The varied chapters of this book seek to capture the complexities of teaching and learning in today's schools, and they share an interest in exploring the influences of knowledge construction in the moment and over time. Teaching and learning are human processes, interrelated and dynamic. We assembled this collection to unpack what it means to teach and to learn, teasing out some of the implications and challenges of such complicated educational processes that are often misconstrued as causal or linear. As (...) educators currently residing in the United States, we find this a particularly pressing agenda, given the current focus on common core standards and reducing teaching and learning to conceptual and pedagogical stepby-step procedures. Our primary concern in putting together this book was to provide a conceptual and political foundation from which to construct and defend understandings and practices of teaching and learning that embody the complexity of educational endeavors and relationships. The isolation of teaching from learning, and the othering of both teachers and students, one from the other, suggests that knowledge is synonymous with information. This book challenges such assumptions. The project underlying this text can be seen as a means of rethinking how teachers' and students' perspectives of practice and curriculum influence what learning opportunities are provided to students. Chapters written by established and new thinkers in the field of education demonstrate the ways in which teachers reformulate relationships between teaching and learning in school settings. Our second objective is to examine local constructions of knowledge over time and how those constructions are consequential for teacher and student learning. By examining patterns of practice and processes of knowledge construction in elementary, secondary, and undergraduate classrooms, the authors of these chapters lay a foundation for examining commonalities and differences in the construction of knowledge and practices across educational levels, disciplines, and in-school and outof-school settings. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Perspectives on the Unity and Integration of Knowledge Garth Benson, Ronald Glasberg & Bryant Griffith Intercultural Communication: pragmatics, genealogy, deconstruction Robert Young.

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes, (...) Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the relation between two important metaphysical notions, ‘truthmaking’ and ‘grounding’. I begin by considering various ways in which truthmaking could be explicated in terms of grounding, noting both strengths and weaknesses of these analyses. I go on to articulate a problem for any attempt to analyze truthmaking in terms of a generic and primitive notion of grounding based on differences we find among examples of grounding. Finally, I outline a more complex view of how truthmaking (...) and grounding could relate. On the view explored, truthmaking is a species of grounding differentiated from other species of grounding by the unique form of dependence it involves. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to make headway on a metaphysics of social construction. In recent work, I’ve argued that social construction should be understood in terms of metaphysical grounding. However, I agree with grounding skeptics like Wilson that bare claims about what grounds what are insufficient for capturing, with fine enough grain, metaphysical dependence structures. To that end, I develop a view on which the social construction of human social kinds is a kind of realization relation. Social kinds, (...) I argue, are multiply realizable kinds. I depart from the Wilson by further arguing that an appeal to grounding is not otiose when it comes to social construction. Social construction, I claim, belongs to the “big-G” Grounding genus, but it is the specific “small-g” relation of realization at work in cases of human kind social construction. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against Peter van Inwagen’s claim (in “Free Will Remains a Mystery”), that agent-causal views of free will could do nothing to solve the problem of free will (specifically, the problem of chanciness). After explaining van Inwagen’s argument, I argue that he does not consider all possible manifestations of the agent-causal position. More importantly, I claim that, in any case, van Inwagen appears to have mischaracterized the problem in some crucial ways. Once we are clear on (...) the true nature of the problem of chanciness, agent-causal views do much to eradicate it. (shrink)

A prominent way of explaining how race is socially constructed appeals to social positions and social structures. On this view, the construction of a person’s race is understood in terms of the person occupying a certain social position in a social structure. The aim of this paper is to give a metaphysically perspicuous account of this form of race construction. Analogous to functionalism about mental states, I develop an account of a ‘race structure’ in which various races (Black, White, Asian, (...) etc.) are functionally defined social positions. Individual persons occupy these social positions by ‘playing the role’ characteristic of those positions. The properties by which a person plays a race role, are the realizers for one’s race. I characterize the social construction of a person’s race in terms of a realization relation that satisfies a ‘subset’ condition on the social powers of raced persons. Races, on this view, are functionally defined, multiply realizable social kinds. The final section of the paper outlines some explanatory benefits of the account. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new approach to the theory of truthmaking. According to this approach, there are multiple forms of truthmaking. Here, I characterize and motivate a specific version of this approach, which I call a ‘Pluralist Theory of Truthmaking.’ It is suggested that truthmaking is a plural, variegated phenomenon wherein different kinds of truths, e.g., positive truths, negative truths, counterfactual truths, etc., are made true in different ways. While the paper only aims to lay the groundwork for a Pluralist (...) Theory of Truthmaking, I show how the theory can be applied to positive and negative truths. The upshot of this application is that truthmaking pluralism allows us to provide negative truths with ‘non-suspicious’ truthmakers. Finally, it is argued that Truthmaker Maximalists would do well to endorse truthmaking pluralism, as it offers a new strategy for upholding Maximalism while diminishing controversial ontological commitments. (shrink)

