A qualitative study using grounded theory methods was conducted to (a) examine what philosophy of technology assumptions are present in the thinking of K-12 technology leaders, (b) investigate how the assumptions may influence technology decision making, and (c) explore whether technological determinist assumptions are present. Subjects involved technology directors and instructional technology specialists from school districts, and data collection involved interviews and a written questionnaire. Three broad philosophy of technology views were widely held by participants, including an instrumental view of (...) technology, technological optimism, and a technological determinist perspective that sees technological change as inevitable. Technology leaders were guided by two main approaches to technology decision making in cognitive dissonance with each other, represented by the categories Educational goals and curriculum should drive technology, and Keep up with Technology (or be left behind). The researcher concluded that as leaders deal with their perceived experience of the inevitability of technological change, and their concern for preparing students for a technological future, the core category Keep up with technology (or be left behind) is given the greater weight in technology decision making. A risk is that this can on occasion mean a quickness to adopt technology for the sake of technology, without aligning the technology implementation with educational goals. (shrink)

Scholars have emphasized that decisions about technology can be influenced by philosophy of technology assumptions, and have argued for research that critically questions technological determinist assumptions. Empirical studies of technology management in fields other than K-12 education provided evidence that philosophy of technology assumptions, including technological determinism, can influence the practice of technology leadership. A qualitative study was conducted to a) examine what philosophy of technology assumptions are present in the thinking of K-12 technology leaders, b) investigate how the assumptions (...) may influence technology decision making, and c) explore whether technological determinist assumptions are present. The research design aligned with Corbin and Strauss qualitative data analysis, and employed constant comparative analysis, theoretical sampling, and theoretical saturation of categories. Subjects involved 31 technology directors and instructional technology specialists from Virginia school districts, and data collection involved interviews following a semi-structured protocol, and a written questionnaire with open-ended questions. The study found that three broad philosophy of technology views were widely held by participants, including an instrumental view of technology, technological optimism, and a technological determinist perspective that sees technological change as inevitable. The core category and central phenomenon that emerged was that technology leaders approach technology leadership through a practice of Keep up with technology (or be left behind). The core category had two main properties that are in conflict with each other, pressure to keep up with technology, and the resistance to technological change they encounter in schools. The study found that technology leaders are guided by two main approaches to technology decision making, represented by the categories Educational goals and curriculum should drive technology, and Keep up with Technology (or be left behind). As leaders deal with their perceived experience of the inevitability of technological change, and their concern for preparing students for a technological future, the core category Keep up with technology (or be left behind) is given the greater weight in technology decision making. The researcher recommends that similar qualitative studies be conducted involving technology leaders outside Virginia, and with other types of educators. It is also recommended that data from this or other qualitative studies be used to help develop and validate a quantitative instrument to measure philosophy of technology assumptions, for use in quantitative studies. (shrink)

Our reluctance to demystify grief is a sign of the distinctive obligation and discomfort that people feel towards those who have died. These feelings, however, are instructive about the nature of grief. As a vehicle of a living person’s relation to the dead, grief is mysterious—and we are rightly reluctant to take that mystery away. But grief is not to be avoided by philosophy on that account. I defend a less Romantic view of grief, in which a grieving person’s experience (...) of “normal” grief: 1) is felt to require an objectively recognized loss; 2) is felt to be dedicated to that lost object; 3) seems to most people to be something that she ought to feel; and 4) probably ought not to be medicalized, nor consequently medicated. This view of grief affords an understanding and appreciation of this rather special and important emotion without reducing its mystery. (shrink)

Families play an essential role in deceased organ procurement. As the person cannot directly communicate his or her wishes regarding donation, the family is often the only source of information regarding consent or refusal. We provide a systematic description and analysis of the different roles the family can play, and actions the family can take, in the organ procurement process across different jurisdictions and consent systems. First, families can inform or update healthcare professionals about a person’s donation wishes. Second, families (...) can authorize organ procurement in the absence of deceased’s preferences and the default is not to remove organs, and oppose donation where there is no evidence of preference but the default is to presume consent; in both cases, the decision could be based on their own wishes or what they think the deceased would have wanted. Finally, families can overrule the known wishes of the deceased, which can mean preventing donation, or permitting donation when the deceased refused it. We propose a schema of 4 levels on which to map these possible family roles: no role, witness, surrogate, and full decisional authority. We conclude by mapping different jurisdictions onto this schema to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the consent system for organ donation and some important nuances about the role of families. This classificatory model aims to account for the majority of the world’s consent systems. It provides conceptual and methodological guidance that can be useful to researchers, professionals, and policymakers involved in organ procurement. (shrink)

