O presente texto procura entender as razões que levaram o filósofo e crítico escocês Hugh Blair a tomar Voltaire como um modelo para o historiador moderno. Inicia-se o estudo com uma breve exposição de alguns elementos da concepção de história no pensamento voltairiano e então se passa à consideração que o autor britânico faz deles.The present text aims to understand the reasons that took the Scottish philosopher and critic Hugh Blair to take Voltaire as a model (...) to the modern historian. This study begins with a brief description of some elements of history conception according to Voltaire´s thinking and then the consideration that the British author makes of it. (shrink)

Hugh Blair gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Autoren der schottischen Aufklärung. Seine Predigten wurden mehrfach gedruckt und aufgelegt. F.D.E. Schleiermacher übernahm um die Jahrhundertwende 1800 die erste Übersetzung der Bücher 4 und 5 von Blairs Predigten ins Deutsch. Diese liegen hier in einer gewohnt hochwertigen, kritischen Edition vor.

Hume's notion of conception is closer to Reid's than Reid realizes and may lie behind Hume's charge in the letter to Hugh Blair (1762) that Reid's philosophy "leads us back to innate ideas".

This is a book on rhetorics as a public communication method, which refers to the ideas of the main theoretician of rhetorics, i.e. Aristotle, Marcus Tillius Cicero, Hugh Blair, Frances Yates, and Gilbert Austin.

Contrary to the view that Francis Hutcheson attempted to expound, defend, and further develop the philosophical system described in Shaftesbury's Characteristics, some contemporaries of Hutcheson considered Hutcheson's differences from Shaftesbury to be at least as profound as the similarities. The clearest descriptions of those differences can be found in William Leechman's preface to Hutcheson's 1755 System of Moral Philosophy, and more elaborately in a review of Hutcheson's System, probably by Hugh Blair, published in the 1755 Edinburgh Review. Examining (...) Shaftesbury's and Hutcheson's moral philosophies in light of these two descriptions reveals that Shaftesbury's defense of virtue as natural to human beings, while a plausible response to Locke, clearly did not escape Hutcheson's censure of Epicurean egoism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Following recent scholarship, this article investigates the relationship among Adam Smith's lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres, his Wealth of Nations, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and his lectures on jurisprudence. According to Smith, the rhetorical theory regarding genre and style improves practical judgment that is central to both economic and legal affairs. Though Smith's lectures on rhetoric feature no overt mention of these legal or commercial applications, when we read these lectures alongside his lectures and writings on jurisprudence (...) and economics, we see that Smith had developed numerous applications for the practical judgment that he taught his students when, under his guidance, they analyzed literary texts. Noting the interrelation among Smith's work on rhetoric, law, and economics allows us to see that others in the Scottish Enlightenment, such as Hugh Blair and Henry Home Lord Kames, similarly found connections among jurisprudence, political economy, and rhetorical theory. (shrink)

During the past fifty years, utopian studies solidified a functional definition of utopia in the Marxist tradition, which has encouraged a broad focus on social process rather than on content. In the liberal-humanist tradition, however, utopia is often treated as strictly a matter of form and content, particularly genre. I argue that the key to a functional definition of utopia in the liberal-humanist tradition is the Western tradition of rhetoric. Since its beginnings in ancient culture, rhetoric has been concerned with (...) verbal or symbolic persuasion using values and ideals of the audience. I explain how the utopian impulse is inherent in rhetorical theory from ancient to modern times, including examples from Plato, Cicero, eighteenth-century rhetoricians Hugh Blair and George Campbell, and modern rhetorician Kenneth Burke. I give a rhetorical reading of Mannheim and Bloch and suggest other areas of cross-pollination between rhetoric and utopian studies. (shrink)

