Communicative practices in online and social media sometimes seem to amplify political conflict, and result in significant harms to people who become the targets of collective outrage. Many complaints that have been made about political correctness in the past, we argue, amount to little more than a veiled expression of resentment over the increasing influence enjoyed by progressive activists. But some complaints about political correctness take on a different complexion, in light of the technologically-driven changes to our communicative practices and (...) political discourse. Given the ways in which they are entangled in these new forms of online communication, well-meaning attempts to police the norms of political correctness may end up contributing to individual wrongs, or to destructive social patterns. In this paper we examine these worries, situate them in a broader sociological context, and offer some tentative proposals about how they might be addressed. (shrink)

In light of concerns about adolescent mental health, there is a need to identify and examine potential pathways to wellbeing in their daily lives. Outdoor environments can offer multiple pathways to wellbeing through opportunities for restoration, physical activity and socialising. However, urbanisation and new lifestyles revolving around the home and the internet are changing young people’s access, use and relationship to the outdoor environment. The authors point out how the research related to adolescents’ outdoor environments is generally not treated with (...) the same level of importance or as comprehensively as that for younger children. The aim of this paper is to pave the way for research and planning initiatives on everyday outdoor environments promoting the wellbeing of adolescents and the authors suggest ways in which perspectives from developmental psychology might inform the study of adolescents’ outdoor environments. The paper concludes by calling for an elevated focus on the role of outdoor environments in adolescents’ everyday lives as a source of wellbeing and more research that makes clear the specific attributes, activities and experiences related to places outdoors which make adolescents feel good. (shrink)

England and Wales are moving toward a model of ‘opt out’ for use of personal confidential data in health research. Existing research does not make clear how acceptable this move is to the public. While people are typically supportive of health research, when asked to describe the ideal level of control there is a marked lack of consensus over the preferred model of consent. This study sought to investigate a relatively unexplored difference between the consent model that people prefer (...) and that which they are willing to accept. It also sought to explore any reasons for such acceptance. (shrink)

This chapter examines Irish and Anglo-Saxon metalwork in Wales during the pre-Viking period from 400 to 850. The findings indicate that the conscious creation or adaptation of distinctive glitter in metalwork was used to convey the social position, legitimacy, and cultural leanings of some groupings during the early medieval period. The chapter also explains that while it can be argued that the native material culture of some people of Wales became progressively distinctive in parallel with a growing sense (...) of self-identification as Cymru, highly complex patterns of regional variation and expressions of identity appear to have existed. (shrink)

This article provides an analysis of the issues and ethical challenges faced in a study with LGBTIQ student participants concerning their experiences of violence, harassment and bullying in tertiary settings. The authors detail the ethical challenges behind the development of the project, and around conducting research with a minority and vulnerable population. The article illustrates how the utilization of feminist and queer theory has impacted the process of conducting ethical research, including approaches to recruitment and participant autonomy. The dilemmas of (...) confidentiality within a self-labelled and easily identifiable population are resolved. Further, unexpected challenges and risks to participant safety created through adherence to institutional ethical research frameworks are rectified. Importantly, the authors seek to avoid revictimization of participants and to instead empower students in their responses to violence, harassment and bullying that they may have experienced. The authors point to utilization of theoretical foundations and continual reflexive improvement as elements of best practice for those seeking to research minority populations, and in projects marked by the participation of those deemed vulnerable and high-risk. (shrink)

