Arne Naess's gestalt ontology - if developed with regard to relational work emerging within cultural geography - is an aspect of deep (...) ecology that has relevance and implications for environmental management's theory and practice. Such a stance provides qualified support for Warwick Fox's identification of the significance of Self-realisation within deep ecological philosophy, and counters attempts by some deep ecology proponents to write Fox and his work out of the history and future prospects of deep ecology. (shrink)

There is a complexity of entities and happenings embodied within the pillars that frame the doorways in our homes and support the broad flat spaces that form supermarkets and department stores. Each pillar speaks to the mythology encircling the origins of Gothic architecture; the ideas surrounding the shift from the trunks and boughs of the sacred grove toward the columns, arches, and vaults of church and cathedral. Each pillar embodies the evolution of life and the history of the Earth. Awakening (...) toward the relational agency at play within the “humanly derived” allows us to recognize this agency as akin to wildness and as William Cronon asserts, this kinship draws us closer to recognizing and responding to the wild in all that surrounds us. It also produces a shift in how we understand the concept of wilderness. It is not, as Cronon contends, a cultural construct, but a fluxing and complex gestalt that includes both human and more-than-human agency. (shrink)

There is a complexity of entities and happenings embodied within the pillars that frame the doorways in our homes and support the broad flat spaces that form supermarkets and department stores. Each pillar speaks to the mythology encircling the origins of Gothic architecture; the ideas surrounding the shift from the trunks and boughs of the sacred grove toward the columns, arches, and vaults of church and cathedral. Each pillar embodies the evolution of life and the history of the Earth. Awakening (...) toward the relational agency at play within the “humanly derived” allows us to recognize this agency as akin to wildness and as William Cronon asserts, this kinship draws us closer to recognizing and responding to the wild in all that surrounds us. It also produces a shift in how we understand the concept of wilderness. It is not, as Cronon contends, a cultural construct, but a fluxing and complex gestalt that includes both human and more-than-human agency. (shrink)

The author reflects upon the notions of personal memory, collective memory, myth, and evolved memory within her lived experience of Risdon Vale. These interrelated forms of memory influence understanding of place and sense of place. Personal memories corroborate and collaborate with intersubjective memories to inform collective memory. Both personal and collective memories are held within a fusion of cultural myths. Evolved memory binds us deeply within the history of the earth and the evolution of life. Risdon Vale provides fertile ground (...) for considerations of place and memory. This former public housing suburb is adjacent to Risdon Cove, the site of first occupation by the British in 1803 and the site of the first massacre of Aboriginal Tasmanians in 1804. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

“One is not born a woman, but becomes one”, Simone de Beauvoir A symbol of liberated womanhood, Simone de Beauvoir's unconventional relationships inspired and scandalised her generation. A philosopher, writer, and feminist icon, she won prestigious literary prizes and transformed the way we think about gender with The Second Sex. But despite her successes, she wondered if she had sold herself short. Her liaison with Jean-Paul Sartre has been billed as one of the most legendary love affairs of the twentieth (...) century. But for Beauvoir it came at a cost: for decades she was dismissed as an unoriginal thinker who 'applied' Sartre's ideas. In recent years new material has come to light revealing the ingenuity of Beauvoir's own philosophy and the importance of other lovers in her life. This ground-breaking biography draws on never-before-published diaries and letters to tell the fascinating story of how Simone de Beauvoir became herself. (shrink)

Through an analysis of policy texts, population statistics and a targeted sample from the popular press, this paper both furthers knowledge about changing meanings of working motherhood in the contemporary US, and proposes a refinement to existing conceptual work relating to how wage-work and care-work are combined. I focus analysis on recent US social policy which grants new rights and protections for women seeking to combine lactation and wage-work (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2011). I critique this (...) policy through Bernise Hausman’s work on the politics of motherhood, arguing that it represents a form of work-life integration that is particularly burdensome for working mothers. I further argue that maternal practice as well as well as expectations of working motherhood in the contemporary US are being reshaped around the demands of neoliberalism, producing what I term ‘neoliberal motherhood’. I assert that this policy represents a way of combining wage-work and care-work that is not captured within existing feminist theory, and suggest that a re-working of theory in this area is needed in order to address cases in which embodied care-work is enfolded within the time and space of wage-work. (shrink)

Down Girl is a broad, original, and far ranging analysis of what misogyny really is, how it works, its purpose, and how to fight it. The philosopher Kate Manne argues that modern society's failure to recognize women's full humanity and autonomy is not actually the problem. She argues instead that it is women's manifestations of human capacities -- autonomy, agency, political engagement -- is what engenders misogynist hostility.

