Cornell realism (CR), a prominent meta-ethical position that has emerged since the last decades of the twentieth century, proposes a non-reductionist naturalistic account of moral properties and facts. This paper argues that the best version of CR’s chosen methodology for arriving at justified moral beliefs must be seen as a variant of reflective equilibrium. In comparison to the traditional versions, our proposal offers a ‘social’ reinterpretation of reflective equilibrium in delineating CR’s epistemology. We argue that it satisfactorily accounts for (...) objectivity and calls for the inclusion of the social nature of both moral and scientific inquiries. Emphasising the social dimension of their epistemological account also nudges debates in metaethics into incorporating the much-needed social dimension while dealing with questions of moral beliefs and facts that have been of CR’s concern. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the benefits of international data sharing. Data sharing enabled the health care policy makers to make decisions based on real-time data, it enabled the tracking of the virus, and importantly it enabled the development of vaccines that were crucial to mitigating the impact of the virus. This data sharing is not the norm as data sharing needs to navigate complex ethical and legal rules, and in particular, the fragmented application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). (...) The introduction of the draft regulation for a European Health Data Space (EHDS) in May 2022 seeks to address some of these legal issues. If passed, it will create an obligation to share electronic health data for certain secondary purposes. While there is a clear need to address the legal complexities involved with data sharing, it is critical that any proposed reforms are in line with ethical principles and the expectations of the data subjects. In this paper we offer a critique of the EHDS and offer some recommendations for this evolving regulatory space. (shrink)

Axel Honneth reconstructs Hegel’s social and political philosophy on the basis of the concept of recognition. For Honneth, recognition is a constitutive relation between individuals that is in principle symmetrical. By conceiving recognition through symmetry, Honneth effectively bans the inclusion of power within recognitive relation. He thus regards the relations of power as cases of non-recognition or misrecognition. In this paper, I develop an alternative theory of the constitutive relation between individuals for Hegel, one that is based on the (...) asymmetrical relation of power. To this aim, I focus on the chapter of “determinations of reflection” in the Science of Logic. Through a close analysis of Hegel’s Logic, I argue that the most fundamental form of relation between individuals is the relation of opposition, that individuals are solely constituted in and through the relation of opposition, and that the relation of opposition is essentially asymmetrical. Together, these claims establish... (shrink)

Plato was the first philosopher who gave an account for the highly controversial claim that both genders are principally equal in respect to their talents and abilities. Consequently, one may advocate the thesis that in Plato’s view, the gender differences are rather the outcomes of social, cultural and political influences, than of natural factors. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the meaning and validity of Plato’s arguments for the gender equality in the Republic, which will be supplemented (...) with some important remarks on this same subject-matter from the Laws, in order to find out what social and political implications they have. In doing this, I will argue against some interpretations of prominent Plato scholars who criticize or reject his account of the social role that women should have in Plato’s ideal city. Additionally, I will discuss the claim, advocated by George Vlastos, that Plato is a feminist in a modern sense of the term. (shrink)

Programming artificial intelligence to make fairness assessments of texts through top-down rules, bottom-up training, or hybrid approaches, has presented the challenge of defining cross-cultural fairness. In this paper a simple method is presented which uses vectors to discover if a verb is unfair or fair. It uses already existing relational social ontologies inherent in Word Embeddings and thus requires no training. The plausibility of the approach rests on two premises. That individuals consider fair acts those that they would be (...) willing to accept if done to themselves. Secondly, that such a construal is ontologically reflected in Word Embeddings, by virtue of their ability to reflect the dimensions of such a perception. These dimensions being: responsibility vs. irresponsibility, gain vs. loss, reward vs. sanction, joy vs. pain, all as a single vector. The paper finds it possible to quantify and qualify a verb as fair or unfair by calculating the cosine similarity of the said verb’s embedding vector against FairVec—which represents the above dimensions. We apply this to Glove and Word2Vec embeddings. Testing on a list of verbs produces an F1 score of 95.7, which is improved to 97.0. Lastly, a demonstration of the method’s applicability to sentence measurement is carried out. (shrink)

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable (...) for our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

