It is not uncommon in educational research and social science in general either to eschew the word truth or to put it in scare quotes in order to signify scepticism about it. After the initial wave of relativism in the philosophy of natural science, a second wave has developed in social science with the rise of postmodernism and poststructuralism. The tendency here is to relativise truth or to bracket out questions of truth. In contradistinction, this paper revindicates the metaphysical nature (...) of truth. Truth is a transcendental precondition of educational inquiry and is best understood as a formal, regulative norm. Realism about truth enjoins a defence of the correspondence theory, which is provided here. At the same time, however, the development of realism in the social sciences has ironically followed the postmodernists in its scepticism about truth and its rejection of the correspondence theory. This paper critically appraises such recent developments, since all research is unintelligible without realism about the social world and whether our substantive knowledge-claims correspond with it. (shrink)

As the international momentum of the school effectiveness movement continues, its exponents remain largely impervious to criticism. This paper argues that while they may not readily align themselves with the individualistic aspects of Conservative social philosophy, their methodology necessarily secretes an atomised social ontology. The charge of ideological commitment rests on the fact that the essentially positivist epistemology employed by school effectiveness researchers presupposes an ontology of closed systems and atomistic events. Thus any notion of the structuring of life‐chances is (...) automatically ruled out of court. The reciprocity of social ontology and methodology is explored in order to account for the myopia of the school effectiveness movement. (shrink)

In Europe, welfare state provision has been subjected to 'market forces'. Over the last two decades, the framework of economic competitiveness has become the defining aim of education, to be achieved by new managerialist techniques and mechanisms. This book thoughtfully and persuasively argues against this new vision of education. This in-depth major study will be of great interest to researchers in the sociology of education, education policy, social theory, organization and management studies, and also to professionals concerned about the deleterious (...) impact of current education policy on children's learning and welfare. (shrink)

Qualitative data of a 'failing' junior school are used to highlight the ways in which a particular Local Education Authority (LEA) responded to 'serious weaknesses' outlined by a team of Office for Standards in Education inspectors and how staff mediated such LEA intervention. Such mediation will be theorised via the employment of analytical dualism, whereby structure and agency are held to be irreducible emergent strata of social reality. The purpose of this paper is not to complement and buttress the ideological (...) nature of school effectiveness research, but to provide a micro insight into current mediation of macro-level policy. (shrink)

As the international momentum of the school effectiveness movement continues, its exponents remain largely impervious to criticism. This paper argues that while they may not readily align themselves with the individualistic aspects of Conservative social philosophy, their methodology necessarily secretes an atomised social ontology. The charge of ideological commitment rests on the fact that the essentially positivist epistemology employed by school effectiveness researchers presupposes an ontology of closed systems and atomistic events. Thus any notion of the structuring of life-chances is (...) automatically ruled out of court. The reciprocity of social ontology and methodology is explored in order to account for the myopia of the school effectiveness movement. (shrink)

As Allaire and Firsirotu (1984) pointed out over a decade ago, the concept of culture seemed to be sliding inexorably into a superficial explanatory pool that promised everything and nothing. However, since then, some sophisticated and interesting theoretical developments have prevented drowning in the pool of superficiality and hence theoretical redundancy. The purpose of this article is to build upon such theoretical developments and to introduce an approach that maintains that culture can be theorized in the same way as structure, (...) possessing irreducible powers and properties that predispose organizational actors towards specific courses of action. The morphogenetic approach is the methodological complement of transcendental realism, providing explanatory leverage on the conditions that maintain for cultural change or stability. (shrink)

In this article, Gostin and Archer explore the varied lenses through which governments are obligated to address humanitarian needs. States’responsibilities to help others derive from domestic law, political commitments, ethical values, national interests, and international law. What is needed, however, is clarity and detailed standards so that States can operationalize this responsibility, making it real for developing countries. Transnational cooperation needs to be more effective and consistent to provide assistance for the world's poorest and least healthy people.

This article deals with a foreign policy question of extraordinary importance: what responsibilities do States have to provide economic and technical assistance to other States that have high levels of need affecting the health and life of their citizens? The question is important for a variety of reasons. There exist massive inequalities in health globally, with the result that poorer countries shoulder a disproportionate burden of disease and premature death. Average life expectancy in Africa is nearly 30 years shorter than (...) in the Americas or Europe. In one year alone, an estimated 14 million of the poorest people in the world died, while only an estimated four million would have died if this population had the same death rate as the global rich. (shrink)

