Debate between Dan Demetriou (Philosophy, Minnesota Morris) and Michael Huemer (Philosophy, Colorado), forthcoming in Problems in Applied Ethics: An Introduction to Contemporary Debates, Steven Cowan, ed. (Bloomsbury). The main essays are 5000 words or fewer; replies are 1500 words or fewer. This penultimate version is published here with permission from the editor.

We introduce a fairness criterion that we call Spanning. Spanning i) is implied by Calibration, ii) retains interesting properties of Calibration that some other ways of relaxing that criterion do not, and iii) unlike Calibration and other prominent ways of weakening it, is consistent with Equalized Odds outside of trivial cases.

I defend the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism, on which appearances of all kinds generate at least some justification for belief. I argue that there is no reason for privileging introspection or intuition over perceptual experience as a source of justified belief; that those who deny Phenomenal Conservatism are in a self-defeating position, in that their view cannot be both true and justified; and that thedemand for a metajustification for Phenomenal Conservatism either is an easily met demand, or is an unfair (...) or question-begging one. (shrink)

The diagnostic category of borderline personality disorder (BPD) has come under increasing criticism in recent years. In this paper, we analyze the role and impact of epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial injustice, in relation to the diagnosis of BPD. We first offer a critical sociological and historical account, detailing and expanding a range of arguments that BPD is problematic nosologically. We then turn to explore the epistemic injustices that can result from a BPD diagnosis, showing how they can lead to experiences (...) of testimonial injustice which impede patient engagement in meaning-making activities, thereby undermining standard therapeutic goals. We conclude by showing how our arguments bolster ongoing efforts to replace the diagnostic category of BPD with alternatives such as complex post-traumatic stress disorder. (shrink)

This article offers a novel, conservative account of material constitution, one that incorporates sortal essentialism and features a theory of dominant sortals. It avoids coinciding objects, temporal parts, relativizations of identity, mereological essentialism, anti-essentialism, denials of the reality of the objects of our ordinary ontology, and other departures from the metaphysic implicit in ordinary ways of thinking. Defenses of the account against important objections are found in Burke 1997, 2003, and 2004, as well as in the often neglected six paragraphs (...) that conclude section V of this article. (shrink)

I argue that, given evidence of the factors that tend to distort our intuitions, ethical intuitionists should disown a wide range of common moral intuitions, and that they should typically give preference to abstract, formal intuitions over more substantive ethical intuitions. In place of the common sense morality with which intuitionism has traditionally allied, the suggested approach may lead to a highly revisionary normative ethics.

This study explores the relationship between perceptions of catastrophic events and beliefs about climate change. Using data from the 2023 Life in Transition Survey, the study finds that contrary to conventional wisdom, more accurate knowledge about past catastrophes is associated with lower concern about climate change. The paper proposes that heightened threat sensitivity may underlie both the tendency to overestimate disaster impacts and increased concern about climate change. The findings challenge the assumption that a more informed citizenry necessarily leads to (...) better climate policy decisions. Instead, they suggest that psychological factors, like anxiety and risk perception, play crucial roles in shaping climate attitudes. Illuminating these dynamics can help societies to foster a more nuanced and constructive public dialogue about the urgent challenges facing our planet and our species. (shrink)

Drawing upon the life and work of S. Kay Toombs, I explore the impact and import of phenomenological accounts of disability for the existentialist tradition. Through the case of multiple sclerosis, a noncongenital, late-onset, and degenerative disability, I show how the general structures that emerge from its lived experience largely support a mere-difference view of disability and highlight the need for an equitably habitable world. I further argue that phenomenological accounts of disability demonstrate accessibility to be the defining feature of (...) what it means to be embodied as we are. I conclude with a discussion of the more general philosophical relationship between disability, embodiment, and existentialism. (shrink)

We propose that all actual causes are simultaneous with their direct effects, as illustrated by both everyday examples and the laws of physics. We contrast this view with the sequential conception of causation, according to which causes must occur prior to their effects. The key difference between the two views of causation lies in differing assumptions about the mathematical structure of time.

This paper, while neutral on questions about the minimality of truth, argues for the non-minimality of truth-aptness.

