Recent ‘revisionist’ studies of the Scientific Revolution have utilized Robert Hooke as an example of a mechanical philosopher who incorporated active principles in his world system. This paper carefully examines Hooke's natural philosophy in order to determine the extent to which he employed active agents in his work. Thorough investigation reveals that although Hooke sometimes refrained from offering causal explanations of the phenomena he studied, there is no solid evidence that he believed active principles were at work in nature. Rather, (...) his major tool for interpreting nature—his theory of congruity—follows wholly mechanical principles, as do his explanations of the essences of the fundamental constituents of the universe. Hooke emerges from this analysis as a purely mechanical philosopher. (shrink)

Is it possible to advance democracy by empowering ordinary citizens to make key decisions about the design of political institutions and policies? In 2004, the government of British Columbia embarked on a bold democratic experiment: it created an assembly of 160 near-randomly selected citizens to assess and redesign the province's electoral system. The British Columbia Citizens' Assembly represents the first time a citizen body has had the power to reform fundamental political institutions. It was an innovative gamble that has been (...) replicated elsewhere in Canada and in the Netherlands, and is gaining increasing attention in Europe as a democratic alternative for constitution-making and constitutional reform. In the USA, advocates view citizens' assemblies as a means for reforming referendum processes. This book investigates the citizens' assembly in British Columbia to test and refine key propositions of democratic theory and practice. (shrink)

For those who teach students in psychology, education, and the social sciences, the _Handbook of Demonstrations and Activities in the Teaching of Psychology, Second Edition_ provides practical applications and rich sources of ideas. Revised to include a wealth of new material, these invaluable reference books contain the collective experience of teachers who have successfully dealt with students' difficulty in mastering important concepts about human behavior. Each volume features a table that lists the articles and identifies the primary and secondary courses (...) in which readers can use each demonstration. Additionally, the subject index facilitates retrieval of articles according to topical headings, and the appendix notes the source as it originally appeared in _Teaching of Psychology_, the official journal of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, Division Two of the American Psychological Association. Volume I consists of 97 articles about strategies for teaching introductory psychology, statistics, research methods, and the history of psychology classes. Divided into four sections, the book suggests ways to stimulate interest, promote participation, grasp psychological terminology, and master necessary scientific skills. (shrink)

Critics of reliability theories of epistemic justificationoften claim that the `generality problem' is an insurmountabledifficulty for such theories. The generality problem is theproblem of specifying the level of generality at which abelief-forming process is to be described for the purposeof assessing its reliability. This problem is not asintractable as it seems. There are illuminating solutionsto analogous problems in the ethics literature. Reliabilistsought to attend to utilitarian approaches to choices betweeninfinite utility streams; they also ought to attend towelfarist approaches to social (...) choice situations that donot demand full aggregation of individual welfares.These analogies suggest that the traditional `single number'approach to reliability is misguided. I argue that a newapproach – the `vector reliability' approach – is preferable.Vector reliability theories associate target beliefs withreliability vectors – that is, structured collections ofreliability numbers – and construct criteria of epistemicjustification that appeal to these vectors. The bulk of thetheoretical labor involved in a reliability account of epistemicjustification is thus transferred from picking a uniquereliability number to constructing a plausible criterionof epistemic justification. (shrink)

In his 2001 article ‘Teaching to Lie and Obey: Nietzsche on Education’, Stefan Ramaekers defends Nietzsche’s concept of perspectivism against the charge that it is relativistic. He argues that perspectivism is not relativistic because it denies the dichotomy between the ‘true’ world and the ‘seeming’ world, a dichotomy central to claims to relativism. While Ramaekers’ article is correct in denying relativistic interpretations of perspectivism it does not go far enough in this direction. In fact, the way Ramaekers makes his case (...) may actually encourage the charge of relativism, especially when it comes to his appropriation of perspectivism for education. This article proposes to pick up where Ramaekers left off. It will argue that Nietzsche’s denial of the opposition between the ‘true’ world and the ‘seeming’ world opens up the possibility for the reestablishment of truth, albeit in a modified form. After examining Nietzsche’s modified ‘realist’ epistemology, the paper will explore the implications of it for his philosophy of education. It will be argued that Nietzsche’s educational philosophy is founded on his concept of perspectivism in so far as he demands that students be rigorously inculcated into a pedagogical framework that teaches students to discriminate between ‘true’ and ‘false’ perspectives. This framework is essential for the development of an intellectually robust and life-affirming culture. (shrink)