Identifying plausible truthmakers for negative truths has been a serious and perennial problem for truthmaker theory. I argue here that negative truths are indeed made true but not in the way that positive truths are. I rely on a distinction between “existence-independence” and “variation-independence” drawn by Hoffman and Horvath to characterize the unique form of dependence negative truths exhibit on reality. The notion of variation-independence is then used to motivate a principle of truthmaking for contingent negative truths.

This paper defends a new version of truthmaker non-maximalism. The central feature of the view is the notion of a default truth-value. I offer a novel explanation for default truth-values and use it to motivate a general approach to the relation between truth-value and ontology, which I call truth-value-maker theory. According to this view, some propositions are false unless made true, whereas others are true unless made false. A consequence of the theory is that negative existential truths need no truthmakers (...) and that positive existential falsehoods need no falsemakers. (shrink)

This article considers three recent attempts by David Armstrong, Ross Cameron, and Jonathan Schaffer to provide truthmakers for negative existential truths. It is argued that none of the proposed truthmakers are up to the task of making any negative existential truth true and, it will turn out, for the same reason.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this commentary piece, I argue that Asay’s accounts of truth and truthmaking in A Theory of Truthmaking give no role to the idea that truth depends on being. In fact, some of the positions taken in the book are in tension with this idea that has been central to truthmaker theory. I consider how three aspects of Asay’s account relate to the idea that truth depends on being.

Ásta’s Categories We Live By is a superb addition to the literature on social metaphysics. In it she offers a powerful framework for understanding the creation and maintenance of social categories. In this commentary piece, I want to draw attention to Ásta’s reliance on explanatory individualism – the view that the social world is best explained by the actions and attitudes of individuals. I argue that this reliance makes it difficult for Ásta to explain how many social categories are maintained (...) and why certain categories are reliably available to us and so resistant to change. These explanatory deficiencies could be overcome, I argue, by eschewing explanatory individualism and positing social structures to figure in structural explanations of the maintenance and availability of social categories. (shrink)

Intertwined with the celebration of Athenian democratic institutions, we find in the "Oresteia" another chain of interactions, in which the elite families of Argos, Phokis, Athens, and even Mount Olympos employ the traditional aristocratic relationships of xenia and hetaireia to renegotiate their own status within-and at the pinnacle of-the civic order, and thereby guarantee the renewed prosperity of their respective communities. The capture of Troy is the result of a joint venture by the Atreidai and the Olympian "family" . Although (...) Agamemnon falls victim to his own mishandling of aristocratic privilege, his son is raised by doryxenoi in Phokis , a relationship which is mirrored by that with the Olympian "allies," Hermes and Apollo. Orestes' recovery of his father's position is thus shown to depend upon a network of "guest-friends" and "sworn-comrades," reinforced by the traditional language of oaths and reciprocal loyalty. In the Eumenides, the alliance between the Olympian and Argive royal families is re-invoked as the basis both for Athena's protection of Orestes, and finally for Zeus' concern for his daughter's Athenian dependents. In contrast to this successful "networking," and the resultant benefits that trickle down to the citizens of Argos and Athens, stand the seditious oaths and perverted "comradeship" of Aigisthos and Klytaimestra; likewise, the Erinyes are unable to draw on equivalent claims of pedigree or xenia to those enjoyed by Orestes and Apollo. Like all Greek tragedies, the "Oresteia" presents the action through constantly shifting viewpoints, those of aristocrats and commoners, leaders and led, while the propriety of this hierarchy itself is never questioned. And although the action moves from monarchical Argos to an incipiently democratic Athens, paradoxically we hear less and less about "ordinary," lower-class citizens as the trilogy progresses. Thus, at the same time that the trilogy reinforces the sense of collective survival and civic values , it also suggests that these can be maintained only through the proper interventions of their traditional leaders. Aeschylus' plays were composed during a time when the Athenian democracy was still developing, and elite leadership and patronage were still taken for granted. Attic tragedy and the City Dionysia may be seen as a site of negotiation between rival ideologies within the polis, wherein a kind of "solidarity without consensus" is achieved. Written and staged by the elite under license from the demos, the dramas play out dangerous stories of royal risk-taking, crime, glory, and suffering, in such a way as to reassure the citizen audience simultaneously of their own collective invulnerability, and of the unique value of their leading families. (shrink)