The popular and successful rhetorical textbooks produced by the 18th century Scottish philosophical tradition, such as George Campbell's The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, and Alexander Bain’s English Composition and Rhetoric have been widely accorded a role in the trajectories of 19th and 20th century literary theory. Scholars have generally overlooked them, however, as philosophical works. The selected writings chosen for this volume show how these rhetorical textbooks were a practical extension of (...) the philosophy of language developed by 18th century Scottish philosophers. Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, Alexander Gerard, and Henry Home, Lord Kames, advanced a radically new paradigm of language as an inherently mediated practice, directed simultaneously to personal and social, moral and aesthetic uses. This Scottish philosophy of rhetoric powerfully influenced the teaching of language and literacy as tools for social and educational innovation. This volume — the first of its kind — offers a wide variety of writings on rhetoric and rhetorical theory, selected in a way that reveals their intimate connection with the Scottish philosophical tradition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ossian and the Invention of Textual HistoryKristine Louise HaugenIt is now controversial to call James Macpherson a forger or the poems of Ossian a hoax. 1 Encouraged by Derick Thomson’s 1952 demonstration that Macpherson’s Ossian indeed echoes authentic Gaelic verse, 2 a group of critics has undertaken to “rehabilitate” Macpherson, not least through a new critical edition of Ossian’s poems and related texts. 3 The edition makes it easier (...) than before to encounter Ossian directly:Morna, thou fairest of women, daughter of Cormac-Carbre? [sic] why in the circle of stones, in the cave of the rock, alone? The stream murmureth hoarsely. The blast groaneth in the aged tree. The lake is troubled before thee.... But thou art like snow on the heath. Thy hair like a thin cloud of gold on the top of Cromleach.... Thy arms, as two white pillars in the hall of Fingal. 4The authentic source of this passage seems to be the eighteenth-century commonplace that the savage and uneducated delight in figurative language, especially similes and metaphors—a commonplace enunciated often in the writings [End Page 309] of Hugh Blair, a literary critic deeply interested in Macpherson’s Ossianic productions. 5 As Harold Weinbrot and others suggest, the Ossian poems were celebrated largely because they confirmed readers’ most picturesque preconceptions about the “infancy of mankind.” 6There was room for disagreement. Many influential litterati were convinced of the poems’ antiquity, among them Goethe, Herder, Cesarotti, and a host of Scottish intellectuals. 7 But there were also detractors, mainly English—for example, Dr. Johnson and Edward Gibbon—although David Hume soon joined the skeptics, and the Scotsman Malcolm Laing issued the most crushing attack in the exchange several decades after Ossian’s first appearance in 1760. 8 The Ossian poems served a potent mixture of scholarly and political concerns, of which some were new but some were venerable. With a subtle but important shift in balance, the same mixture underlay the willingness of the most prominent eighteenth-century critics to discredit problematic texts and textual myths, even at the cost of an apparent reduction in historical knowledge. 9 For all parties Macpherson’s Ossian invited not only aesthetic delectation, but sustained thought about the relationship between early poetry and history and the value of early texts for reconstructing the past. [End Page 310]The question of British origins had preoccupied seventeenth-century antiquaries for a number of reasons, including Polydore Vergil’s unflattering Anglica Historia (first published 1546). 10 In the campaign to establish respectable national roots the Celtic druids had quickly become a kind of favorite example; they were presented early and often as heroes of British culture. The druids and their associates the bards had been described in their French setting by classical authors; William Camden, John Selden, and others transferred them easily to Celtic Britain. It was then straightforward to suggest further that the British Celts were the first discoverers of writing and philosophy, or at least discoverers concurrent with the ancient Hebrews, or both, this theory having been elaborated for the French Celts through Annius of Viterbo’s historical forgeries of 1498 and Annius’s French partisans. 11In fact this theory placed England at a disadvantage as Scotland, Ireland, and Wales had the more convincing joint claim to Celtic ancestry. Individual claims for Scotland and Ireland were frequently heard as well. The text most relevant to Ossian was the deist John Toland’s 1726 history of the druids, in which Toland both satirized the eighteenth-century clergy and argued that the ancient Celts of France and Scotland were colonists from Ireland—the original home of druidism, learning, and Toland. 12 In Toland’s version the theory made much of certain unpublished Irish manuscripts, supposedly dating from Cicero’s day and written in the “native” Irish alphabet. St. Patrick had burned hundreds of druidical religious books when he arrived in Ireland—proof that the Celts had a written language—but the bardic histories, couched in rugged verse, had escaped the evangelist’s flames. 13 Clearly, any respectable reply would need to draw on ancient manuscripts too.Even for readers unfamiliar with Toland, Macpherson’s texts... (shrink)

