Excerpt from The Harmonial Philosophy: A Compendium and Digest of the Works of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Seer of Poughkeepsie His Natural and Divine Revelations, Great Harmonia, Spiritual Inter course, Answers to ever-recurring Questions, Inner Life, Summer. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format (...) whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This paper reports on a study of ethical decision-making in a fair trade company. This can be seen to be a crucial arena for investigation since fair trade firms not only have a specific ethical mission in terms of helping growers out of poverty, but they tend to be perceived as (and are often marketed on the basis of) having an "ethical" image. Eschewing a straightforward test of extant ethical decision models, we adopt Thompson''s proposal for a more contextualist understanding (...) rooted in ethnographic data. Our findings suggest that the fair trade mission of the firm is experienced as an over-riding ethical claim, which is often invoked to justify potentially ethically questionable decisions. Moreover, decision precedents emerge which can mean that the decision process is bypassed or hurried through. Finally we provide evidence that the significance of these precedents, and indeed, even moral intensity itself, could be actively shaped and constructed by organization members to support different, even shifting, conceptions of what is a morally acceptable decision for a fair trade company to make. (shrink)

Employee buy-in is a key factor in ensuring small- and medium-size enterprise (SME) engagement with corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this exploratory study, we use participant observation and semi-structured interviews to investigate the way in which three fair trade SMEs utilise human resource management (and selection and socialisation in particular) to create employee engagement in a strong triple bottomline philosophy, while simultaneously coping with resource and size constraints. The conclusions suggest that there is a strong desire for, but tradeoff within (...) these companies between selection of individuals who already identify with the triple bottomline philosophy and individuals with experience and capability to deal with mainstream brand management – two critical employee attributes that appear to be rarely found together. The more important the business experience to the organisation, the more effort the organisation must expend in formalising their socialisation programmes to ensure employee engagement. A key method in doing this is increasing employee knowledge of, and affection for, the target beneficiaries of the CSR programme (increased moral intensity). (shrink)

In England, higher education institutions, together with the schools whose staff they train, are being required to incorporate synthetic phonics as one of the key approaches to the teaching of reading. Yet even if synthetic phonics can be identified as one of the component ‘skills’ of reading, an assumption vigorously contested in this paper, it does not follow that it can or should be taught explicitly and independently of reading for meaning. Imposing such a ‘method’ is, at a deep level, (...) incompatible with teachers acting as teachers and potentially constitutes a kind of abuse of early readers. Moreover, because of the conceptual difficulties confronting any attempt to specify synthetic phonics as an approach, there cannot exist, in principle, empirical research that actually supports its value. Current policy in England since the Rose Report, at least, assumes the opposite. All this cannot be dismissed as a little local difficulty for England concerning the teaching of reading English with all its spelling irregularities: there are broader implications for the relationship between research and teaching, together with continuing tendencies to impose ‘teacher proof’ approaches on schools and their staff in many countries. (shrink)

A growing body of literature critical of ethics review boards has drawn attention to the processes used to determine the ethical merit of research. Citing criticism on the bureaucratic nature of ethics review processes, this literature provides a useful provocation for (re)considering how the ethics review might be enacted. Much of this criticism focuses on how ethics review boards _deliberate,_ with particular attention given to the lack of transparency and opportunities for researcher recourse that characterise ethics review processes. Centered specifically (...) on the conduct of ethics review boards convened within university settings, this paper draws on these inherent criticisms to consider the ways that ethics review boards might enact more communicative and deliberative practices. Outlining a set of principles against which ethics review boards might establish strategies for engaging with researchers and research communities, this paper draws attention to how _Deliberative communication_, _Engagement with researchers_ and the _Distribution of responsibility_ for the ethics review might be enacted in the day-to-day practice of the university human ethics review board. This paper develops these themes via a conceptual lens derived from Habermas’ (The theory of communicative action. Volume 1: Reason and the rationalization of society, 1984 ) articulation of ‘communicative action’ and Fraser’s (Social Text, 25(26), 56–80, 1990 ) consideration of ‘strong publics’ to cast consideration of the role that human ethics review boards might play in supporting university research cultures. _Deliberative communication_, _Engagement with researchers_ and the _Distribution of responsibility_ provide useful conceptual prompts for considering how ethics review boards might undertake their work. (shrink)

This book examines the process philosophies of Whitehead and others against current discussions of astrobiology, extraterrestrial life, and their engagement by theological and religious systems.

