This books offers new ways to think about teaching excellence in higher education. After surveying key debates on this topic, the author presents a definition of the concept of teaching excellence. He then offers a fresh interpretation of Boyer’s famous account of scholarship as the foundation of university teaching. To fully understand the nature of teaching excellence in higher education, the book then gives an account of the various dimensions of the domain of university teaching and the core drivers required (...) to bring those domains to life. The idea of empowerment underlies the journey to excellence in teaching. The book argues that university lecturers aspiring to become excellent should be active agents, strongly pursuing the development of their perfectible abilities required for high quality teaching. The author then draws on recent developments in virtue theory to set out the qualities of character requisite for guiding and driving university lecturers to grow and develop into excellent teachers. What this book does: • Makes the idea of scholarship, as offered by Boyer, foundational to the work of university faculty. • Outlines the core aspects of university teaching that demand attention in the quest for excellence in teaching. • Demonstrates the role of agency, empowerment, and skills development in the development of excellent teaching. • Presents ideas drawn from virtue epistemology as fundamental drivers to become excellent at university teaching. • Offers guidelines for the cultivation of excellent teaching performances that display elegant artistry. (shrink)

The process of making ethical judgments is much more complex than studying only personal moral philosophy variables (idealism and relativism). The renewed interest in epistemic values (virtue and vice epistemology) in contemporary philosophy has shown significant relevance to understanding ethical behavior and such values may be better predictors than studying only idealism and relativism. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine employees’ personal moral philosophies, optimism, epistemic values, and various organizational unethical practices as compared to their managers. We (...) used Rawwas’ items of epistemology in this study. The sample consisted of 262 managers and employees. The results revealed that managers were more sensitive to organizational unethical practices, scored less on epistemic vices, less on absolutism, and more on exceptionalism than employees were. However, there was no difference between managers and employees related to moderate and minor unethical organizational practices, situationism, subjectivism, optimism, and epistemic virtues. We provided discussion of the results and implications. (shrink)

This highly multidisciplinary collection discusses an increasingly important topic among scholars in science and technology studies: objectivity in science. It features eleven essays on scientific objectivity from a variety of perspectives, including philosophy of science, history of science, and feminist philosophy. Topics addressed in the book include the nature and value of scientific objectivity, the history of objectivity, and objectivity in scientific journals and communities. Taken individually, the essays supply new methodological tools for theorizing what is valuable in the pursuit (...) of objective knowledge and for investigating its history. The essays offer many starting points, while suggesting new avenues of research. Taken collectively, the essays exemplify the very virtues of objectivity that they theorize—in reading them together, the reader can sense various anxieties about the dangerously subjective in our age and locate commonalities of concern as well as differences of approach. As a result, the volume offers an expansive vision of a research community seeking a communal understanding of its own methods and its own epistemic anxieties, struggling to enunciate the key problems of knowledge of our time and offer insight into how to overcome them. -/- (Contributors: Alex Csiszar, Scott Edgar, Peter Galison, Ian Hacking, Sandra Harding, Moira Howes, Paolo Savoia, Judy Segal, Joan Steigerwald, and Alison Wylie). (shrink)

Within the nursing ethics literature, there has for some time now been a focus on the role and importance of character for nursing. An overarching rationale for this is the need to examine the sort of person one must be if one is to nurse well or be a good nurse. How one should be to live well or live a/the good life and to nurse well or be a good nurse seems to necessitate a focus on an agent's character (...) as well as actions because character is (for the most part) expressed in action (e.g. see Laird). This paper will give an overview of the reasons for the role and importance of character in nursing practice and explain its relation to nursing's frequent use of virtue ethics in order to recommend caution. While the paper agrees that the role of character is important in nursing caution is needed in both how much moral and thus normative, emphasis is being placed on the psychology of character and on the drift to virtue ethics. The psychological which may be explanatory needs to be linked with the normative, and a justification for the normative is needed. A justification as virtue ethics is contested, and nursing practice does not need to take on this explanatory and justificatory burden.A tentative proposal raised but not discussed in depth in this paper is that when an ultimate explanation or explanatory ground is needed, nursing practice leads quite naturally to a form of consequentialism as well as a realist metaethic. On this account, there are two levels of moral thinking, and nursing practice entails the virtues at one level and leads quite naturally to moral thinking at another more critical level of the criterion of what makes something right and good independently of character. (shrink)

