Information and communications technology (ICT) is now used more by non-IT professional end-users than by IT professionals. A survey of 125 London-based organisations found that the majority had instituted codes of conduct designed to govern the use of ICT by their employees. However, the primary purpose of adopting such codes was to ensure the security and efficient operation of the organisation's information systems rather than for wider ethical considerations. Hence, few of the codes of conduct addressed issues relating to the (...) collection, storage and dissemination of data about individuals (personal data); this was especially the case with codes emanating from IT departments rather than senior management. In general, codes of conduct were found to be ineffective in influencing end-user behaviour in the organisations surveyed. Codes of conduct are a means by which organisations seek to exercise power, control and ownership, but their effectiveness is compromised by the nature of ICT itself as well as the attitudes of employees. The failure of well-publicised ethical policies to influence use of ICT by business studies students – the managers of tomorrow – suggests that these tensions are likely to remain unresolved. (shrink)

This paper examines the establishment and enforcement of codes of conduct governing the use of Internet technology as a means of providing a basis of trust in the e‐business context. The discussion draws on the findings of a survey of 80 UK organisations, and considers the relationship between factors such as organisation size, type, use of IT, the length of time with an Internet connection and the use of a code of conduct, as well as the specific areas of Internet (...) technology covered by codes of conduct. The paper also investigates the extent of disciplinary cases associated with the misuse of Internet technology, as well as the ownership and responsibility for implementing codes of conduct. The survey results suggest that the use of codes of conduct varies significantly from organisation to organisation, and that those who initiate such codes are not those seen as being responsible for implementing them. The results also indicate that a growing number of employees are disciplined for misuse of facilities offered by Internet technology. (shrink)

This paper examines the establishment and enforcement of codes of conduct governing the use of Internet technology as a means of providing a basis of trust in the e‐business context. The discussion draws on the findings of a survey of 80 UK organisations, and considers the relationship between factors such as organisation size, type, use of IT, the length of time with an Internet connection and the use of a code of conduct, as well as the specific areas of Internet (...) technology covered by codes of conduct. The paper also investigates the extent of disciplinary cases associated with the misuse of Internet technology, as well as the ownership and responsibility for implementing codes of conduct. The survey results suggest that the use of codes of conduct varies significantly from organisation to organisation, and that those who initiate such codes are not those seen as being responsible for implementing them. The results also indicate that a growing number of employees are disciplined for misuse of facilities offered by Internet technology. (shrink)

An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development research priority, innovative learning environments have been translated into policy and practice in 25 countries around the world. In Aotearoa/new Zealand, learning spaces are being reconceptualised in relation to this policy work by school leaders who are confronted by an impetus to lead pedagogic change. The article contributes a conjunctural analysis of the milieu around the redesign of these education facilities. Recognising that bodies and objects entwine in pedagogic spaces, we contribute a new (...) materialism reading of ILEs as these are instantiated in New Zealand. New materialism recognises the agential nature of matter and questions the anthropocentric narrative that frames the post-enlightenment conception of what it means to be human. The decentring of human subjects through a materialist ontology facilitates a consideration of the power of objects to affect the spatial politics of learning environments. The article traces a relationship between the New Zealand strategic plan for Education 2015–2021 and principal conceptions of ILE as the lived spaces of this policy actualisation and the disciplinary/control society conjuncture. Informed by theories of spatial practice, we argue that principals’ understandings of ‘space’ are integral to pedagogic approaches within open-plan spaces. A conjunctural analysis can expand the capacity to act politically. By examining the complex conditions of a political intervention, in this case ILEs, we trace the displacements and condensations of different sorts of contradictions, and thus open up possibilities for action. (shrink)

An emerging discourse about automated agricultural machinery imagines farms as places where farmers and workers do not need to be, but also implicitly frames farms as intolerable places where people do not want to be. Only autonomous machines, this story goes, can relieve farmers and workers of this presumed burden by letting them ‘farm at a distance’. In return for this distanced autonomy, farmers are promised increased control over their work-life balance and greater farm productivity from letting ‘smart’ robots assume (...) control over the operational environment. Drawing upon the ways that these machines are promoted by manufacturers in various media, we trace the nascent contours of what we term a liberatory sociotechnical imaginary for agricultural automation across three cases—automated milking systems, self-driving tractors, and robotic strawberry pickers. We show how promises for new freedoms and autonomy are flexibly deployed to respond to distinct frictions that farmers, workers, and even farm animals experience in different modes of industrial agriculture. However, underlying these promises is the purposefully understated self-interest of manufacturers, who stand to gain further control over farms if automated technologies assume a central role in agriculture. Through the liberatory rhetoric, we contend, the imaginary seeks to enroll farmers into a socio-technical network that creates new relations of dependence upon the companies who design, sell, maintain, and often retain ownership over automated technologies. While potentially powerful, this imaginary may nonetheless fail to coalesce as farmers, workers, and agroecosystems exert their own agency on automated imaginaries and technological futures for agriculture. (shrink)

