Originally published in 1992. This book discusses the possibilities of developing the research process in social science so that it benefits the subjects as well as the researcher. The authors distinguish between 'ethical', 'advocate' and 'empowering' approaches to the relationship between researcher and researched, linking these to different ideas about the nature of knowledge, action, language, and social relations. They then use a series of empirical case studies to explore the possibilities for 'empowering research'. The book is the product of (...) dialogue between researchers from a range of disciplines and is for those working across the social sciences. Through combination of philosophical discussion, methodological recommendation and case-study illustration, it provides guidance that is practical without being simplistic. (shrink)

Deborah Thomas _Beyond Genre: Melodrama, Comedy and Romance in Hollywood Films_ Moffat, Dumfriesshire, Scotland: Cameron and Hollis, 2000 ISBN 0-9065506-17-4 142 pp.

In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups literally (...) intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. _Groups as Agents_ will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time. (shrink)

Responsible Robotics is about developing robots in ways that take their social implications into account, which includes conceptually framing robots and their role in the world accurately. We are now in the process of incorporating robots into our world and we are trying to figure out what to make of them and where to put them in our conceptual, physical, economic, legal, emotional and moral world. How humans think about robots, especially humanoid social robots, which elicit complex and sometimes disconcerting (...) reactions, is not predetermined. The animal–robot analogy is one of the most commonly used in attempting to frame interactions between humans and robots and it also tends to push in the direction of blurring the distinction between humans and machines. We argue that, despite some shared characteristics, when it comes to thinking about the moral status of humanoid robots, legal liability, and the impact of treatment of humanoid robots on how humans treat one another, analogies with animals are misleading. (shrink)

This paper analyses the hidden use of new axioms in set-theoretic practice with a focus on large cardinal axioms and presents a general overview of set-theoretic practices using large cardinal axioms. The hidden use of a new axiom provides extrinsic reasons in support of this axiom via the idea of verifiable consequences, which is especially relevant for set-theoretic practitioners with an absolutist view. Besides that, the hidden use has pragmatic significance for further important sub-groups of the set-theoretic community---set-theoretic practitioners with (...) a pluralist view and set-theoretic practitioners who aim for ZFC-proofs. By describing this, the paper gives a more complete picture of new axioms in set-theoretic practice. These observations, for instance, show that set-theoretic practitioners interested in ZFC-proofs use tools that go beyond ZFC. The analysis is based on empirical data that was collected in an extensive interview study with set-theoretic practitioners. (shrink)

This article argues that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing the action. I call this reason The Anti-Compounding Injustice principle or aci. Compounding injustice and the aci principle are likely to be relevant when analyzing the moral issues raised by “big data” and its combination with the computational power of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Past injustice can infect the data used in algorithmic decisions in two distinct ways. Sometimes prior (...) injustice undermines the accuracy of the data itself. In these contexts, improving accuracy will also help to avoid compounding injustice. Other times, past injustice produces real-world differences among people with regard to skills, health, wealth, and other traits that employers, lenders, and others seek to measure. When decisions are based on accurate data that itself results from prior injustice, these decisions can also compound injustice. This second dynamic has received less attention than the first but is especially important because improving the accuracy of data will not mitigate this unfairness. (shrink)

This guide leads readers systematically through the arguments of Mary Shepherd's two books. Chapters 1-4 cover the arguments in the Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824), where Shepherd argues that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths and that causal inferences can be rationally justified. Shepherd's primary target in this work is Hume, but she also addresses the views of Thomas Brown and William Lawrence. Shepherd considered her second book, Essays on the Perception (...) of an External Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (1827), to be an extension of the earlier project on causation; here she appeals to the causal principles established in the first book to argue that we can know through reason that an external world of continually-existing objects must exist independently of us, as the causes of our sensations. Chapter 5 of this Guide addresses Shepherd's accounts of sensation and reasoning; Chapters 6-9 lead the reader through the arguments of the Essays, as well laying out Shepherd's views on skepticism and Berkeleyan idealism, her accounts of mind and body, her philosophy of religion, and the solutions she offers to two puzzles about vision. (shrink)