What, according to proponents of doxastic deontologism, is responsible belief? In this paper, we examine two proposals. Firstly, that responsible belief is blameless belief (a position we call DDB) and, secondly, that responsible belief is praiseworthy belief (a position we call DDP). We consider whether recent arguments in favor of DDP, mostly those recently offered by Brian Weatherson, stand up to scrutiny and argue that they do not. Given other considerations in favor of DDP, we conclude that the deontologist should (...) maintain that doxastic responsibility is a concept about freedom from appropriate blame. (shrink)

Calling into question all structural rules and principles relating to language, Joshua Kates presents a radical new path for interpreting this every day, taken-for-granted tool of communication. Traversing theory, literary criticism, philosophy, and the philosophy of language, the book speaks to contemporary debates on analytical and humanistic modes of inquiry. Language and texts are thought of as active 'events', replete with allusions to history, context and tradition that are always in the making. This emphasis makes the case for a rigorous (...) inquiry of text and talk in all their forms, bridging the continental and analytical divide in the process. (shrink)

Introduction: Fielding Derrida -- Jacques Derrida's early writings : alongside skepticism, phenomenology -- Analytic philosophy, and literary criticism -- Deconstruction as skepticism -- Derrida, Husserl, and the commentators : a developmental approach -- A transcendental sense of death : Derrida and the philosophy of language -- Literary theory's languages : the deconstruction of sense vs. the deconstruction of reference -- Jacques Derrida and the problem of philosophical and political modernity -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : the problem of modernity (...) -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : historicism and history in two interpretations of Husserl's late writings -- Derrida's contribution to phenomenology : a problem of no species -- Foretellese : futures of Derrida and Marx. (shrink)

Subversive Pedagogies draws attention to creative and critical pedagogies as a resource for engaging pressing problems in global politics. The collection explores the radical potential of pedagogy to transform students, scholars, citizens and institutions. It brings together scholars and students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including international relations, political science, indigenous studies, feminist theory and theatre studies, as well as practitioners in theatre and the arts. These diverse voices explore innovative pedagogical practices that extend our understanding of where pedagogy (...) happens, invite critical assessment of the ways the neoliberal university shapes and restricts pedagogical engagement, and offer both theoretical and practical tools to explore more creative and broader understandings of what pedagogy can and should do. (shrink)

Evidence suggests that the incidence of research misconduct is not in decline despite efforts to improve awareness, education and governance mechanisms. Two responses to this problem are favoured: first, the promotion of an agent-centred ethics approach to enhance researchers’ personal responsibility and accountability, and second, a change in research culture to relieve perceived pressures to engage in misconduct. This article discusses the challenges for both responses and explains how normative coherence through values alignment might assist. We argue that research integrity (...) and research ethics convey mixed messages, which are likely to contribute to a form of normative confusion. For the successful adoption of an agent-centred approach, normative coherence is needed between the two. To facilitate normative coherence, we propose that research ethics and research integrity be underpinned by a shared set of moral values that can be enacted via codes and guidelines and imbue research environments. Furthermore, to facilitate culture change, the same normative coherence is necessary at all levels of an institution. Only via values alignment between institutional aims, management, institutional practices and researchers can an ethical culture become truly embedded in research institutions. (shrink)

