There is an enduring and widespread perception amongst policy makers and practitioners that certain groups of children, in particular those who find learning difficult, have a detrimental effect on the achievement of other children. Challenging this basic assumption, this award-winning book argues that high levels of inclusion can be entirely compatible with high levels of achievement and that combining the two is not only possible but essential if all children are to have the opportunity to participate fully in education. This (...) fully revised second edition is packed with vivid case studies that explore the benefits and tensions for children and schools, and sets out to answer the following questions: What is the nature of the relationship between the inclusion of some children and the achievement of all? Are there strategies which can raise the achievement of all children, whilst safeguarding the inclusion of others who are more vulnerable? What changes can a school make to ensure high levels of inclusion as well as high levels of achievement for all its children? Achievement and Inclusion in Schools offers a fully up-to-date analysis of current issues in light of recent changes to education policy in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It provides practical guidance for practitioners and policy-makers, and will be of interest to anyone passionate about inclusive education. (shrink)

A complement to _Researching Schools_ by the same authors, this book provides readers with a strong theoretical framework for school-based research as well as valuable advice on the ways in which networks of specialist groups can work together to create a broad-ranging approach to educational research. Through a critical examination of existing research and current thinking, the authors draw out implications for the effective policy and practice of school-based research. Illustrated throughout with case studies and including a full and detailed (...) literature review, this book will be a vital resource for all academics pursuing research into education. (shrink)

Presenting the work of a highly innovative partnership between the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education and eight secondary schools, this book explores this networked learning community which has helped to define the use and production of educational knowledge and research within and between various partners. This book examines the central questions and gives examples of the outcomes of the development that will assist any researchers, especially teachers undertaking research, to develop school-university partnerships. Stories and examples from practitioners and others (...) who worked directly in and with schools are presented throughout the book. It will appeal to a wide audience of practitioners and academics, and to all who are interested in how research and enquiry can be used to support the development of practice in schools. (shrink)

In this paper, we contribute to research on enterprise artificial intelligence (AI), specifically to organizations improving the customer experiences and their internal processes through using the type of AI called machine learning (ML). Many organizations are struggling to get enough value from their AI efforts, and part of this is related to the area of explainability. The need for explainability is especially high in what is called black-box ML models, where decisions are made without anyone understanding how an AI (...) reached a particular decision. This opaqueness creates a user need for explanations. Therefore, researchers and designers create different versions of so-called eXplainable AI (XAI). However, the demands for XAI can reduce the accuracy of the predictions the AI makes, which can reduce the perceived usefulness of the AI solution, which, in turn, reduces the interest in designing the organizational task structure to benefit from the AI solution. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the need for XAI is as low as possible. In this paper, we demonstrate how to achieve this by optimizing the task structure according to sociotechnical systems design principles. Our theoretical contribution is to the underexplored field of the intersection of AI design and organizational design. We find that explainability goals can be divided into two groups, pattern goals and experience goals, and that this division is helpful when defining the design process and the task structure that the AI solution will be used in. Our practical contribution is for AI designers who include organizational designers in their teams, and for organizational designers who answer that challenge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Merton and Buddhism: Wisdom, Emptiness and Everyday MindKristin Johnston LargenMerton and Buddhism: Wisdom, Emptiness and Everyday Mind. Edited by Bonnie Bowman Thurston. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2007. 271 pp.This particular book—Merton and Buddhism—is the fourth in a series that seeks to study world religions “through the lens of Thomas Merton’s life and writing” (p. viii). The first three volumes in the series are Merton and Sufism, Merton and (...) Hesychasm, and Merton and Judaism. This book continues in the same format and includes essays from a variety of scholars addressing various aspects of Merton’s engagement with different schools of Buddhism. It is divided into four main parts, with a fifth part that contains a helpful bibliography as well as notes on the different contributors. Additionally the text is peppered with a variety of illustrations, including a center section with many pictures of images of the Buddha from different cultural contexts. The assortment of black-and-white illustrations include pictures of people Thomas Merton (1915–1968) met on his travels, pictures he took while on his “Asian Journey,” and pictures of Merton himself and Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery.The volume begins with two helpful essays that orient a novice reader to the volume. The first essay, by the late Roger Corless (1938–2007), is a simple, straight-forward [End Page 218] introduction to Buddhism. This is useful for readers who are drawn to this book by the desire to learn more about Merton but have no background in Buddhism itself. The second essay is by Bonnie Thurston, who describes her piece as “Merton and Buddhism 101” (p. 15). Her essay describes primarily the “when” and the “why” of Merton’s interest in Buddhism, noting that Merton was not interested in becoming a Buddhist himself, but rather believed that his own (and others’) practice of Christianity could be positively informed by Buddhism, particularly in its attention to meditation and dismantling what Merton called the “false self.”The second main part of the book is devoted to essays that each focus on Merton’s engagement with a specific Buddhist tradition. While it is clear that Merton was particularly influenced by and drawn to Zen Buddhism (Ruben Habito supplies the essay on Merton’s experience with Zen in this section), he did not limit himself to Zen, but sought out connections and experience with individuals from diverse Buddhist backgrounds. Thus, the first essay in this section details his meetings with monks from the Theravada tradition and emphasizes the central role Merton’s own monastic identity played in his understanding and evaluation of Buddhism as a whole.The second essay is of particular importance, as it discusses Merton’s engagement with Tibetan Buddhism, which many believe would have developed into a much deeper connection had his exposure to Tibetan Buddhism not come at the very end of Merton’s life. The author of this essay, Judith Simmer-Brown, notes that “Previously, Merton’s interests had been in Zen Buddhism, but after meeting Tibetans in India he felt an immediate rapport” (p. 53). The Tibetans also shared this experience. The Dalai Lama (from whom Merton received meditation instruction), Trungpa Rinpoche, and Chadral Rinpoche, among others, all recognized his spiritual depth and honesty. At the end of her essay, Simmer-Brown reflects on the strong impression the mountain Kanchenjunga made on him (this is the “seventh mountain” of Merton’s personal geography—see The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, by Michael Mott) and speculates as to how Merton might have continued to explore Tibetan Buddhism, had he lived beyond the year.The final essay in this section is of a different nature, but serves a very important purpose. John Keenan’s essay, “The Limits of Thomas Merton’s Understanding of Buddhism,” makes clear that Merton’s understanding of Buddhism reflects the general ignorance of Buddhism by Western Christians at that time, and thus, while Merton’s engagement with Buddhism was “welcome and mind-stretching” to his audience in the 1960s, it is “quite insufficient today for any dialogue with Buddhism, or with Zen” (p. 121). Keenan notes that a large part of the problem stems from Merton’s... (shrink)

