Large‐scale patterns of correlated growth in development are partially driven by competition for metabolic and informational resources. It is argued that competition between organs for limited resources is an important mesoscale morphogenetic mechanism that produces fitness‐enhancing correlated growth. At the genetic level, the growth of individual characters appears independent, or “modular,” because patterns of expression and transcription are often highly localized, mutations have trait‐specific effects, and gene complexes can be co‐opted as a unit to produce novel traits. However, body parts (...) are known to interact over the course of ontogeny, and these reciprocal exchanges can be an important determinant of developmental outcomes. Genetic mechanisms underlie cell and tissue behaviors that allow organs to communicate with one another, but they also create evolutionarily adaptive competitive dynamics that are driven by physiological and biophysical processes. Advances in the understanding of competitive and closely related coordinative interactions across scales will complement existing research programs that emphasize the role of cellular mechanisms in morphogenesis. Study of the large‐scale order produced by competitive dynamics promises to facilitate advances in basic evolutionary and developmental biology, as well as applied research in fields such as bioengineering and regenerative medicine that aim to regulate patterning outcomes. (shrink)

The question of whether the modern evolutionary synthesis requires an extension has recently become a topic of discussion, and a source of controversy. We suggest that this debate is, for the most part, not about the modern synthesis at all. Rather, it is about the extent to which genetic mechanisms can be regarded as the primary determinants of phenotypic characters. The modern synthesis has been associated with the idea that phenotypes are the result of gene products, while supporters of the (...) extended synthesis have suggested that environmental factors, along with processes such as epigenetic inheritance, and niche construction play an important role in character formation. We argue that the methodology of the modern evolutionary synthesis has been enormously successful, but does not provide an accurate characterization of the origin of phenotypes. For its part, the extended synthesis has yet to be transformed into a testable theory, and accordingly, has yielded few results. We conclude by suggesting that the origin of phenotypes can only be understood by integrating findings from all levels of the organismal hierarchy. In most cases, parts and processes from a single level fail to accurately explain the presence of a given phenotypic trait. The debate between the proponents of the modern and extended syntheses is somewhat reminiscent of the duck-rabbit illusion. The two sides are probably talking about the same thing, but from different perspectives. If not, then we argue that the challenge is to do an experiment that rules out the alternative view. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractThe exquisite morphology of a complex body results from the sum of competitive and cooperative interactions among its subsystems. More details can be found in article number 1900245 by Richard Gawne et al. The cover image shows immunohistochemical staining (in red) of the head of a tadpole of Xenopus laevis, showing the brain, nostrils, and peripheral innervation.

Why is it that some business managers appear to behave differently in private and at work? How, if at all, are the decisions managers make affected by the nature of their organisations? What impact do organisational values have on the moral autonomy of managers? A research project into these questions is now under way in three disparate Australian business firms and this paper sets out the premise underlying it. For purposes of research the general premise is that the moral character (...) of a business influences the moral judgements and actions of its members. More specifically, it is suggested that the economic paradigm renders a business organisation amoral rather than moral or immoral, and as a result moral responsibility comes to be assigned to individual members. However, the socio-cultural nature of such firms interferes with the ability of managers to exercise moral autonomy. Governed as it is by the market or laws of economics, the amoral organisation is likely to transform its members into individuals without moral standards. (shrink)

Why is it that some business managers appear to behave differently in private and at work? How, if at all, are the decisions managers make affected by the nature of their organisations? What impact do organisational values have on the moral autonomy of managers? A research project into these questions is now under way in three disparate Australian business firms and this paper sets out the premise underlying it. For purposes of research the general premise is that the moral character (...) of a business influences the moral judgements and actions of its members. More specifically, it is suggested that the economic paradigm renders a business organisation amoral rather than moral or immoral, and as a result moral responsibility comes to be assigned to individual members. However, the socio-cultural nature of such firms interferes with the ability of managers to exercise moral autonomy. Governed as it is by the market or laws of economics, the amoral organisation is likely to transform its members into individuals without moral standards. (shrink)

In this paper a corporate social responsibility audit is developed following the underlying methodology of the quality award/excellence models. Firstly the extent to which the quality awards already incorporate the development of social responsibility is examined by looking at the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the European Quality Award. It will be shown that the quality awards do not yet include ethical aspects in relation to social responsibility. Both a clear definition of social responsibility and an improved audit instrument (...) are required. A definition and an audit instrument are developed which stimulate movement in that direction and help organisations to reflect on their position in relation to social responsibility. (shrink)