Theorising the interplay of structure and agency is the quintessential focus of sociological endeavour. This paper aims to be part of that continuing endeavour, arguing for a stratified social ontology, where structure and agency are held to be irreducible to each other and causally efficacious, yet necessarily interdependent. It thus aims not to be part of that on-going journey in search of the 'ontological holy grail'. Instead, it offers a way of linking structure and agency which enables the practical education (...) researcher concretely to examine their relative interplay over time. The methodological key to teasing out their relative interplay is held to be analytical dualism. It will be argued that such a methodological device is precluded by Giddens' structuration theory. (shrink)

As Bhaskar (1989:1) argues, we need to take philosophy seriously because it underwrites both what constitutes science and knowledge and which political practices are deemed legitimate. At present, the field of educational research internationally is witnessing a pragmatist trend, whereby practical education research is carried out without reference to ontological and epistemological concerns. For David Reynolds, a leading UK school effectiveness academic, '[p]recisely because we did not waste time on philosophical discussion or on values debates, we made rapid progress' (1998:20). (...) Equally, for Teddlie, '[t]he orientation of many in the US is to do rather than to reflect […] In reality many practitioners are currently interested in what could work at their school […rather…] than in ruminations about social inequalities associated with different socioeconomic classes' (Teddlie and Reynolds 2000:27). The purpose of this chapter is not only to reclaim critical realist social philosophy for educational research, but also to reclaim reality from the positivist and statistical methodology that underpins School Effectiveness Research (SER) and to make clear the difference that realism makes by virtue of its critical explanatory power in unmasking the ideological nature of SER and its adoption by New Labour. (shrink)

The irony of the rejection of the sex/gender distinction is that it renders sociology per se an impossible enterprise. For it is my submission that, contra Hood-Williams (1996) and others, the biological and the social constitute distinct, irreducible levels of reality: to conflate (in a ‘downwards’ or ‘upwards’ direction) the two levels is immediately to render analysis of their relative interplay at best intractable. It is indeed arguable that Hood-Williams is not so much concerned with (rightly) rejecting the so-called ‘additive’ (...) approach to the biological and the social where the biological base is seen a priori as immutable, but more fundamentally with rejecting the necessary dualism of nature and culture (ie the biological and the social). In contradistinction, a realist defence of the sex/gender distinction will be made, involving critical reference to various major writers in the field and offering a brief but tentative discussion of the provenance of gender. (shrink)

This paper argues that the recent 'mini-renaissance' in Marxist educational sociology as propounded in particular by Rikowski (1996, 1997) is fatally flawed, not only denying the sui generis (autonomous) properties of the educational system but also precluding practical social theorising per se . The reason for this centres on the adoption of a universal internal relations social ontology, which results in the reduction of concrete social reality to the narrow abstraction of the omnipresent 'Capital Relation'. At the same time, such (...) theorising remains conspicuously silent on the issue of the feasible alternatives to capitalism implied by the (albeit flawed) explanatory critiques of such recent Marxist theorising within the sociology of education. (shrink)

For academics and students, Education Management in Managerialist Times offers a critical guide to existing educational management texts and makes a strong case for redefining educational management along more socially and politically informed lines. The book also offers practitioners alternative management strategies intended to contest, rather than support, managerialism, while being realistic about the context within which those who lead and manage schools currently have to work.

his chapter discusses some of the basic tenets of a critical realist social ontology. It defines capitalism, which Roy Jacques conspicuously fails to do. Jacques argues that the very point of explanatory critique is to facilitate useful action. For Geoffrey Hodgson, the epsilon scenario could be described as beyond capitalism. A form of employment contract remains, but it is a mere shell of its former capitalist self. In the work process, the degree of control by the employer over the employee (...) is minimal. Hodgson argues that 'impurity' necessarily characterizes all socioeconomic systems. However, any assessment of feasibility depends crucially upon an adequate theoretical analysis of concrete socio-economic systems. The chapter explains the nature of disaggregative analysis, which is predicated upon a realist ontology. Transcendentally the social world is composed of internal and external social relations; disaggregative analysis enables thought experiments about alternative social arrangements. The chapter addresses the nature of division of labour, knowledge and Hayek. (shrink)