Perceptualism is a prominent theory analyzing emotions as perceptual experiences of value. A longstanding challenge to perceptualism says that emotions cannot be perceptual because they are subject to normative assessments in terms of reasons and rationality while perceptual experiences are not. I defend perceptualism from this charge. My argument begins by distinguishing two forms of normative assessment: fundamental and non-fundamental. Perceptualism is compatible with the latter (i.e., non-fundamental reasons and rationality); even sensory experiences are so assessable. I next argue that (...) emotions are only non-fundamentally assessable. Following this argument, I outline a perceptualist-friendly theory of emotions as non-fundamentally normatively assessable. (shrink)

Dion is a full-bodied man. Theon is that part of him which consists of all of him except his left foot. What becomes of Dion and Theon when Dion’s left foot is amputated? Employing the doctrine of sortal essentialism, I defend a surprising answer last defended by Chrysippus: that Dion survives while the seemingly unscathed Theon perishes. For replies to critics, see my publications of 1997 and (especially) 2003.

This paper aims to uncover some of the important contributions the phenomenological method can offer to philosophical issues in literary studies. It leads us to the idea that the archetypes found in fiction are intuited phenomenologically. This idea is then linked to a social constructive attainment of meaning for reality. From the intersubjectivity provided by phenomenology, empathy with characters in fiction is then displayed as more than an intellectual activity, as it becomes known to have practical implications. It is framed (...) as involving the same processes as the empathy we have with people in the real world. This equivalency allows for the plausibility of the notion that fiction-making is a necessary process for our interpretations of reality. It designates our involvement in fiction as beneficial to our experience of the real world and supports the notion it can train us to empathize. Such training is displayed to be posssible from phenomenology’s role in the process of empathy. Phenomenology's method de-centers the Cartesian ego to prevent any impasse between internal consciousness and the external world. Since they are bridged together by intentionality, we learn that phenomenology is a method that can contribute to how we conceive of empathy. (shrink)

The conflict between aesthetic experience and the modern vision of the world frames aesthetic experience as a defender of the plurality derived from the perspectives of individuals. This signifies that aesthetic experience confronts the unilateralism of modernity’s vision. This article propounds that this role of aesthetic experience is based on its defense of subjectivity and individuality. This defense, when investigated, reveals the compatibility between phenomenology and pragmatism. This compatibility also demonstrates that aesthetic experience should be understood as a phenomenological experience. (...) Therefore, phenomenology and pragmatism reveal a comradery that permits them to work in tandem, defending subjectivity and pluralism in the face of modernity. (shrink)

During the eighteenth century, German philosophers wrote on a broad range of topics in moral philosophy: from meta-ethical issues such as the nature of obligation, to elaborate systems of normative ethics (often in the form of a doctrine of duties to self, others, and God), to topics in applied ethics such as the permissibility of the death penalty and censorship. Moral philosophy was also intimately related to the modern natural law tradition at the time, as well as to discussions taking (...) place in theology and psychology, to name only a few other disciplines. As a result, it is often hard to isolate eighteenth-century German moral philosophy without addressing a whole host of other philosophical subjects. There are nonetheless certain central topics that were discussed by nearly every major figure of the period and which therefore serve as a window into how German philosophers approached moral philosophy during the eighteenth century. In this chapter I illustrate that one such topic is the principle of morality; namely what philosophers took to be the supreme norm at the foundation of judging actions to be morally good or evil. As we will see, although several figures approached this principle in a broadly similar way by identifying “perfection” as the central concept at work, they differ considerably with respect to important details. Furthermore, certain common threads reveal themselves: philosophers differ not only with respect to the content of the principle, but also with respect to the way in which it can be derived, how particular duties can in turn be derived from the supreme principle, and how the principle can be formulated. I begin by outlining Christian Wolff’s influential principle of perfection (Section 1), followed by a consideration of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s subtle revision of this principle (Section 2) and Christian August Crusius’s theological alternative (Section 3). I then briefly consider the impact that the reception of eighteenth-century British philosophy had on German moral philosophy during the second half of the eighteenth century (Section 4), before considering Moses Mendelssohn’s and Immanuel Kant’s answers to the 1763 Prize Essay Question (Section 5) and Johann August Eberhard’s unique mixture of rationalism and empiricism from the early 1780s (Section 6). I conclude (Section 7) with a brief discussion of Kant’s approach to the principle of morality and the principle of happiness proposed against it by his early empiricist critics. (shrink)

