Does science have a place when it comes to making public policy? The answer might not be as simple as many people think. Ideally, scientists discover facts, and those facts inform policy. But policy undermines the open-ended nature of scientific inquiry, and scientists end up representing an agenda rather than presenting objective truths to be used to make decisions that impact the public. Through a variety of perspectives, this volume explores who wins and who loses when science and politics mix.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Elizabeth Anscombe, long known as a student, friend and translator of Wittgenstein, was herself one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. No Morality, No Self examines her two best-known papers, in which she advanced her most amazing theses. In 'Modern Moral Philosophy', she claimed that the term moral, understood as picking out a special, sui generis category, is literally senseless and should therefore be abandoned. In 'The First Person', she maintained that (...) the word 'I' is not a referring expression: in other words, its function in the language is not to pick out the speaker, or 'the self' - or any entity whatsoever. Both papers are considered influential, and are frequently cited; but their main claims, and many of their arguments, have been widely misunderstood. In this book James Doyle shows that once various errors of interpretation have been cleared away, the claims can be seen to be far more plausible, and the arguments far more compelling, than even her defenders have realized. Philosophers often seek attention by making startling claims which are subsequently revealed as little more than commonplaces wrapped in hyperbole. Doyle's book makes it clear that here, in her greatest papers, Anscombe achieves something vanishingly rare in philosophy: a persuasive case for genuinely unsettling and profound conclusions. The two lines of argument, seemingly so disparate, are also shown to be connected by Anscombe's deep opposition to the Cartesian picture of the mind.--. (shrink)

_This practical and forward-focused book presents a framework that uses social infrastructure to produce effective and inclusive professional development options in education._ Although technology has increased our capacity for social networking both in the digital space and face-to-face, Kira J. Baker-Doyle contends that most professional development opportunities for educators are still fundamentally asocial. She calls for the adoption of humanizing network practices to create meaningful continuing education experiences that leverage the collective knowledge, expertise, and social capital of educators to (...) spark educational change. Baker-Doyle shows how the critical network literacy (CNL) framework overlays critical theory, multiliteracies theory, and social network theory in a way that encourages critical reflection and collaboration among participants. She draws from sources including empirical studies of teacher educators and teacher activists, meta-analytical studies of social network research in education, and professional experience with collective organizing efforts, to detail the many benefits of cultivating CNL in educational spaces. Baker-Doyle provides evidence of how the framework’s practices and protocols can increase transparency, improve representation, and incorporate affirming and restorative discourse. Her work demonstrates how CNL helps create environments that honor teachers’ social identities, their social networks, and the broader social context in which they work. This thought-provoking book is filled with exercises that reinforce social competencies, questions that prompt dialogue and understanding, and real-world examples that underscore the framework's relevance to key educational practices. The generous guidance offered in _Critical Network Literacy_ can be used as a launching point to promote innovation and leadership in teaching. (shrink)

In epistemology and philosophy of science, there has been substantial debate about truth’s relation to understanding. “Non-factivists” hold that radical departures from the truth are not always barriers to understanding; “quasi-factivists” demur. The most discussed example concerns scientists’ use of idealizations in certain derivations of the ideal gas law from statistical mechanics. Yet, these discussions have suffered from confusions about the relevant science, as well as conceptual confusions. Addressing this example, we shall argue that the ideal gas law is best (...) interpreted as favoring non-factivism about understanding, but only after delving a bit deeper into the statistical mechanics that has informed these arguments and stating more precisely what non-factivism entails. Along the way, we indicate where earlier discussions have gone astray, and highlight how a naturalistic approach furnishes more nuanced normative theses about the interaction of rationality, understanding, and epistemic value. (shrink)

A student of Étienne Gilson and Joseph Owens, John P. Doyle taught medieval and Scholastic philosophy at Saint Louis University for forty years. Of continuing interest to Doyle has been the thought of Francisco Suárez, S.J. On this topic Doyle has published over a dozen articles and four English translations of portions of Suárez's key works. This volume celebrates the life and career of one of those rare kinds of scholars who has mastered an entire field of (...) inquiry and thought. (shrink)

I argue that there is nothing wrong with perfect voyeurism , covert watching or listening that is neither discovered nor publicized. After a brief discussion of privacy I present attempts from Stanley Benn, Daniel Nathan, and James Moor to show that the act is wrong. I argue that these authors fail to make their case. However, I maintain that, if detected or publicized, voyeurism can do grave harm and to that extent should be severely punished. I conclude with some thoughts (...) on the stubborn intuition that perfect voyeurism is wrong despite the absence of harm. (shrink)