Distance education has a long and complex history. It accounts for more than one-third of all higher education students in the world and, because of its very nature, has produced some of the top graduates worldwide who were unable to study fulltime and on-campus for various reasons. One of the most prestigious graduates of the DE system was the former state president of South Africa, the late Nelson Mandela. Online learning is a form of DE and fast becoming the preferred (...) method of instruction and delivery. Critiques of online learning, and of DE itself, will argue that, because of the separation of the teacher and the student, only academic skills can be taught and learnt using this medium. The so-called ‘softer skills’ – those that focus on the development of the person – are best taught in a face-to-face, traditional environment. This article focuses on a review of DE theories and models. A particular emphasis is placed on online learning theories, and how the teaching of formational learning skills can be successfully incorporated into this educational setting. The article draws from a range of studies that have been conducted, based on conceptual and empirical research evidence from various authors. Drawing from Garrison, Anderson and Archer’s Community of Inquiry framework for online education, it presents key elements that relate to the formational training of theology students. The article examines research that both supports and cautions against online learning for formative development. It concludes by suggesting a blended model of both face-to-face and online learning, where meaningful interactions between the learner and teacher take place, is desirable. The article highlights the important role that DE can play in developing the human component of education. (shrink)

Traditional, positivist assessment approaches generally fail to capture the nuances of learners’ clinical competence in medical programmes. This has led to the implementation of an alternate assessment approach known as ‘programmatic assessment’, which embraces subjectivity of human judgement in holistic decision making in clinical settings. Faculty and staff have found the introduction of programmatic assessment to be challenging because it is a major, complex change to the traditional way of carrying out assessment. Extending our previous work, where we used critical (...) realism to explore students’ experiences of programmatic assessment, we here unpack the underlying conditions and mechanisms triggered by programmatic assessment’s implementation. We applied Bhaskar’s concept of ontological stratification, retroduction and Archer’s theoretical accounts of morphogenesis/stasis to theorize the interplay between the socio-cultural entities that constrain and enable desired changes in assessment practices, and those that condition students and staff to accept or reject the new ‘non-traditional’ assessment processes. (shrink)

We agree that sexual selection is a more comprehensive explanation for sex differences in direct aggression than social role theory, which is an unparsimonious and vestigial remnant of human exceptionalism. Nevertheless, Archer misses several opportunities to put the theoretical predictions made by himself and by others into direct competition in a way that would further the interests of strong inference.

What is salience? This collection addresses this neglected question by considering the role of salience in a wide variety of areas. All 13 chapters are specially commissioned, and written by an international team of contributors.

In a series of recent papers, Jane Friedman has argued that attitudes like wondering, enquiring, and suspending judgement are question-directed and have the function of moving someone from a position of ignorance to one of knowledge. Call such attitudes interrogative attitudes. Friedman insists that all IAs are governed by the following Ignorance Norm: Necessarily, if one knows Q at t, then one ought not have an IA towards Q at t. However, I argue that key premisses in Friedman’s argument actually (...) point towards an opposing conclusion; namely, that IAs are not governed by the Ignorance Norm, and IAs have functions other than moving someone from a position of ignorance to one of knowledge. I conclude that the Ignorance Norm should be rejected. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that the constitutive aim of inquiring into some question, Q, is improving one’s epistemic standing with respect to Q. Call this the epistemic-improvement view. I consider and ultimately reject two alternative accounts of the constitutive aim of inquiry—namely, the thesis that inquiry aims at knowledge and the thesis that inquiry aims at belief—and I use my criticisms as a foil for clarifying and motivating the epistemic-improvement view. I also consider and reject a pair of normative theses (...) about when inquiry goes awry or is inappropriate. The first is the normative thesis defended by Dennis Whitcomb who claims that inquiry goes awry if it culminates in a belief that falls short of knowledge and that one should not inquire into Q if one already knows the answer to Q. The second is the normative thesis defended by Jane Friedman who claims that one should not inquire into Q if one already believes some complete answer to Q. (shrink)

This book, the last volume in the Social Morphogenesis series, examines whether or not a Morphogenic society can foster new modes of human relations that could exercise a form of 'relational steering', protecting and promoting a nuanced version of the good life for all. It analyses the way in which the intensification of morphogenesis and the diminishing of morphostasis impact upon human flourishing. The book links intensified morphogenesis to promoting human flourishing based on the assumption that new opportunities open up (...) novel experiences, skills, and modes of communication that appeal to talents previously lacking any outlet or recognition. It proposes that equality of opportunity would increase as ascribed characteristics diminished in importance, and it could be maintained as the notion of achievement continued to diversify. Digitalization has opened the cultural 'archive' for more to explore and, as it expands exponentially, so do new complementary compatibilities whose development foster yet further opportunities. If more people can do more of what they do best, these represent stepping stones towards the 'good life' for more of them. (shrink)

Margaret S. Archer is responsible for important conceptual developments in critical realism and the structure-agent problem but her explanatory framework often opposes those of other influential theorists. In this book she provides a response to critics of her work in the form of a set of discussions of published articles.

"God and Mr Wells" from William Archer. Scottish critic and writer (1856 - 1924).

