Experimental investigations into children’s interpretation of scalar terms show that children have difficulties with scalar implicatures in tasks. In contrast with adults, they are for instance not able deriving the pragmatic interpretation that “some” means “not all” (Noveck, 2001; Papafragou & Musolino, 2003). However, there is also substantial experimental evidence that children are not incapable of drawing scalar inferences and that they are aware of the pragmatic potential of scalar expressions. In these kinds of studies, the prime interest is to (...) discover what conditions facilitate implicature production for children. One of the factors that seem to be difficult for children is the generation of the scalar alternative. In a Felicity Judgment Task (FJT) the alternative is given. Participants are presented with a pair of utterances and were asked to choose the most felicitous description. In such a task, even five-year-old children showed a very good performance (Chierchia et al., 2001; Foppolo, Guasti, & Chierchia, 2012). Our study wants to build on this tradition, by using a FJT where not only “some-all” choices are given, but also “some-many” and “many-all”. We compared performance of 59 five-year-old children with 34 11-year-old children. The results indicated that performance of both age-groups was clearly above chance. With respect to the ‘some-all’ choice, we find in both age-groups very high accuracy, replicating Foppolo et al. (2012). However, for the five-year-old children, the critical and ambiguous items were more difficult than the control items and they also performed worse on these two items than the eleven-year-old children. Interestingly with respect to the issue of scalar diversity, the eleven-year-old children were also presented temporal items, which turned out to be more difficult than the quantitative ones. (shrink)

The Matter of the Mind addresses and illuminates the relationship between psychology and neuroscience by focusing on the topic of reduction. Written by leading philosophers in the field Discusses recent theorizing in the mind-brain sciences and reviews and weighs the evidence in favour of reductionism against the backdrop of recent important advances within psychology and the neurosciences Collects the latest work on central topics where neuroscience is now making inroads in traditional psychological terrain, such as adaptive behaviour, reward systems, consciousness, (...) and social cognition. (shrink)

Onze relatie met het landschap is eigenlijk heel onduidelijk. Er zijn veel vragen daarover, zoals: waarom voelen we ons in sommige landschappen thuis en in andere niet? Of waarom scheiden we natuur en cultuur? En: hoe is de relatie tussen mens en natuur in niet-westerse culturen? Wat heeft muziek met natuur te maken? Waarom zijn ongewervelde dieren zo opwindend? Hoe kunnen we een echt partnerschap met natuur vormgeven?0Ecoloog en filosoof Matthijs Schouten behandelt dit soort vragen in de beschouwingen in (...) dit boek en gaat diep in op onze complexe en ambivalente relatie met natuur en landschap. (shrink)

This article critically analyses correspondence and decisions regarding children/young people who were included in the Canadian child migration schemes that ran between 1883 and 1939, and those who were deemed ‘undeserving’ and outside the scope of the schemes. Drawing on critical realist ontology, a metatheory that centralises the causal non-linear dynamics and generative mechanisms in the individual, the cultural sphere, and wider society, the research starts from the premise that the principle of ‘less or more eligibility’ lies at the heart (...) of the British welfare system, both now and historically. Through analysing case files and correspondence relating to children sent to Canada via the Waifs and Strays Society and Fegan Homes, I shed light on the complex interplay between morality, biological determinism, resistance, and resilience in decisions around which children should be included or excluded. I argue that it was the complex interplay and nuance between the moral/immoral, desirable/undesirable, degenerate, and capable/incapable child that guided practice with vulnerable children in the late 1800s. In judgements around ‘deservedness’, related stigmas around poverty and ‘bad’ behaviour were rife. Within this, the child was punished for his/her ‘immoral tendencies’ and ‘inherited traits’, with little regard for the underlying reasons for their behaviour and ‘mental deficiencies’. (shrink)