What role do fables play in Cartesian method and psychology? By looking at Descartes’ use of fables, James Griffith suggests there is a fabular logic that runs to the heart of Descartes’ philosophy. First focusing on The World and the Discourse on Method, this volume shows that by writing in fable form, Descartes allowed his readers to break from Scholastic methods of philosophizing. With this fable-structure or -logic in mind, the book reexamines the relationship between analysis, synthesis, and inexact (...) sciences; between metaphysics and ethico-political life; and between the imagination, the will, and the passions. (shrink)

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that aims to give a theoretical account of what there is and what it is like. Social justice movements seek to bring about justice in a society by changing policy, law, practice, and culture. Evidently, these activities are very different from one another. The goal of this article is to identify some positive connections between recent work in metaphysics and social justice movements. I outline three ways in which metaphysical work on social reality can (...) make a contribution to movements seeking social justice, viz., (1) by providing basic categories and concepts useful for clarifying and defending claims made by social justice movements; (2) by offering accounts of the natures of social categories, structures, and institutions that these movements seek to change; and (3) by contributing to “unmasking” or “debunking” projects that reveal putatively natural arrange- ments to be social in nature and hence subject to moral critique, alteration, and possibly eradication. (shrink)

A recent presentist strategy has been to deny that truths about the past need presently existing truthmakers. These presentists do not deny that such truths need grounding; they hold that each truth about the past is true because of how the world was, not how it is. This paper argues that this position faces two problems, one of which can be overcome by adopting a certain view of the property of truth for propositions about the past. The second problem cannot (...) be solved. The upshot is that this form of presentism is not a theory of truthmaking for propositions about the past. Rather, it is a theory about why such truths need no present grounding that is motivated by a novel theory of truth. (shrink)

Managing grand challenges demands a relational leader who encourages collaboration, coordination, and trust with various stakeholders. Although leaders appear to play a critical role in addressing grand challenges, relatively little research exists about the factors that inform stakeholder perceptions of leaders during a grand challenge. To address this limitation, we integrate implicit leadership theory and gender role theory to consider stakeholders’ gender prescriptive expectations when evaluating leader effectiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic. We theorize that stakeholders advantage female leaders based on (...) mental schemas of what is required in a pandemic—relational leadership—and stakeholders’ prescriptive expectations of female leaders as more relational. Using a laboratory experiment, we find that female leaders are perceived as more relational, and hence, more effective than their male counterparts. Our findings advance scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of strategic leadership, stakeholder management, and grand challenges. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo examine health and social care professionals’ understanding of the legislation governing research involving adults lacking mental capacity in England and Wales.MethodsA cross-sectional online survey was conducted using a series of vignettes. Participants were asked to select the legally authorised decision-maker in each scenario and provide supporting reasons. Responses were compared with existing legal frameworks and analysed according to their level of concordance.ResultsOne hundred and twenty-seven professionals participated. Levels of discordance between responses and the legal frameworks were high across all (...) five scenarios. Nearly half of the participants provided responses that were discordant in all scenarios. Only two participants provided concordant responses across all five scenarios.DiscussionParticipants demonstrated a lack of knowledge about the legal frameworks, the locus of authority and the legal basis for decision-making. The findings raise concern about the accessibility of research for those who lack capacity, the ability to conduct research involving such groups and the impact on the evidence base for their care.ConclusionThis is the first study to examine health and social care professionals’ knowledge and understanding of the dual legal frameworks in the UK. Health and social care professionals’ understanding and attitudes towards research involving adults with incapacity may warrant further in-depth exploration. The findings from this survey suggest that greater training and education is required. (shrink)

First published in 2000, this translation of one of the great works of Western political thought is based on the assumption that when Plato chose the dialogue form for his writing, he intended these dialogues to sound like conversations - although conversations of a philosophical sort. In addition to a vivid, dignified and accurate rendition of Plato's text, the student and general reader will find many aids to comprehension in this volume: an introduction that assesses the cultural background to the (...) Republic, its place within political philosophy, and its general argument; succinct notes in the body of the text; an analytical summary of the work's content; a full glossary of proper names; a chronology of important events; and a guide to further reading. The result is an accomplished and accessible edition of this seminal work, suitable for philosophers and classicists as well as historians of political thought at all levels. (shrink)