My purpose in this article is to defend the goodness of Whitehead's God against two recent critics: Pierfrancesco Basile and Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes. I will both rely on Whitehead's own statements regarding God's goodness and offer a metaphysical interpretation of these statements in relation to his “axianoetic” universe.

This chapter contains sections titled: Measuring Learning for Accountability Purposes The Theory of Assessment Assessment and Fairness Conclusion.

Why did Bernhard Riemann, arguably the most original mathematician of his generation, spend the last year of life investigating the mechanism of hearing? Fighting tuberculosis and the hostility of eminent scientists such as Hermann Helmholtz, he appeared to forsake mathematics to prosecute a case close to his heart. Only sketchy pages from his last paper remain, but here we assemble some significant clues and triangulate from them to build a broad picture of what he might have been driving at. Our (...) interpretation is that Riemann was a committed idealist and from this philosophical standpoint saw that the scientific enterprise was lame without the “poetry of hypothesis”. He believed that human thought was fundamentally the dynamics of “mind-masses” and that the human mind interpenetrated, and became part of, the microscopic physical domain of the cochlea. Therefore, a full description of hearing must necessarily include the perceptual dimensions of what he saw as a single manifold. The manifold contains all the psychophysical aspects of hearing, including the logarithmic transformations that arise from Fechner’s law, faithfully preserving all the subtle perceptual qualities of sound. For Riemann, hearing was a unitary physical and mental event, and parallels with modern ideas about consciousness and quantum biology are made. A unifying quantum mechanical model for an atom of consciousness—drawing on Riemann’s mind-masses and the similar “psychons” proposed by Eccles—is put forward. (shrink)

Andrew Davis; 9. Is there a Future for Assessment and Accountability?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 32, Issue 1, 7 March 2003, Pages 145–152, http.

The mechanisms responsible for the fine tuning of development, where the wildtype phenotype is reproduced with high fidelity, are not well understood. The difficulty in approaching this problem is the identification of mutant phenotypes indicative of a defect in these fine‐tuning control mechanisms. Evolutionary biologists have used asymmetry as a measure of developmental homeostasis. The rationale for this was that, since the same genome controls the development of the left and right sides of a bilaterally symmetrical organism, departures from symmetry (...) can be used to measure genetic or environmental perturbations. This paper examines the relationship between asymmtry and resistance to organophosphorous insecticides in the Australian sheep blowfly, Lucilia cuprina. A resistance gene, Rop‐1, which encodes a carboxylesterase enzyme, also confers a significant increase in asymmetry. Continued exposure of resistant populations to insecticide has selected a dominant suppressor of the asymmetry phenotype. Genetic evidence indicates that the modifier is the L. cuprina Notch homologue. (shrink)

Andrew Davis; 1. The Need for a Philosophical Treatment of Assessment, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 32, Issue 1, 7 March 2003, Pages 1–18, https:/.

