This article explores the idea of Parliamentary sovereignty in British constitutional theory. Two general explanations for this idea are considered: firstly, that the existence of a sovereign entity is a conceptually necessary precondition for the existence of a state or constitution; secondly, that Parliament is sovereign, if it is, in virtue of a rule of recognition whose existence and content may be empirically determined. The former account, it is suggested, looms large in orthodox British constitutional theory but cannot be sustained. (...) Herbert Hart's version of the latter account is examined by reference to the decision in Jackson v Attorney General but is also found wanting. Given the inadequacy of these accounts, it is contended that the idea of Parliamentary sovereignty is misconceived. Building on insights in the work of Hart and Dworkin, it is argued that the British constitution instead rests on the ideal of government under law or the principle of legality. The putative value of legality, it is contended, will shape or control the many different principles that condition the exercise of official power. (shrink)

This review article examines Alison Young’s book, Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Human Rights Act. It focuses principally on the theoretical framework within which Young advances her many detailed arguments about the British constitution. In particular, it challenges Young’s contention that the powers of Parliament and courts can be explained by reference to an empirically determinable ‘legal fact’ (whether that ‘fact’ reflects Dicey’s theory of continuing parliamentary sovereignty or some other theory). The review article contends that there are insuperable evidential and (...) philosophical difficulties with this approach to British constitutional theory. In the light of these difficulties, it is argued that Young’s theory (and indeed any other constitutional theory) must be understood as a thoroughly normative account of the powers that Parliament and courts should have. (shrink)

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we (...) witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved. (shrink)

1. Animal Cruelty Industrial farming is appallingly abusive to animals. Pigs. In America, nine-tenths of pregnant sows live in “gestation crates. ” These pens are so small that the animals can barely move. When the sows are first crated, they may flail around, in an attempt to get out. But soon they give up. Crated pigs often show signs of depression: they engage meaningless, repetitive behavior, like chewing the air or biting the bars of the stall. The sows live like (...) this for four months. Gestation crates will be phased out in Europe by the end of 2012, but they will still be used in America.1 In nature, pigs nurse their young for about thirteen weeks. But in industrial farms, piglets are taken from their mothers after about ten days. Because the piglets are weaned prematurely, they develop a lifelong craving to suck and chew. But the farmers don’t want them sucking and chewing on other pigs’ tails. So the growers routinely snip off the tails of all their pigs. They do this with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. However, the whole tail is not removed; a tender stump remains. The point is to render the area sensitive, so the pigs being chewed on will fight back. Which they do.2 Over 113 million pigs are slaughtered each year in America.3 Typically, these pigs are castrated, their needle teeth are clipped, and one of their ears is notched for identification —all without pain relief.4 In nature, pigs spend up to three quarters of their waking hours foraging and exploring their environment.5 But in the factory farms, “tens of thousands of hogs spend their entire lives ignorant of earth or straw or sunshine, crowded together beneath a metal roof standing on metal slats suspended over a septic tank. ”6 Bored, and in constant pain, the pigs must perpetually inhale the fumes of their own waste. These pigs often get sick, and their ill health is exacerbated by the overcrowding. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture compared hog farms containing over 10,000 pigs—which is the norm—with farms containing under 2,000 pigs. (shrink)

Teaching research methods is especially challenging because we not only wish to convey formal knowledge and encourage critical thinking, as with any course, but also to enable our students dream up meaningful research projects, translate them into logical steps, conduct the research in a professional manner, analyze the data, and write up the project in APA style. We also wish to spark interest in the topics of research papers, and in the intellectual challenge of creating a research report, but we (...) have learned just how difficult these goals can be from teaching undergraduates and from serving as journal reviewers: many submissions contain flaws such as elementary errors of logic (e.g., using a null control condition instead of a placebo or dummy treatment), tangled statistics, a lack of graphs, and ungrammatical, unclear writing that violates APA rules. Yet these manuscripts are written by university faculty, often with doctorates and years of experience. Even published papers may contain egregious faults (Standing & McKelvie, 1986). And although we have both published widely, we still hone our skills. It requires optimism to expect that a typical undergraduate will do better, on the basis of just a year or two of studies in psychology. In this paper, we describe a systematic set of methodology courses and two specific practices that we think can help. Methodology Courses as the Backbone of our Psychology Program How can methodology courses promote undergraduate involvem... (shrink)