Although many iterations of the mammy in the last two centuries have received analytical attention, the construction of this figure as asexual or undesiring and undesirable remains to be interrogated. This essay attends to this under-theorised dimension of her image. Resisting a reading of the mammy as fixed in silence, I assert that she might instead ‘say nothing’, and bring into focus a black asexual agency that I call a declarative silence. This strategy of ‘saying nothing’ is then explored (...) in a reading of the withholdings of the character of Mama in Gayl Jones's neo-slave narrative, Corregidora (1975). (shrink)

While psychoanalysis credits the entrenchment of systems of subordination to the necessity of socialization and the transmission of dominant values from parent to child, by claiming social symbolics independent of the dominant hegemony, W.E.B. Du Bois calls for resistant forms of identification. Psychoanalyticaccounts of social power relations often assume that the dominant social group produces the only operative social symbolic and that this symbolic is also identical with the nation, but Du Bois’s attention to the slave song allows him to (...) trace the burial of a black American symbolic rather than a traumatic inculcation of the dominant white symbolic. (shrink)

While psychoanalysis credits the entrenchment of systems of subordination to the necessity of socialization and the transmission of dominant values from parent to child, by claiming social symbolics independent of the dominant hegemony, W.E.B. Du Bois calls for resistant forms of identification. Psychoanalyticaccounts of social power relations often assume that the dominant social group produces the only operative social symbolic and that this symbolic is also identical with the nation, but Du Bois’s attention to the slave song allows him to (...) trace the burial of a black American symbolic rather than a traumatic inculcation of the dominant white symbolic. (shrink)

In arguing that slavery is not a relic of the past, but a relational dynamic undergirded by an ontology of anti-Blackness that prevents Blacks from ever being considered human beings, the self-described Afropessimist, Frank Wilderson III, argues that Black people occupy the position of social death in the present. Due to this anti-Black condition, Wilderson concludes that no form of redress is possible to assuage, liberate, and redeem Black people from this anti-Black condition other than the (...) “End of the World.” Drawing upon Fredrich Nietzsche’s understanding of the problem of nihilism and its existential consequences, I argue that while Afropessimism is useful for articulating the problem of anti-Blackness, it makes a nihilistic turn through Wilderson’s “End of the World” since there is no world where Blackness is experienced as anything other than social death. As a response to Wilderson, I conclude that the philosopher Jacqueline Scott’s life-affirming Nietzschean philosophy and her anti-racist activism in “Racial Nihilism as Racial Courage” is one adequate response to the nihilistic threat to Black America if Black people are condemned to a life of social death because of the enduring nature of anti-Black racism. (shrink)