This paper inquires into the nature of intertheoretic relations between psychology and neuroscience. This relationship has been characterized by some as one in which psychological explanations eventually will fall away as otiose, overthrown completely by neurobiological ones. Against this view it will be argued that it squares poorly with scientific practices and empirical developments in the cognitive neurosciences. We analyse a case from research on visual perception, which suggests a much more subtle and complex interplay between psychology and neuroscience than (...) a complete take-over of the former by the latter. In the case of vision, cross-theory influences between psychology and neuroscience go back and forth, resulting in refinement in both disciplines. We interpret this case study as showing that: (1) Mutual co-evolution of psychological and neurobiological theories, exemplifying persisting top-down influences from psychology, is a more empirically adequate way to describe psychoneural theory relations than a view on co-evolution, favoured by reductionists, which regards the cross-theory contributions from psychology as merely heuristically useful with no enduring influence on neurobiological theorizing; (2) In research on vision, discovering (or hypothesizing) the neural basis of functions vindicates psychological approaches, it does not eliminate them; (3) Current work on vision shows that many perceptual phenomena must be understood in terms of dynamical interactions between an observer and his/her environment. Therefore, we argue that internalist characterizations of the visual system must be supplemented with externalist accounts that address these reciprocal observer-environment interactions involved in vision. Such processes seem quite different from (internal) cellular and molecular ones, and as such seem to lie outside the scope of neuroscientific inquiry. We conclude that psychoneural reduction or elimination is implausible as a meta-theoretical prediction of theory choice in empirical work. Instead, this case study of vision shows that both psychology and neuroscience contribute to, and complement one another in the study of visual perception. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning literature on the governance and impact of cross-sector partnerships in the past two decades, the debate on how and when these collaborative arrangements address globally relevant problems and contribute to systemic change remains open. Building upon the notion of wicked problems and the literature on governing such wicked problems, this paper defines harnessing problems in multi-stakeholder partnerships as the approach of taking into account the nature of the problem and of organizing governance processes accordingly. The paper develops (...) an innovative analytical framework that conceptualizes MSPs in terms of three governance processes harnessing three key dimensions of wicked problems. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil provides an illustrative case study on how this analytical framework describes and explains organizational change in partnerships from a problem-based perspective. The framework can be used to better understand and predict the complex relationships between MSP governance processes, systemic change and societal problems, but also as a guiding tool in organizing governance processes to continuously re-assess the problems over time and address them accordingly. (shrink)

Recent calls for reinstituting mandatory home economics education have emphasized its potential to advance gender egalitarian aims. The thought is that, because women’s disproportionate performance of caregiving and household labor is partially caused by gender socialization that better prepares women than men for such work, we can disrupt gender inegalitarian work distributions by preparing everyone for the sort of work in question. The curricula envisioned in these calls are gender-neutral, in the sense that they recommend identical educational interventions for all (...) genders. By exploiting a parallel between gender-neutral educational policies and gender-neutral family leave policies, we argue first that gender-neutral home economics instruction is unlikely to advance gender egalitarian aims, and may in fact reinforce the very outcomes it is meant to disrupt. However, we further argue that a more radical home economics curriculum could avoid these difficulties. To the extent that we value educational interventions as a possible means for advancing gender egalitarian aims, we have good reason to seriously consider adopting a gender non-neutral program in which all and only boys receive mandatory caregiving instruction. (shrink)

Fried and Kollár constructed a fully faithful functor from the category of graphs to the category of fields. We give a new construction of such a functor and use it to resolve a longstanding open problem in computable model theory, by showing that for every nontrivial countable structure${\cal S}$, there exists a countable field${\cal F}$of arbitrary characteristic with the same essential computable-model-theoretic properties as${\cal S}$. Along the way, we develop a new “computable category theory”, and prove that our functor and (...) its partially defined inverse are computable functors. (shrink)

This volume defends a particular set of progressive political interventions on the basis of their being legitimate exercises of coercive political power, specifically focusing on the gendered division of labour, which is widely regarded as the predominant form of gender injustice.

Prudential hedonism has been beset by many objections, the strength and number of which have led most modern philosophers to believe that it is implausible. One objection in particular, however, is nearly always cited when a philosopher wants to argue that prudential hedonism is implausible—the experience machine objection to hedonism. This paper examines this objection in detail. First, the deductive and abductive versions of the experience machine objection to hedonism are explained. Following this, the contemporary responses to each version of (...) the argument are assessed and the deductive version is argued to be relatively ineffective compared to the abductive version. Then, a taxonomy of the contemporary critical responses to the abductive version is created. Consideration of these responses shows that the abductive version of the objection is fairly powerful, but also that one type of response seems promising against it. This response argues that experience machine thought experiments seem to elicit judgments that are either too biased to be used as evidence for the objection or not obviously in favour of reality. It is argued that only this type of refutation seems likely to convince proponents of the abductive version that the objection is much weaker than they believe it to be. Finally, it is suggested that more evidence is required before anything definitive can be said on the matter. (shrink)