Is the world internally connected by a web of necessary connections or is everything loose and independent? Followers of David Hume accept the latter by upholding Hume’s Dictum, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Roughly put, anything can coexist with anything else, and anything can fail to coexist with anything else. Hume put it like this: “There is no object which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves.” Since Hume’s (...) day, Hume’s Dictum has played a major role in philosophy, especially in contemporary metaphysics. In ruling out necessary connections, Hume’s Dictum implies that causal relations and the laws of nature are contingent. It makes other demands on our metaphysics of science as well; for example, it places restrictions on our metaphysics of counterfactuals, dispositions, and explanation. The principle has applications in other areas too. Hume’s Dictum places constraints on our theories of abstract objects and moral properties. For example, Hume’s Dictum rules out the view that moral properties are distinct from, but necessarily connected to, non-moral properties. While Hume’s Dictum is a prominent principle in metaphysics, few Humeans have defended the principle at length. It is assumed more often than it is argued for. As a result, Hume’s Dictum no longer enjoys the reputation it once did. It’s common to hear complaints about the lack of arguments in support of Hume’s Dictum. Moreover, philosophers are increasingly willing to defend views that are at odds with Hume’s Dictum. A striking example of this is the recent explosion of interest in views that take causal relations and the laws of nature to be necessary. Humeans can no longer afford to be complacent. An extended defense of Hume’s Dictum is called for, and that’s what this dissertation aims to offer. This dissertation has three parts. In the first part, I lay out some preliminaries and offer a precise formulation of Hume’s Dictum. In the second part, I develop three arguments in favor of Hume’s Dictum. In the final part, I defend Hume’s Dictum against objections. (shrink)

In recent discussions on the meaning of derogatory terms, most theorists base their investigations on the assumption that slurring terms could in principle have some neutral, i.e. purely descriptive, counterpart. Lauren Ashwell has recently shown that this assumption does not generalize to gendered slurs. This paper aims to challenge the point and benefit of approaching the meaning of derogatory terms in contrast to their allegedly purely descriptive counterparts. I argue that different discursive practices among different communities of practice sometimes change (...) the semantics of a term. By the example of the term ‘black,’ I show in what ways these different practices may amount to semantic contestations which complicate the assessment of whether a specific politically significant term is purely descriptive. My discussion of politically significant terms provides insights into further phenomena such as the appropriation of derogatory terms by the target group or meaning change more generally. Moreover, it not only accounts for the political aspects of a linguistic phenomenon, but equally highlights and explains the oft-neglected but crucial role that language plays in social and political struggles. It thus contributes to ongoing discussions both in philosophy of language and in social and political philosophy. (shrink)

We examine moving spotlight theories of time: theories according to which there are past and future events and an objective present moment. In Section 1, we briefly discuss the origins of the view. In Section 2, we describe the traditional moving spotlight view, which we understand as an ‘enriched’ B-theory of time, and raise some problems for that view. In the next two sections, we describe versions of the moving spotlight view that we think are better and which solve those (...) problems. In Section 3, we describe a version of the view that combines permanentism – the thesis that all things always exist – with propositional temporalism, the thesis that some propositions are sometimes true and sometimes false. In Section 4, we discuss a version of the view that is like an ‘enriched’ presentism. We conclude with some brief thoughts on issues that remain outstanding. (shrink)

While many philosophers of science have accorded special evidential significance to tests whose results are "novel facts", there continues to be disagreement over both the definition of novelty and why it should matter. The view of novelty favored by Giere, Lakatos, Worrall and many others is that of use-novelty: An accordance between evidence e and hypothesis h provides a genuine test of h only if e is not used in h's construction. I argue that what lies behind the intuition that (...) novelty matters is the deeper intuition that severe tests matter. I set out a criterion of severity akin to the notion of a test's power in Neyman-Pearson statistics. I argue that tests which are use-novel may fail to be severe, and tests that are severe may fail to be use-novel. I discuss the 1919 eclipse data as a severe test of Einstein's law of gravity. (shrink)

In 1241/4 the theology masters at the university at Paris with their chancellor, Odo of Chateauroux, mandated by their bishop, William of Auvergne, met to condemn ten propositions against theological truth. This book represents the first comprehensive examination of what hitherto has been a largely ignored instrument in a crucial period of the university's early maturation. However, the book's ambition goes wider than this. The condemnation provides a window through which to view the wider doctrinal, intellectual, institutional and historical developments (...) within the emerging university. These include the advent of the Dominicans and Franciscans at the university; and the developing focus of Paris theologians on using their learning for preaching at a time of a rapid and sometimes divergent development of doctrine and concerns over the newly-translated Aristotelian and associated Arab and Jewish works, heresy, the Greek Church and the Jews. The book compares the condemnation's ten articles with the major statement of Catholic principles in the first canon of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, and assesses what conclusions can be drawn from their apparent correlation. (shrink)