The development of nuclear energy technologies in the second half of the 20th century came with great hopes of rebuilding nations recovering from the devasta-tion of the Second World War or recently released from colonial rule. In coun-tries like France, India, the USA, Canada, Russia, and the United Kingdom, nuclear energy became the symbol of development towards a modern and technologically advanced future. However, after more than six decades of experi-ence with nuclear energy production, and in the aftermath of the (...) Fukushima nuclear disaster, it is safe to say that nuclear energy production is not without its problems.Some of these problems have their origins in the very materiality of the technolo-gies involved. For example, not only does the use of highly radioactive materials give rise to risks for the current generation (e.g., in the potential for disaster when reactors melt down) but high-level radioactive waste from nuclear energy production presents a serious intergenerational problem for which an acceptable final solution or its implementation remains elusive. Moreover, nuclear energy technologies have specific social and political consequences. For example, they have been said to be authoritarian technologies (Winner, 1980), requiring cen-tralized authority, secrecy, and technocratic decision-making. While some of these problems could have been foreseen before nuclear energy technologies were introduced, others only arose after these technologies were already integrated into the social and infrastructural fabric of our lives. Addition-ally, new technologies (e.g., Generation III, III+ and IV reactors) are still being developed, bringing with them new and uncertain hazards and risks. Ignorance and uncertainty about the possible deleterious effects of introducing a new technology are inevitable, especially if the technology is complex, large time-scales are involved, or risks depend on social or political factors unforeseen in the design stage. However, this should not deter us from developing and intro-ducing new technologies. Rather, it should motivate us to organize these ‘exper-iments’ with new technologies in society in such a way that we can learn about their possible hazards and risks as effectively and responsibly as possible (van de Poel, 2011, 2015). In this way, it is possible to minimize risks and avoid unwant-ed moral, social or political developments. However, organizing such experi-ments responsibly also means that one could come to the conclusion that continuing an experiment is no longer responsible or desirable. Should we be prepared for such a scenario, and if so, how could we do that? One possible strategy to tackle this issue is that the technology and its introduction should be reversible. The aim of this thesis is to further explore this strategy by answering the following main research question (RQ) and accompanying subquestions (SQ):RQ: What are the implications of reversibility for the responsible develop-ment and implementation of nuclear energy technologies?SQ1: Under what conditions can nuclear energy technologies be considered reversible?SQ2: Why should nuclear energy technologies be reversible?SQ3: If so, how could the reversibility of nuclear energy technologies be achieved?After the introductory chapter 1, the chapters that form the main body of this dissertation each provide a distinct contribution to answering the three subques-tions and, by extension, the main research question. Guided by three historical case studies of nuclear energy technology development (i.e., India, France and the USA), chapter 2 answers the first subquestion by formulating the two condi-tions under which it can be considered reversible, i.e., 1) the ability to stop the further development and deployment of a that technology in society, and 2) the ability to undo the undesirable outcomes (material, institutional or symbolic) of the development and deployment of the technology. Chapter 3 subsequently tackles the second subquestion by establishing the general desirability of technological reversibility by virtue of its relation to responsibility in Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical phenomenology. It argues that technology development is a legitimate response to responsibility but inevitably falls short of the responsibility that inspires it, incessantly calling for technological and political change in the process. Having thus argued that nuclear energy technologies should ideally be reversible, chap-ters 4 and 5 work towards specific strategies to achieve technological reversibil-ity. Chapter 4 first investigates the processes that make it difficult to stop the further development and implementation of a nuclear energy technology in society, thus provid-ing input on how to fulfill the first condition for the reversibility of nuclear energy technologies. To do so, it presents a phenomenological perspective on technology and its adoption based on the work of Alfred Schutz. It also explores different ways in which technology adoption drives the processes of path depend-ence towards technological lock-in. Chapter 5 examines the history of geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste in the USA. It identifies a number of concrete policy pitfalls that could lead to lock-in and that should consequently be avoided. It also presents a number of general design strategies that could facilitate the undoing of undesirable consequences of a technology, thus providing input on how to fulfill the second condition for the reversibility of nuclear energy technol-ogies.Chapter 6 summarizes the central findings of the thesis and explains how these help to answer the research questions. On top of this, it reflects on a number of complications connected to reversibility considerations. Based on this, it is concluded that the question of irreversibility and reversibility is context- and technology-specific and a matter of degree. The chapter concludes with a reflec-tion on generalizations and limitations of the results. Finally, chapter 7 discusses the implications of this dissertation’s results for responsibly experimenting with nuclear energy technologies in society. (shrink)

McMahon, Jennifer A. Routledge. 2018. pp. 230. £115.

The rise of molecular epigenetics over the last few years promises to bring the discourse about the sociality and susceptibility to environmental influences of the brain to an entirely new level. Epigenetics deals with molecular mechanisms such as gene expression, which may embed in the organism “memories” of social experiences and environmental exposures. These changes in gene expression may be transmitted across generations without changes in the DNA sequence. Epigenetics is the most advanced example of the new postgenomic and (...) context-dependent view of the gene that is making its way into contemporary biology. In my article I will use the current emergence of epigenetics and its link with neuroscience research as an example of the new, and in a way unprecedented sociality of contemporary biology. After a review of the most important developments of epigenetic research, and some of its links with neuroscience, in the second part I reflect on the novel challenges that epigenetics presents for the social sciences for a re-conceptualization of the link between the biological and the social in a postgenomic age. Although epigenetics remains a contested, hyped, and often uncritical terrain, I claim that especially when conceptualized in broader non-genecentric frameworks,. (shrink)

Reflection is widely acknowledged to play a crucial role in enhancing the competence of medical professionals. Developed countries have given importance to implementing reflective practices for professional development. In developing countries, reflective practices are not given much importance as a tool for professional growth. This article aims to uncover the existing practices of reflection and the challenges faced by medical professionals working at a government hospital in Nepal. It also promotes the practice of reflection to improve daily (...) professional practice. This article aims to uncover the existing practices of reflection and the challenges faced by medical professionals working at a government hospital in Nepal. This qualitative study utilized Narrative Inquiry as the research method and conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with two medical professionals selected through purposive sampling followed by content analysis of the collected data. The study was based on the theories of social constructivism and transformative learning. After analyzing the data, three significant themes emerged: empathizing through reflection, change in practice through reflection, and barriers to reflective practices. The study identified several barriers to reflective practices, including a negative attitude, sociocultural contexts, and a lack of support from the medical community. It is crucial to encourage self-reflection for medical professionals to enhance their professional growth and promote lifelong learning. This study provides valuable insights into the significance of reflective practices in the professional development of medical personnel, particularly in developing countries. (shrink)

This essay seeks to expose readers from the social sciences to current debates in their fields, beyond the discussions of induction and deduction one learns about in a typical research methods course. It provides glimpses of social science from its dawn in 17th century empiricism, through the rise of postpositivism and antipositivism, to the infamous “science wars” in the 1990s, and expresses a hope for a broader and more inclusive future. Specifically, the paper compares the traditional positivist method (...) of scientific inquiry to a phenomenological approach, and attempts to demonstrate the relevance of philosophical investigation in social science research. (shrink)