According to the received account of guilt in the philosophical literature, one cannot feel guilt unless one takes oneself to have done something morally wrong. But ordinary people feel guilt in many cases in which they do not take themselves to have done anything morally wrong. In this paper, I focus on one kind of guilt without perceived wrongdoing, guilt about being merely causally responsible for a bad state-of-affairs. I go on to present a novel account of guilt that explains (...) guilt about mere causal responsibility, according to which guilt represents part of the self as bound up with what is bad. (shrink)

Frege argued for the force-content distinction not only by appealing to the logical and fictional contexts which are most closely associated with the “Frege point", but also based on the fact that an affirmative answer to a yes-no question constitutes an assertion. Supposedly this is only intelligible if the question contains a forceless thought or proposition which an affirmative answer then asserts. Against this I argue that this fact more readily supports the view that questions operate on assertions and other (...) forceful acts themselves. Force is neither added to propositions as on the traditional view, nor is it cancelled as has recently been proposed. Rather higher-level acts such as questioning, but also e.g. conditionalizing, embed and present assertoric or directive acts that are forceful and committal, while suspending commitment to them. The Frege point confounds different varieties of force and the question whether something is merely presented for consideration with the question what is so presented. Force is representational: through assertoric and directive force indicators subjects non-conceptually present positions of theoretical or practical knowledge, while interrogative acts indicate positions of wondering which strive for such knowledge. (shrink)

Various approaches have emerged over the last several decades to meet the challenges and complexities of anticipating and responding to the potential impacts of emerging technologies. Although many of the existing approaches share similarities, they each have shortfalls. This paper takes as the object of its study Anticipatory Ethics for Emerging Technologies (ATE) to technology assessment, given that it was formatted to address many of the privations characterising parallel approaches. The ATE approach, also in practice, presents certain areas for retooling, (...) such as how it characterises levels and objects of analysis. This paper results from the work done with the TechEthos Horizon 2020 project in evaluating the ethical, legal, and social impacts of climate engineering, digital extended reality, and neurotechnologies. To meet the challenges these technology families present, this paper aims to enhance the ATE framework to encompass the variety of human processes and material forms, functions, and applications that comprise the socio-technical systems in which these technologies are embedded. (shrink)

nated discussion of the semantics of such verbs. I will call this view.

Are thought experiments nothing but arguments? I argue that it is not possible to make sense of the historical trajectory of certain thought experiments if one takes them to be arguments. Einstein and Bohr disagreed about the outcome of the clock-in-the-box thought experiment, and so they reconstructed it using different arguments. This is to be expected whenever scientists disagree about a thought experiment's outcome. Since any such episode consists of two arguments but just one thought experiment, the thought experiment cannot (...) be the arguments. (shrink)

This chapter situates Kant’s rejection of Stoic eudaimonism within his overarching anti-eudaimonist agenda. I begin by emphasizing the importance of the Stoic tradition for Kant’s critical reception of ancient ethical theory. I then reconstruct the central commitments of ancient Stoic eudaimonism and of Christian Garve’s quasi-Stoic eudaimonism. Turning to Kant’s anti-Stoic argument in the Dialectic of the Second Critique, I argue that the primary target of Kant’s error of subreption (vitium subreptionis) is the Stoic Seneca, specifically his account of joy (...) (gaudium) as an accompaniment of one’s consciousness of virtuous activity. After reconstructing Kant’s argument in detail, I offer a new way to understand its anti-eudaimonist implications: practical illusion leads the Stoic to rationalize, and, ultimately, to disfigure the moral law. Even in their moral ardor—or rather, propelled by it—the Stoic commits an error of self-love. (shrink)

Louis Althusser is perhaps most well-known for his concept of ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’ (ISAs). However, Althusser is not clear about what role, if any, ISAs play in a post-capitalist society. At times, Althusser talks about ISAs (and the state) withering; at other times, they are merely reformed. Sometimes, ISAs are described as having an inescapable repressive dimension; on other occasions, they are a perfectly acceptable tool for the reproduction of socialism. In this paper, I offer a way of thinking through (...) this confusion that draws on the thought of the Daoist philosopher, Zhuangzi. I argue that Zhuangzian friendship represents a kind of radical equality that is reproducible without the traditional kind of ideological interpellation of ISAs, thereby allowing Althusser explain post-capitalist ideological reproduction. It is worth noting that in this paper, I am not engaging in a textual exegesis of the Zhuangzi. My primary interest is in using the contemporary literature on the Zhuangzi to think through a problem in Althusser’s philosophical system. (shrink)