Rationale, aims and objectives: Bioethics and professionalism are standard subjects in medical training programmes, and these curricula reflect particular representations of meaning and practice. It is important that these curricula cohere with the actual concerns of practicing clinicians so that students are prepared for real-world practice. We aimed to identify ethical and professional concerns that do not appear to be adequately addressed in standard curricula by comparing ethics curricula with themes that emerged from a qualitative study of medical practitioners. Method: (...) Curriculum analysis: Thirty-two prominent ethics and professionalism curricula were identified through a database search and were analysed thematically. Qualitative study: In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 medical practitioners. Participants were invited to reflect upon their perceptions of the ways in which values matter in their practices and their educational experiences. The themes emerging from the two studies were compared and contrasted. Results: While representations of meaning and value in ethics and professionalism curricula overlap with the preoccupations of practicing clinicians, there are significant aspects of ‘real-world’ clinical practice that are largely ignored. These fell into two broad domains: ‘sociological’ concerns about enculturation, bureaucracy, intra-professional relationships, and public perceptions of medicine; and epistemic concerns about making good decisions, balancing different kinds of knowledge, and practising within the bounds of professional protocols. Conclusions: Our findings support the view that philosophy and sociology should be included in medical school and specialty training curricula. Curricula should be reframed to introduce students to habits of thought that recognize the need for critical reflection on the social processes in which they are embedded, and on the philosophical assumptions that underpin their practice. (shrink)

Technological enthusiasm is a value that can influence engineering, shape technologies and subsequently transform human lifestyles. Despite its significant role, up until now, there has been little research done on this value. The dominant idea is that this value is commendable. However, based on consequentialism, a recently proposed idea describes TE as neither morally commendable nor reprehensible. In this paper, three arguments are presented against this recent idea, and a new idea is introduced, which challenges not only commendation for TE (...) but also neutrality of TE. Further, it is shown that a virtue ethics approach can be adopted to evaluate the moral role of TE. In the approach, TE can be considered a character trait or a virtue/vice. Then, three arguments are proposed to indicate that TE is not a virtue but a vice. This paper illustrates some advantages of virtue ethics in ethical evaluation of a problem in which consequentialism or utilitarianism is not effective. (shrink)

Technological enthusiasm is a value that can influence engineering, shape technologies and subsequently transform human lifestyles. Despite its significant role, up until now, there has been little research done on this value. The dominant idea is that this value is commendable. However, based on consequentialism, a recently proposed idea describes TE as neither morally commendable nor reprehensible. In this paper, three arguments are presented against this recent idea, and a new idea is introduced, which challenges not only commendation for TE (...) but also neutrality of TE. Further, it is shown that a virtue ethics approach can be adopted to evaluate the moral role of TE. In the approach, TE can be considered a character trait or a virtue/vice. Then, three arguments are proposed to indicate that TE is not a virtue but a vice. This paper illustrates some advantages of virtue ethics in ethical evaluation of a problem in which consequentialism or utilitarianism is not effective. (shrink)

Technological enthusiasm is a value that can influence engineering, shape technologies and subsequently transform human lifestyles. Despite its significant role, up until now, there has been little research done on this value. The dominant idea is that this value is commendable. However, based on consequentialism, a recently proposed idea describes TE as neither morally commendable nor reprehensible. In this paper, three arguments are presented against this recent idea, and a new idea is introduced, which challenges not only commendation for TE (...) but also neutrality of TE. Further, it is shown that a virtue ethics approach can be adopted to evaluate the moral role of TE. In the approach, TE can be considered a character trait or a virtue/vice. Then, three arguments are proposed to indicate that TE is not a virtue but a vice. This paper illustrates some advantages of virtue ethics in ethical evaluation of a problem in which consequentialism or utilitarianism is not effective. (shrink)

The present article sets out to defend the thesis that among the more or less familiar enemies or challenges an adequate theory of virtue has to cope with is another, less obvious one – virtue ethics itself. The project of establishing virtue ethics as a third paradigm of normative ethics at eye level with consequentialism and deontological approaches to ethics threatens to distort not just our ethical thinking but the theory of virtue itself. A theory of virtue that is able (...) to meet the demands of a full-blown virtue ethics necessarily has to face three fundamental dilemmas and thus seems to fail as an adequate theory of virtue. And vice versa: An ontologically and normatively viable theory of virtue will be unsuited to provide a promising starting point for virtue ethics as the “third kid on the block” among the options of self-standing paradigms of normative ethics. (shrink)

Evaluational internalism holds that only features internal to agency (e.g., motivation) are relevant to attributions of virtue [Slote, M. (2001). Morals from motives. Oxford: Oxford University Press]. Evaluational externalism holds that only features external to agency (e.g., consequences) are relevant to attributions of virtue [Driver, J. (2001). Uneasy virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]. Many evaluational externalists and internalists claim that their view best accords with philosophically naïve (i.e., folk) intuitions, and that accordance provides argumentative support for their view. Evaluational internalism (...) and externalism are incompatible views and therefore it is impossible that both views are supported by most folk intuitions. In four experiments, we present evidence that neither pure evaluational internalism nor pure evaluational externalism accurately capture some relevant folk intuitions about virtue. However, our experiments suggest external factors are vastly more important than internal factors for folk attributions of virtue. While these data do not entail that evaluational internalism and externalism about virtue are false, they situate important argumentative burdens, constrain philosophical theory about virtue, and illustrate a valuable method that could foster more efficient progress in ethics. (shrink)

