Philosophers and physicians alike tend to discuss the physician-patient relationship in terms of physician privilege and patient autonomy, stressing the duty of the physician to respect the autonomy and the variously elaborated rights of the patient. The authors of this article argue that such emphasis on rights was initially productive, in a first generation of debate on medical ethical issues, but that it is now time for a second generation effort that will stress the importance of the unique experiential aspects (...) of the physician-patient relationship — mutual trust, suffering and healing. We attempt here to initiate this second-generation discussion, presenting the first generation's philosophical background, criticizing it from the perspective of clinical experience, and seeking a synthesis in the relational qualities of patient and physician interacting in a medical context. (shrink)
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was one of the most influential philosophers of the Twentieth Century. Founder of the phenomenology movement, his thinking influenced Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. In this stimulating introduction, David Woodruff Smith introduces the whole of Husserl's thought, demonstrating his influence on philosophy of mind and language, on ontology and epistemology, and on philosophy of logic, mathematics and science. Starting with an overview of Husserl's life and works, and his place in Twentieth century philosophy and in (...) Western philosophy as a whole, David Woodruff Smith introduces Husserl's concept of phenomenology, explaining his influential theories of intentionality, objectivity and subjectivity. In subsequent chapters he covers Husserl's logic, metaphysics, realism and transcendental idealism, and epistemology. Finally, he assesses the significance and implications of Husserl's work for contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Including a timeline, glossary and extensive suggestions for further reading, Husserl will be essential reading for anyone interested in Husserl, phenomenology and Twentieth century philosophy. (shrink)
Norman Kemp Smith's The Philosophy of David Hume continues to be unsurpassed in its comprehensive coverage of the ideas and issues of Hume's Treatise. Now, after years of waiting, this currently out-of-print and highly sought-after classic is being re-issued. This ground-breaking book has long been regarded as a classic study by scholars in the field, yet a new introduction by Don Garrett places the book in its contemporary context, showing Humes's continuing importance in the field.
My own philosophical interests led me to investigate the letter which Smith submitted to The Times, along with eighteen other signatures from renowned philosophers, each objecting to the honorary degree which Cambridge was about to award Jacques Derrida. While Smith's letter has been esteemed for sober defense of philosophy, it has also been viewed as rather notorious by Derrida and postmodern sympathizers. After having contacted Smith at the State University of New York at Buffalo, we agreed to (...) meet and discuss the matter in more detail. What follows are my inquiries, and his account, of his letter to The Times letters page, 9 May, 1992. (shrink)
When Adam Smith published his celebrated writings on economics and moral philosophy he famously referred to the operation of an invisible hand. Adam Smith's Political Philosophy makes visible the invisible hand by examining its significance in Smith's political philosophy and relating it to similar concepts used by other philosophers, revealing a distinctive approach to social theory that stresses the significance of the unintended consequences of human action. This book introduces greater conceptual clarity to the discussion of the (...) invisible hand and the related concept of unintended order in the work of Smith and in political theory more generally. By examining the application of spontaneous order ideas in the work of Smith, Hume, Hayek and Popper, Adam Smith's Political Philosophy traces similarities in approach and from these builds a conceptual, composite model of an invisible hand argument. While setting out a clear model of the idea of spontaneous order the book also builds the case for using the idea of spontaneous order as an explanatory social theory, with chapters on its application in the fields of science, moral philosophy, law and government. (shrink)
John E. Smith has contributed to contemporary philosophy in primarily four distinct capacities; first, as a philosopher of religion and God; second, as an indefatigable defender of philosophical reflection in its classical sense ( a sense inclusive of, but not limited to, metaphysics); third, as a participant in the reconstruction of experience and reason so boldly inaugurated by Hegel then redically transformed by the classical American pragmatists, and significantly augmented by such thinkers as Josiah Royce, william Earnest Hocking, and (...) Alfred North Whitehead; fourth, as an interpreter of philosophical texts and traditions (Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche no less than Charles Peirce, WIlliam James and John Dewey; German idealism as well as American; the Augustinian tradition no less than the pragmatic). Reason, Experience, and God provides an important and comprehensive look at the work of John E. Smith by collected essays which each address aspects of his life-long work. A response by John E. Smith himself draws a line of continuity between the pieces. (shrink)
LO : John L. Bell, David DeVidi and Graham Solomon, Logical Options, Broadview Press, 2001. ILF : Peter Smith, Introduction to Formal Logic, CUP 2003. LFP : Ted Sider, Logic for Philosophy, OUP forthcoming: draft available at http://tedsider.org/books/lfp/lfp.pdf.
