Little is known about the aims and impact of university-based ethics centers. Less is known about how centers leverage their unique campus positions to engage undergraduates in transformative ethics education. This article provides a foundation for future research on university-based ethics centers. First, this article addresses the history of ethics education in higher education, the rise of university ethics centers, and the factors necessary for successful ethics programs. Next, this piece shows the geographic distribution of ethics centers and which centers (...) provide undergraduate-focused ethics education. Finally, this article enables future research on effective ethics center structure, leadership, and outreach. (shrink)

Little is known about the aims and impact of university-based ethics centers. Less is known about how centers leverage their unique campus positions to engage undergraduates in transformative ethics education. This article provides a foundation for future research on university-based ethics centers. First, this article addresses the history of ethics education in higher education, the rise of university ethics centers, and the factors necessary for successful ethics programs. Next, this piece shows the geographic distribution of ethics centers and which centers (...) provide undergraduate-focused ethics education. Finally, this article enables future research on effective ethics center structure, leadership, and outreach. (shrink)

In recent years there has been increased focus on supporting the safety and wellbeing of children and young people with disability. This paper reports on a study that asked children and young people with disability and adults who work with them about practices that support their wellbeing and safety, including barriers and enablers to ethical practice. We used the theory of practice architectures to unpack the practices. Findings point to a range of practices that both young people and adults regarded (...) as important in creating the cultural conditions for young people to feel happy, safe and well, albeit placing different emphases on particular practices. Several tensions within and between these practices and the evolving requirements of disability and safeguarding policy environments were also apparent. While often not well articulated, the inherent tensions have implications when considering what children and young people need, particularly those with higher support needs. Findings suggest closer attention needs to be given to the intersection between individual and systemic factors in shaping ethical practice aimed at supporting the wellbeing and safety of children and young people with disability. (shrink)

The ‘Ordinary Language’ philosophy of the early 20th century is widely thought to have failed. It is identified with the broader so-called ‘linguistic turn’, a common criticism of which is captured by Devitt and Sterelny (1999), who quip: “When the naturalistic philosopher points his finger at reality, the linguistic philosopher discusses the finger.” (p 280) The implication is that according to ‘linguistic’ philosophy, we are not to study reality or truth or morality etc, but the meaning of the words ‘reality’, (...) ‘truth’, ‘morality’ etc. Ordinary Language philosophy has fallen so thoroughly into disrepute because it is supposed to advocate that not only are we to study words and meanings rather than the phenomena themselves (which is apparently bad enough), but we must restrict that study to words and meanings as they occur in the language used by the ordinary speaker. A number of preposterous corollaries have been taken to follow from this view. Most seriously, perhaps, and irritatingly, is that any theory which contains ‘non-ordinary’ uses of expressions is thereby ‘meaningless’ or simply false – which is clearly absurd. In this paper I show that this is a completely inaccurate picture of Ordinary Language philosophy. My aim is to correct these persistent misinterpretations, and make possible a more sensible reassessment of the philosophy. (shrink)