Background: Moral distress is an important and well-studied phenomenon among nurses and other healthcare providers, yet the conceptualization of parental moral distress remains unclear. Objective: The objective of this dimensional analysis was to describe the nature of family moral distress in serious pediatric illness. Design and methods: A dimensional analysis of articles retrieved from a librarian-assisted systematic review of Scopus, CINAHL, and PsychInfo was conducted, focusing on how children, parents, other family members, and healthcare providers describe parental moral distress, both (...) explicitly through writings on parental moral experience and implicitly through writings on parental involvement in distressing aspects of the child’s serious illness. Ethical considerations: To promote child and family best interest and minimize harm, a nuanced understanding of the moral, existential, emotional, and spiritual impact of serious pediatric illness is needed. The cases used in this dimensional analysis come from the first author’s IRB approved study at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and subsequent published studies; or have been adapted from the literature and the authors’ clinical experiences. Findings: Three dimensions emerged from the literature surrounding parent moral distress: an intrapersonal dimension, an interpersonal dimension, and a spiritual/existential dimension. The overarching theme is that parents experience relational solace and distress because of the impact of their child’s illness on relationships with themselves, their children, family, healthcare providers, their surrounding communities, and society. Discussion: Elucidating this concept can help nurses and other professionals understand, mitigate, or eliminate antecedents to parental moral distress. We discuss how this model can facilitate future empirical and conceptual bioethics research, as well as inform the manner in which healthcare providers engage, collaborate with, and care for families during serious pediatric illness. Conclusion: Parent moral distress is an important and complex phenomenon that requires further theoretical and empirical investigation. We provide an integrated definition and dimensional schematic model that may serve as a starting point for future research and dialogue. (shrink)

French political philosophy has experienced a renewal over the last twenty years. One of its leading projects is Marcel Gauchet’s reflection on democracy and religion. This project situates itself within the context of the French debate on modernity and autonomy launched by the work of Cornelius Castoriadis. Gauchet’s work makes a significant contribution to this debate by building on the pioneering work of Lefort on the political self-instituting capacity of modern societies and the associated shift from religion to ideology. It (...) thus explores the centrality of the notion of sovereignty in the advent of liberal democracy and conducts this reflection within an overall discussion of the role played by Christianity in the genesis of European modernity. It elaborates an anthropology of modernity which explores the relationship between individualism and democracy and redefines modernity as a project of sovereignty which aims at creating a radically new society, the society of individuals. (shrink)

Annotation Scholars of medieval scholastic philosophy as well as those who study semiotics will appreciate this side-by-side translation, with introduction, by Doyle (Saint Louis U.) of a late 16th-early 17th century Jesuit text. The text (its name is taken from the U. of Coimbra, in Portugal, where the authors taught) contains commentaries on Aristotle, as part of a course in philosophy, particularly logic. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

This is an empirical phenomenological interview study into the experiences of professional actors as they create and perform roles for the stage. Prior research was inadequate for capturing actors’ changing life worlds over time. Analyzing the interviews using the descriptive phenomenological method yielded general structural descriptions and pointed to the relevance of Schütz’s description of multiple realities. Being cast in a role changes the pace and goals of actors’ everyday worlds and leads the actors intermittently and with intention to enter (...) other realities—fictional, theoretical, and/or pictorial. A province unique to acting is the drama world in which the actors live incarnate as their characters. The drama world is infused pre-reflectively with discoveries from other provinces of meaning, unfolds spontaneously, and, in performance, has the audience as horizon. The drama world and the experiences that give rise to it provide new material for comparative phenomenological analysis of various forms of imagining. (shrink)

This paper motivates a constraint on how to explain the “sense of agency” for conscious thinking. It argues that a prominent model fails to satisfy the constraint before sketching an alternative that does. On the alternative, punctate acts of conscious thinking, such as episodes of inner speech, are recognizable as our deeds because they are recognizable as parts of complex cognitive activities, which we know non-observationally in virtue of holding intentions to perform them.

This essay provides a subtly new reading of Frantz Fanon's Peau noire, masques blancs through a re-examination of one of its key terms: noirceur, or ‘blackness’. Whi...

At the center of much contemporary work on self-knowledge of our attitudes is a debate between Agentialists and Empiricists. Empiricists hold that first-person knowledge of one’s own attitudes possesses a broadly empirical basis, such as observation or inference. Agentialists insist that an account of self-knowledge must make sense of the intimate connection between knowing one’s attitudes and actively forming them in response to reasons. But it is plausible to suppose that a psychologically realistic account of self-knowledge will emphasize both active (...) and passive elements. Focusing on the idea that we form self-ascriptions of belief on the basis of active deliberation, this paper outlines such a middle ground position. (shrink)