Most of the serious thinking I have done over the past twenty years has been done while running.'Mark Rowlands has run for most of his life. He has also been a professional philosopher. And for him the two - running and philosophising - are inextricably connected. In Running with the Pack he tells us about the most significant runs of his life - from the entire day he spent running as a boy in Wales, to the runs along (...) French beaches and up Irish mountains with his beloved wolf Brenin, and through Florida swamps more recently with his dog Nina. Intertwined with this honest, passionate and witty memoir are the fascinating meditations that those runs triggered. He ends by describing running a mid-life marathon with absolutely no training. Woven throughout the book are profound meditations on mortality, midlife and the meaning of life. This is a highly original and moving book that will make the philosophically inclined want to run, and those who love running become intoxicated by philosophical ideas. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo examine health and social care professionals’ understanding of the legislation governing research involving adults lacking mental capacity in England and Wales.MethodsA cross-sectional online survey was conducted using a series of vignettes. Participants were asked to select the legally authorised decision-maker in each scenario and provide supporting reasons. Responses were compared with existing legal frameworks and analysed according to their level of concordance.ResultsOne hundred and twenty-seven professionals participated. Levels of discordance between responses and the legal frameworks were high across (...) all five scenarios. Nearly half of the participants provided responses that were discordant in all scenarios. Only two participants provided concordant responses across all five scenarios.DiscussionParticipants demonstrated a lack of knowledge about the legal frameworks, the locus of authority and the legal basis for decision-making. The findings raise concern about the accessibility of research for those who lack capacity, the ability to conduct research involving such groups and the impact on the evidence base for their care.ConclusionThis is the first study to examine health and social care professionals’ knowledge and understanding of the dual legal frameworks in the UK. Health and social care professionals’ understanding and attitudes towards research involving adults with incapacity may warrant further in-depth exploration. The findings from this survey suggest that greater training and education is required. (shrink)

The recent publication of a couple of guidebooks to some of the many crags around Armidale (in the New England area of northern New South Wales) has resulted in a bit of interest from outof-towners. (So far guides have been published on Dome Wall and Moonbi, arguably the best two crags in the district.) This article aims to give a bit of inside information on some of the climbs and, hopefully, entice some new blood (and splintered bone) to the (...) area. Fortunately, however, from your point of view as baggees and potential baggees, Armidale is a very good place to be— there are no scary routes and everything is fairly graded (particularly if you are in the back bar of the Wicklow Hotel). This, naturally enough, makes my job as bagger very difficult; however, I’ll do my best. (shrink)

A decade has now passed since the House of Lords removed the immunity from suit in negligence previously enjoyed by advocates in England and Wales. The small number of cases decided against barristers since the removal of the immunity indicates that the closeness of the relationship between barristers and the judiciary may give rise to issues of perceived judicial impartiality. This paper argues that the standard of care applied to barristers may be more generous than that applied to other (...) professions. This is because the courts emphasise the importance of barristers' independence and the judiciary also have a direct interest in avoiding defensive practices on the part of barristers. Expert evidence is uncommon in negligence claims against barristers, placing the judge in the dual role of expert and adjudicator. The paper also considers the principles developed to address actual, apparent and presumed bias on the part of judges and the principles enshrined in Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In concluding, possibilities are explored for redressing the balance in barristers' negligence claims and removing the perception of bias which may currently taint such claims. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to explore how health informatics can underpin the successful delivery of recovery-orientated healthcare, in rural and remote regions, to achieve better mental health outcomes. Recovery is an extremely social process that involves being with others and reconnecting with the world. Design/methodology/approach An interpretivist study involving 27 clinicians and 13 clients sought to determine how future expenditure on ehealth could improve mental health treatment and service provision in the western Murray Darling Basin of New South Wales, (...) Australia. Findings Through the use of targeted ehealth strategies, it is possible to increase both the accessibility of information and the quality of service provision. In small communities, the challenges of distance, access to healthcare and the ease of isolating oneself are best overcome through a combination of technology and communal social responsibility. Technology supplements but cannot completely replace face-to-face interaction in the mental health recovery process. Originality/value The recovery model provides a conceptual framework for health informatics in rural and remote regions that is socially responsible. Service providers can affect better recovery for clients through infrastructure that enables timely and responsive remote access whilst driving between appointments. This could include interactive referral services, telehealth access to specialist clinicians, GPS for locating clients in remote areas and mobile coverage for counselling sessions in “real time”. Thus, the technology not only provides better connections but also adds to the responsiveness of any treatment available. (shrink)