According to many philosophers, "the meaning of life" refers to our cosmic purpose, the activity that we were created by God or a purposive universe to perform. If there is no God or teleology, there is no such thing as the meaning of life. But this need not be the last word on the matter. In this paper, I ask what the benefits provided by a cosmic purpose are, and go on to argue that thinking of our lives in a (...) particular way—in terms of a unified life narrative—can supply us with many of those benefits. We might lose little if there is no such thing as the meaning of life, since there is still something that can provide much of what is valuable about it. (shrink)

People attribute purposes in both mundane and profound ways—such as when thinking about the purpose of a knife and the purpose of a life. In three studies (total N = 13,720 observations from N = 3,430 participants), we tested whether these seemingly very different forms of purpose attributions might actually involve the same cognitive processes. We examined the impacts of four factors on purpose attributions in six domains (artifacts, social institutions, animals, body parts, sacred objects, and human lives). Study 1 (...) manipulated what items in each domain were originally created for (original design) and how people currently use them (present practice). Study 2 manipulated whether items are good at achieving a goal (effectiveness) and whether the goal itself is good (morality). We found effects of each factor in every domain. However, whereas morality and effectiveness had remarkably similar effects across domains, the effects of original design and present practice differed substantially. Finally, Study 3 revealed that, within domains, the effects of original design and present practice depend on which entities design and use items. These results reveal striking similarities in purpose attributions across domains and suggest that certain entities are treated as authorities over the purposes of particular items. (shrink)

Over the past 45 years there has been increasing vocal opposition to religious schools, particularly in Western Europe. Only some of this opposition is related to the perception that some religious schools might be excluding the less fortunate. Much of the opposition rests on the conviction that it is no longer tenable to fund and support so many religious schools when the number of persons professing religious belief has sharply declined. This argument, buttressed by the belief that Europe has undergone (...) a profound “secularization,” maintains that religious schools are but an obsolete cultural relic to be discarded in favor of nondenominational alternatives. Relatedly, religious schools are believed to contribute to segregation and “divisiveness”: Rather than maintain a system in which persons are drawn to schools that reflect their own cultural or religious background, children ought to attend the same schools, learning from – and not only about – each other through substantive interaction. Underneath this argument lies a concern with fostering the skills and dispositions necessary for citizenship. It remains unclear, however, whether religious schools are more guilty of segregation than nonreligious schools. Nor is it clear why attending a religious school would make one less capable of cultivating the skills and dispositions necessary for citizenship than nonreligious alternatives. (shrink)

I argue for the 'strong view of etymology' and the value of education in regard to terminological and linguistic competence.

This paper explores the relationship between romantic love and polyamory. Our central question is whether traditional norms of monogamy can be excised from romantic love so as to harmonize with polyamory’s ethical dimensions (as we construe them). How one answers this question bears on another: whether ‘polyamory’ should principally be understood in terms of romantic love or instead some alternative conception(s). Our efforts to address these questions begin by briefly motivating our favored approach to romantic love, a “narratival” one inspired (...) by 1930s cultural theorist Denis de Rougemont, wherein such love is exclusive, supernatural or promising transcendence, painful, impeded, and, ultimately, fatal. We maintain that, even once exclusivity is removed as an official component, tensions with polyamory’s ethical dimensions remain: romantic love’s other elements rationalize acting and feeling in ways that privilege a singular beloved above others. A tempting solution is to further revise romantic love. However, we are skeptical that this leaves space for distinctively romantic love. Our tentative proposal, then, is that polyamory’s ethical dimensions favor rejecting romantic love as ultimately desirable. (shrink)

Epistemic responsibility involves at least two central ideas. (V) To be epistemically responsible is to display the virtue(s) epistemic internalists take to be central to justification (e.g., coherence, having good reasons, fitting the evidence). (C) In normal (non-skeptical)circumstances and in thelong run, epistemic responsibility is strongly positively correlated with reliability. Sections 1 and 2 review evidence showing that for a wide range of real-world problems, the most reliable, tractable reasoning strategies audaciously flout the internalist''s epistemic virtues. In Section 3, I (...) argue that these results force us to give up either (V), our current conception of what it is to be epistemically responsible, or (C) the responsibility-reliability connection. I will argue that we should relinquish (V). This is likely to reshape our epistemic practices. It will force us to alter our epistemic judgments about certain instances of reasoning, to endorse some counterintuitive epistemic prescriptions, and to rethink what it is for cognitive agents to be epistemically responsible. (shrink)