In England, current government policy on children's reading is strongly prescriptive, insisting on the delivery of a pure and exclusive form of synthetic phonics, where letter sounds are learned and blended in order to ‘read’ text. A universally imposed phonics ‘check’ is taken by all five year olds and the results are widely reported. These policies are underpinned by the claim that research has shown systematic synthetic phonics to be the most effective way of teaching children to read. Andrew (...) Davis argues that there is a basic problem with this claim. Whatever it is that empirical researchers take themselves to be doing when they investigate synthetic phonics, they are not investigating a specifiable method of teaching reading. This is for two reasons. First, there are no such things as specifiable methods of teaching. Teaching is a vastly complex human activity involving contextual and reactive practical judgments that are responsive to the myriad contingencies of classroom life. The idea that teachers might proceed by way of prescribed methods rather than practical judgments is simply a fantasy. Second, teaching children to correlate letter combinations with sounds, and to blend sounds into sequences, is not teaching them to read. Reading is a matter of grasping meaning conveyed by text. While sustained attention to letter-sound correspondences can be helpful to some novice readers, we should neither assume that it is helpful to all nor confuse mastery of such correspondences with the ability to read. Davis's challenge to government policy on the teaching of reading, and to the empirical research that supposedly underpins it, is timely, radical and compelling. The zeal with which synthetic phonics is championed by its advocates has been remarkably effective in pushing it to the top of the educational agenda; but we should not mistake zeal for warrant. (shrink)

A engaging dialogue with the modern “axionoetic” proposals of A.N. Whitehead, Keith Ward, and John Leslie, arguing for the relational nature of ultimacy wherein Mind and Value, Possibility and Actuality, God and the World are affirmed as ultimate only in virtue of their relationality. This relationship Whitehead calls “mutual immanence.”.

This paper discusses the current fashion for brain-based learning, in which value-laden claims about learning are grounded in neurophysiology. It argues that brain science cannot have the ‘authority’ about learning that some seek to give it. It goes on to discuss whether the claim that brain science is relevant to learning involves a category mistake. The heart of the paper tries to show how the contribution of brain science to our grasp of the nature of learning is limited in principle. (...) Finally the paper explores the potential of brain science to illuminate specific learning disabilities. (shrink)

In this response, I agree with much of what Schrag says about the principled limits of neuroscience to inform educators' decisions about approaches to learning. However, I also raise questions about the extent to which discoveries about ‘deficits’ in brain function could possibly help teachers. I dispute Schrag's view that externalism/internalism debates in the philosophy of mind are relatively arcane and lack implications for the importance or otherwise for education of discoveries about the brain.

What is 'fairness' in the context of educational assessment? I apply this question to a number of contemporary educational assessment practices and policies. My approach to philosophy of education owes much to Wittgenstein. A commentary set apart from the main body of the paper focuses on my style of philosophising. Wittgenstein teaches us to examine in depth the fine-grained complexities of social phenomena and to refrain from imposing abstract theory on a recalcitrant reality. I write philosophy of education for policy (...) makers and teachers. Scrutiny of examples plays a vital role in communicating with such an audience. Starting points include 'accommodations' for disabled students, allegedly gender-biased tests, and the recruitment procedures of 'elitist' music conservatoires. A key intuition that fairness is associated with test validity turns out to be seriously flawed. Problems centre on the idea of a 'construct', and the supposed divide between an underlying construct and its behavioural manifestations. Equality of opportunity notions underlie some accusations of unfairness but there are alternative approaches to a just society. Both the judgments about fairness, and the proposed remedies are open to serious philosophical criticisms. There are widespread conceptual difficulties, together with inconsistent and contestable value judgments. (shrink)

Arguing that everyone has a right to privacy as control overaccess to `intimate' aspects of one's life, this author draws on thework of Julie Inness to discuss children's rights to privacy inclassrooms. Even if it is agreed that pupils should exercise this right,a central point is that there may be moral or other value considerationsthat justify setting the right aside. Among selected complexities, animportant extension is the right to psychological processes throughwhich learners acquire new knowledge.

The Common School should promote a sense of the distinctive worth of all human beings. How is the respect thus owed to every individual to be properly understood? This familiar question is explored by discussing ‘lookism’, a form of discrimination on the grounds of appearance. The treatment is located within a wider analysis of stereotyping. Ultimately stereotyping overlooks persons as sources of actions with moral significance and as potential owners of moral virtues. The Common School could profitably approach traditionally emotive (...) issues such as racism indirectly by helping students to understand in some depth how ‘lookist’ attitudes deny agency. It could then encourage students to apply these insights to traditional forms of discrimination. (shrink)

