This article investigates the issue of secondary school pupils asking questions. This is an important topic on which very little has been published to date. The article reviews the current literature, which almost exclusively reports the lack of student initiated, content related questioning in classrooms. A small study is described that challenges this view, finding a significantly greater level of student participation, a high percentage of inquiry driven questions and little reluctance on the part of pupils to participate actively in (...) lessons. However, when these questioning patterns, which appear to indicate exemplary lessons on paper, are examined in terms of pupil learning, it is found that large numbers of student questions can lead to severe disruption unless adequately controlled. For effective learning to take place, it is a vital that the learner has the opportunity to ask questions of the teacher. The vast bulk of the literature explores this topic through quantitative analysis of questioning patterns and suggested strategies for increasing the quality and frequency of pupil?s questions. This article reviews this research and explores the issue further through classroom observations, pupil questionnaires and interviews with teachers. The findings are compared with the current paradigm and the issue is discussed in terms of impact on pupil learning. (shrink)

Abstract:The term stakeholder is a powerful one. This is due, to a significant degree, to its conceptual breadth. The term means different things to different people and hence evokes praise or scorn from a wide variety of scholars and practitioners. Such breadth of interpretation, though one of stakeholder theory’s greatest strengths, is also one of its most prominent theoretical liabilities. The goal of the current paper is like that of a controlled burn that clears away some of the underbrush of (...) misinterpretation in the hope of denying easy fuel to the critical conflagration that would raze the theory. We aim to narrow its technical meaning for greater facility of use in management and organizational studies. By elaborating a number of common misinterpretations – critical and friendly – of the theory, we hope to render a stronger and more convincing theory as a starting place for future research. (shrink)

This volume will acquaint novice philosophers with one of the most important debates in twentieth-century philosophy, and will provide seasoned readers with a ...

We are all familiar with the phenomenon of a proposition seeming true. Many think that these seeming states can yield justified beliefs. Very few have seriously explored what these seeming states are. I argue that seeming states are not plausibly analyzed in terms of beliefs, partial beliefs, attractions to believe, or inclinations to believe. Given that the main candidates for analyzing seeming states are unsatisfactory, I argue for a brute view of seemings that treats seeming states as irreducible propositional attitudes.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

J. L. Schellenberg's argument from hiddenness against the existence of God is simple. The primary argument is as follows.The Main Argument from Hiddenness If God exists, then no one would be epistemically rational for not believing in God. Some people are epistemically rational for not believing in God. Therefore, God does not exist.However, much of the issue concerning this argument surrounds the support for premise. As many have noted, Schellenberg's first premise does not demand an undeniable, incontrovertible proof for God's (...) existence. He merely claims that God would provide evidence sufficient for rational belief, and presumably this would entail that the only people who do not believe are culpable for their nonbelief. Their nonbelief would be their own fault. (shrink)

Although death statutes permitting physicians to declare brain death are relatively uniform throughout the United States, academic debate persists over the equivalency of human death and brain death. Alan Shewmon showed that the formerly accepted integration rationale was conceptually incomplete by showing that brain-dead patients demonstrated a degree of integration. We provide a more complete rationale for the equivalency of human death and brain death by defending a deeper understanding of the organism as a whole and by using a novel (...) strategy with shared objectives to justify death determination criteria. Our OaaW account describes different types of OaaW, defining human death as the loss of status as a human OaaW. We defend human death as similar to nonhuman death in terms of wakefulness, but also distinct in terms of the sui generis properties, particularly conscious awareness. We thereby defend the equivalency of brain death and human death using a resulting neurocentric rationale. (shrink)

In the past thirty years environmental ethics has emerged as one of the most vibrant and exciting areas of applied philosophy. Several journals and hundreds of books testify to its growing importance inside and outside philosophical circles. But with all of this scholarly output, it is arguably the case that environmental ethics is not living up to its promise of providing a philosophical contribution to the resolution of environmental problems. This article surveys the current state of the field and offers (...) an alternative path for the future development of environmental ethics toward a more publicly engaged model of applied philosophy. (shrink)

The standard inferentialist approaches to modal logic tend to suffer from not being able to uniquely characterize the modal operators, require that introduction and elimination rules be interdefined, or rely on the introduction of possible-world like indexes into the object language itself. In this paper I introduce a hypersequent calculus that is flexible enough to capture many of the standard modal logics and does not suffer from the above problems. It is therefore an ideal candidate to underwrite an inferentialist theory (...) of meaning for modal operators. Here I treat specifically the modal logics K, D, T, S4, B, and S5. I show that the calculi are adequate for each set of models, and show that they meet a large set of criteria that are generally thought necessary for a calculus to underwrite a theory of meaning. (shrink)