Quality of work life affects the quality of life. By applying amoral paradigms in decision making managers of business enterprises can cause a poor quality work life and reduce the quality of life. The explanation and prediction of ethical/unethical business behaviour should not always be attributed to individual managers, as it may result from strong culture and decision making systems. It is argued that the causes and the solutions to ethical dilemmas can often be found in a theory based on (...) integration of models of moral reasoning, decision schema, value congruence and corporate decision structures. The impact of exclusion of moral principles from the decision making process is illustrated by way of a case study. (shrink)

Introduction -- Defining pluralism : Simon Pokagon, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Thomas fortune -- Evolution and American Indian philosophy -- Feminist resistance : Anna Julia Cooper, Jane Addams, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Labor, empire and the social gospel : Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Jane Addams -- A new name for an old way of thinking : William James -- Making ideas clear : Charles Sanders Peirce -- The beloved community and its discontents : Josiah Royce and the realists (...) -- War, anarchism, and sex : Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger -- Democracy and social ethics : John Dewey -- Naturalism and idealism, fear, and conventionality : Mary Whiton Calkins and Elsie Clews Parsons -- Race riots and the color line : W. E. B. du Bois -- Philosophy reacts : Hartley Burr Alexander and Morris R. Cohen -- Creative experience : Mary Parker Follett -- Cultural pluralism : Horace Kallen and Alain Locke -- War and the rise of logical positivism : Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap -- Mccarthyism and American empiricism : Jacob Loewenberg, Henry Sheffer, C. I. Lewis, and Charles Morris -- The linguistic turn : Gustav Bergmann, May Brodbeck, and W. V. O. Quine -- Resisting the turn : Donald Davidson, Wilfrid Sellars, and the pluralist rebellion -- Philosophy outside : John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Rachel Carson -- Economics and technology : Lewis Mumford, C. Wright Mills and John Kenneth Galbraith -- Politics : John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Michael Sandel, Martha Nussbaum, and Noam Chomsky -- Civil rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Wright and James Baldwin -- Black power : Malcolm X, James Cone, Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, and Cornel West -- Latin American American philosophy -- Red power, indigenous philosophy : Vine Deloria, Jr. and contemporary American Indian thought -- Feminism -- Engaged philosophy and the environment -- American philosophy today -- Recovering and sustaining the American tradition -- American philosophy revitalized -- The spirit of American philosophy in the new century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Drieu, Céline: French Fascism, Scapegoating, and the Price of Revelation Richard J. Golsan Texas A &M University Although the Girardian concept of the scapegoat and its attendant phenomena have a number of obvious implications for the study of fascism, to date the connection has been addressed only in broadly theoretical terms. In Des Choses cachées and in subsequent works, René Girard has alluded to modern political scapegoating such (...) as the Nazi persecution of the Jews as examples of mass victimizations where the enormous number of victims represents an effort to compensate for the failure of the scapegoating process itself in the wake of Christian revelation.1 While the victims are initially vilified, they are not sacralized after their sacrifice, and order is maintained only so long as a steady stream of victims is forthcoming. As Andrew McKenna explains in Violence and Difference, "with the passing of the sacred order, of the sacred tout court, sacrifice becomes less and less capable of uniting the community and therefore demands more and more victims... the decline of symbolic violence brings an increase of real victims; their quantity mounts in inverse proportion to the ritual efficacy of sacrifice, and victimage appears more and more gratuitous" (159-60). Moreover, McKenna continues, victimage of this sort becomes increasingly untraceable, rootless, and it is this aspect of official Nazi anti-Semitism, for example, which allowed many Nazis in their postwar trials to proclaim their innocence for their roles in the Final Solution by insisting that they were "only following orders" (162-3). 1 See Things Hidden 128-9. For a more general discussion of the persecution of ethnic minorities as a source of social cohesiveness, see the essays "Violence and Representation" and "Generative Scapegoating." Drieu, Céline: French Fascism173 These observations certainly help to illuminate the role of scapegoating in Nazi racial politics and in the Holocaust in particular. They are less helpful, however, in understanding other paradigms of fascism in which antiSemitism did not play as central a role or in cases in which fascist ideology was not synonymous with government policy or political hegemony. The role of scapegoating in Italian Fascism, for example, is more difficult to ascertain than it is in Nazism because anti-Semitism was less crucial as a means of establishing social cohesiveness, at least until Nazi influence became predominant during World War II (Soucy xviii). In France, the presence of a number of fascist movements from the twenties through the end of the Occupation, and the absence of an autonomous fascist state during the same period, make the task of assessing the role of scapegoating even more difficult. This is especially true in light of the fact that a number of French fascist movements were not anti-Semitic, at least until it became expedient to be so to curry favor with the Nazis. In French Fascism: The First Wave, Robert Soucy notes that during the interwar years, fascist groups including "the Jeunesse Patriotes, the Croix de Feu and the Faisceau... welcomed Jews into their ranks" (xviii). The lack of a consistent attitude towards the Jews is, in fact, just one of several points of divergence among French fascists and fascist groups prior to World War Two. As a result, historians and political theorists who have studied French fascism have strongly disagreed as to its origins as well as its basic ideology. In Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, Zeev Sternhell argues that "the history of fascism can be described as a continuous attempt to revise marxism and create a national form of socialism" (20). Soucy, on the other hand, insists that on many of the most important social and political issues, including "taxation, government spending, nationalization, property rights, class conflict, religion, education, and foreign policy, French Fascism was overwhelmingly conservative" (xi). Other historians, especially among the French themselves, have gone so far as to insist that there is no such thing as French fascism, that such a creature, if it existed at all, was merely an import, a watered-down version of Nazism or Italian Fascism.2 If no consensus as to the nature or even the existence of French fascism can be reached by analyzing the programs... (shrink)

