From Greek antiquity to the latest theories, this historical survey of political philosophy not only covers the major thinkers in the field but also explores the theme of how political philosophy relates to the nature of man. It illustrates how the great political thinkers have always grounded their political thought in what the author terms a "normative anthropology," which typically has not only ethical but metaphysical and/or theological components. Starting with the ancient Greek Sophists, author Michael J. White examines (...) how thinkers over the centuries have approached such political and philosophical concerns as justice, morality, and human flourishing, offering substantial studies of--among others--Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, and J. S. Mill. White highlights the impact of Christianity on political philosophy, illustrating the diversity of that impact by studies of Augustine, Aquinas, and Marsilius of Padua. Concluding with an in-depth analysis of John Rawls and contemporary liberal political philosophy, this text blends insight and information in a refreshing and useful manner. A brief Epilogue considers both the value and the limitations of political philosophy and its study. (shrink)

Wilkinson (1991) suggests that the problems of polarity decisions and homoplasy in a cladistic analysis may be solved if cladists simply accept plesiomorphy as a reliable indicator of monophyly. Here we argue that: (1) Wilkinson's argument is based on misapprehension of synapomorphy and the problem of homoplasy; (2) His proposed methodology fails to consider the full ramifications of rooting, polarity, and parsimony; and (3) His method does not solve the problems he raises. We demonstrate the limitations of this methodology by (...) using Wilkinson's practical example. We find no justification for the assertion that plesiomorphy may reliably delimit monophyly and recommend against Wilkinson's suggested methodological revisions. (shrink)

This article is concerned with developing a philosophical approach to a number of significant changes to academic publishing, and specifically the global journal knowledge system wrought by a range of new digital technologies that herald the third age of the journal as an electronic, interactive and mixed-media form of scientific communication. The paper emerges from an Editors' Collective, a small New Zealand-based organisation comprised of editors and reviewers of academic journals mostly in the fields of education and philosophy. The paper (...) is the result of a collective writing process. (shrink)

This is Introduction to the PESA conference 2014 held in Hamilton, NZ, is devoted to the conference theme of ‘Education as philosophies of engagement’. We provide a brief analysis of the modern history of ‘philosophies of engagement’ since the Second World War examining the notion of socially responsible writing and teaching.

BackgroundCommunity engagement is increasingly promoted as a marker of good, ethical practice in the context of international collaborative research in low-income countries. There is, however, no widely agreed definition of community engagement or of approaches adopted. Justifications given for its use also vary. Community engagement is, for example, variously seen to be of value in: the development of more effective and appropriate consent processes; improved understanding of the aims and forms of research; higher recruitment rates; the identification of important ethical (...) issues; the building of better relationships between the community and researchers; the obtaining of community permission to approach potential research participants; and, the provision of better health care. Despite these diverse and potentially competing claims made for the importance of community engagement, there is very little published evidence on effective models of engagement or their evaluation.MethodsIn this paper, drawing upon interviews with the members of a Community Advisory Board on the Thai-Myanmar border, we describe and critically reflect upon an approach to community engagement which was developed in the context of international collaborative research in the border region.Results and conclusionsDrawing on our analysis, we identify a number of considerations relevant to the development of an approach to evaluating community engagement in this complex research setting. The paper also identifies a range of important ways in which the Community Advisory Board is in practice understood by its members to have morally significant roles and responsibilities beyond those usually associated with the successful and appropriate conduct of research. (shrink)

An Aims-based Curriculum spells out a ground-breaking alternative to the familiar school curriculum constructed around a number of largely academic subjects. Its starting point is not subjects, but what schools should be for. It argues that aims are not to be seen as high-sounding principles that can be easily ignored: they are the lifeblood of everything a school does. -/- The book begins with general aims to do with equipping each learner to lead a personally fulfilling life, and to help (...) others to do so too. From these, they derive more specific aims covering the personal qualities, skills and understanding needed for a life of personal, civic and vocational well-being. -/- The second half of the book, on political realities of implementation, takes this process of aims-derivation further. Some of its detailed aims, but by no means all, overlap with conventional curriculum objectives. It also looks at the role of the state in curriculum decisions, as well as the implications of the book’s central argument for student choice, school ethos, assessment, inspection and teacher education . (shrink)

Video ethics in educational research involving children is a recent topic that has arisen since the increase in the use of visual mediums in research especially with the development of new and ubiquitous internet technologies and social media. This paper emerged as an expressed concerned by a group of scholars associated with the new Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy that was established in 2016. The paper is the result of a collective writing process over a period of a few (...) months that discusses visual studies in education and visual ethics in relation to qualitative research in education, and as it applies to children. The article also uses the newly established convention of open review, publishing the results with the paper. (shrink)

Deliberative democrats would appear to face something of a dilemma: They want to secure robust citizen input into the policy process, especially on the big, controversial issues that affect people’...