If business requires ethical solutions that are viable in the liminal landscape between concepts and corporate office, then business ethics and corporate social responsibility should offer tools that can survive the trek, that flourish in this well-traveled, but often unarticulated, environment. Indeed, feminist ethics produces, accesses, and engages such tools. However, work in BE and CSR consistently conflates feminist ethics and feminine ethics and care ethics. I offer clarification and invoke the analytic power of three feminist ethicists 'in action' whose (...) investigations into the "grey zones" of harms; identity and representational conventions; and "asymmetrical reciprocity" harmonize with business ethics' requirements. (shrink)

This paper proposes a distinctive kind of agency that can vindicate the agency of members of marginalised groups while accommodating the autonomy-undermining influences of oppression. Socially-embedded agency—the locus of which is in the exercise of our ability to negotiate between different social features—is compatible with, and can explain, various phenomena, including double-consciousness and white fragility. Moreover, although socially-embedded agency is neither necessary nor sufficient for autonomy, exercising it is practically necessary for autonomy, at least for members of marginalised groups in (...) our non-ideal world. (shrink)

This paper examines visual representation from a distinctive, interdisciplinary perspective that draws on ethics, visual studies and critical race theory. Suggests ways to clarify complex issues of representational ethics in marketing communications and marketing representations, suggesting an analysis that makes identity creation central to societal marketing concerns. Analyzes representations of the exotic Other in disparate marketing campaigns, drawing upon tourist promotions, advertisements, and mundane objects in material culture. Moreover, music is an important force in marketing communication: visual representations in music (...) promotions are also explored as data for inquiry. Offers an alternative to phenomenologically based approaches in marketing and consumer research scholarship that use consumer responses to generate data. Contributes additional insight into societal marketing and places global marketing processes within the intersection of ethics, aesthetics and representation. (shrink)

Some people of colour feel shame in response to racist incidents. This phenomenon seems puzzling since, plausibly, they have nothing to feel shame about. This puzzle arises because we assume that targets of racism feel shame about their race. However, I propose that when an individual is racialised as non-White in a racist incident, shame is sometimes prompted, not by a negative self-assessment of her race, but by her inability to choose when her stigmatised race is made salient. I argue (...) that this can make sense of some shame responses to racism. My account also helps to highlight some of the emotional and cognitive costs of racism that have their root in shame as well as a new form of hermeneutical injustice and distinctive communicative harms, contributing to a fuller picture of what is objectionable about racism. (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 355-373, October 2021.

One challenge in providing an adequate definition of physical disability is unifying the heterogeneous bodily conditions that count as disabilities. We examine recent proposals by Elizabeth Barnes (2016), and Dana Howard and Sean Aas (2018), and show how this debate has reached an impasse. Barnes’ account struggles to deliver principled unification of the category of disability, whilst Howard and Aas’ account risks inappropriately sidelining the body. We argue that this impasse can be broken using a novel concept: marginalised functioning. Marginalised (...) functioning concerns the relationship between a person’s bodily capacities and their social world: specifically, their ability to function in line with the default norms about how people can typically physically function that influence the structuring of social space. We argue that attending to marginalised functioning allows us to develop, not one, but three different models of disability, all of which—whilst having different strengths and weaknesses—unify the category of disability without sidelining the body. (shrink)

Understanding science requires appreciating the values it presupposes and its social context. Both the values that scientists hold and their social context can affect scientific communication. Philosophers of science have recently begun studying scientific communication, especially as it relates to public policy. Some have proposed “guiding principles for communicating scientific findings” to promote trust and objectivity. This paper contributes to this line of research in a novel way using behavioural experimentation. We report results from three experiments testing judgments about the (...) trustworthiness, competence and objectivity of scientists. More specifically, we tested whether such judgments are affected by three factors: consulting or not consulting nonscientists, conducting research under a restrictive or non-restrictive governmental communication policy, and the source of a lab’s funding (i.e., government funding, private funding, or a combination of the two). We found that each of these factors affects ordinary judgments of trustworthiness, competence and objectivity. These findings support several recommendations that could help improve scientific communication and communication policies. (shrink)

