Through close readings of Frost's poetry and often ignored prose, Mark Richardson argues that Frost's debates with Van Wyck Brooks, Malcolm Cowley, and H. L. Mencken informed his poetics and his poetic style just as much as did his deep identification with earlier writers like Emerson and William James.

This article, a contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies,” criticizes a prominent form of philosophical account of rational activity. Rational activity includes actions as varied as kicking a soccer ball and speaking a language. The philosophical accounts examined — which may be called “intellectualist” — share two features: they originate in skeptical doubt about whether what appears to be rational activity really is, and they ascribe knowledge of the norms of her activity to the person doing it. Given (...) their first feature, intellectualist accounts seek to reassure us. But they fail: the phenomenon to which they appeal in explaining rational activity — a person's grasping its norms — itself presupposes such activity. The question whether a person knows the norms of her activity is a central way of organizing the disputes of the last sixty years over whether the humanities are as intellectually legitimate as the sciences. One prominent thing it can mean to call humanities work “fuzzy” is that it is without authoritative method. Critics of the humanities may be understood as insisting that intellectual work is genuinely rational only where the thinker has in view sharply defined norms. Thus, such critics evince the same kind of concern about the legitimacy of literary or historical studies as intellectualist philosophers do about the reality of apparent soccer kicks or meaningful speech. Whatever the merit of these concerns, there is no comfort to be had in ascribing knowledge of the norms of her activity to either the literary critic or the soccer player. (shrink)

To aid neuroscientists in determining the ethical limits of their work and its applications, neuroethical problems need to be identified, catalogued, and analyzed from the standpoint of an ethical framework. Many hospitals have already established either autonomy or welfare-centered theories as their adopted ethical framework. Unfortunately, the choice of an ethical framework resists resolution: each of these two moral theories claims priority at the exclusion of the other, but for patients with neurological pathologies, concerns about the patient’s welfare are treated (...) as meaningless without consideration of the patient’s expressed wishes, and vice versa. Ethicists have long fought over whether suffering or autonomy should be our primary concern, but in neuroethics a resolution of this question is essential to determine the treatment of patients in medical and legal limbo. I propose a solution to this problem in the form of ethical dualism. This is a conservative measure in that it retains both sides of the debate: both happiness and autonomy have intrinsic value. However, this move is often met with resistance because of its more complex nature—it is more difficult to make a decision when there are two parallel sets of values that must be considered than when there is just one such set. The monist theories, though, do not provide enough explanatory power: namely, I will present two recently publicized cases where it is clear that neither ethical value on its own (neither welfare nor autonomy) can fully account for how a vegetative patient should be treated. From the neuroethical cases of Terri Schiavo and Lauren Richardson, I will argue that a dualist framework is superior to its monist predecessors, and I will describe the main features of such an account. (shrink)

"An essential overview of an important intellectual movement, Logical Empiricism in North America offers the first significant, sustained, and multidisciplinary attempt to understand the intellectual, cultural, and political dimensions of ...

In this article we explore the role of data custodians in establishing and maintaining social licence for the use of personal information in health research. Personal information from population‐level data collections can be used to make significant contributions to health and medical research, but this use is dependent on community acceptance or a social licence. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with data custodians across Australia to better understand data custodians’ views on their roles and responsibilities. This inductive, thematic analysis of the (...) interview data focuses on three factors that contribute to social licence – reciprocity, non‐exploitation and the public good. While the data custodians interviewed did not explicitly frame their role in the context of social licence, their descriptions of their roles and responsibilities clearly indicated that they did have some role to play in building and maintaining social licence. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Beauty and Goodness Patterns of Beautiful Poetry Human Excellence and the Standard of Poetic Beauty Moral Psychology Love of Beauty and Being Just Conclusion.

Biographer Richardson has written a moving portrait of James--pivotal member of the Metaphysical Club and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience. The biography, ten years in the making, draws on unpublished letters, journals, and family records. Richardson paints extraordinary scenes from what James himself called the "buzzing blooming confusion" of his life, beginning with childhood, as he struggled to achieve amid the domestic chaos and intellectual brilliance of Father, brother Henry, and sister Alice. James was a beloved (...) teacher who taught courage and risk-taking, and served as mentor to W.E.B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, and many other Harvard outsiders. Richardson also illuminates James's hugely influential works. One of the great figures in mysticism here brought richly to life, James is a man "whose leading ideas are still so fresh and challenging that they are not yet fully assimilated by the modern world they helped to bring about."--From publisher description. (shrink)