Infantologies is a collective writing project designed to express and summarise important ideas, approaches and forms of advocacy in a short and condensed method, in order to present a network of d...

While logical principles seem timeless, placeless, and eternal, their discovery is a story of personal accidents, political tragedies, and broad social change. If A, Then B begins with logic's emergence twenty-three centuries ago and tracks its expansion as a discipline ever since. -/- The book treats logic as more than a tale of individual abstraction; it sees logic as also being a result of politics, economics, technology, and geography, because all these factors helped to generate an audience for the discipline (...) from the start. The book thus relates developments in logical theory to the social history of different historical periods. -/- The book defends a number of controversial philosophical theses: (1) that rationally persuasive arguments must always proceed from premises that are initially more convincing than the conclusions to be proved (a position derived from Aristotle), (2) that intuitive logical judgments, though sometimes mistaken, can also count as certain knowledge, independent of the techniques used to construct formal logical systems, (3) that Wittgenstein was mistaken in thinking that philosophy was riddled with unintelligible language and that the real problems, instead, have been ambiguity and pretentious diction, and (4) that Nelson Goodman's argument to the effect that deductive logic can be "virtuously circular" is founded on a non sequitur. -/- . (shrink)

Video ethics in educational research involving children is a recent topic that has arisen since the increase in the use of visual mediums in research (such as photovoice and video) especially with the development of new and ubiquitous internet technologies and social media. This paper emerged as an expressed concerned by a group of scholars associated with the new Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy (Brill) that was established in 2016. The paper is the result of a collective writing process (...) over a period of a few months that discusses visual studies in education and visual ethics in relation to qualitative research in education, and as it applies to children. The article also uses the newly established convention of open review, publishing the results with the paper. (shrink)

The increasing effort, both lay and academic, to encourage a transition from an “I-It” to an “I-Thou” relation to nature is located within a typology of ways of “knowing nature.” This typology provides the context for a particular understanding of human conversation which sees the relation as a cyclical process of “immersion” and “realization” from which a model of the dialectic between “I-It” and “I-Thou” relations to nature can be developed. This model can be used to identify practical measures that (...) can be taken as first steps toward a balance between these relations, both in general and in the context of science-oriented nature conservation organizations such as English Nature in Britain. (shrink)

We examine data on and models of small world properties and parameters of social networks. Our focus, on tie-strength, multilevel networks and searchability in strong-tie social networks, allows us to extend some of the questions and findings of recent research and the fit of small world models to sociological and anthropological data on human communities. We offer a 'navigability of strong ties' hypothesis about network topologies tested with data from kinship systems, but potentially applicable to corporate cultures and business networks.

The increasing effort, both lay and academic, to encourage a transition from an “I-It” to an “I-Thou” relation to nature is located within a typology of ways of “knowing nature.” This typology provides the context for a particular understanding of human conversation which sees the relation as a cyclical process of “immersion” and “realization” from which a model of the dialectic between “I-It” and “I-Thou” relations to nature can be developed. This model can be used to identify practical measures that (...) can be taken as first steps toward a balance between these relations, both in general and in the context of science-oriented nature conservation organizations such as English Nature in Britain. (shrink)

The increasing effort, both lay and academic, to encourage a transition from an “I-It” to an “I-Thou” relation to nature is located within a typology of ways of “knowing nature.” This typology provides the context for a particular understanding of human conversation which sees the relation as a cyclical process of “immersion” and “realization” from which a model of the dialectic between “I-It” and “I-Thou” relations to nature can be developed. This model can be used to identify practical measures that (...) can be taken as first steps toward a balance between these relations, both in general and in the context of science-oriented nature conservation organizations such as English Nature in Britain (formerly, the Nature Conservancy Council). (shrink)

We examine the ethical, social, and regulatory barriers that may hinder research on therapeutic potential of certain controversial controlled substances like marijuana, heroin, or ketamine. Hazards for individuals and society and potential adverse effects on communities may be good reasons for limiting access and justify careful monitoring of these substances. Overly strict regulations, fear of legal consequences, stigma associated with abuse and populations using illicit drugs, and lack of funding may, however, limit research on their considerable therapeutic potential. We review (...) the surprisingly sparse literature and address the particular ethical concerns pertinent to research with illicit and addictive substances, such as undue inducement, informed consent, therapeutic misconception, and risk to participants, researchers, and institutions. We consider the perspectives of key research stakeholders and explore whether they may be infected with bias. We conclude by proposing an empirical research agenda to provide an evidentiary basis for ethical reasoning. (shrink)

In our world we sleep and eat the image and pray to it and wear it too.– Don DeLillo, (2016) Mao II, p.27, Pan Macmillan.Some three years ago we envisioned a project concerning the shift from text...