A grandfather clause is a provision whereby an old rule continues to apply to some existing situation while a new rule applies to all future cases. This paper focuses on the use of grandfather clauses in health technology appraisals (HTAs) issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom. NICE provides evidence‐based guidance on healthcare technologies and public health interventions that influence resource allocation decisions in the National Health Service (NHS) and the broader public (...) sector in England and Wales. In this context, a grandfather clause is included when NICE does not recommend treatment with a given technology. The grandfather clause provides an exemption from the general recommendation for patients who have already started treatment with the technology in question, before the publication of the NICE guidance. In this paper we first lay out the contexts in which grandfather clauses occur in NICE guidance, and then consider ethical arguments against and in support of grandfather clauses and the continuation of treatment. We argue that NICE’s current practice of automatic inclusion of a grandfather clause is ethically problematic and unfair. While the inclusion of a grandfather clause may be appropriate and justified in specific cases, we argue that inclusion of such a clause should be considered as part and parcel of the decision making process on a case by case basis, rather than adopted as the default. (shrink)

One clear indication of the increasing use of the written word in western Europe from the twelfth century onwards was the compilation of an unprecedentedly diverse and numerous body of legal texts. In part, the growing textualization of law built on earlier foundations. This was particularly true of Roman law, whose rediscovery in Italy in the late eleventh century led to a revival in the study of law. At the same time, the expansion of papal power from the second half (...) of the eleventh century accelerated the production of new collections of canon law, whose compilers sought to impose order upon a mass of written law going back to the earliest councils of the church and also to integrate contemporary additions to that law resulting from conciliar and papal legislation. Yet the diversification of legal writing also owed much to the compilation of texts of secular customary law, in both Latin and the vernacular. In some societies, such as Iceland and Scandinavia, these texts marked the beginning of written law; in others, including England, France, Germany, and, above all, Italy, where law and legislation had been written earlier in the Middle Ages, the custom of particular kingdoms or provinces was committed to writing in new forms with the compilation of coutumiers. Although their relationship to earlier Welsh legal writing is unclear, the lawbooks of medieval Wales provide a further instance of this textualization of secular custom. (shrink)

On the basis of careful textual exegesis and philosophical analysis, and contrary to the received view, Mark R. Wheeler demonstrates that Aristotle presents and systematically explicates his definition of the essence of the truth in the Metaphysics. Aristotle states the nominal definitions of the terms "truth" and "falsehood" as part of his arguments in defense of the logical axioms. These nominal definitions express conceptions of truth and falsehood his philosophical opponents would have recognized and accepted in the context of (...) dialectical argument. On the basis of these nominal definitions, Aristotle develops his definitions of the essences of truth and falsehood--his "real" definitions of truth and falsehood. Aristotle's methodical exposition of his essential definitions of truth and falsehood in the Metaphysics serves as a well-developed example of how his philosophical inquiry starts with nominal definitions and ends with real definitions. Wheeler also argues for the novel claim that Aristotle defines the most fundamental kind of truth in terms of accurate measurement. Aristotle's metrical conception of truth serves as the theoretical basis for specifying the truth conditions of various assertions, for identifying the sorts of beings implicated in these truth conditions, and for explaining the nature of approximate truth and falsehood. Far from offering us a minimal account of truth, Wheeler shows how Aristotle offers us a sophisticated and metrical theory of truth. (shrink)

Together again for the first time, Marx and Durkheim join forces in the pages of Disintegration: Bad Love, Collective Suicide, and the Idols of Imperial Twilight for a dialectical exploration of the moral economy of neoliberalism, animated, as it is not only by the capitalist chase for surplus value, but also by an immortal vortex of sacred powers. Classical sociology and psychoanalysis are reconstituted within Hegelian social ontology and dialectical method that differentiates between the ephemeral and free and the eternal (...) and fixed aspects of modern life. (shrink)

In ancient China, a revered Taoist sage named Zhuangzi told many parables. In Existential Psychology and the Way of the Tao, a selection of these parables will be featured. Following each parable, an eminent existential psychologist will share a personal and scholarly reflection on the meaning and relevance of the parable for psychotherapy and contemporary life. The major tenets of Zhuangzi's philosophy are featured. Taoist concepts of emptiness, stillness, Wu Wei (i.e. intentional non-intentionality), epistemology, dreams and the nature of reality, (...) character building in the midst of pain, meaning and the centrality of relationships, authenticity, self-care, the freedom that can come from one's willingness to confront death, spiritual freedom, and gradations of therapeutic care are topics highlighted in this book. (shrink)

