Recently, there has been a debate focusing on the question of whether groups can literally have beliefs. For the purposes of epistemology, however, the key question is whether groups can have knowledge. More specifi cally, the question is whether “group views” can have the key epistemic features of belief, viz., aiming at truth and being epistemically rational. I argue that, while groups may not have beliefs in the full sense of the word, group views can have these key epistemic features (...) of belief. However, I argue that on Margaret Gilbert's infl uential “plural subject” account of group belief, group views are unlikely to be epistemically rational. (shrink)

Human rights are those legal and/or moral rights that all persons have simply as persons. In the current digital age, human rights are increasingly being either fulfilled or violated in the online environment. In this article, I provide a way of conceptualizing the relationships between human rights and information technology. I do so by pointing out a number of misunderstandings of human rights evident in Vinton Cerf's recent argument that there is no human right to the Internet. I claim that (...) Cerf fails to recognize the existence of derived human rights. I argue further that we need to consider what other human rights are necessitated by the digital age. I suggest we need a Declaration of Digital Rights. As a step toward the development of such a declaration, I suggest a framework for thinking through how to ensure the human rights are satisfied in digital contexts. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine a particularly important kind of social group, what I call a “collective.” Collectives are distinguished from other social groups by the fact that the members of collectives can think and act “in the name of ” the group; they can collectively plan for its future, work for its success, and grieve at its failure. As a result, collectives have certain person-like properties that other social groups lack. I argue that persons form collectives by taking a (...) shared first person plural perspective based on a shared collective self-concept. This collective self-concept defines the collective, and, along with the causal history of the collective, uniquely identifies it. Over time, collectives persist through changes in membership by maintaining this collective self-concept. Changes in the collective self-concept may be identity preserving, however, if they result from processes that naturally flow from the identity of the collective and which are appropriately caused by (or accepted by) the collective and are connected to previous stages of the collective via collective memories. (shrink)

It has been recommended that parents should monitor their children’s Internet use, including what sites their children visit, what messages they receive, and what they post. In this paper, I claim that parents ought not to follow this advice, because to do so would violate children’s right to privacy over their on-line information exchanges. In defense of this claim, I argue that children have a right to privacy from their parents, because such a right respects their current capacities and fosters (...) their future capacities for autonomy and relationships. (shrink)

Solomon’s article and Binmore’s response exemplify a standard exchange between the game theorist and those critical of applying game theory to ethics. The critic of game theory lists a number of problems with game theory and the game theorist responds by arguing that the critic’s objections are based on a misrepresentation of the theory. Binmore claims that the game theorist is in the position of the innocent man who, when asked why he beats his wife, must explain that he doesn’t (...) beat his wife at all (Binmore, 2). However, even if we agree that the denial is true, we might still like to know why, if you are not beating your wife, do others consistently accuse you of doing so? Or, to get away from this rather sexist metaphor, why are critics of game theory like Solomon (according to game theorists) consistently getting game theory wrong?While, as I argue in the first section, critics of game theory such as Solomon may misrepresent game theory, this misrepresentation is not entirely their own fault. The way in which game theory is traditionally presented is misleading. For example, students are usually first introduced to game theory through the prisoner’s dilemma. It is compelling drama, but lousy PR for the use of ethics in game theory. (You want to know what to do? Let’s see how two thieves reason.) However, while Binmore is right to argue that game theory neither assumes nor entails the theory of human nature that Solomon finds objectionable, Solomon is also right to argue that game theory is promulgated and applied with what appear to be a robust set of assumptions about human motivation. I argue in the second section, however, that in fact neither these applications of game theory, nor game theory itself, is committed to a particular theory of human motivation. Thus, while game theory is not able to provide a complete ethical theory (assuming that a theory of human motivation is essential to such a theory), it is not contrary to ethics. In the final section I note that Aristotle, rather than being the alternative to using game theory in business ethics, as Solomon suggests, actually points the way to an ethical theory that can combine a discussion of both game theory and “those nagging and controversial questions about what it is that people do and ought to care about” (Solomon, 7). (shrink)

We consider the mission of the librarian as an information provider and the core value that gives this mission its social importance. Our focus here is on those issues that arise in relation to the role of the librarian as an information provider. In particular, we focus on questions of the selection and organization of information, which bring up issues of bias, neutrality, advocacy, and children's rights to access information.