Against philosophical orthodoxy, Hilary Kornblith has mounted an empirically grounded critique of the epistemic value of reflection. In this paper, I argue that this recent critique of the epistemic value of reflection fails even if we concede that (a) the empirical facts are as Kornblith says they are and (b) reliability is the only determinant of epistemic value. The critique fails because it seeks to undermine the reliability of reflection in general but targets only one of its (...) variants, namely individual reflection, while neglecting social reflection. This critique comprises two arguments which have a common structure: they both impose a requirement on the reliability of reflection, but deny, on empirical grounds, that the requirement is met. One argument imposes an introspection requirement, which I reject as superfluous. I show how reflection can proceed without introspection. The other argument imposes an efficacy requirement. This requirement concerns whether reflection is causally efficacious i.e., whether it leads us to change our minds for the better. I accept this as a genuine requirement. Even if we concede that individual reflection fails to meet this requirement, I argue that we have not been given sufficient evidence to believe that social reflection is bound to fail this requirement. Furthermore, my analysis of the conditions under which social reflection works best provides us with prima facie grounds for optimism regarding the reliability of social reflection. Ultimately, then, these arguments fail to undermine the epistemic value of reflection in general. (shrink)

Here I will develop a naturalistic account of epistemic reflection and its significance for epistemology. I will first argue that thought, as opposed to mere information processing, requires a capacity for cognitive self-regulation. After discussing the basic capacities necessary for cognitive self-regulation of any kind, I will consider qualitatively different kinds of thought that can emerge when the basic capacities enable the creature to interiorize a form of social cooperation. First, I will discuss second-personal cooperation and the kind (...) of thought that emerges from its interiorization. Then, I will discuss third-personal cooperation and the kind of thought that emerges from its interiorization. We will see that epistemic reflection is the interiorized version of interpersonal argumentation, which is the epistemic component of third-personal cooperation. In developing this account, I will draw heavily on the work of Michael Tomasello and other cognitive scientists advocating the “social intentionality hypothesis”. However, I will show how work done in the defeasible reasoning tradition can provide us with a deeper explanation of some claims made by advocates of the social intentionality hypothesis. Additionally, we will see that work done on social intentionality can help us better understand the significance of knowledge and justification as understood by the defeasible reasoning tradition. We will see that the social intentionality hypothesis and the defeasible reasoning tradition are mutually illuminating. By drawing equally on both, I will provide a novel account of the foundations of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper proposes a Rawlsian conception of moral justification as a social activity. Through a close reading, Rawls’ view of ethical justification is shown to be significantly more dialogical and deliberative than is commonly appreciated. The result is a view that emphasizes the social nature of ethical justification and identifies information sharing between persons as the crux of justification in metaethics, in contrast to normative ethics. I call it Rawlsian reflective equilibrium to distinguish it from other varieties.

The diversity of multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic groups and communities within Britain has created cohesion and integration challenges for different community groups and authorities to adapt to the current diverse society. More recently, there has been an increased focus on Muslim segregation in Britain in official reports and reviews. Those documents mentioned the Muslims’ segregation (directly or indirectly) for various reasons, and some recommendations have aimed to improve “community cohesion” in general and Muslims’ “integration” in particular. However, community participation in (...) the design or planning of regeneration and development projects has yet to be focused on, although these documents recommended promoting community cohesion and integration through these projects. Community participation in architecture—in its broader sense—is a crucial aspect that contributes towards fulfilling the tasks of serving communities with different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Muslims’ religious and cultural practices have been problematised in urban spaces and perceived as leading to social and spatial segregation. This paper intends to explore how secular urban spaces are used and perceived by Muslims through their religious and cultural practices. Therefore, the article aspires to inform the community participation in urban projects and demonstrates the role that Muslims’ inclusion in designing urban projects has in promoting cohesion and integration. The Ellesmere Green project in Burngreave, Sheffield, UK, is an empirical example of exploring this locally through semi-structured interviews with community members, leaders, and local authorities’ officials. The findings demonstrate that sacred and secular spaces are interconnected in Muslims’ everyday lives, and the boundaries between them are blurry. The data also show that having the ability to manifest their religious and cultural practices in secular urban spaces does not suggest the desire for segregation, nor does it reduce Muslims’ willingness to have social and spatial interactions with non-Muslims. (shrink)

The diversity of multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic groups and communities within Britain has created cohesion and integration challenges for different community groups and authorities to adapt to the current diverse society. More recently, there has been an increased focus on Muslim segregation in Britain in official reports and reviews. Those documents mentioned the Muslims’ segregation (directly or indirectly) for various reasons, and some recommendations have aimed to improve “community cohesion” in general and Muslims’ “integration” in particular. However, community participation in (...) the design or planning of regeneration and development projects has yet to be focused on, although these documents recommended promoting community cohesion and integration through these projects. Community participation in architecture—in its broader sense—is a crucial aspect that contributes towards fulfilling the tasks of serving communities with different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Muslims’ religious and cultural practices have been problematised in urban spaces and perceived as leading to social and spatial segregation. This paper intends to explore how secular urban spaces are used and perceived by Muslims through their religious and cultural practices. Therefore, the article aspires to inform the community participation in urban projects and demonstrates the role that Muslims’ inclusion in designing urban projects has in promoting cohesion and integration. The Ellesmere Green project in Burngreave, Sheffield, UK, is an empirical example of exploring this locally through semi-structured interviews with community members, leaders, and local authorities’ officials. The findings demonstrate that sacred and secular spaces are interconnected in Muslims’ everyday lives, and the boundaries between them are blurry. The data also show that having the ability to manifest their religious and cultural practices in secular urban spaces does not suggest the desire for segregation, nor does it reduce Muslims’ willingness to have social and spatial interactions with non-Muslims. (shrink)

Social media sites offer a huge data about our everyday life, thoughts, feelings and reflecting what the users want and like. Since user behavior on OSNS is a mirror image of actions in the real world, scholars have to investigate the use SM to prediction, making forecasts about our daily life. This paper provide an overview of different commonly used social media and application of their data analysis.