Despite the periodic table having been discovered by chemists half a century before the discovery of electronic structure, modern designs are invariably based on physicists’ definition of periods. This table is a chemists’ table, reverting to the phenomenal periods that led to the table’s discovery. In doing so, the position of hydrogen is clarified.

Critics of reliability theories of epistemic justificationoften claim that the `generality problem' is an insurmountabledifficulty for such theories. The generality problem is theproblem of specifying the level of generality at which abelief-forming process is to be described for the purposeof assessing its reliability. This problem is not asintractable as it seems. There are illuminating solutionsto analogous problems in the ethics literature. Reliabilistsought to attend to utilitarian approaches to choices betweeninfinite utility streams; they also ought to attend towelfarist approaches to social (...) choice situations that donot demand full aggregation of individual welfares.These analogies suggest that the traditional `single number'approach to reliability is misguided. I argue that a newapproach – the `vector reliability' approach – is preferable.Vector reliability theories associate target beliefs withreliability vectors – that is, structured collections ofreliability numbers – and construct criteria of epistemicjustification that appeal to these vectors. The bulk of thetheoretical labor involved in a reliability account of epistemicjustification is thus transferred from picking a uniquereliability number to constructing a plausible criterionof epistemic justification. (shrink)

Let’s say that an act requires Person-Affecting Justification if and only if some alternative would have been better for someone. So, Lucifer breaking Xavier’s back requires Person-Affecting Justification because the alternative would have been better for Xavier. But the story continues: While Lucifer evades justice, Xavier moves on and founds a school for gifted children. Xavier’s deepest values become identified with the school and its community. When authorities catch Lucifer, he claims no Person-Affecting Justification is needed: because the attack set (...) Xavier on his life’s path, it’s no longer true that the alternative would have been better by the standard of what Xavier now values most. An unappealingly paternalistic way to hold Lucifer to account is to discount Xavier’s preferences as merely adaptive. Instead, I propose understanding the persons of Person-Affecting Justification to be not persons but person stages. This allows us to hold Lucifer to account without having to discount Xavier’s actual preferences, and has interesting implications for compensatory justice, including making sense of reparations for historical wrongs. (shrink)

Some adaptationist explanations are regarded as maximally solid and others fanciful just-so stories. Just-so stories are explanations based on very little evidence. Lack of evidence leads to circular-sounding reasoning: “this trait was shaped by selection in unseen ancestral populations and this selection must have occurred because the trait is present.” Well-supported adaptationist explanations include evidence that is not only abundant but selected from comparative, populational, and optimality perspectives, the three adaptationist subdisciplines. Each subdiscipline obtains its broad relevance in evolutionary biology (...) via assumptions that can only be tested with the methods of the other subdisciplines. However, even in the best-supported explanations, assumptions regarding variation, heritability, and fitness in unseen ancestral populations are always present. These assumptions are accepted given how well they would explain the data if they were true. This means that some degree of “circularity” is present in all evolutionary explanations. Evolutionary explanation corresponds not to a deductive structure, as biologists usually assert, but instead to ones such as abduction or induction. With these structures in mind, we show the way to a healthier view of “circularity” in evolutionary biology, and why integration across the comparative, populational, and optimality approaches is necessary. (shrink)

In Book II of the Republic, Socrates briefly depicts a city where each inhabitant contributes to the welfare of all by performing the role for which he or she is naturally suited. Socrates calls this city the `true city ' and the `healthy one'. Nearly all commentators have argued that Socrates' praise of the city cannot be taken at face value, claiming that it does not represent Socrates' preferred community. The point of this paper is to argue otherwise. The claim (...) is that Socrates genuinely believes the city is a healthy and desirable city, and that he believes that the First City is in fact superior to the Kallipolis. (shrink)