Small and medium size business enterprises (SMEs) are the linchpin in systems of food provisioning in sub-Saharan Africa. These businesses occupy the middle of the agri-food chain and face a food security conundrum: they must ensure that smallholder producers of limited means can operate under fair terms while low-income consumers are supplied with affordable and nutritious food. This task becomes even more challenging when resources are scarce. This paper explores how resource-constrained SMEs arrange the terms on which both farmers and (...) consumers are included in agri-food chains. To this end, it combines the concept of inclusion with that of frugality. We use the case of a Kenyan SME to demonstrate how a focus on frugality can advance our understanding of how business practices create thriving business relationships with smallholders while simultaneously ensuring access to affordable food for consumers. We additionally identify what conditions for inclusion emerge from this type of dynamic business practices. Our perspective departs from assessing induced organisational interventions, such as contract farming or cooperatives, which deliberately shorten the agri-food chain, thereby overlooking the skilful practices being employed by business actors in the middle of the chain. (shrink)

In this paper, I urge feminists to re-center fetal moral status in their theorizing about abortion. I argue that fundamental feminist normative commitments are at odds with efforts to de-emphasize fetal moral status: The feminist commitment to ensuring care for dependents supports surprising conclusions with regard to the ethics of abortion, and the feminist commitment to politicizing the personal has surprising conclusions regarding the politics of abortion. But these feminist insights also support the conclusion that, conditional on fetal moral status, (...) care for unwanted fetuses would be a social obligation that only derivatively falls to women who are unwillingly pregnant. (shrink)

In this article, I develop and defend a prioritarian principle of justice for the distribution of educational resources. I argue that this principle should be conceptualized as directing educators to confer a general benefit, where that benefit need not be mediated by improved academic outcomes. I go on to argue that it should employ a metric of all-things-considered flourishing over the course of the student's lifetime. Finally, I discuss the relationship between my proposed prioritarian principle and the meritocratic principle that (...) it is presumed to supplement. (shrink)

Several philosophers of education argue that schooling should facilitate students’ development of autonomy. Such arguments fall into two main categories: Student-centered arguments support autonomy education to help enable students to lead good lives; Public-goods-centered arguments support autonomy education to develop students into good citizens. Critics challenge the legitimacy of autonomy education—of the state imposing a schooling curriculum aimed at making children autonomous. In this paper, I offer a unified solution to the challenges of legitimacy that both arguments for autonomy education (...) face. I first defend a particular construal of liberal legitimacy, and then consider each legitimacy challenge in light of that construal. I argue that the legitimacy challenges confronting both types of argument can be overcome. Further, I explain why we should pursue both arguments, rather than resting the entire case for autonomy education on one or the other. I conclude that each argument—if it can justify autonomy education at all—can justify autonomy education consistent with the requirements of liberal democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

Despite women’s increased labor force participation, household divisions of labor remain highly unequal. Properly implemented, gender egalitarian political interventions such as work time regulation, dependent care provisions, and family leave initiatives can induce families to share work more equally than they currently do. But do these interventions constitute legitimate uses of political power? In this article, I defend the political legitimacy of these interventions. Using the conception of citizenship at the heart of political liberalism, I argue that citizens would accept (...) political interventions aimed at protecting the ‘genuinely available option’ to enact gender egalitarian lifestyles. More strongly still, I argue that under certain circumstances, citizens would insist on the enactment of political interventions to protect this option. According to political liberalism’s constraints on legitimacy, this insistence renders these interventions not only legitimate but positively mandatory. It is legitimate for a state to exercise power to preserve the genuinely available option to enact a gender egalitarian lifestyle, and under certain circumstances, it is illegitimate for a state to fail to do so. (shrink)

According to Stereotype Threat Hypothesis, fear of confirming gendered stereotypes causes women to experience anxiety in circumstances wherein their performance might potentially confirm those stereotypes, such as high-stakes testing scenarios in science, technology, engineering, and math courses. This anxiety causes women to underperform, which in turn causes them to withdraw from math-intensive disciplines. STH is thought by many to account for the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, and a growing body of evidence substantiates this hypothesis. In considering the plausibility (...) of STH as an explanation for women's disproportionate attrition from undergraduate philosophy programs, one is struck by dissimilarities between STEM and philosophy that appear to undermine the applicability of STH to the latter. In this paper, I argue that these dissimilarities are either merely apparent or merely apparently relevant to the plausibility of STH as an explanation for gender disparities in philosophy. I argue further that, if research from STEM uncovers promising strategies for confronting stereotype threat, we should think about how to apply those strategies in our introductory philosophy classrooms. (shrink)