RIGHT TO SILENCE-UK, U.S, FRANCE, and GERMANY SALLY RAMAGE (TRADE MARK REGISTERED) WIPO Orchid ID 0000-0002-8854-4293 Pages 2-30 Current Criminal Law, Volume 1, Issue 2, ABSTRACT The privilege of the right to silence can be traced back to the 12th century, becoming more developed in later centuries. -/- Table of cases European Court of Human Rights Deweer v Belgium [1980], Eckle v Germany [1982], DN v The Netherlands [1975], Funke v France [1993] 16 EHRR 297, JP v Austria [1989], (...) Kansal v UK [2003] Application No 21413/02 Khan v UK [2000] 31 EHRR 45, Saunders v UK [1997] 23 EHRR 313, Schenk v Switzerland [1991] 13 EHRR 242, and Tora Tolmos v Spain [1995] Table of Cases United Kingdom Brown v Procurator Fiscal, Dunfermline, [2000] , The Times, Feb 14, High Ct Scot.; HM Advocate v Friel [1978] SLT; Lambe v Munster [1882] 10 QBD 110.; Pearse v Pearse [1846] Eng Rep 950 (on truth); Re Pantmaenog Timber Co Ltd [2003] HL; R v Bryce [1992] 95 Cr App Rep 320; R v Canale [1990] 2 All ER 187; R v Fitzpatrick [1995] 4 SCR 154; R v Herbert [1990] 2 SCR 151; R V Hertfordshire County Council, ex parte Green Environmental Industries and another [2000] 1 All ER 773; R v Keenan [1989] Crim LR 720; R v Maguire [1990] Cr App Rep 115; R v Pound, Green and ors [2004]; R v Sang [1979] Crim LR 655; R v Saunders [1986] unreported; R v Seelig, R v Spens [1991] CA; R v Smith [1992] 95 Cr App. R. 191; R v Steen and ors [2003] unreported; R v Walsh [1981] CrimLR 822; R V Ward 96 Cr App R [1993]; R v Weekes [1993] Crim LR 211; R v White [1999] 2 SCR 417; R v Young [2003] unreported; Thompson Newspaper v Canada [1990] 1 SCR 425; Walsh Automation (Europe) Ltd v Bridgeman and ors [2002] EWHC 1344 QB France-Law France 1789 Declaration des driots de l‟homme et du citoyen 1808 Code d ‟instruction criminelle 1946 Constitution 1958 Code de procedure penale 2000 Penal Code Germany-Law Germany 1871 Criminal Code 1877 Criminal Procedure Code (St PO) 1877 Judicial Organisation Law 1949 Constitution 1975 Criminal Code 1998 Criminal Code Table of Cases Germany Germany BGH Admissibility of secret tape recordings judgement 14 June 1960, in BGHSt 14, 358 BGH Lie detector judgement 16 Feb 1954, in BGHSt 5, 332. BberfG Decision concerning the applicability of ne bis in idem 31 March 1987, in BberfGE 75,1; BGH Sweeping deception of suspect judgement 24 August 1988, in BGHSt 36, 328. BGH Judgement 24 August 1993, in BGHSt 39, 305 Table of Cases United States United States of America California v Byres [1971] 402 U.S. 424; Fisher v United States 475 U.S. 391 [1986]; Griffin v California [1965] 380 US 609 [; Hoffman v United States [1950] 341 U.S. 479; Supreme Court Baldwin v NY, 399 US 143 [1970]; Supreme Court Chavez v Martinez , U.S. 123 [2003]; Supreme Court Doyle v Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 [1976]; Supreme Court Escobedo v Illinois, 378 U.S. 478 [1964]; Supreme Court Giglio v US, 405 U.S. 150 [1972] Supreme Court Harris v NY, 401 U.S. 222 [1971]; Supreme Court Kirby v Illinois, 406 U.S. 682 [1972]; Supreme Court Miranda v Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 [1966]; Supreme Court Moore v Illinois, 408 U.S. 768 [1972]; Supreme Court Moran v Burbine, 475 U.S. [1986]; Supreme Court Orzoco v Texas, 324 U.S.24 [1969]; Supreme Court US v Hale [1975] 422 US 17; Supreme Court US v Leon, 468 U.S. 897 [1984]; Supreme Court US v Salerno, 481 U.S. 739 [1987]; Twining v New Jersey 211 US 78 113 -/- . (shrink)

