In the 1980s and 1990s the predominant metatheories in development analysis were cast into doubt by their apparent failure in practice. One response to this impasse in development theory was to turn to postmodern ideas to explain their failure. In particular many analysts utilized Foucauldian discourse theory to critique development as a discourse of power. Such analysis gave rise to a post-development school of thought that condemned development as harmful to people in the Global South and advocated its abandonment. This (...) paper argues that most such attempts at a discourse analysis of development were characterized by serious flaws related to skepticism, notably problems of performative contradiction and relativism. Consequently, the paper argues for an alternative approach in the form of a development ethics drawing on aspects of deconstructionist and critical realist thought. (shrink)

The consensus among spacetime substantivalists is to respond to Leibniz's classic shift arguments, and their contemporary incarnation in the form of the hole argument, by pruning the allegedly problematic metaphysical possibilities that generate these arguments. Some substantivalists do so by directly appealing to a modal doctrine akin to anti-haecceitism. Other substantivalists do so by appealing to an underlying hyperintensional doctrine that implies some such modal doctrine. My first aim in this paper is to pose a challenge for all extant forms (...) of this consensus position. My second aim is to show what form substantivalism must take in order to uphold the consensus while addressing this challenge. The result is a novel "plenitudinous" substantivalist view, which predicts that certain modal facts about spacetime are vague or indeterminate. I then argue against this view on independent grounds, concluding that substantivalists should reject the consensus position. The paper also discusses the way forward for substantivalists in light of this conclusion. (shrink)

This article reads Carlyle as a reader of Goethe to recover why he proclaimed Goethe as the `benignant spiritual revolutionist' of modernity and `first of the moderns'. As Goethe's first major English translator, Thomas Carlyle was also arguably the first to grasp the nature and purpose of Goethe's project to interpret modernity as a revolutionary epoch involving changes in consciousness, culture and material development. For Carlyle, Goethe's Faust presents modern consciousness and culture from the side of elegy - as the (...) search by an old man for eternal youth and an infinite world without constraints involving tragic loss. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, by contrast, presents the same processes from the side of romantic quest, that is, from the perspective of a youth growing into adulthood, as looking into the future with infinite hope. Finally in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Carlyle discerns that the radical form of this novel as a discontinuous narrative that embodies movement, change and incompletion enables Goethe to represent the social conditions of moderns as a spiritual challenge and historic achievement. Carlyle's critical perspicacity is evident not least in his choice of Goethe's works to translate as much as his own essays on Goethe's place in modern European letters. In his close reading of Goethe, Carlyle captures the symbolic form of modernity as incorporating three levels of revolutionary transformation of individual consciousness, of culture and of modernity as mythic condition consisting of tragic development, creative destruction and perpetual movement and change. Moderns then are challenged to become authors of their own texts and lives. Carlyle contrasts Goethe's achievement against other primary candidates for the title of modern spiritual revolutionist in ironically Goethean terms: Napoleon (Prometheus), Byron (Faust and Young Werther) and Voltaire (Mephistopheles). Thereafter, the older Carlyle puts aside his critical readings of Goethe to become his own Goethean authority on the modern condition, most notably in his most famous books, Sartor Resartus, The French Revolution, Chartism, On Heroes, and Past and Present. By reading Carlyle as a reader of Goethe we can begin to discern that Carlyle was not only an historian, biographer and political commentator of his own place and times but a critical theorist seeking to interpret the modern epoch, with and beyond Goethe. (shrink)

This commentary examines the use of Y-chromosome testing to reconstruct a genetic ancestry for the Lemba, a group in southern Africa.

ABSTRACTThe Bene Israel is a Jewish community in western India whose origins are unknown from conventional sources. This paper discusses a genetic ancestry study that mapped Bene Israel geneaologies and the impact of the study on the Bene Israel.

Environmental ethicists have not reached a consensus about whether or not individuals who contribute to climate change have a moral obligation to reduce their personal greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, I side with those who think that such individuals do have such an obligation by appealing to the concept of integrity. I argue that adopting a political commitment to work toward a collective solution to climate change—a commitment we all ought to share—requires also adopting a personal commitment to reduce (...) one’s emissions. On these grounds, individuals who contribute to climate change have a prima facie moral duty to lower their personal greenhouse gas emissions. After presenting this argument and supporting each of its premises, I defend it from two major lines of objection: skepticism about integrity’s status as a virtue and concerns that the resulting moral duty would be too demanding to be morally required. I then consider the role that an appeal to integrity could play in galvanizing the American public to take personal and political action regarding climate change. (shrink)