The paper argues that no criterion-referenced assessment system can achieve both reliability and validity at one and the same time. It shows that the reasons for this are conceptual, and hence that empirical research into the‘problem’ is a waste of money and effort. Considerable discussion is devoted to ideas of knowledge and understanding, and to proper educational objectives pertaining to these. Much reference is made to the current National Curriculum context in the United Kingdom, and conclusions are drawn for appropriate (...) educational policy in this area. (shrink)

Conflicts of interest pose special problems for the professions. Even the appearance of a conflict of interest can undermine essential trust between professional and public. This volume is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the ramifications and problems associated with important issue. It contains fifteen new essays by noted scholars and covers topics in law, medicine, journalism, engineering, financial services, and others.

How far can consistent assessment capture all the worthwhile features of educational achievement? Are some important components of learning necessarily open to a range of potentially inconsistent judgments by different assessors? I argue for a cautiously affirmative answer to this question, drawing on analogies with aesthetic judgments and a rehearsal of the holistic characteristics of some assessment criteria. I also employ recent treatments of moral particularism and of concepts of incommensurability to oppose the drive for consistency in assessment required by (...) a high stakes accountability regime. (shrink)

Abstract‘High stakes testing’ is to be understood as testing with serious consequences for students, their teachers and their educational institutions. It plays a central role in holding teachers and educational institutions to account. In a recent article Randall Curren seeks to refute a number of philosophical arguments developed in my The Limits of Educational Assessment against the legitimacy of high stakes testing. In this reply I contend that some of the arguments he identifies are not mine, and that others survive (...) his critique. (shrink)

All of finance is now automated, most notably high frequency trading. This paper examines the ethical implications of this fact. As automation is an interdisciplinary endeavor, we argue that the interfaces between the respective disciplines can lead to conflicting ethical perspectives; we also argue that existing disciplinary standards do not pay enough attention to the ethical problems automation generates. Conflicting perspectives undermine the protection those who rely on trading should have. Ethics in finance can be expanded to include organizational and (...) industry-wide responsibilities to external market participants and society. As a starting point, quality management techniques can provide a foundation for a new cross-disciplinary ethical standard in the age of automation. (shrink)

All of finance is now automated, most notably high frequency trading. This paper examines the ethical implications of this fact. As automation is an interdisciplinary endeavor, we argue that the interfaces between the respective disciplines can lead to conflicting ethical perspectives; we also argue that existing disciplinary standards do not pay enough attention to the ethical problems automation generates. Conflicting perspectives undermine the protection those who rely on trading should have. Ethics in finance can be expanded to include organizational and (...) industry-wide responsibilities to external market participants and society. As a starting point, quality management techniques can provide a foundation for a new cross-disciplinary ethical standard in the age of automation. (shrink)

PISA claims that it can extend its reach from its current core subjects of Reading, Science, Maths and problem-solving. Yet given the requirement for high levels of reliability for PISA, especially in the light of its current high stakes character, proposed widening of its subject coverage cannot embrace some important aspects of the social and aesthetic world. Verdicts on the latter often have holistic features, and there are dangers that such verdicts involve attempts to compare what cannot be compared. Judgments (...) about the normative and the social often feature a legitimate lack of consistency. (shrink)

Hirst always highlighted knowledge when reflecting on the school curriculum. He replaced his early focus on liberal education, the development of mind and theoretical knowledge by emphasizing the practical and practices as a curriculum starting point and for the framing of educational aims. In this paper I explore links between Hirst’s philosophical treatment of knowledge and some currently contested aspects of UK government education policies. I also note some ways in which his work relates to selected present-day debates in philosophy (...) of education. Examples of UK government policy will include Ofsted’s definition of learning as a ‘change in long-term memory’ and the ways in which they place ‘logical sequencing’ at the heart of teaching, learning, and curriculum. Their learning definition treats knowledge as an individual asset rather than something about individuals as embedded in the social world of practices, a perspective more in keeping with Hirst’s later views. The critique of individualistic notions of knowledge and learning includes some explorations of how learners move into the ‘space of reasons’. Where I draw attention to relationships between Hirst’s thought and contemporary philosophy of education debates, I do not always draw any definite conclusions. (shrink)