RIGHT TO SILENCE-UK, U.S, FRANCE, and GERMANY SALLY RAMAGE (TRADE MARK REGISTERED) WIPO Orchid ID 0000-0002-8854-4293 Pages 2-30 Current Criminal Law, Volume 1, Issue 2, -/- Sally Ramage, BA (Hons), MBA, LLM, MPhil, MCIJ, MCMI, DA., ASLS, BAWP. Orchid ID 0000-0002-8854-4293 Publisher & Managing Editor Criminal Lawyer series [1980-2022](ISSN 2049-8047) Current Criminal Law series [2008-2022] (ISSN 1758-8405) and Criminal Law News series [2008-2022] (ISSN 1758-8421). Sweet & Maxwell (Thomson Reuters) (Licensed Annotator of UK Statutes) in annual law books (...) Current Law Statutes Annotated, (2006, 2009, 2010 editions) (sole and separate S&M contracts) for 7 UK Criminal Justice Statutes: UK Safeguarding Vulnerable Persons Act 2006; UK International Development Act 2006; UK Fraud Act 2006; UK Policing and Crime Act 2009, UK Local Democracy Act 2009; UK Bribery Act 2010; and UK Crime and Security Act 2010. TradeMark SALLY RAMAGE ® (2005-2025) in the UK, 2401827; WIPO TradeMark SALLY RAMAGE® 900614; USA TradeMark 3,440,910) (2008-2028). WARNING: The doing of an unauthorized act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution. -/- ABSTRACT The privilege of the right to silence can be traced back to the 12th century, becoming more developed in later centuries. -/- Table of cases European Court of Human Rights Deweer v Belgium [1980], Eckle v Germany [1982], DN v The Netherlands [1975], Funke v France [1993] 16 EHRR 297, JP v Austria [1989], Kansal v UK [2003] Application No 21413/02 Khan v UK [2000] 31 EHRR 45, Saunders v UK [1997] 23 EHRR 313, Schenk v Switzerland [1991] 13 EHRR 242, and Tora Tolmos v Spain [1995] Table of Cases United Kingdom Brown v Procurator Fiscal, Dunfermline, [2000] , The Times, Feb 14, High Ct Scot.; HM Advocate v Friel [1978] SLT; Lambe v Munster [1882] 10 QBD 110.; Pearse v Pearse [1846] Eng Rep 950 (on truth); Re Pantmaenog Timber Co Ltd [2003] HL; R v Bryce [1992] 95 Cr App Rep 320; R v Canale [1990] 2 All ER 187; R v Fitzpatrick [1995] 4 SCR 154; R v Herbert [1990] 2 SCR 151; R V Hertfordshire County Council, ex parte Green Environmental Industries and another [2000] 1 All ER 773; R v Keenan [1989] Crim LR 720; R v Maguire [1990] Cr App Rep 115; R v Pound, Green and ors [2004]; R v Sang [1979] Crim LR 655; R v Saunders [1986] unreported; R v Seelig, R v Spens [1991] CA; R v Smith [1992] 95 Cr App. R. 191; R v Steen and ors [2003] unreported; R v Walsh [1981] CrimLR 822; R V Ward 96 Cr App R [1993]; R v Weekes [1993] Crim LR 211; R v White [1999] 2 SCR 417; R v Young [2003] unreported; Thompson Newspaper v Canada [1990] 1 SCR 425; Walsh Automation (Europe) Ltd v Bridgeman and ors [2002] EWHC 1344 QB France-Law France 1789 Declaration des driots de l‟homme et du citoyen 1808 Code d ‟instruction criminelle 1946 Constitution 1958 Code de procedure penale 2000 Penal Code Germany-Law Germany 1871 Criminal Code 1877 Criminal Procedure Code (St PO) 1877 Judicial Organisation Law 1949 Constitution 1975 Criminal Code 1998 Criminal Code Table of Cases Germany Germany BGH Admissibility of secret tape recordings judgement 14 June 1960, in BGHSt 14, 358 BGH Lie detector judgement 16 Feb 1954, in BGHSt 5, 332. BberfG Decision concerning the applicability of ne bis in idem 31 March 1987, in BberfGE 75,1; BGH Sweeping deception of suspect judgement 24 August 1988, in BGHSt 36, 328. BGH Judgement 24 August 1993, in BGHSt 39, 305 Table of Cases United States United States of America California v Byres [1971] 402 U.S. 424; Fisher v United States 475 U.S. 391 [1986]; Griffin v California [1965] 380 US 609 [; Hoffman v United States [1950] 341 U.S. 479; Supreme Court Baldwin v NY, 399 US 143 [1970]; Supreme Court Chavez v Martinez , U.S. 123 [2003]; Supreme Court Doyle v Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 [1976]; Supreme Court Escobedo v Illinois, 378 U.S. 478 [1964]; Supreme Court Giglio v US, 405 U.S. 150 [1972] Supreme Court Harris v NY, 401 U.S. 222 [1971]; Supreme Court Kirby v Illinois, 406 U.S. 682 [1972]; Supreme Court Miranda v Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 [1966]; Supreme Court Moore v Illinois, 408 U.S. 768 [1972]; Supreme Court Moran v Burbine, 475 U.S. [1986]; Supreme Court Orzoco v Texas, 324 U.S.24 [1969]; Supreme Court US v Hale [1975] 422 US 17; Supreme Court US v Leon, 468 U.S. 897 [1984]; Supreme Court US v Salerno, 481 U.S. 739 [1987]; Twining v New Jersey 211 US 78 113 -/- . (shrink)