Bernard Williams’ Shame and Necessity (1993) was an influential early contribution to what has become a broader movement to rehabilitate shame as a moral emotion. But there is a tension in Williams’ discussion that presents an under-appreciated difficulty for efforts to rehabilitate shame. The tension arises between what Williams takes shame in its essence to be and what shame can do—the role that shame can be expected to play in ethical life. Williams can—and we argue, should—be read as avoiding the (...) difficulties stemming from this tension, but this requires a reevaluation of several of his central claims about shame’s role in ethical thought and experience. For instance, his broad claims that the “structures of shame” can “give a conception of one’s ethical identity” (93), and that shame “mediates … between ethical demands and the rest of life” (102), cannot be taken at face value. What emerges is a view that is in a sense less ambitious, but also more in tune with the spirit of Williams’ larger project. There may also, we suggest, be a more general lesson: We should be suspicious of the temptation to seek some special affinity between shame and ethical life, lest we distort our understanding of both. (shrink)

When Mill published The Subjection of Women in 1869 he wanted to replace the domination of one sex by the other laws based on ‘a principle of perfect equality’. It is widely complained, however, that even advanced countries have still failed to achieve equality between the sexes. Power and wealth and influence are still overwhelmingly in the hands of men. But equalities of these kinds are not the ones required by the principle of equality that Mill had in mind; and, (...) furthermore, a principle that demanded them would actually be incompatible with Mill’s. The conclusion is not, however, that social policies dealing with men and women are all they should be. It is just that although the fundamental problems of feminism could be – and to a considerable extent still can be – expressed in terms of requirements for justice and equality, we have now reached a stage where concentrating on these ideas can distort the real problems, and may actually impede the kind of progress that is needed. (shrink)

This article draws in particular on existential-phenomenological notions of “witnessing.” Witnessing, often conceived in the context of testimony, obviously involves epistemological concerns, such as how we come to know through the experiences and reports of others. I shall argue, however, that witnessing as a mode of intersubjectivity offers understandings that involve questions about how people come to be. More specifically, I want to consider the positive potential of “witnessing” to disrupt intersubjective completeness or closure, particularly as this relates to work (...) on organizing subjectivities, as well as, in the field of organization studies. (shrink)

Mark David Webster ABSTRACT: Using qualitative methods, the author sought to better understand how philosophical assumptions about technology affect the thinking, and influence the decision making, of educational technology leaders in their professional practice. One of the research questions focused on examining whether assumptions of technological determinism were present in thinking and influenced the decisions that leaders make. The core category that emerged from data analysis, Keep up with technology (or be left behind), was interpreted to be a manifestation (...) of the technological imperative, an assumption associated with the philosophical perspective of technological determinism. The article presents a literature review and critique of philosophical issues surrounding technological determinism. Data analysis led to the conclusion that technology leaders working in K-12 education place weighted priority on the technological imperative, and there is philosophical tension between Keep up with technology (or be left behind), and a concurrently held perspective based on the logic of the instrumental view of technology. The findings suggest that different accounts of technological determinism, including Bimber’s three accounts of normative, nomological, and unintended consequences, are significant in the thinking of participants. School technology leaders placed priority on embracing technological change, sometimes adopting technology for its own sake. (shrink)

The context of international health research involving human subjects, and this should appear obvious, is the human community. As such, basic questions of how human beings should be treated by other human beings, particularly in situations of unequal power – e.g., in the form of control, choice, or opportunity – lay at the foundations of related ethical discourse when ethics are discussed at all. I trace a narrative that follows upon a recent revision process of international guidelines for biomedical research (...) involving human subjects. I focus in particular upon the issue of a standard of care. In the second section, I draw upon philosophers John Rawls, Claudia Card, and Allen Buchanan to discuss concerns regarding the 'least advantaged members of society' in the context of global inequality. The paper includes reflections upon pedagogy in courses focused upon international health research involving human subjects. (shrink)

A qualitative study was conducted to examine the philosophy of technology of K-12 technology leaders, and explore the influence of their thinking on technology decision making. The research design aligned with CORBIN and STRAUSS grounded theory methods, and I proceeded from a research paradigm of critical realism. The subjects were school technology directors and instructional technology specialists, and data collection consisted of interviews and a written questionnaire. Data analysis involved the use of grounded theory methods including memo writing, open and (...) axial coding, constant comparison, the use of purposive and theoretical sampling, and theoretical saturation of categories. Three broad philosophy of technology views were widely held by participants: an instrumental view of technology, technological optimism, and a technological determinist perspective that saw technological change as inevitable. Technology leaders were guided by two main approaches to technology decision making, represented by the categories Educational goals and curriculum should drive technology, and Keep up with Technology (or be left behind). The core category and central phenomenon that emerged was that technology leaders approached technology leadership by placing greater emphasis on keeping up with technology, being influenced by an ideological orientation to technological change, and being concerned about preparing students for a technological future. (shrink)