‘It worked there. Will it work here?’ We have to be able to identify the ‘it’ in that aphoristic question. Classifications of teaching methods belong in the social realm, where human intentions play a fundamental role in how phenomena are categorized. The social realm is characterized with the help of John Searle. Social phenomena are often open to interpretation, rather than definitive verdicts. The nature of the social limits the possibility of consistency in how teaching should be classified, which in (...) turn limits the viability of standard quantitative empirical research into effectiveness. Either classifications of teaching are very broad, which robs them of a researchable identity, or they are more specific, which can undermine their credentials as true teaching. So-called ‘Direct Instruction’ is a case in point. (shrink)

The transplant community has faced unprecedented challenges balancing risks of performing living donor transplants during the COVID-19 pandemic with harms of temporarily suspending these procedures. Decisions regarding postponement of living donation stem from its designation as an elective procedure, this despite that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services categorise transplant procedures as tier 3b (high medical urgency—do not postpone). In times of severe resource constraints, health systems may be operating under crisis or contingency standards of care. In this manuscript, (...) the United Network for Organ Sharing Ethics Workgroup explores prioritisation of living donation where health systems operate under contingency standards of care and provide a framework with recommendations to the transplant community on how to approach living donation in these circumstances.To guide the transplant community in future decisions, this analysis suggests that: (1) living donor transplants represent an important option for individuals with end-stage liver and kidney disease and should not be suspended uniformly under contingency standards, (2) exposure risk to SARS-CoV-2 should be balanced with other risks, such as exposure risks at dialysis centres. Because many of these risks are not quantifiable, donors and recipients should be included in discussions on what constitutes acceptable risk, (3) transplant hospitals should strive to maintain a critical transplant workforce and avoid diverting expertise, which could negatively impact patient preparedness for transplant, (4) transplant hospitals should consider implementing protocols to ensure early detection of SARS-CoV-2 infections and discuss these measures with donors and recipients in a process of shared decision-making. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s “Schema” and J. G. Fichte’s “Bild” are parallel figures of activity that serve as bridges. For both Kant and Fichte, it is not the image/schema taken as product that is primary, but the act of imaging. I show how Fichte leans on the Kantian argumentation of the schematism in order to attempt bridging the gulf critical philosophy leaves between theoretical and practical philosophy. My broader purpose is to indicate how two German Idealists emphasize activity as a way of (...) solving philosophical problems. (shrink)

I use Ian Hacking 's views to explore ways of classifying people, exploiting his distinction between indifferent kinds and interactive kinds, and his accounts of how we 'make up' people. The natural kind/essentialist approach to indifferent kinds is explored in some depth. I relate this to debates in psychiatry about the existence of mental illness, and to educational controversies about the credentials of learner classifications such as 'dyslexic'. Claims about the 'existence' of learning disabilities cannot be given a clear, simple (...) and unambiguous interpretation. In particular I show that science cannot deliver a definitive taxonomy of learner categories, and that this has important implications for teachers and policy makers. (shrink)

David Carr, Andrew Davis; Can there be a Moral Psychology of Democratic and Civic Education & Understanding Mathematics, Journal of Philosophy of Education.

Meister Eckhart might have liked it. Indeed, many-one thinking is the idea that there is the one ultimate origin, coherence, spirit of it all... but not without a multitude and diversity emerging within, which is the evolving universe with planets like Earth, with its biosphere and humankind, with you and me living in it. The Many-One is thought of as the whole of the cosmos complementing and entangled with all its parts, as beings inside Being and Being inside beings, as (...) the Creator and “his” co-creating creatures. The both-one-and-many idea takes a strong stance against any ultimate either-or-reduction, against isms of all sorts. Being unity and plurality and duality all at once, the Many-One is neither monistic nor pluralistic nor dualistic in any way. Inside this broad frame, it is open for many specific approaches, not least those represented in this volume, which are cosmic holism, cultural-spiritual-evolution thought, Higher-We, integral thinking, the Metaphysics of Adjacency, panentheism, process theology, and transpersonal-participatory thinking. However, the many-one idea also chimes in with approaches not sampled here, like Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism, Edgar Morin's Complex Thought, or metamodernism. (shrink)