Media outlets, industry researchers, and policy-makers are today busily extolling new robotic advances that promise to transform agriculture, bringing us ever closer to self-farming farms. Yet such techno-optimist discourse ignores the cautionary lessons of past attempts to mechanize farms. Adapting the Social Construction of Technology framework, we trace the history of efforts to replace human labor with machine labor on fruit, nut, and vegetable farms in California between 1945 and 1980—a place and time during which a post-WWII culture of faith (...) in the beneficence of technoscience applications to agriculture reached an apex. The degree to which and forms whereby mechanization gains momentum hinges on whether, how, and among whom a technological frame for mimicking human capabilities and supplanting workers coalesces. These frames, we find, vary considerably across crops, reflecting complex interactions of biology, farmer and farm worker behavior, industry supply chains, agricultural research and development, financial flows, and beliefs about labor, race, gender, and immigration. To tease out these complex dynamics, we draw directly from archival evidence to follow the development of cultivation and harvest machines through four cases spanning a spectrum of outcomes—tomatoes, nuts, peaches, and lettuce. In comparing across these cases, we find that although agricultural engineers, scientists, and their boosters framed mechanization as a triumphal narrative of progress in ‘human vs. nature’ conflicts, this techno-optimist rhetoric camouflaged deeper ‘human vs. human’ conflicts, particularly among agribusiness, farmers, and farm workers. We conclude with several insights that this historical study brings to the study of agricultural automation today. (shrink)

Testimony is an invaluable source of knowledge. We rely on the reports of those around us for everything from the ingredients in our food and medicine to the identity of our family members. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the epistemology of testimony. Despite the multitude of views offered, a single thesis is nearly universally accepted: testimonial knowledge is acquired through the process of transmission from speaker to hearer. In this book, Jennifer Lackey shows that this (...) thesis is false and, hence, that the literature on testimony has been shaped at its core by a view that is fundamentally misguided. She then defends a detailed alternative to this conception of testimony: whereas the views currently dominant focus on the epistemic status of what speakers believe, Lackey advances a theory that instead centers on what speakers say. The upshot is that, strictly speaking, we do not learn from one another's beliefs - we learn from one another's words. Once this shift in focus is in place, Lackey goes on to argue that, though positive reasons are necessary for testimonial knowledge, testimony itself is an irreducible epistemic source. This leads to the development of a theory that gives proper credence to testimony's epistemologically dual nature: both the speaker and the hearer must make a positive epistemic contribution to testimonial knowledge. The resulting view not only reveals that testimony has the capacity to generate knowledge, but it also gives appropriate weight to our nature as both socially indebted and individually rational creatures. The approach found in this book will, then, represent a radical departure from the views currently dominating the epistemology of testimony, and thus is intended to reshape our understanding of the deep and ubiquitous reliance we have on the testimony of those around us. (shrink)

Inhibition, an executive function, is critical for achieving goals that require suppressing unwanted behaviours, thoughts, or distractions. One hypothesis of the emotion and goal compatibility theory is that emotions of sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control. Across Experiments 1–4, we tested this hypothesis by inducing a happy, sad, fearful, and neutral emotional state prior to completing an inhibition task that indexed a specific facet of inhibition (oculomotor, resisting interference, behavioural, and cognitive). In Experiment 4, we included an anger induction to (...) examine whether valence or motivational-orientation best-predicted performance. We found support that fear and sadness enhanced inhibition except when inhibition required resisting interference. We argue that sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control aiding the detection and analysis of problems (i.e. sadness) or threats (i.e. fear) within one’s environment. In sum, this work highlights the importance of identifying how negative emotions can be beneficial for and interact with specific executive functions influencing down-stream processing including attention, cognition, and memory. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey presents a ground-breaking exploration of the epistemology of groups, and its implications for group agency and responsibility. She argues that group belief and knowledge depend on what individual group members do or are capable of doing, while being subject to group-level normative requirements.