The mathematical developments of the 19th century seemed to undermine Kant’s philosophy. Non-Euclidean geometries challenged Kant’s view that there is a spatial intuition rich enough to yield the truth of Euclidean geometry. Similarly, advancements in algebra challenged the view that temporal intuition provides a foundation for both it and arithmetic. Mathematics seemed increasingly detached from experience as well as its form; moreover, with advances in symbolic logic, mathematical inference also seemed independent of intuition. This paper considers various philosophical responses to (...) these changes, focusing on the idea of modifying Kant’s conception of intuition in order to accommodate the increasing abstractness of mathematics. It is argued that far from clinging to an outdated paradigm, programs based on new conceptions of intuition should be seen as motivated by important philosophical desiderata, such as the truth, apriority, distinctiveness and autonomy of mathematics. (shrink)

The increasing application of artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare raises both hope and ethical concerns. Some advanced machine learning methods provide accurate clinical predictions at the expense of a significant lack of explainability. Alex John London has defended that accuracy is a more important value than explainability in AI medicine. In this article, we locate the trade-off between accurate performance and explainable algorithms in the context of distributive justice. We acknowledge that accuracy is cardinal from outcome-oriented justice because it helps (...) to maximize patients’ benefits and optimizes limited resources. However, we claim that the opaqueness of the algorithmic black box and its absence of explainability threatens core commitments of procedural fairness such as accountability, avoidance of bias, and transparency. To illustrate this, we discuss liver transplantation as a case of critical medical resources in which the lack of explainability in AI-based allocation algorithms is procedurally unfair. Finally, we provide a number of ethical recommendations for when considering the use of unexplainable algorithms in the distribution of health-related resources. (shrink)

How is the burden of proof to be distributed among individuals who are involved in resolving a particular issue? Under what conditions should the burden of proof be distributed unevenly? We distinguish attitudinal from dialectical burdens and argue that these questions should be answered differently, depending on which is in play. One has an attitudinal burden with respect to some proposition when one is required to possess sufficient evidence for it. One has a dialectical burden with respect to some proposition (...) when one is required to provide supporting arguments for it as part of a deliberative process. We show that the attitudinal burden with respect to certain propositions is unevenly distributed in some deliberative contexts, but in all of these contexts, establishing the degree of support for the proposition is merely a means to some other deliberative end, such as action guidance, or persuasion. By contrast, uneven distributions of the dialectical burden regularly further the aims of deliberation, even in contexts where the quest for truth is the sole deliberative aim, rather than merely a means to some different deliberative end. We argue that our distinction between these two burdens resolves puzzles about unevenness that have been raised in the literature. (shrink)

Alex Sarch’s recent book, Criminally Ignorant: Why the Law Pretends We Know What We Don’t is a wonderfully rich work.1 Sarch provides and defends an explanatorily powerful theory of criminal culpab...

Kevin Elliott’s A Tapestry of Values is a terrific book, chock full of valuable case studies and incisive analyses. It aims to be useful not only to students of philosophy of science and the other areas of science studies but also to practicing scientists, policymakers, and the public at large—a tall order. And it succeeds admirably for many of these folks. In my comments I suggest what it would need for the rest.

The paper is written in response to those who fail to recognize the relation between a patient's mental competency and her state of pain. Some clinicians claim that a proper diagnosis can only be made in the absent of analgesia. Rather, the patient's state of pain directly affects her mental competency and thus her ability to give valid consent. Clinicians should rethink their approach to diagnosis when the patient is in pain.