Do mountains exist? The answer to this question is surely: yes. In fact, ‘mountain’ is the example of a kind of geographic feature or thing most commonly cited by English speakers (Mark, et al., 1999; Smith and Mark 2001), and this result may hold across many languages and cultures. But whether they are considered as individuals (tokens) or as kinds (types), mountains do not exist in quite the same unequivocal sense as do such prototypical everyday objects as chairs or (...) people. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: Introduction Henry Somers-Hall; 1. Deleuze and the history of philosophy Daniel W. Smith; 2. Difference and repetition James Williams; 3. The Deleuzian reversal of Platonism Miguel Beistegui; 4. Deleuze and Kant Beth Lord; 5. Phenomenology and metaphysics, and chaos: on the fragility of the event in Deleuze Leonard Lawlor; 6. Deleuze and structuralism François Dosse; 7. Deleuze and Guattari: Guattareuze and Co. Gary Genosko; 8. Nomadic ethics Rosi Braidotti; 9. Deleuze's political philosophy Paul Patton; (...) 10. Deleuze, mathematics, and realist ontology Manuel Delanda; 11. Deleuze and life John Protevi; 12. Gilles Deleuze's aesthetics of sensation Dorothea Olkowski; 13. Deleuze and literature Ronald Bogue; 14. Deleuze and psychoanalysis Eugene Holland; 15. Deleuze's philosophical heritage: unity, difference, and onto-theology Henry Somers-Hall. (shrink)
Accounting educators are being called on to provide a greater emphasis on ethics education. This paper examines three important issues concerning ethics education in accounting. First, the question of whether ethics can indeed be taught is examined. Next, several innovative approaches are presented which have been used by accounting educators to integrate ethics into the classroom. Finally, results of a survey of students concerning their perspectives of ethical issues in accounting education, the accounting profession, and society at large are presented (...) and discussed. Survey results reveal that students consider a lack of ethics damaging to the accounting profession and society. Results also indicate that accounting students are seeking ethical and moral direction. (shrink)
The first part of this paper makes five points: First, the problem of Otherness is different and differently constructed in modern differentiated societies. Therefore, approaches to Otherness based on traditional notions of difference and boundary between societies and systems of shared belief will not suffice; Second, because solidarity can no longer be maintained through boundaries between ingroup and outgroup, social cohesion has to take a different form; Third, to the extent that Otherness is not a condition of demographic, or belief (...) based, exclusion in modern societies, but rather something that happens to people otherwise available to one another in interaction, othering is a processthat occurs over the course of interaction, turn by turn, not a set of beliefs or a state of mind; Fourth, othering may be supported by accounts and narratives, and these may exist before the fact – or be articulated after the fact. But, over the course of an ongoing interaction, beliefs and narratives do not explain what goes wrong with practices; Fifth, practices require reciprocity and trust. Therefore, practices require a morestringent form of morality – not a less stringent form – and moresocial cohesion – not less – than traditional society.The second part of the paper illustrates these five points with an extended analysis of a cross-race interaction in which accounts are invoked, reciprocity breaks down, and participants are rendered as Accountable Others. (shrink)
The shape of the Earth's surface, its topography, is a fundamental dimension of the environment, shaping or mediating many other environmental flows or functions. But there is a major divergence in the way that topography is conceptualized in different domains. Topographic cartographers, information scientists, geomorphologists and environmental modelers typically conceptualize topographic variability as a continuous field of elevations or as some discrete approximation to such a field. Pilots, explorers, anthropologists, ecologists, hikers, and archeologists, on the other hand, typically conceptualize this (...) same variability in terms of hills and valleys, mountains and plains, barrows and trenches, that is, as (special sorts of) objects, with locations, shapes, and often names of their own. In this chapter, we sketch an approach to bridging this fundamental gap in geographic information infrastructure. (shrink)
The computational genomics community has come increasingly to rely on the methodology of creating annotations of scientific literature using terms from controlled structured vocabularies such as the Gene Ontology (GO). We here address the question of what such annotations signify and of how they are created by working biologists. Our goal is to promote a better understanding of how the results of experiments are captured in annotations in the hope that this will lead to better representations of biological reality through (...) both the annotation process and ontology development, and in more informed use of the GO resources by experimental scientists. (shrink)
This paper explores the meaning of social justice and development in post-apartheid South Africa. It begins with social justice as a process of equalisation, presenting some evidence of the challenge and explaining the difficulty of achieving racial equality. Recognition of changes in national development strategy in the post-apartheid era, and their implications for inequality, leads to discussion of alternative development ethics, which involves reconsideration of what stands for the good life. The possibility of a combination of traditional African (...) communitarianism and the ethic of care is explored, as a basis for an alternative conception of the good. Some impediments to the realisation of such a vision are identified. (shrink)
Philosophical work on the mind flowed in two streams through the 20th century: phenomenology and analytic philosophy. This volume aims to bring them together again, by demonstrating how work in phenomenology may lead to significant progress on problems central to current analytic research, and how analytical philosophy of mind may shed light on phenomenological concerns. Leading figures from both traditions contribute specially written essays on such central topics as consciousness, intentionality, perception, action, self-knowledge, temporal awareness, and mental content. Phenomenology and (...) Philosophy of Mind demonstrates that these different approaches to the mind should not stand in opposition to each other, but can be mutually illuminating. (shrink)
Is consciousness or the subject part of the natural world or the human world? Can we write intentionality, so central in Husserl's philosophy, into Quine's system of ontological naturalism and naturalized epistemology — or into Heidegger's account of human being and existential phenomenology? The present task is to show how to do so. Anomalous monism provides a key.