This paper considers two conceptual expansions of Du Boisian double consciousness—white double consciousness (Alcoff 2015) and kaleidoscopic consciousness (Medina 2013)—both of which aim to articulate the moral-epistemic potential of cultivating double consciousness from racially dominant or other socially privileged positions. We analyze these concepts and challenge them on the grounds that they lack continuity with their Du Boisian predecessor and face problems of practical feasibility. As we show, these expansions obscure structural barriers that make white double consciousness and kaleidoscopic consciousness (...) unlikely antidotes to the kind of racial domination that double consciousness was introduced to illuminate. We conclude that while more intersectional and pluralistic accounts of double consciousness may be desirable, the project of expansion has moral limits. Identifying these limitations, we outline ways in which double consciousness—as a tool for conceptualizing the genealogy of structural anti-Blackness—remains valuable in the absence of ever-expanding revision. (shrink)

This book marks the retirement of Donald Harris as Director of the Socio-Legal Studies Institute, Oxford University. Dr Harris was at the forefront of the move in legal scholarship from traditional black-letter approaches to one supplemented by a socio-legal perspective, making use of the insights of the social sciences. His success can be seen in this unique volume of original essays by some of the most distinguished scholars in this field, all of whom have connections with the Centre. The (...) essays range from an economic analysis of the law, the behaviour of lawyers in the business world, the property and financial consequences of divorce, to current tensions between judges and politicians. All are fused by their achievement in providing a succinct summary of the current state of research while making a considered assessment of future directions. (shrink)

In response to the Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island core melts, nuclear proponents allege they were “black-swan events”—extremely unlikely, at the tail of probability distributions. They...

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 267-272, October 2011.

Conservation planning is only as good as the science on which it relies. This paper evaluates the science underlying the least-cost-path model, developed by Meegan and Maehr (2002) , for the Florida panther, Puma concolor coryi. It also assesses the resulting claim that private lands in central Florida are desirable for panther colonization (Maehr et al. 2002a , p. 187; Maehr 2001 , pp. 3–4; Maehr and Deason 2002 , p. 400). The paper argues that panther conservation planning, as proposed (...) by Maehr, is flawed because of its (1) poor analysis of panther-habitat requirements, owing largely to use of only daytime telemetry, a black-box model, and failure to take account of spatial and temporal uncertainties; (2) use of stipulative and misleading definitions of key biological terms, such as “forest obligate” and panther “dispersal”; (3) employment of question-begging value judgments to rank habitat; (4) weak testing of the model; (5) inconsistency in evaluation of forest habitat; (6) inconsistency in evaluation of agricultural lands; and (7) inconsistency in assessing effects of highways on panther habitat. (shrink)

Alternative food networks, such as farmers’ markets and community-supported agricultural and fishery programs, often struggle to reach beyond a consumer base that is predominantly white and affluent. This case study explores seven inclusion strategies deployed by a community-supported fishery program (Fishadelphia, in Philadelphia, PA, USA) including discounting prices, accepting payment in multiple forms and schedules, offering a range of product types, communicating and recruiting through a variety of media (especially in person), and choosing local institutions and people of color (POC) (...) as pickup location hosts. Our analysis indicated that all of these strategies were associated with increased participation of customers of color and/or customers without a college degree. For Asian customers, accepting cash, offering whole fish, recruiting in-person, and POC-hosted pickup locations were key factors. For Black customers, discounted price, accepting cash, offering fillets, and communicating through means other than email were most important. Discounted price and communicating through means other than email were most important for customers without a college degree. Payment method, payment schedule and communication method were highly correlated with other strategies; we suggest that these strategies work in synergy to make the program attractive and feasible to these customers. We consider how Fishadelphia’s inclusion efforts have benefitted from both tactical approaches (i.e., programmatic features) and a structural approaches (i.e., the people and places represented within the project), and suggest that elements of both tactical and structural inclusion can be applied in other contexts. This work is crucial for increasing food access, and underscores the importance of relationships in recruiting diverse customers. (shrink)

The Commission on the Accreditation of Law Enforcement employs rigorous evaluation techniques. Objective accreditation, such as made possible by CALEA, is important from the public’s perspective and in the national community of law enforcement.To counteract a general distrust of law enforcement agencies, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration developed a grant to develop standards by which the quality and performance of law enforcement could be measured. LEAA developed 107 standards and, though well received by the law enforcement community, no single group (...) or agency took the initiative to begin a program to evaluate and implement the standards. In 1979, the Department of Justice established an additional grant that effectively organized the four major law enforcement groups: the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriff’s Association, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the Police Executive Research Forum. (shrink)