What can we learn about the nature of technology by studying practices of maintenance and repair? This volume addresses this question by bringing together scholarship from philosophers of technology working at the forefront of this emerging and exciting topic. -/- The chapters in this volume explore how attending to maintenance and repair can challenge and complement existing ways of thinking about technology focused on use and design and introduce new philosophical perspectives on the relationship between technology, time and human practice. (...) They examine the significance of maintenance and repair practices at different scales in relation to a diverse range of philosophical traditions and a wide variety of technologies, from urban infrastructure such as bridges and buildings to data technologies such as servers and software systems. Together, the contributions highlight common themes in the philosophical study of maintenance, including the role of skill, the significance of social values and the potential of these practices to transform the technologies to which they are applied. By reflecting on the different ways in which we keep technologies going, from the devices we use in our homes to the large technical systems which surround us, this volume reveals the philosophical significance of practices of maintenance, not only as a source of new insights but also as a resource for enriching our understanding of a variety of existing topics in philosophy. -/- Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of engineering and science & technology studies. (shrink)

Everyone wants to be virtuous, but recent psychological investigations suggest that this may not be possible. Mark Alfano challenges this theory and asks, not whether character is empirically adequate, but what characters human beings could have and develop. Although psychology suggests that most people do not have robust character traits such as courage, honesty and open-mindedness, Alfano argues that we have reason to attribute these virtues to people because such attributions function as self-fulfilling prophecies - children become more studious (...) if they are told that they are hard-working and adults become more generous if they are told that they are generous. He argues that we should think of virtue and character as social constructs: there is no such thing as virtue without social reinforcement. His original and provocative book will interest a wide range of readers in contemporary ethics, epistemology, moral psychology and empirically informed philosophy. (shrink)

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.1 i The Act makes it an offence for any person to excise, infibulate or otherwise mutilate the whole or any part of a female's labia majora, labia minora or clitoris, or to aid, abet, counsel or procure the mutilation by another person. The exception is where a surgical or obstetric procedure is clinically indicated. There has long been UK legalisation against female genital mutilation but the 2003 Act (...) extended the criminal offence to UK nationals and permanent residents who are overseas, including in countries where the practice is legal. A person found guilty of an offence under the Act can be imprisoned for up to 14 years.Precise figures for the number of girls and women who have undergone, or who are at risk of FGM, in the UK, are hard to establish because of the secrecy surrounding the practice. It is estimated, however, that over 21 000 girls under the age of 15, in England and Wales, are at high risk of FGM.2 Despite this prevalence, recent clinical and policy guidelines3,4 and the legislative framework to prosecute, there have been no prosecutions for FGM in the UK. Worryingly, there is a suggestion that some girls are being brought to the UK for FGM, as the UK is seen as having ‘fewer controls’ and ‘less awareness about FGM’. A recent quote in the BMJ noted ‘People from many countries in Europe go to the UK for this purpose’.5In response to the lack of prosecutions, in November 2012, the Crown Prosecution Service launched an action plan for improving prosecutions. Action points include: gathering more robust data on allegations of FGM; raising with Ministers what the existing reporting …. (shrink)

This volume tackles Gödel's two-stage project of first using Husserl's transcendental phenomenology to reconstruct and develop Leibniz' monadology, and then founding classical mathematics on the metaphysics thus obtained. The author analyses the historical and systematic aspects of that project, and then evaluates it, with an emphasis on the second stage.