In the Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger develops an account of non-being according to which it is understood as a part of Different. Yet the precise language he uses to characterize the form Non-Being and other negative forms has two variations. In the first, a negative form is characterized as a part of the nature of Different contraposed to the nature of the form negated. Thus, Non-Beautiful is described as ‘something different among beings that is marked-off from some one kind and (...) in turn contraposed with something among beings’ (257e2-4), and Non-Being is identified as ‘the part of the nature of Different contraposed with the being of each thing’ (258e2). In the second variation, however, a negative form is characterized as the contraposing (antithesis) of the nature of a part of Different relative to the nature of the form negated. Hence, Non-Beautiful ‘turns out to be a contraposing of being in relation to being’ (257e6-7) and Non-Being is ‘the contraposing of the nature of a part of Different and of the nature of Being’ (258a11-b1). In this essay, I develop an account of the parts of Different that explains the two variants in the Stranger’s characterization of negative forms, focusing on the Stranger’s description of the Non-Beautiful as a part of Different. Since the Stranger’s account of the parts of Different is based on an analogy with parts of knowledge, I begin by examining what it means to be a part of knowledge, drawing on Socrates’ account of knowledge in Republic V. (shrink)

In my 1991 paper, AAnti-Individualism and Privileged Access,@ I argued that externalism in the philosophy of mind is incompatible with the thesis that we have privileged , nonempirical access to the contents of our own thoughts.¹ One of the most interesting responses to my argument has been that of Martin Davies (1998, 2000, and Chapter _ above) and Crispin Wright (2000 and Chapter _ above), who describe several types of cases to show that warrant for a premise does not always (...) transmit to a known deductive consequence of that premise, and who contend that this fact under-mines my argument for incompatibilism. I will try to show here that the Davies/Wright point about transmission of warrant does not adversely affect my argument. (shrink)

In this article I argue that while an attachment to one's country is both natural and even partially justifiable, cultivating loyal patriotism in schools is untenable insofar as it conflicts with the legitimate aims of education. These aims include the epistemological competence necessary for ascertaining important truths germane to the various disciplines; the cultivation of critical thinking skills ; and developing the capacity for economic self‐reliance. I argue that loyal patriotism may result in a myopic understanding of history, an unhealthy (...) attitude of superiority relative to other cultures, and a coerced sense of attachment to one's homeland. (shrink)

The flight to reference is a widely-used strategy for resolving philosophical issues. The three steps in a flight to reference argument are: (1) offer a substantive account of the reference relation, (2) argue that a particular expression refers (or does not refer), and (3) draw a philosophical conclusion about something other than reference, like truth or ontology. It is our contention that whenever the flight to reference strategy is invoked, there is a crucial step that is left undefended, and that (...) without a defense of this step, the flight to reference is a fatally flawed strategy; it cannot succeed in resolving philosophical issues. In this paper we begin by setting out the flight to reference strategy and explaining what is wrong with arguments that invoke the strategy. We then illustrate the problem by considering arguments for and against eliminative materialism. In the final section we argue that much the same problem undermines Philip Kitcher's attempt to defend scientific realism. (shrink)

1. The primary evidence and motivation for externalism in the philosophy of mind is provided by the semantic facts that support direct reference theories of names, indexi- cal pronouns, and natural kind terms. But many externalists have forgotten their sem- antic roots, or so I shall contend here. I have become convinced of this by a common reaction among externalists to the main argument of my 1991 paper AAnti-Individual- ism and Privileged Access.@ In that argument, I concluded that externalism is (...) incompat- ible with the principle that we can have privileged, non-empirical knowledge of the contents of our own thoughts. The reaction in question amounts to a dismissive denial of one of my argument=s main premises. This premise, which I defended at length in the paper, is that an externalist thesis regarding a cognitive property should hold that possession of the property by a person _logically_, or _conceptually_, implies the existence of objects external to that person. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to bring the woefully neglected literature on predictive modeling to bear on some central questions in the philosophy of science. The lesson of this literature is straightforward: For a very wide range of prediction problems, statistical prediction rules (SPRs), often rules that are very easy to implement, make predictions than are as reliable as, and typically more reliable than, human experts. We will argue that the success of SPRs forces us to reconsider our views (...) about what is involved in understanding, explanation, good reasoning, and about how we ought to do philosophy of science. (shrink)

Discusses the old problem of how to characterize apparently intentional states that appear to lack objects. In tandem with critically discussing a recent proposal by Tim Crane, I develop the line of reasoning according to which talking about intentional objects is really a way of talking about intentional states—in particular, it’s a way of talking about their satisfaction-conditions.