The Commission on the Accreditation of Law Enforcement employs rigorous evaluation techniques. Objective accreditation, such as made possible by CALEA, is important from the public’s perspective and in the national community of law enforcement.To counteract a general distrust of law enforcement agencies, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration developed a grant to develop standards by which the quality and performance of law enforcement could be measured. LEAA developed 107 standards and, though well received by the law enforcement community, no single group (...) or agency took the initiative to begin a program to evaluate and implement the standards. In 1979, the Department of Justice established an additional grant that effectively organized the four major law enforcement groups: the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriff’s Association, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the Police Executive Research Forum. (shrink)

The literature of economic theory, like that of philosophy, abounds in prefaces and prolegomena. Methodology and analysis of concepts take an important place in a science which has not found the sure path of development. But there is no sure path for methodology either. The selfconscious methodology of social science has been largely a borrowing from that of physical science, where procedures have developed to a stage of considerable maturity. But the analogy falls down where guidance is most needed, at (...) the points where social science is most likely to develop new concepts and new types of structure. Philosophers have not been lacking, indeed, to belittle the entire enterprise, and to deny the possibility of anything that could strictly be called social science. (shrink)

There is a strong appetite in ‘the wild’ (i.e., beyond the academy) for public philosophy. There are myriad forums available, from magazines and online publications to podcasts and YouTube videos, for those who wish to engage in philosophy in a non-academic context. For academic philosophers, this has raised methodological and metaphilosophical questions like: ‘what is the best way to engage in public philosophy?’ and ‘what are our aims when we engage in public philosophy?’ But what do ‘the public’ want? If (...) public philosophy is philosophy written for a public audience, what is it, exactly, that it can or might do for them? Several answers have been proposed by philosophers, but less attention has been paid to how the public themselves might answer that question. The aim of this essay is to try and put together at least the beginning of an answer. In June 2022 we put out a survey in the hope of eliciting views from ‘the public’ on issues relating to the nature and aims of both philosophy (more generally) and public philosophy. In doing so, our aim was to take a ‘democratic’ approach to answering the question: What is public philosophy? (shrink)

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of knowledge—analytic and intuitive, explicit and tacit. Analytic knowledge is arrived at by logical deductive thinking, and is a sequential thought process in which each step can be explained and defended. Intuitive knowledge, in contrast, is frequently alogical or nonrational, and often involves nonconscious mental processes. Though intuitive ways of knowing are essential to both scientific research and scientific medicine, the culture of medicine celebrates only the analytic, evidentiary kind of knowledge, while eschewing intuition (...) as being “nonscientific.” The popularity and prevalence of what is known as evidence-based medicine reflects this bias in favor of the analytic and the explicit. Though the evidence-based approach has contributed greatly to standardizing medical care, favoring treatments for which there is evidence of effectiveness, it has limitations. An overreliance on evidence-based medicine is problematic, because this approach leaves out important factors in the actual practice of clinical medicine such as diagnosis, nonverbal cures provided by patients, and the way the doctor–patient relationship bears on patient management and compliance, and because it is not appropriate for dealing with medical conditions that do not lend themselves to study by controlled clinical trials. (shrink)

Decision-Making Capacity First published Tue Jan 15, 2008; substantive revision Fri Aug 14, 2020 In many Western jurisdictions the law presumes that adult persons, and sometimes children that meet certain criteria, are capable of making their own medical decisions; for example, consenting to a particular medical treatment, or consenting to participate in a research trial. But what exactly does it mean to say that a subject has or lacks the requisite capacity to decide? This question has to do with what (...) is commonly called “decisional capacity”, a central concept in health care law and ethics, and increasingly an independent topic of philosophical inquiry. -/- Decisional capacity can be defined as the ability of subjects to make their own medical decisions. Somewhat similar questions of capacity arise in other contexts, such as capacity to stand trial in a court of law and the ability to make decisions that relate to personal care and finances. However, the history behind the more general legal notions of capacity to stand trial and capacity to manage one’s life is different and operates somewhat differently in law (Roth, Meisel, & Litz 1977; Zapf & Roesch 2005). For the purposes of this discussion the notion of decisional capacity will be limited to medical contexts only; most notably, those where decisions to consent or to refuse treatment or participation in clinical research are concerned. (shrink)