The ethical considerations of insider trading have been widely debated in the academic literature :171–182, 1990). In 2013, the STOCK Act, which was initially passed to mitigate insider trading by government officials, was quickly and unexpectedly amended to allow certain government employees to withhold their financial information. To identify and quantify the potential costs placed on investors by non-corporate insider traders, we use the unusual circumstances surrounding this amendment. For a sample of stocks most held by members of Congress, we (...) find that, relative to control stocks, liquidity significantly worsens and volatility increases during the post-amendment period. Our results highlight the costs that are incurred by investors in the presence of non-corporate insider trading. These findings call for a stronger development of an ethical framework that justifies the restriction of all types of insider trading. (shrink)

This essay examines the question of whether language, knowledge, and truth are possible in a world of relativism and flux, developing along a line of comparison between the Cratylus and Theaetetus of Plato on the one hand, and the Zhuangzi 莊子 of the Daoist philosophical tradition on the other. Against Plato’s image of “leaky pots” that symbolizes the impossibility of language in a state of flux, the Zhuangzi introduces “spillover-goblet words” that resist the language of necessity and essence by continually (...) emptying themselves out, only to be filled again with the always contingent. To put the ideas and metaphors of each of these perspectives into conversation, the essay drafts a comparison between two manners of animal classification, with classical taxonomy aligning with Platonism on the one hand, and the evolutionary science of “cladistics”—taxonomy based on ancestry—allying with Daoism on the other. In the end, it is Plato who is left holding his pejorative “leaky pots,” as under conditions of essential change it is putatively unchanging categories themselves that are shown to create the worst problems for knowledge. (shrink)

Recent discussions among lawyers, philosophers, policy researchers and athletes have focused on the potential threat to privacy posed by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) whereabouts requirements. These requirements demand, among other things, that all elite athletes file their whereabouts information for the subsequent quarter on a quarterly basis and comprise data for one hour of each day when the athlete will be available and accessible for no advance notice testing at a specified location of their choosing. Failure to file one’s (...) whereabouts, or the non-availability for testing at said location on three occasions within any 18-month period constitutes an anti-doping rule violation that is equivalent to testing positive to a banned substance, and may lead to a suspension of the athlete for a time period of between one and two years. We critically explore the extent to which WADA’s whereabouts requirements are in tension with existing legislation on privacy, with respect to UK athletes, who are simultaneously protected by UK domestic and EU law. Both UK domestic and EU law are subject to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 8, which establishes a right to “respect for private and family life, home and correspondence”. We critically discuss the centrality of the whereabouts requirements in relation to WADA’s aims, and the adoption and implementation of its whereabouts rules. We conclude that as WADA’s whereabouts requirements appear to be in breach of an elite athlete’s rights under European workers’ rights, health & safety and data protection law they are also, therefore, in conflict with Article 8 of the ECHR and the UK Human Rights Act 1998. We call for specific amendments that cater for the exceptional case of elite sports labour if the WADA requirements are to be considered legitimate. (shrink)

This paper concerns the ontological status of ontological categories (e.g., universal, particular, substance, property, relation, kind, object, etc.). I consider E.J. Lowe’s argument for the view that ontological categories do not exist and point out that it has some undesirable consequences for his realist ontology. I go on to argue that the main premise in Lowe’s argument—that ontological categories cannot be categorized—is false and then develop a conception of ontological categories as formal ontological kinds.

It is an undeniable empirical fact that a human fetus is a member of the species homo sapiens from the moment of conception. There is thus an important sense in which it is a human being in itself, and not simply part of a pregnant woman’s body, despite what defenders of abortion on demand might want us to think. It is also reasonable to suppose that all human beings, and thus human fetuses, are persons, with all that entails, but this (...) is a metaphysical presupposition as opposed to an empirical fact, and is thus contentious. It is argued, however, that this should be of little comfort to the defenders of abortion, because the mere fact that human fetuses have an inherent tendency to become persons is sufficient reason to confer a moral status upon them, which renders abortion morally problematic at best. (shrink)

In Eum. 1028–9 the Furies mark their transformation into Eumenides by donning red robes over their black costumes in imitation of the robes worn in the Panathenaea by metics . Greek epic was sensitive to the symbolic value of clothing and Aeschylus had experimented in the Persians with the greater scope that drama offered for clothing-symbolism. Scholars have detected a wealth of associations in the Furies' robing-scene: this culmination of the trilogy echoes the red carpet upon which Agamemnon walks to (...) his death in the first play, which is actually referred to as ‘garments’ , and the net in which Agamemnon is caught , which is brought on stage in the middle play . Another series of stage-actions of equal importance in preparing for the robing of the Furies has not been so well explained. (shrink)