Geography and Ethics examines the place of geography in ethics and of ethics in geography by drawing together specially commissioned contributors from distinguished scholars from around the world.
Fifty years after the Holocaust, anti-Jewish myths and sentiments are gaining momentum in Europe, the Islamic world, the Americas, and even in Japan. Why? Does hate spring eternal? Seeking an answer to this question, I develop a seven part argument. My aim is to advance what can reasonably be called a "social constructionist" perspective on the kind of antisemitic demonology that is now gaining worldwide currency. My method is to seek clarity by evaluating varying kinds of constructionist claims. Both the (...) strengths and weaknesses of these claims are illuminating for my purposes, as I try to show in connection with writers including Philippe Lacoue- Labarthe, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Daniel Goldhagen, and Pierre-Andre Taguieff. My conclusion is that we can best understand antisemitism as an instance of what historian Gavin Langmuir calls "chimeria." Interpreted in the spirit of certain classic texts (by Sartre, Adorno, and Samuel), this notion offers a powerful starting point for further inquiry. To illustrate the promise of this approach, I close with an interpretation of the current, global antisemitic revival as an expression of anti-Jewish chimeria. (shrink)
A phenomenology of action is outlined, analyzing the structure of volition, kinesthesis, and perception in the experience of action, and, finally, the experience of embodiment in action. The intentionality of action is contrasted with that of thought and perception in regard to the role of the body, and the relations between an action, the experience of acting, and the context of the action are specified.
Despite continuing controversies regarding the vital status of both brain-dead donors and individuals who undergo donation after circulatory death (DCD), respecting the dead donor rule (DDR) remains the standard moral framework for organ procurement. The DDR increases organ supply without jeopardizing trust in transplantation systems, reassuring society that donors will not experience harm during organ procurement. While the assumption that individuals cannot be harmed once they are dead is reasonable in the case of brain-dead protocols, we argue that the DDR (...) is not an acceptable strategy to protect donors from harm in DCD protocols. We propose a threefold alternative to justify organ procurement practices: (1) ensuring that donors are sufficiently protected from harm; (2) ensuring that they are respected through informed consent; and (3) ensuring that society is fully informed of the inherently debatable nature of any criterion to declare death. (shrink)
Over the past century phenomenology has ably analyzed the basic structuresof consciousness as we experience it. Yet recent philosophy of mind, lookingto brain activity and computational function, has found it difficult to makeroom for the structures of subjectivity and intentionality that phenomenologyhas appraised. In order to understand consciousness as something that is bothsubjective and grounded in neural activity, we need to delve into phenomenologyand ontology. I draw a fundamental distinction in ontology among the form,appearance, and substrate of any entity. Applying (...) this three-facet ontology toconsciousness, we distinguish: the intentionality of consciousness (its form),the way we experience consciousness (its appearance, including so-called qualia),and the physical, biological, and cultural basis of consciousness (its substrate).We can thus show how these very different aspects of consciousness fit togetherin a fundamental ontology. And we can thereby define the proper domains ofphenomenology and other disciplinesthat contribute to our understanding of consciousness. (shrink)
This collection explores the structure of consciousness and its place in the world, or inversely the structure of the world and the place of consciousness in it. Amongst the topics covered are: the phenomenological aspects of experience (inner awareness, self-awareness), dependencies between experience and the world (the role of the body in experience, the role of culturally formed background ideas) and the basic ontological categories found in the world at large (unity, state-of-affairs, connectedness, dependence and intentionality). Developing ideas drawn from (...) historical figures such as Descartes, Husserl, Aristotle, and Whitehead, the essays together demonstrate the interdependence of ontology and phenomenology and its significance for the philosophy of mind. (shrink)
This book evaluates the increasingly wide variety of intellectual resources for research methods and methodologies and investigates what constitutes good educational research. Written by a distinguished international group of philosophers of education Questions what sorts of research can usefully inform policy and practice, and what inferences can be drawn from different kinds of research Demonstrates the critical engagement of philosophers of education with the wider educational research community and illustrates the benefits that can accrue from such engagement.
Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.
Epiphenomenalism is a theory concerning the relation between the mental and physical realms, regarded as radically different in nature. The theory holds that only physical states have causal power, and that mental states are completely dependent on them. The mental realm, for epiphenomenalists, is nothing more than a series of conscious states which signify the occurrence of states of the nervous system, but which play no causal role. For example, my feeling sleepy does not cause my yawning — rather, both (...) the feeling and the yawning are effects of an underlying neural state. (shrink)
This essay explores an ideal notion of form (mathematical structure) that embraces logical, phenomenological, and ontological form. Husserl envisioned a correlation among forms of expression, thought, meaning, and object—positing ideal forms on all these levels. The most puzzling formal entities Husserl discussed were those he called ‘manifolds’. These manifolds, I propose, are forms of complex states of affairs or partial possible worlds representable by forms of theories (compare structuralism). Accordingly, I sketch an intentionality-based semantics correlating these four Husserlian levels of (...) form—thereby integrating logic, phenomenology, and ontology. (shrink)
It is argued, on the basis of ideas derived from Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Husserl's Logical Investigations, that the formal comprehends more than the logical. More specifically: that there exist certain formal-ontological constants (part, whole, overlapping, etc.) which do not fall within the province of logic. A two-dimensional directly depicting language is developed for the representation of the constants of formal ontology, and means are provided for the extension of this language to enable the representation of certain materially necessary relations. The (...) paper concludes with a discussion of the relationship between formal logic, formal ontology, and mathematics. (shrink)
From an ethical point of view, shared decision-making is preferable to either physician paternalism or patient sovereignty. The traditional model of doctor-patient communication is too directive and too unconcerned with the patient's values to support truly shared decision-making. The traditional distinction between rhetoric and sophistic can provide the basis for a new model of mutual persuasion that does not limit communication to information, and that avoids the spectre of manipulation.
Phenomenology is the study of conscious experience from the first-person point of view. Husserl used principles of formal ontology even as he bracketed the natural-cultural world in describing our experience, and Heidegger pursued fundamental ontology in his variety of phenomenology describing our own modes of existence. I shall address the role of ontology in phenomenology, and vice versa. Our account of what exists depends on our account of what and how we experience. But, moreover, our understanding of the structure of (...) consciousness depends on our understanding of structure, basic ontological structure, and hence of the place of consciousness in the structure of the world. What makes consciousness “hard” for contemporary philosophy of mind is understanding how intentionality and subjectivity fit into the structure of the world: how phenomenology fits with ontology. (shrink)
Two hundred and sixty-three subjects each gave examples for one of five geographic categories: geographic features, geographic objects, geographic concepts, something geographic, and something that could be portrayed on a map. The frequencies of various responses were significantly different, indicating that the basic ontological terms feature, object, etc., are not interchangeable but carry different meanings when combined with adjectives indicating geographic or mappable. For all of the test phrases involving geographic, responses were predominantly natural features such as mountain, river, lake, (...) ocean, hill. Artificial geographic features such as town and city were listed hardly at all for geographic categories, an outcome that contrasts sharply with the disciplinary self-understanding of academic geography. However, geographic artifacts and fiat objects, such as roads, cities, boundaries, countries, and states, were frequently listed by the subjects responding to the phrase something that could be portrayed on a map. In this paper, we present the results of these experiments in visual form, and provide interpretations and implications for further research. (shrink)
The essays in this volume explore the full range of Husserl's work and reveal just how systematic his philosophy is. There are treatments of his most important contributions to phenomenology, intentionality and the philosophy of mind, epistemology, the philosophy of language, ontology, and mathematics. An underlying theme of the volume is a resistance to the idea, current in much intellectual history, of a radical break between 'modern' and 'postmodern' philosophy, with Husserl as the last of the great Cartesians. Husserl is (...) seen in this volume as a philosopher constantly revising his system in order to be able to integrate philosophy with ideas emanating from science and culture. The so-called rift between analytic and 'continental' philosophy emerges as an artificial construct. (shrink)