In laying out his theory of public reason, John Rawls is adamant that there be a clear distinction between private and public reason. Rawls says that political society under the theory of political liberalism is not an association. Associations, he says, are private communities, and the domain of private reason. Private reason, furthermore, occurs in the domain of private associations. Public reason, however, occurs beyond the scope of private associations, in an overlapping domain of shared reasons. In fact, Rawls says (...) that public reasons are not bound by association at all. But I think this conceptual move is not necessary. I will argue that public reason, as Rawls describes it, does occur in the context of a public association, which is an association of individual citizens who share certain – specific ends – as shown by the concept of the overlapping consensus, amongst other components of the theory. There are ends of which the public agree, and those are the ends laid out by the principles of the political conception, which are expressed with the association of an overlapping consensus, realm of public reason, and in a minimum of requisite shared values, history, education, and other forms of ideas that are meant to bond citizens by public association, which makes public reason possible under the theory of public reason. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to reflect on the impact of biases related to artificial intelligence (AI) systems developed to tackle issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, with special focus on those developed for triage and risk prediction. A secondary aim is to review assessment tools that have been developed to prevent biases in AI systems. In addition, we provide a conceptual clarification for some terms related to biases in this particular context. We focus mainly on nonracial biases (...) that may be less considered when addressing biases in AI systems in the existing literature. In the manuscript, we found that the existence of bias in AI systems used for COVID-19 can result in algorithmic justice and that the legal frameworks and strategies developed to prevent the apparition of bias have failed to adequately consider social determinants of health. Finally, we make some recommendations on how to include more diverse professional profiles in order to develop AI systems that increase the epistemic diversity needed to tackle AI biases during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. (shrink)

Abstract: Minstrels are found in all parts of the world. They perform similar functions in their various societies. They are the custodian of the people’s history, entertainers, educationists, advisers and reconstructionists. The secret behind their success in their roles in the society lies in their ability to impress the audience during their performance. Performance plays an indispensable role in full actualization of the story being told as a full aesthetic experience. In this paper, the writer x-rays the roles of both (...) performance and the context of the play in reconstruction of the society especially in Upper Iweka area of Onitsha town. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to draw attention to conceptual similarities between two important texts in the history of political philosophy, Plato’s Republic and Noam Chomsky’s and Edward S. Herman’s work, Manufacturing Consent. Similar to the way the “propaganda model,” which Chomsky and Herman describe as a phenomenon by which “news media” is used as a means to transmitting false ideas, the method described by Socrates in the Republic, where poetry is used as a means to transmit false ideas (...) is not entirely different. Furthermore, those who transmit false ideas under such conditions do so automatically, consciously or not, because they’ve internalized certain values, which lead to an automatic rule and certain political order. I will also employ the concepts of “harmful propaganda” and “flawed ideologies” that Jason Stanley outlines in How Propaganda Works, and show that these concepts are either identical or closely related to the problem of manufacturing consent, amongst others. (shrink)

Goal: To assess public knowledge and attitudes towards the family’s role in deceased organ donation in Europe. -/- Methods: A systematic search was conducted in CINHAL, MEDLINE, PAIS Index, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science on December 15th, 2017. Eligibility criteria were socio-empirical studies conducted in Europe from 2008 to 2017 addressing either knowledge or attitudes by the public towards the consent system, including the involvement of the family in the decision-making process, for post-mortem organ retrieval. Screening and data collection (...) were performed by two or more independent reviewers for each record. -/- Results: Of the 1482 results, 467 studies were assessed in full-text form, and 33 were included in this synthesis. When the deceased has not expressed any preference, a majority of the public support the family's role as a surrogate decision-maker. When the deceased expressly consented, the respondents' answers depend on whether they see themselves as potential donors or as a deceased's next-of-kin. Answers also depend on the relationship between the deceased and the decision-maker(s) within the family, and on their ethnic or cultural background. -/- Conclusions: Public views on the authority of the family in organ donation decision-making require further research. A common conceptual framework and validated well-designed questionnaires are needed for future studies. The findings should be considered in the development of Government policy and guidance regarding the role of families in deceased organ donation. (shrink)