Avi Mintz (2008) has recently argued that Anglo-American educators have a tendency to alleviate student suffering in the classroom. According to Mintz, this tendency can be detrimental because certain kinds of suffering actually enhance student learning. While Mintz compellingly describes the effects of educator’s desires to alleviate suffering in students, he does not examine one of the roots of the desire: the feeling of compassion or pity (used as synonyms here). Compassion leads many teachers to unreflectively alleviate student struggles. While (...) there are certainly times when compassion is necessary to help students learn, there are other times when it must be overcome. Compassion in the classroom is a two-edged sword that must be carefully employed; and yet it is often assumed that it is an unequivocal good that ought to trump all other impulses. In this article I hope to raise awareness concerning the promises and pitfalls of compassion in education by examining the theories of two historical figures who famously emphasised compassion in their philosophical writings: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche. Rousseau and Nietzsche argue that compassion is a powerful educational force but that it must be properly employed. For Rousseau and Nietzsche, compassion is necessary to develop self-mastery in human beings—the ultimate goal of education—but it is a compassion that must hurt in order to help. My hope is that Rousseau’s and Nietzsche’s ideas on compassion will encourage thoughtful reflection on the uses and abuses of compassion in education. (shrink)

While a great deal has been written on Plato's Lysis in philosophy and philology journals over the last thirty years, nothing has been published on Lysis in the major Anglo-American philosophy of education journals during that time. Nevertheless, this dialogue deserves attention from educators. In this essay, Mark Jonas argues that Lysis can serve as a model for educators who want to move their students beyond mere aporia, but also do not want to dictate answers to students. Although the (...) dialogue ends in Socrates's affirmation of aporia, his affirmation is actually meant to persuade his interlocutors to reflect on an epiphany they had previously experienced. In what follows, Jonas offers a close reading of relevant passages of Lysis, demonstrating the way that Socrates leads his interlocutors to an epiphany without forcing his answers upon them. (shrink)

Institutional ethics committees remain largely absent from the literature on error reduction and patient safety. This paper attempts to fill the gap. Healthcare professionals are on the front lines in the defense against medical error, but the changes that are needed to reduce medical errors and enhance patient safety are cultural and systemic in nature. As noted in the Hastings Centers recent report, Promoting Patient Safety, the occurrence of medical error involves a complex web of multiple factors. Human misstep is (...) certainly one such factor, but not the only one. In this paper, I build on the Hasting Centers report on patient safety in arguing that institutional ethics committees ought to play an integral role in the transformation of a culture of blame to a culture of safety in healthcare delivery. (shrink)

Institutional ethics committees remain largely absent from the literature on error reduction and patient safety. This paper attempts to fill the gap. Healthcare professionals are on the front lines in the defense against medical error, but the changes that are needed to reduce medical errors and enhance patient safety are cultural and systemic in nature. As noted in the Hastings Centers recent report, Promoting Patient Safety, the occurrence of medical error involves a complex web of multiple factors. Human misstep is (...) certainly one such factor, but not the only one. In this paper, I build on the Hasting Centers report on patient safety in arguing that institutional ethics committees ought to play an integral role in the transformation of a culture of blame to a culture of safety in healthcare delivery. (shrink)

Many medical services lack robust evidence of effectiveness and may therefore be considered “unnecessary” care. Proactively withdrawing resources from, or de-funding, such services and redirecting the savings to services that have proven effectiveness would enhance overall health system performance. Despite this, governments have been reluctant to discontinue funding of services once funding is in place. The focus of this study is to understand how the framing of an issue or problem influences government decision-making related to de-funding of medical services. To (...) achieve this, a framework describing how problem frames, or explanatory naratives, influence government policy decisions was developed and applied to actual cases. The two cases selected were the Ontario government’s decisions to de-fund the drug Oxycontin and blood glucose test strips used by patients with diabetes. A qualitative content analysis of public discourse surrounding these two resource withdrawal examples was conducted and described using the framework. In the framework, government decision-making is a partial reflection of the visibility of the policy issue and complexity of the causal story told within a problem frame. By applying this framework and considering these two key characteristics of problem frames, we can better understand, and possibly predict, the shape and timing of government policy decisions to withdraw resources from medical services. (shrink)

"Explores the concept of the social contract and how it shapes citizenship. Argues that the modern social contract is an account of the ethical and cultural conditions upon which modern citizenship depends"--Provided by publisher.