We distinguish traditional cognition theories from hierarchically complex stacked neural networks that meet many of Newell's criteria. The latter are flexible and can learn anything that a person can learn, by using their mistakes and successes the same way humans do. Shortcomings are due largely to limitations of current technology.

We are grateful for Roy T. Cook's attention to our work in his recent review of our book If A, Then B: How the World Discovered Logic. But Professor Cook leaves two misimpressions that we should like to correct. First, we have never maintained (as he phrases it) that "one's premises must be more certain than the conclusions that follow from them, ignoring the obvious logical fact that, if B logically follows from A, then B is provably at least as (...) probable as A." Instead, we assert that one must be *initially* more certain of one's premises than the conclusions that follow from them; otherwise, we contend, no argument that relies on those premises to prove such a conclusion can be rationally persuasive. On this view, one might still be equally certain of both the premises and the conclusion after being persuaded by the argument, especially in cases where the premises entail the conclusion. By analogy, Aristotle asserts in the Posterior Analytics that the premises of demonstration must be "better known" than the conclusion—meaning, in part, that the premises must be initially more convincing. But this hardly shows that Aristotle thinks that, if A is invoked to demonstrate B, then A and B can never be regarded as equally probable…. (shrink)

Professor Girle suggests that the ancient Athenian interest in Aristotle’s syllogistic flowed from a preoccupation with debate in the form of a dialogue game. But other cultures, especially in India, also had a preoccupation with debate that could be characterized in the same way. This kind of explanation seems to us to ignore the elephant in the room: the fact that, in ancient Athens, dialogue and debate were not merely a game. They were the life and death of the state. (...) Many Athenians felt that foolish policies had cost the state dearly, especially during the Peloponnesian War, and many of them blamed those policies on shoddy political reasoning in the Assembly. (Plato hammers at this theme relentlessly.) And tellingly, it is only in the wake of such tragedies that Aristotle’s syllogistic finally emerged. We think that any credible explanation of the ancient Greek interest in formal logic needs to include this grim political reality. (shrink)

Why do logical truths exist at all, and how can our belief in them be justified? In an earlier article we contended that at least some aspects of logic must always be assumed, without argument, and that ‘logic is a horizon beyond which none of our earnest and self-reflecting arguments can help us see’. We also contended that logical truths are independent of physical facts, of social rules, and of the anatomical features of our brains. Nevertheless, in a further article (...) in this volume, Jeremiah Joven Joaquin and Jose Emmanuel Agregado have challenged our view. We respond to their criticisms.Export citation. (shrink)

This book presents a series of informal biographies about major figures in the history of psychology. A unique combination of expertise and human appeal, the volume places the contributions of each pioneer in a new and fascinating perspective. For instance, several of the authors use the novel approach of having the pioneers return to the present day to reflect back on their work as it relates to the here and now. Revisions of speeches given in a popular series of invited (...) addresses at psychological conventions, the chapters offer appealing glimpses into the lives of individuals who made a difference in the early years of psychology as a field of study. Each of the five volumes in this series contains different profiles thereby bringing more than 100 of the pioneers in psychology more vividly to life. (shrink)

A series of structural constitutional arguments lodged in multiple cases against Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) authorities to negotiate prescription drug prices via the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act threaten the legitimacy of CMS program and federal agency powers.

Individuals with high anxiety show bias for threatening information, but it is unclear whether this bias affects memory. Recognition memory studies have shown biases for recognising and rejecting threatening items in anxiety, prompting the need to identify moderating factors of this effect. This study focuses on the role of semantic similarity: the use of many semantically related threatening words could increase familiarity for those items and obscure anxiety-related differences in memory. To test this, two recognition memory experiments varied the proportion (...) of threatening words in lists to manipulate the semantic-similarity effects. When similarity effects were reduced, participants with high trait anxiety were biased to respond “new” to threatening words, whereas when similarity effects were strong there was no effect of anxiety on memory bias. Analysis of the data with the drift diffusion model showed that the bias was due to differences in processing of the threatening stimuli rather than a simple response bias. These data suggest that the semantic similarity of the threatening words significantly affects the presence or absence of anxiety-related threat bias in recognition memory. The results indicate that trait anxiety is associated with a bias to decide that threatening stimuli were not previously studied, but only when semantic-similarity effects are controlled. Implications for theories of anxiety and future studies in this domain are discussed. (shrink)