Abstract: When in 1846, Euhemerus, a Greek philosopher propounded a theory that all Greek gods were once men who were deified in their life time and worshipped as a god after their death. The Greeks never take the assertion kindly. Euphemerus was accused of sacrilege. Later findings by anthropologists proved Euphemerus correct. Heroes and deification of heroes are found in different parts of the world. The writer is aware that deification of a hero is a symbiotic venture. This means that (...) the hero might have worked so hard in solving the people’s problems, the people in return deifies him. In this write up, the writer is looking for the significance of this deification. The writer through oral interviews, visit to library and reading relevant books on the topic is able to arrive at the answer as stated in the write up. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Miranda Fricker’s account of blame in “What’s the Point of Blame? A Paradigm Based Explanation” can assist in explaining why cancel culture is ultimately unproductive. In particular, the phenomenon of cancel culture possesses pathological forms of blame. There are three specific pathologies outlined by Fricker that can be observed in cancel culture. They are as follows: cancel culture does not leave room for people to learn from their mistakes, it does not express its blame (...) in the proper ethical register, and cancel culture allows for blame to fester and spread. In the first half of my paper, I will lay out the distinct aspects of Fricker’s paper that relate to cancel culture and a definition of the term cancel culture. In the second half, I will explore the real-life cancelation of actor Lea Michele so as to validate the presence of cancel culture in our society today. Furthermore, I will expand on three of Fricker’s pathologies that are present in cancel culture and refute a counter argument people may pose who are supportive of cancel culture. (shrink)

Many claims about conceptual matters are often represented as, or inferred from, claims about the meaning, reference, or mastery, of words. But sometimes this has led to treating conceptual analysis as though it were nothing but linguistic analysis. We canvass the most promising justifications for moving from linguistic premises to substantive conclusions. We show that these justifications fail and argue against current practice (in metaethics and elsewhere), which confuses an investigation of a word’s meaning, reference, or competence conditions with an (...) analysis of some concept or property associated with that word. (shrink)

In common with traditional forms of epistemic internalism, epistemological disjunctivism attempts to incorporate an awareness condition on justification. Unlike traditional forms of internalism, however, epistemological disjunctivism rejects the so-called New Evil Genius thesis. In so far as epistemological disjunctivism rejects the New Evil Genius thesis, it is revisionary. -/- After explaining what epistemological disjunctivism is, and how it relates to traditional forms of epistemic internalism / externalism, I shall argue that the epistemological disjunctivist’s account of the intuitions underlying the New (...) Evil Genius thought experiment is at best incomplete. As presented, therefore, epistemological disjunctivism is unable to accommodate the core guiding intuitions of epistemic internalism. Given the stated aim of not being revisionary on this score, the view is at a dialectical disadvantage over the traditional forms of epistemic internalism the position is meant to replace. Unfortunately, therefore, at present, the impasse between internalism and externalism remains. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon problem has been hotly debated since the case was introduced in the early 1980’s (e.g. Lehrer and Cohen 1983; Cohen 1984), and there seems to be recent increased interest in the topic. In a forthcoming collection of papers on the New Evil Demon problem (Dutant and Dorsch, forthcoming), at least two of the papers, both by prominent epistemologists, attempt to resist the problem by appealing to the distinction between justification and excuses. My primary aim here is (...) to critically evaluate this new excuse maneuver as a response to the New Evil Demon problem. -/- Their response attempts to give us reason to reject the idea that victims of the New Evil Demon have justification for believing as they do. I shall argue that this approach is ultimately unsuccessful, however much of value can be learned from these attempts. In particular, progress in the debate can be made by following those who advance the excuse maneuver and make explicit the connection between epistemic justification and epistemic norms. By doing so, the questions being debated are clarified, as is the methodology being used to attempt to answer them. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the value of epistemic justification cannot be adequately explained as being instrumental to truth. I intend to show that false belief, which is no means to truth, can nevertheless still be of epistemic value. This in turn will make a good prima facie case that justification is valuable for its own sake. If this is right, we will have also found reason to think that truth value monism is false: assuming that true belief does (...) have value, there is more of final epistemic value than mere true belief. (shrink)

What makes an intellectual virtue a virtue? A straightforward and influential answer to this question has been given by virtue-reliabilists: a trait is a virtue only insofar as it is truth-conducive. In this paper I shall contend that recent arguments advanced by Jack Kwong in defence of the reliabilist view are good as far as they go, in that they advance the debate by usefully clarifying ways in how best to understand the nature of open-mindedness. But I shall argue that (...) these considerations do not establish the desired conclusions that open-mindedness is truth-conducive. To establish these much stronger conclusions we would need an adequate reply to what I shall call Montmarquet’s objection. I argue that Linda Zagzebski’s reply to Montmarquet’s objection, to which Kwong defers, is inadequate. I conclude that it is contingent if open-mindedness is truth-conducive, and if a necessary tie to truth is what makes an intellectual virtue a virtue, then the status of open-mindedness as an intellectual virtue is jeopardised. We either need an adequate reliabilist response to Montmarquet’s objection, or else seek alternative accounts of what it is that makes a virtue a virtue. I conclude by briefly outlining some alternatives. (shrink)