?On or about XX1100XXX2009? I arrived at Compound XX, TIF Defender, Camp Bucca Iraq and discovered that SFC XXXX and CPL XXXX had, in contravention of standard operating procedure and the requirements of Combined Joint Task Force 134 General Orders, entered Compound XX without first securing all detainees in the Salat, and walked to the rear fenceline through the occupied Compound, many times within deadspace [outside the] guard force's line of sight, and back through the sally port.1 SFC XXXX (...) and CPL XXXX were unmolested during this entry. No prior coordination was performed with the other members of the guard force, other than PFC XXXX who was ordered by SFC XXXX to open the sally port to allow entry. SFC XXXX and CPL XXXX were in a Compound occupied at the time by approximately 1038 Iraqi Security Detainees, and could have been harmed or taken hostage with little warning, leaving the guard force few options other than to attempt to defend SFC XXXX and CPL XXXX by lethal means, as these were the only weapons available that had the range and accuracy required? (shrink)

This paper provides an account of social practices that reveals how they are constitutive of social agency, enable coordination around things of value, and are a site for social intervention. The social world, on this account, does not begin when psychologically sophisticated individuals interact to share knowledge or make plans. Instead, culture shapes agents to interpret and respond both to each other and the physical world around us. Practices shape us as we shape them. This provides resources for understanding why (...) social practices tend to be stable, but also reveals sites and opportunities for change. (shrink)

In this collection of previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory and on the resources of contemporary analytic philosophy to develop the idea that gender and race are positions ...

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

It is always awkward when someone asks me informally what I’m working on and I answer that I’m trying to figure out what gender is. For outside a rather narrow segment of the academic world, the term ‘gender’ has come to function as the polite way to talk about the sexes. And one thing people feel pretty confident about is their knowledge of the difference between males and females. Males are those human beings with a range of familiar primary and (...) secondary sex characteristics, most important being the penis; females are those with a different set, most important being the vagina or, perhaps, the uterus. Enough said. Against this background, it isn’t clear what could be the point of an inquiry, especially a philosophical inquiry, into “what gender is”. (shrink)

A philosophically useful account of social structure must accommodate the fact that social structures play an important role in structural explanation. But what is a structural explanation? How do structural explanations function in the social sciences? This paper offers a way of thinking about structural explanation and sketches an account of social structure that connects social structures with structural explanation.

I’ll start by giving a very brief summary of Sider’s position and will identify some points on which my own position differs from his. I’ll then raise four issues, viz., how to articulate the 3-dimensionalist view, the trade-offs between Ted’s stage view of persistence and endurance with respect to intrinsic properties, the endurantist’s response to the argument from vagueness, and finally more general questions about what’s at stake in the debate. I don’t believe that anything I say raises insurmountable problems (...) for Sider’s view; and in fact, I’m sure he’s in a better position to defend his view more convincingly than I’m able to defend mine. However, there is plenty worth discussing further. (shrink)

The authoranalyzes the types of metaphors that are used to describe the Internetin issues of Wired magazine from before and after the dot-com collapse to understand the perceptions and expectations of some of the actors involved in the shaping of the Internet. In addition, the metaphors deployed in economics and geophysiology are used to demonstrate how metaphors can influence public debate, policy, and theory. The author argues that metaphors do not simply have a descriptive function but that they also carry (...) normative connotations. Language, alongside social practices and material objects, is an important tool in attempts to construct the future. Six overlapping metaphorical themes are identified: revolution, evolution, salvation, progress, universalism, and the “American dream.” A critical analysis of these metaphors, informed by a critique of the metaphors used in economics and geophysiology, leads the author to challenge the universalist claims made by some Internet enthusiasts for the inclusive potential of the Internet. (shrink)

Racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice are more than just bad attitudes; after all, such injustice involves unfair distributions of goods and resources. But attitudes play a role. How central is that role? Tommie Shelby, among others, argues that racism is an ideology and takes a cognitivist approach suggesting that ideologies consist in false beliefs that arise out of and serve pernicious social conditions. In this paper I argue that racism is better understood as a set of practices, attitudes, (...) social meanings, and material conditions, that systematically reinforce one another. Attitudes play a role, but even the cognitive/affective component of ideologies should include culturally shared habits of mind and action. These habits of mind distort, obscure, and occlude important facts about subordinated groups and result in a failure to recognize their interests. How do we disrupt such practices to achieve greater justice? I argue that this is sometimes, but not always, best achieved by argument or challenging false beliefs, so social movements legitimately seek other means. (shrink)

This study investigated the link between meditation, self-reported mindfulness and cognitive flexibility as well as other attentional functions. It compared a group of meditators experienced in mindfulness meditation with a meditation-naïve control group on measures of Stroop interference and the “d2-concentration and endurance test”. Overall the results suggest that attentional performance and cognitive flexibility are positively related to meditation practice and levels of mindfulness. Meditators performed significantly better than non-meditators on all measures of attention. Furthermore, self-reported mindfulness was higher in (...) meditators than non-meditators and correlations with all attention measures were of moderate to high strength. This pattern of results suggests that mindfulness is intimately linked to improvements of attentional functions and cognitive flexibility. The relevance of these findings for mental balance and well-being are discussed. (shrink)

The False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3729, a post-Civil War law inspired by cases of defense contracting fraud, was revitalized in 1986. Since then it has been used to sue both manufacturers and providers of pharmaceuticals. In some cases, these suits were meant to target offlabel marketing of pharmaceuticals. In 2009, the 11th Circuit rendered a decision in Hopper v. Solvay Pharmaceuticals that dramatically limits the ability of private plaintiff whistle-blowers to bring qui tam suits under the FCA for (...) such marketing. In June 2010, the Supreme Court denied certiorari, making the Circuit court decision final. The Solvay decision creates a significant barrier to certain kinds of qui tam suits, requiring the plaintiff to demonstrate the intent to market off-label, including by showing specific prescriptions that were written as a result of efforts to do so. (shrink)

Across the humanities and social sciences it has become commonplace for scholars to argue that categories once assumed to be “natural” are in fact “social” or, in the familiar lingo, “socially constructed”. Two common examples of such categories are race and gender, but there many others. One interpretation of this claim is that although it is typically thought that what unifies the instances of such categories is some set of natural or physical properties, instead their unity rests on social features (...) of the items in question. Social constructionists pursuing this strategy—and it is these social constructionists I will be focusing on in this paper—aim to “debunk” the ordinary assumption that the categories are natural, by revealing the more accurate social basis of the classification.2 To avoid confusion, and to resist some of the associations with the term ‘social construction’, I will sometimes use the term ‘socially founded’ for the categories that this sort of constructionist reveals as social rather than natural. (shrink)

Recent work on social injustice has focused on implicit bias as an important factor in explaining persistent injustice in spite of achievements on civil rights. In this paper, I argue that because of its individualism, implicit bias explanation, taken alone, is inadequate to explain ongoing injustice; and, more importantly, it fails to call attention to what is morally at stake. An adequate account of how implicit bias functions must situate it within a broader theory of social structures and structural injustice; (...) changing structures is often a precondition for changing patterns of thought and action and is certainly required for durable change. (shrink)

Theorists analyzing the concepts of race and gender disagree over whether the terms refer to natural kinds, social kinds, or nothing at all. The question arises: what do we mean by the terms? It is usually assumed that ordinary intuitions of native speakers are definitive. However, I argue that contemporary semantic externalism can usefully combine with insights from Foucauldian genealogy to challenge mainstream methods of analysis and lend credibility to social constructionist projects.