This paper offers re-assessment of Scottish Common Sense rhetoric and its relationship to pluralist practice and philosophical method. It argues that the rhetorical texts of George Campbell, Hugh Blair, and Alexander Bain can be read as a practical application of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. This offers a novel means of examining the relationship that Scottish rhetoric has to the philosophy of David Hume and also its own innovative philosophy of language. Finally, I argue that Scottish rhetoric makes a (...) unique contribution to rhetorical methodology's key place in the creation of social and moral consensus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:69 WILLIAM ROBERTSON AND DAVID HUME: THREE LETTERS The relationship between David Hume and his fellow Scottish historian William Robertson has always seemed one-sided. Despite the existence of fifteen letters to Robertson in the standard volumes of Hume's correspondence,1 Hume scholars have long had reason to regret the lack of a single extant letter from Robertson to Hume. None are to be found, for example, where one would most (...) expect them to be — in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, alongside the letters to Hume from various other Moderate clergymen and literati in Robertson's circle, such as Hugh Blair and Adam Ferguson. Fortunately, however, two of Robertson's letters to Hume (numbered II and III below) have now turned up where one would not expect them to be — among Robertson's own correspondence in the Robertson2 Macdonald Papers, National Library of Scotland. They are not mere drafts, such as one is accustomed to find among an author's private papers; rather, they are autograph signed letters that appear to have actually been posted. How and when they found their way back to Robertson's personal papers, and what became of the rest of Robertson's letters to Hume, are questions open to speculation. For the moment we are grateful for the letters we now have, neither of which is known to have been published before in whole or in part. Nor has Hume been identified before as the recipient of either of these letters, though internal evidence makes it clear that he was. Both letters date from the late 1760s, when Hume was living in London and Robertson was at the peak of his multi-faceted career in Edinburgh as university principal, parish minister, ecclesiastical leader, and man of letters. The first of them, dated 27 March 1767, was sent to Hume in his capacity as under- 70 secretary of state in the Northern Department (an office he held from February 1767 to January 1768). It is plainly a reply to a letter of 19 March, in which Hume had discussed three topics to which Robertson was 5 responding: Robertson's efforts to secure a military chaplaincy for a certain Scottish minister (evidently named Brodie); Conway's role in the famous dispute between Hume and Rousseau; and the public response to Adam Ferguson's newly published Essay on the History of Civil Society. In addition Robertson addresses a matter that Hume had apparently broached with him at some earlier time: the attempt to find a suitable Scottish church to which Hume might obtain a crown presentation for his nephews' tutor, the Rev. Christopher Tait. The letter concludes on a note of admiration that is characteristic not only of Robertson but of most of Hume's other "Protestant Pastors" in Scotland. The second letter to Hume, dated 31 January 1769, is chiefly concerned with the forthcoming publication of Robertson's History of Charles V and the French translation of it by J.-B.-A. Suard — subjects that had been treated in two letters from Hume to 7 Robertson of autumn 1768. It also contains a strong recommendation for a bright young Scottish writer (in both the legal and literary senses of that term) who would one day become Robertson's most vitriolic critic: Gilbert Stuart. On the personal side, there is encouragement for the now unemployed Hume to return to Edinburgh, as he was then threatening to do, after his "great glut of society" at Paris and London, and there are allusions in the closing paragraph to Hume's part in introducing his friend to polite society when Robertson had visited London to arrange the publication of Charles V in the spring of 1768. 71 To these two letters from Robertson we have prefixed a third from earlier in the same decade, one Q not actually addressed to Hume but largely about him. Robertson wrote it to their common friend Gilbert Elliot (later Sir Gilbert Elliot) on 8 March 1762, two days before the Town Council elected Robertson principal of Edinburgh University. The first paragraph deals with the principalship and relates to Hume only indirectly, as we point out in a footnote. The second paragraph, however, contains interesting... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:69 WILLIAM ROBERTSON AND DAVID HUME: THREE LETTERS The relationship between David Hume and his fellow Scottish historian William Robertson has always seemed one-sided. Despite the existence of fifteen letters to Robertson in the standard volumes of Hume's correspondence,1 Hume scholars have long had reason to regret the lack of a single extant letter from Robertson to Hume. None are to be found, for example, where one would most (...) expect them to be — in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, alongside the letters to Hume from various other Moderate clergymen and literati in Robertson's circle, such as Hugh Blair and Adam Ferguson. Fortunately, however, two of Robertson's letters to Hume (numbered II and III below) have now turned up where one would not expect them to be — among Robertson's own correspondence in the Robertson2 Macdonald Papers, National Library of Scotland. They are not mere drafts, such as one is accustomed to find among an author's private papers; rather, they are autograph signed letters that appear to have actually been posted. How and when they found their way back to Robertson's personal papers, and what became of the rest of Robertson's letters to Hume, are questions open to speculation. For the moment we are grateful for the letters we now have, neither of which is known to have been published before in whole or in part. Nor has Hume been identified before as the recipient of either of these letters, though internal evidence makes it clear that he was. Both letters date from the late 1760s, when Hume was living in London and Robertson was at the peak of his multi-faceted career in Edinburgh as university principal, parish minister, ecclesiastical leader, and man of letters. The first of them, dated 27 March 1767, was sent to Hume in his capacity as under- 70 secretary of state in the Northern Department (an office he held from February 1767 to January 1768). It is plainly a reply to a letter of 19 March, in which Hume had discussed three topics to which Robertson was 5 responding: Robertson's efforts to secure a military chaplaincy for a certain Scottish minister (evidently named Brodie); Conway's role in the famous dispute between Hume and Rousseau; and the public response to Adam Ferguson's newly published Essay on the History of Civil Society. In addition Robertson addresses a matter that Hume had apparently broached with him at some earlier time: the attempt to find a suitable Scottish church to which Hume might obtain a crown presentation for his nephews' tutor, the Rev. Christopher Tait. The letter concludes on a note of admiration that is characteristic not only of Robertson but of most of Hume's other "Protestant Pastors" in Scotland. The second letter to Hume, dated 31 January 1769, is chiefly concerned with the forthcoming publication of Robertson's History of Charles V and the French translation of it by J.-B.-A. Suard — subjects that had been treated in two letters from Hume to 7 Robertson of autumn 1768. It also contains a strong recommendation for a bright young Scottish writer (in both the legal and literary senses of that term) who would one day become Robertson's most vitriolic critic: Gilbert Stuart. On the personal side, there is encouragement for the now unemployed Hume to return to Edinburgh, as he was then threatening to do, after his "great glut of society" at Paris and London, and there are allusions in the closing paragraph to Hume's part in introducing his friend to polite society when Robertson had visited London to arrange the publication of Charles V in the spring of 1768. 71 To these two letters from Robertson we have prefixed a third from earlier in the same decade, one Q not actually addressed to Hume but largely about him. Robertson wrote it to their common friend Gilbert Elliot (later Sir Gilbert Elliot) on 8 March 1762, two days before the Town Council elected Robertson principal of Edinburgh University. The first paragraph deals with the principalship and relates to Hume only indirectly, as we point out in a footnote. The second paragraph, however, contains interesting... (shrink)

