Dixon, Robert; Reid, Stephen; Connolly, Noel Since the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference established a pastoral research capability in 1996, a great deal of research has been carried out on various aspects of the Catholic community in Australia. This research has been carried out either directly by the Bishops Conference's research staff, or in association with other bodies such as NCLS Research, the Christian Research Association, Australian Catholic University and, most recently, Catholic Religious Australia.

Dixon, Robert; Reid, Stephen Catholics are the largest religious group in Australia. According to the 2011 Australian Census, Catholics made up just over a quarter of the Australian population: there were 5,439,268 Catholics in a total Australian population of 21,507,719. In the five years between the 2006 and 2011 Censuses, the number of Catholics increased by over 312,000, or 6.1 per cent. During the same period, the total Australian population increased by 8.3 per cent. Catholics have continued to (...) grow in numbers at every census, but their percentage in the Australian population has been declining slowly since the peak of 27.3 per cent in 1991. (shrink)

I argue that Wittgenstein's rejection of scepticism in On Certainty rests on the view that epistemic concepts such as‘doubt,‘knowledge’,‘justification’and so on, cannot be intelligibly applied to the common sense propositions that traditional sceptical arguments appear to undermine. I detect two strands in On Certainty in support of this view. I attempt to show that neither of these strands adequately establishes the thesis, and that they point to a tension in Wittgenstein's treatment of scepticism. I argue that the first strand is (...) dogmatic, but accords with the constraints of Wittgenstein's method, while the second strand avoids the dogmatism of the first at the cost of violating these constraints. (shrink)

Natural selection is commonly interpreted as the fundamental mechanism of evolution. Questions about how selection theory can claim to be the all-sufficient explanation of evolution often go unanswered by today's neo-Darwinists, perhaps for fear that any criticism of the evolutionary paradigm will encourage creationists and proponents of intelligent design.In Biological Emergences, Robert Reid argues that natural selection is not the cause of evolution. He writes that the causes of variations, which he refers to as natural experiments, are independent (...) of natural selection; indeed, he suggests, natural selection may get in the way of evolution. Reid proposes an alternative theory to explain how emergent novelties are generated and under what conditions they can overcome the resistance of natural selection. He suggests that what causes innovative variation causes evolution, and that these phenomena are environmental as well as organismal.After an extended critique of selectionism, Reid constructs an emergence theory of evolution, first examining the evidence in three causal arenas of emergent evolution: symbiosis/association, evolutionary physiology/behavior, and developmental evolution. Based on this evidence of causation, he proposes some working hypotheses, examining mechanisms and processes common to all three arenas, and arrives at a theoretical framework that accounts for generative mechanisms and emergent qualities. Without selectionism, Reid argues, evolutionary innovation can more easily be integrated into a general thesis. Finally, Reid proposes a biological synthesis of rapid emergent evolutionary phases and the prolonged, dynamically stable, non-evolutionary phases imposed by natural selection. (shrink)

Preventive use of force may be defined as the initiation of military action in anticipation of harmful actions that are neither presently occurring nor imminent. This essay explores the permissibility of preventive war from a cosmopolitan normative perspective, one that recognizes the basic human rights of all persons, not just citizens of a particular country or countries. It argues that preventive war can only be justified if it is undertaken within an appropriate rule-governed, institutional framework that is designed to help (...) protect vulnerable countries against unjustified interventions while also avoiding unacceptable risks of the costs of inaction. The key to ensuring the fairness of rules governing the preventive use of force is accountability.This essay proposes a scheme that would make those promoting and those rejecting the preventive use of force more accountable. The proposal contains the following crucial features:States proposing preventive war are required to enter into a contract with a diverse body of states as a condition for authorization of their actions;Prior to taking preventive action, states must make an evidence-based case to the UN Security Council, and agree in advance to submit themselves to an evaluation by an impartial body after the preventive action occurred;Both proponents of action and those opposing it will be held accountable ex post for the accuracy of their prior statements and the proportionality of their actions;Sanctions will be imposed against intervening states or states that opposed preventive action, respectively, depending on the findings of the ex post evaluation.If preventive action were blocked in the Security Council, states seeking to engage in preventive action could then present their case in a different body–a coalition of democratic states–with its own ex post and ex ante accountability procedures. (shrink)

The authors articulate a global public standard for the normative legitimacy of global governance institutions. This standard can provide the basis for principled criticism of global governance institutions and guide reform efforts in circumstances in which people disagree deeply about the demands of global justice and the role that global governance institutions should play in meeting them.