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Reissued in its revised 1866 second edition, this work by John Stuart Mill discusses the positivist views of the French philosopher and social scientist Auguste Comte. Comte is regarded as the founder of positivism, the doctrine that all knowledge must derive from sensory experience. The two-part text was originally printed as two articles in the Westminster Review in 1865. Part 1 offers an analysis of Comte's earlier works on positivism in the natural and social sciences, while Part 2 considers (...) its application in areas such as religion and ethics. Mill states that Comte is the first philosopher who has attempted to extend positivism 'to all objects of human knowledge'. Despite being critical of a number of Comte's views, such as the exclusion of psychology from positivist science, Mill acknowledges his fellow philosopher's influence in the face of common negative perceptions of the positivist movement. (shrink)

Working within the tradition of continental philosophy, this article argues in favour of a phenomenological understanding of language as a crucial component of bioethical inquiry. The authors challenge the ‘commonsense’ view of language, in which thinking appears as prior to speaking, and speech the straightforward vehicle of pre-existing thoughts. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's (1908–1961) phenomenology of language, the authors claim that thinking takes place in and through the spoken word, in and through embodied language. This view resituates bioethics as a (...) matter of bodies that speak. It also refigures the meaning of ethical self-reflexion, and in so doing offers an alternative view on reflexivity and critique. Referring to the Kantian critical tradition and its reception by Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault, we advance a position we call ‘critical ethical reflexivity’. We contend that Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of language offers valuable insight into ethical reflexivity and subject formation. Moreover, his understanding of language may foster new qualitative empirical research in bioethics, lead to more nuanced methods for interpreting personal narratives, and promote critical self-reflexion as necessary for bioethical inquiry. (shrink)

The concept of social structure is ill defined in the literature despite the perennial problem and ongoing discussion about the relationship between agency and structure. In this paper I will provide an outline of what the term social structure means, but my main focus will be on emphasizing the value of the concept for nursing research and demonstrate how its erasure in some research negatively effects on our understanding of the nurses' role in clinical practice. For example, qualitative research in (...) nursing has largely focused on agency through such theories as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and symbolic interactionism. The result is that social structure may be erased or seen as epiphenomena of agency. My purpose is to provide a theoretical discussion of social structure and how such a discussion can help us to understand how nurses live and experience clinical practice. While not denying the importance of agency, I will argue that the thinned out approach to social structure places limits on our understanding of the constraints nurses experience in their working lives. The result is that nurses' attitudes and clinical failings are individualized, resulting in ever more calls for improved education, when a more thorough examination of structural issues may elucidate more fundamental problems. (shrink)

This book intends to establish, against his numerous modern critics, that the ancient philosopher Parmenides was a mystic. Instead of arriving at his conclusions by cold reason, Parmenides found the unity of Being, which he called “the Truth,” by turning to a life of meditation.

We argue that the physics of complex materials and self-organizing processes should be made central to the biology of form. Rather than being encoded in genes, form emerges when cells and certain of their molecules mobilize physical forces, effects, and processes in a multicellular context. What is inherited from one generation to the next are not genetic programs for constructing organisms, but generative mechanisms of morphogenesis and pattern formation and the initial and boundary conditions for reproducing the specific traits of (...) a taxon. There is no inherent antagonism between this “physicalist” perspective and genetics, since physics acts on matter, and gene products are essential material components of living systems whose variability affects the systems’ parameters. We make this notion concrete by summarizing the concept of “dynamical patterning modules” (DPMs; Newman and Bhat, Phys Biol 5:1–14, 2008; Int J Dev Biol 53:693–705, 2009), an explicit physico-genetic framework for the origin and evolution of multicellular form in animals, as well as (when differences in interaction toolkit genes and applicable physical processes are taken into account) in multicellular plants (Hernández-Hernández et al., Int J Dev Biol 56:661–674, 2012). DPMs provide the missing link between development and evolution by revealing how genes acting in concert with physics can generate and transform morphology in a heritable fashion. (shrink)