Shah, N. The Philosophical Quarterly, 56, 481–498 (2006) has defended evidentialism on the premise that only it (and not pragmatism) is consistent with both (a) the deliberative constraint on reasons and (b) the transparency feature of belief. I show, however, that the deliberative constraint on reasons is also problematic for evidentialism. I also suggest a way for pragmatism to be construed so as to make it consistent with both (a) and (b) and argue that a similar move is not available (...) to the evidentialist. Thus, far from settling the debate in favour of evidentialism, considerations concerning the deliberative constraint on reasons support pragmatism. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 209-229, June 2022.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Our Best RhetorologistWayne C. BoothAristotle’s Rhetoric: An Art of Character, by Eugene Garver; 328 pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, $53.95.Eugene Garver’s new book is not only an original and challenging account of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It is one of the fullest and most responsible encounters ever with philosophical, political, and ethical issues raised by the theory and practice of rhetoric. I’ll go even further. Because Garver grapples so (...) well with how Aristotle’s problems differ from ours, and how his solutions do not quite fit what we most need, I hereby confer upon him, without irony, the title of supreme “rhetorologist” (a term he needs but does not use).A rhetorologist is not just “rhetorician” or “rhetorical theorist” or “philosopher of rhetoric.” Garver’s work dramatizes our need for a term for the “comparativist of rhetorics,” the thinker who probes how disparate rhetorical practices and theories compete and are finally, inescapably related. In earlier times when all philosophers were trained to think about rhetoric the term “genuine philosopher” might have served the trick. But it won’t work today.Garver has spent decades on this masterwork of rhetorology, and he thus joins those rare masters-of-interrelated-rhetorics—Kenneth Burke, Richard McKeon, who else?—those who do justice both to the importance and the complexities of a subject that Aristotle has led us into but himself could never have dreamed of, since he had available no fully developed alternative “rhetorics” to do a “-logy” on. [End Page 116]The book is too ambitious and complex to allow full justice here. It is a book not just to read but to study; it is a book to teach from. All attentive readers will find themselves drawn into issues previously dodged, or engaged in quarrels about theses they’ve never met before. Those like me whose interests overlap strongly with Garver’s will of course dispute about some points. What will prove important, as the book gets discussed, will be our recognition of just why the project itself has led Garver, and leads us, into some inescapable juggling with several different and potentially contradictory theses, each of them so important that it must at moments have invited Garver to consider it as primary. Indeed, when an original thinker bites off more than anyone can chew, let alone fully digest, we should not be surprised if we have a hard time deciding just what the main point is. Several times in my first reading I thought, “Garver has mistitled this book: it should be called...”—and then I’d try out a title that fit the argument at that point but would not fit precisely what came next.The result is that different sympathetic readers will find different books here, with at least the following ambiguously related purposes—all of them to my mind either firmly achieved or at least pursued so effectively that refutation will prove difficult. Some of them are the overt theses of particular chapters, but all are found echoed or implied in every chapter. And all are finally and impressively interrelated.IFirst, Garver works, as he must, to show the faults of past readings of the Rhetoric. The chief of these has been the reduction to a handbook for rhetors; it is not a technical handbook, though it can be used as that, but an effort to “construct a civic relation between argument and ethos, so between techn̄e and phron̄esis [prudence]” (p. 77). “Aristotle’s political project is to maximize the active—energeia—side of rhetoric and so civilize the activity of influencing beliefs and judgments and convert into a minor irritant the role played by disreputable tactics such as playing on irrelevant emotions in the hearers” (p. 40). “I have... assumed that instead of doing that job [the ‘handbook’ job] badly, Aristotle is in fact trying to accomplish something else. I see him exhibiting the internal values and standards of rhetorical argument to legislators and citizens” (p. 235), [and thus making possible] “a new conception of the ethical, and of the relation of logos and ethos” (p. 16). “Aristotle’s Rhetoric is about a civic art... (shrink)

Without trust there is no credible human health research (HHR). This article accepts this truism and addresses a crucial question that arises: how can trust continually be promoted in an ever-changing and uncertain HHR environment? The article analyses long-standing mechanisms that are designed to elicit trust—such as consent, anonymization, and transparency—and argues that these are best understood as trust represented by proxies of trustworthiness, i.e., regulatory attempts to convey the trustworthiness of the HHR system and/or its actors. Often, such proxies (...) are assumed to operate as markers that trust exists or, at least, has not been lost. But, since trust can neither be “built” nor “secured,” this is a precarious assumption. Worryingly, there is no existing theoretical account of how to understand and evaluate these proxies of trustworthiness as part of a trusted HHR ecosystem. To remedy this, the paper argues for a radical reimagining of trust and trustworthiness as performative acts that ought to be understood in relation to each other and by reference to the common values at stake. It is shown that proxies of trustworthiness are the operational tools used to perform trustworthiness. It advocates for a values-based approach to understanding the relationship between trust and trustworthiness. This establishes a strong basis for an evaluative framework for proxies of trustworthiness, i.e., to determine how to perform trustworthiness well. Five common proxies in HHR are scrutinized from a values perspective. The contribution is to provide a far-reaching normative and practical framework by which existing and future proxies of trustworthiness can be identified, assessed, maintained, or replaced in rapidly changing HHR regulatory ecosystems where trust itself is crucial to the success of the entire HHR enterprise. (shrink)

