BackgroundInformed consent as stipulated in regulatory human research guidelines requires volunteers to be well-informed about what will happen to them in a trial. However, researchers may be faced with the challenge of how to ensure that a volunteer agreeing to take part in a clinical trial is truly informed. This study aimed to find out volunteers’ comprehension of informed consent and voluntary participation in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) clinical trials during the registration cohort.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative study among volunteers who (...) were enrolled in the registration cohort of HIV clinical trials in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A purposive sampling strategy was used to obtain twenty study participants. The data were collected between June and September 2020 using a semi-structured interview guide. In-depth interviews were used to collect the data to obtain deep insights of the individual study participants on the comprehension of informed consent and participation in the clinical trial. A thematic analysis approach was used to analyze the data. Themes and subthemes were supported by the quotes from the participants.ResultsVolunteers described comprehension of informed consent from different perspectives. They reported that various components of the informed consent such as study procedure, confidentiality, risk and benefits were grasped during engagement meetings. Furthermore, the volunteers’ decision to participate in the registration cohort was voluntary. However, trial aspects such as health insurance, free condoms, and medical checkups could have indirectly influenced their reluctance to withdraw from the study.ConclusionEngagement meetings may increase the comprehension of informed consent among potential participants for HIV clinical trials. However, trial incentives may influence participation, and thus future research should focus on the challenges of giving incentives in the study. This will ensure comprehension and voluntary participation in the context of HIV clinical trials. (shrink)

Two studies examined the link between social dominance and male waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Groups of four men interacted in a leaderless group discussion. In both studies, men with higher WHRs (associated with current and long-term health status) were rated by other group members as behaving more leader-like when an observer was present, and rated themselves as being more assertive. In Study 2, men with higher WHRs were rated by independent observers as behaving more dominantly, but only when the evaluator was (...) present. These results are discussed in terms of evolutionary models of health, attraction, and intrasexual competition. (shrink)