Michael Williams believes that scepticism about the externalworld seems compelling only because the considerations that underpin it are thoughtto be ``mere platitudes'' about e.g., the nature and source of human knowledge, and hence,that if it shown through a ``theoretical diagnosis'' that it does not rest upon suchplatitudes, but contentious theoretical considerations that we are no means bound toaccept, we can simply dismiss the absurd sceptical conclusion. Williams argues thatscepticism does presuppose two extremely contentious doctrines, however, he admits thatif these doctrines (...) are themselves motivated by ``platitudes'' then scepticism follows. Iaddress Williams's arguments for thinking scepticism must presuppose these doctrines,and argue that he overlooks a way that they can be seen as motivated by mere platitudes.Thus, I conclude that William's novel rejection of scepticism fails. (shrink)

As global governance institutions proliferate and become more powerful, their legitimacy is subject to ever sharper scrutiny. Yet what legitimacy means in this context and how it is to be ascertained are often unclear. In a previous paper in this journal, we offered a general account of the legitimacy of such institutions and a set of standards for determining when they are legitimate. In this paper we focus on the legitimacy of the UN Security Council as an institution for making (...) decisions concerning the use of military force across state borders. The context for this topic has changed over the last decade as a result of the ongoing development of the responsibility to protect (RtoP) doctrine and extensive discussions about it in the United Nations. Yet the mostly widely accepted proposals for RtoP still require Security Council authorization for forceful intervention, and strictly limit the conditions under which such intervention may take place. (shrink)

I argue that Wittgenstein's rejection of scepticism in On Certainty rests on the view that epistemic concepts such as‘doubt,‘knowledge’,‘justification’and so on, cannot be intelligibly applied to the common sense propositions that traditional sceptical arguments appear to undermine. I detect two strands in On Certainty in support of this view. I attempt to show that neither of these strands adequately establishes the thesis, and that they point to a tension in Wittgenstein's treatment of scepticism. I argue that the first strand is (...) dogmatic, but accords with the constraints of Wittgenstein's method, while the second strand avoids the dogmatism of the first at the cost of violating these constraints. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane reply to Steven Lee's critique of their previous essay on the preventive use of military force.

The cognitive science of religions’ By-Product Theory contends that much religious thought and behavior can be explained in terms of the cultural activation of maturationally natural cognitive systems. Those systems address fundamental problems of human survival, encompassing such capacities as hazard precautions, agency detection, language processing, and theory of mind. Across cultures they typically arise effortlessly and unconsciously during early childhood. They are not taught and appear independent of general intelligence. Theory of mind undergirds an instantaneous and automatic intuitive understanding (...) of minds, mental representations, and their implications for agents’ actions. By-Product theorists hypothesize about a social cognition content bias, holding that mentalizing capacities inform participants’ implicit understanding of religious representations of agents with counter-intuitive properties. That hypothesis, in combination with Baron-Cohen’s account of Autistic Spectrum Disorder in terms of diminished theory of mind capacities, suggests an impaired religious understanding hypothesis. It proposes that people with ASD have substantial limitations in intuitive understanding of and creative inferences from such representations. Norenzayan argues for a mind-blind atheism hypothesis, which asserts that the truth of these first two hypotheses suggests that people with ASD have an increased probability, compared to the general population, of being atheists. Numerous empirical studies have explored these three hypotheses’ merits. After carefully pondering distinctions between intuitive versus reflective mentalizing and between explicit versus implicit measures and affective versus cognitive measures of mentalizing, the available empirical evidence provides substantial support for the first two hypotheses and non-trivial support for the third. (shrink)

Subtitled: Illinois as seen by the Farm Security Administration photographers, 1936-1943. 162 photos reflect the wide diversity of what has been called the nation's most representative state. Includes the work of Dorthea Lange, Esther Bubley, Edwin Rosskam and others. Cloth edition, $29.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Human rights are a central part of a social worker's value base in contemporary practice, but the structures by which social work services are delivered can adversely affect practitioners? abilities to uphold service user rights. This article describes the organizational development of social work services in England and the evolution of a rights focus for the practice of social work. It uses two cases, participation by children and young people looked after by the local authority and parents with learning difficulties, (...) to determine what prevents the delivery of rights at practice level. We argue that the structures which are the product of historical development prevent workers delivering a service that is anti-oppressive and grounded in a rights-based approach to practice. This suggests that the recent changed arrangements for the delivery of social work offer the opportunity to address human rights within practice and reinvigorate the profession. The division of the profession between children's trusts and adult social services within separate local authority departments or care trusts should make dialogue between specialist social workers, which has been suppressed by internal structures, possible. Such a dialogue could contribute to saving the profession from the disintegration that its division threatens, while advancing the human rights agenda. (shrink)

Michael Peters, Sonja Arndt & Marek TesarThis is a collective writing experiment of PESA members, including its Executive Committee, asking questions of the Philosophy of Education in a New Key. Co...