What are we to make of the cogito (cogito ergo sum) today, as the walls of Cartesian philosophy crumble around us? The enduring foundation of the cogito is consciousness. It is in virtue of a particular phenomenological structure that an experience is conscious rather than unconscious. Drawing on an analysis of that structure, the cogito is given a new explication that synthesizes phenomenological, epistemological, logical, and ontological elements. What, then, is the structure of conscious thinking on which the cogito draws? (...) What kind of certainty does the experience of thinking give one about one's thinking and about one's existence? What form of inference is the cogito, and what is the source of its validity and soundness? Does the cogito itself lead to an ontology of mind and body like Descartes's dualism? The discussion begins with Descartes's own careful formulations of some of these issues. Then the cogito is parsed into several different principles, the phenomenological principle emerging as basic. In due course the analysis sifts through Husserl's epistemology, Hintikka's logic (or pragmatics) of the cogito, and Kaplan's logic of demonstratives, as these bear specifically on the cogito. (shrink)
Aircraft with increasingly high performance were important to the war effort in World War II. Changes in technology allowed aircraft to reach faster speeds and to complete missions at higher altitudes. With these changes came new obstacles for pilots who had to tolerate these stresses. Of primary concern to the U.S. War Department was the loss of consciousness that often occurred with high-speed maneuvers and especially during pull-up after dive-bombing missions. In some cases, pilots would experience up to 9G of (...) force during rapid ascent, much more than the 6G threshold that typically leads to loss of consciousness. In 1941, a research team in Red Wing, MN, proposed experiments to elucidate the mechanism .. (shrink)
There is an awakening of interest in links between geography and moral philosophy, or ethics. This paper reviews a range of issues where common ground might be found on this new disciplinary interface. These issues include the historical geography of moralities, the notion of moral geographies, inclusion and exclusion in the context of the bounding of spaces, and the moral significance of distance and proximity, as well as the more familiar concern with social justice. Environmental ethics provides a link (...) with the physical side of the subject. Some suggestions are made as to the possible contribution of geography to the understanding of moral issues. (shrink)
This paper reports the results of a series of experiments designed to establish how non-expert subjects conceptualize geospatial phenomena. Subjects were asked to give examples of geographical categories in response to a series of differently phrased elicitations. The results yield an ontology of geographical categories—a catalogue of the prime geospatial concepts and categories shared in common by human subjects independently of their exposure to scientific geography. When combined with nouns such as feature and object, the adjective geographic elicited almost exclusively (...) elements of the physical environment of geographical scale or size, such as mountain, lake and river. The phrase things that could be portrayed on a map, on the other hand, produced many geographical scale artefacts (roads, cities, etc.) and fiat objects (states, countries, etc.), as well as some physical feature types. These data reveal considerable mismatch as between the meanings assigned to the terms ‘geography’ and ‘geographic’ by scientific geographers and by ordinary subjects, so that scientific geographers are not in fact studying geographical phenomena as such phenomena are conceptualized by naive subjects. The data suggest, rather, a special role in determining the subject-matter of scientific geography for the concept of what can be portrayed on a map. This work has implications for work on usability and interoperability in geographical information science, and it throws light also on subtle and hitherto unexplored ways in which ontological terms such as ‘object’, ‘entity’ and ‘feature’ interact with geographical concepts. (shrink)
Pike’s phenomenology of mystical experiences articulates sharply where theological content may enter the structure of Christian mystics’ experiences (as characterized in their own words). Here we look to Buddhist (and other) accounts of pure or nibbanic consciousness attained in experiences of deep meditation. A contemporary modal model of inner awareness is considered whereby a form of pure consciousness underlies and embraces further content in various forms of consciousness, including mystical experiences in different traditions and experiences of full union (with God).
§1. Intentionality; §2. Husserl's Phenomenological Conception of Intentionality; §3. The Distinction between Content and Object; §4. Husserl's Theory of Content: Noesis and Noema; §5. Noema and Object; §6. The Sensory Content of Perception; §7. The Internal Structure of Noematic Sinne; §8. Noema and Horizon; §9. Horizon and Background Beliefs.