This chapter examines an epistemological disjunctivist treatment of self-knowledge of belief. More specifically, it considers whether such a Disjunctivism is confronted by a familiar objection facing Disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge. The objection is this: given that good and bad cases are subjectively indistinguishable, one cannot take oneself to be in the good case, when one is, by reflection alone, as Disjunctivists claim. Some philosophers have argued that the objection does not apply to the case of self-knowledge; I argue they are (...) wrong. There are “ringers” for belief, and their existence may undermine our claims to self-knowledge, even in good cases. I suggest that whether the objection applies to the case of self-knowledge depends on how we conceive of conscious judgment. I end by considering an alternative conception that rules out the possibility of bad cases for self-knowledge. (shrink)

This essay addresses the question how we know our conscious thinking. Conscious thinking typically takes the form of a series of discrete episodes that constitute a complex cognitive activity. We must distinguish the discrete episodes of thinking in which a particular content is represented in phenomenal consciousness and is present “before the mind’s eye” from the extended activities of which these episodes form a part. The extended activities are themselves contentful and we have first-person access to them. But because their (...) content is not represented in phenomenal consciousness, this access cannot be broadly observational. Instead, I argue, it is agential. Furthermore, that extended activities are intentional explains the possibility of a nonobservational form of introspective access to the discrete episodes in consciousness. (shrink)

Random noise in the neurobiology of animals allows for the generation of alternative possibilities for action. In lower animals, this shows up as behavioral freedom. Animals are not causally predetermined by prior events going back in a causal chain to the origin of the universe. In higher animals, randomness can be consciously invoked to generate surprising new behaviors. In humans, creative new ideas can be critically evaluated and deliberated. On reflection, options can be rejected and sent back for “second thoughts” (...) before a final responsible decision and action. When the indeterminism is limited to the early stage of a mental decision, the later decision itself can be described as adequately determined. This is called the two-stage model, first the “free” generation of ideas, then an adequately determinism evaluation and selection process we call “will.”. (shrink)

Research into two-stage models of “free will” – first “free” random generation of alternative possibilities, followed by “willed” adequately determined decisions consistent with character, values, and desires – suggests that William James was in 1884 the first of a dozen philosophers and scientists to propose such a two-stage model for free will. We review the later work to establish James’s priority. By limiting chance to the generation of alternative possibilities, James was the first to overcome the standard two-part argument against (...) free will, i.e., that the will is either determined or random. James gave it elements of both, to establish freedom but preserve responsibility. We show that James was influenced by Darwin’s model of natural selection, as were most recent thinkers with a two-stage model. In view of James’s famous decision to make his first act of freedom a choice to believe that his will is free, it is most fitting to celebrate James’s priority in the free will debates by naming the two-stage model – first chance, then choice -“Jamesian” free will. (shrink)

This is the first volume dedicated solely to the topic of epistemological disjunctivism. The original essays in this volume, written by leading and up-and-coming scholars on the topic, are divided into three thematic sections. The first set of chapters addresses the historical background of epistemological disjunctivism. It features essays on ancient epistemology, Immanuel Kant, J.L. Austin, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The second section tackles a number contemporary issues related to epistemological disjunctivism, including its relationship with perceptual disjunctivism, radical skepticism, (...) and reasons for belief. Finally, the third group of essays extends the framework of epistemological disjunctivism to other forms of knowledge, such as testimonial knowledge, knowledge of other minds, and self-knowledge. Epistemological Disjunctivism is a timely collection that engages with an increasingly important topic in philosophy. It will appeal to researches and graduate students working in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of perception. (shrink)

Richard Moran and Matthew Boyle have objected to a variety of accounts of self-knowledge of belief on the grounds that they depict us, in possessing that knowledge, as alienated from our beliefs. The idea of alienation is meant to capture something important about the first-person perspective and to help us rule out competing accounts of self-knowledge. Moran and Boyle’s claim is that standing in a first-personal relation to one’s belief involves both knowing what one believes and occupying the perspective of (...) that belief on the world. This is the Alienation Constraint. The goal of the chapter is to provide a novel argument for it. Drawing on Shoemaker’s idea that it is impossible for a rational and conceptually competent subject to be “self-blind”, it argues that our capacity for self-knowledge must be constitutive of possession of the concept of belief, the Concept Constraint. The chapter argues that the Alienation Constraint follows from the Concept Constraint on an independently plausible understanding of the concept of belief. (shrink)