Background Few studies have been conducted to assess the quality of orientation practices for ethics advisory committees that conduct ethics consultation. This survey study focused on several Harvard teaching hospitals, exploring orientation quality and committee members’ self-evaluation in the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities ethics consultation competencies. Methods We conducted a survey study that involved 116 members and 16 chairs of ethics advisory committees, respectively. Predictor variables included professional demographics, duration on committees and level of training. Outcome variables included (...) familiarity with and preparedness in the ASBH competencies and satisfaction with orientations. We hypothesised that responses would be associated with both the aforementioned predictors and whether or not participants had encountered the ASBH competencies in training. Results A majority of respondents found their orientation curricula to be helpful, although a significant portion of respondents did not receive any orientation or were unsatisfied with their orientation. Familiarity with ASBH competencies was a statistically significant predictor of respondents’ self-evaluation in particular categories. Standard educational materials were reported as offered during orientation, such as readings and case studies ; different medium resources were less evidenced such as videos on ethics consultation. Conclusions Institutions should re-evaluate orientation practices for ethics committee members that perform ethics consultation. Integrating ASBH competencies and useful methods into a resourceful pedagogy will help improve both member satisfaction with orientation and preparation in consultation. (shrink)

Testimony is a crucial source of knowledge: we are to a large extent reliant upon what others tell us. It has been the subject of much recent interest in epistemology, and this volume collects twelve original essays on the topic by some of the world's leading philosophers. It will be the starting point for future research in this fertile field. Contributors include Robert Audi, C. A. J. Coady, Elizabeth Fricker, Richard Fumerton, Sanford C. Goldberg, Peter Graham, Jennifer Lackey, Keith (...) Lehrer, Richard Moran, Frederick F. Schmitt, Ernest Sosa, and James Van Cleve. (shrink)

This chapter argues that despite the recent, welcome interest in autobiographical writing about depression, its use for research purposes presents an epistemological challenge because the extent to which these descriptions illuminate the true nature of depressive experience cannot be discerned. Contextualized within the genre of autobiography as well as the subgenre of illness memoir, the depression memoir exhibits ambiguities, it is shown, imposed by the constraints of its genre, and by the nature of autobiographical memory. Sources of ambiguity distinctive to (...) depression memoirs are next introduced, some tied to cultural meanings, others to the status of depressive states as constituted by moods. Finally, some empirical corroboration for these claims is cited, in findings indicating that depression affects autobiographical memory and writing style. The indeterminacy identified here is not a reason to dismiss depression memoirs, it is concluded, so much as to employ caution in drawing inferences from them. (shrink)

Green design tools are emerging as a new response to the dilemmas that architects and designers face in preventing the toxic impacts of building construction. Environmental health advocates, scientists, and consulting firms are stepping in to provide designers with new tools—including science-based assessment methods, standards, databases, and software—intended to help structure and inform decision-making in sustainable design. We argue that green design tools play an important but largely uninvestigated role in giving designers new forms of influence while mediating how designers’ (...) values are translated into actual design choices. Tool makers embed their own values and politics into the construction of the tools, which function as “black boxes”—their internal operations are understood as less important than their outputs for informing sustainable design. Using the green building movement as a case study, we consider three tools for selecting environmentally benign materials: the GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals, Pharos, and the Health Product Declaration. Examining controversies about the scientific validity of green design tools, we suggest that they are rooted in value conflicts and tensions in the politics of chemical knowledge. Transparent engagement with values and politics among tool developers and users could strengthen the legitimacy and credibility of green design tools. (shrink)

Jennifer Church presents a new account of perception, which shows how imagining alternative perspectives and possibilities plays a key role in creating and validating experiences of self-evident objectivity. She explores the nature of moral perception and aesthetic perception, and argues that perception can be both literal and substantive.

James Frederick Ferrier developed his philosophy from a common sense background. However, his rejection of common sense philosophy in particular and Enlightenment philosophy in general results in the development of a system of idealism. In his series of lectures ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness - Parts I to VII’, which appeared in Blackwoods Magazine (1838–39), he outlines the problem with modern philosophy and argues that philosophy should follow a new direction. In his view, the most peculiar and interesting (...) aspect of humanity is consciousness. He contends that the attempt to develop a ‘science of man’ is impossible because it transforms a person into an object of study and thereby fails to capture the most distinctive aspect of humanity, namely, consciousness. According to Ferrier, philosophy should be an extension of consciousness itself; it is: ‘consciousness sublimed’. This paper will outline the central arguments in ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness’ and show that an early example of British idealism was not only developed out of the common sense tradition but shares with common sense philosophy a focus on the immediate evidence of consciousness, placing the relationship between thought and world at the centre of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Jennifer Hornsby; V*—Which Physical Events are Mental Events?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 81, Issue 1, 1 June 1981, Pages 73–92, https://do.