Religious traditions can be drawn on in a number of ways to illuminate discussions of the moral standing of animals and the ethical use of animals in scientific research. I begin with some general comments about relevant points in the history of major religions. I then briefly describe American civil religion, including the cult of health, and its relation to scientific research. Finally, I offer a critique of American civil religion from a Christian perspective.
It is one of the questions that has baffled economists, cultural commentators and consumer-watchers: why are people who drive a hard bargain in all other parts of their lives willing to spend £3 on a shot of coffee and some hot, frothy milk in a very large cardboard cup? The reason for the remarkable growth of one of the social markers of the past two decades - upmarket coffee shops such as Starbucks and Caffe Nero - could now be a (...) little clearer thanks to an American academic who has undertaken a remarkable personal odyssey to try to get to the bottom of the conundrum. Bryant Simon spent a year visiting more than 400 of its coffee shops in several countries, observing customers for around 12 to 15 hours a week. He went to 25 branches outlets during four days in London, but admitted: 'I tried to have a drink in every one, but it was too painful on my system.'. (shrink)
Many recent studies of technological change have focussed on the implementation of computer-based high technology systems. The research described here deals with the introduction of a new but âlowâ technology into an ancient craft tradition in India. The paper describes a project to capture and archive aspects of the tacit knowledge content of the traditional cire perdue brass foundry (Dhokra) craft of Bikna village, near Bankura, West Bengal. The research involved collaboration between the Indian National Institute for Science, Technology and (...) Development Studies (NISTADS) and School of Art, Media and Design, University of Wales, Newport, UK in the context of the EU-India Cross-Cultural Innovation Network Project. NISTADS were proposing to introduce a new fuel-efficient furnace technology in place of the traditional form used in Bikna. It was expected that the introduction of the new furnace would catalyse major changes in the entire dhokra craft at Bikna. What was not anticipated, however, was the speed and extent of this change, to the extent that the old traditional way of doing things was changed within the space of a few months. A Multimedia record of the craft and the process was developed. These technologies make it possible to develop adequate representations of skilled performance mediated by the craftsman him- or herself. Particularly valuable in this respect is the capacity of multimedia systems to use a full range of modalities of description, including video, sound, still image, conventional text and technical diagrams. This enables the presentation of very complex information in a variety of formats and contexts. The context and process of developing this knowledge archive are described. (shrink)
We applaud Aggleton & Brown's affirmation of limbic diencephalic-hippocampal interaction as a key memory substrate. However, we do not agree with a thesis of diencephalic-hippocampal strict dedication to episodic memory. Instead, this circuitry supports the production of context-specific patterns of activation that subserve retrieval for a broad class of memory phenomena, including goal-directed instrumental behavior of animals and episodic memory of humans.
In the context of technology development and systems engineering, knowledge is typically treated as a complex information structure. In this view, knowledge can be stored in highly sophisticated data systems and processed by explicitly intelligent, software-based technologies. This paper argues that the current emphasis upon knowledge as information (or even data) is based upon a form of rationalism which is inappropriate for any comprehensive treatment of knowledge in the context of human-centred systems thinking. A human-centred perspective requires us to treat (...) knowledge in human terms. The paper sets out the particular importance of tacit knowledge in this regard. It sets out two case studies which reveal the critical importance of a careful treatment of tacit knowledge for success in two complex, technology-driven projects. (shrink)
To achieve the goals of ethics education, students must have oportunities to develop both moral capacities (imagination, responsibility, and perseverance) and intellectual capacities (critical thinking). This article contends that service-based learning represents an important opportunity for integrative ethics education. It describes a program of leadership internships at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, in which faculty members conduct a for-credit reflection seminar with students involved in service internships. The seminar is based upon student-written cases about ethical issues they face in (...) their work settings. (shrink)
There was a strong consensus in the commentaries that animals' performances in metacognition paradigms indicate high-level decisional processes that cannot be explained associatively. Our response summarizes this consensus and the support for the idea that these performances demonstrate animal metacognition. We amplify the idea that there is an adaptive advantage favoring animals who can – in an immediate moment of difficulty or uncertainty – construct a decisional assemblage that lets them find an appropriate behavioral solution. A working consciousness would serve (...) this function well. This explains why animals may have the functional equivalent of human declarative consciousness. However, like other commentators who were friendly to this equivalence, we approach carefully the stronger claims that animals' metacognitive performances imply full-blown self-awareness or phenomenal consciousness. We discuss the commentators' interesting ideas for future research, as well as their intriguing ideas about the evolution and development of metacognition and its relation to theory of mind. We also discuss residual confusions about existing research and remaining methodological issues. (shrink)
