GILLETT K. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 297–307 A critical discourse analysis of British national newspaper representations of the academic level of nurse education: too clever for our own good?This critical discourse analysis examines articles about the academic level of nurse education that appeared in British national newspapers between 1999 and 2009. British newspaper journalists regularly attribute problems with recruitment into nursing and nursing care to the increasing academic nature of nurse education. It is impossible to separate discourse about nurse (...) education from the wider nursing discourse. Many journalists laud a traditional and stereotypical construct of nurse identity and suggest that increasing nurse education produces nurses who are ‘too clever to care’. This article argues that whilst nurses lack a voice in the National press, they have little input into the construction of newspaper discourse about nurse education and subsequently, limited influence on resulting public opinion, government policy and the morale of nurses. (shrink)

GILLETT K. Nursing Inquiry 2010; 17: 197–207From ‘part of ’ to ‘partnership’: the changing relationship between nurse education and the National Health ServiceWorldwide, many countries have moved towards incorporating nurse education into the higher education sector and this inevitably has implications for the relationship between nurse education providers and local health service providers. This study explores the changes to the relationship in the UK between nurse education providers and the UK National Health Service over the past 20 years and (...) demonstrates how two political ideologies have been central to those changes. The two ideologies of interest are the introduction of internal markets to the National Health Service by the Conservative government at the end of the 1980s and the New Labour response to the fragmentation of public services caused by Conservative neoliberal policy, which was to introduce the notion of ‘partnership working’. This study reviews the wider debate around partnership policy and applies that debate to evaluate the way that nurse education providers and the National Health Service are working in partnership to provide clinical practice placements for nursing students. (shrink)

The first edition of The Mind and its Discontents was a powerful analysis of how, as a society, we view mental illness. In the ten years since the first edition, there has been growing interest in the philosophy of psychiatry, and a new edition of this text is more timely and important than ever. -/- In The Mind and its Discontents, Grant Gillett argues that an understanding of mental illness requires more than just a study of biological models of (...) mental processes and pathologies. As intensely social animals, he argues, we need to look for the causes of human mental disorders in our interactions with others; in social rule-following and its role in the organization of mental content; in the power relations embedded within social structures and cultural norms; in the way that our mental life is inscribed by a cumulative life of encounters with others. Drawing upon work from within the philosophy of mind, epistemology, post-modern continental philosophy, and philosophy of language, he tries to elucidate the nature of psychiatric phenomena involving disorders of thought, perception, emotion, moral sense, and action. Within this framework, a series of chapters analyse important psychiatric disorders such as depression, attention deficiency, autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia. Along the way, Gillett explores the nature of memory and identity; of hysteria and what constitutes rational behaviour; and of what causes us to label someone a psychopath or deviant. -/- Updated, available in paperback, and more accessible than before, the new edition of this fascinating book will provide readers with important insights into the causes and nature of psychosis. In addition, Gillett's arguments have considerable implications for the way in which we understand and treat people suffering from psychiatric disorders. The Mind and its Discontents will be read by researchers and postgraduate students in a range of academic areas, including psychiatry, bioethics, philosophy of mind, social theory, and clinical psychology. It will also be of considerable interest to practising psychiatrists. (shrink)

According to Margaret Cavendish the entire natural world is essentially rational such that everything thinks in some way or another. In this paper, I examine why Cavendish would believe that the natural world is ubiquitously rational, arguing against the usual account, which holds that she does so in order to account for the orderly production of very complex phenomena (e.g. living beings) given the limits of the mechanical philosophy. Rather, I argue, she attributes ubiquitous rationality to the natural world in (...) order to ground a theory of the ubiquitous freedom of nature, which in turn accounts for both the world's orderly and disorderly behavior. (shrink)

A theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, Karen Barad elaborates her theory of agential realism, a schema that is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics.