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834) was, in Berlin, an eminent preacher, professor, and member of the academy. He displayed an influential theological and philosophical position between enlightenment, German idealism, and romanticism. The historical-critical edition of Schleiermacher's complete works, his unpublished writings and correspondence, published since 1980, has been divided into the following five sections: I. Writings and Drafts II. Lectures III. Sermons IV. Translations V. Correspondence and Biographical Documents The first editorial section, Writings and Drafts, includes all of (...) Schleiermacher's writings which were printed during his lifetime except those which belong to the editorial sections III and IV. It also includes manuscripts either relating to these printed works or to drafts which do not belong to other editorial sections. In 2003, the final two text volumes (vols. 13 and 14) appeared. In 2005, the index volume with some addenda was published. The second editorial section, Lectures, contains all the material regarding Schleiermacher's extentsive lecturing both in Theological and Philosophical Faculties. Additional material is also drawn from notes made in his lecture by his students. (The Berlin Research Centre has been carrying out the editorial work on this section since 1989.) The third section, Sermons, includes all of Schleiermacher's published sermons authorised by himself, as well as his own handwritten drafts and records by listeners where the original text has not been preserved. (The Kiel Research Centre has been working on this section between 2003 and 2017.) This edition of Schleiermacher's sermons consist of a total of 14 volumes of approximately 600 pages each, plus an index volume. The forth section, Translations, has two main components. Schleiermacher translated Hugh Blair's and Joseph Fawcett's sermons (as well as parts of Mungo Park's Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa) from English into German (volumes 1 and 2). Further this sections will contain Schleiermacher's translation of Platon from Greek into German (beginning with volume 3). Section V. includes the letters from and to Schleiermacher, as well as bibliographical documents. The work on this section started in 1979 in the Schleiermacher Research Center Berlin. So far (May 2020), 13 volumes have been published, documenting letters until December 1816. (shrink)