Spanning 24 centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and literary figures, and modern psychologists. Truly interdisciplinary, it is the first such anthology. As it traces Western attitudes, it reveals a conversation across centuries and continents as the authors interpret, respond, and build on each other's work. Editor Jennifer Radden provides an extensive, in-depth introduction that draws links and parallels between the selections, and reveals the (...) ambiguous relationship between these historical accounts of melancholy and today's psychiatric views on depression. This important new collection is also beautifully illustrated with depictions of melancholy from Western fine art. (shrink)

The emergence of modern science is a history of disentanglement, as science detached itself first from religion and then from philosophy. Jennifer Trusted in Physics and Metaphysics argues that science -- in its haste to tear itself from its historical links -- has neglected the various roles religious and philosophical ideas have actually played and continue to play in scientific thinking. This book seeks to redress the balance by exploring how metaphysical beliefs have functioned in the history of scientific (...) inquiry and discovery. By examining the history of science from the eleventh century to the present, this book shows how religious and mystical beliefs, as well as philosophical speculation, have had a considerable role in motivating scientists and inspiring scientific inquiry. Physics and Metaphysics presupposes no technical knowledge of either philosophy or science, and as such it is an ideal introduction to science and the importantforces that have shaped its history and ideas. (shrink)

Jennifer Homsby; The Facts in Question: A Response to Dodd and to Candlish, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1, 1 June 1999, Pages 241–.

Unknowing is at the center of spiritual life. It is only by creating a space in which anything can happen that we allow God to speak; only by stepping back that we allow space for that unpredictable Spirit that brings us gifts beyond any of our imaginings.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 57-62 [Access article in PDF] Listening to People Or Listening to Prozac?Another Consideration of Causal Classifications Jennifer Hansen Keywords causal classification, descriptivism, melancholia, neurasthenia, depression, cultural relativism. The shape and detail of depression have gone through a thousand cartwheels, and the treatment of depression has alternated between the ridiculous and the sublime, but the excessive sleeping, inadequate eating, suicidiality, withdrawal from social (...) interaction, and relentless despair are all as old as the hill tribes, if not as old as the hills. In the years since man achieved the capacity for self-reference, shame has come and gone; treatments for bodily complaints have alternated and crossed with treatments for spiritual ones; pleas to external gods have echoed pleas to internal demons. To understand the history of depression is to understand the invention of human being as we now know and are him. Our Prozac-popping, cognitively focused, semi-alienated postmodernity is only a stage in the ongoing understanding and control of mood and character. (Solomon 2001, 286) ALTHOUGH ANDREW SOLOMON clearly believes that "the shape and detail of depression have gone through a thousand cartwheels," Jennifer Radden gives us pause before assuming that depression is just another name for Dame Melancholy. Solomon's claim depends on a deeper metaphysical claim about the nature of depression and its causes. The current method of psychiatric nosology, descriptivism, does not necessarily support equating melancholia and depression. Furthermore, it appears that adopting descriptivism as the sole method of classifying mental disorders commits us to cultural relativist psychiatry. Below I reconsider whether we want to rule out causal classifications and suggest that embracing both descriptivism and causal classifications offer us greater possibilities in understanding human illness and culture.Although the occasion for Jennifer Radden's essay is to investigate whether or not melancholia and depression refer to the same thing, her essay detours into a consideration of extra-descriptivist models of psychiatric illness versus the descriptivism of current psychiatric nosology. This detour turns out to be warranted; her purely academic question yields to a timelier question concerning the proper methodology for classifying mental disorders. Whereas debates about psychiatric nosology are perennial, the recent success of the new generation of antidepressants [End Page 57] is reviving biological psychiatry and its search for the neurochemical origins of depression. Hence, embedded in Radden's question concerning whether or not melancholia is the same thing as clinical depression, is another important question concerning the causes of mental illness, particularly depression.Currently, with its descriptivist approach, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) does not classify mental illness, such as clinical depression, based on underlying causes. The cluster of symptoms and behavioral signs that lead a clinician to diagnose one as depressed that are contained in either the DSM or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) may be too fuzzy or elusive to give any clear distinction between major depression, mild depression, and the blues. For example, one group of epidemiologists points out that [t]he DSM-III, DSM-III-R, and DSM-IV acknowledge that depression, like many mental disorders, has no currently obvious natural classes... If natural classes of depression exist, then their nosology awaits the discovery of distinct and reliable genetic, biological, clinical, or other predictors of risk, severity, or clinical course. Clinicians have a tradition of separating depressions into subtypes; however, this subtyping has not yet led to clear-cut delineations of syndromes in populations. (Kaelber 1995, 4) The evidence is still insufficient to establish the biological or psychological origins of depression. Although many theories exist that explain why people become depressed, scientifically we are not yet in a position to determine which is the right theory. From a pragmatic perspective, however, whether or not we know what causes depression, we can nonetheless attempt to alleviate suffering from depression. And it is with this goal in mind that the DSM-IV and ICD-10 classify mental disorders.Now, given that our current methodology for psychiatric nosology does not establish causes, it is also insufficient for determining what... (shrink)