This essay proposes a design perspective on argumentation, intended as complementary to empirical and critical scholarship. In any substantive domain, design can provide insights that differ from those provided by scientific or humanistic perspectives. For argumentation, the key advantage of a design perspective is the recognition that humanity’s natural capacity for reason and reasonableness can be extended through inventions that improve on unaided human intellect. Historically, these inventions have fallen into three broad classes: logical systems, scientific methods, and disputation frameworks. (...) Behind each such invention is a specifiable “design hypothesis”: an idea about how to decrease error or how to increase the quality of outcomes from reasoning. As problems in contemporary argumentation practice become more complex, design thinking rises in relevance and importance. A design research agenda in argumentation would focus on theorizing design innovations and on evaluating design hypotheses. (shrink)

Much contemporary social epistemology takes as its starting point individuals with sophisticated propositional attitudes and considers (i) how those individuals depend on each other to gain (or lose) knowledge through testimony, disagreement, and the like and (ii) if, in addition to individual knowers, it is possible for groups to have knowledge. In this paper I argue that social epistemology should be more attentive to the construction of knowers through social and cultural practices: socialization shapes our psychological and practical orientation so (...) that we perform local social practices fluently. Connecting practical orientation to an account of ideology, I argue that to ignore the ways in which cognition is socially shaped and filtered is to allow ideology to do its work unnoticed and unimpeded. Moreover, ideology critique cannot simply challenge belief, but must involve challenges to those practices through which we ourselves become the vehicles and embodiments of ideology.V. (shrink)

Self-reported data are regarded by medical researchers as invalid and less reliable than data produced by experts in clinical settings, yet individuals can increasingly contribute personal information to medical research through a variety of online platforms. In this article we examine this ‘participatory turn’ in healthcare research, which claims to challenge conventional delineations of what is valid and reliable for medical practice, by using aggregated self-reported experiences from patients and ‘pre-patients’ via the internet. We focus on 23andMe, a genetic testing (...) company that collects genetic material and self-reported information about disease from its customers. Integral to this research method are relations of trust embedded in the information exchange: trust in customers’ data; trust between researchers/company and research subjects; trust in genetics; trust in the machine. We examine the performative dimension of these trust relations, drawing on Shapin and Schaffer’s discussion of how material, literary and social technologies are used in research in order to establish trust. Our scepticism of the company’s motives for building trust with the self-reporting consumer forces us to consider our own motives. How does the use of customer data for research purposes by 23andMe differ from the research practices of social scientists, especially those who also study digital traces? By interrogating the use of self-reported data in the genetic testing context, we examine our ethical responsibilities in studying the digital selves of others using internet methods. How researchers trust data, how participants trust researchers, and how technologies are trusted are all important considerations in studying the social life of digital data. (shrink)

How do we achieve social justice? How do we change society for the better? Some would argue that we must do it by changing the laws or state institutions. Others that we must do it by changing individual attitudes. I argue that although both of these factors are important and relevant, we must also change culture. What does this mean? Culture, I argue, is a set of social meanings that shapes and filters how we think and act. Problematic networks of (...) social meanings constitute an ideology. Entrenched ideologies are resilient and are barriers to social change, even in the face of legal interventions. I argue that an effective way to change culture is through social movements and contentious politics, and that philosophy has a role to play in promoting such change. (shrink)

In this article we examined the ways in which strategic ambiguity in the use of keywords served an enabling function within a discourse marked by conflict and ideological divisions. Our analysis focused on the intertextual relationships between five documents intended by the government to guide the development of biotechnology in New Zealand. Through our analysis we identified ‘sustainability’ as a keyword and three major roles for the deployment of the discourse strategy of strategic ambiguity in the use of this keyword. (...) First, strategic ambiguity lent an internal and intertextual coherence to the texts. Second, it allowed multiple perspectives and objectives to co-exist. Third, strategic ambiguity facilitated the participation of discourse actors who subscribed to ideologies that were more or less incommensurable. (shrink)

Not all of the studies cited in the target article as evidence that fluctuating asymmetry (FA) predicts male mating success demonstrate that the observed asymmetry is, in fact, FA. FA is a population-level pattern of differences between sides. Unless the population-level distributional criteria of bilateral traits are reported, the meaning of asymmetry in individuals is unknown.