Feminist epistemologies hold that differences in the social locations of inquirers make for epistemic differences, for instance, in the sorts of things that inquirers are justified in believing. In this paper we situate this core idea in feminist epistemologies with respect to debates about social constructivism. We address three questions. First, are feminist epistemologies committed to a form of social constructivism about knowledge? Second, to what extent are they incompatible with traditional epistemological thinking? Third, do the answers to these questions (...) raise serious problems for feminist epistemologies? We argue that some versions of two of the main strands in feminist epistemology – feminist standpoint theory and feminist empiricism – are committed to a form of social constructivism, which requires certain departures from traditional epistemological thinking. But we argue that these departures are less problematic than one might think. Thus, (some) feminist epistemologies provide a plausible way of understanding how (some) knowledge might be socially constructed. (shrink)

We applaud Ray and Cooper (2024) for emphasizing environmental health as a bioethics issue. As a team of interdisciplinary pediatric researchers and providers who are part of an institutional clima...

In 1990 Edward Craig published a book called Knowledge and the State of Nature in which he introduced and defended a genealogical approach to epistemology. In recent years Craig’s book has attracted a lot of attention, and his distinctive approach has been put to a wide range of uses including anti-realist metaepistemology, contextualism, relativism, anti-luck virtue epistemology, epistemic injustice, value of knowledge, pragmatism and virtue epistemology. While the number of objections to Craig’s approach has accumulated, there has been no sustained (...) attempt to develop answers to these objections. In this paper we provide answers to seven important objections in the literature. (shrink)

Collected for the first time in a single volume are essays which examine the developments in three fundamental biological disciplines - embryology, evolutionary biology, and genetics. These disciplines were in conflict for much of the twentieth century and the essays in this collection examine key methodological problems within these disciplines and the difficulties faced in overcoming the conflicts between them. Burian skilfully weaves together historical appreciation of the settings within which scientists work, substantial knowledge of the biological problems at stake (...) and the methodological and philosophical issues faced in integrating biological knowledge drawn from disparate sources. The final chapter describes what recent findings in development biology and genetics can tell us about the history and development of animals. Written in a clear, accessible style this collection should appeal to students and professionals in philosophy of science, and the philosophy and history of biology. (shrink)

This book explores an important issue within the free will debate: the relation between free will and moral responsibility.