Book synopsis: Today the majority of philosophers in the English-speaking world adhere to the “naturalist” credos that philosophy is continuous with science, and that the natural sciences provide a complete account of all that exists—whether human or nonhuman. The new faith says science, not man, is the measure of all things. However, there is a growing skepticism about the adequacy of this complacent orthodoxy. This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism not in the name of (...) some form of supernaturalism, but in order to defend a more inclusive or liberal naturalism. The many prominent Anglo-American philosophers appearing in this book—Akeel Bilgrami, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, John Dupré, Jennifer Hornsby, Erin Kelly, John McDowell, Huw Price, Hilary Putnam, Carol Rovane, Barry Stroud, and Stephen White—do not march in lockstep, yet their contributions demonstrate mutual affinities and various unifying themes. Instead of attempting to force human nature into a restricted scientific image of the world, these papers represent an attempt to place human nature at the center of renewed—but still scientifically respectful—conceptions of philosophy and nature. (shrink)

Dans L’Antre des Nymphes, Porphyre répartit en trois groupes les dieux et les lieux des sacrifices qui leur sont offerts. Une telle division est connue des chercheurs qui s’intéressent à la manière dont les Grecs pourraient avoir organisé le monde divin et ses interventions. Mais on a méconnu d’autres affirmations que Porphyre produit à ce sujet dans le traité Sur la philosophie tirée des oracles. Dans les fr. 314 et 315, Porphyre cite de longs extraits d’oracles dans lesquels Apollon répartit (...) les dieux et leurs sacrifices en trois groupes. Il restructure lui-même et justifie ces divisions. Même si Apollon propose plus de catégories que celles auxquelles nous sommes habitués, son approche suggère que la tendance à la catégorisation était plus commune dans la pensée des Anciens que ne l’a prétendu la recherche récente. On voit aussi que Porphyre fait en sorte de ramener les catégories d’Apollon à trois seulement. En conclusion, de telles observations peuvent nous aider à mieux saisir nos pratiques en tant qu’historiens des religions. (shrink)

This volume contains selections from the philosophical writings of James Frederick Ferrier. Ferrier was the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews between 1845 and 1864 and he was one of the earliest post-Hegelian British idealists. He develops a system of absolute idealism via a rejection of the Scottish school of common sense and Enlightenment philosophy in general. These selections focus on his primary philosophical interests: epistemology and ontology. Ferrier denies the possibility of a science of man (...) and suggests that philosophy should focus on self-consciousness, the defining feature of humanity. Jennifer Keefe is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. (shrink)