In his article ‘The case against ethics review in the social sciences’, Schrag asserts that the social sciences should not be subject to ethical review. He recounts a number of examples where ethical review has seemingly failed. He further suggests some alternative models for dealing with ethical review in the social sciences. Finally, he concludes, and we concur, that there is a lack of empirical evidence as to the benefit of research ethics review.

From machine learning and computer vision to robotics and natural language processing, the application of data science and artificial intelligence is expected to transform health care (Ce...

Paul Thagard has recently argued that thought experiments are dangerous and misleading when we try to use them as evidence for claims. This paper refutes his skepticism. Building on Thagard’s own work in cognitive science, I suggest that Thagard has much that is positive to say about how thought experiments work. My last section presents some new directions for research on the intersection between thought experiments and cognitive science.

This paper explores a novel philosophy of ethical care in the face of burgeoning biomedical technologies. I respond to a serious challenge facing traditional bioethics with its roots in analytic philosophy. The hallmarks of these traditional approaches are reason and autonomy, founded on a belief in the liberal humanist subject. In recent years, however, there have been mounting challenges to this view of human subjectivity, emerging from poststructuralist critiques, such as Michel Foucault's, but increasingly also as a result of advances (...) in biotechnology itself. In the face of these developments, I argue that the theoretical relevance and practical application of mainstream bioethics is increasingly under strain. Traditionalists will undoubtedly resist. Together, professional philosopher-bioethicists, public health policymakers, and the global commercial healthcare industry tend to respond conservatively by shoring up the liberal humanist subject as the foundation for medical ethics and consumer decision-making, appealing to the familiar tropes of reason, autonomy, and freedom. (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

Would it be good, other things being equal, for additional people to exist whose lives would be worth living? I examine and reject several arguments for the answer that it would not be good; then I offer opposing arguments that I believe are more successful. Thus, I agree with utilitarians who say that it is better for there to be more happy people. Next I argue for the stronger claim that the happiness of potential people is as important as that (...) of adults. Potential quality of life, then, matters in a host of bioethical issues: abortion, commercial surrogacy, the treatment of defective newborns, and so on. What is the practical upshot of all this? I reject the idea that we must do whatever is necessary to prolong life worth living. But I also reject the view that the side‐effects of overpopulation always outweigh the value of realizing potential happiness. So I advocate a middle position, which I do not identify precisely. Even from this middle position, however, potential happiness is more important than is commonly assumed in bioethics. (shrink)

Significant inequalities in health between and within countries have been measured over the past decades. Although these inequalities, as well as attempts to improve sub-standard health, raise profound issues of social justice and the right to health, those working in the field of bioethics have historically tended to devote greater attention to ethical issues raised by new, cutting-edge biotechnologies such as life-support cessation, genomics, stem cell research or face transplantation. This suggests that bioethics research and scholarship may revolve around issues (...) that, while fascinating and important, currently affect only a small minority of the world's population. In this article, we examine the accusation that bioethics is largely dominated by Anglophone and industrialized world interests, and explore what kinds of positive contributions a 'bioethics from below' (as Paul Farmer calls it) can make to the field of bioethics in general. As our guide in this exploration, we make use of some experiences and lessons learned in our collaborative bioethics project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Building Bioethics Capacity and Justice in Health. We conclude that while there is some evidence of increased attention to bioethical challenges in developing countries, this development should be further cultivated, because it could help expand the horizons of the field and enhance its social relevance wherever it is practiced. (shrink)