It is commonly claimed that fully virtuous individuals cannot be ignorant and that everyday intuitions support this fact. Others maintain that there are virtues of ignorance and most people recognize them. Both views cannot be correct. We report evidence from three experiments suggesting that ignorance does not rule out folk attributions of virtue. Additionally, results show that many of these judgments can be predicted by one’s emotional stability—a heritable personality trait. We argue that these results are philosophically important for the (...) study of virtue and we discuss some of the ways individual differences may inform and facilitate current debates in ethics. We close with a cautionary argument detailing the risks of discounting some intuitions simply because they are associated with seemingly less desirable personality traits. (shrink)

This paper applies emerging research on epistemic virtues to business ethics. Inspired by recent work on epistemic virtues in philosophy, I develop a view in which epistemic virtues contribute to the acquisition of knowledge that is instrumentally valuable in the realisation of particular ends, business ends in particular. I propose a conception of inquiry according to which epistemic actions involve investigation, belief adoption and justification, and relate this to the traditional ‘justified true belief’ analysis of knowledge. I defend the view (...) that epistemic virtues enable and/or motivate people to perform epistemic actions. An examination of the key epistemic virtues of love of knowledge, epistemic courage, temperance, justice, generosity and humility provides some initial evidence suggesting that the way epistemic virtues enable or motivate is by countering a number of biases that have been uncovered by behavioural economics, and also indicates ways in which the instrumental epistemic value view is superior to other approaches to epistemic virtue offered in the literature. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article, the logic and functions of character-trait ascriptions in ethics and epistemology is compared, and two major problems, the "generality problem" for virtue epistemologies and the "global trait problem" for virtue ethics, are shown to be far more similar in structure than is commonly acknowledged. I suggest a way to put the generality problem to work by making full and explicit use of a sliding scale--a "narrow-broad spectrum of trait ascription"-- and by accounting for the various uses (...) of it in an inquiry-pragmatist account. In virtue theories informed by inquiry pragmatism, the agential habits and abilities deemed salient in explanations/evaluations of agents in particular cases, and the determination of what relevant domains and conditions an agent's habit or ability is reliably efficacious in, is determined by pragmatic concerns related to our evaluative epistemic practices. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to develop a coherence theory for the justification of evidentiary judgments in law. The main claim of the coherence theory proposed in this article is that a belief about the events being litigated is justified if and only if it is a belief that an epistemically responsible fact finder might hold by virtue of its coherence in like circumstances. The article argues that this coherentist approach to evidence and legal proof has the resources to (...) meet some of the main objections that may be addressed against attempts to analyze the justification of evidentiary judgments in law in coherentist terms. It concludes by exploring some implications of the proposed version of legal coherentism for a jurisprudence of evidence. (shrink)

It’s been argued with some justice by commentators from Walter Kaufmann to Thomas Hurka that Nietzsche’s positive ethical position is best understood as a variety of virtue theory – in particular, as a brand of perfectionism. For Nietzsche, value flows from character. Less attention has been paid, however, to the details of the virtues he identifies for himself and his type. This neglect, along with Nietzsche’s frequent irony and non-standard usage, has obscured the fact that almost all the virtues he (...) praises are intellectual rather than moral. The vices he most despises include dogmatism, intellectual partisanship, faith, boredom, the need for certainty, and pity. The virtues he most appreciates include curiosity, honesty, skepticism, creativity, the historical sense, intellectual courage, and intellectual fastidiousness. These tables of values place Nietzsche squarely among so-called responsibilist virtue epistemologists, such as Lorraine Code and Linda Zagzebski, who emphasize that knowledge is infused with desire and affect. I argue that curiosity construed as the specification of the will to power in the domain of epistemology is a cardinal Nietzschean virtue, and that the others – especially intellectual courage and honesty – are presupposed by curiosity. Thus, Nietzsche turns out to accept his own peculiar brand of the thesis of the unity of virtue. (shrink)

This paper challenges the appeal to theory virtues in theory choice as well as the appeal to the intellectual and moral virtues of an agent as determining unique choices between empirically equivalent theories. After arguing that theoretical virtues do not determine the choice of one theory at the expense of another theory, I argue that nor does the appeal to intellectual and moral virtues single out one agent, who defends a particular theory, and exclude another agent defending an alternative theory. (...) I analyse Duhem’s concept of good sense and its recent interpretation in terms of virtue epistemology. I argue that the virtue epistemological interpretation does not show how good sense leads to conclusive choices and scientific progress. (shrink)

In this entry, I offer a critical analysis of virtue epistemology, which is a fundamental collection of recent approaches to epistemology. After a few remarks on the roots of this view, I reconstruct the key features of the two main accounts of virtue epistemology and I discuss how these accounts respond to some traditional epistemological challenges. -/- Questo contributo propone una disamina critica dell’epistemologia delle virtù, una delle correnti più importanti della teoria della conoscenza contemporanea. Dopo un breve affondo sulle (...) origini di questa corrente, vengono analizzate le caratteristiche dei due approcci fondamentali all’epistemologia delle virtù e le risposte che essi offrono ad alcuni problemi epistemologici tradizionali. (shrink)