We frequently speak of certain things or phenomena being built out of or based in others. Making Things Up concerns these relations, which connect more fundamental things to less fundamental things: Karen Bennett calls these 'building relations'. She aims to illuminate what it means to say that one thing is more fundamental than another.

Neuroscience and technological medicine in general increasingly faces us with the imminent reality of cyborgs—integrated part human and part machine complexes.If my brain functions in a way that is supported by and exploits intelligent technology both external and implantable, then how should I be treated and what is my moral status—am I a machine or am I a person? I explore a number of scenarios where the balance between human and humanoid machine shifts, and ask questions about the moral status (...) of the individuals concerned. The position taken is very much in accordance with the Aristotelian idea that our moral behaviour is of a piece with our social and personal skills and forms a reactive and reflective component of those skills. (shrink)

Between 1653 and 1655 Margaret Cavendish makes a radical transition in her theory of matter, rejecting her earlier atomism in favour of an infinitely-extended and infinitely-divisible material plenum, with matter being ubiquitously self-moving, sensing, and rational. It is unclear, however, if Cavendish can actually dispense of atomism. One of her arguments against atomism, for example, depends upon the created world being harmonious and orderly, a premise Cavendish herself repeatedly undermines by noting nature’s many disorders. I argue that her supposed difficulties (...) with atomism expose a deeper tension in her work between two fundamental metaphysical commitments each of which has substantial philosophical support: her monist theory of the material world (which maintains that there exists just one natural substance which is the single principal cause) and her occasional theory of causation (which requires multiple finite principal causes in nature -- causes that might be considered individual substances). Her monism undermines atomism while her theory of occasional cause seems to rest on a conception of nature that would be especially friendly to atomism. I argue further that we can solve this tension within a Cavendishian framework in such a way as to preserve her theory of causation and her monism, but that this solution depends upon our taking her monism in a particular (and weak) form. I finally note that we can best make sense of her unique and interesting form of monism by acknowledging her social-political motivations in addition to her motivations in natural philosophy. (shrink)

Employing a thematic approach and drawing on disciplines ranging from neurobiology to philosophy, Film and Morality examines how morality is presented in films and how films serve as a source of moral values. While the role of censorship in upholding moral standards has been considered comprehensively, the presence of moral dilemmas in films has not attracted the same level of interest. Film-makers may address moral concerns explicitly, but moral dilemmas can serve as plot devices, creating dramatic tension by providing pivotal (...) moments when characters are called upon to make life-changing decisions. Drawing on a range of well-known and neglected films mainly from Britain and America, this book provides numerous examples of how film-makers make use of morality and how audiences are invited to explore moral issues by following characters who live with the consequences of their choices. Film and Morality introduces philosophical debates on such topics as free will, conscience and the place of moral codes in everyday life, showing the relevance of film to these issues. The book presents a distinct approach to how films might be analysed. (shrink)

In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. Now, in (...) The Great Transformation , Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal “Axial Age” can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times. Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. With regard to dealing with fear, despair, hatred, rage, and violence, the Axial sages gave their people and give us, Armstrong says, two important pieces of advice: first there must be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action. In her introduction and concluding chapter, Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today. In our various institutions, we sometimes seem to be attempting to create exactly the kind of religion that Axial sages and prophets had hoped to eliminate. We often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to be the major catalyst of spiritual change. (shrink)

Abstract: There has recently been controversy over the existence of 'multiple realization' in addition to some confusion between different conceptions of its nature. To resolve these problems, we focus on concrete examples from the sciences to provide precise accounts of the scientific concepts of 'realization' and 'multiple realization' that have played key roles in recent debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology. We illustrate the advantages of our view over a prominent rival account ( Shapiro, 2000 and (...) 2004 ) and use our work to rebut recent objections to the long-standing claim that psychological properties are multiply realized. For we use scientific evidence, in combination with our more precise theoretical framework, to show that we have strong reason to believe that psychological properties are indeed multiply realized both at the biochemical and neuronal levels. (shrink)

Recently much has been made of the grounding relation, and of the idea that it is intimately tied to fundamentality. If A grounds B, then A is more fundamental than B (though not vice versa ), and A is ungrounded if and only if it is fundamental full stop—absolutely fundamental. But here is a puzzle: is grounding itself absolutely fundamental?