Decisions about whether or not to become a parent are significant parts of normative human development. Many studies have shown that married different-sex couples are expected to become parents, and that many social pressures enforce this norm. For same-sex couples, however, much less is known about social norms surrounding parenthood within marriage. This study examined injunctive norms and descriptive norms for the pursuit of parenthood as a function of age, gender, and sexual orientation. Participants in an internet survey included 1020 (...) cisgender people from across the United States Findings showed that norms, especially descriptive norms, for the pursuit of parenthood for heterosexual people were much stronger than those for lesbian women and gay men, and that norms for lesbian women were stronger than those for gay men. These differences were more pronounced for older, heterosexual, and male participants. However, lesbian and gay participants, especially gay men, reported that lesbian and gay people ought to become parents to the same extent as heterosexual people. Overall, the results indicated that, regardless of sexual orientation, adults report that lesbian and gay married people ought to become parents, but that they expect only a minority of these couples will pursue parenthood. This research provided a glimpse into how Americans are envisioning family formation among same-sex couples today. (shrink)

This thesis examines Nietzsche's philosophy as a response to Kant. I show that Kant, as interpreted by Nietzsche, dissociates epistemology and metaphysics. According to Nietzsche, the consequence of this dissociation is the collapse of Kant's transcendental epistemology into a sceptical idealism, which disables the making of positive metaphysical claims about the nature of reality. I argue that Nietzsche overcomes the dissociation of epistemology and metaphysics by rejecting Kant's distinction between constitutive, empirical knowledge and regulative, metaphysical belief. Furthermore, I show that (...) Nietzsche rejects, what he considers to be, Kant's formalistic constitutive epistemology in favour of a regulative and interest-directed account of knowledge. I argue that Nietzsche adopts an internal realist epistemology that stipulates that our epistemic claims must be justified from within our perspectival practices of justification but that such claims must be subject to a realist constraint. Moreover, I propose that Nietzsche is justified, from within these epistemic parameters, in putting forward metaphysical claims about the nature of reality. The thesis is structured in four chapters. Chapter one examines Nietzsche's appropriation of Kant. Chapter two takes up the issue of Nietzsche's perspectivism in the context of his concerns with the issues of justification and truth. The penultimate chapter examines the emergence of Nietzsche's internal realism in his early writings. Finally, chapter four examines Nietzsche's will to power thesis where I contend that the metaphysics of the will to power is both facilitated by and compatible with his perspectivism. (shrink)

Abstract:It has become increasingly common to either dismiss Nietzsche's will to power thesis as a thesis about the nature of reality or else to interpret it as promoting antiessentialism. The latter tendency is evident in the recent ontic structural realist interpretation of Nietzsche. According to the latter view, Nietzsche proposes a constitutively relational ontology that he takes to be supported by natural science and which, it is argued, is now supported by contemporary quantum physics. The author argues, against the antiessentialist (...) trend generally and the ontic structuralist realist interpretation in particular, that Nietzsche's will to power is a causal essentialist thesis that offers a metaphysics of causal powers that, although relational by virtue of being directed to produce effects, are also intrinsically constituted. The author argues that Nietzsche's causal essentialism, contrary to the ontic structural realist interpretation, emerges from his criticism of, rather than support for, the capacity of natural science to capture real causal power. Nonetheless, in contrast to both Nietzsche's view that science lacks the resources to support an appeal to intrinsic natures to secure real causal power and the ontic structural realist's claim that contemporary physics rules it out, the author argues that a particular wave function realist interpretation of quantum mechanics gives Nietzsche precisely what he wants by highlighting the causal significance of intrinsic natures of the wave function in configuration space. The article concludes that, contrary to his own expectations, Nietzsche's causal essentialism is scientifically vindicated. (shrink)

According to Pessimism about moral testimony, it is objectionable to form moral beliefs by deferring to another. This paper motivates Pessimism about another source of moral knowledge: propositional memory. Drawing on a discussion of Gilbert Ryle’s on forgetting the difference between right and wrong, it argues that Internalism about moral motivation offers a satisfying explanation of Pessimism about memory. A central claim of the paper is that Pessimism about memory (and by extension, testimony) is an issue in moral psychology rather (...) than moral epistemology. That is because it is best explained by appeal to claims about the constitution of moral knowledge as a state of mind, rather than requirements on belief formation. The paper also provides reason to think that the focus on testimony, pervasive in the literature, is something of a red herring. (shrink)

This essay examines the manner in which Hume challenges the cognitivist and realist intuitions informing our ordinary experience of value by identifying values with mind-dependent feelings and by separating facts from values. However, through a process of interpretive rehearsal of Hume’s arguments in the first two parts of the paper we find that they come under increasing internal strain, which points, contrary to his initial argument about the irreducibly phenomenal aspects of value experience, to the motivational role of reason and (...) to the identification of values, not with mind-dependent feelings, but with dispositional properties of objects. The third and final part of the paper will offer a systematic reconstruction of his arguments with a view to suggesting one possible – descriptivist – alternative to Hume’s initial challenges, which can serve to satisfy the emerging cognitivist and realist needs of his arguments. (shrink)