What is knowledge? What should knowledge be like? Call an epistemological project that sets out to answer the first question ‘descriptive’ and a project that sets out to answer the second question ‘normative’. If the answers to these two questions don’t coincide—if what knowledge should be like differs from what knowledge is like—there is room for a third project we call ‘revisionary’. A revisionary project starts by arguing that what knowledge should be differs from what knowledge is. It then proposes (...) that we revise our account of knowledge accordingly. Our aim in this paper was to develop a methodology for revisionary projects in epistemology. Put roughly, the thought is that we start by looking at the various things that we expect knowledge to do for us. Once we have a list of the various things we expect knowledge to do for us we have a ‘job description’; a list of tasks we need done, and that we expect knowledge to perform. With the job description in hand, we can ask what knowledge would hav.. (shrink)

In this article we survey six recent developments in the philosophical literature on free will and moral responsibility: (1) Harry Frankfurt's argument that moral responsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise; (2) the heightened focus upon the source of free actions; (3) the debate over whether moral responsibility is an essentially historical concept; (4) recent compatibilist attempts to resurrect the thesis that moral responsibility requires the freedom to do otherwise; (5) the role of the control condition in free (...) will and moral responsibility, and finally (6) the debate centering on luck. (shrink)

This paper is about two topics: metaepistemological absolutism and the epistemic principles governing perceptual warrant. Our aim is to highlight—by taking the debate between dogmatists and conservativists about perceptual warrant as a case study—a surprising and hitherto unnoticed problem with metaepistemological absolutism, at least as it has been influentially defended by Paul Boghossian as the principal metaepistemological contrast point to relativism. What we find is that the metaepistemological commitments at play on both sides of this dogmatism/conservativism debate do not line (...) up with epistemic relativism nor do they line up with absolutism, at least as Boghossian articulates this position. What this case study reveals is the need in metaepistemological option space for the recognition of a weaker and less tendentious form of absolutism, what we call “environment relativism”. On this view, epistemic principles are knowable, objective, and they can serve as the basis of particular epistemic evaluations, but their validity is relative to the wider global environment in which they are applied. (shrink)

Empirical work on motivated reasoning suggests that our judgments are influenced to a surprising extent by our wants, desires and preferences (Kahan 2016; Lord, Ross, and Lepper 1979; Molden and Higgins 2012; Taber and Lodge 2006). How should we evaluate the epistemic status of beliefs formed through motivated reasoning? For example, are such beliefs epistemically justified? Are they candidates for knowledge? In liberal democracies, these questions are increasingly controversial as well as politically timely (Beebe et al. 2018; Lynch forthcoming, 2018; (...) Slothuus and de Vreese 2010). And yet, the epistemological significance of motivated reasoning has been almost entirely ignored by those working in mainstream epistemology. We aim to rectify this oversight. Using politically motivated reasoning as a case study, we show how motivated reasoning gives rise to three distinct kinds of skeptical challenges. We conclude by showing how the skeptical import of motivated reasoning has some important ramifications for how we should think about the demands of intellectual humility. (shrink)

What role, if any, should the government perform in a society? Two very different answers to this question have been provided by John Rawls and Robert Nozick. For Rawls, the government plays an important role in ensuring that the principles of justice are realized in the workings of society. For Nozick, the role of government is limited to that of providing protection. The debate over these two views has led to the questioning of the entire liberal doctrine, a questioning that (...) has taken place not only within intellectual circles, but also within the society at large. (shrink)

This paper reflects on some of the risks and requirements of engagingin feminist pedagogy. Feminist pedagogy seeks to promote an interactive classroom, encourage a de‐centered approach to the teaching and learning process, and take differences seriously. Some of these practices may pose risks for the practitioner in an established academic environment where one may be expected to make “pobjective” judgments and assign grades without regard for difference; where pedagogy designed to encourage an interactive classroom may be taken as indicating lack (...) of “expertise” which is often only recognized as such in authoritative assertiveness. If there is a backlash against critiques of the canon and experimentalism in pedagogy, can feminist pedagogy be a coherent practice in today's academic institutions? (shrink)

Eating animals acts as mirror and representation of patriarchal values. Meat eating is the re-inscription of male power at every meal. The patriarchal gaze sees not the fragmented flesh of dead animals but appetizing food. If our appetites re-inscribe patriarchy, our actions regarding eating animals will either reify or challenge this received culture. If meat is a symbol of male dominance then the presence of meat proclaims the disempowering of women.