Social work is a contested tradition, torn between the demands of social governance and autonomy. Today, this struggle is reflected in the division between the dominant, neoliberal agenda of service provision and the resistance offered by various critical perspectives employed by disparate groups of practitioners serving diverse communities. Critical social work challenges oppressive conditions and discourses, in addition to addressing their consequences in individuals’ lives. However, very few recent critical theorists informing critical social work have advocated (...) revolution. A challenging exception can be found in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–97), whose explication of ontological underdetermination and creation evades the pitfalls of both structural determinism and post-structural relativism, enabling an understanding of society as the contested creation of collective imaginaries in action and a politics of radical transformation. On this basis, we argue that Castoriadis’s radical-democratic revisioning of revolutionary praxis can help in reimagining critical social work’s emancipatory potential. (shrink)

This article reviews research on counterfactual, social, and temporal comparisons and proposes a Reflection and Evaluation Model (REM) as an organizing framework. At the heart of the model is the assertion that 2 psychologically distinct modes of mental simulation operate during comparative thinking: reflection, an experiential (“as if”) mode of thinking characterized by vividly simulating that information about the comparison standard is true of, or part of, the self; and evaluation, an evaluative mode of thinking characterized by (...) the use of information about the standard as a reference point against which to evaluate one’s present standing. Reflection occurs when information about the standard is included in one’s self-construal, and evaluation occurs when such information is excluded. The result of reflection is that standard–consistent cognitions about the self become highly accessible, thereby yielding affective assimilation; whereas the result of evaluation is that comparison information is used as a standard against which one’s present standing is evaluated, thereby yielding affective contrast. The resulting affect leads to either an increase or decrease in behavioral persistence as a function of the type of task with which one is engaged, and a combination of comparison-derived causal inferences and regulatory focus strategies direct one toward adopting specific future action plans. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have revealed systematic errors in human reasoning. There is disagreement about what these errors indicate about human rationality, but one upshot seems clear: human reasoning does not seem to fit traditional views of human rationality. This concern about rationality has made its way through various fields and has recently caught the attention of philosophers. The concern is that if philosophers are prone to systematic errors in reasoning, then the integrity of philosophy would be threatened. In this paper, I (...) present some of the more famous work in cognitive science that has marshaled this concern. Then I present reasons to think that those with training in philosophy will be less prone to certain systematic errors in reasoning. The suggestion is that if philosophers could be shown to be less prone to such errors, then the worries about the integrity of philosophy could be constrained. Then I present evidence that, according to performance on the CRT (Frederick 2005), those who have benefited from training and selection in philosophy are indeed less prone to one kind of systematic error: irrationally arbitrating between intuitive and reflective responses. Nonetheless, philosophers are not entirely immune to this systematic error, and their proclivity for this error is statistically related to their responses to a variety of philosophical questions. So, while the evidence herein puts constraints on the worries about the integrity of philosophy, it by no means eliminates these worries. The conclusion, then, is that the present evidence offers prima facie reasons to ascribe a mitigated privilege to philosophers' ability to rationally arbitrate between intuitive and reflective responses. (shrink)

Charles Mills adhered to the highest standards of philosophical scholarship, while seeing his work firmly as a contribution to the cause of social justice. He had a deep appreciation for historical context and a history of ideas approach to racial/philosophical questions. He was one of the foremost Rawls interpreters or our time, though only a few years before his passing was he so recognized. He channeled his analytic training in his habit of demonstrating how a view is strengthened when (...) an author shows how objections can be systematically replied to. I wish he had tried to integrate class and race into a larger theoretical system, of both an explanatory and normative character. Class is sometimes an unnoted presence in his explanation of white supremacy. Charles saw himself contributing to a collective scholarly social justice project and was happy to acknowledge the greater expertise of others in allied areas to his. (shrink)

Social change is slow and difficult. Social change for animals is formidably slow and difficult. Advocates and scholars alike have long tried to change attitudes and convince the public that eating animals is wrong. The topic of norms and social change for animals has been neglected, which explains in part the relative failure of the animal protection movement to secure robust support reflected in social and legal norms. Moreover, animal ethics has suffered from a disproportionate focus (...) on individual attitudes and behavior at the expense of collective behavior, social change, and empirical psychology. If what we want to change is behavior on a large scale, norms are important tools. This article reviews an account of social norms that provides insights into the possibility and limitations of social change for animals, approaching animal protection as a problem of reverse social engineering. It highlights avenues for future work from this neglected perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I (...) contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view. (shrink)

In this study, we aimed to investigate how prospective science teachers, who participated in a series of explicit-reflective activities for NOS teaching, understood "science in a social and cultural context" in the context of a biographical documentary film. We adopted a phenomenological approach. The data were analyzed descriptively by considering the aspects of nature of science and the levels of understanding as defined in Dilthey's hermeneutic approach. In this way, we determined participants’ levels of hermeneutic understanding regarding the nature (...) of science. The findings show that the participants regarded science within the framework of aspects of the consensus view blended with somewhat authentic interpretations and at a basic level of understanding from the point of view of hermeneutics. This finding highlights the importance of integrating the hermeneutic approach into the teaching process in understanding science. (shrink)

How a senior researcher from a developing country can build an organic academic enterprise. Drawing from childhood experience with nature, past works with the business sector, and philosophy of data-driven research, the essay presents a compelling case of letting young graduates work on big database-building projects: one on Vietnamese social sciences; the other is more than 80 years of the pioneer science in Vietnam—mathematics. Two national databases have enabled meaningful data-driven interactions with scientific policymakers.

We discuss the social-epistemic aspects of Catherine Elgin’s theory of reflective equilibrium and understanding and argue that it yields an argument for the view that a crucial social-epistemic function of epistemic authorities is to foster understanding in their communities. We explore the competences that enable epistemic authorities to fulfil this role and argue that among them is an epistemic virtue we call “epistemic empathy”.