Background. The concept of empathy in students has gained significant attention in medical education. Whether implementing formal educational interventions to promote long-term and effective empathy levels leads to sustained increased empathy levels in students, is however less clear. Objectives. The study aimed to evaluate the trajectory of medical students’ self-perceived empathy levels during their 6-year MB ChB degree. Methods. A longitudinal, prospective study was conducted over 4 years. A cohort of 292 medical students was invited to participate. Participants completed the (...) Jefferson Scale of Empathy for Students (JSE-S) at three intervals during their studies. The students attended two workshops related to empathic patient interactions during this time. The JSE-S mean score by age and gender was compared, making use of a linear regression model. Results. A total of 119 students completed the study. Students’ total empathy levels were similar during the first and the last measuring point (110), but there was a significant rise in the intermediate measuring point (113.3). When the male and female cohorts’ scores were interpreted separately, both genders demonstrated a similar pattern to the total score, although females’ JSE-S scores were higher than the males. Conclusion. The results of the study confirm that educational interventions can increase students’ self-perceived empathy levels; however, we suggest that students require reinforcement and multiple opportunities to practise and observe empathic communication with patients to sustain high levels of empathy. Follow-up sessions to specifically target the promotion of empathy should be implemented; otherwise the long-term effect of educational interventions might be limited. (shrink)

We often describe ourselves as agnostic on a wide range of questions, such as does God exist, is String Theory true, or will the President win re-election? But what does it mean to be agnostic and when is agnosticism justified? This monograph addresses these and related questions.

This book rethinks the discussion of sport as a cinematic subject. Arguing for the vitality of the sports film as distinctively 'modern' genre, the book looks at its innovative potential to capture twentieth- and twenty-first-century sport in all its complexity. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout, the book integrates work and ideas from film studies with thinking from sports psychology, philosophy, data theory and ecocriticism. In its detailed analyses of a wide-ranging group of films, the book shows how (...) film, from fictional works to biopics to experimental documentaries, can illuminate individual sporting experience, as well as sport's wider place in modern life. (shrink)

The philosophical difficulties presented by self-deception are vexed and multifaceted. One such difficulty is what I call the ‘doxastic problem’ of self-deception. Solving the doxastic problem involves determining whether someone in a state of self-deception that ∼p both believes that p and believes that ∼p, simply holds one or the other belief, or, as I will argue, holds neither. This final option, which has been almost entirely overlooked to-date, is what I call ‘ nondoxasticism ’ about self-deception. In this article, (...) I present a negative case for nondoxasticism according to which, in the paradigm case of self-deception, there is no explanatory need to attribute the self-deceived person either their undesired belief that p, or their desired belief that ∼p. Folk psychology is replete with concepts other than belief, and if we bear this in mind, it becomes clear that the explanatory roles for which the self-deceived person's purported beliefs have traditionally been enlisted can be comfortably filled without recourse to belief. (shrink)

The abstract structure of inquiry - the process of acquiring and changing beliefs about the world - is the focus of this book which takes the position that the "pragmatic" rather than the "linguistic" approach better solves the philosophical problems about the nature of mental representation, and better accounts for the phenomena of thought and speech. It discusses propositions and propositional attitudes (the cluster of activities that constitute inquiry) in general and takes up the way beliefs change in response to (...) potential new information, suggesting that conditional propositions should be understood as projections of epistemic policies onto the world.Robert C. Stalnaker is a professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

This volume examines the nature/politics relationship anew in the wake of recent critiques of the category of "nature." Its essays draw on contemporary and canonical thinkers to reflect on "second nature" as a site or paradigm of political contest and intervene into debates about environmentalism, human rights, and more.

Can there be a duty to forgive those who have wronged us? According to a popular view amongst philosophers working on forgiveness the answer is no. Forgiveness, it is claimed, is always elective. This view is rejected by Gamlund (2010a; 2010b) who argues that duties to forgive do exist and then provides conditions that are relevant to determining whether forgiveness is obligatory or supererogatory. In this paper I will argue that the conditions that Gamlund provides do not provide a plausible (...) account of the connection between forgiveness and duty. The problems I will raise against Gamlund’s view is a problem that faces any moral view that makes room for supererogation. I will then investigate whether the existing solutions to this problem provide a more plausible account of the connection between forgiveness and obligation. I will argue that the two most prominent solutions, The Favouring Reasons View and The Sacrifice View, produce implausible results when applied to the case of forgiveness. However, an alternative view, The Freedom View, can provide plausible results when applied to the case of forgiveness. This gives us defeasible reason to favour this as a general solution to The Problem of the Good Ought Tie-Up. (shrink)