Background:New graduate transition into the workforce is challenging and can involve managing ethical tensions. Ethical tensions cause new graduates to doubt their capabilities due to their lack of experience. To support new graduates, we need to know what these ethical tensions are.Objectives:To explore the ethical tensions perceived to occur in practice for new graduate health professionals.Research design:This qualitative systematic review involved a search of five databases (Medline, EMBASE, AMED, CINAHL and Scopus) which resulted in the retrieval of 3554 papers. After (...) the two-phased screening process, eight studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria and had rich data on the review question. Articles were read several times, critically appraised and analysed through thematic analysis.Ethical considerations:No ethical approval was required for the systematic review. The review was conducted following well-established reporting guidelines enabling transparency and rigour.Findings:Studies originated from Australia, United States, Iran and China. One study included speech pathologists and seven were with nurses. Four themes included the following: (1) enduring an unknown workplace culture that generates uncertainty without support for new graduates; (2) being vulnerable because of distress from bullying, exclusion and being a scapegoat; (3) constraining systems and institutional restrictions that cause dilemmas; and (4) experiencing disillusionment from lost ideals about ethical practice.Discussion:This review has brought to light the vulnerability of new graduates to negative workplace culture and collegial incivility. In addition, new graduates are subjected to ethical tensions created by institutional constraints which can create dilemmas and uncertainties through practice that does not align with what they anticipated.Conclusion:Understanding ethical tensions experienced by new graduates enables provision of informed support. There needs to be considerable cultural change for orientation and socialisation of new graduates to enable them to learn and manage ethical tensions. (shrink)

Respect for patients’ autonomy has taken a central place in the practice of medicine. Received wisdom holds that respect for autonomy allows overriding a patient’s treatment preferences only if the patient has been found to lack capacity. This understanding of respect for autonomy requires a dichotomous approach to assessing capacity, whereby a patient must be found either to have full capacity to make some particular treatment decision or must be found to lack capacity to make that decision. However, clinical reality (...) is more complicated, and, in borderline cases, different physicians may arrive at disparate judgments of capacity. In such cases, when capacity-determination protocols fail to achieve consensus, physicians would benefit from guidance regarding the clinical decision-making process necessary to elucidate the most ethically sound course of action. This article considers one such case and argues that, in a limited number of cases, respect for autonomy may require overriding a patient’s stated treatment preference when a capacity determination is equivocal, even though the patient has not clearly demonstrated a lack of capacity. (shrink)

Our first encounter with Socrates in the Symposium is bizarre. Aristodemus, surprised to run into Socrates fully bathed and with his sandals on, asks him where he is going “to have made himself so beautiful (kalos)” (174a4, Rowe trans.). Socrates replies that he is on his way to see the lovely Agathon, and so that “he has beautified himself in these ways in order to go, a beauty to a beauty (kalos para kalon)” (174a7–8). Why does Socrates, who in just (...) a few moments will be lost in contemplation out on the front porch, care about being beautiful? His remark to Aristodemus is clearly in some sense ironic, but on the other hand, he really has taken unusual care with his physical appearance. Later, in his encomium to love, he will claim that beauty has this effect on lovers: the beauty of the beloved causes the lover to disdain his former way of life and “give birth” to beautiful “offspring.” Is the image of the squat and snub-nosed Socrates all freshly scrubbed and kitted out a comic foreshadowing, or a debunking, of his serious speech? Does Socrates really believe in the transformative power of beauty? (shrink)

Thomas Richardson and Peter Spirtes. Scoring Ancestral Graph Models.

Studies on so-called Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness have been taken to establish the claim that conscious perception of a stimulus requires the attentional processing of that stimulus. One might contend, against this claim, that the evidence only shows attention to be necessary for the subject to have access to the contents of conscious perception and not for conscious perception itself. This “Methodological Argument” is gaining ground among philosophers who work on attention and consciousness, such as Christopher Mole. I find (...) that, without the supporting evidence of inaccessible consciousness, this argument collapses into an indefensible form of inductive parsimony. The Methodological Argument is thus shown to be unsuccessful when used against the claim that attention is required for conscious perception, though I suggest that it may be successful against the more ambitious claim that attention is necessary for all conscious experience. (shrink)

This special issue was the first philosophy journal issue in English devoted to feminist perspectives in aesthetics. It was prompted by more than two decades of feminist scholarship in all academic disciplines that challenged the operations of gender in research and theory, prompting widespread examination of disciplinary assumptions and methods, new understandings of the histories of fields and their classic texts, and refinement of awareness of how scholarship retains gender bias. An expanded version of the journal resulted in the publication (...) of Hein and Korsmeyer's anthology from Indiana University Press, Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective (1993). (shrink)