This edited collection sets forth a new understanding of aesthetic-moral judgment organised around three key concepts: pleasure, reflection, and accountability. The overarching theme is that art is not merely a representation or expression like any other, but that it promotes shared moral understanding and helps us engage in meaning-making. This volume offers an alternative to brain-centric and realist approaches to aesthetics. It features original essays from a number of leading philosophers of art, aesthetics, ethics, and perception, including Elizabeth Burns Coleman, (...) Garrett Cullity, Cynthia A. Freeland, Ivan Gaskell, Paul Guyer, Jane Kneller, Keith Lehrer, Mohan Matthen, Jennifer A. McMahon, Bence Nanay, Nancy Sherman, and Robert Sinnerbrink. Part I of the book analyses the elements of aesthetic experience— pleasure, preference, and imagination—with the individual conceived as part of a particular cultural context and network of other minds. The chapters in Part II explain how it is possible for cultural learning to impact these elements through consensus building, an impulse to objectivity, emotional expression, and reflection. Finally, the chapters in Part III converge on the role of dissonance, difference, and diversity in promoting cultural understanding and advancement. Social Aesthetics and Moral Judgment will appeal to philosophers of art and aesthetics, as well as to scholars in other disciplines interested in issues related to art and cultural exchange. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 63-66 [Access article in PDF] The Pragmatics of Psychiatry and the Psychiatry of Cross-Cultural Suffering Jennifer Radden I AM IN SUBSTANTIAL AGREEMENT with many of the conclusions David Brendel draws in his thoughtful discussion. Misleading language aside, I particularly applaud his use of my plea for ontological descriptivism to support clinical practice, which respects, as he puts it, the subjectively "melancholic" person (...) living behind the objectively "depressed" clinical presentation.Brendel offers two main critiques of my discussion about the relationship between today's depression and melancholia of past eras. First, he asserts that I neglect the relevance of causal reasoning in my preference for a descriptivist over a causal ontology. Second, arguing that pragmatic considerations ought to be, as he says, front and center when philosophers and psychiatrists "grapple with the complexities of psychiatric explanation," (Brendel 2003, 54) he questions what he sees as my too ready dismissal of pragmatism in this discussion. Allegiance to pragmatism seems to me to sit strangely with support for a causal ontology, as I shall try to demonstrate. But first let me comment on these two sides of Brendel's commentary.The case of Van Gogh's alleged melancholia is particularly well chosen because there has been continuing debate about Van Gogh's condition, including scholarly work attributing it to an inherited metabolic disorder (Arnold 1992). Brendel's suggestion that a causal ontology might allow us to use historical evidence to throw light on the relation between depression and melancholia is an interesting and fruitful one that I had overlooked. Brendel also holds hope for drug cartography as a means of determining the causes of mental disorders. I admit to the initial plausibility of the approach to classification employed by drug cartography, of course. Diagnostic maps must be evaluated according to their effectiveness for the purposes they serve, and cannot—or should not—be seen as mere descriptions of natural phenomena. And maps based on psychopharmacological effects will serve one of the most important purposes we can have in relation to mental disorders: their successful treatment. Nonetheless, as I indicated in my essay, there are conceptual limitations to drug cartography. That several different syndromes respond to the same drug is suggestive, but it does not tell us anything definitive about structural similarities or differences between those different disorders. Nor, from the fact that a condition is alleviated by drugs, does it follow that a particular brain state was the initiating cause of that condition.My dismissal of a pragmatic approach in the foregoing discussion may have been overly hasty. [End Page 63] But in trying to make good this omission, I find myself struck by the complexity of the task. There appear to be at least five different places where a pragmatic response might be called for: (1) in deciding what to say about the relationship between depression and melancholia; (2) in determining the structure of any given psychiatric classification; (3) in choosing between what I have called descriptivist and causal ontologies; (4) in electing a course or method of treatment in the clinical context; and (5) in evaluating psychiatric explanations.With regard to (1), I have sketched in a note one pragmatic consideration in favor of equating melancholia and depression: by so doing, we might reinvest depressive states with some of the glamorous associations from the past and so diminish the stigma and provide some compensation and consolation for the suffering attaching to depression. Pragmatic reasoning may be perfectly appropriate here. I beg to point out that pragmatic considerations let me neglect it.With regard to (2), I recognize that psychiatric classifications are not so much identifications of natural kinds as responses to our various purposes; indeed, this point is offered as one drawback of adopting a causal analysis, because there is little reason to expect our purposes, which are a product of culture, to correspond to natural arrangements, which are not.With regard to (3), if there were overriding pragmatic considerations that favored accepting one or the other of these ontologies, then perhaps this would be... (shrink)