In this paper, I argue that Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of self-overcoming has been largely misinterpreted in the philosophy of education journals. The misinterpretation partially stems from a misconstruction of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, and leads to a conception of self-overcoming that is inconsistent with Nietzsche’s educational ideals. To show this, I examine some of the prominent features of the so-called “debate” of the 1980s surrounding Nietzsche’s conception of self-overcoming. I then offer an alternative conception that is more consistent with Nietzsche’s thought, and (...) provides a more nuanced understanding of Nietzsche’s “anti-democratic” pedagogy. Ultimately, I argue that while Nietzsche’s educational philosophy is not egalitarian, it can be effectively utilized in “democratic” classrooms, assuming his concept of self-overcoming is properly construed. (shrink)

In his 2001 article 'Teaching to Lie and Obey: Nietzsche on Education', Stefan Ramaekers defends Nietzsche's concept of perspectivism against the charge that it is relativistic. He argues that perspectivism is not relativistic because it denies the dichotomy between the 'true' world and the 'seeming' world, a dichotomy central to claims to relativism. While Ramaekers' article is correct in denying relativistic interpretations of perspectivism it does not go far enough in this direction. In fact, the way Ramaekers makes his case (...) may actually encourage the charge of relativism, especially when it comes to his appropriation of perspectivism for education. This article proposes to pick up where Ramaekers left off. It will argue that Nietzsche's denial of the opposition between the 'true' world and the 'seeming' world opens up the possibility for the reestablishment of truth, albeit in a modified form. After examining Nietzsche's modified 'realist' epistemology, the paper will explore the implications of it for his philosophy of education. It will be argued that Nietzsche's educational philosophy is founded on his concept of perspectivism in so far as he demands that students be rigorously inculcated into a pedagogical framework that teaches students to discriminate between 'true' and 'false' perspectives. This framework is essential for the development of an intellectually robust and life-affirming culture. (shrink)

Two of the distinctive ethical issues that arise for computer users (as opposed to computer programmers) have to do with the file formats that are used to encode information and the licensing terms for computer software. With respect to both issues, most professional philosophers do not recognize the burdens that they impose on others. Once one recognizes these burdens, a very simple argument demands changes in the behavior of the typical computer user: some of the ways we use computers gratuitously (...) impose significant burdens on others; it is wrong to impose significant burdens on others gratuitously; some of the ways we use computers are unethical. (shrink)

Abstract Differing interpretations of the political thought of David Hume have tended to emphasize either conservative, gradualist elements similar to Burke or rationalist aspects similar to Hobbes. The concept of indirect utility as used by Hume reconciles these two approaches. Indirect utility is best illustrated by Hume's conception of justice, in contrast to his conception of benevolence, which yields direct benefits. This understanding of Hume's consequentialism also helps underscore certain egalitarian aspects of Hume's thought.

Many teachers in teacher education programs are cursorily introduced to Dewey's ‘epochmaking’ ideas on interest and effort through discussions based on the need for child-centered pedagogies that utilize students' interests. Unfortunately, this strategy often tacitly encourages teachers to over-rely on students' interests. In this paper, I recommend a way of introducing Dewey's conception of interest that avoids the common pitfall of over-reliance on students' interests. I argue that if we focus on the changes Dewey made to the expression of his (...) philosophy during a seventeen-year period, we can help illuminate the force of his theory while protecting against unfortunate misinterpretations. (shrink)