In this article, I make a philosophical case for the state to fund religious schools. Ultimately, I shall argue that the state has an obligation to fund and provide oversight of all schools irrespective of their religious or non-religious character. The education of children is in the public interest and therefore the state must assume its responsibility to its future citizens to ensure that they receive a quality education. Still, while both religious schools and the polity have much to be (...) gained from direct funding, I will show that parents and administrators of these schools may have reasons to be diffident toward the state and its hypothetical interference. While the focus of the paper is primarily on the American educational context, the philosophical questions related to state funding and oversight of religious schools transcend any one national context . (shrink)

-- Immanuel Kant (Kant 1990, p. 46/429) The idea that our most basic duty is to treat each other with respect is one of the Enlightenment’s greatest legacies and Kant is often thought to be one of its most powerful defenders. If Kant’s project were successful then the lofty notion that humanity is always worthy of respect would be vindicated by pure practical reason. Further, this way of defending the ideal is supposed to reflect our autonomy, insofar as it is (...) always one’s own reason that demands that one treat humanity with respect. In this article, I consider what I take to be one of the most important and compelling attempts to defend the Kantian project. I draw the disappointing conclusion that this attempt does not succeed. The reasons this attempt fails shed some light on the difficulties facing any attempt to defend the Kantian project. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that emerged from his criticism of the “intellectualist legend” that to do something intelligently is “to do a bit of theory and then to do a bit of practice,” and became a philosophical commonplace in the second half of the last century. In this century Jason Stanley has attacked Ryle’s distinction, arguing that “knowing-how is a species of knowing-that,” and accusing Ryle of setting up a straw man in his critique of “intellectualism.” Examining the (...) use of the terms “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism” in the first half of the 20th century, in a wide-ranging debate in the social sciences as well as in philosophy, I show that Ryle was not criticizing a straw man, but a live historical position. In the context of this controversy, Ryle’s position represents a third way between “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism,” an option that has largely gone missing in the 21st century discussion. This argument illustrates how history can inform the history of philosophy, and how the history of philosophy can inform contemporary philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

It is argued that a subject who has an experience as of succession can have this experience at a time, or over a period of time, during which there occurs in him no succession of conscious mental states at all. Various metaphysical implications of this conclusion are explored. One premise of the main argument is that every experience is an experience as of succession. This implies that we cannot understand phenomenal temporality as a relation among experiences, but only as a (...) primitive feature of experience, or else as something analyzable into wholly non-phenomenal terms. (shrink)

Case studies about institutional pressures encouraging dishonesty in the US Navy.

The neutral and nearly neutral theories of molecular evolution are sometimes characterized as theories about drift alone, where drift is described solely as an outcome, rather than a process. We argue, however, that both selection and drift, as causal processes, are integral parts of both theories. However, the nearly neutral theory explicitly recognizes alleles and/or molecular substitutions that, while engaging in weakly selected causal processes, exhibit outcomes thought to be characteristic of random drift. A narrow focus on outcomes obscures the (...) significant role of weakly selected causal processes in the nearly neutral theory. (shrink)

The challenges and opportunities associated with the education of immigrants predate modern school systems, though it certainly can be said that support for public schooling grew—for example, in Canada and the United States—as dominant (read White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) groups came to see the importance of integrating masses of disparate origin. Educational responses to the children of immigrants over time have been varied, and many responses are indistinguishable from efforts to address other minority groups. In North America, the rapid expansion of (...) immigration encompassing immigrant and refugee populations from around the world, particularly since the 1960s, has led to a number of structural and curricular changes in schools, only some of which were explicitly aimed at immigrants. One example of a policy aimed at the children of immigrants was bilingual education, and as this increasingly fell out of favor, ESL (English as a second language) classrooms became more common. However, with few exceptions, neither has been a very effective instrument for addressing the interests or concerns of immigrants themselves. Nevertheless, most parents strongly prefer that their children learn to master the dominant language, as a means of getting ahead. (shrink)