In his paper “The Social Diffusion of Warrant and Rationality,” Sanford Goldberg argues that relying on testimony makes the warrant for our beliefs “socially diffuse” and that this diminishes our capacity to rationally police our beliefs. Thus, according to Goldberg, rationality itself is socially diffuse. I argue that while testimonial warrant may be socially diffuse (because it depends on the warrants of other epistemic agents) this feature has no special link to our capacity to rationally police our beliefs. Nevertheless, I (...) endorse Goldberg’s claim about rationality and I propose that a Foley-style account of rationality might help to better articulate Goldberg’s proposal. (shrink)

In this “global information age” accessing, disseminating, and controlling information is an increasingly important aspect of human life. Often these interests are expressed in the language of human rights—e.g., rights to expression, privacy, and intellectual property. As the discipline concerned with, “Facilitating the effective communication of desired information between human generator and human user” (Belkin, 1975, 22), Library and Information Science (LIS) has a central role in facilitating communication about human rights and ensuring the respect for human rights in information (...) services and systems. This paper surveys the literature at the intersection of LIS and human rights. To begin, an overview of human rights conventions and an introduction to human rights theory is provided. Then the intersections between LIS and human rights are considered. Three central areas of informational human rights—communication, privacy, and intellectual property—are discussed in detail. It is argued that communication rights in particular serve as a central linchpin in the system of human rights. (shrink)

According to Ron Mallon (2004), any adequate account of race must meet three constraints: passing, no-traveling, and reality. "Passing" describes the fact that persons who are treated by others as belonging to one race, may "actually" belong to a different race. "No traveling" refers to the fact that racial concepts such as "white" may pick out different sets of persons in different cultures. "Reality" refers to the fact that racial designations enter into explanations of how people's lives go. However, Mallon (...) argues that no account can simultaneously satisfy all three constraints. I argue that an account of race as an institutional fact, based on Searle's theory of constitutive rules, can satisfy all three constraints. Furthermore, the institutional account provides an enlightening explanation of these three features of race. (shrink)

As a result of the global economic turndown, many local and national governments are disinvesting in public libraries. This paper proposes that governments have an obligation to create and fund public libraries, because access to them is a human right. Starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and appealing to recent work in Human Rights Theory, I argue that there is a right to information, which states are obligated to fulfill. Given that libraries are highly effective institutions for ensuring (...) that this right is fulfilled, there is a derived human right to a public library. (shrink)