The classes stable, simple, and NSOP $_1$ in the stability hierarchy for first-order theories can be characterised by the existence of a certain independence relation. For each of them there is a canonicity theorem: there can be at most one nice independence relation. Independence in stable and simple first-order theories must come from forking and dividing (which then coincide), and for NSOP $_1$ theories it must come from Kim-dividing. We generalise this work to the framework of Abstract Elementary Categories (AECats) (...) with the amalgamation property. These are a certain kind of accessible category generalising the category of (subsets of) models of some theory. We prove canonicity theorems for stable, simple, and NSOP $_1$ -like independence relations. The stable and simple cases have been done before in slightly different setups, but we provide them here as well so that we can recover part of the original stability hierarchy. We also provide abstract definitions for each of these independence relations as what we call isi-dividing, isi-forking, and long Kim-dividing. (shrink)

Experimental moral philosophy began to emerge as a methodology inthe last decade of the twentieth century, a branch of the largerexperimental philosophy approach. From the beginning,it has been embroiled in controversy on a number of fronts. Somedoubt that it is philosophy at all. Others acknowledge that it isphilosophy but think that it has produced modest results at best andconfusion at worst. Still others think it represents an important advance., Before the research program can be evaluated, we should have someconception of (...) its scope. But controversy surrounds questionsabout its boundaries as well. Uncontroversially, the distinctionbetween experimental and non-experimental philosophy is not identicalto the distinction between a posteriori and a prioriphilosophy. Experimental evidence is a proper subset of empiricalevidence, which is itself a subset of a posteriorievidence. Can any more be said?, L1: A child raised in a particular linguistic community almostinevitably ends up speaking an idiolect of the local language despitelack of sufficient explicit instruction, lack of extensive negativefeedback for mistakes, and grammatical mistakes by caretakers., character, moral | cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, moral | emotion | ethics: virtue | intuition | moral anti-realism | moral psychology: empirical approaches | moral realism | moral relativism | well-being, Copyright © 2014 byMark Alfano Don Loeb, View this site from another server:. (shrink)

In his contribution, Mark Alfano lays out a new (to virtue theory) naturalistic way of determining what the virtues are, what it would take for them to be realized, and what it would take for them to be at least possible. This method is derived in large part from David Lewis’s development of Frank Ramsey’s method of implicit definition. The basic idea is to define a set of terms not individually but in tandem. This is accomplished by assembling all (...) and only the common sense platitudes that involve them (e.g., typically, people want to be virtuous), conjoining those platitudes, and replacing the terms in question by existentially quantified variables. If the resulting sentence is satisfied, then whatever satisfies are the virtues. If it isn’t satisfied, there are a couple of options. First, one could just admit defeat by saying that people can’t be virtuous. More plausibly, one could weaken the conjunction by dropping a small number of the platitudes from it (and potentially adding some others). Alfano suggests that the most attractive way to do this is by dropping the platitudes that deal with cross-situational consistency and replacing them with platitudes that involve social construction: basically, people are virtuous (when they are) at least in part because other people signal their expectations of virtuous conduct, which induces virtuous conduct, which in turn induces further signals of expected virtuous conduct, and so on. (shrink)

CONDUCT AND CHARACTER is a concise anthology of readings in ethical theory that covers the major schools of thought as well as a handful of fundamental topics in ethical theory. Reading selections in the chapters provide coverage of both classical and contemporary philosophical writings, representing a spectrum of viewpoints on each theory or topic. The readings include brief introductions to assist students in identifying key ideas and have been selected and edited in order to optimize student comprehension. This collection is (...) perfect for ethics courses that focus on theory, as well as a supplementary text for applied ethics courses. Because of short, self-contained chapters it also works very well for an ethics component in introductory philosophy courses. (shrink)

Virtue is among the most venerable concepts in philosophy, and has recently seen a major revival. However, new challenges to conceptions of virtue have also arisen. In _Current Controversies in Virtue Theory_, five pairs of cutting-edge philosophers square off over central topics in virtue theory: the nature of virtue, the connection between virtue and flourishing, the connection between moral and epistemic virtues, the way in which virtues are acquired, and the possibility of attaining virtue. Mark Alfano guides his readers (...) through these essays, with a synthetic introduction, succinct abstracts of each debate, suggested further readings and study questions for each controversy, and a list of further controversies to be explored. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that imagination plays a role in moral reasoning, and what are the theoretical and practical implications? Engaging with three traditions in moral theory and confronting them with three contexts of moral practice, this book offers a more comprehensive framework to think about these questions. The author develops an argument about the relation between imagination and principles that moves beyond competition metaphors and center-periphery schemas. He shows that both cooperate and are equally necessary to cope (...) with moral problems, and combines insights of different theories and disciplines to explore how this works in practice. (shrink)