Argument is a pervasive feature of human interaction, and in its natural contexts of occurrence, it is organized around the management of disagreement. Since disagreement can occur around any kind of speech act whatsoever, not all arguments involve a claim supported by reasons; many involve standpoints attributed to someone but claimed by no one. And although truth and validity are often at issue in naturally occurring arguments, these do not exhaust the standards to which arguers are held. Arguers hold one (...) another accountable for cooperating in the management of disagreement, infusing argumentation with a natural normativity that exists apart from any theorized appraisal standard applied to the claim-reason relationship. Argumentation’s natural normativity is visible not only in how arguments unfold in interaction but also in how humanity continuously strives to improve its methods of disagreement management. (shrink)

Argument is a pervasive feature of human interaction, and in its natural contexts of occurrence, it is organized around the management of disagreement. Since disagreement can occur around any kind of speech act whatsoever, not all arguments involve a claim supported by reasons; many involve standpoints attributed to someone but claimed by no one. And although truth and validity are often at issue in naturally occurring arguments, these do not exhaust the standards to which arguers are held. Arguers hold one (...) another accountable for cooperating in the management of disagreement, infusing argumentation with a natural normativity that exists apart from any theorized appraisal standard applied to the claim-reason relationship. Argumentation’s natural normativity is visible not only in how arguments unfold in interaction but also in how humanity continuously strives to improve its methods of disagreement management. (shrink)

Are sagging pants cool? Are cows food? Are women more submissive than men? Are blacks more criminal than whites? Taking the social world at face value, many people would be tempted to answer these questions in the affirmative. And if challenged, they can point to facts that support their answers. But there is something wrong about the affirmative answers. In this chapter, I draw on recent ideas in the philosophy of language and metaphysics to show how the assertion of a (...) generic claim of the sort in question ordinarily permits one to infer that the fact in question obtains by virtue of something specifically about the subject so described, i.e., about women, or blacks, or sagging pants. In the examples I’ve offered, however, this implication inference is unwarranted. The facts in question obtain by virtue of broad system of social relations within which the subjects are situated, and are not grounded in intrinsic or dispositional features of the subjects themselves. The background relations are obscured, however, and as a result, the assertion is at least systematically misleading; a denial functions to block the problematic implication. Revealing such implications or presuppositions and blocking them is a crucial part of ideology critique. (shrink)

"Being and Logos" is... a philosophical adventure of rare inspiration.... Its power to illuminate the text..., its ecumenicity of inspiration, its methodological rigor, its originality, and its philosophical profundity—all together make it one of the few philosophical interpretations that the philosopher will want to re-read along with the dialogues themselves. A superadded gift is the author's prose, which is a model of lucidity and grace." —International Philosophical Quarterly "Being and Logos is highly recommended for those who wish to learn how (...) a thoughtful scholar approaches Platonic dialogues as well as for those who wish to consider a serious discussion of some basic themes in the dialogues." —The Academic Reviewer. (shrink)

[Sally Haslanger] In debates over the existence and nature of social kinds such as 'race' and 'gender', philosophers often rely heavily on our intuitions about the nature of the kind. Following this strategy, philosophers often reject social constructionist analyses, suggesting that they change rather than capture the meaning of the kind terms. However, given that social constructionists are often trying to debunk our ordinary (and ideology-ridden?) understandings of social kinds, it is not surprising that their analyses are counterintuitive. This (...) article argues that externalist insights from the critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction can be extended to justify social constructionist analyses. /// [Jennifer Saul] Sally Haslanger's 'What Good Are Our Intuitions? Philosophical Analysis and Social Kinds' is, among other things, a part of the theoretical underpinning for analyses of race and gender concepts that she discusses far more fully elsewhere. My reply focuses on these analyses of race and gender concepts, exploring the ways in which the theoretical work done in this paper and others can or cannot be used to defend these analyses against certain objections. I argue that the problems faced by Haslanger's analyses are in some ways less serious, and in some ways more serious, than they may at first appear. Along the way, I suggest that ordinary speakers may not in fact have race and gender concepts and I explore the ramifications of this claim. (shrink)