Gravitational decoherence (GD) refers to the effects of gravity in actuating the classical appearance of a quantum system. Because the underlying processes involve issues in general relativity (GR), quantum field theory (QFT), and quantum information, GD has fundamental theoretical significance. There is a great variety of GD models, many of them involving physics that diverge from GR and/or QFT. This overview has two specific goals along with one central theme:(i) present theories of GD based on GR and QFT and explore (...) their experimental predictions;(ii) place other theories of GD under the scrutiny of GR and QFT, and point out their theoretical differences. We also describe how GD experiments in space in the coming decades can provide evidence at two levels:(a) discriminate alternative quantum theories and non-GR theories;(b) discern whether gravity is a fundamental or an effective theory. (shrink)

The copy provided on ths site is a late draft. It provides a philosophical argument for the view that by and large it is morally wrong to buy shares in a company that is behaving badly unless you (if necessary acting together with others) are able and willing to prevent the misbehaviour. A key lemma in my argument concerns a chain of authorisation from the shareholders to the company's board to the CEO -- one in virtue of which shareholders are (...) ultimately responsible for major patterns of wrongdoing by the company. (shrink)

Abstract: Folktale is universal. It is found in all parts of the world. One of the outstanding characteristics of folktale is the possession of trickster. Trickster has different name in the tales of different ethnic groups of the world. In Hausa, he is “ereke”, in Yoruba he is “ijapa”, in Ashanti (Ghana) he is “ananse”, in Trinidad, he is fox, in other parts of Europe, he is either rabbit, monkey or hare etc. A trickster is often something of a rogue. (...) He manages to extricate himself from intrigue and sometimes saves himself from dangerous situation by a display of mental ability. The trickster of the folktales of the Igbo people of Nigeria is tortoise ‘Mbe’. Tortoise is not an outstanding animal. In the case of gathering of animals, he would least be noticed. There are large, ferocious, and beautiful animals that would make the presence of tortoise unnoticed. But when it comes to folktales, tortoise is the smallest among the characters. He so much defeats other characters by his deceptions. His greatest weapon is lies. Most of Igbo folktales are moral tales. They teach moral, yet trickster plays prominent role in the tales of Igbo people. In other words trickster is used in the education of the young. The writer investigated to find reasons for such development through reading books and journals relating to the topic. She studied six Igbo folktales and also through oral interviews of some prominent Igbo people of ages ranging from 20-70 yrs of age. The writer found out amongst other things that Igbo world view on life is responsible to the use of tricksters in their education of the young. (shrink)

What is it to be a woman? What is it to be a man? We start by laying out desiderata for an analysis of 'woman' and 'man': descriptively, it should link these gender categories to sex biology without reducing them to sex biology, and politically, it should help us explain and combat traditional sexism while also allowing us to make sense of the activist view that gendering should be consensual. Using a Putnam-style 'Twin Earth' example, we argue that none of (...) the existing analyses in the feminist literature succeeds in meeting all of our desiderata. Finally, we propose a positive account that we believe can satisfy all the desiderata outlined. According to our theory, the genders 'woman' and 'man' are individuated not by their contemporary connections to sex biology, but by their historical continuity with classes that were originally closely connected to sex biology. (shrink)

Selgelid and Koplin’s article ‘Kidney Sales and the Burden of Proof’ (K&S 2019) presents a series of detailed and persuasive arguments, intended to demolish my own arguments against the prohibition of organ selling. And perhaps they might succeed, if the case described by the authors were anything like the one I actually make. However, notwithstanding the extensive quotations and the detailed explanations of the way I supposedly argue, this account of my position comprehensively mistakes both the conclusions I reach and (...) the arguments I give for them. -/- I know that there are around many misconceptions about my views on this subject, but I have always hoped they could not survive a reading of what I had actually written. I have just—after a gap of many years—looked again at the two most recent of the texts Koplin and Selgelid refer to, and it goes without saying that I can see various things I could now do better; but I do still find these misinterpretations hard to understand. And since anyone with nothing to go on but this article would reasonably conclude that the original texts were not worth reading, I am grateful to the editors for the opportunity to try to set the record straight. -/- I presume not many readers would be interested in a detailed comparative commentary on the texts, showing where this account gets my intentions wrong. I shall try instead to explain how what I do mean—and what I think I say—diverges from what is said here, and then go on to a brief outline of what my arguments and conclusions really are. I hope this may also give some sense of why, for all the opposition I have encountered since I was first drawn into this debate, I persist in thinking that the work I have been doing is important not only for this topic but for analysis in practical ethics more generally. (shrink)