Involuntary civil commitment to treatment for opioid use disorder prevents imminent overdose, but also restricts autonomy and raises other ethical concerns. Using the Kass Public Health Ethics Framework, we identified ICC benefits and harms. Benefits include: protection of vulnerable, underserved patients; reduced legal consequences; resources for families; and “on-demand” treatment access. Harms include: stigmatizing and punitive experiences; heightened family conflict and social isolation; eroded patient self-determination; limited or no provision of OUD medications; and long-term overdose risk. To use ICC ethically, (...) it should be recognized as comprising vulnerable patients worthy of added protections; be a last resort option; utilize consensual, humanizing processes; provide medications and other evidence-based-treatment; integrate with existing healthcare systems; and demonstrate effective outcomes before diffusion. ICC to OUD treatment carries significant potential harms that, if unaddressed, may outweigh its benefits. Findings can inform innovations for ensuring that ICC is used in an ethically responsible way. (shrink)

Over the past decade, support for reexamining and reconsidering the U.S. model of ethics review for protocols involving research with humans has grown, particularly for studies involving participants from multiple locales and organizations. The HMO Research Network received an infrastructure-building contract in 2004 that enabled us to evaluate issues in multi-institutional IRB review, examine possible changes, and propose a new model. We conducted key informant interviews and held meetings with IRB personnel, administrators, and researchers, eventually resulting in networkwide agreement to (...) pilot an alternative model of IRB review for minimal-risk, data-only studies that only entailed use of computerized data from our network sites. This article describes the organizational and interpersonal processes that led to the successful establishment of this alternative model, to inform other research consortia considering new multisite review models. (shrink)

Philosophical orthodoxy holds that Thomas Reid is an externalist concerning epistemic justification, characterizing Reid as holding the key to an externalist response to internalism. These externalist accounts of Reid, however, have neglected his work on prejudice, a heretofore unexamined aspect of his epistemology. Reid’s work on prejudice reveals that he is far from an externalist. Despite the views Reid may have inspired, he exemplifies internalism in opting for an accessibility account of justification. For Reid, (...) there are two normative statuses that a belief might satisfy, being blameless and having a just ground. Through reflection, a rational agent is capable of satisfying both of these statuses, making Reid an accessibility internalist about epistemic justification. (shrink)

This study locates what is happening to teachers' work in the global economy. Two case studies show how teachers are simultaneously experiencing significant changes to their work, and responding in ways that actively shape these process.

Reid’s discussion of Molyneux’s question has been neglected. The Inquiry discusses the question twice, offering opposing answers. The first discussion treats the underlying issue as concerning common perceptibles of touch and vision, and in particular whether in vision we originally perceive depth. Although it is tempting to treat the second discussion as doing the same, this would render pointless various novel features Reid introduces in reformulating Molyneux’s question. Rather, the issue now is whether the blind can form a (...) reasonable conception of visual appearances, a conception that would allow them to perform Molyneux’s task. In explaining why Reid thought they can, I draw on his account of primary quality concepts as independent of sensation; of concept possession as ability, not acquaintance with sensation; and of visual appearance itself as in key part a matter of the perception of a primary quality, visible figure. Thus the issue does not concern cross-modality, what vision has in common with touch; but how even what is central in vision is amodal, able to be grasped independently of any sensory mode. Reid’s second Molyneux discussion thereby forms a focus for the Inquiry’s central claims, and the rejection of the Ideal Theory they entail. (shrink)

In this paper, I state Thomas Reid’s views about the moral sense and his criticism of the moral-sense theories of Francis Hutcheson and David Hume. I argue that Reid’s views about the moral sense has a distinct advantage over Hutcheson’s while they offer a viable alternative to Hume’s.

David Lewis (1974, 1994/1999) proposed to reduce the facts about mental representation to facts about sensory evidence, dispositions to act, and rationality. Recently, Robert Williams (2020) and Adam Pautz (2021) have taken up and developed Lewis’s project in sophisticated and novel ways. In this paper, we aim to present, clarify, and ultimately object to the core thesis that they all build their own views around. The different sophisticated developments and defenses notwithstanding, we think the core thesis is vulnerable. We (...) pose a dilemma by considering the two sides of a current epistemological controversy over the relation between evidence and rational belief: permissivism vs. uniqueness. As we argue, the prospects for the Lewisian project look dim when either supposition is clearly made. (shrink)

Marcella Althaus-Reid proposes the Bi/christ in her sexual reconstruction of theology. Goss examines three representational strategies of the obscene Christ to test the inclusiveness of her model. He applies Judith Butler's notion of gender performativity to the pop star Madonna to suggest an accessorizing of Althaus-Reid's model of the Bi/christ to the Bi/transvestite Christ.

In this paper, I state Thomas Reid’s views about the moral sense and his criticism of the moral-sense theories of Francis Hutcheson and David Hume. I argue that Reid’s views about the moral sense has a distinct advantage over Hutcheson’s while they offer a viable alternative to Hume’s.