Patient consent has been formulated in terms of radical individualism rather than shared benefits. Medical education relies on the provision of patient consent to provide medical students with the training and experience to become competent doctors. Pelvic examination represents an extreme case in which patients may legitimately seek to avoid contact with inexperienced medical students particularly where these are male. However, using this extreme case, this paper will examine practices of framing and obtaining consent as perceived by medical students. This (...) paper reports findings of an exploratory qualitative study of medical students and junior doctors. Participants described a number of barriers to obtaining informed consent. These related to misunderstandings concerning student roles and experiences and insufficient information on the nature of the examination. Participants reported perceptions of the negative framing of decisions on consent by nursing staff where the student was male. Potentially coercive practices of framing of the decision by senior doctors were also reported. Participants outlined strategies they adopted to circumvent patients’ reasons for refusal. Practices of framing the information used by students, nurses and senior doctors to enable patients to decide about consent are discussed in the context of good ethical practice. In the absence of a clear ethical model, coercion appears likely. We argue for an expanded model of autonomy in which the potential tension between respecting patients’ autonomy and ensuring the societal benefit of well-trained doctors is recognised. Practical recommendations are made concerning information provision and clear delineations of student and patient roles and expectations. (shrink)

This article seeks to describe in general terms what has become the standard way of conceptualizing moral injury in the clinical psychological and psychiatric literature, which is the key source for applications of the concept in other domains. What we call “the standard model” draws on certain assumptions about beliefs, mental states, and emotions as well as an implicit theory of causation about how various forms of harm arise from certain experiences or “events” that violate persons’ moral beliefs and systems. (...) Our analysis makes these assumptions more explicit and subjects them to critical scrutiny. In so doing, we survey the current literature and identify basic features of how moral injuries are defined, how they are thought to occur, and the forms of treatment or repair that appear to be indicated. We caution that it matters how moral experience is characterized and argue that an alternative understanding of what is the moral in moral injury is important for overcoming critical challenges to the standard model. Moreover, recently evolving approaches to moral repair could be more consistent with an alternative model. Our concluding suggestion is that a more robust account of the nature of moral experience and its relations to self-identity and social experience more generally could advance understanding of the etiology of moral injury and promote rehabilitation. (shrink)

This book discusses both the philosophy of mathematics and of mathematics education. The first part is a critique of existing approaches and a new philosophy of mathematics. Chapters include: (1) "A Critique of Absolutist Philosophies of Mathematics," (2) "The Philosophy of Mathematics Reconceptualized," (3) "Social Constructivism as a Philosophy of Mathematics," (4) "Social Constructivism and Subjective Knowledge," and (5) "The Parallels of Social Constructivism." The second part of the book explores the philosophy of mathematics education and shows that many aspects (...) of mathematics education rest on underlying, usually implicit, philosophical assumptions. Making these assumptions explicit puts a critical tool into the hands of teachers and researchers. Chapters in this section are: (6) "Aims and Ideologies of Mathematics Education," (7) "Groups with Utilitarian Ideologies," (8) "Groups with Purist Ideologies," (9) "The Social Change Ideology of the Public Educators," (10) "Critical Review of Cockcroft and the National Curriculum," (11) "Hierarchy in Mathematics, Learning, Ability and Society," (12) "Mathematics, Values and Equal Opportunities," and (13) "Investigation, Problem Solving and Pedagogy." Each chapter contains notes. (Contains 654 references.) (MKR). (shrink)

In this essay we present three biases that make it difficult to represent farmer voices in a meaningful way. These biases are information bias, individual bias, and short-term bias. We illustrate these biases through two case studies. One is the case of Golden Rice in the Philippines and the other is the case of Bt cotton in India.