The French existentialists Simone de Beauvoir and Jean‐Paul Sartre are renowned philosophers of freedom. But what “existentialist freedom” is is a matter of disagreement amongst their interpreters and, some argue, between Beauvoir and Sartre themselves. Since the late 1980s several scholars have argued that a Sartrean conception of freedom cannot justify the ethics of existentialism, adequately account for situations of oppression, or serve feminist ends. On these readings, Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about freedom—making existentialist ethics, resistance to oppression, and feminism (...) coherently defensible. This article identifies four conceptions of freedom in order to clarify the questions of whether and how they disagreed, arguing that some incompatibilist readings of Sartre and Beauvoir conflate or confuse these conceptions in ways that render their conclusions unconvincing. However, there are stronger grounds on which to claim that Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about morality—and the conditions of its possibility. (shrink)

Internalists about reasons following Bernard Williams claim that an agent’s normative reasons for action are constrained in some interesting way by her desires or motivations. In this paper, I offer a new argument for such a position—although one that resonates, I believe, with certain key elements of Williams’ original view. I initially draw on P.F. Strawson’s famous distinction between the interpersonal and the objective stances that we can take to other people, from the second-person point of view. I suggest that (...) we should accept Strawson’s contention that the activity of reasoning with someone about what she ought to do naturally belongs to the interpersonal mode of interaction. I also suggest that reasons for an agent to perform some action are considerations which would be apt to be cited in favor of that action, within an idealized version of this advisory social practice. I then go on to argue that one would take leave of the interpersonal stance towards someone—thus crossing the line, so to speak—in suggesting that she do something one knows she wouldn’t want to do, even following an exhaustive attempt to hash it out with her. An internalist necessity constraint on reasons is defended on this basis. (shrink)

By looking at the politics of classification within machine learning systems, this article demonstrates why the automated interpretation of images is an inherently social and political project. We begin by asking what work images do in computer vision systems, and what is meant by the claim that computers can “recognize” an image? Next, we look at the method for introducing images into computer systems and look at how taxonomies order the foundational concepts that will determine how a system interprets the (...) world. Then we turn to the question of labeling: how humans tell computers which words will relate to a given image. What is at stake in the way AI systems use these labels to classify humans, including by race, gender, emotions, ability, sexuality, and personality? Finally, we turn to the purposes that computer vision is meant to serve in our society—the judgments, choices, and consequences of providing computers with these capacities. Methodologically, we call this an archeology of datasets: studying the material layers of training images and labels, cataloguing the principles and values by which taxonomies are constructed, and analyzing how these taxonomies create the parameters of intelligibility for an AI system. By doing this, we can critically engage with the underlying politics and values of a system, and analyze which normative patterns of life are assumed, supported, and reproduced. (shrink)

There are growing discontinuities between the research practices of data science and established tools of research ethics regulation. Some of the core commitments of existing research ethics regulations, such as the distinction between research and practice, cannot be cleanly exported from biomedical research to data science research. Such discontinuities have led some data science practitioners and researchers to move toward rejecting ethics regulations outright. These shifts occur at the same time as a proposal for major revisions to the Common Rule—the (...) primary regulation governing human-subjects research in the USA—is under consideration for the first time in decades. We contextualize these revisions in long-running complaints about regulation of social science research and argue data science should be understood as continuous with social sciences in this regard. The proposed regulations are more flexible and scalable to the methods of non-biomedical research, yet problematically largely exclude data science methods from human-subjects regulation, particularly uses of public datasets. The ethical frameworks for Big Data research are highly contested and in flux, and the potential harms of data science research are unpredictable. We examine several contentious cases of research harms in data science, including the 2014 Facebook emotional contagion study and the 2016 use of geographical data techniques to identify the pseudonymous artist Banksy. To address disputes about application of human-subjects research ethics in data science, critical data studies should offer a historically nuanced theory of “data subjectivity” responsive to the epistemic methods, harms and benefits of data science and commerce. (shrink)

One variety of love is familiar in everyday life and qualifies in every reasonable sense as a reactive attitude. ‘Reactive love’ is paradigmatically (a) an affectionate attachment to another person, (b) appropriately felt as a non-self-interested response to particular kinds of morally laudable features of character expressed by the loved one in interaction with the lover, and (c) paradigmatically manifested in certain kinds of acts of goodwill and characteristic affective, desiderative and other motivational responses (including other-regarding concern and a desire (...) to be with the beloved). ‘Virtues of intimacy’ as expressed in interaction with the lover are agent-relative reasons for reactive love, and like other reactive attitudes, reactive love generates reasons in its own right. Within a broad conception of the virtues, reactive love sheds light on the reactive attitudes more generally. (shrink)