What is it to be morally responsible for something? Recent philosophical work reveals considerable disagreement on the question. Indeed, some theorists claim to distinguish several varieties of moral responsibility, with different conditions that must be satisfied if one is to bear responsibility of one or another of these kinds. -/- Debate on this point turns partly on disagreement about the kinds of responses made appropriate when one is blameworthy or praiseworthy. It is generally agreed that these include "reactive attitudes" such (...) as resentment and gratitude, but theorists disagree about the nature of these attitudes. They dispute the connections between moral responsibility, desert, and the justification of punishment as well. -/- Many theorists take it that, whatever the appropriate responses are, they are responses to an agent's "quality of will," but there is no consensus on what this comes to. Are the agent's beliefs about the moral status of her behavior what matter, or is it what she cares about, or what she judges important? -/- This volume presents twelve original essays from participants in these debates. The contributors include prominent established figures as well as influential younger philosophers. A substantive introduction by the editors surveys recent debates and situates the contributions within it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis of Modern Literary FictionAndrew J. McKennaThe Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis of Modern Literary Fiction, by Cesareo Bandera; 318 pp. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994, $16.50.When we consider the early relations of philosophy and literature, we most often think of Republic X and about degrees of separation between reality and (...) its image. That is a mistake, according to Cesareo Bandera, who shows in his deft reading of Laws that Plato expelled the poets chiefly because of their threat to the difference between sacred and profane: their mournful harmoniae polluted sacred rites. In this Plato is closer to the religious world examined by Durkheim, where the absolute difference between sacred and profane alone guarantees all other differences. Aristotle is shown to be starkly misleading here, since his Poetics discuss tragedy as if it had nothing to do with the ritual practices in which it originates. His vaunted realism can only save poetry—and ontological appearances—by ignoring, by virtually expelling the sacred from its purview.This expulsion of the sacred from the horizon of our rationality is the thematic core of Bandera’s argument about modern literary fiction as it [End Page 189] emerges in the Renaissance. He does not bring the religious back to our attention to enthrall us with it anew, but to explain via formidable literary and historical scholarship how we stand with respect to it, and how we misunderstand our enlightened disrespect for it. Our modern scientific spirit, our really amazing freedom of inquiry, has a different genealogy than we commonly suppose.It is not primarily philosophy which grounds our humanist irreverence, but our Western religious tradition, which Bandera reads, along with René Girard, Roberto Calasso, and Marcel Gauchet, as a uniquely desacralizing agency in culture. His book’s central endeavor is to expand the implications of Girard’s sacrificial theory of social formation across close readings of ancient and Renaissance literature and criticism in order to show the constraints on rationality within a culture where the sacred veiled human violence. According to this view, that veil is rent irreparably with the revelation of the innocent victim as the vantage point from which to interpret the murderous fury of the crowd, however ritualized as awe for the god(s), or as art. A stunning analysis of Virgil (with an assist from Michel Serres’s reading of Lucretius) reveals a writer holding back from his appalled understanding of violent foundations. With the Renaissance, art is cannily deritualized; not pious Aeneas, born of a goddess, but Don Quixote, born in prison, sets the course for modern fiction.Bandera’s astute readings of Renaissance literature and criticism shed decisively new light on the significance of this axial period, poised at the fulcrum of his argument. His vast and probing research reminds us how modern literary fiction nourished its self-consciousness and freedom amidst lavish and vehement debate over mixing the human and divine. Stripped of the taboos limiting classical thought, the sacred’s monopoly on violence had eroded to reveal individual culpability—but also vast, new possibilities for thought and action. A clear ethical impulse accompanies these readings, in which Calderon and Cervantes are shown to deprive us of a sacred alibi for human violence, which is now a matter for me to resolve with my neighbor. Organically cultural imperatives lose ground to a sense of individual responsibility, which Bandera traces back to the historically documented ascendancy of devotio moderna in late medieval Europe.Despite and because of debates over its cultural role, Renaissance literature’s very marginality freed it to explore every dimension of human error. And we learn how those who unwittingly conspire to resacralize it, from Tasso and Shelley through Arnold and Frye, only continue to play the sacred game that caused shudders in Plato and inspires just plain silliness among our own critical anarchs and demystifyers.Bandera’s net is cast wide and deep, including a bracing debate with Milbank and Blumenberg, whose sweep he emulates successfully, and whose powerful analyses he corrects. Witty and adroit scrutiny of our “sacred allergy” extends... (shrink)