The hole argument purports to show that all spacetime theories of a certain form are indeterministic, including the General Theory of Relativity. The argument has given rise to an industry of searching for a metaphysics of spacetime that delivers the right modal implications to rescue determinism. In this paper, I first argue that certain prominent extant replies to the hole argument—namely, those that appeal to an essentialist doctrine about spacetime—fail to deliver the requisite modal implications. As part of my argument, (...) I show that threats to determinism of the sort brought out by the hole argument are more general than has heretofore been recognized. I then use these results to propose a novel essentialist doctrine about spacetime that successfully rescues determinism, what I call sufficiency metric essentialism. However, I go on to argue that once we realize what an essentialist doctrine about spacetime must look like in order to address the hole argument, we should reject all such doctrines, because they can't fulfill their ambition of improving on standard modal replies to the argument. I close by suggesting some lessons for future work on spacetime and the metaphysics of physics more broadly, and also drawing some general morals for contemporary metaphysics, in particular about (i) whether essence can be used to articulate a precise structuralist doctrine, and (ii) the relationship between essence and modality. (shrink)

We challenge the standard interpretation of pain asymbolia (PA), a neuropsychiatric condition that causes unusual reactions to pain stimuli. The standard interpretation asserts that PA subjects experience pain but lack important features of the experience. However, we argue that the clinical evidence for PA does not support this interpretation and that the arguments put forward by the defenders of the standard interpretation end up making self-contradicting claims. Finally, we suggest that the best interpretation of the available evidence is to take (...) a deflationist stance toward PA, at least until further evidence becomes available. (shrink)

This study examines the use of a modified form of the theory of planned behavior in understanding the decisions of undergraduate students in engineering and humanities to engage in cheating. We surveyed 527 randomly selected students from three academic institutions. Results supported the use of the model in predicting ethical decision-making regarding cheating. In particular, the model demonstrated how certain variables (gender, discipline, high school cheating, education level, international student status, participation in Greek organizations or other clubs) and moral constructs (...) related to intention to cheat, attitudes toward cheating, perceptions of norms with respect to cheating, and ultimately cheating behaviors. Further the relative importance of the theory of planned behavior constructs was consistent regardless of context, whereas the contributions of variables included in the study that were outside the theory varied by context. Of particular note were findings suggesting that the extent of cheating in high school was a strong predictor of cheating in college and that engineering students reported cheating more frequently than students in the humanities, even when controlling for the number of opportunities to do so. (shrink)

This article explores testing as research site in the sociology of technology. A fully generalizable analysis is offered of testing in terms of a notion of projection. Prospective, current, and retrospective testing are identified The article is illustrated with examples of testing a clinical budgeting system in the United Kingdom National Health Service and the testing of the O-rings on the space shuttle Challenger. Lastly, the theme of "testing the user" is developed Some comments are offered on the pervasiveness of (...) testing in society at large. (shrink)

A large body of research has examined the relationship between moral intensity (MI) and the four‐component model of morality, typically, by separating MI into its constituent dimensions and regressing them individually against the four‐component model. This approach, however, violates the definition of MI as a single construct. To correct this problem, we develop and test a model of the impact of MI as a single, 6‐item formative construct. We find that when MI is taken into account, moral recognition is not (...) significant. MI does, however, serve as a strong trigger for judgment. We also determine that splitting MI into multiple factors does not significantly affect the results, confirming the assertion that MI is a single, coherent construct. (shrink)

The word ‘environment’ has a history. Before the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of a singular, abstract entity—the organism—interacting with another singular, abstract entity—the environment—was virtually unknown. In this paper I trace how the idea of a plurality of external conditions or circumstances was replaced by the idea of a singular environment. The central figure behind this shift, at least in Anglo-American intellectual life, was the philosopher Herbert Spencer. I examine Spencer’s work from 1840 to 1855, demonstrating that he was exposed (...) to a variety of discussions of the ‘force of circumstances’ in this period, and was decisively influenced by the ideas of Auguste Comte in the years preceding the publication of Principles of psychology (1855). It is this latter work that popularized the word ‘environment’ and the corresponding idea of organism–environment interaction—an idea with important metaphysical and methodological implications. Spencer introduced into the English-speaking world one of our most enduring dichotomies: organism and environment. (shrink)