In arguing against the likelihood of consciousness in non-human animals, Descartes advances a slippery slope argument that if thought were attributed to any one animal, it would have to be attributed to all, which is absurd. This paper examines the foundations of Thomas Willis’ comparative neuroanatomy against the background of Descartes’ slippery slope argument against animal consciousness. Inspired by Gassendi’s ideas about the corporeal soul, Thomas Willis distinguished between neural circuitry responsible for reflex behaviour and that responsible for cognitively or (...) consciously mediated behaviour. This afforded Willis a non-arbitrary basis for distinguishing between animals with thought and consciousness and those without, a methodology which retains currency for neuroscience today. (shrink)

We regularly make graded normative judgements in the epistemic domain. Recent work in the literature examines degrees of justification, degrees of rationality, and degrees of assertability. This paper addresses a different dimension of the gradeability of epistemic normativity, one that has been given little attention. How should we understand degrees of epistemic criticizability? In virtue of what sorts of factors can one epistemic failing be worse than another? The paper develops a dual-factor view of degrees of epistemic criticizability. According to (...) the view, degrees of epistemic criticizability are (i) an inverse function of degrees of doxastic justification and (ii) a function of degrees of agent culpability. The paper develops an account of each factor, and explains how they should be weighted. The paper also addresses the importance of modelling degrees of epistemic criticizability in a broader context. I focus on the role that such a model can play in the ethics of epistemic criticism. (shrink)

The World is Born From Zero is an investigation into the relationship between video games and science fiction through the philosophy of speculation. Cameron Kunzelman argues that the video game medium is centered on the evaluation and production of possible futures by following video game studies, media philosophy, and science fiction studies to their furthest reaches. Claiming that the best way to understand games is through rigorous formal analysis of their aesthetic strategies and the cultural context those strategies emerge (...) from, Kunzelman investigates a diverse array of games like The Last of Us, VA-11 Hall-A, and Civilization VI in order to explore what science fiction video games can tell us about their genres, their ways of speculating, and how the medium of the video game does (or does not) direct us down experiential pathways that are both oppressive and liberatory. Taking a multidisciplinary look at these games, The World is Born From Zero offers a unique theorization of science fiction games that provides both science fiction studies and video game studies with new tools for thinking how this medium and mode inform each other. (shrink)

Cheating is deeply embedded in everyday life. The costs of the most common forms of cheating total close to a trillion dollars annually. Part of the problem is that many individuals fail to see such behavior as a serious problem. "Everyone does it" is a common rationalization, and one that comes uncomfortably close to the truth. That perception is also self-perpetuating. The more that individuals believe that cheating is widespread, the easier it becomes to justify. Yet what is most notable (...) about analysis of the problem is how little there is of it. Whether or not Americans are cheating more, they appear to be worrying about it less. In Cheating, eminent legal scholar Deborah L. Rhode offers the only recent comprehensive account of cheating in everyday life and the strategies necessary to address it. Because cheating is highly situational, Rhode drills down on its most common forms in sports, organizations, taxes, academia, copyright infringement, marriage, and insurance and mortgages. Cheating also reviews strategies necessary to address the pervasiveness and persistence of cheating in these contexts. We clearly need more cultural reinforcement of ethical conduct. Efforts need to begin early, with values education by parents, teachers, and other role models who can display and reinforce moral behaviors. Organizations need to create ethical cultures, in which informal norms, formal policies, and reward structures all promote integrity. People also need more moral triggers that remind them of their own values. Equally important are more effective enforcement structures, including additional resources and stiffer sanctions. Finally, all of us need to take more responsibility for combatting cheating. We need not only to subject our own conduct to more demanding standards, but also to assume a greater obligation to prevent and report misconduct. Sustaining a culture that actively discourages cheating is a collective responsibility, and one in which we all have a substantial stake. (shrink)

Exploring the philosophical foundations of discrimination law as it exists in several jurisdictions, this collection of all new essays bridges the gap between abstract philosophical work on justice and fairness and legal work on specific types of discrimination.