Traditional methods of teaching professional nursing ethics in the classroom have translated into limited success in clinical practice. Students don’t perceive an integration of ethics education in practical clinical settings, while educators grapple with a lack of perceived ‘excellence of moral character’ in their students when they are taught intellectual virtues and theoretical wisdom in the classroom that they do not see demonstrated in the clinical setting. Also traditionally, emphasis in ethics teaching has tended to focus on the nurse-patient relationship, (...) while less attention has been paid to nursing in a more inter/intra professional or global context. The purpose of using constructivist theory and concept-based learning strategies to teach junior level nursing students ethics was to present implications for nurse educators that will help them foster/improve their student’s critical thinking, and increase their mastery and global integration of the complex abstract concepts associated with professional nursing ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Decision-Making as a Broader ConceptJacinta O. A. Tan (bio), Anne Stewart (bio), and Tony Hope (bio)KeywordsCompetence, decision-making, capacity, anorexia nervosa, autonomy, values, identityWe thank Demian Whiting for the thoughtful critique of aspects of our paper (Tan et al. 2006a). A primary aim of our research was to provide empirical grounds on which to stimulate discussion about the nature of decision-making capacity (DMC). Whiting criticizes in particular the concept (...) of 'pathological values' that we suggested might be relevant in the assessment of DMC and in the related issue of deciding when a patient's refusal of beneficial treatment should be overridden.Whiting's central concern is with DMC. Whiting argues that the absence of pathological values should not be a criterion for DMC. We are unclear whether he is also arguing that pathological values do not provide a reason of any kind for overriding treatment refusal. At the end of the paper he writes: "we cannot justify compulsory treatment of patients who have pathological values... on the grounds that these patients lack DMC" (2009, XX). This seems to leave open the possibility that we may be able to justify compulsory treatment of patients who have pathological values on grounds other than that they lack DMC. As we wrote in our response to the discussants of our original paper, "The primary issue for us is whether the reasons for refusal to which we draw attention provide grounds for overriding refusal, and if they do how they can be characterized in such a way as to avoid the ever-present danger of simply overriding autonomy in a patient's best interests" (Tan et al. 2006b, 300).In deciding on whether to use compulsory treatment, there are other relevant factors that may need to be considered, such as the seriousness of the decision, which determines the threshold for competence. However, in this response we consider three issues. First, we argue that the current concept of DMC is by no means so clear cut or generally agreed upon as Whiting implies, and that some of the lack of clarity relates to pathological values. Second, that the concept of DMC is itself dependent on accounts of autonomy, and that it is plausible that pathological values can affect autonomy. Third, we directly consider the question of whether a coherent account of pathological values might be given based on a concept of authenticity.The Current Criteria for DMCWhiting argues that the current criteria for DMC are correct and that an additional criterion along the lines of absence of pathological values should not be added. This argument assumes that there is a clear and agreed understanding of the current criteria. We believe this is not the case for three reasons.(i) Whiting begins his account of DMC by saying that it is normally taken to include: "(1) [End Page 345] understanding (and appreciation)" (2009, 341). Already there is an area of dispute, and the use of parentheses reflects this. The concept of 'appreciation' was developed by Grisso and Applebaum (Grisso, Appelbaum, and Hill-Fotouhi 1997). It is not included in either English common law development, for example (ReC), nor in the criteria specified in the Mental Capacity Act 2005. More important, Grisso and Appelbaum in their comment on our original paper (2006) argue that our work advances thinking about 'appreciation' rather than requiring that we add new elements. The implication is that they believe that what we have called pathological values are relevant to the assessment of capacity and are already included in an account of capacity that incorporates the criterion of 'appreciation.' In our response, we argued that pathological values are not entirely captured within the account of appreciation that Grisso and Appelbaum had previously given. We do not want to revisit that issue here, but the point of relevance is that on one view (that of Grisso and Appelbaum) pathological values are already included in the current criteria for DMC as part of the concept of appreciation, whereas on Whiting's view they are not.(ii) Even if there were agreement over the wording and concepts relevant to DMC there is a further important issue: how are those concepts... (shrink)

Context: Most constructivist discourse is situated at the philosophical-conceptual level, where arguments appeal to the intuition of the reader, while formal-computational models have only been taken into account to a very limited degree so far. Problem: Two types of problems need to be addressed: Synthetically, can constructivist concepts be turned into actual computational implementations? Can these be further conceptual developments in constructivist theory as such, or are they just an application thereof? Conceptually, does the notion of computation square with constructivist (...) approaches at all? Method: Paradigmatically, we discuss the meaning of “computational” in cognitive agents that comply with constructivist concepts. Also, we summarize the contributions. Results: From a constructivist point of view, the concept of “computational model” is ambiguous and depends on whether it is used in the sense of the computational(ist) theory of mind or simply as a tool. Implications: The insights presented in the contributions to this special issue point in the direction of a computational extension of constructivist approaches as well as a constructivist extension to computational approaches. However, while many of the questions we posed were discussed in the contributions and open peer commentaries, some of them were largely neglected and thus are subject to further discussion. (shrink)

The growing body of research on temporal and spatial experience lacks a comprehensive theoretical approach. Drawing on Giddens’ framework, we present time-space distanciation as a construct for theorizing the relations between culture, time, and space. TSD in a culture may be understood as the extent to which time and space are abstracted as separate dimensions and activities are extended and organized across time and space. After providing a historical account of its development, we outline a multi-level conceptualization of TSD supported (...) by research on cultural differences in the experience of time and space. We impact this conceptualization by examining two ethnographic case studies. We conclude by highlighting future research directions. TSD is an integrative, interdisciplinary, multi level construct with the potential to guide the burgeoning social science of time and space. (shrink)