In this book about metaphysics the author defends a realistic view of universals, characterizing the notion of universal by considering language and logic, the idea of possibility, hierarchies of universals, and causation. He argues that neither language nor logic is a reliable guide to the nature of reality and that basic universals are the fundamental type of universal and are central to causation. All assertions and predications about the natural world are ultimately founded on these basic universals. A distinction is (...) drawn between unified particulars and arbitrary particulars ; unified particulars are the terms of causal relations and thus the real constituents of the world. The world is not made up of events but of unified particulars and basic universals. (shrink)

In this paper I return to Hegel's dispute with Kant over the conceptual ordering of external and internal purposiveness to distinguish between two conceptions of teleology at play in the contemporary function debate. I begin by outlining the three main views in the debate (the etiological, causal role and organizational views). I argue that only the organizational view can maintain the capacity of function ascriptions both to explain the presence of a trait and to identify its contribution to a current (...) system, for it is the only view that considers teleology as a natural cause. To establish how teleology can be considered as a natural cause, advocates of the organizational view return to Kant's analysis of internal purposiveness. However, while Kant identifies the requirements that an object must meet to satisfy the demands of teleological judgment, I suggest that he denies that we can know whether they are truly met. I argue that Hegel's philosophy of nature is better equipped to determine how internal purposiveness can be considered as a natural cause, for it grounds organization in a form of purposiveness that is more fundamental than a designer's intention. (shrink)

This commentary critically examines a recent qualitative study, published in this issue of Neuroethics, on the attitudes of family caregivers toward evidence of covert consciousness in brain-injured patients.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that developments in transhumanist technologies may have upon human cultures, and to do so by exploring a potential debate between Habermas and the transhumanists. Transhumanists, such as Nick Bostrom, typically see the potential in genetic and other technologies for positively expanding and transcending human nature. In contrast, Habermas is a representative of those who are fearful of this technology, suggesting that it will compound the deleterious effects of the colonisation of (...) the lifeworld, further constraining human autonomy and undermining the meaningfulness of the lifeworld by expanding the technological control and manipulation of humanity. It will be argued that these opposed positions are grounded in fundamentally different understandings of the consequences of scientific and technological advance. On one level, the transhumanists remain confident that the lifeworld has within it the resources necessary to find meaning and purpose in a society deeply infused by genetic technology. Habermas disagrees. On another level, the difference is articulated by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, primarily by challenging what may be understood as a Baconian faith in science as a project for the domination of nature. While the transhumanists broadly embrace this faith, Habermas returns to something akin to Horkheimer and Adorno’s pessimistic scepticism. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between a deconstructivist method in science and technology studies and the more recent moves towards a reconstructivist engagement with science and science policy making. Drawing on examples from the author's own research, the article identifies three forms of engagement and their relative utility and limitations. The article argues that these are typical of STS work that seeks direct engagement with science policy making and which could form the basis for a more "serviceable STS" that retains (...) its critical and independent perspective on science. The paper concludes by arguing that the analysis has important implications for the ways in which STS expertise can articulate with science policy making. (shrink)

This paper defends a key aspect of the Peircean conception of truth—the idea that truth is in some sense epistemically-constrained. It does so by exploring parallels between Peirce’s epistemology of inquiry and that of Wittgenstein in On Certainty. The central argument defends a Peircean claim about truth by appeal to a view shared by Peirce and Wittgenstein about the structure of reasons. This view relies on the idea that certain claims have a special epistemic status, or function as what are (...) popularly called ‘hinge propositions’. (shrink)

Payoff dominance, a criterion for choosing between equilibrium points in games, is intuitively compelling, especially in matching games and other games of common interests, but it has not been justified from standard game-theoretic rationality assumptions. A psychological explanation of it is offered in terms of a form of reasoning that we call the Stackelberg heuristic in which players assume that their strategic thinking will be anticipated by their co-player(s). Two-person games are called Stackelberg-soluble if the players' strategies that maximize against (...) their co-players' best replies intersect in a Nash equilibrium. Proofs are given that every game of common interests is Stackelberg-soluble, that a Stackelberg solution is always a payoff-dominant outcome, and that in every game with multiple Nash equilibria a Stackelberg solution is a payoff-dominant equilibrium point. It is argued that the Stackelberg heuristic may be justified by evidentialist reasoning. (shrink)

In the early months of 2020, the deadly Covid-19 disease spread rapidly around the world. In response, national and regional governments implemented a range of emergency lockdown measures, curtailing citizens’ movements and greatly limiting economic activity. More recently, as restrictions begin to be loosened or lifted entirely, the use of so-called contact tracing apps has figured prominently in many jurisdictions’ plans to reopen society. Critics have questioned the utility of such technologies on a number of fronts, both practical and ethical. (...) However, little has been said about the ways in which the normative design choices of app developers, and the products that result therefrom, might contribute to ethical reflection and wider political debate. Drawing from scholarship in critical design and human–computer interaction, this paper examines the development of a QR code-based tracking app called Zwaai (‘Wave’ in Dutch), where its designers explicitly positioned the app as an alternative to the predominant Bluetooth and GPS-based approaches. Through analyzing these designers’ choices, this paper argues that QR code infrastructures can work to surface a set ofethical–political seams, two of which are discussed here—responsibilizationandnetworked (im)permanence—that more ‘seamless’ protocols like Bluetooth actively aim to bypass, and which may go otherwise unnoticed by existing ethical frameworks. (shrink)