This paper locates its genesis in a small town called Vitebsk in Belorussia which experienced a flowering of creativity and artistic energy that led to significant modernist experimentation in the years 1917–1921. Marc Chagall, returning from the October Revolution took up the position of art commissioner and developed an academy of art that became the laboratory for Russian modernism. Chagall’s Academy, Bakhtin’s Circle, and Malevich’s experiments, artistic group UNOVIS—all in fierce dialogue with one another—made the town of Vitebsk into an (...) artistic crucible in the early twentieth century. We argue that this creative collective transformed creative energies of Russian drama, music, theatre, art, and philosophy in a distinctive contribution to modernism, structuralism and formalism that contributed richly to the social understanding of creativity itself that is so evident across Mikhail Bakhtin’s subsequent body of work, and elsewhere across the world. This paper argues that a consideration of such interplay has much potential for twenty-first century educational philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction to the Philosophy of Law: Readings and Cases employs a combination of case-based and theory-based materials to show novices in the field how the philosophy of law is related to concrete and actual legal practice. Ideal for undergraduates, it engages their curiosity about the law without sacrificing philosophical content. The authors emphasize a command of legal concepts and doctrine as a prelude to philosophical analysis. Designed to acquaint students with the fundamentals of jurisprudence and legal theory, Part I of (...) the book includes readings from influential philosophers representing eight different types of jurisprudence: natural law theory, positivism, constructivism, consequentialism, critical legal studies, feminist theory, practice theory, and new natural law theory. In Part II, the authors present a variety of cases that allow students to apply the theories in Part I to the actual practice of law. Unlike similar texts, which focus primarily on public law, this unique book addresses both private and public law, and includes cases on statutory interpretation, contract law, and tort law. Brief essays precede and discussion questions follow each case. Introduction to the Philosophy of Law: Readings and Cases serves as an exceptional text for courses in the philosophy of law, jurisprudence, and legal theory. (shrink)

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

Community engagement is increasingly promoted as a marker of good, ethical practice in the context of international collaborative research in low-income countries. There is, however, no widely agreed definition of community engagement or of approaches adopted. Justifications given for its use also vary. Community engagement is, for example, variously seen to be of value in: the development of more effective and appropriate consent processes; improved understanding of the aims and forms of research; higher recruitment rates; the identification of important ethical (...) issues; the building of better relationships between the community and researchers; the obtaining of community permission to approach potential research participants; and, the provision of better health care. Despite these diverse and potentially competing claims made for the importance of community engagement, there is very little published evidence on effective models of engagement or their evaluation. (shrink)

"Simone Weil's bibliography": p. [181]-194. Includes index. Introduction / George Abbott White -- The jagged edge / Michele Murray -- Simone Weil's mind / Robert Coles -- The life and death of Simone Weil / J.M. Cameron -- Simone Weil, last things / Michele Murray -- Simone Weil's Iliad / Michael K. Ferber -- Notes on Simone Weil's Iliad / Joseph H. Summers -- Patriotism and The need for roots / Conor Cruise O'Brien -- Marxism-Leninism and the language of (...) Politics magazine / Staughton Lynd -- Simone Weil's work experiences / George Abbott White. (shrink)

RationaleSurrogates of critically ill patients often have inaccurate expectations about prognosis. Yet there is little research on how intensive care unit clinicians should discuss prognosis, and existing expert opinion-based recommendations give only general guidance that has not been validated with surrogate decision makers.ObjectiveTo determine the perspectives of key stakeholders regarding how prognostic information should be conveyed in critical illness.MethodsThis was a multicenter study at three academic medical centers in California, Pennsylvania, and Washington. One hundred eighteen key stakeholders completed in-depth semistructured (...) interviews. Participants included 47 surrogates of adult patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome; 45 clinicians working in study ICUs, including physicians, nurses, social workers, and spiritual care providers; and 26 experts in health communication, decision science, ethics, family-centered care, geriatrics, healthcare disparities, palliative care, psychology, psychiatry, and critical care.Measurements and main resultsThere was broad support among surrogates for existing expert recommendations, including truthful prognostic disclosure, emotional support, tailoring the disclosure strategy to each family's needs, and checking for understanding. In addition, stakeholders offered suggestions that add specificity to existing recommendations, including: In addition to conveying prognostic estimates, clinicians should help families "see the prognosis for themselves" by showing families radiographic images and explaining the clinical significance of physical manifestations of severe disease at the bedside. Many physicians did not support using numeric estimates to convey prognosis to families, whereas many surrogates, clinicians from other disciplines, and experts believed numbers could be helpful. Clinicians should conceptualize prognostic communication as an iterative process that begins with a preliminary mention of the possibility of death early in the ICU stay and becomes more detailed as the clinical situation develops. Although prognostic information should be initially disclosed by physicians, other members of the multidisciplinary team-nurses, social workers, and spiritual care providers-should be given explicit role responsibilities to reinforce physicians' prognostications and help families process a poor prognosis emotionally.ConclusionsFamily members, clinicians, and experts identified specific communication behaviors that clinicians should use to discuss prognosis in the critical care setting. These findings extend existing opinion-based recommendations and should guide interventions to improve communication about prognosis in ICUs. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)