We considered supererogatory behavior as illustrated by people who rescued Jews in Nazi Europe. When we did so, we encountered a puzzling empirical finding: rescuers insisted they had no choice in their life-or-death actions. Rescuers' perspectives -- how they saw themselves in relation to others -- served as a powerful constraint on choice as traditionally conceived. Traditional moral theories failed to provide satisfactory explanations for this phenomenon, and we turned to virtue ethics to determine whether this approach, with its emphasis (...) on character, would provide a useful philosophical tool for explicating rescue behavior.Our conclusion on virtue ethics is mixed. We find the focus on character found in virtue ethics is superior to the traditional rule-based theories of moral choice, with virtue ethics able to account both for the supererogatory nature of rescue behavior and for rescuers' reports that they had no choice. Yet even as virtue ethics provides insight into the way character forms the preconditions for moral action and affects what people define as moral situations, it fails to capture the critical role of perspective in moral choice. Nor does it provide an answer to the conundrum that troubles us when we consider the implications of rescue behavior: can we assign moral responsibility if character determines actions? The reports of the rescuers present a concrete description of what has been called a perception of a common humanity. It is this perspective that constitutes the particular moral imperative that moved the rescuers to risk their lives for others, and whose full explication eludes us. Supererogatorisches Verhalten zeigt sich bei Menschen, die im Europa der Nazizeit Juden gerettet haben. Dazu sind wir auf einen verwirrenden empirischen Befund gestoßen: Retter bestehen darauf, daß sie mit Bezug auf ihre Handlungen, bei denen es um Leben und Tod ging, gar keine Wahl gehabt haben. Die Retterperspektive - wie sich die Retter selbst in ihrer Beziehung zu anderen sehen - wirkte sich als eine machtvolle Beschränkung der Wahlmöglichkeiten aus, wie sie traditionell angenommen werden. Traditionelle Moraltheorien haben es nicht geschafft, befriedigende Erklärungen für dieses Phänomen zu liefern, und wir haben uns der Tugendethik zugewendet, um herauszufinden, ob sie, die den Charakter betont, ein nützliches philosophisches Hilfsmittel für die Erklärung derartigen Rettungsverhalten bereitstellt.Unsere Schlußfolgerungen bezüglich der Tugendethik sind gemischt. Wir sind der Ansicht, daß die Betonung des Charakters durch die Tugendethik den traditionellen, auf Regeln basierenden Theorien über moralische Wahlmöglichkeiten überlegen ist, wobei die Tugendethik sowohl der supererogatorischen Natur des Rettungsverhaltens als auch den Aussagen der Retter, sie hätten gar keine Wahl gehabt, Rechnung trägt. Obwohl die Tugendethik sogar Einsichten in die Art und Weise liefert, wie der Charakter die entscheidende Vorbedingung für moralisches Handeln bildet und wie Menschen moralische Situationen bestimmen, versagt sie doch dabei, die maßgebliche Rolle zu definieren, die die moralische Perspektive bei der moralischen Wahl spielt. Ebensowenig gibt sie eine Antwort auf das Rätsel, das uns beschäftigt, wenn wir die Implikationen des Rettungsverhaltens bedenken: Können wir moralische Verantwortlichkeit zuschreiben, wenn der Charakter die Handlungen bestimmt? Die Aussagen der Retter geben eine konkrete Beschreibung von etwas, was als Perzeption einer gemeinsamen Menschheit bezeichnet worden ist. Es ist diese Perspektive, die das besondere moralische Gebot in Kraft setzt, das die Retter dazu bewogen hat, ihr Leben für andere zu riskieren. Diese Perspektive läßt sich nicht vollständig erklären. (shrink)

(2013). Veritistic Epistemology and the Epistemic Goals of Groups: A Reply to Vähämaa. Social Epistemology: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 21-25. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2012.760666.

Introduction: Thinking, writing, and reading about the real -- Dialectic and the real : Lacan, Hegel, and the alchemy of après-coup -- 'Reality' and the real : culture as anamorphosis -- The real of sexual difference : imagining, thinking, being -- Ethics and the real : the ungodly virtues of psychoanalysis -- Politics, or, the art of the impossible.

Critical Qualitative Health Research seeks to deepen understandings of the philosophies, politics and practices shaping contemporary qualitative health related research. This accessible, lively, controversial introduction draws on current empirical examples and critical discussion to show how qualitative research undertaken in neoliberal healthcare contexts emerges and the complex issues qualitative researchers confront. This book provides readers with a critical, interrogative discussion of the histories and the legacies of qualitative research, as well as of the more recent calls for renewed criticality in (...) research to respond to global health concerns. Contributions further showcase a range of contemporary work engaging with these issues and the complex encounters with philosophies, politics and practices this involves; from seeking explicit engagements with posthuman ideas or detailed explorations of deeply engaged humanist approaches, to critical discussions of the politics and practices of emerging novel, digital and creative methods. This book offers postgraduate researchers, health researchers and students alike opportunities to engage more deeply with the emergent, complex and messy terrain of qualitative health related research. (shrink)

Drawing on positioning theory this study investigates how Somali diaspora mothers actively struggle to be recognized by teachers in Danish public schools as equitable partners in their children’s education. The study takes into account the historically and politically constituted conditions for positioning work and argues that these mothers navigate skillfully in these conditions explicitly positioning themselves as both ‘supportive assistants’ and ‘responsible parents’. However, the analysis shows that these mothers have narratives of unjust treatment of both themselves and their children (...) in schools, but the struggle to be recognized as equitable partners inhibits their possibilities of taking up the position of ‘advocate for their child’. They are thereby drawn into a position of ‘passive complacency’. Additionally the article argues for a more encompassing understanding of positioning theory that takes into account the constituted conditions as well as embodied and material aspects of constitutive here-and-now negotiations. (shrink)