We argue in this paper that so-called new wave reductionism fails to capture the nature of the interlevel relations between psychology and neuroscience. Bickle (1995, Psychoneural reduction of the genuinely cognitive: some accomplished facts, Philosophical Psychology, 8, 265-285; 1998, Psychoneural reduction: the new wave, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) has claimed that a (bottom-up) reduction of the psychological concepts of learning and memory to the concepts of neuroscience has in fact already been accomplished. An investigation of current research on the phenomenon (...) of long-term potentiation reveals that this claim overstates the facts. Both the psychological and the neural concepts involved have not yet stabilized and face further correction under the influence of both bottom-up and top-down selection pressures. In addition, psychological concepts often refer to functions, and functions are indispensable and irreducible. Function ascriptions pick out objective patterns involving historical factors and distal goals. This view of functions implies that psychological facts cannot be simply read off from the neurophysiological facts. Although psychological theorizing is constrained by neurophysiology (and vice versa), psychology remains distinct at least to some degree. (shrink)

The _Matter of the Mind_ addresses and illuminates the relationship between psychology and neuroscience by focusing on the topic of reduction. Written by leading philosophers in the field Discusses recent theorizing in the mind-brain sciences and reviews and weighs the evidence in favour of reductionism against the backdrop of recent important advances within psychology and the neurosciences Collects the latest work on central topics where neuroscience is now making inroads in traditional psychological terrain, such as adaptive behaviour, reward systems, consciousness, (...) and social cognition. (shrink)

Despite women’s increased labor force participation, household divisions of labor remain highly unequal. Properly implemented, gender egalitarian political interventions such as work time regulation, dependent care provisions, and family leave initiatives can induce families to share work more equally than they currently do. But do these interventions constitute legitimate uses of political power? In this article, I defend the political legitimacy of these interventions. Using the conception of citizenship at the heart of political liberalism, I argue that citizens would accept (...) political interventions aimed at protecting the ‘genuinely available option’ to enact gender egalitarian lifestyles. More strongly still, I argue that under certain circumstances, citizens would insist on the enactment of political interventions to protect this option. According to political liberalism’s constraints on legitimacy, this insistence renders these interventions not only legitimate but positively mandatory. It is legitimate for a state to exercise power to preserve the genuinely available option to enact a gender egalitarian lifestyle, and under certain circumstances, it is illegitimate for a state to fail to do so. (shrink)

Those who wish to abolish or restrict the use of non-human animals in so-called factory farming and/or experimentation often argue that these animal use practices are incommensurate with animals’ moral status. If sound, these arguments would establish that, as a matter of ethics or justice, we should voluntarily abstain from the immoral animal use practices in question. But these arguments can’t and shouldn’t be taken to establish a related conclusion: that the moral status of animals justifies political intervention to disallow (...) or significantly diminish factory farming and animal experimentation. In this paper, we set out to do two things: First, we argue that while the arguments mentioned above may establish the moral impermissibility or injustice of the practices they condemn, they are not sufficient to justify political interventions or social policies to abolish or restrict such practices. It is one thing to argue that some moral imperative or imperative of justice exists, and quite another thing to call for the use of political power to induce compliance with that imperative. Our second task is to assess the prospects for developing an argument that is sufficient to justify political interventions to restrict or abolish the use of non-human animals in factory farming or experimentation. Beyond establishing the immorality or injustice of animal consumption or experimentation, one must show that the interventions in question constitute legitimate use of political power. Would prohibiting or discouraging animal use be legitimate? We attempt to answer this question within the context of fundamental liberal constraints on the legitimate use of coercive political power. (shrink)

International business organizations are regularly addressed on their corporate social responsibility (CSR). As illustrated in this paper, it is not yet clear exactly what CSR means to organizations and how to deal with it. In this paper, the authors explore how a sensemaking approach helps to understand the business challenges of CSR within an organizational context. The theories of Karl Weick are applied to the experiences of CSR in Royal Dutch Shell. The authors argue that the key to CSR in (...) international business organizations is to engage stakeholders and start a process of joint sensemaking. Three main competencies are crucial in this: the competency to engage stakeholders through listening and understanding; the creation of an organizational language so that CSR makes sense to members of the organization; and recognizing the momentum of taking action. (shrink)