The modern slavery literature engages with history in an extremely limited fashion. Our paper demonstrates to the utility of historical research to modern slavery researchers by explaining the rise and fall of the ethics-driven market category of “free-grown sugar” in nineteenth-century Britain. In the first decades of the century, the market category of “free-grown sugar” enabled consumers who were opposed to slavery to pay a premium for a more ethical product. After circa 1840, this market category disappeared, even though considerable (...) quantities of slave-grown sugar continued to arrive into the UK. We explain the disappearance of the market category. Our paper contributes to the on-going debates about slavery in management by historicizing and thus problematizing the concept of “slavery”. The paper challenges those modern slavery scholars who argue that lack of consumer knowledge about product provenance is the main barrier to the elimination of slavery from today’s international supply chains. The historical research presented in this paper suggests that consumer indifference, rather than simply ignorance, may be the more fundamental problem. The paper challenges the optimistic historical metanarrative that pervades much of the research on ethical consumption. It highlights the fragility of ethics-driven market categories, offering lessons for researchers and practitioners seeking to tackle modern slavery. (shrink)

Volume 52, Issue 8, July 2020, Page 811-815.

In this superbly argued and deeply engaging book, Andrew Linzey not only shows that animals can and do suffer but also that many of the justifications for inflicting animal suffering in fact provide grounds for protecting them.

Recent work on emergence in physics has focused on the presence of singular limit relations between basal and upper-level theories as a criterion for emergence. However, over-emphasis on the role of singular limit relations has somewhat obscured what it means to say that a property or behaviour is emergent. This paper argues that singular limits are not central to emergence and develops an alternative account of emergence in terms of the failure of basal explainability. As a consequence, emergence and reduction, (...) long held to be two sides of the same coin in the emergentist tradition, are largely decoupled. (shrink)

Conflicting answers to the question of what principles of justice are for may generate very different ways of theorizing about justice. Indeed divergent answers to it are at the heart of G. A. Cohen's disagreement with John Rawls. Cohen thinks that the roots of this disagreement lie in the constructivist method that Rawls employs, which mistakenly treats the principles that emerge from a procedure that involves factual assumptions as ultimate principles of justice. But I argue that even if Rawls were (...) to abandon his constructivism, and to accept Cohen's argument that ultimate principles of justice are not grounded directly in any facts, their divergent views concerning the proper role of principles of justice would lead them to different conclusions. I contend that even if ultimate principles of justice are not directly grounded in any facts, the role that principles of justice are needed to play may mean that their justification depends upon facts about what is feasible and facts about what is burdensome to people. Contrary to what Cohen maintains, being dependent on the facts in this manner does not preclude a principle from being ultimate; nor do principles which have this sort of dependence on the facts necessarily combine justice with other values in a way that must lead to conflation. (shrink)

This volume brings together original research that throws new light on how standards of behavior for medical practitioners are articulated in different religious, social, and political contexts.

Violent conflict between individuals and groups was as common in the ancient world as it has been in more recent history. Detested in theory, it nevertheless became as frequent as war between sovereign states. The importance of such ‘_stasis_’ was recognised by political thinkers of the time, especially Thucydides and Aristotle, both of whom tried to analyse its causes. Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in the Classical City, first published in 1982, gives a conspectus of _stasis_ in the societies of (...) Greek antiquity, and traces the development of civil strife as city-states grew in political, social and economic sophistication. Aristocratic rivalry, tensions between rich and poor, imperialism and constitutional crisis are all discussed, while special consideration is given to the attitudes of the participants and the theoretical explanations offered at the time. In conclusion, civil strife in the ancient world is compared to more recent conflicts, both domestic and international. (shrink)

A new introduction to Kant, guiding the student through the key concepts of his work by examining the overall development of his ideas.

One of the aspects of consciousness deserving of study is what might be called its subjective unity - the way in which, though conscious experience moves from object to object, and can be said to have distinct ‘states', it nevertheless in some sense apparently forms a singular flux divided only by periods of unconsciousness. The work of William James provides a valuable, and rather unique, source of analysis of this feature of consciousness; however, in my opinion, this component of James’ (...) theory of the mind has so far gone under-emphasized in the scholarly literature. This paper undertakes some philosophical geography, trying to draw out and elucidate some of the relevant ideas from James’ corpus, and also subjects those ideas to some analysis to try and assist in judgements of their current importance. (shrink)