Religious exclusivism, or the idea that only one religion can be true, fuels hatred and conflict in the modern world. Certain objections to religious pluralism, together with associated defences of exclusivism are flawed. I defend a moderate religious pluralism, according to which the truth of one religion does not automatically imply the falsity of others. The thought that we can respect persons even when holding them mistaken strains credulity when we are dealing with religious convictions. Moreover, exclusivism is informed by (...) inadequate approaches to discourse about transcendence. The intentional-descriptivist approach to reference is not comprehensively adequate, and yet is assumed by some objections to pluralism. The irreducibly metaphorical character of much religious language means that differences between world religions can be more apparent than real. Approaches to religious education should embrace a moderate religious pluralism. (shrink)

Rather than a “logical assertion,” Whitehead described a proposition as a “lure for feeling” for a collectivity to come. The unique contributions in Propositions in the Making articulate the newest reaches of Whiteheadian propositions for a postmodern world.

If patriotism can thus be seen as an incentive or as an instigation even in such a recondite science as epistemology, how much more readily can it be seen to perform such functions in other studies more immediately or inextricably bound up with communal human life? I pass over instances that occur to me—for instance, the Victorian Jesuit, Father Hopkins, declaring that every good poem written by an Englishman was a blow struck for England--and profit instead, if I may, by (...) the presence among us of Edward Said. I do not know, and it is none of my business to know, what passport Said presents at the international frontier. But it is surely common knowledge among us that he has deep and feelingful and intimate allegiances to the state of Lebanon. Who of us has failed to connect this with his books Orientalism and The Question of Palestine? The point is that, having made this connection, none of us thinks the worse of Said. On the contrary, we recognize that he has a special stake in such topics and therefore speaks on them with a special authority. Unless I am mistaken, that stake and that authority are, in a perhaps extended sense, patriotic. And whatever our speculative objections to the idea and the principle of patriotism, in practice we recognize it and we honour it.What I am questioning, it will now be plain, is the principle of "disinterest." "The disinterested pursuit of knowledge"—it is what in our distinct disciplines all of us have paid lip-service to, and perhaps more than lip-service. But when we come right down to it, is it what we believe? The honest patriot declares an interest; and if we are wise, we take note of the declaration, making allowances and reserving doubts accordingly. But what are we to make of the scholar who declares no interest, who claims implicitly to be truly disinterested. Can we believe him? And if we cannot, what guidance do we have as to what reservations to make, what doubts to entertain? I am of one mind with my Marxist colleagues who, from a political position very far from mine, warn us to be especially suspicious of the scholar who claims to have no axe to grind. We, all of us, have axes to grind; the crucial distinction is between those who know this about themselves and those who don't.Let me make myself clear. When I urge that the terms "patriotism" and "patriotic" be reinstated in our discourse, and particularly in those forms of our discourse that may be called "interpretation," I do not imply that patriotism is a nobler, a more elevated instigation than sundry others, mostly ideological, of which we are more aware. The point is precisely that of these others we are aware because we share a vocabulary which acknowledges them, whereas "patriotic" has been banished from our vocabulary, and so the reality which the word represents is left out of our calculations. Let me admit for the sake of argument what I do not in fact believe-- that patriotism is a concept and a sentiment so besmirched by the unholy uses made of it that, if mankind is to survive, patriotism will have to be eradicated. Even if that were the case, it remains true that patriotic interest and incitement are very far from having been eradicated from the world that we in fact inhabit, and try to interpret, here and now; and if we try to work within a vocabulary that pretends otherwise, we condemn ourselves to producing interpretations that are drastically partial and perhaps disastrously misleading. The point is not whether patriotism is a good thing or a bad thing but simply that it is; it exists, as powerful factor which we all in our hearts acknowledge even as our vocabulary refuses to. And when we speak in this context of "the world," we certainly include in that world ourselves, who offer to interpret it. Every one of our interpretations is coloured by the fact that we, the several interpreters, are British or American, French or Italian or Russian or whatever. If we think otherwise, we deceive ourselves; and yet where, in any of our currently acceptable vocabularies, determined as all of them are by the glib rationalism of the Enlightenment, do we find that momentous fact about ourselves acknowledged? Where is it acknowledged, for instance, in the vocabulary of feminism that "woman," as conceived by an American writing about Italians, cannot help but be significantly different from "woman" as conceived by an Italian looking at Americans? Or again, an Italian woman may well, we must suppose, be an Italian patriot; but where, in the current vocabulary of feminists, is that dimension of her "woman-ness" allowed for? Let it be acknowledged only so as to be deplored; but let it in any event be acknowledged. At the moment, it isn't.Donald A. Davie, the distinguished poet, is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Vanderbilt University and honorary fellow of Saint Catharine's College, Cambridge and of Trinity College, Dublin. He has edited The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse, and his Collected Poems 1950-1970 appeared in 1972. His latest publications are Dissentient Voice and These the Companions; Recollections. (shrink)