The aim of this paper is to indicate the purpose of education and how it implies changes in the curricula of basic education and in the methods of teaching, guidance and evaluation. We start with the concepts of capacities and overlapping consensus, created respectively by Amartya Sen and John Rawls, and find something that we can call a good life and what it means to improve life. So, we established that education should have as its primary function to enable the (...) subject to lead a good life in harmony with the social environment. To decide whether the basic educational curriculum fulfills this function, we started with an analysis of school subjects. We realized that both the curriculum and the teaching methods were important for the fulfillment of the function of education, and that Brazilian basic education fails to fulfill these two points satisfactorily, as the current curriculum does not fully enable the individual to lead a good life and teaching methods are not guided and evaluated pedagogically by professionals. Anyway, the conclusion we reached was that we need certain changes in the curriculum and teaching methods. / O objetivo deste artigo é indicar qual a finalidade da educação e como isso implica modificações nos currículos da educação básica e nos métodos de orientação e avaliação de ensino. Partimos dos conceitos de capacidades e consenso sobreposto, criados respectivamente por Amartya Sen e John Rawls, e encontramos algo que podemos chamar de vida boa e o que significa melhoria de vida. Então, estabelecemos que a educação deve ter como função primordial capacitar o sujeito a levar uma vida boa em harmonia com o meio social. Para decidirmos se o currículo educacional básico cumpre essa função, partimos para uma análise das disciplinas escolares. Percebemos que tanto o currículo, quanto os métodos de ensino eram importantes para a realização da função da educação, e que a educação básica brasileira não consegue cumprir esses dois pontos satisfatoriamente, pois o currículo atual não capacita plenamente o indivíduo a levar uma vida boa e os métodos de ensino não são orientados e avaliados pedagogicamente por profissionais. Enfim, a conclusão que chegamos foi a de que precisamos de certas mudanças no currículo e nos métodos de ensino. (shrink)

In search of our highest capacities, cognitive scientists aim to explain things like mathematics, language, and planning. But are these really our most sophisticated forms of knowing? In this paper, I point to a different pinnacle of cognition. Our most sophisticated human knowing, I think, lies in how we engage with each other, in our relating. Cognitive science and philosophy of mind have largely ignored the ways of knowing at play here. At the same time, the emphasis on discrete, rational (...) knowing to the detriment of engaged, human knowing pervades societal practices and institutions, often with harmful effects on people and their relations. There are many reasons why we need a new, engaged—or even engaging—epistemology of human knowing. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making takes steps towards this, but it needs deepening. Kym Maclaren’s idea of letting be invites such a deepening. Characterizing knowing as a relationship of letting be provides a nuanced way to deal with the tensions between the knower’s being and the being of the known, as they meet in the process of knowing-and-being-known. This meeting of knower and known is not easy to understand. However, there is a mode of relating in which we know it well, and that is: in loving relationships. I propose to look at human knowing through the lens of loving. We then see that both knowing and loving are existential, dialectic ways in which concrete and particular beings engage with each other. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the most prominent concepts in the literature and, in short, indicates the positive impacts of businesses on their stakeholders. Despite the growing body of literature on this concept, the measurement of CSR is still problematic. Although the literature provides several methods for measuring corporate social activities, almost all of them have some limitations. The purpose of this study is to provide an original, valid, and reliable measure of CSR reflecting the responsibilities (...) of a business to various stakeholders. Based on a proposed conceptual framework of CSR, a scale was developed through a systematic scale development process. In the study, exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the underlying factorial structure of the scale. Data was collected from 269 business professionals working in Turkey. The results of the analysis provided a four-dimensional structure of CSR, including CSR to social and nonsocial stakeholders, employees, customers, and government. (shrink)

This commentary offers a coherent reading of the papers presented in the special issue ‘Exclusion, Engagement, and Empathy: Reflections on Public Participation in Medicine and Technology’. Focusing on intellectual self-trust it adds a further perspective on the harmful epistemic consequences of social exclusion for individual agents in healthcare contexts. In addition to some clarifications regarding the concepts of ‘intellectual self-trust’ and ‘social exclusion’ the commentary also examines in what ways empathy, engagement and participatory sense-making could help to avoid (...) threats to intellectual self-trust that arise form being excluded from participation in communicative practices in the context of healthcare. (shrink)

This chapter is centered around an apparent tension that research on implicit bias raises between virtue and social knowledge. Research suggests that simply knowing what the prevalent stereotypes are leads individuals to act in prejudiced ways—biasing decisions about whom to trust and whom to ignore, whom to promote and whom to imprison—even if they reflectively reject those stereotypes. Because efforts to combat discrimination obviously depend on knowledge of stereotypes, a question arises about what to do next. This chapter argues (...) that the obstacle to virtue is not knowledge of stereotypes as such, but the “accessibility” of such knowledge to the agent who has it. “Accessibility” refers to how easily knowledge comes to mind. Social agents can acquire the requisite knowledge of stereotypes while resisting their pernicious influence, so long as that knowledge remains, in relevant contexts, relatively inaccessible. (shrink)

Expert knowledge regularly informs personal and civic-decision making. To decide which experts to trust, lay publics —including policymakers and experts from other domains—use different epistemic and non-epistemic cues. Epistemic cues such as honesty, like when experts are forthcoming about conflicts of interest, are a popular way of understanding how people evaluate and decide which experts to trust. However, many other epistemic cues, like the evidence supporting information from experts, are inaccessible to lay publics. Therefore, lay publics simultaneously use second-order (...) class='Hi'>social cues in their environment to inform decisions to trust. These second-order social cues, or ‘social indicators of trust’, prevent lay publics from having to trust blindly. Social indicators of trust therefore inform lay publics’ epistemic vigilance, or constant low level-monitoring of testimony from experts. This special issue examines the nature, acquisition and application of social indicators of trust for scientific experts and institutions. It also raises questions about the types of trust asked of lay publics and challenges traditional normative assumptions about the relationship between science and lay publics through study of attitudes, values, and experiences. The issue descriptively re-examines the structure of institutions, their role and methods for ferrying information, as well as how social indicators operate in times of crisis. In this collection of works, we bridge history, science, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, science communication and social epistemology, to broaden the discourse on trust in experts and more accurately reflect the imperfect yet indispensable endeavour that trusting is. (shrink)