Following Lawrence Kohlberg it has been commonplace to regard Plato's moral theory as ‘intellectualist’, where Plato supposedly believes that becoming virtuous requires nothing other than ‘philosophical knowledge or intuition of the ideal form of the good’. This is a radical misunderstanding of Plato's educational programme, however. While Plato claims that knowledge is extremely important in the initial stages of the moral development of young adults, he also claims that knowledge must be followed by a rigorous process of imitation and habituation. (...) Like Aristotle, Plato believes that it is not possible to become virtuous if one does not practice the virtues under the guidance of virtuous role models. This paper seeks to illuminate this little recognised aspect of Plato's educational programme. When properly understood, Plato's theory offers educators important insights into how best to encourage the moral development of young adults. (shrink)

Managed care is evolving in ways that pose unique ethical challenges to those interested in the intersection of clinical and organizational ethics. For example, Disease Management is a form of managed care that has emerged in response to chronic illness. DM is a healthcare management tool that coordinates resources across an entire health care delivery system and throughout the life cycle of chronic disease. Health Maintenance Organizations have reduced some costs in the delivery of acute care, but real cost savings (...) will result only with greater efficiencies in the delivery of costly chronic care. DM is a systematic, population-based approach that identifies persons at risk of chronic ailment, intervenes with specific programs of care, measures clinical and other outcomes, and provides continuous quality improvement. Characterized as a movement to patient-driven services, DM involves a complex web of provider relations. (shrink)

Managed care is evolving in ways that pose unique ethical challenges to those interested in the intersection of clinical and organizational ethics. For example, Disease Management is a form of managed care that has emerged in response to chronic illness. DM is a healthcare management tool that coordinates resources across an entire health care delivery system and throughout the life cycle of chronic disease. Health Maintenance Organizations have reduced some costs in the delivery of acute care, but real cost savings (...) will result only with greater efficiencies in the delivery of costly chronic care. DM is a systematic, population-based approach that identifies persons at risk of chronic ailment, intervenes with specific programs of care, measures clinical and other outcomes, and provides continuous quality improvement. Characterized as a movement to patient-driven services, DM involves a complex web of provider relations. (shrink)

The author argues that bioethicists must develop alternative approaches to facilitate the study of the conditions for the responsible development of nanotechnologies. Proponents of “sustainability” have developed a useful model to integrate multiple perspectives into the evaluation of the impact of technologies on global ecological integrity under conditions of uncertainty.

Like biotechnology before it, nanotechnology is beginning to provoke opposition from environmentalists concerned about the ethics of the development and application of nanotechnologies. Given the lack of data on environmental health and safety regarding how nanoparticles might impact the environment and effect the health of the human body, some environmentalists have called for limits on the production of nanoproducts until more research can be done to prove their safety. On the other side, while nanotech scientists and engineers agree that additional (...) study of possible harmful effects is in order, they argue it would be unethical to turn our backs on what nanotechnology may do to help clean up the environment and improve health. They argue that a ban on nanomaterials would be shortsighted. (shrink)

Scholars who consider the relationship between Marx’s and Hegel’s scientific method often make a critical mistake. In the exposition of the manner in which Marx had made use of Hegel’s logic, they fail to consider the relationship between form and content in the logical progression of categories. They fail to comprehend the circular nature of scientific method, with its attending concepts of “dialectic” and Aufhebung.

In this essay, Mark Jonas argues that there are three broadly held misconceptions of Plato's philosophy that work against his relevance for contemporary moral education. The first is that he is an intellectualist who is concerned only with the cognitive aspect of moral development and does not sufficiently emphasize the affective and conative aspects; the second is that he is an elitist who believes that only philosopher-kings can attain true knowledge of virtue and it is they who should govern (...) society; the third is that he affirms the realm of the Forms as a literal metaphysical reality and believes that for individuals to attain virtue they must access this realm through contemplation. The goal of this essay is to correct these misconceptions. The rehabilitation of Plato's reputation may enable future researchers in moral education to discover in his philosophy new avenues for exploring how best to cultivate virtues in students. (shrink)