This paper will explore the relationship between Mezirow's concept of reflexivity and Bourdieu's theory of habitus in order to develop a more robust framework within which critical reflection can take place. Nurse educators have sought to close the theory practice gap through the use of critical reflection. However, we are not convinced that this has produced the depth and quality of reflection required. Furthermore, the contexts in which critical reflection takes place is often sidelined or erased so that the whole (...) impetus in the literature is to educate nurses in reflection rather than empower nurses to understand the complex circumstances and barriers that obstruct critical reflection. This paper argues that the reason for this position is that nurse education does not always acknowledge the role that personal and cultural values systems have on reflective practices. The literature search was undertaken using CINHAL and MEDLINE. Keywords included: values systems, habitus, and critical reflection. Inclusion criteria were determined by the theoretical approach and included seminal texts, from as far back as 1956, to identify key themes. Although critical reflection is a potentially powerful way of enhancing care it has often failed to do so. It is suggested that this is because nurse educators have frequently used models of reflection without considering the impact that student's personal values systems has on their perceptions of care and subsequently care delivery. The purpose of this paper is to promote deeper levels of reflection and is part of a programme of research aimed at developing a more robust approach to reflection in educational practice. (shrink)

Newborn screening is the programme through which newborn babies are screened for a variety of conditions shortly after birth. Programmes such as this are individually oriented but resemble traditional public health programmes because they are targeted at large groups of the population and they are offered as preventive interventions to a population considered healthy. As such, an ethical tension exists between the goals of promoting the high uptake of supposedly ‘effective’ population-oriented programmes and the goal of promoting genuinely informed decision-making. (...) There is, however, a lack of understanding with regard to how parents experience the tension between promoting uptake and facilitating informed choice. This paper addresses this issue, and data are presented to show how aspects of the timing, presentation of information and procedural routinisation of newborn screening serves to impact on the decisions made by parents. (shrink)

A layman's guide to the mechanics of Gödel's proof together with a lucid discussion of the issues which it raises. Includes an essay discussing the significance of Gödel's work in the light of Wittgenstein's criticisms.

During vertebrate limb development, various genes of the Hox family, the products of which influence skeletal element identity, are expressed in specific spatiotemporal patterns in the limb bud mesenchyme. At the same time, the cells also exhibit ‘self‐organizing’ behavior – interacting with each other via extracellular matrix and cell‐cell adhesive molecules to form the arrays of mesenchymal condensations that lead to the cartilaginous skeletal primordia. A recent study by Yokouchi et al.(1) establishes a connection between these phenomena. They misexpressed the (...) product of the Hoxa‐13 gene in chick limb buds and demonstrated both skeletal pattern perturbations and changes in cell‐cell adhesivity in mesenchyme aberrantly expressing this protein. (shrink)

Our understanding of Locke’s theory of ideas is stymied by his reticence about what he means by ‘idea’. I attempt to work around the problem by focusing on some neglected questions that afford us a better picture of his theory. I ask not what his ideas are, but what kinds of states or episodes he counts as someone’s having an idea, and what is involved in having simple and complex ideas. I argue that although we can make sense of much (...) of what he says about having simple and complex ideas, he is muddled about simplicity and complexity. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

The UK has a long established programme of newborn bloodspot screening. This operates under a model of informed choice. Understanding is central to the `informed’ element of an informed choice yet it is rarely assessed. To date most research within the context of newborn bloodspot screening has focussed on parental recall of information. In this paper I argue that simplistic assessments of knowledge through recall fail to reflect more complex notions of understanding. In support of this contention I draw on (...) qualitative interviews with parents of children who have undergone newborn bloodspot screening. (shrink)

With the advent of new AIDS treatment initiatives such as the World Health Organization's “3 by 5” program and the United States' “President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” the ethical questions about AIDS care in the developing world have changed. No longer are they fundamentally about the conduct of research; now, we must turn our attention to developing treatment programs. In particular, we must think about how to spread limited treatment resources among the vast reservoir of people who need them.