This book examines the theological methodology of Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck (1854-1921). The focus of the book is on the influence of the German historicist movement on his theological method and uses Bavinck's doctrine of the Trinity as a way to test the argument that while not embracing all of the relativising implications of the movement, the role of history as a force that both shapes the present and allows for development into the future has a demonstrable influence on his (...) theological methodology. To make this argument the book considers Bavinck's larger nineteenth century context. It traces the development of both history and theology being understood as sciences in the university and how this required a reimagining of both disciplines. It could be said that the theology is thoroughly historicised in the nineteenth century. The book then considers the three principia of Bavinck's theological methodology: Revelation, Confession, and Christian Consciousness, demonstrating how Bavinck both appropriates and adapts historicist assumptions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Deliberative democratic theory, commonly used to explore questions of “political” corporate social responsibility, has become prominent in the literature. This theory has been challenged previously for being overly sanguine about firm profit imperatives, but left unexamined is whether corporate contexts are appropriate contexts for deliberative theory in the first place. We explore this question using the case of Starbucks’ “Race Together” campaign to show that significant challenges exist to corporate deliberation, even in cases featuring genuinely committed firms. We return to (...) the underlying social theory to show that this is not an isolated case: for-profit firms are predictably hostile contexts for deliberation, and significant normative and strategic problems can be expected should deliberative theory be imported uncritically to corporate contexts. We close with recent advances in deliberative democratic theory that might help update the PCSR project, and accommodate the application of deliberation to the corporate context, albeit with significant alterations. (shrink)

Biobank research and genomic information are changing the way we look at health and medicine. Genomics challenges our values and has always been controversial and difficult to regulate. In the future lies the promise of tailored medical treatments and pharmacogenomics but the borders between medical research and clinical practice are becoming blurred. We see sequencing platforms for research that can have diagnostic value for patients. Clinical applications and research have been kept separate, but the blurring lines challenges existing regulations and (...) ethical frameworks.Then how do we regulate it? This book contains an overview of the existing regulatory landscape for biobank research in the Western world and some critical chapters to show how regulations and ethical frameworks are developed and work. How should international sharing work? How design an ethical informed consent? An underlying critique: the regulatory systems are becoming increasingly complex and opaque. The international community is building systems that should respond to that. According to the authors in fact, it is time to turn the ship around. Biobank researchers have a moral responsibility to look at and assess their work in relation to the bigger picture: the shared norms and values of current society. Research ethics shouldn't only be a matter of bioethicists writing guidelines that professionals have to follow. Ethics should be practiced through discourse and regulatory frameworks need to be part of that public discourse. Ethics review should be then not merely application of bureaucracy and a burden for researchers but an arena where researchers discuss their projects, receive advice and practice their ethics skills. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical overview of recent work on epistemic blame. The paper identifies key features of the concept of epistemic blame and discusses two ways of motivating the importance of this concept. Four different approaches to the nature of epistemic blame are examined. Central issues surrounding the ethics and value of epistemic blame are identified and briefly explored. In addition to providing an overview of the state of the art of this growing but controversial field, the paper highlights (...) areas where future work is needed. (shrink)

This book brings into focus both the positive and negative aspects that technology places on the professional identity of librarians, highlighting the new methods involved in data management, communication, and library information education and research.

Abstract Curiously missing in the vast literature on Hilary Putnam's so-called model-theoretic argument against semantic realism is any response from would-be proponents of what Putnam would call magical theories of reference. Such silence is surprising in light of the fact that such theories have occupied a significant position in the history of philosophy and the fact that there are still several prominent thinkers who would, no doubt, favor such a theory. This paper develops and examines various responses to Putnam's argument (...) on behalf of the proponent of a magical theory of reference. While Putnam's explicit replies to such responses to his argument seem to involve little more than name calling, I develop arguments that show that there are significant problems facing any would-be proponent of such a view. While magical theories of reference are far from the strawmen Putnam seems to take them to be, there are, I argue, genuine reasons for a semantic realist to prefer a non-magical theory of reference. (shrink)

Improving structural theories of international politics -- Socializing states in the international system -- Socializing the United States: emergence to major member -- Socializing the United States: structural imperatives and great power status -- Socializing Israel: emergence to major member.