In this essay, I suggest that Spinoza acknowledges a distinction between formal reality that is infinite and timelessly eternal and formal reality that is non-infinite (i. e., finite or indefinite) and non-eternal (i. e., enduring). I also argue that if, in Spinoza’s system, only intelligible causation is genuine causation, then infinite, timelessly eternal formal reality cannot cause non-infinite, non-eternal formal reality. A denial of eternal-durational causation generates a puzzle, however: if no enduring thing – not even the sempiternal, indefinite individual (...) composed of all finite, enduring things – is caused by the infinite, eternal substance, then how can Spinoza consistently hold that the one infinite, eternal substance is the cause of all things and that all things are modes of that substance? At the end of this essay, I sketch how Spinoza could deny eternal-durational causation while still holding that an infinite, eternal God is the cause of all things and that all things are modes. I develop the interpretation more in the companion essay.1 1 In “Spinoza’s Monism II,” in the next issue of this journal. (shrink)

Derk Pereboom's Four-Case Argument is among the most famous and resilient manipulation arguments against compatibilism. I contend that its resilience is not a function of the argument's soundness but, rather, the ill-gotten gain from an ambiguity in the description of the causal relations found in the argument's foundational case. I expose this crucial ambiguity and suggest that a dilemma faces anyone hoping to resolve it. After a thorough search for an interpretation which avoids both horns of this dilemma, I conclude (...) that none is available. Rather, every metaphysically coherent interpretation invites either a hard- or soft-line reply to Pereboom's argument. I then consider a recharacterization of the dilemma which seems to clear the way for the defence of a revised Four-Case Argument. I address this rejoinder by identifying a still more fundamental problem shared by all viable interpretations of the manipulation cases, showing that each involves a type of manipulation which undermines the victim's agency. Because this diagnosis supports a soft-line reply to every viable interpretation of the argument and can be endorsed by any compatibilist, I consider it the final piece of the Soft-line Solution to the Four-Case Argument. Finally, I suggest a new taxonomy of manipulation arguments, arguing that none that employs the suppressive variety of manipulation found in Pereboom's argument offers a threat to compatibilism. -/- (For direct download option, search Kristin M. Mickelson, Soft-line Solution). (shrink)

An old question in Spinoza scholarship is how finite, non-eternal things transitively caused by other finite, non-eternal things (i. e., the entities described in propositions like E1p28) are caused by the infinite, eternal substance, given that what follows either directly or indirectly from the divine nature is infinite and eternal (E1p21–23). In “Spinoza’s Monism I,” “Spinoza’s Monism I,” in the previous issue of this journal. I pointed out that most commentators answer this question by invoking entities that are indefinite and (...) sempiternal, but argued that perhaps we should not be so quick to assume that in Spinoza’s system, an infinite and eternal substance could cause such indefinite, sempiternal entities. But if such eternal-durational causation is denied, then it seems harder to see how Spinoza’s system could be coherent: if Spinoza holds that the infinite, eternal substance cannot cause anything that is not infinite and not eternal, then how can he also hold that all things are modes immanently caused by substance (E1p15, E1p18, E1p25)? In this essay, I explain how Spinoza’s system could be understood in light of a denial of eternal-durational causation. On the interpretation I offer, God is the cause of all things and all things are modes because the essences of all things follow from the divine nature and all essences enjoy infinite, eternal reality as modes immanently caused by the infinite, eternal substance. The same non-substantial essences can also be conceived as enjoying non-infinite, non-eternal reality, but so conceived, they are enduring, finite (or sempiternal, indefinite) entities that cannot be conceived as modes caused by and inhering in the one infinite, eternal substance. I conclude by pointing out that if we take this interpretive route, we do have to understand Spinoza as committed to acosmism, or a denial of the reality of the world – at least the world of enduring, finite things. (shrink)

My two principal aims in this essay are interconnected. One aim is to provide a new interpretation of the ‘infinite modes’ in Spinoza’s Ethics. I argue that for Spinoza, God, conceived as the one infinite and eternal substance, is not to be understood as causing two kinds of modes, some infinite and eternal and the rest finite and non-eternal. That there cannot be such a bifurcation of divine effects is what I take the ‘infinite mode’ propositions, E1p21–23, to establish; E1p21–23 (...) show that each and every one of the immanent effects of an infinite and eternal God is an infinite and eternal mode. The other aim is to show that these propositions can be understood as part of an extended critical response to Descartes’s infamous doctrine that God creates eternal truths and true and immutable natures. If we have the correct (Spinozan) conceptions of what God is and how God works, we see that an eternal and infinite God can only be understood to cause ‘eternal truths,’ and that these eternal truths are infinite and eternal modes of God. (shrink)