This book investigates the debates around religion and science at the influential Victoria Institute. Founded in London in 1865, and largely drawn from the evangelical wing of the Church of England, it had as its prime objective the defence of 'the great truths revealed in Holy Scripture' from 'the opposition of science, falsely so called'. The conflict for them was not between science and religion directly, but rather what exactly constituted true science Chapters cover the Victoria Institute's formation, its heyday (...) in the late Nineteenth Century, and its decline in the years following the First World War. They show that at stake was more than any particular theory; rather, it was an entire worldview, combining theology, epistemology, and philosophy of science. Therefore, instead of simply offering a survey of religious responses to evolutionary theory, this study demonstrates the complex relationship between science, evangelical religion, and society in the years after Darwin's Origin of Species. It also offers some insight as to why conservative evangelicals did not display the militancy of some American fundamentalists with whom they shared so many of their intellectual commitments. Filling in a significant gap in the literature around modern attitudes to religion and science, this book will be of keen interest to scholars of Religious Studies, the History of Religion, and Science and Religion. (shrink)

The Victoria Institute was established in London in 1865. Although billed as an anti-evolutionary organization, and stridently anti-Darwinian in its rhetoric, it spent relatively little time debating the theory of natural selection. Instead, it served as a haven for a specific set of intellectual commitments. Most important among these was the Baconian scientific methodology, which prized empiricism and induction, and was suspicious of speculation. Darwin's use of hypotheses meant that the Victoria Institute members were unconvinced that his work was truly (...) scientific, but even more concerning for them was the specter of biblical criticism. This approach to biblical studies incorporated techniques from literary criticism, treating it as any other document. Since it also relied on hypotheses, the Victoria Institute members were similarly skeptical that biblical criticism was scientific, and spent much of their time attempting to refute it. In this way, they functioned as an incubator for the concerns that would animate the fundamentalist–modernist controversies of the early twentieth century. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1918, Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West has been the object of academic controversy and opprobrium. In their efforts to dispose of it, scholars have resorted to a variety of tactics: bitter invective, icy scorn, urbane mockery, or simply pretending that the book is not there. Yet generations of readers have refused to be warned off, finding in Spengler a prophetic voice and a source of profound intellectual excitement. H. Stuart Hughes's Oswald Spengler offers (...) a judicious and objective reading of Spengler's works that admirably fills the gap between hypercritical invective and naive enthusiasm. This pioneering volume makes clear why Spengler's pessimistic reading of the fate of European civilization continues to resonate with contemporary anxieties. Despite the author's self-imposed intellectual and social isolation, Spengler's work was as Hughes demonstrates, a part of the enormous effort of intellectual reevaluation that has characterized the early twentieth century. Viewing Spengler in the broadest possible perspective, the author places his thought in its cultural relationship to that of such predecessors as Giambattista Vico, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Nikolai Danilevsky and contemporaries including Benedetto Croce, Henri Bergson, and Vilfredo Pareto. A chapter of Hughes's book is devoted to Spengler's influence on later cyclical thinkers such as Arnold Toynbee and Pitirim Sorokin. Another chapter clarifies the essentially antagonistic relationship between his thought and Nazi ideology. Throughout, Hughes is carefully attuned to the complex and often bewildering shifts of Spengler's ideas and manner, providing a unified picture of the sober historian; the lofty seer; the cool, detached observer; and the impassioned participant. In his introduction to this new edition, Hughes comments on the timeliness of Spengler's message with respect to technology and environmental issues and draws some unexpected and fascinating parallels between Spengler's thought and that of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Oswald Spengler offers an illuminating view of the achievements and limitations of one of the most influential and representative figures of the twentieth century. It will be of concern to intellectual historians, philosophers, political scientists, and sociologists. (shrink)