Social psychologists often describe “implicit” racial biases as entirely unconscious, and as mere associations between groups and traits, which lack intentional content, e.g., we associate “black” and “athletic” in much the same way we associate “salt” and “pepper.” However, recent empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, albeit in partial, inarticulate, or even distorted ways. Moreover, evidence suggests that implicit biases are not “dumb” semantic associations, but instead reflect our skillful, norm-sensitive, and embodied engagement (...) with social reality. This essay draws on phenomenological and hermeneutic methods and concepts to better understand what social-psychological research has begun to reveal about the conscious access individuals have to their own racial attitudes, as well as the intentional contents of the attitudes themselves. -/- First, I argue that implicit racial biases form part of the “background” of social experience. That is, while they exert a pervasive influence on our perceptions, judgments, and actions, they are frequently felt but not noticed, or noticed but misinterpreted. Second, I argue that our unreflective racial attitudes are neither mere associations nor fully articulated, propositionally structured beliefs or emotions. Their intentional contents are fundamentally indeterminate. For example, when a white person experiences a “gut feeling” of discomfort during an interaction with a black person, there is a question about the meaning or nature of that discomfort. Is it a fear of black people? Is it anxiety about appearing racist? There is, I argue, no general, determinate answer to such questions. The contents of our unreflective racial attitudes are fundamentally vague and open-ended, although I explain how they nevertheless take on particular shapes and implications—that is, their content can become determinate—depending on context, social meaning, and structural power relations. (If, for example, a perceived authority figure, such as a politician, parent, or scientist, encourages you to believe that your uncomfortable gut feeling is a justified fear of other social groups, then that is what your gut feeling is likely to become.). (shrink)

The Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954 mandated school integration. The decision also to recognize that inequalities outside the schools, of both a class- and race-based nature, prevent equality in education. Today, the most prominent argument for integration is that disadvantaged students benefit from the financial, social, and cultural “capital” of middle class families when the children attend the same schools. This argument fails to recognize that disadvantaged students contribute to advantaged students’ educational growth, and sends demeaning (...) messages to the disadvantaged students and messages of unwarranted superiority to the advantaged. Parents, teachers, and schools can adopt a justice perspective that avoids these deleterious aspects of the capital argument, and helps create a community of equals inside the integrated school. Struggles for educational justice must remain closely linked with struggles of both a class- and race-based nature for other forms of justice in the wider society. (shrink)

Reflecting on group theory within clinical supervision offers useful vantage points from which to engage nursing and the helping professions in the task of supervisory practice. This paper presents reflective experiences of group clinical supervision training and practice through a critique of Hawkins and Shohet’s process centred model. The underlying premise of transference hypothesis is that experiences and memories from the past inform present behaviours. Little has been written about the hypothesis in relation to clinical supervision in nursing and the (...) helping professions. However, the hypothesis was criticised by John M. Shlien in the 1980s and remains pertinent today due to expansion into social and healthcare practice. Reflective autobiographical diary entries focus on the model’s two latter stages which propose the use of Sigmund Freud’s transference hypothesis. The work of Freud, Foulkes, Heidegger and Hawkins and Shohet are synthesised and conclude with a phenomenological suggestion that immediacy and openness are necessary ontological conditions for group clinical supervision. Valuing empathic attunement to better understand group clinical supervision may be more important than theoretical distractions for non-therapeutic clinical supervision practice. (shrink)

In this article, we philosophically reflect on the nature of corporate governance. We raise the question whether control is still a feasible ideal of corporate governance and reflect on the implications of the epistemic insufficiency of economic institutions with regard to grand challenges like of global warming for our conceptualization of corporate governance. We first introduce the concept of corporate governance from the perspective of economics and politics. We then trace the genealogy of the concept of governance based on a (...) selective reading of Giorgio Agamben’s work, who has pointed at two interdependent paradigms of governance in the Christian tradition, and apply his categories in the context of corporate governance. We finally engage in a critical reflection on the concept of corporate governance and develop four characteristics of corporate governance that can guide future conceptual as well as empirical research in the field of corporate social responsibility of economic institutions. (shrink)

We associate the method of reflective equilibrium with developing principles of social justice, but it can also be used on a literary canon, with the aim of identifying principles of inclusion and exclusion. But I note three risks of doing so, using the American literary canon as an example.

Ontologies represent principled, formalised descriptions of agents’ conceptualisations of a domain. For a community of agents, these descriptions may differ among agents. We propose an aggregative view of the integration of ontologies based on Judgement Aggregation (JA). Agents may vote on statements of the ontologies, and we aim at constructing a collective, integrated ontology, that reflects the individual conceptualisations as much as possible. As several results in JA show, many attractive and widely used aggregation procedures are prone to return inconsistent (...) collective ontologies. We propose to solve the possible inconsistencies in the collective ontology by applying suitable weakenings of axioms that cause inconsistencies. (shrink)

How can people function appropriately and respond normatively in social contexts even if they are not aware of rules governing these contexts? John Searle has rightly criticized a popular way out of this problem by simply asserting that they follow them unconsciously. His alternative explanation is based on his notion of a preintentional, nonrepresentational background. In this paper I criticize this explanation and the underlying account of the background and suggest an alternative explanation of the normativity of elementary (...) class='Hi'>social practices and of the background itself. I propose to think of the background as being intentional, but nonconceptual, and of the basic normativity or proto-normativity as being instituted through common sensory-motor-emotional schemata established in the joint interactions of groups. The paper concludes with some reflections on what role this level of collective intentionality and the notion of the background can play in a layered account of the social mind and the ontology of the social world. (shrink)