**For my more recent views of the third kind of cognition, see my "Finding Oneself in God"** -/- Abstract: Cognition of the third kind, or scientia intuitiva, is supposed to secure beatitudo, or virtue itself (E5p42). But what is scientia intuitiva, and how is it different from (and superior to) reason? I suggest a new answer to this old and vexing question at the core of Spinoza’s project in the Ethics. On my view, Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva resembles Descartes’s scientia more (...) than has been appreciated. Although Spinoza’s God is not Descartes’s benevolent, transcendent God, Spinoza agrees with Descartes that the highest certainty requires that a cognizer correctly conceive of God and her causal relation to God; it is only with cognition of the third kind that a cognizer can be certain that her adequate (that is, clear and distinct) representations of extramental things agree with formally real, extramental ideata, and so are true. If this is right, a reading of Spinoza that has dominated scholarship since the Ethics’ publication is misguided: for Spinoza, it is not always the case that having (and recognizing that one has) a clear and distinct idea is sufficient for knowing that that idea is true. I end the chapter by suggesting why scientia is intuitive for Spinoza: Spinoza attempts to avoid Cartesian-Circle-style circularity by insisting that a cognizer must intuit the correct representation of God and God’s relation to things. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 6, June 2022.

The terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ were introduced in the mid-20th century to name conflicting views about the logical relationship between the thesis of determinism and the thesis that someone has free will. These technical terms were originally introduced within a specific research paradigm, the classical analytic paradigm. This paradigm is now in its final stages of degeneration and few free-will theorists still work within it (i.e. using its methods, granting its substantive background assumptions, etc.). This chapter discusses how the ambiguity (...) of the terms ‘incompatibilism’ and ‘compatibilism’ took root and why it matters to the contempory debate. I explain why the ambiguity of these anachronistic terms, though relatively innocuous when they were first introduced, is now encouraging theorists to tolerate and perpetuate serious philosophical errors (e.g. to conflate relations as different in kind and importance as correlation and causation, to knowingly promote invalid arguments, and to equivoate on jargon in ways that keep the free-will debate mired in psuedo-stalemates). I also suggest a new paradigm for anyone looking for relief from the confusion and deadlock created by the use of inadequate classical narratives and jargon. -/- A selection from the publication is available to download here. For full version, please gmail me, username: kristin.mickelson.42 -/- . (shrink)

This chapter describes Spinoza's obscure “ideas of ideas” doctrine and his claim that “as soon as one knows something, one knows that one knows it, and simultaneously knows that one knows that one knows, and so on, to infinity”. Spinoza holds that the human mind is a representation of the body: the “objectum of the idea constituting the human mind” is the human body. Suppose ideas are essentially self‐reflexive, and that this reflexive awareness, the “idea of the idea,” makes the (...) objectively‐real representational content present to mind. The chapter also suggests that Spinoza holds that adequate ideas come, by nature, with reflective knowledge. Reasoning through the Ethics is one way to come to the adequate ideas that silence doubts about the veridicality of one's adequate ideas of bodies. The “human mind has an adequate cognition of God's eternal and infinite essence”. (shrink)

Agonizing care: care ethics, agonistic feminism and a political theory of care ‘Care’ is central to nursing theory and practice, and has been described in a variety of ways. Intense conversations about care have been developing in other fields of study as well, from the social sciences to the humanities. Care ethics has grown out of intellectual exchange between feminist thought, moral theory and the critique of traditional western political philosophy. However, care ethics is not without its critics, as these (...) accounts of care have also sparked vigorous challenges. This paper traces the construct of care through nursing theory, care ethics, feminist critiques of moral and political theory and agonistic feminism to outline a set of problematics that a political theory of care should engage. It discusses how care is conventionally posited in more or less essentialist, universalizing and naturalizing terms. It introduces the ideas of feminist theorists who resist dichotomizing care and the political, and situate care in the context of power and politics. The tensions between care feminism and agonistic feminism are highlighted in order to explore the potential of theorizing both care and nursing in political terms. (shrink)

Andrews argues for a pluralistic folk psychology that employs different kinds of practices and different kinds of cognitive tools (including personality trait attribution, stereotype activation, inductive reasoning about past behavior, and ...