Experimental moral philosophy emerged as a methodology in the last decade of the twentieth century, as a branch of the larger experimental philosophy (X-Phi) approach. Experimental moral philosophy is the empirical study of moral intuitions, judgments, and behaviors. Like other forms of experimental philosophy, it involves gathering data using experimental methods and using these data to substantiate, undermine, or revise philosophical theories. In this case, the theories in question concern the nature of moral reasoning and judgment; the extent and sources (...) of moral obligations; the nature of a good person and a good life; even the scope and nature of moral theory itself. This entry begins with a brief look at the historical uses of empirical data in moral theory and goes on to ask what, if anything, is distinctive about experimental moral philosophy—how should we distinguish it from related work in empirical moral psychology? After discussing some strategies for answering this question, the entry examines two of the main projects within experimental moral philosophy, and then discusses some of the most prominent areas of research within the field. As we will see, in some cases experimental moral philosophy has opened up new avenues of investigation, while in other cases it has influenced longstanding debates within moral theory. (shrink)

In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, (...) he argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy--in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question. (shrink)

Hobbes emphasized that the state of nature is a state of war because it is characterized by fundamental and generalized distrust. Exiting the state of nature and the conflicts it inevitably fosters is therefore a matter of establishing trust. Extant discussions of trust in the philosophical literature, however, focus either on isolated dyads of trusting individuals or trust in large, faceless institutions. In this paper, I begin to fill the gap between these extremes by analyzing what I call the topology (...) of communities of trust. Such communities are best understood in terms of interlocking dyadic relationships that approximate the ideal of being symmetric, Euclidean, reflexive, and transitive. Few communities of trust live up to this demanding ideal, and those that do tend to be small (between three and fifteen individuals). Nevertheless, such communities of trust serve as the conditions for the possibility of various important prudential epistemic, cultural, and mental health goods. However, communities of trust also make possible various problematic phenomena. They can become insular and walled-off from the surrounding community, leading to distrust of out-groups. And they can lead their members to abandon public goods for tribal or parochial goods. These drawbacks of communities of trust arise from some of the same mecha-nisms that give them positive prudential, epistemic, cultural, and mental health value – and so can at most be mitigated, not eliminated. (shrink)

Most philosophers find it puzzling how beliefs could wrong, and this leads them to conclude that they do not. So there is much philosophical work to be done in sorting out whether I am right to say that they do, as well as how this could be so. But in this paper I will take for granted that beliefs can wrong, and ask instead when beliefs wrong. My answer will be that beliefs wrong when they falsely diminish. This answer has (...) three parts: that beliefs wrong only when they are false, that beliefs wrong only when they diminish, and that false diminishment is sufficient for wronging. I will seek to elaborate on and defend all three of these claims, but it is the first to which I will give the most attention. (shrink)

We argue that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. First, we explain the recognition heuristic as studied by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to, and outside the control of, the cognitive agent. We then connect the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, arguing that the recognition heuristic is best understood as an instance of (...) scaffolded cognition. In section three, we consider the double-edged sword of cognitive scaffolding. On the one hand, scaffolds can reduce the internal processing demands on cognitive agents while increasing their access to information. On the other hand, the use of scaffolding leaves cognitive agents increasingly vulnerable to forming false beliefs or failing to form beliefs at all about particular topics. With respect to the recognition heuristic, agents rely on third parties (such as the media) to report not just what’s true but also what’s important or valuable. This makes cognitive agents relying on these third parties vulnerable to two erroneous influences: 1) because they don’t recognize something, it isn’t important or valuable, and 2) because they do recognize something, it is important or valuable. Call the latter the Kardashian Inference and the former the Darfur Inference. In section four, we use Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to characterize the nature and harm of these false inferences, with special emphasis on the Darfur Inference. In section five, we use data-mining and an empirical study to show how Gigerenzer’s population estimation task is liable to produce Darfur Inferences. We conclude with some speculative remarks on more important Darfur Inferences, and how to avoid them by scaffolding better. One primary way to accomplish this it to shift the burden of embodying the virtue of epistemic justice from the hearer or consumer of media to the media themselves. (shrink)