Formal criteria of theoretical equivalence are mathematical mappings between specific sorts of mathematical objects, notably including those objects used in mathematical physics. Proponents of formal criteria claim that results involving these criteria have implications that extend beyond pure mathematics. For instance, they claim that formal criteria bear on the project of using our best mathematical physics as a guide to what the world is like, and also have deflationary implications for various debates in the metaphysics of physics. In this paper, (...) I investigate whether there is a defensible view according to which formal criteria have significant non-mathematical implications, of these sorts or any other, reaching a chiefly negative verdict. Along the way, I discuss various foundational issues concerning how we use mathematical objects to describe the world when doing physics, and how this practice should inform metaphysics. I diagnose the prominence of formal criteria as stemming from contentious views on these foundational issues, and endeavor to motivate some alternative views in their stead. (shrink)

This book considers how language can be appropriately theorized as both a natural and cultural phenomenon. In reaching his conclusion, Pateman draws on a wide range of work in linguistics, philosophy, and social theory, and argues in defense of Chomsky and against Wittgenstein, all within the framework of a realist philosophy of science and contemporary social theory.

We show that Weak Vopěnka’s Principle, which is the statement that the opposite category of ordinals cannot be fully embedded into the category of graphs, is equivalent to the large cardinal principle Ord is Woodin, which says that for every class [Formula: see text] there is a [Formula: see text]-strong cardinal. Weak Vopěnka’s Principle was already known to imply the existence of a proper class of measurable cardinals. We improve this lower bound to the optimal one by defining structures whose (...) nontrivial homomorphisms can be used as extenders, thereby producing elementary embeddings witnessing [Formula: see text]-strongness of some cardinal. (shrink)

This commentary aims to place Grace de Laguna’s critique of pragmatism in its historical context. It examines her 1904 response to Henry Heath Bawden, her 1909 attack on John Dewey’s immediate empiricism, and her 1910 book Dogmatism and Evolution, focusing on the following question: Why did she describe her approach as an attempt to complete the pragmatists’ Darwinian revolution in logic?

Cinematic motion is, I argue, a genuine and intrinsic property of some cinematic works and not just a matter of how things look to us. It is an event—an item's change of position—happening prior and external to our sensory responses to movies. I therefore defend against common-sense illusionism a minority opinion within cinema studies: that movie viewing normally occasions veridical perceptions of a kind of objective displacement. I also dispute another version of anti-illusionist realism about cinematic motion, the implication that (...) cinematic motion, like colour, is a response-dependent property. The impression of motion, I contend, is not produced by the visual system's operations. It is a sensory representation of a physical property of a particular type of external object. (shrink)

Trevor Pateman; Can Schools Educate?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 139–148, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.19.

Determining whether a homoplastic trait is the result of convergence or parallelism is central to many of the most important contemporary discussions in biology and philosophy: the relation between evolution and development, the importance of constraints on variation, and the role of contingency in evolution. In this article, I show that two recent attempts to draw a black-or-white distinction between convergence and parallelism fail, albeit for different reasons. Nevertheless, I argue that we should not be afraid of gray areas: a (...) clarified version of S. J. Gould's earlier account, based on a separation of underlying developmental mechanisms from the realized trait, still represents a useful approach. (shrink)

This book examines the link between population growth and environmental impact and explores the implications of this connection for the ethics of procreation. In light of climate change, species extinctions, and other looming environmental crises, Trevor Hedberg argues that we have a collective moral duty to halt population growth to prevent environmental harms from escalating. This book assesses a variety of policies that could help us meet this moral duty, confronts the conflict between protecting the welfare of future people (...) and upholding procreative freedom, evaluates the ethical dimensions of individual procreative decisions, and sketches the implications of population growth for issues like abortion and immigration. It is not a book of tidy solutions: Hedberg highlights some scenarios where nothing we can do will enable us to avoid treating some people unjustly. In such scenarios, the overall objective is to determine which of our available options will minimize the injustice that occurs. This book will be of great interest to those studying environmental ethics, environmental policy, climate change, sustainability, and population policy. (shrink)

Many environmental philosophers have argued that there is an obligation for individuals to reduce their individual carbon footprints. However, few of them have addressed whether this obligation would entail a corresponding duty to limit one’s family size. In this paper, I examine several reasons that one might view procreative acts as an exception to a more general duty to reduce one’s individual greenhouse gas emissions. I conclude that none of these reasons are convincing. Thus, if there is an obligation to (...) reduce one’s unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, then people should also limit the size of their families when they have the means to do so. (shrink)