Great hope has been placed on biobank research as a strategy to improve diagnostics, therapeutics and prevention. It seems to be a common opinion that these goals cannot be reached without the participation of commercial actors. However, commercial use of biobanks is considered morally problematic and the commercialisation of human biological materials is regulated internationally by policy documents, conventions and laws. For instance, the Council of Europe recommends that: “Biological materials should not, as such, give rise to financial gain”. Similarly, (...) Norwegian legislation reads: “Commercial exploitation of research participants, human biological material and personal health data in general is prohibited”. Both articles represent kinds of common moral intuitions. A problem, however, is that legislative documents are too vague and provide room for ample speculation. Through the use of focus group interviews with Norwegian biobank donors, we have tried to identify lay intuitions and morals regarding the commercial use of biobanks. Our findings indicate that the act of donation and the subsequent uses of the samples belong to two different spheres. While concerns around dignity and commodification were present in the first, injustice and unfairness were our informants’ major moral concerns in the latter. Although some opposition towards commercial actors was voiced, these intuitions show that it is possible to render commercial use of biobanks ethically acceptable based on frameworks and regulations which hinder commodification of the human body and promote communal benefit sharing. (shrink)

*As mentioned in Peter Coy's NYT essay "When Being Good Is Just a Matter of Being Lucky" (2023) -/- ----- -/- How is the problem of free will related to the problem of moral luck? In this essay, I answer that question and outline a new solution to the paradox of moral luck, the source-paradox solution. This solution both explains why the paradox arises and why moral luck does not exist. To make my case, I highlight a few key connections (...) between the paradox of moral luck and two related problems, namely the problem of free will and determinism and the paradox of self-creation. Piecing together intuitions, arguments, and insights from recent work on each of these three problems, I argue that the type of control necessary for moral responsibility can only be had by someone who is a genuine source of his own actions, but the relevant notion of sourcehood admits no coherent characterization. If our commonsense view of moral responsibility is incoherent, it is unsurprising that our commitment to the existence of morally responsible agents commits us to some paradoxical things—e.g. to both the existence and impossibility of moral luck. For more information about this article, please write to gmail account: kristin.mickelson.42. (shrink)

I suggest a pluralistic account of folk psychology according to which not all predictions or explanations rely on the attribution of mental states, and not all intentional actions are explained by mental states. This view of folk psychology is supported by research in developmental and social psychology. It is well known that people use personality traits to predict behavior. I argue that trait attribution is not shorthand for mental state attributions, since traits are not identical to beliefs or desires, and (...) an understanding of belief or desire is not necessary for using trait attributions. In addition, we sometimes predict and explain behavior through appeal to personality traits that the target wouldn't endorse, and so could not serve as the target's reasons. I conclude by suggesting that our folk psychology includes the notion that some behavior is explained by personality traits—who the person is—rather than by beliefs and desires—what the person thinks. Consequences of this view for the debate between simulation theory and theory theory, as well as the debate on chimpanzee theory of mind are discussed. (shrink)

According to luck egalitarianism, inequalities are justified if and only if they arise from choices for which it is reasonable to hold agents responsible. This position has been criticised for its purported harshness in responding to the plight of individuals who, through their own choices, end up destitute. This paper aims to assess the Harshness Objection. I put forward a version of the objection that has been qualified to take into account some of the more subtle elements of the luck (...) egalitarian approach. Revising the objection in this way suggests that the Harshness Objection has been overstated by its proponents: because luck egalitarians are sensitive to the influence of unequal brute luck on individuals’ choices, it is unlikely that there will be any real world cases in which the luck egalitarian would not have to provide at least partial compensation. However, the Harshness Objection still poses problems for the luck egalitarian. First, it is not clear that partial compensation will be sufficient to avoid catastrophic outcomes. Second, the Harshness Objection raises a theoretical problem in that a consistent luck egalitarian will have to regard it as unjust if any assistance is provided to the victim of pure option luck, even if such assistance could be provided at no cost. I consider three strategies the luck egalitarian could pursue to accommodate these concerns and conclude that none of these strategies can be maintained without either violating basic luck egalitarian principles or infringing upon individual liberty. (shrink)