Darwin hypothesized that some animals, when selecting sexual partners, possess a genuine “sense of beauty” that cannot be accounted for by the logic of natural selection. This hypothesis has been notoriously controversial. In this chapter I propose that the concept of agency can be useful to operationalize the “sense of beauty”, and can help identify the conditions under which one can infer that animals are acting as (aesthetic) agents. Focusing on a case study of the behavior of the Pavo cristatus, (...) I identify the types of evidence that would allow for the inference of agency through aesthetic choice. (shrink)

This broad-ranging _Companion_ comprises original contributions from leading Platonic scholars and reflects the different ways in which they are dealing with Plato’s legacy. Covers an exceptionally broad range of subjects from diverse perspectives Contributions are devoted to topics, ranging from perception and knowledge to politics and cosmology Allows readers to see how a position advocated in one of Plato’s dialogues compares with positions advocated in others Permits readers to engage the debate concerning Plato’s philosophical development on particular topics Also includes (...) overviews of Plato’s life, works and philosophical method. (shrink)

In the past decade, policy-makers in science have been concerned with harmonizing research integrity standards across Europe. These standards are encapsulated in the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Yet, almost every European country today has its own national-level code of conduct for research integrity. In this study we document in detail how national-level codes diverge on almost all aspects concerning research integrity – except for what constitutes egregious misconduct. Besides allowing for potentially unfair responses to joint misconduct by (...) international collaborations, we argue that the divergences raise questions about the envisaged self-regulatory function of the codes of conduct. (shrink)

Some of the most significant policy responses to cases of fraudulent and questionable conduct by scientists have been to strengthen professionalism among scientists, whether by codes of conduct, integrity boards, or mandatory research integrity training programs. Yet there has been little systematic discussion about what professionalism in scientific research should mean. In this paper I draw on the sociology of the professions and on data comparing codes of conduct in science to those in the professions, in order to examine what (...) precisely the model of professionalism implies for scientific research. I argue that professionalism, more than any other single organizational logic, is appropriate for scientific research, and that codes of conduct for scientists should strengthen statements concerning scientific autonomy and competence, as well as the scientific service ideal. (shrink)

Distrust in scientific experts can be surprisingly stubborn, persisting despite evidence supporting the experts’ views, demonstrations of their competence, or displays of good will. This stubborn distrust is often viewed as a manifestation of irrationality. By contrast, this article proposes a logic of “status distrust”: low-status individuals are objectively vulnerable to collective decision-making, and can justifiably distrust high-status scientific experts if they are not confident that the experts do not have their best interests at heart. In phenomena of status distrust, (...) social status is thus an indicator of distrust, and this has wider implications for the literatures on trust in science and on expert communication. (shrink)