In a series of works Sosa (in: Knowledge in perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991; A virtue epistemology: apt belief and reflective knowledge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; Reflective knowledge: apt belief and reflective knowledge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009; ‘How Competence Matters in Epistemology’, Philos Perspect 24(1):465–475, 2010; Knowing full well, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011; Judgment and agency, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015; Epistemology, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2017) has defended the view that there are two kinds or (...) ‘grades’ of knowledge, animal and reflective. One of the most persistent critics of Sosa’s attempts to bifurcate knowledge is Kornblith (in: Greco (ed) Ernest sosa and his critics, Wiley, Hoboken, 2004; ‘Sosa in Perspective’, Philos Stud 144(1):127–136, 2009; On reflection, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012). Our aim in this paper is to outline and evaluate Kornblith’s criticisms. We will argue that, while they raise a range of difficult (exegetical and substantive) questions about Sosa’s ‘bi-level’ epistemology, Sosa has the resources to adequately respond to all of them. Thus, this paper is a (qualified) defence of Sosa’s bi-level epistemology. (shrink)

A group of 20 Muslim educators participating in an M-level module on Islamic Education were invited to explore their preferences for sensing and intuition. They were then invited to work in three groups to discuss Psalm 73:1–10, specifically addressing two distinctive perceiving questions: What do you see in this description and what ideas does this passage set running in your mind? Clear differences emerged between the ways in which sensing types and intuitive types handled these two questions. The intuitive types (...) relished the opportunity to chase after ideas and to make connections. The sensing types stuck more closely to a literal analysis of the text and felt much less confident in chasing after ideas and making connections. These findings support the thesis that scriptural interpretation is shaped, at least to some extent, by the psychological type preferences of the reader.Contribution: Situated within the reader-perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the SIFT method is concerned with identifying the influence of the psychological type of the reader in shaping the interpretation of text. The present study demonstrates that this theory holds true for the way in which Muslim educators read Psalm 73. (shrink)

This book contains twelve chapters by leading and up-and-coming philosophers on metaepistemology, that is, on the nature, existence and authority of epistemic facts. One of the central divides in metaepistemology is between epistemic realists and epistemic anti-realists. Epistemic realists think that epistemic facts exist independently of human judgements and practices, and that they have authority over our judgements and practices. Epistemic anti-realists think that, if epistemic facts exist at all, they are grounded in human judgements and practices, and gain any (...) authority they have from our judgements and practices. This book considers both epistemic realist and anti-realist perspectives, as well as perspectives that 'transcend' the realism/anti-realism dichotomy. As such, it constitutes the 'state of the art' with regard to metaepistemology, and will shape the debate in years to come. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore how a conversational theory of moral responsibility can provide illuminating resources for building a theory about the nature and norms of moral forgiveness.

New nursing researchers are faced with a smorgasbord of competing methodologies. Sometimes, they are encouraged to adopt the research paradigms beloved of their senior colleagues. This is a problem if those paradigms are no longer of contemporary methodological relevance. The aim of this paper was to provide clarity about current research paradigms. It seeks to interrogate the continuing viability of positivism as a guiding paradigm for nursing research. It does this by critically analysing the methodological literature. Five major paradigms are (...) addressed: the positivist; the interpretivist/constructivist; the transformative; the realist; and the postpositivist. Acceptance of interpretivist, transformative or realist approaches necessarily entails wholesale rejection of positivism, while acceptance of postpositivism involves its partial rejection. Postpositivism has superseded positivism as the guiding paradigm of the scientific method. The incorporation in randomized controlled trials of postpositivist assumptions indicates that even on the methodological territory that it once claimed as its own, positivism has been rendered redundant as an appropriate paradigm for contemporary nursing research. (shrink)

The mere exposure effect is the increase in positive affect that results from the repeated exposure to previously novel stimuli. We sought to determine if judgments other than affective preference could reliably produce a mere exposure effect for two-dimensional random shapes. In two experiments, we found that brighter and darker judgments did not differentiate target from distracter shapes, liking judgments led to target selection greater than chance, and disliking judgments led to distracter selection greater than chance. These results for brighter, (...) darker, and liking judgments were obtained regardless of whether shape recognition was greater (Experiment 1) or not greater (Experiment 2) than chance. Effects of prior exposure to novel shapes were reliably observed only for affective judgment tasks. These results are inconsistent with general predictions made by the nonspecific activation hypothesis, but not the affective primacy or perceptual fluency hypotheses which were discussed in terms of cognitive neuroscience research. (shrink)

Recently, Neil Levy has proposed that an agent can acquire freedom‐relevant agential abilities by virtue of the conditions in which she finds herself, and in this way, can be thought of as partially constituted by those conditions. This can be so even if the agent is completely ignorant of the relevant environmental conditions, and even if these conditions play no causal role in what the agent does. Drawing upon these resources, Levy argues that Frankfurt‐style examples are not cogent. In this (...) paper, we explain why his argument fails. (shrink)