""Serious philosophy is not an attempt to construct a system of beliefs, but the activity of awakening, the conversation passionately pursued. Only if professional philosophy reclaims this paradigm and finds ways to embody it, will it achieve an active place in the thought and life of our culture."" --James Conlon, ""Stanley Cavell and the Predicament of Philosophy."" This book is a collection of serious philosophical essays that aim to awaken readers, teachers, and students to a desire for conversation passionately pursued. (...) The essays in this volume speak about sex, movies, poetry, and politics, in short, about those things contemporary Americans passionately discuss. These are the subjects that were taught for forty-three years in James Conlon's classroom at Mount Mary University, a Catholic urban university for women in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This volume celebrates Conlon's work while calling to all who continue to teach and learn about philosophy in contemporary times with the message that relevant philosophy deals with life as it is lived in the moment. ""Dr. Conlon made it his life's work to bring to consciousness an often unconscious awareness that accepts the way things are as the measure of what is real, normative, and moral. His commitment to awakening people to the wonder of common experience made a profound contribution to the mission of Mount Mary. The essays in this volume are a testament to the way he engaged students in the process of living a fully human life."" --Joan Penzenstadler, SSND, Mount Mary University ""True to the spirit of Professor Conlon's teaching, this collection illustrates how his approach made philosophy a genuine dialogue, brought diverse viewpoints and perspectives to bear on any problem, and engaged generations of women in the philosophical conversation."" --Kathleen Poorman Dougherty, Alma College ""This collection of always thoughtful and often provocative essays by James Conlon, his colleagues, and students honors Conlon's decades-long career at Mount Mary University dedicated to teaching the practice of philosophy... Both new and experienced teachers of philosophy will find insights and inspiration in this volume!"" --Donna Engelmann, Alverno College ""Just in Time celebrates the work of the philosopher James Conlon. It also honors the pedagogy of inquiry that has had a profound impact on the students he taught for over 40 years. Conlon's essays are paired with ones from his students and colleagues--testaments to the influence that his teaching has had. Readers will be challenged to pursue passionate conversations and inspire others to engage in thoughtful inquiry about the relevant topics of today."" --Eileen Schwalbach, Former president, Mount Mary University Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Mary University. She is the author of Thinking Woman: A Philosophical Approach to the Quandary of Gender and the editor of The Devil's Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the Lutheran Tradition. James Conlon is Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus at Mount Mary University where he taught for forty-three years. He is the author of numerous philosophical articles. (shrink)

A fascinating survey of the forces that shape who we are and how we act-from the author of The Calculus Diaries Following her previous tours through the worlds of physics (Black Bodies and Quantum Cats) and calculus (The Calculus Diaries), acclaimed science writer Jennifer Ouellette now turns her attention to the mysteries of human identity and behavior with Me, Myself, and Why. She draws on genetics, neuroscience, and psychology-enlivened as always with her signature sense of humor and pop-culture references-to (...) explore how we become who we are. Ouellette lets readers in on her own surprising journey of self-discover, as she has her genome sequenced, her brain mapped, her personality typed, and even samples a popular hallucinogen. Bringing together everything from Mendel's famous pea plant experiments and mutations in The X-Men to our taste in food and our relationship with avatars and our online selves, Ouellette delivers another fun and enlightening work of popular science that's sure to be enjoyed by her many fans. (shrink)

Philosophers of language have long recognized that in opaque contexts, such as those involving propositional attitude reports, substitution of co-referring names may not preserve truth value. For example, the name ‘Clark Kent’ cannot be substituted for ‘Superman’ in a context like:1. Lois believes that Superman can flywithout a change in truth value. In an earlier paper, Jennifer Saul demonstrated that substitution failure could also occur in ‘simple sentences’ where none of the ordinary opacity-producing conditions existed, such as:2. Superman leaps (...) more tall buildings than Clark Kent does.Accounts focusing on opacity were unable to explain our ‘anti-substitution intuitions’ in such cases.In Simple Sentences, Substitution, and Intuitions, Saul extends her earlier work. She provides a comprehensive presentation and criticism of recent accounts of simple sentence substitution failure, and proposes a new approach drawing on psychological evidence about cognitive processing. Saul's purpose is not merely to solve the substitution puzzle cases, but to make …. (shrink)

A dramatic shift in British and French ideas about empire unfolded in the sixty years straddling the turn of the nineteenth century. As Jennifer Pitts shows in A Turn to Empire, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Jeremy Bentham were among many at the start of this period to criticize European empires as unjust as well as politically and economically disastrous for the conquering nations. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the most prominent British and French liberal thinkers, including John Stuart (...) Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, vigorously supported the conquest of non-European peoples. Pitts explains that this reflected a rise in civilizational self-confidence, as theories of human progress became more triumphalist, less nuanced, and less tolerant of cultural difference. At the same time, imperial expansion abroad came to be seen as a political project that might assist the emergence of stable liberal democracies within Europe. Pitts shows that liberal thinkers usually celebrated for respecting not only human equality and liberty but also pluralism supported an inegalitarian and decidedly nonhumanitarian international politics. Yet such moments represent not a necessary feature of liberal thought but a striking departure from views shared by precisely those late-eighteenth-century thinkers whom Mill and Tocqueville saw as their forebears. Fluently written, A Turn to Empire offers a novel assessment of modern political thought and international justice, and an illuminating perspective on continuing debates over empire, intervention, and liberal political commitments. (shrink)