Biologists explain organisms’ behavior not only as having been programmed by genes and shaped by natural selection, but also as the result of an organism’s agency: the capacity to react to environmental changes in goal-driven ways. The use of such ‘agential explanations’ reopens old questions about how justified it is to ascribe agency to entities like bacteria or plants that obviously lack rationality and even a nervous system. Is organismic agency genuinely ‘real’ or is it just a useful fiction? In (...) this paper we focus on two questions: whether agential explanations are to be interpreted ontically, and whether they can be reduced to non-agential explanations (thereby dispensing with agency). The Kantian approach we identify interprets agential explanations non-ontically, yet holds agency to be indispensable. Attributing agency to organisms is not to be taken literally in the way we attribute physical properties such as mass or acceleration, but nor is it a mere heuristic or predictive tool. Rather, it is an inevitable consequence of our own rational capacity: as long as we are rational agents ourselves, we cannot avoid seeing agency in organisms. (shrink)

Codes of ethics currently offer no guidance to scientists acting in capacity of expert. Yet communicating their expertise is one of the most important activities of scientists. Here I argue that expert communication has a specifically ethical dimension, and that experts must face a fundamental trade-off between "actionability" and "transparency" when communicating. Some recommendations for expert communication are suggested.

The dominant view on the ethics of cognitive enhancement (CE) is that CE is beholden to the principle of autonomy. However, this principle does not seem to reflect commonly held ethical judgments about enhancement. Is the principle of autonomy at fault, or should common judgments be adjusted? Here I argue for the first, and show how common judgments can be justified as based on a principle of service.

The dominant view today on evolutionary progress is that it has been thoroughly debunked. Even value-neutral progress concepts are seen to lack important theoretical underpinnings: natural selection provides no rationale for progress, and natural selection need not even be invoked to explain large-scale evolutionary trends. In this paper I challenge this view by analysing how natural selection acts in heterogeneous environments. This not only undermines key debunking arguments, but also provides a selectionist rationale for a pattern of “evolutionary unfolding”, where (...) life radiates across an increased range of exploitation of environmental heterogeneity. (shrink)

We propose that measures of information integration can be more straightforwardly interpreted as measures of agency rather than of consciousness. This may be useful to the goals of consciousness research, given how agency and consciousness are “duals” in many (although not all) respects.

Niche construction is a concept that captures a wide array of biological phenomena, from the environmental effects of metabolism to the creation of complex structures such as termite mounds and beaver dams. A central point in niche construction theory is that organisms do not just passively undergo developmental, ecological, or evolutionary processes, but are also active participants in them Evolution: From molecules to men, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983; Laland KN, Odling-Smee J, Feldman MW, In: KN Laland and T Uller (...) Evolutionary causation: Biological and philosophical reflections, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2019). In this paper, we distinguish between two fundamentally different ways in which organisms are active participants: as agents and as contributors. Roughly, organisms act as agents when niche constructing effects are a result of a goal-directed behavior over which the organisms have some degree of control. Organisms act as contributors when the niche constructing effects do not arise from a goal to perform the constructive activity. As illustrative examples we discuss plants altering leaf-morphology to optimize light exposure as reported by Sultan and bacteria creating novel niches through excreting energy-rich metabolites. The difference between agential and contributional niche construction is important for understanding the different ways organisms can actively participate in development, ecology, and evolution. Additionally, this distinction can increase our understanding of how the capacity of agency is distributed across the tree of life and how agency influences developmental and evolutionary processes. (shrink)

Organismic agency is often understood as the capacity to produce goal-directed behavior. This paper proposes a new way of modelling agency, namely as a naturalized deliberation. Deliberative action is not directed towards a particular goal, but involves a process of weighing multiple goals and a choice for a particular combination of these. The underlying causal model is symmetry breaking, where the organism breaks symmetries present in the selective environment. Deliberation is illustrated though the phenomena of mate choice and bacterial chemotaxis.