This paper is based on the comments I gave to Alfred Mele regarding his original Zygote Argument during my presentation at a small workshop on manipulation arguments in Budapest back in 2012. After those comments, Mele changed the conclusion of his original Zygote Argument and redefined 'incompatibilism' so that it would refer to the conclusion of his new Zygote Argument (Mele 2013+). Yet, over the last decade, Mele has made no comment in print about the changes he made nor the (...) invalidity objection that led to them. To my knowledge, Mele has only mentioned this 2015 paper once: in the context of defending his non-explanatory definition of 'incompatibilism' at the opening of Aspects of Agency (p. 6, n. 4), Mele draws his readers' attention to just *just this paper* as a place where they'll find the type of nonstandard/nontraditional definition of 'incompatibilism' that he rejects. If Mele had a general concern about unusual definitions of 'incompatibilism', he could have just as easily named almost any leading figure in free will for this purpose (since most reject the non-explanatory definition he now endorses). But for some reason, Mele thought an unemployed junior researcher should be singled out as an example. Moreover, if Mele were genuinely interested in helping his readers understand the ambiguity of terms like 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism' it is a mystery that he referenced a paper in which nothing of substance hung on the definitions given to these terms when he might have instead pointed them to my OTHER 2015 paper in which the MAIN AIM of the paper is to expose the difficulties facing anyone who wants to define the terms 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism' in a way that everyone will accept (including a critique of the definitions that Mele has adopted). By all appearances, Mele's aim was to give readers the false impression that my working definition of 'incompatibilism' played some role in my charge that his argument is invalid (which it doesn't, given that the term doesn't appear in either the premises or conclusion of that argument). In this paper, I simply use the invalidity of the simple 2-premise Zygote Argument to make a series of more philosophically significant points (e.g. regarding the dialectical structure of the free-will debate, the role of best-explanation reasoning, and to develop the first-ever "master manipulation argument"). Mele pays no attention to my answer to the "Now What?" question in this paper, even though that answer was the paper's main point. For those interested in a more recent discussion of how the logical and metaphilosophical observations made in this paper have helped to move the free-will debate forward, I suggest my contributions to the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Free Will (Intro and Chapter 4, 2023) and my paper "Free Will, Self-Creation, and the Paradox of Moral Luck" (2019). (shrink)

The acknowledgement of basic human vulnerability in relationships between mental health service users and professionals working in community-based mental health services (in Norway) was a starting point. The purpose was to explore how users of these services describe and make sense of their meetings with other people. The research is collaborative, with researcher and person with experienced-based knowledge cooperating through the research process. Data is derived from 19 interviews with 11 people who depend on mental health services for assistance at (...) least three times a week. Data is analysed according to the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results confirm that reciprocity is fundamental for relationships, and that recognizing the individual entails personal involvement. The participants describe a struggle, and recognizing this struggle may help the professional to achieve a deeper understanding of the individual. (shrink)

Expressive theories of state action seek to identify and assess the ‘meaning’ implicit in state action, such as legislation and public policies. In expressive theories developed by relational egalitarians, state action must ‘express’ equal concern and respect for citizens. However, it is unclear how precisely we can determine and assess the meaning of what states do. This paper considers how an expressive theory could be developed, given the commitments of a relational account of equality, and how such a theory would (...) relate to relational egalitarianism more broadly. I suggest that expressive considerations should be tied more closely than they are in the current literature to agents’ attitudes and to their intentions. I discuss a range of real-world policies that are problematic for what they can be taken to express. (shrink)

This study examined the direct influence of national economic condition, as well as the indirect effects through the strength of noneconomic institutions on supervisors’ ethical reasoning using the institutional anomie theory developed by Messner and Rosenfeld :1393–1416, 2001). Utilizing data of 20,025 supervisors across 52 countries, the analyses showed that high disparity in the economic distribution directly and indirectly leads to unethical values. High economic inequality in a country resulted in high tendency of supervisors to justify unethical acts. In addition, (...) some of this influence went through the institutional strength of family, education, polity, and religion, thereby indicating partial mediation. As a result, the study presented the important roles of social institutions in explaining supervisors’ attitude and behavior. The findings of this research contribute to the institutional anomie theory by clarifying the multilevel path of the macrostructures’ conditions in explaining supervisors’ ethicality. Moreover, since some of the relationships between variables resulted in the direction opposite to the propositions of the theory, this study suggested other theoretical models that may be integrated with IAT. Along with these theoretical contributions, practical implications to businesses and society are discussed to strengthen supervisors’ ethics. (shrink)

_Phenomenological insights into health issues relating to bodily self-experience, normality and deviance, self-alienation, and objectification._.

Employees often experience ethical dilemmas throughout their service in an organization. This study utilized a multilevel standpoint to address employees’ differences in ethical reasoning. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze responses from 40,485 full‐time employees across 54 countries. Drawing from Durkheim's concepts of the homo duplex, socialization process, and social conditions, this study found a positive relationship between employees’ income level and unethical reasoning. Furthermore, the results indicate that modern social regulation, technological advancement, economic development, and economic change moderate (...) the relationship between income and ethical judgment. The study findings contribute to the Durkheimian model by validating the effects of individual‐ and country‐level factors on employees’ ethicality. Considering that the results contradict Durkheim's initial propositions, another concept and theory are proposed, which may complement Durkheim's arguments. Practical implications for organizations and society are further discussed to reinforce employees’ ethics. (shrink)