Robert B. Brandom is one of the most original philosophers of our day, whose book Making It Explicit covered and extended a vast range of topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language--the very core of analytic philosophy. This new work provides an approachable introduction to the complex system that Making It Explicit mapped out. A tour of the earlier book's large ideas and relevant details, Articulating Reasons offers an easy entry into two of the main themes of Brandom's (...) work: the idea that the semantic content of a sentence is determined by the norms governing inferences to and from it, and the idea that the distinctive function of logical vocabulary is to let us make our tacit inferential commitments explicit. Brandom's work, making the move from representationalism to inferentialism, constitutes a near-Copernican shift in the philosophy of language--and the most important single development in the field in recent decades. Articulating Reasons puts this accomplishment within reach of nonphilosophers who want to understand the state of the foundations of semantics. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Semantic Inferentialism and Logical Expressivism 2. Action, Norms, and Practical Reasoning 3. Insights and Blindspots of Reliabilism 4. What Are Singular Terms, and Why Are There Any? 5. A Social Route from Reasoning to Representing 6. Objectivity and the Normative Fine Structure of Rationality Notes Index Displaying a sovereign command of the intricate discussion in the analytic philosophy of language, Brandom manages successfully to carry out a program within the philosophy of language that has already been sketched by others, without losing sight of the vision inspiring the enterprise in the important details of his investigation ' Using the tools of a complex theory of language, Brandom succeeds in describing convincingly the practices in which the reason and autonomy of subjects capable of speech and action are expressed. --J'rgen Habermas. (shrink)

What role should a motivation to do the right thing, read de dicto, play in the life of a virtuous agent? According to a prominent argument from Michael Smith, those who are only motivated by such a desire are moral fetishists. Since Smith’s argument, a number of philosophers have examined what role this desire would play in the life of the morally virtuous agent. My primary aim in this paper is an historical one. I will show that much of this (...) discussion can be found in Adam Smith’s The Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1764), published over two hundred years before Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem. I will then argue that there is an important insight to be found in Adam Smith’s book that is missing from the contemporary discussion. According to Adam Smith, while a de dicto desire to do the right thing can play an important role in the life of a virtuous agent, the person who is only ever motivated by this desire will often be epistemically disadvantaged compared to the person who possesses the appropriate sentiments. I will argue that Adam Smith’s claim is plausible given his own view of the moral sentiments as providing the foundation of morality. In addition, there is good reason to accept Smith’s claim even for those who do not accept his view of the foundational role of the moral sentiments. (shrink)

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize With a new preface by the author In his most powerful and important book, renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton presents a brilliant analysis of the crucial role that German doctors played in the Nazi genocide. Now updated with a new preface, The Nazi Doctors remains the definitive work on the Nazi medical atrocities, a chilling exposé of the banality of evil at its epitome, and a sobering reminder of the darkest side (...) of human nature. (shrink)

In a new retelling of the romantic rationalist adventure of ideas that is Hegel's classic The Phenomenology of Spirit, Robert Brandom argues that when our self-conscious recognitive attitudes take Hegel's radical form of magnanimity and trust, we can overcome a troubled modernity and enter a new age of spirit.

This paper revisits some foundational questions concerning the abstract representation of a discourse context. The context of a conversation is represented by a body of information that is presumed to be shared by the participants in the conversation – the information that the speaker presupposes a point at which a speech act is interpreted. This notion is designed to represent both the information on which context-dependent speech acts depend, and the situation that speech acts are designed to affect, and so (...) to be a representation of context that is appropriate for explaining the interaction of context and the contents expressed in them. After reviewing the motivating ideas and the outlines of the apparatus, the paper responds to a criticism of the framework, and considers the way it can help to clarify some phenomena concerning pronouns with indefinite antecedents. (shrink)

This collection of papers (including three completely new ones) by one of the foremost philosophers in epistemology transcends two of the most widely misunderstood positions in philosophy--foundationalism and coherentism. Audi proposes a distinctively moderate, internalist foundationalism that incorporates some of the virtues of both coherentism and reliabilism. He develops important distinctions between positive and negative epistemic dependence, substantively and conceptually naturalistic theories, dispositional beliefs and dispositions to believe, episodically and structurally inferential beliefs, first and second order internalism, and rebutting as (...) opposed to refuting skepticism. These contrasts are applied not only to rational belief, but to rational action and the rationality of desires and intentions. The overall position is a pluralist, moderately rationalistic, internalist theory of justification and a partly externalist conception of knowledge. However, by virtue of offering a theory of rationality as well as an account of knowledge and justified belief, it will interest philosophers of ethics, science, and the social sciences and teachers and students of epistemology. (shrink)