The success of precision medicine depends on obtaining large amounts of information about at-risk populations. However, getting consent is often difficult. Why? In this commentary I point to the differentials in social status involved. These differentials are inevitable once personal information is surrendered, but are particularly intense when the studied populations are socioeconomically or socioculturally disadvantaged and/or ethnically stigmatized groups. I suggest how the deep distrust of the latter groups can be partially justified as a lack of confidence that their (...) core values or interests will sufficiently be taken into account. Hence, the ethical challenge here lies not in avoiding status differentials, but in dealing with them appropriately. Scientists should not assume trust from others but adopt a norm of “demonstrating trustworthiness”. (shrink)

Social media has invaded our private, professional, and public lives. While corporations continue to portray social media as a celebration of self-expression and freedom, public opinion, by contrast, seems to have decidedly turned against social media. Yet we continue to use it just the same. What is social media, and how should we live with it? Is it the promise of a happier and more interconnected humanity, or a vehicle for toxic self-promotion? In this essay I examine the very structure (...) of social media communications in order to sketch how we should engage with social media. Social media communications are, I argue, a public communication of private content. This allows connections to be made with others in ways that would not otherwise be possible; however, it also submits the private to a status competition, which in turn is linked to mental health challenges. A ‘virtuous’ engagement with social media means being aware of these dynamics, and choosing to subordinate social media to other, more important goods. (shrink)

The paper interrogates the status, nature and significance of epistemological relativism as a key element of constructionism and critical realism. It finds that epistemological relativism is espoused by authorities in critical realism and marginalized or displaced in the field of management and organization studies, resulting in forms of analysis that are empirically, but not fully critically, realist. This evaluation prompts reflection on the question of whether, how and with what implications epistemological relativism might be recast at the heart of critical (...) realist studies of management and organization. (shrink)

Environmental heterogeneity is invoked as a key explanatory factor in the adaptive evolution of a surprisingly wide range of phenomena. This article aims to analyze this explanatory scheme of categorizing traits or properties as adaptations to environmental heterogeneity. First it is suggested that this scheme can be understood as a reaction to how heterogeneity adaptations were discounted or ignored in the modern synthesis. Then a positive account is proposed, distinguishing between two broad categories of adaptation to environmental heterogeneity: properties selected (...) for by well-defined patterns of environmental heterogeneity, and properties that help organisms exploit novel patterns of environmental heterogeneity. (shrink)

This paper examines the issue of global child labor. The treatment is grounded in the classical economics of Adam smith and the more recent writings of human capital theorists. Using this framework, the universal problem of child labor in newly industrializing countries is investigated. Child labor is placed in its historical context with a brief review of practices in the United States and Great Britain at the time those countries were industrializing. Then, child labor is examined in its contemporary global (...) context. We argue that, as countries industrialize, they tend to follow predictable patterns of development – including use of and eventual abandonment of child labor. We argue that this convergence under the logic of industrial capitalism supports a universalist approach to human rights (that would condemn child labor) over a more tolerant cultural relativist approach. (shrink)

Background Professional communities such as the medical community are acutely concerned with negligence: the category of misconduct where a professional does not live up to the standards expected of a professional of similar qualifications. Since science is currently strengthening its structures of self-regulation in parallel to the professions, this raises the question to what extent the scientific community is concerned with negligence, and if not, whether it should be. By means of comparative analysis of medical and scientific codes of conduct, (...) we aim to highlight the role of negligence provisions in codes of conduct for scientists, and to discuss the normative consequences for future codes of conduct. -/- Methods We collected scientific and medical codes of conduct in a selection of OECD countries, and submitted each code of conduct to comparative textual analysis. -/- Results Negligence is invariably listed as an infraction of the norms of integrity in medical codes of conduct, but only rarely so in the scientific codes. When the latter list negligence, they typically do not provide any detail on the meaning of ‘negligence’. -/- Discussion Unlike codes of conduct for professionals, current codes of conduct for scientists are largely silent on the issue of negligence, or explicitly exclude negligence as a type of misconduct. In the few cases where negligence is stipulated to constitute misconduct, no responsibilities are identified that would help prevent negligence. While we caution against unreasonable negligence provisions as well as disproportionate sanctioning systems, we do argue that negligence provisions are crucial for justified trust in the scientific community, and hence that there is a very strong rationale for including negligence provisions in codes of conduct. (shrink)

Philosophers of science and metascientists alike typically model scientists’ behavior as driven by credit maximization. In this article I argue that this modeling assumption cannot account for how scientists have a default level of trust in each other’s assertions. The normative implication of this is that science policy should not focus solely on incentive reform.