International business organizations are regularly addressed on their corporate social responsibility (CSR). As illustrated in this paper, it is not yet clear exactly what CSR means to organizations and how to deal with it. In this paper, the authors explore how a sensemaking approach helps to understand the business challenges of CSR within an organizational context. The theories of Karl Weick are applied to the experiences of CSR in Royal Dutch Shell. The authors argue that the key to CSR in (...) international business organizations is to engage stakeholders and start a process of joint sensemaking. Three main competencies are crucial in this: the competency to engage stakeholders through listening and understanding; the creation of an organizational language so that CSR makes sense to members of the organization; and recognizing the momentum of taking action. (shrink)

The doctrine of eliminative materialism holds that belief-desire psychology is massively referentially disconnected. We claim, however, that it is not at all obvious what it means to be referentially (dis)connected. The two major accounts of reference both lead to serious difficulties for eliminativism: it seems that elimination is either impossible or omnipresent. We explore the idea that reference fixation is a much more local, partial, and context-dependent process than was supposed by the classical accounts. This pragmatic view suggests that elimination (...) is not the prime model for understanding the complex relations between the mind and brain sciences, and that we have little ground for concluding that in general psychological kinds do not exist. We suggest that reference changes are better seen as continuous rather than completely eliminative. (shrink)

We argue that embedded cognition provides an argument against Jaegwon Kim’s neural reduction of mental causation. Because some mental, or at least psychological processes have to be cast in an externalist way, Kim’s argument can be said to lead to the conclusion that mental causation is as safe as any other form of higher-level of causation.

Emotion suppression has been found to have negative psychological and social consequences in Western cultural contexts. Yet, in some other cultural contexts, emotion suppression is less likely to have negative consequences; relatedly, emotion suppression is also more common in those East-Asian cultural contexts. In a dyadic conflict study, we aim to conceptually replicate cultural differences found in previous research with respect to the prevalence and consequences of emotion suppression,and extend previous research by testing whether cultural differences are larger for some (...) than for other types of negative emotions. We postulate that cultural differences in suppression are less pronounced for socially engaging emotions than socially disengaging emotions, because the former foster the relationship, whereas the latter emphasize individual goals. Belgian and Japanese couples engaged in a 10-min conflict interaction followed by video-mediated recall, during which participants rated their emotions and emotion suppression every 30 s. As predicted, Japanese participants reported more suppression than their Belgian counterparts, but the cultural difference was more pronounced when participants experienced more socially disengaging emotions than when they experienced more socially engaging emotions. These results suggest that the type of emotion should be considered when describing cultural differences in emotion suppression. Finally, and consistent with previous research, emotion suppression was negatively associated with interaction outcomes in Belgian couples, but not in Japanese couples. (shrink)

In this article, I explore a new reason in favor of precollegiate philosophy: It could help narrow the persistent gender disparity within the discipline. I catalog some of the most widely endorsed explanations for the underrepresentation of women in philosophy and argue that, on each hypothesized explanation, precollegiate philosophy instruction could help improve our discipline's gender balance. Explanations I consider include stereotype threat, gendered philosophical intuitions, inhospitable disciplinary environment, lack of same-sex role models for women students in philosophy, and conflicting (...) “schemas” for philosophy and femininity. I argue that, insofar as some combination of these hypothesized explanations accounts for some portion of the underrepresentation of women in philosophy, those of us concerned to make things better have reason to participate in and promote efforts to share philosophy with younger students. (shrink)

Many college teachers believe that teaching can promote justice. Meanwhile, many in the broader American public disparage college classrooms as spaces of left-wing partisanship. This paper engages with that charge of partisanship. Section 1 introduces the charge. Then, in Sect. 2, I consider what teaching for justice should aim to do. I argue that selective institutions of higher education impose positional costs on members of a generation who do not attend them, and that those positional costs accrue not only in (...) terms of distributive equality but also in terms of civic equality. Teaching for justice, I argue, should be understood as an attempt to lessen those costs. But the civic equality costs that selective higher education imposes can be meaningfully lessened only by a radical version of teaching for justice: educational consciousness raising for institutional reform. This sets up a high hurdle for any defense against the partisanship charge, because the kind of teaching for justice we have most justice-related reason to engage in seems especially susceptible to that charge. Section 3 gives a public reasons case in favor of teaching for justice so understood. Because civic equality is a commitment we all ought to share as free and equal citizens, teaching for justice aimed at restoring civic equality enjoys a public reasons justification. Still, an all-things-considered assessment of our permissions or obligations to engage in this teaching project awaits a careful thinking through of the case against it. (shrink)