In this unique study Fulford combines the disciplines of rigorous philosophy with an intimate knowledge of psychopathology to overturn traditional hegemonies. The patient replaces the doctor at the heart of medicine. Moral theory and the logic of evaluation replace epistemology as the focus of philosophical enquiry. Ever controversial, mental illness is at the interface of philosophy and medicine. Mad or bad? Dissident or diseased? Dr Fulford shows that it is possible to achieve new insights into these traditional dilemmas, insights at (...) once practically relevant and philosophically significant. (shrink)

A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers—composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others—are species of what I call ‘building relations’. I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that—contra appearances—it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation.

This open access book is a systematic update of the philosophical and scientific foundations of the biopsychosocial model of health, disease and healthcare. First proposed by George Engel 40 years ago, the Biopsychosocial Model is much cited in healthcare settings worldwide, but has been increasingly criticised for being vague, lacking in content, and in need of reworking in the light of recent developments. The book confronts the rapid changes to psychological science, neuroscience, healthcare, and philosophy that have occurred since the (...) model was first proposed and addresses key issues such as the model’s scientific basis, clinical utility, and philosophical coherence. The authors conceptualise biology and the psychosocial as in the same ontological space, interlinked by systems of communication-based regulatory control which constitute a new kind of causation. These are distinguished from physical and chemical laws, most clearly because they can break down, thus providing the basis for difference between health and disease. This work offers an urgent update to the model’s scientific and philosophical foundations, providing a new and coherent account of causal interactions between the biological, the psychological and social. (shrink)

Part I -- Scientific Composition and the New Mechanism. - 1. Laura Franklin-Hall: New Mechanistic Explanation and the Need for Explanatory Constraints. - 2. Kenneth Aizawa: Compositional Explanation: Dimensioned Realization, New Mechanism, and Ground. - 3. Jens Harbecke: Is Mechanistic Constitution a Version of Material Constitution?. - 4. Derk Pereboom: Anti-Reductionism, Anti-Rationalism, and the Material Constitution of the Mental. Part II -- Grounding, Science, and Verticality in Nature. - 5. Jonathan Schaffer: Ground Rules: Lessons from Wilson. - 6. Jessica Wilson: (...) The Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding. - 7. Carl Gillett: The Metaphysics of Nature, Science, and the Rules of Engagement. - 8. Andrew Melnyk: Grounding and the Formulation of Physicalism. - 9. Alyssa Ney: Grounding in the Philosophy of Mind: A Defense. (shrink)

This book discusses the notion that quantum gravity may represent the "breakdown" of spacetime at extremely high energy scales. If spacetime does not exist at the fundamental level, then it has to be considered "emergent", in other words an effective structure, valid at low energy scales. The author develops a conception of emergence appropriate to effective theories in physics, and shows how it applies (or could apply) in various approaches to quantum gravity, including condensed matter approaches, discrete approaches, and loop (...) quantum gravity. (shrink)

Dummett's output has been prolific and highly influential, but not always as accessible as it deserves to be. This book sets out to rectify this situation.