Do epistemic intuitions tell us anything about knowledge? Stich has argued that we respond to cases according to our contingent cultural programming, and not in a manner that tends to reveal anything significant about knowledge itself. I’ve argued that a cross-culturally universal capacity for mindreading produces the intuitive sense that the subject of a case has or lacks knowledge. This paper responds to Stich’s charge that mindreading is cross-culturally varied in a way that will strip epistemic intuitions of their evidential (...) value. I argue that existing work on cross-cultural variation in mindreading favors my position over Stich’s. (shrink)

We applaud Gasper (2018) for reviewing five approaches to operationalizing neutral states. To supplement Gasper’s important contribution, we express the five neutral conditions at the appraisal level with the hope of clarifying their defining features and helping researchers to generate suitable neutral conditions.

Saul_Jennifer, Scepticism and Implicit Bias.

Against recent work by Haslanger and Leslie, I argue that we do not yet have good reason to think that we should single out generics about social groups out as peculiarly destructive, or that we should strive to eradicate them from our usage. Indeed, I suggest they continue to serve a very valuable purpose and we should not rush to condemn them.

Hurley’s is a difficult book to work through—partly because of its length and the complexity of its arguments, but also because each of the ten essays of which it is composed has a rather different starting point and focus, and because few of her arguments achieve real closure. Essay 2 discusses competing interpretations of Kant, essay 4 articulates nonconceptual forms of self-consciousness, essay 5 offers fresh interpretations of commissurotomy patients’ behavior, essay 6 develops an objection to Wittgenstein on rule following, (...) essay 8 attacks an alleged assumption of externalism, and chapter 10 explores the possibility of combining a “motor theory” and a “control theory” of perception. This is a very rich brew, and at least half the challenge this book presents consists in discerning its central argument and conclusion with enough precision to bring criticism to bear. (shrink)

Critical discourse analysis is a useful and productive qualitative methodology but has been underutilized within nursing research. In order to redress this deficiency the research presented in this article represents an exploration of the way in which critical discourse analysis may be applied to the analysis of public debates around policy for nursing practice. In this article the author discusses the history of the application of critical discourse analysis and provides an example of its application to the debate around the (...) use of nurse practitioners within the Australian healthcare system. (shrink)

This is a conversation held at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law, hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The conversation covers the claim made by Insole that Kant believes in God, but is not a Christian, the way in which reason itself is divine for Kant, and the suggestion that reading Kant can open up new possibilities for dialogue (...) between Christian thinkers and contemporary forms of secular religiosity. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy is one of the most distinctive achievements of the European Enlightenment. At its heart lies what Kant called the 'strange thing': the free, rational, human will. This introduction explores the basis of Kant's anti-naturalist, secular, humanist vision of the human good. Moving from a sketch of the Kantian will, with all its component parts and attributes, to Kant's canonical arguments for his categorical imperative, this introduction shows why Kant thought his moral law the best summary expression (...) of both his own philosophical work on morality and his readers' deepest shared convictions about the good. Kant's central tenets, key arguments, and core values are presented in an accessible and engaging way, making this book ideal for anyone eager to explore the fundamentals of Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

Jennifer Johnston’s fiction presents the conditions of Irish culture and society by exploring the separations between interior and exterior realms and past and present temporalities persisting within the insulating privacy of the familial home space. In _The Christmas Tree_ (1981), the home is both haven and prison for Johnston’s heroine. In this paper, I argue that the home—which assumes the form of the individual body and the familial home—is paradoxical. The protagonist leaves 1950s Ireland because of the country’s rigid (...) gender roles in order to pursue an autonomous life as a writer in England, but she is unable to publish her writing within the confines of the patriarchal publishing world. The home of her body becomes paradoxical when she becomes a single mother as an avenue for creativity but is then diagnosed with terminal cancer. She returns to her father’s home to die, which she re-orders and reclaims through the disorder of the uncanny—represented by her non-conformity and illness brought into the patriarchal home. By writing her life story and creating a brief, alternative maternal relationship with her young caretaker, the protagonist confronts her own ambivalence toward her parents, who also represent aspects of oppressive heteronormative gender expectations. (shrink)

Jennifer McKitrick offers an opinionated guide to the philosophy of dispositions. In her view, when an object has a disposition, it is such that, if a certain type of circumstance were to occur, a certain kind of event would occur. Since this is very common for this to be the case, dispositions are an abundant and diverse feature of our world.