That holobionts are units of selection squares poorly with the observation that microbes are often recruited from the environment, not passed down vertically from parent to offspring, as required for collective reproduction. The taxonomic makeup of a holobiont’s microbial community may vary over its lifetime and differ from that of conspecifics. In contrast, biochemical functions of the microbiota and contributions to host biology are more conserved, with taxonomically variable but functionally similar microbes recurring across generations and hosts. To save what (...) is of interest in holobiont thinking, we propose casting metabolic and developmental interaction patterns, rather than the taxa responsible for them, as units of selection. Such units need not directly reproduce or form parent-offspring lineages: their prior existence has created the conditions under which taxa with the genes necessary to carry out their steps have evolved in large numbers. These taxa or genes will reconstruct the original interaction patterns when favorable conditions occur. Interaction patterns will vary in ways that affect the likelihood of and circumstances under which such reconstruction occurs. Thus, they vary in fitness, and evolution by natural selection will occur at this level. It is on the persistence, reconstruction, and spread of such interaction patterns that students of holobiosis should concentrate, we suggest. This model also addresses other multi-species collectively beneficial interactions, such as biofilms or biogeochemical cycles maintaining all life. (shrink)

This article reviews three new books analysing the phenomenon of neoliberalism through religious lenses and comments on how Christian ethics should navigate among various distinct uses of the term ‘neoliberalism’ and the solutions a Christian ethical approach proposes to the ways in which neoliberalism harms humans and societies.

Background: Ethical care in maternity is fundamental to providing care that both prevents harm and does good, and yet, there is growing acknowledgement that disrespect and abuse routinely occur in this context, which indicates that current ethical frameworks are not adequate. Care ethics offers an alternative to the traditional biomedical ethical principles. Research aim: The aim of the study was to determine whether a correlation exists between midwifery-led care and care ethics as an important first step in an action research (...) project. Research design: Template analysis was chosen for this part of the action research. Template analysis is a design that tests theory against empirical data, which requires pre-set codes. Participants and context: A priori codes that represent midwifery-led care were generated by a stakeholder consultative group of nine childbearing women using nominal group technique, collected in Perth, Western Australia. The a priori codes were applied to a predesigned template with four domains of care ethics. Ethical considerations: Ethics approval was granted by the Edith Cowan University research ethics committee REMS no. 2019-00296-Buchanan. Findings: The participants generated eight a priori codes representing ethical midwifery care, such as: 1.1 Relationship with Midwife; 1.2 Woman-centred care; 2.1 Trust women’s bodies and abilities; 2.2. Protect normal physiological birth; 3.1. Information provision; 3.2. Respect autonomy; 4.1. Birth culture of fear and 4.2. Recognition of rite of passage. The a priori codes were mapped to the care ethics template. The template analysis found that midwifery-led care does indeed demonstrate care ethics. Discussion: Care ethics takes into consideration what principle-based bioethics have previously overlooked: relationship, context and power. Conclusion: Midwifery-led care has been determined in this study to demonstrate care ethics, which suggest that further research is defensible with the view that it could be incorporated into the ethical codes and conduct for the midwifery profession. (shrink)

Human microbiome research makes causal connections between entire microbial communities and a wide array of traits that range from physiological diseases to psychological states. To evaluate these causal claims, we first examine a well-known single-microbe causal explanation: of Helicobacter pylori causing ulcers. This apparently straightforward causal explanation is not so simple, however. It does not achieve a key explanatory standard in microbiology, of Koch’s postulates, which rely on manipulations of single-microorganism cultures to infer causal relationships to disease. When Koch’s postulates (...) are framed by an interventionist causal framework, it is clearer what the H. pylori explanation achieves and where its explanatory strengths lie. After assessing this ‘simple’, single-microbe case, we apply the interventionist framework to two key areas of microbiome research, in which obesity and mental health states are purportedly explained by microbiomes. Despite the experimental data available, interventionist criteria for explanation show that many of the causal claims generated by microbiome research are weak or misleading. We focus on the stability, specificity and proportionality of proposed microbiome causal explanations, and evaluate how effectively these dimensions of causal explanation are achieved in some promising avenues of research. We suggest some conceptual and explanatory strategies to improve how causal claims about microbiomes are made. (shrink)