Over 700,000 copies of the original hardcover and paperback editions of this stunningly popular book have been sold. Karen Armstrong's superbly readable exploration of how the three dominant monotheistic religions of the world—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have shaped and altered the conception of God is a tour de force. One of Britain's foremost commentators on religious affairs, Armstrong traces the history of how men and women have perceived and experienced God, from the time of Abraham to the present. From classical (...) philosophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the modern age of skepticism, Armstrong performs the near miracle of distilling the intellectual history of monotheism into one compelling volume. (shrink)

The basic form of the exclusion problem is by now very, very familiar. 2 Start with the claim that the physical realm is causally complete: every physical thing that happens has a sufficient physical cause. Add in the claim that the mental and the physical are distinct. Toss in some claims about overdetermination, give it a stir, and voilá—suddenly it looks as though the mental never causes anything, at least nothing physical. As it is often put, the physical does all (...) the work, and there is nothing left for the mental to do. (shrink)

A lot of people believe that distinct objects can occupy precisely the same place for the entire time during which they exist. Such people have to provide an answer to the 'grounding problem' – they have to explain how such things, alike in so many ways, nonetheless manage to fall under different sortals, or have different modal properties. I argue in detail that they cannot say that there is anything in virtue of which spatio-temporally coincident things have those properties. However, (...) I also argue that this may not be as bad as it looks, and that there is a way to make sense of the claim that such properties are primitive. (shrink)

The paper is an extended discussion of what I call the ‘dismissive attitude’ towards metaphysical questions. It has three parts. In the first part, I distinguish three quite different versions of dismissivism. I also argue that there is little reason to think that any of these positions is correct about the discipline of metaphysics as a whole; it is entirely possible that some metaphysical disputes should be dismissed and others should not be. Doing metametaphysics properly requires doing metaphysics first. I (...) then put two particular disputes on the table to be examined in the rest of the paper: the dispute over whether composite objects exist, and the dispute about whether distinct objects can be colocated. In the second part of the paper, I argue against the claim that these disputes are purely verbal disputes. In the third part of the paper, I present a new version of dismissivism, and argue that it is probably the correct view about the two disputes in question. They are not verbal disputes, and the discussion about them to date has not remotely been a waste of time. At this stage, however, our evidence has run out. I argue that neither side of either dispute is simpler than the other, and that the same objections in fact arise against both sides. (For example, the compositional nihilist does not in fact escape the problem of the many, and the one-thinger does not in fact escape the grounding problem.). (shrink)

The diagnosis of bipolar disorder has been linked to giftedness of various sorts and this raises a special problem in that it is likely that the condition has a genetic basis. Therefore it seems possible that in the near future we will be able to detect and eliminate the gene predisposing to the disorder. This may mean, however, that, as a society, we lose the associated gifts. We might then face a difficult decision either way in that it is unclear (...) that we are preventing an unalloyed bad when we diagnose and eliminate bipolar disorder through prenatal genetic testing and yet if we allow the individual to be born we are condemning that person to being an unwitting sacrifice in that they might well suffer considerable net distress as a result of our need to keep our gene pool enriched in the relevant way. (shrink)

How much of philosophical, scientific, and political thought is caught up with the idea of continuity? What if it were otherwise? This paper experiments with the disruption of continuity. The reader is invited to participate in a performance of spacetime (re)configurings that are more akin to how electrons experience the world than any journey narrated though rhetorical forms that presume actors move along trajectories across a stage of spacetime (often called history). The electron is here invoked as our host, an (...) interesting body to inhabit (not in order to inspire contemplation of flat-footed analogies between ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ worlds, concepts that already presume a given spatial scale), but a way of thinking with and through dis/continuity – a dis/orienting experience of the dis/jointedness of time and space, entanglements of here and there, now and then, that is, a ghostly sense of dis/continuity, a quantum dis/continuity. There is no overarching sense of temporality, of continuity, in place. Each scene diffracts various temporalities within and across the field of spacetimemattering. Scenes never rest, but are reconfigured within, dispersed across, and threaded through one another. The hope is that what comes across in this dis/jointed movement is a felt sense of différance, of intra-activity, of agential separability – differentiatings that cut together/apart – that is the hauntological nature of quantum entanglements. (shrink)