This chapter explores a case study in contemporary fanaticism. We adopt Katsafanas’s conceptualization of fanaticism to make possible an in-depth discussion of and evaluation of a diffuse but important social movement — the anglophone manosphere. According to Katsafanas, fanatics are fruitfully understood as members of a group that adopts sacred values which they hold unconditionally to preserve their own psychic unity, and who feel that those values are threatened by those who do not accept them. The manosphere includes several social (...) movements, including incels, men’s rights activists, and men-going-their-own-way. We show that many members of these groups are well-characterized by Katsafanas’s theory of fanaticism, and that they have forged their fanatical group identity using tools that philosophers have tended to associate with more benign social movements and the task of “conceptual engineering.” Indeed, we think that manosphere groups have in many cases been more successful than more palatable liberationist movements, and that this case study in the dark side of conceptual engineering may be both sobering and informative. (shrink)

Medicalization was the theme of the 29th European Conference on Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care that included a panel session on the DSM and mental health. Philosophical critiques of the medical model in psychiatry suffer from endemic assumptions that fail to acknowledge the real world challenges of psychiatric nosology. The descriptive model of classification of the DSM 3-5 serves a valid purpose in the absence of known etiologies for the majority of psychiatric conditions. However, a consequence of the “atheoretical” (...) approach of the DSM is rampant epistemological confusion, a shortcoming that can be ameliorated by importing perspectives from the work of Jaspers and McHugh. Finally, contemporary psychiatry’s over-reliance on neuroscience and pharmacotherapy has led to a reductionist agenda that is antagonistic to the inherently pluralistic nature of psychiatry. As a result, the field has suffered a loss of knowledge that may be difficult to recover. (shrink)

How should emotions figure in scientific practice? I begin by distinguishing three broad answers to this question, ranging from pessimistic to optimistic. Confirmation bias and motivated numeracy lead us to cast a jaundiced eye on the role of emotions in scientific inquiry. However, reflection on the essential motivating role of emotions in geniuses makes it less clear that science should be evacuated of emotion. I then draw on Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectivism to articulate a twenty-first century epistemology of science that recognizes (...) the necessity of emotion to inquiry but aims to manage the biases that emotions can introduce. Twenty-first century perspectivism is both social and (temporally) distal, helping it to overcome a paradox of self-critical inquiry. (shrink)

Gossip is often serious business, not idle chitchat. Gossip allows those oppressed to privately name their oppressors as a warning to others. Of course, gossip can be in error. The speaker may be lying or merely have lacked sufficient evidence. Bias can also make those who hear the gossip more or less likely to believe the gossip. By examining the social functions of gossip and considering the differences in power dynamics in which gossip can occur, we contend that gossip may (...) be not only permissible but virtuous, both as the only reasonable recourse available and as a means of resistance against oppression. (shrink)

Protests and counter-protests seek to draw and direct attention and concern with confronting images and slogans. In recent years, as protests and counter-protests have partially migrated to the digital space, such images and slogans have also gone online. Two main ways in which these images and slogans are translated to the online space is through the use of emoji and hashtags. Despite sustained academic interest in online protests, hashtag activism and the use of emoji across social media platforms, little is (...) known about the specific functional role that emoji and hashtags play in online social movements. In an effort to fill this gap, the current paper studies both hashtags and emoji in the context of the Twitter discourse around the Black Lives Matter movement. (shrink)

Virtues are dispositions that make their bearers admirable. Dispositions can be studied scientifically by systematically varying whether their alleged bearers are in (or take themselves to be in) the dispositions' eliciting conditions. In recent decades, empirically-minded philosophers looked to social and personality psychology to study the extent to which ordinary humans embody dispositions traditionally considered admirable in the Aristotelian tradition. This led some to conclude that virtues are not attainable ideals, and that we should focus our ethical reflection and efforts (...) more on jerry-rigging our environments than on improving our characters. Most virtue ethicists resisted this reorientation. However, much of the scientific evidence on which the controversy was based has failed to replicate, raising the question of how much faith we should place in methodologically suspect studies. In this paper, I assess the state of the debate and recommend best practices for a renewed interdisciplinary investigation of virtues and vices in which philosophical expertise related to conceptualization and theorizing is essentially intertwined with scientific expertise related to operationalization, measurement, and statistics. (shrink)