Contemporary reasoning about health is infused with the work products of experts, and expert reasoning about health itself is an active site for invention and design. Building on Toulmin’s largely undeveloped ideas on field-dependence, we argue that expert fields can develop new inference rules that, together with the backing they require, become accepted ways of drawing and defending conclusions. The new inference rules themselves function as warrants, and we introduce the term “warranting device” to refer to an assembly of the (...) rule plus whatever material, procedural, and institutional resources are required to assure its dependability. We present a case study on the Cochrane Review, a new method for synthesizing evidence across large numbers of scientific studies. After reviewing the evolution and current structure of the device, we discuss the distinctive kinds of critical questions that may be raised around Cochrane Reviews, both within the expert field and beyond. Although Toulmin’s theory of field-dependence is often criticized for its relativism, we find that, as a matter of practical fact, field-specific warrants do not enjoy immunity from external critique. On the contrary, they can be opened to evaluation and critique from any interested perspective. (shrink)

This short commentary reflects on policy making for open data. The articles in this special issue all raise interesting challenges and questions for research policy, broadly defined, including how to stimulate researchers to make data open in the first place, how to reuse data sensibly, and how to ensure data are appropriately stored and made accessible for future users. This commentary reflects on the author’s own experience of taking part in an international policy forum that was tasked with preparing a (...) report about the importance of making research data open. The author describes how she attempted to ensure insights from science and technology studies—made by contributors to this special issue and many others in the field—were incorporated in the final report. She also describes how technologically determinist arguments were invoked to close down discussions about the political dimensions of open access to research data. (shrink)

This article examines how weblog authors present their online gender identity, in order to establish how these modes of presentation fit into the research landscape about gender identity and computer-mediated communication. After a preliminary descriptive analysis of a sample of Dutch and Flemish weblogs, the authors conduct a qualitative content analysis of four of these `blogs'. They conclude that these weblog writers present their gender identity through narratives of `everyday life' that remain closely related to the binary gender system. However, (...) their performance of `masculinity' and `femininity' is more diffuse and heterogeneous than some theories in the field of gender and CMC would assume. In addition, the act of diary writing on weblogs can be understood as challenging the masculine connotation of the weblog as an ICT, demonstrating that the use of a technology is pivotal in shaping the ways in which technologies themselves are conceived of as `masculine' or `feminine'. (shrink)

How does an object persist through change? How can a book, for example, open in the morning and shut in the afternoon, persist through a change that involves the incompatible properties of being open and being shut? The goal of this reader is to inform and reframe the philosophical debate around persistence; it presents influential accounts of the problem that range from classic papers by W. V. O. Quine, David Lewis, and Judith Jarvis Thomson to recent work by contemporary philosophers. (...) The authors take on the question of persistence by examining three broad approaches: perdurantism, which holds that change over time is analogous to change over space; exdurantism, according to which identity over time is analogous to identity across possible worlds; and endurantism, which holds that ordinary objects persist by enduring. Each of these approaches appears to be coherent, but each also has its own metaphysical problems. Persistence includes papers that argue for perdurantism, exdurantism, or endurantism, as well as papers that explore some metaphysical difficulties challenging each account. In this way the collection allows readers to balance the trade-offs of each approach in terms of intuitiveness, theoretical attractiveness, and elegance.Contributors:Yuri Balashov, William Carter, Graeme Forbes, Sally Haslanger, Katherine Hawley, H. S. Hestevold, Mark Hinchliffe, Mark Johnston, Roxanne Marie Kurtz, David K. Lewis, Ned Markosian, D. H. Mellor, W. V. O. Quine, Theodore Sider, Richard Taylor, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Peter van Inwagen, Dean Zimmerman. (shrink)

A very distinctive and important new option for Christian theology. McFague proposes in a clear and challenging way a theological program based on what she calls 'the organic model' for conceiving God.