I think that there is an awful lot wrong with the exclusion problem. So, it seems, does just about everybody else. But of course everyone disagrees about exactly _what_ is wrong with it, and I think there is more to be said about that. So I propose to say a few more words about why the exclusion problem is not really a problem after all—at least, not for the nonreductive physicalist. The genuine _dualist_ is still in trouble. Indeed, one of (...) my main points will be that the nonreductive physicalist is in a rather different position vis à vis the exclusion problem than the dualist is. Properly understanding nonreductive physicalism—and clearly recognizing that it is, after all, a form of _physicalism_—goes a long way toward solving the exclusion problem. (shrink)

This collection brings together fourteen contributions by authors from around the globe. Each of the contributions engages with questions about how local and global bioethical issues are made to be comparable, in the hope of redressing basic needs and demands for justice. These works demonstrate the significant conceptual contributions that can be made through feminists' attention to debates in a range of interrelated fields, especially as they formulate appropriate responses to developments in medical technology, global economics, population shifts, and poverty.

Relationships between current theories, and relationships between current theories and the sought theory of quantum gravity (QG), play an essential role in motivating the need for QG, aiding the search for QG, and defining what would count as QG. Correspondence is the broad class of inter-theory relationships intended to demonstrate the necessary compatibility of two theories whose domains of validity overlap, in the overlap regions. The variety of roles that correspondence plays in the search for QG are illustrated, using examples (...) from specific QG approaches. Reduction is argued to be a special case of correspondence, and to form part of the definition of QG. Finally, the appropriate account of emergence in the context of QG is presented, and compared to conceptions of emergence in the broader philosophy literature. It is argued that, while emergence is likely to hold between QG and general relativity, emergence is not part of the definition of QG, and nor can it serve usefully in the development and justification of the new theory. (shrink)

I argue that it is intuitive and useful to think about composition in the light of the familiar functionalist distinction between role and occupant. This involves factoring the standard notion of parthood into two related notions: being a parthood slot and occupying a parthood slot. One thing is part of another just in case it fills one of that thing's parthood slots. This move opens room to rethink mereology in various ways, and, in particular, to see the mereological structure of (...) a composite as potentially outreaching the individual entities that are its parts. I sketch one formal system that allows things to have individual entities as parts multiple times over. This is particularly useful to David Armstrong, given Lewis's charge that his structural universals must do exactly that. I close by reflecting upon the nature and point of formal mereology. (shrink)

Nursing staff of many specialities are taking on and developing their roles in new and advanced practice areas. Patients will be offered new services from highly skilled advanced nurse practitioners. Such nurses need guidance, direction and information to assist them in their new roles. This book will offer insight and guidance on a variety of issues that are likely to be encountered by the Nurse Practitioner in everyday practice.

Although for a long time, Dutch academic philosophy was characterized by a pluralism of – imported – philosophical frameworks and paradigms, in more recent decades, a type of ‘normal philosophy’, in the Kuhnian sense, has become dominant which aims to solve ethical and political problems and dilemmas through rational-normative argumentation. Contrary to what is often claimed, the new 'normal philosophy' amounts not to thinking ‘beyond the analytic-continental divide’ in a fruitful synthesis, but to the subsumption of continental philosophical themes and (...) concepts under the analytic tradition. The potentially critical tenor of continental philosophy threatens to be ‘solved’ by this subsumption. ‘Normal philosophy’, with its emphasis on rational-normative argumentation, risks leading to a state philosophy that fits in with existing policy questions, ignoring systemic and structural power inequalities. I argue that the journal Krisis, in keeping with its original principles, should hang on to critical philosophical reflection, which today is needed more than ever, specifically – pace current right-wing and left-wing populist attacks on identity politics – on systemic, multiple forms of deprivation and oppression. (shrink)

Concerns about ‘mental causation’ are concerns about how it is possible for mental states to cause anything to happen. How does what we believe, want, see, feel, hope, or dread manage to cause us to act? Certain positions on the mind-body problem—including some forms of physicalism—make such causation look highly problematic. This entry sketches several of the main reasons to worry, and raises some questions for further investigation.