The work reported in this monograph was begun in the winter of 1967 in a graduate seminar at Berkeley. Many of the basic data were gathered by members of the seminar and the theoretical framework presented here was initially developed in the context of the seminar discussions. Much has been discovered since1969, the date of original publication, regarding the psychophysical and neurophysical determinants of universal, cross-linguistic constraints on the shape of basic color lexicons, and something, albeit less, can now also (...) be said with some confidence regarding the constraining effects of these language-independent processes of color perception and conceptualization on the direction of evolution of basic color term lexicons. (shrink)

This undergraduate textbook covers the key material for a typical first course in logic, in particular presenting a full mathematical account of the most important result in logic, the Completeness Theorem for first-order logic. Looking at a series of interesting systems, increasing in complexity, then proving and discussing the Completeness Theorem for each, the author ensures that the number of new concepts to be absorbed at each stage is manageable, whilst providing lively mathematical applications throughout. Unfamiliar terminology is kept to (...) a minimum, no background in formal set-theory is required, and the book contains proofs of all the required set theoretical results. The reader is taken on a journey starting with König's Lemma, and progressing via order relations, Zorn's Lemma, Boolean algebras, and propositional logic, to completeness and compactness of first-order logic. As applications of the work on first-order logic, two final chapters provide introductions to model theory and nonstandard analysis. (shrink)

The doctrine of double effect, together with other moral principles that appeal to the intentions of moral agents, has come under attack from many directions in recent years, as have a variety of rationales that have been given in favor of it. In this paper, our aim is to develop, defend, and provide a new theoretical rationale for a secular version of the doctrine. Following Quinn (1989), we distinguish between Harmful Direct Agency and Harmful Indirect Agency. We propose the following (...) version of the doctrine: that in cases in which harm must come to some in order to achieve a good (and is the least costly of possible harms necessary), the agent foresees the harm, and all other things are equal, a stronger case is needed to justify Harmful Direct Agency than to justify Harmful Indirect Agency. We distinguish between two Kantian rationales that might be given for the doctrine, a “dependent right” rationale, defended by Quinn, and an “independent right” rationale, which we defend. We argue that the doctrine and the “independent right” rationale for it are not vulnerable to counterexamples or counterproposals, and conclude by drawing implications for the larger debate over whether agents' intentions are in any way relevant to permissibility and obligation. (shrink)

Sandplay is a growing field of interest for Jungian and other psychotherapists. _Sandplay - Silent Workshop of the Psyche_ by Kay Bradway and Barbara McCoard, provides an introduction to sandplay as well as extensive new material for those already using this form of therapy. Based on the authors' wide-ranging clinical work, it includes: in-depth sandplay case histories material from a wide range of adults and children over 90 illustrations in black and white and colour detailed notes on interpretation of sand (...) trays an examination of symbols and concepts used in sandplay. Clearly written and soundly based in theory, this book provides historical background for understanding sandplay as well as helpful discussion of how it works in a clinical context. Kay Bradway and Barbara McCoard bring their indispensable personal experience to the subject to stress the healing potential of sandplay. They also reflect on the nature of a therapy where the psyche works largely in silence. (shrink)

This paper starts by investigating Ackermann's interpretation of finite set theory in the natural numbers. We give a formal version of this interpretation from Peano arithmetic (PA) to Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the infinity axiom negated (ZF−inf) and provide an inverse interpretation going the other way. In particular, we emphasize the precise axiomatization of our set theory that is required and point out the necessity of the axiom of transitive containment or (equivalently) the axiom scheme of ∈-induction. This clarifies the (...) nature of the equivalence of PA and ZF−inf and corrects some errors in the literature. We also survey the restrictions of the Ackermann interpretation and its inverse to subsystems of PA and ZF−inf, where full induction, replacement, or separation is not assumed. The paper concludes with a discussion on the problems one faces when the totality of exponentiation fails, or when the existence of unordered pairs or power sets is not guaranteed. (shrink)