We humans have a formidable armamentarium of social display behaviours, including song-and-dance, the visual arts, and role-play. Of these, role-play is probably the crucial adaptation which makes us most different from other apes. Human childhood, a sheltered period of ‘extended irresponsibility’, allows us to develop our powers of make-believe and role-play, prerequisites for human cooperation, culture, and reflective consciousness. Social mirror theory, originating with Dilthey, Baldwin, Cooley and Mead, holds that there cannot be mirrors in the mind without (...) mirrors in society. I will present evidence from the social and behavioural sciences to argue that self-awareness depends on social mirrors and shared experiential worlds. The dependence of reflectivity on shared experience requires some reframing of the ‘hard problem’, and suggests a non-trivial answer to the zombie question. (shrink)

In this chapter we draw comparisons between Kass’ views on the normative authority of repugnance and social intuitionist accounts of moral judgement which are similarly sceptical about the role of reasoned reflection in moral judgement. We survey the empirical claims made in support of giving moral primacy to intuitions generated by emotions such as repugnance, as well as some common objections. We then examine accounts which integrate intuition and reflection, and argue that plausible accounts of wisdom are (...) in tension with Kass’ claim that our inarticulable emotional responses can be the expression of deep wisdom. We conclude that while repugnance and other emotions have a role to play in informing deliberation and judgement, we have reason to be cautious in giving them normative authority. Affective responses alone cannot discharge the burden of justification for moral judgement and are just one tool relied upon by those we consider wise. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the reality of the use of social networks in the technical colleges in Palestine, where the variables of social networks were included. The analytical descriptive method was used in the study. A questionnaire consisting of (12) items was randomly distributed to college workers Technology in the Gaza Strip. The sample of the study consisted of (205) employees of these colleges. The response rate was 74.5%. The results showed a high degree of approval for (...) the dimensions of the social networks and a relative weight (74.15%) according to the perspective of the employees of the technical colleges in the Gaza Strip. The results of the study showed that there is a high level of social networking areas (site management and Website Content) in the technical colleges in the Gaza Strip. The field of site management ranked first with a relative weight of 74.91%, and second and last (Content Site) with a relative weight (73.38%). The results showed that there were differences between colleges in the use of social networks where the results showed that the most common colleges used these networks (UCAS) and the least used is (GTC). The results showed no differences between male and female employees in the use of social networks in technical colleges. The researchers suggest a number of recommendations, including: the need to raise awareness of the importance of Facebook and other social networking sites, through the holding of courses for employees in technical colleges, and to identify the ways to optimize the use of such sites, and the benefits of this use, and reflected positively on technical colleges. And the adoption of dealing with the various social networking sites as a reality, and the Palestinian and Arab technical colleges, use them in accordance with the objectives of technical colleges. Advise the Department of Technical Colleges to devote time to their presence on social networks to follow the public and respond to their queries. There is a need for the attention of decision-makers in technical colleges in social sites, because they are considered an important and effective means of communication, and the link between beneficiaries and decision-makers. There is a need to promote the use of modern electronic means of work and the need to increase the link of customers to the college through electronic services. (shrink)

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS. -/- The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: (...) there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into an unpalatable moral relativism on which there is no non-arbitrary basis between a justice that underwrites forms of domination such as slavery and a justice that condemns such forms of domination is equally powerful and compelling. I show that there is a way to harmonize both views that is subject to empirical test. -/- First I show that the most widely accepted and influential formulation of liberal justice, John Rawls' Justice as Fairness, in. e.g, A Theory of Justice, cannot avoid the relativistic challenge because it would not be accepted, as a matter of sociological fact, by real people in a divided society once the "veil of Ignorance" is removed and real people step out from the Original Position. To put it differently, different reflective equilibria are inevitable in a divided society. Given the weight that Rawls properly puts on the realizability of a conception of justice and its stability in practice, this is a fatal objection. There can be no divided society that is "well ordered" in Rawls' sense, governed by a shared conception of justice and known to be so governed. -/- I then turn to the most powerful statement of the CLS view, Milton's Fisk's relativistic account in The State and Justice. For Fisk, justice is a compromise between what the dominant groups can compel and what the the subordinate groups will acquiesce to., There is no one such compromise in any given situation, so the account is in that sense relativistic, but more deeply, it is relativistic in that it offers no non-arbitrary, non-question begging way to choose between the official justice of, e.g., a slaveholding society and and the radical justice of the slaves, which has no place for slaveholders as a group or slavery as an institution.All that Fisk can offer is an arbitrary existential choice: I'm with the slaves. (Or the slaveowners.) Most of us would find this disconcerting or even unacceptable. -/- I show that Fisk's general sort of account can be modified to allow for an non-arbitrary choice. Given general facts about human nature, societies based on domination will produce resistance that over the long run will diminish or eliminate various forms of domination. Through a sort of ratchet effect, rights won will be hard if not impossible to reverse. Societies embodying forms of domination can therefore be compared on dimensions of stability: the more domination, the more resistance, and the less stability. Such societies are inferior on the dimension of justice to more emancipatory society on the terms of both kinds of justice, official and radical. -/- This is not question begging because regimes of domination incorporate stability no less than more emancipatory social orders. The choice between official justice embodying domination and radical justice that does not is not arbitrary because it is based on a shared commitment to long term stability. This offers an empirical test of which social orders are more justice, and a prediction that over time, domination will tend to decrease. (shrink)