This paper applies Edward Craig’s and Bernard Williams’ ‘genealogical’ method to the debate between relativism and its opponents in epistemology and in the philosophy of language. We explain how the central function of knowledge attributions -- to ‘flag good informants’ -- explains the intuitions behind five different positions (two forms of relativism, absolutism, contextualism, and invariantism). We also investigate the question whether genealogy is neutral in the controversy over relativism. We conclude that it is not: genealogy is most naturally taken (...) to favour an anti-realism about epistemic norms. And anti-realism threatens absolutism. (shrink)

"Ce livre propose une enquête philosophique explorant le rapport à la mort dans nos sociétés. C’est une invitation à penser les liens humains à la fin de la vie. On évoque les liens intimes, mais également les liens sociaux encadrés par la loi. Dans un tel contexte, comment discerner les raisons anciennes et nouvelles convenant au bien de la cité? L’ouvrage s’adresse aux accompagnants en soins palliatifs. Il concerne également toute personne soucieuse pour elle-même et ses proches de réfléchir à (...) son voyage au bout de la vie. Nous sommes mortels, nous le savons et le fil de nos existences provoque des occasions de nous le rappeler. Dans la solitude de mourir s’inscrit l’appel à la compassion. Ainsi, pour les Grecs de l’Antiquité, l’image de la cigogne symbolisait la prise en charge des vieux par les jeunes, un signe de l’amitié politique. L’émergence de la culture palliative est intimement liée aux changements qui ont affecté l’évolution récente de la vie démocratique. Cette culture est née et s’est développée dans des circonstances politiques particulières. À l’observer, on peut déchiffrer certains codes de notre vie civique, ses aspirations, mais aussi ses ambiguïtés. Louis-André Richard propose d’examiner les questions actuelles en compagnie de Platon, d’Aristote, d’Augustin ou de Tocqueville. Grâce à eux, la philosophie, symbolisée par la sagesse de Minerve, est mise à contribution pour explorer la genèse et les métamorphoses de concepts comme la dignité et l’autonomie. Comment se déploie la dynamique de la raison et de la liberté à l’heure de notre mort? Tel est l’enjeu pour les roseaux pensants que nous sommes. Si notre frêle espèce appelle à la sollicitude de la cigogne, elle ne saurait négliger de convoquer aussi la sagesse de Minerve."--Résumé de l'éditeur. (shrink)

In this book Michael McKenna advances a new theory of moral responsibility, one that builds upon the work of P.F. Strawson.

Internalists in epistemology think that whether one possesses epistemic statuses such as knowledge or justification depends on factors that are internal to one; externalists think that whether one possesses these statuses can depend on factors that are external to one. In this chapter we focus on the relationship between externalism and epistemic relativism. Externalism isn’t straightforwardly incompatible with epistemic relativism but, as we’ll see, it is very common to hold that key externalist insights block or undermine some standard arguments for (...) epistemic relativism. Our aim in this chapter is to give a broad overview of why externalism poses a problem for standard arguments for relativism. But we also want to discuss some—admittedly less developed—ways in which some externalist ideas might actually provide support for certain forms of epistemic relativism. (shrink)

Despite the ongoing consideration of the ethical nature of human resource management (HRM), little research has been conducted on how morality and ethics are represented in the discourse, activities and lived experiences of human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we connect the thinking and lived experiences of HR professionals to an alternative ethics, rooted in the work of Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1989; Theory, Culture and Society 7:5-38, 1990; Postmodern Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991; Approaches to (...) Social Enquiry, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993; Life in Fragments, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) and Levinas (Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998). We argue that the study of HRM and ethics should be contextualized within the discourses used, the practices and activities of HR professionals. Through the analysis of interview data from 40 predominantly Canadian HR practitioners and managers we experiment with Bauman's notion of 'moral impulse' to help us understand how HRM is both a product and perpetuator of moral neutralization in organizations. We suggest that HRM as it is practiced is concerned with distancing, depersonalizing, and dissembling, and acts in support of the 'moral' requirements of business, not of people. However, we also recognize that HR practitioners and managers are often confronted with and conflicted by actions and decisions that they are required to take, therefore opening possibilities and hope for an alternative ethical HRM. (shrink)