Those matters that are judged to be spiritual are seen as especially valuable and important. For this reason it is claimed that nurses need to be able to offer spiritual care when appropriate and, to aid them in this, nurse theorists have discussed the nature of spirituality. In a recent debate John Paley has argued that nurses should adopt a naturalistic stance which would enable them to employ the insights of modern science. Barbara Pesut has criticized this thesis, especially as (...) it is applied to palliative care. This paper re-examines this debate with particular attention to the meaning of 'spirituality' and the justification for accepting spiritual and religious theories. It is argued that when we take into consideration the great diversity among religious and spiritual ideas, the lack of rational means of deciding between them when they conflict, and the practicalities of nursing, we find that a spiritual viewpoint is less useful than a naturalistic one, when offering palliative care. (shrink)

Background independence begins life as an informal property that a physical theory might have, often glossed as 'doesn't posit a fixed spacetime background'. Interest in trying to offer a precise account of background independence has been sparked by the pronouncements of several theorists working on quantum gravity that background independence embodies in some sense an essential discovery of the General Theory of Relativity, and a feature we should strive to carry forward to future physical theories. This paper has two goals. (...) The first is to investigate what a world must be like in order to be truly described by a background independent theory given extant accounts of background independence. The second is to argue that there are no non-empirical reasons to be more confident in theories that satisfy extant accounts of background independence than in theories that don't. The paper concludes by drawing a general moral about a way in which focussing primarily on mathematical formulations of our physical theories can adversely affect debates in the metaphysics of physics. (shrink)

Readers have much to consider when evaluating Greenblum and Hubbard’s conclusion that ‘physicians have no business doing theology’.1 The two central arguments the authors offer are fairly convincing within the confines they set for themselves, the provisos they stipulate and their notions of ‘privacy’ and ‘public reason’. However, I would ask readers to consider two questions, the answers to which I believe the authors leave opaque. First, what is theological negotiation? Second, what makes chaplains the singular group of healthcare professionals (...) responsible for theological negotiation? In this Commentary, I explore these questions not with the goal of rejecting the authors’ conclusion, but rather with the goal of highlighting relevant considerations when evaluating the authors’ central tenets. First, I would like readers to consider Greenblum and Hubbard’s descriptions of theological negotiation. They categorise theological negotiation into metaphysical, normative and alternative responses, and hold that this kind of negotiation is, for the most part, impermissible for healthcare professionals, save chaplains.1 The examples of Dr Chatterjee and Dr Thompson expand theological negotiation to include instances where physicians add a theological veneer to their clinical recommendations. In both the examples, the physician has made the case for accepting or rejecting a certain intervention—for Dr Chatterjee, accepting …. (shrink)

We consider a weak version of Schindler’s remarkable cardinals that may fail to be ${{\rm{\Sigma }}_2}$-reflecting. We show that the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}_2}$-reflecting weakly remarkable cardinals are exactly the remarkable cardinals, and that the existence of a non-${{\rm{\Sigma }}_2}$-reflecting weakly remarkable cardinal has higher consistency strength: it is equiconsistent with the existence of an ω-Erdős cardinal. We give an application involving gVP, the generic Vopěnka principle defined by Bagaria, Gitman, and Schindler. Namely, we show that gVP + “Ord is not ${{\rm{\Delta (...) }}_2}$-Mahlo” and ${\text{gVP}}$ + “there is no proper class of remarkable cardinals” are both equiconsistent with the existence of a proper class of ω-Erdős cardinals, extending results of Bagaria, Gitman, Hamkins, and Schindler. (shrink)

This paper first argues that we can bring out a tension between the following three popular doctrines: (i) the canonical reduction of metaphysical modality to essence, due to Fine, (ii) contingentism, which says that possibly something could have failed to be something, and (iii) the doctrine that metaphysical modality obeys the modal logic S5. After presenting two such arguments (one from the theorems of S4 and another from the theorems of B), I turn to exploring various conclusions we might draw (...) in light of these results, and argue that none comes cost free. In the course of laying out possible responses to my arguments, we'll have a chance to evaluate various doctrines about the interplay between contingency and essence, as well as develop some alternative reductions of metaphysical modality to essence. I don't decisively come down in favor of one response over the others, though I say some things that point towards the conclusion that essence has no role to play in reducing metaphysical modality. (shrink)

_The Borderline Psychotic Child_ reviews the history and evolution of the borderline diagnosis for children, both in the USA and the UK, bringing the reader up to date with current clinical opinion on the subject. Using a range of clinical case studies, the book attempts to harmonise US and UK views on borderline diagnosis in the light of new developments in theory at The Menninger Clinic, The Anna Freud Centre and The Tavistock Clinic. Providing an introduction to the borderline concept, (...) and a systematic overview of current theoretical thinking and clinical practices from leading practitioners in the field, _The Borderline Psychotic Child_ will make informative reading both for professionals and students in the field of child analysis. (shrink)