Ethical review and analysis of health policy may help to ensure policies address the needs of society and align with relevant values and principles. Indeed, researchers and bioethicists have recognized the need for ethical frameworks specifically for public health applications. The objective of this research was to compile structured tools for ethical review of health policy and to analyze these tools for their scope and philosophical underpinnings. A systematic search and review of academic and grey literature was conducted to compile (...) existing tools designed for health policy ethics review. The search yielded 13 health policy ethical review tools. Qualitative content analysis revealed that all of the tools were influenced by multiple ethical values and that a majority were influenced by more than one ethical theory. The most common values were non-maleficence and beneficence. The most common influencing ethical theory was the Principles Approach. The structure of the tools demonstrates a heterogeneity of methodology designs to approach policy ethics review. This research offers a unique contribution to the bioethics field that provides a useful resource and understanding of the current ethical review tools for health policy. (shrink)

First published in 1985, the _Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity Through Education_ quickly established itself as the essential reference work concerning gender equity in education. This new, expanded edition provides a 20-year retrospective of the field, one that has the great advantage of documenting U.S. national data on the gains and losses in the efforts to advance gender equality through policies such as Title IX, the landmark federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, equity programs and research. Key features include:_ (...) Expertise_ – Like its predecessor, over 200 expert authors and reviewers provide accurate, consensus, research-based information on the nature of gender equity challenges and what is needed to meet them at all levels of education._ Content Area Focus_ – The analysis of gender equity within specific curriculum areas has been expanded from 6 to 10 chapters including mathematics, science, and engineering._ Global/Diversity Focus_ – Global gender equity is addressed in a separate chapter as well as in numerous other chapters. The expanded section on gender equity strategies for diverse populations contains seven chapters on African Americans, Latina/os, Asian and Pacific Island Americans, American Indians, gifted students, students with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. _ Action Oriented_ – All chapters contain practical recommendations for making education activities and outcomes more gender equitable. A final chapter consolidates individual chapter recommendations for educators, policymakers, and researchers to achieve gender equity in and through education._ New Material_ – Expanded from 25 to 31 chapters, this new edition includes: *more emphasis on male gender equity and on sexuality issues; *special within population gender equity challenges ; *coeducation and single sex education; *increased use of rigorous research strategies such as meta-analysis showing more sex similarities and fewer sex differences and of evaluations of implementation programs; *technology and gender equity is now treated in three chapters; *women’s and gender studies; *communication skills relating to English, bilingual, and foreign language learning; and *history and implementation of Title IX and other federal and state policies. Since there is so much misleading information about gender equity and education, this _Handbook_ will be essential for anyone who wants accurate, research-based information on controversial gender equity issues—journalists, policy makers, teachers, Title IX coordinators, equity trainers, women’s and gender study faculty, students, and parents. (shrink)

Stuart Kauffman’s forthcoming book, The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution (1991), is a large and ambitious attempt to bring about a major reorientation in theoretical biology and to provide a fundamental reinterpretation of the place of selection in evolutionary theory. Kauffman offers a formal framework which allows one to pose precise and well-defined questions about the constraints that self-organization imposes on the evolution of complex systems, and the relation of self-organization and selection. He says at the (...) outset that he wants to “delineate the spontaneous sources of order, the self organized properties of simple and complex systems” and to understand how they “permit, enable and limit the efficacy of natural selection” (Introduction, p. 2).2 As he says somewhat later, the central theme running through his book is that “the order in organisms may largely reflect spontaneous order in complex systems” (ch. 6, p. 224). (shrink)

Visionary quests to return to the Garden of Eden have shaped Western culture from Columbus' voyages to today's tropical island retreats. Few narratives are so powerful - and, as Carolyn Merchant shows, so misguided and destructive - as the dream of recapturing a lost paradise. A sweeping account of these quixotic endeavors by one of America's leading environmentalists, Reinventing Eden traces the idea of rebuilding the primeval garden from its origins to its latest incarnations in shopping malls, theme parks (...) and gated communities. With eloquence and insight, Merchant shows how the drive to conquer nature and to explore and settle the globe, springs from this utopian pastoral impulse throughout Western history. Time and again, human manipulation of the environment is our downfall: Eden is achieved by fencing off pristine beauty in national parks and wildlife preserves, while leaving the majority of the earth in ruins. Challenging both narratives, Merchant argues that the green veneer of city-park conservation has become a cover for the corruption of the earth and the neglect of its environment. Reinventing Eden is a bold new way to think about the earth that includes green political parties, sustainable development and a partnership between humans and earth that is nothing short of an ecological revolution. (shrink)

A summary of the philosophical literature on trust.

Critics of social injustice argue that the agent of transformative social change will (or should) be a mass agent; namely, an agent that is large, complex, and geographically dispersed. Traditional theories of collective agency emphasize the presence of shared intentions and common knowledge, but mass agents are too large for such cohesion. To make sense of mass agency, I suggest a new approach. On the solidarity theory of mass agency, a mass agent is composed of (a) organizers who intend to (...) fight for social change and (b) supporters who are in solidarity with organizers. (shrink)

An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in (...) divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993. (shrink)