I examine the claim that the underlying importance given to freedom within a society's scheme of values varies with historical circumstance and social context (I shall sometimes call this the "relativist claim"). The point of the examination will be to attempt to determine the manner in which, and the extent to which, this claim really endangers the liberal argument, which seems to suggest that freedom is valuable everywhere and always. It will be seen that several apparent challenges may be (...) dismissed, since for one reason or another they do not really threaten traditional liberalism. When these apparent (but non-threatening) challenges are pared away from the relativist claim, it will be seen that the remaining threat is on the one hand weaker, and on the other hand more dubious, than might have been supposed at first. This rather formal work will then set the stage for a proffered definition of the sort of "freedom" that is at stake in this discussion, and for my own attempt to offer answers to the questions about the value of freedom that I raise. (shrink)

The diversity of multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic groups and communities within Britain has created cohesion and integration challenges for different community groups and authorities to adapt to the current diverse society. More recently, there has been an increased focus on Muslim segregation in Britain in official reports and reviews. Those documents mentioned the Muslims’ segregation (directly or indirectly) for various reasons, and some recommendations have aimed to improve “community cohesion” in general and Muslims’ “integration” in particular. However, community participation in (...) the design or planning of regeneration and development projects has yet to be focused on, although these documents recommended promoting community cohesion and integration through these projects. Community participation in architecture—in its broader sense—is a crucial aspect that contributes towards fulfilling the tasks of serving communities with different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Muslims’ religious and cultural practices have been problematised in urban spaces and perceived as leading to social and spatial segregation. This paper intends to explore how secular urban spaces are used and perceived by Muslims through their religious and cultural practices. Therefore, the article aspires to inform the community participation in urban projects and demonstrates the role that Muslims’ inclusion in designing urban projects has in promoting cohesion and integration. The Ellesmere Green project in Burngreave, Sheffield, UK, is an empirical example of exploring this locally through semi-structured interviews with community members, leaders, and local authorities’ officials. The findings demonstrate that sacred and secular spaces are interconnected in Muslims’ everyday lives, and the boundaries between them are blurry. The data also show that having the ability to manifest their religious and cultural practices in secular urban spaces does not suggest the desire for segregation, nor does it reduce Muslims’ willingness to have social and spatial interactions with non-Muslims. (shrink)

1. Law and morals as two systems of norms, and the inner morality of law 2. Law as a value bearer and as a mere external indicator 3. The inner and external moral credit of legislator 4. The inner morality of law. As to the last paragraph, the most striking feature of the inner morality of law is that it is such a possible characteristic, surplus quality which is not a sine qua non, which law is conceivable without. However, it (...) is a question whether law can long do without it? In principle, the legislator is free in deciding on what legal consequence he attaches to what course of conduct14 and it is also desirable that legal concepts be freed from moral overtones. Nevertheless, the legal complex cannot be torn out of its social context, nor can it steadily conflict with other complexes (religions, moral, or political values, norms and ideologies) law is to develop in living interrelationship with. Otherwise, it is subject to danger that (I) law-observance in average cases is weakened; (2) the reified functioning of and approach to law are strengthened and make law alienated; and (3) it blurs the social objectives the law intends to serve and, especially in hard cases, makes its application rootless and floating. A pathological situation only becomes more pathological, if the pathology of contents is accompanied by the pathology of means. Or, it brings the promise of real solution closer, if the adequateness of means also provides, by the strength of publicity, for the direct mobilization of society. That explains why it is a topical question what I have proposed to term the inner morality of law. [For the text, see my L&Ph, 77–89] . (shrink)

The article approximates some of the foundations of Cornelius Castoriadis's understanding of social-historical, guided by a theoretical-sociological perspective. I try to think in what senses Castoriadis's social ontology consideration can help us to rethink and eventually reconfigure the domain of social-theoretical reflection on the world. At the same time, an attempt is made to measure the extent of the reordering that the presuppositions of this ontology imply for the presuppositional level-ontological, epistemological, and methodological elements - and (...) the theoretical level - categories, concepts, and general statements-in sociology. The text closes, programmatically, with some problems and challenges that Castoriadis' thought bequeaths to the theoretical-social reflection on the world. (shrink)

Kwame Gyekye offers a philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times. Critically employing Western political and philosophical concepts to clear, comparative advantage, Gyekye addresses a wide range of concrete problems afflicting postcolonial African states, such as ethnicity and nation-building, the relationship of tradition to modernity, the nature of political authority and political legitimation, political corruption, and the threat to traditional moral and social values, practices, and institutions in the wake of rapid social (...) change. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will first argue that current practices in CBE are framed within the market or economic logic and miss the normative dimension of the call for circularity. The transition to the CBE requires a fundamental reflection on the role of economic actors in the social and ecological environment with significant consequences for their business practices. Second, we will argue that the transition to the CBE requires the acknowledgement of the normative and social dimensions of (...) this transition at the meso and macro levels, and the establishment of an environmental and social logic on the micro level of business practices. Third, we will argue that the concept of responsible innovation (RI) can help to articulate the normative and social dimensions of the transition to the CBE, and enables the operationalisation of the environmental and social logic at the micro level. In this respect, RI can be understood as a driver for the transition to the CBE. (shrink)

The conceptualisation of schooling is often based on “ideal children” in “ideal situations.” However, in determining the level of participation for children who are considered vulnerable in schooling, it is important to understand the lived experiences of these children. In this study, migrant children (particularly undocumented ones) in South Africa are the focus, and their lived experiences were considered through reflections from their parents and teachers. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, and analysed using a constant comparative method of qualitative (...) analysis within a grounded theory approach. The study found that challenges affecting migrant children’s schooling include the lack of documentation, language barriers, issues of transition and adaptation (discrimination), and the inability to access further education. Strategies were identified to address the challenges, including schools liaising with the Department of Home Affairs, implementing cultural diversity programmes within the school, and through deliberate inclusive programmes. (shrink)