Whitehead and Teilhard scholars imagine a philosophical and theological encounter between the two.

Through a collection of contributions from an international team of empirical researchers and philosophers, _New Philosophies of Learning_ signals the need for a sharper critical awareness of the possibilities and problems that the recent spate of innovative learning techniques presents. Explores some of the many contemporary innovations in approaches to learning, including neuroscience and the focus on learners’ well-being and happiness Debates the controversial approaches to categorising learners such as dyslexia Raises doubts about the preoccupation with quasi-mathematical scrutiny and the (...) neglect of ethical reflection about education Discusses the possible grounds for concern, without exaggerating their similarities or offering sweeping judgements Includes contributions from empirical researchers and philosophers, including Usha Goswami, Howard Gardner, Julian Elliott, David Bakhurst, John White and Christopher Winch. (shrink)

Epistemologists typically assume that the acquisition of knowledge from testimony is not threatened at the stage at which audiences interpret what proposition a speaker has asserted. Attention is instead typically paid to the epistemic status of a belief formed on the basis of testimony that it is assumed has the same content as the speaker’s assertion. Andrew Peet has pioneered an account of how linguistic context sensitivity can threaten the assumption. His account locates the threat in contexts in which (...) an audience’s evidence under-determines which proposition a speaker is asserting. I argue that Peet’s epistemic uncertainty account of the threat is mistaken and I propose an alternative. The alternative locates the threat in contexts that provide factors that give audiences a mistaken psychological certainty or confidence that a speaker has asserted a proposition she has not. (shrink)

Utopian Moments is an edited volume of essays with an exceptionally wide reach, covering 250 years of the utopian canon, from More's archetype to Le Guin's The Dispossessed. The editors, Miguel A. Ramiro Avilés and J. C. Davis, clearly favor the classics, or what Lyman Tower Sargent, in his contribution, calls "exemplars of the mainstream of utopian writing". All the usual suspects are here—Campanella, Bacon, Harrington, Fourier, Owen, Bellamy, Wells, and others—plus a few "wild cards" thrown in to keep (...) things interesting. True, similar projects have been done before. Claeys's excellent Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature and Claeys and Sargent's comprehensive Utopian Reader... (shrink)

Clouser and Gert’s 'A Critique of Principlism’ (1990) has ignited debate over the adequacy of substituting principlism for moral theory as a means for dealing with biomedical dilemmas. Clouser and Gert argue that this sort of substitution is not adequate to the task. I examine their argument in light of recent defences of principlism on this score, those of B. Andrew Lustig (1992), David Degrazia (1992), and Beauchamp and Childress (1994). I argue that both sides in the debate have (...) assumed differing conceptions of a moral theory that virtually guarantee their respective conclusions. These differing conceptions are motivated by antecedent epistemological commitments. The present debate over principlism is therefore inconclusive. Future discussion should focus on the underlying epistemological issues. (shrink)

A review of Stephen Davies's book, Musical Works and Performances.