The truth about line 70 was public property as far back as Plathner, who is quoted by Ruperti , but modern editors shy away from it and, with a perverse unanimity, print the accusative rubetam. Not only must viro then be taken with sitiente as an ablative absolute, in spite of the proximity of porrectura, but there is no internal coherence in the relative clause. R. Beer put his finger on the nerve of the matter: ‘possumus quidem miscere vinum, miscere (...) venenum, sed si mulier vinum porrigit interea venenum miscet, non vino immiscet, nihil inest periculi viro.’ All is resolved once the proper force of sitiente is recognized: it qualifies rubeta and means sitim faciente, ‘parching’. (shrink)

Using the scientific investigation of the Shroud of Turin as an extended example, it is argued that miracles are best understood not as violations of natural law, but as scientifically inexplicable events. It is then argued that even though we can imagine circumstances in which science itself might provide us with good grounds for believing that an event is scientifically inexplicable, these grounds would at best provide us with circumstantial evidence that the event was miraculous, and would in any case (...) be inconclusive. (shrink)

This article reveals three aspects of victimhood in Bataille’s reading of Sade (of the other, of the self, and Sade’s language) and relates them to some of Bataille’s metaphysical and political notions: the impossible, the general and the restricted economy, sovereignty, and transgression. Doing so shows a progressive simplification of possibilities for transgression from the pre-Christian world to that of popular sovereignty, i.e., the sovereignty of the crowd, the latter leaving open one avenue for transgression: Sadean victimhood. The article then (...) applies these aspects to the pamphlet in Sade’s Philosophy in the Boudoir, “Frenchmen, Some More Effort If You Wish to Become Republicans,” in relation to a contemporaneous document of popular sovereignty, the preamble to the Constitution of the Year III, titled “Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen.” Attending to the aspects of Sadean victimhood in “Effort” shows that its system’s very impossibility makes it the Declaration’s logical completion. Finally, that impossibility is revealed as the sovereignty of the masses, distinct from that of the crowd. (shrink)

This paper looks at the themes of nature, humanity, and military and industrial development in the nineteenth century American painter Winslow Homer through the lens of the Hegelian theory of art. Robert Pippin's After the Beautiful has recently put the Hegelian framework to very fruitful use in understanding pictorial modernism. This study of Homer follows a similar approach but argues that Homer's canvases represent a development in the modern spirt which, in many ways, goes beyond the canvases of Manet – (...) a very tight modernist contemporary of Homer's. Homer communicates a presentment of the immense and, in certain profound respects, horrifying power of humanity's growing industrialization. I trace the development of this idea over the course of his career, from this early Civil War canvases to his final seascapes and argue that an understanding of Homer's work is important for understanding the modern spirit of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (shrink)

Higher order cognitive processes, including ethical decision making (EDM), are influenced by the experiencing of discrete emotions. Recent research highlights the negative influence one such emotion, anger, has on EDM and its underlying processes. The mechanism, however, by which anger disrupts the EDM has not been investigated. The current study sought to discover whether cognitive appraisals of an emotion-evoking event are the driving mechanisms behind the influence of anger on EDM. One primary (goal obstacle) and one secondary (certainty) appraisal of (...) anger were examined. Study results suggest that appraisals of certainty are the driving mechanism behind the negative relationship between anger and EDM. Certainty appraisals led to less application of EDM-promoting strategies and more unethical social motives. Findings further highlight the value of investigating appraisals of emotional events, given their cognitive nature, for their potential effects on cognitive operations, such as EDM. Future directions and implications are discussed. (shrink)

Hobbes and Butler both conjure images of an abandoned infant in their respective discussions of vulnerability. Leviathan uses this image to discuss original dominion, or natural maternal right over the child, while for Butler rights discourse produces fantasies of invulnerability that derealize other lives. However, Hobbes’s infant in nature has no rights and can only consent to being nourished. Only when able to nourish itself can it claim rights to transfer through the covenant producing a fantasy of individual invulnerability. Vulnerability (...) in the state of nature and the com- monwealth’s fantasy of invulnerability are together a counter-fantasy to the fantasies of invulnerability of Hobbes’s time, through heaven or eternal glory. In question is whether Butler, in her reimagining of community, is, like Hobbes, producing a fantasy, but a meta-fantasy that community can be taken as fantasy without derealizing the fantastic or that fantasizes an honesty about its being fantasy. (shrink)