Does the recent success of Podemos and Syriza herald a new era of inclusive, egalitarian left populism? Because leaders of both parties are former students of Ernesto Laclau and cite his account of populism as guiding their political practice, this essay considers whether his theory supports hope for a new kind of populism. For Laclau, the essence of populism is an “empty signifier” that provides a means by which anyone can identify with the people as a whole. However, the concept (...) of the empty signifier is not as neutral as he assumes. As I show by analyzing the role of race in his theory, some subjects are constituted in a way that prevents their unmediated identification with the people. Consequently, Laclau’s view should be read as symptomatic of the problems with populist logic if its adherents are to avoid reproducing its exclusions and practice a more inclusive politics. (shrink)

Edward Wilson wrote in Consilience that “Human history can be viewed through the lens of ecology as the accumulation of environmental prostheses” (1999 p 316), with technologies mediating our collective habitation of the Earth and its complex, interdependent ecosystems. Wilson emphasized the defining characteristic of complex systems, that they undergo transformations which are irreversible. His view is now standard, and his central point bears repeated emphasis, today: natural systems can be broken, species—including us—can disappear, ecosystems can fail, and technological prostheses (...) potentiate rather than ameliorate disaster when the fragilities that they introduce into our evolutionary co-dependencies with natural systems, and with each other, are under-appreciated. (shrink)

In general, epistemic internalists hold that an individual’s justification for a belief is exhausted by her reflectively accessible reasons for thinking that the contents of her beliefs are true. Applying this to the epistemology of testimony, a hearer’s justification for beliefs acquired through testimony is exhausted by her reflectively accessible reasons to think that the contents of the speaker’s testimony is true. A consequence of internalism is that subjects that are alike with respect to their reflectively accessible reasons are alike (...) with respect to what they have justification to believe. Testimony should be thought no different: hearers that are alike with respect to reflectively accessible reasons to think that a speaker’s testimony is true are alike with respect to their justification for beliefs based upon that testimony. But it has been recently argued that this view faces powerful counterexamples. So the central question is this: assuming that a hearer can acquire justification to believe a proposition through the testimony of a speaker, can epistemic internalism provide the resources to explain how such justification is possible? My aim in this paper is to address these counterexamples, and in so doing, defend epistemic internalist accounts of testimony. (shrink)

Abstract: Nanka is in Orumba North Local Government Area in Anambra State of Nigeria. This work centred on the function of Nwadunu in Nanka administrative set up. This work is meant to make people understand administrative set up in Nanka clearer. Thus removing doubts that often arise as regards to the function of Nwadunu institution in Nanka. The work is also meant to draw the attention of researchers and educationist to the existence of this unique institution in Nanka. The researcher’s (...) paper being a stepping stone from where other researchers can take off. In carrying out this research, the researcher prepared questionnaires for oral interviews which the researcher administered on Nwadunu himself, the clan head of Umudunu quarter, Nanka and some selected elders from the seven villages that make up Nanka. From analysis of the responses, the researcher was able to arrive at conclusion of what Nwadunu’s position in administration set up in Nanka is. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that self-awareness is intertwined with one's awareness of possibilities for action. I show this by critically examining Dan Zahavi's multidimensional account of the self. I argue that the distinction Zahavi makes among 'pre-reflective minimal', 'interpersonal', and 'normative' dimensions of selfhood needs to be refined in order to accommodate what I call 'pre-reflective self-understanding'. The latter is a normative dimension of selfhood manifest not in reflection and deliberation, but in the habits and style of a person’s (...) pre-reflective absorption in the world. After reviewing Zahavi's multidimensional account and revealing this gap in his explanatory taxonomy, I draw upon Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Frankfurt in order to sketch an account of pre-reflective self-understanding. I end by raising an objection to Zahavi’s claim for the primitive and foundational status of pre-reflective self-awareness. To carve off self-awareness from the self’s practical immersion in a situation where things and possibilities already matter and draw one to act is to distort the phenomena. A more careful phenomenology of pre-reflective action shows that pre-reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-understanding are co-constitutive, both mutually for each other and jointly for everyday experience. (shrink)