This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, Open-mindedness (...) adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model’s cross-cultural generalizability. (shrink)

Unfortunately, many people today see the regulation of lies, disinformation, hate speech, and fake news as an infringement of free speech, at least when such speech is ‘political,’ despite the damage that such speech can do. But this very protective attitude toward speech rests on a mistaken understanding of the role of free speech in a liberal society. The right to free speech is based on the liberal value of freedom, and as such can be no broader than freedom itself. (...) And freedom has always been subject to reasonable limits in a liberal society. Indeed, while the principles of toleration and neutrality are often cited as supporting a broad interpretation of the right to free speech, they also tell us that certain limits apply to that right. We need not tolerate speech that encourages intolerance, and while government should be neutral between reasonable conceptions of the good, it need not be neutral between reasonable and unreasonable conceptions. These ideas form the framework of liberal society, and as I shall show, also provide a guide for understanding what kind of speech is protected in a liberal society and what it is not. (shrink)

Historically associated with military service, conscientious objection has become a significant phenomenon in health care. Mark Wicclair offers a comprehensive ethical analysis of conscientious objection in three representative health care professions: medicine, nursing and pharmacy. He critically examines two extreme positions: the 'incompatibility thesis', that it is contrary to the professional obligations of practitioners to refuse provision of any service within the scope of their professional competence; and 'conscience absolutism', that they should be exempted from performing any action contrary (...) to their conscience. He argues for a compromise approach that accommodates conscience-based refusals within the limits of specified ethical constraints. He also explores conscientious objection by students in each of the three professions, discusses conscience protection legislation and conscience-based refusals by pharmacies and hospitals, and analyzes several cases. His book is a valuable resource for scholars, professionals, trainees, students, and anyone interested in this increasingly important aspect of health care. (shrink)

This chapter lays out a case that with the proper perspective on the place of epistemology within normative inquiry more generally, it is possible to appreciate what was on the right track about some of the early approaches to the analysis of knowledge, and to improve on the obvious failures which led them to be rejected. Drawing on more general principles about reasons, their weight, and their relationship to justification, it offers answers to problems about defeat and the conditional fallacy (...) that plagued early defeasibility analyses of knowledge and offers a sketch of a contemporary alternative that is motivated by the idea that knowledge requires the right kind of “match” between objective and subjective factors. (shrink)

Can animals act morally? Philosophical tradition answers 'no,' and has apparently convincing arguments on its side. Cognitive ethology supplies a growing body of empirical evidence that suggests these arguments are wrong. This groundbreaking book assimilates both philosophical and ethological frameworks into a unified whole and argues for a qualified 'yes.'.

In this chapter, we address the roles that exemplars might play in a comprehensive response to epistemic injustice. Fricker defines epistemic injustices as harms people suffer specifically in their capacity as (potential) knowers. We focus on testimonial epistemic injustice, which occurs when someone’s assertoric speech acts are systematically met with either too little or too much credence by a biased audience. Fricker recommends a virtue­theoretic response: people who do not suffer from biases should try to maintain their disposition towards naive (...) testimonial justice, and those who find themselves already biased should cultivate corrective testimonial justice by systematically adjusting their credence in testimony up or down depending on whether they are hearing from someone whom they may be biased against or in favor of. We doubt that the prominent admiration­emulation model of exemplarism will be much use in this connection, so we propose two ways of learning from negative exemplars to better conduct one’s epistemic affairs. In the admiration­emulation model, both the identification of what a virtue is and the cultivation of virtues identified thusly proceed through the admiration of virtuous exemplars. We show that this model has serious flaws and argue for two alternatives: the envy­agonism model and the ambivalence­avoidance model. (shrink)