The author means to show how focusing on the sense of hearing can sharpen our understanding of Kierkegaard’s argument – in the first portion of Either/Or – that Don Giovanni ranks supreme among works of art. After explaining how he takes Kierkegaard’s case to rest on the issue of the ear being the “most spiritually qualified sense,” he shows how attending to the importance of hearing within the original Don Juan myth, as well as within Mozart and Da Ponte’s treatment (...) of it, can help us understand the myth’s dependence on and repudiation of Christianity: unlike sight, hearing places us in close spiritual intimacy with its source, even as it also opens up specific possibilities of theatricality and deceit. He concludes by arguing why hearing should be regarded as the paradigmatic sense in relation to which Kierkegaard understands the task of philosophy itself, in contrast to earlier philosophical emphases on visible intelligibility. (shrink)

The recent “turn to matter” evident in material feminist theories of the more‐than‐human world offers distinct posthuman understandings of the world as continuously relationally entangled, emergent or materializing. In this paper, I consider how these premises both trouble conventional understandings of matter and/or materials, but likewise potentially revise and revitalize understandings of the political for health and inequalities, and for nursing. This is both timely and much needed given contemporary contexts of austerity‐driven neoliberalism in health care and the unprecedented growth (...) in disparities of wealth and well‐being. I wish to explore whether material feminisms allow us to retheorize connections between abstract theory and material concerns like health and inequalities, differently. This is not theory in opposition to practice or activism, but theory conceptualized as sets of entangled emergent practices, but also what constitutes the political, as more fully relational to and in praxis with health‐related activism. I will argue these theories further justify how practitioners can visibly care for and care more about social and health inequalities. Drawing mainly on the work of material feminist, Karen Barad, and her bringing together of queer and feminist theory, as well as feminist new materialisms and understandings of posthumanism, I discuss how this turn to matter together with meaning might transform understandings of health and inequalities. (shrink)

The challenges posed by postmodern and poststructural theories profoundly disrupt the certainties of feminist and nursing research, yet at the same time offer possibilities for developing new epistemologies. While there are an increasing number of accounts discussing the theoretical implications of these ideas for nursing research, I wish to discuss the practical and the methodological implications of using postmodern feminist theories within empirical research. In particular, I identify the challenges I encountered through an examination of specific aspects of the research (...) process and through examples drawn from empirical research. I conclude that using postmodern feminist theories requires a continuous engagement with, and interrogation of, the modern epistemological and ontological assumptions of qualitative, feminist nursing research and, in so doing, presents the possibility for nurse scholars to begin to develop a ‘passionately interested’ methodological approach to nursing inquiry. (shrink)

Each book in the series includes six 40-minute studies designed to draw you into God’s Word through basic inductive Bible study.

Despite claims of ‘evidence based policy’, the place of empirical evidence in family law reform is ambiguous. There is ongoing socio-legal analysis of the differential value and uses of quantitative data and anecdote in detailing women’s experiences and advocating for change. In this paper, we engage with these issues through a focus on how data were constructed in a key government report, Every Picture Tells a Story, which was used to officially define the problem and outline recommendations in the controversial (...) 2006-08 reform of the Australian Child Support Scheme. Our discussion focuses on two questions: what legitimacy is accorded to different kinds of evidence in family law reform processes?; and, how is this legitimacy gendered? We applied feminist critical discourse analysis to the type, source and claims of the data included in the child support chapter of the report. Our findings indicate that both quantitative data and anecdote were used to privilege fathers’ financial interests and autonomy; in contrast, women’s voices and interests were marginalised. Thus, we argue the legitimacy of data is ascribed through its relationship to the gendered definition of the ‘problems’ of child support, rather than the type of data per se. (shrink)

In this fascinating study, the author analyzes the conceptual roots of molecular biology and the social matrix in which it was developed.

What, exactly, makes humans human? A close look at nonhuman animal domestication practices reveals how people came to view their own uniqueness in western cultural process. The study of domestication across time shows the multiple human impulses underlying acts of animal enclosure and domestication. Animals can be beloved companions or eaten for a meal. These impulses involve contradictory moralities-a rich subject for inquiries into the dynamics of power and possession, at scales ranging from local to global.