This study adapts the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980) to the behavior of fraudulent reporting on financial statements so as to examine the effects of moral reasoning and self-monitoring on intention to report fraudulently, using structural equation modeling. The paper seeks to investigate two of the red flags for financial statement fraud identified in Loebbecke et al.'s (1989) paper: client management displays a significant lack of moral fiber and client personnel exhibit strong personality anomalies. As expected, high (...) moral reasoners are more influenced than low moral reasoners by their own attitude towards the behavior. Contrary to prior research, low self-monitors are found to be more influenced than high self-monitors by subjective norms. Future research is recommended to investigate the counter-intuitive results for self-monitors, to consider the implications of group decision making as regards the promulgation of fraudulent financial statements, and to examine additional red flags for financial statement fraud. (shrink)

Two versions of global supervenience have recently been distinguished from each other. I introduce a third version, which is more likely what people had in mind all along. However, I argue that one of the three versions is equivalent to strong supervenience in every sense that matters, and that neither of the other two versions counts as a genuine determination relation. I conclude that global supervenience has little metaphysically distinctive value.

Recent defenses of shaming as an effective tool for identifying bad practice and provoking social change appear compatible with feminism. I complicate this picture by examining two instances of online feminist shaming that resulted in shame backlashes. Shaming requires the assertion of social and epistemic authority on behalf of a larger community, and is dependent upon an audience that will be receptive to the shaming testimony. In cases where marginally situated knowers attempt to “shame up,” it presents challenges for feminist (...) uses. (shrink)

In times of crisis, when current theories are revealed as inadequate to task, and new physics is thought to be required—physics turns to re-evaluate its principles, and to seek new ones. This paper explores the various types, and roles of principles that feature in the problem of quantum gravity as a current crisis in physics. I illustrate the diversity of the principles being appealed to, and show that principles serve in a variety of roles in all stages of the crisis, (...) including in motivating the need for a new theory, and defining what this theory should be like. In particular, I consider: the generalised correspondence principle, UV-completion, background independence, and the holographic principle. I also explore how the current crisis fits with Friedman’s view on the roles of principles in revolutionary theory-change, finding that while many key aspects of this view are not represented in quantum gravity, the view could potentially offer a useful diagnostic, and prescriptive strategy. This paper is intended to be relatively non-technical, and to bring some of the philosophical issues from the search for quantum gravity to a more general philosophical audience interested in the roles of principles in scientific theory-change. (shrink)

Analogue experiments have attracted interest for their potential to shed light on inaccessible domains. For instance, ‘dumb holes’ in fluids and Bose–Einstein condensates, as analogues of black holes, have been promoted as means of confirming the existence of Hawking radiation in real black holes. We compare analogue experiments with other cases of experiment and simulation in physics. We argue—contra recent claims in the philosophical literature—that analogue experiments are not capable of confirming the existence of particular phenomena in inaccessible target systems. (...) As they must assume the physical adequacy of the modelling framework used to describe the inaccessible target system, arguments to the conclusion that analogue experiments can yield confirmation for phenomena in those target systems, such as Hawking radiation in black holes, beg the question. (shrink)

I argue that dualism does not help assuage the perceived explanatory failure of physicalism. I begin with the claim that a minimally plausible dualism should only postulate a small stock of fundamental phenomenal properties and fundamental psychophysical laws: it should systematize the teeming mess of phenomenal properties and psychophysical correlations. I then argue that it is dialectically odd to think that empirical investigation could not possibly reveal a physicalist explanation of consciousness, and yet can reveal this small stock of fundamental (...) phenomenal properties and psychophysical laws. I go on to consider a couple of different forms the dualist's laws could take, and argue that one version makes no progress on the hard problem of consciousness, and the other replaces the hard problem with a different problem that is just as hard. (shrink)