With modern technological advances, distance education has become an increasingly important education delivery medium for, for example, the higher education provided by open universities. Among predictive factors of successful learning in distance education, the effects of non-cognitive skills are less explored. Grit, the dispositional tendency to sustain trait-level passion and long-term goals, has raised much research interest and gained importance for predicting academic achievement. The Grit Questionnaire, measuring Perseverance of Effort and Consistency of Interests, has been shown to be a (...) reliable instrument in traditional university student populations. However, the measurement and predictive validity of this questionnaire is still unknown for adult distance education university students who differ from traditional students in various ways. Based on a sample of 2,027 students from a distance education university, this study assessed the psychometric properties of the two-factor structure grit measured by the Grit Questionnaire. The findings suggest that the short form of the Grit Questionnaire is a potentially useful assessment tool for measuring the grit construct for distance learning higher education and that the Consistency of Interests factor is especially relevant to consider the improvement of learning performance for distance education in terms of courses credit and exam attempts. The measurement precision of the Perseverance of Effort factor, however, should be improved in future research to provide higher measurement accuracy and broader item coverage. (shrink)

The subject of this book, which is the first to be devoted to a single photograph, is Camille Silvy's remarkable River Scene.

Life and work of the French photographer Camille Silvy.

In this paper, Kate Kirkpatrick argues that the recent return to moral exemplars in exemplarist moral theory might benefit from engaging with existentialists' use of exemplars in two ways: first, by considering the role of negative exemplars and the power of emotions other than admiration in moral formation; and second, by considering objections to exemplarist education, in particular Simone de Beauvoir's objection that narrative exemplars often serve an ideological function and perpetuate oppressive ideals — especially (but not only) about (...) women. After situating this discussion in ancient and recent debates about the role of literary narratives in moral formation, Kirkpatrick outlines a moral perfectionist reading of Beauvoir and an objection to exemplarist moral theory's reliance on exemplars that “we” admire on the basis that “the admirable” often serves to promote the interests of the powerful rather than the flourishing of all human beings. Finally, while agreeing with this symposium's editors that efforts to improve our understanding of how to use narrative exemplars in educational settings are valuable, she asks how, given the force of the Beauvoirian objection, their criterion of “appropriate critical reflection” might be met. (shrink)

Philosophers have turned their attention to gaslighting only recently, and have made considerable progress in analysing its characteristic aims and harms. I am less convinced, however, that we have fully understood its nature. I will argue in this paper that philosophers and others interested in the phenomenon have largely overlooked a phenomenon I call moral gaslighting, in which someone is made to feel morally defective—for example, cruelly unforgiving or overly suspicious—for harbouring some mental state to which she is entitled. If (...) I am right about this possibility, and that it deserves to be called gaslighting, then gaslighting is a far more prevalent and everyday phenomenon than has previously been credited. And it can also be a purely structural phenomenon, as well as an interpersonal one, which remains a controversial possibility in the current literature. (shrink)

According to the normativist, it is built into the nature of belief itself that beliefs are subject to a certain set of norms. I argue here that only a normativist account can explain certain non‐normative facts about what it takes to have the capacity for belief. But this way of defending normativism places an explanatory burden on any normativist account that an account on which a truth norm is explanatorily fundamental simply cannot discharge. I develop an alternative account that can (...) achieve explanatory adequacy where this sort of truth privileging account falls short. (shrink)

Ritchie Robertson, Richard Sher, and Alicia Montoya are three of the most distinguished scholars of eighteenth-century book history and the Enlightenment, and I cannot think of a triumvirate more q...

Background/Aim: The law on consent has changed in Scotland with the introduction of the Adults with Incapacity Act 2000. This Act introduces the concept of proxy consent in Scotland. Many patients in intensive care are unable to participate in the decision making process because of their illness and its treatment. It is normal practice to provide relatives with information on the patient’s condition, treatment, and prognosis as a substitute for discussion directly with the patient. The relatives of intensive care patients (...) appeared to believe that they already had the right to consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. The authors’ aim was to assess the level of knowledge among relatives of intensive care patients of both the old and new law using a structured questionnaire.Methods: The next of kin of 100 consecutive patients completed a structured questionnaire. Each participant had the questions read to them and their answers recorded. Patients were not involved in the study.Results: Few were aware of the changes. Most thought that they previously could give consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. Only 13% have ever discussed the preferences for life sustaining treatment with the patient but 84% felt that they could accurately represent the patient’s wishes.Conclusions: There appeared to be a lack of public awareness of the impending changes. The effectiveness of the Act at improving the care of the mentally incapacitated adult will depend largely on how successful it is at encouraging communication and decision making in advance of incapacity occurring. (shrink)