The class of all Artinian local rings of length at most l is ∀ 2 -elementary, axiomatised by a finite set of axioms Art l . We show that its existentially closed models are Gorenstein, of length exactly l and their residue fields are algebraically closed, and, conversely, every existentially closed model is of this form. The theory Got l of all Artinian local Gorenstein rings of length l with algebraically closed residue field is model complete and the theory Art (...) l is companionable, with model-companion Got l. (shrink)

Background To investigate attitudes of staff, residents and family members in long-term care towards sex and intimacy among older adults, specifically the extent to which they conceptualise sex and intimacy as a need, a right, a privilege or as a component of overall well-being. Methods The present study was a part of a two-arm mixed-methods cross-sectional study using a concurrent triangulation design. A validated survey tool was developed; 433 staff surveys were collected from 35 facilities across the country. Interviews were (...) conducted with 75 staff, residents and family members. Results It was common for staff, residents and family members to talk about intimacy and sexuality in terms of rights and needs. As well as using the language of needs and rights, it was common for participants to use terms related to well-being, such as fun, happiness or being miserable. One participant in particular described receiving intimate touch as a ‘kind of care’—a particularly useful way of framing the conversation. Conclusion While staff, residents and family frequently used the familiar language of needs and rights to discuss access to intimate touch, they also used the language of well-being and care. Reframing the conversation in this way serves a useful purpose: it shifts the focus from simply meeting minimum obligations to a salutogenic approach—one that focuses on caring for the whole person in order to improve overall well-being and quality of life. No data are available. (shrink)

BackgroundThe existing literature on sexuality and intimacy in residential care tends to focus on either the question of rights, or the value of autonomy. Where the literature does reference values...

Jennifer Morton’s Moving Up without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility is a wonderful book.1 1 In the acknowledgements, Morton says that in order to write it, she needed to ‘unlearn’ her training to write like a philosopher. I’ve had some occasion to try to unlearn that training myself. Having found it quite difficult, I am in awe of Morton’s remarkable accomplishment. She is offering deep philosophical insights into a matter of urgent social concern, and she’s making (...) those insights broadly legible to people who are not philosophers. The book is philosophically rich, but not for the sake of being philosophically rich. Like Morton, I think philosophy has a lot to offer to college leaders and, indeed, to leaders of all social institution that influence the trajectories of people’s lives. But making those contributions on behalf of our discipline requires us to exercise discernment and care not just in making distinctions and unpacking assumptions; it requires discernment and care too in judging which of those distinctions and assumptions really need probing. With this book, Morton offers not only a penetrating philosophical treatment of some under-explored costs involved in social mobility. She also offers a model for how to bring the disciplinary tools of philosophy to bear in ways that empower a broad audience to understand and to act on the conclusions she defends. (shrink)

The question of our educational obligations to disadvantaged students has typically been conceptualized using the language of achievement gaps: how and to what extent should we ameliorate gaps between students in terms of their attainment of certain valuable outcomes that are correlated with education? Recently, some have argued that the language of achievement gaps is misconceived and problematic, and that we should instead conceptualize our obligations to students as an education debt that is owed to certain disadvantaged students as descendants (...) of historic and structural injustices. Underlying this argument is a deeper conviction that the moral requirement to bring about a fair patterned distribution of educational outcomes is constrained by an obligation to rectify historical injustices. By conceptualizing the issue as a debt, rather than a gap (the argument goes), we can keep the priority of historical obligations squarely on the table. In this article, I defend the conceptual framework of achievement gaps in primary and secondary education by arguing that patterned principles of educational justice are not constrained by any claims and obligations that arise in virtue of historic injustices. (shrink)

Recently, some philosophers of religion have suggested that a reduction of the classical image of humanity may jeopardize classical theism. To obstruct reductionism, some theologians have argued for dualism on the basis of the argument of consciousness. In this essay, I argue that even consciousness must be considered a brain‐based phenomenon. This does not commit one to reductionism, however. Nonreductive physicalism appears to offer a promising alternative to either dualism or reductionism, without necessarily compromising more traditional views of humanity. I (...) do suggest that a modification of the classical image of God may be inevitable. (shrink)