In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person’s life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent’s intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively “direct” or (...) “personal”. Here we integrate these two classes of findings. Two experiments examine a novel personalness/directness factor that we call personal force, present when the force that directly impacts the victim is generated by the agent’s muscles (e.g., in pushing). Experiments 1a and b demonstrate the influence of personal force on moral judgment, distinguishing it from physical contact and spatial proximity. Experiments 2a and b demonstrate an interaction between personal force and intention, whereby the effect of personal force depends entirely on intention. These studies also introduce a method for controlling for people’s real-world expectations in decisions involving potentially unrealistic hypothetical dilemmas. (shrink)

This volume examines the conflicting factors that shape the content and form of grammatical rules in language, which speakers and addressees need to contend with when expressing themselves and when trying to comprehend messages. Chapters examine adult language, first and second language acquisition, and the motivations behind historical change.

Insulin is stored within the pancreas in an inactive Zn2+‐bound hexameric form prior to release. Similarly, clinical insulins contain Zn2+ and form multimeric complexes. Upon release from the pancreas or upon injection, insulin only becomes active once Zn2+ disengages from the complex. In plasma and other extracellular fluids, the majority of Zn2+ is bound to human serum albumin (HSA), which plays a vital role in controlling insulin pharmacodynamics by enabling removal of Zn2+. The Zn2+‐binding properties of HSA are attenuated by (...) non‐esterified fatty acids (NEFAs) also transported by HSA. Elevated NEFA concentrations are associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes. Here we present the hypothesis that higher NEFA levels in obese and/or diabetic individuals may contribute to insulin resistance and affect therapeutic insulin dose‐response profiles, through modulation of HSA/Zn2+ dynamics. We envisage this novel concept to have important implications for personalized treatments and management of diabetes‐related conditions in the future. (shrink)

This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind. _Enaction_, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in _The Embodied Mind_, breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its embodied (...) action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. _Enaction_ offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science. Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science. Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson. (shrink)

There is a parallel between the debate between Gottlob Frege and David Hilbert at the turn of the twentieth century and at least some aspects of the current controversy over whether category theory provides the proper framework for structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics. The main issue, I think, concerns the place and interpretation of meta-mathematics in an algebraic or structuralist approach to mathematics. Can meta-mathematics itself be understood in algebraic or structural terms? Or is it an exception to the (...) slogan that mathematics is the science of structure? (shrink)

According to ante rem structuralism a branch of mathematics, such as arithmetic, is about a structure, or structures, that exist independent of the mathematician, and independent of any systems that exemplify the structure. A structure is a universal of sorts: structure is to exemplified system as property is to object. So ante rem structuralist is a form of ante rem realism concerning universals. Since the appearance of my Philosophy of mathematics: Structure and ontology, a number of criticisms of the idea (...) of ante rem structures have appeared. Some argue that it is impossible to give identity conditions for places in homogeneous ante rem structures, invoking a version of the identity of indiscernibles. Others raise issues concerning the identity and distinctness of places in different structures, such as the the natural number 2 and the real number 2. The purpose of this paper is to take the measure of these objections, and to further articulate ante rem structuralism to take them into account. (shrink)

Universal human rights and particular cultural identities, which are relativistic by nature, seem to stand in conflict with each other. It is commonly suggested that the relativistic natures of cultural identities undermine universal human rights and that human rights might compromise particular cultural identities in a globalised world. This article examines this supposed clash and suggests that it is possible to frame a human rights approach in such a way that it becomes the starting point and constraining framework for all (...) non-deficient cultural identities. In other words, it is possible to depict human rights in a culturally sensitive way so that universal human rights can meet the demands of a moderate version of meta-ethical relativism which acknowledges a small universal core of objectively true or false moral statements and avers that, beyond that small core, all other moral statements are neither objectively true nor false. (shrink)

We show that, by choosing definitions carefully, a version of Frege's theorem can be proved in intuitionistic logic.

Supra-Bayesianism is the Bayesian response to learning the opinions of others. Probability pooling constitutes an alternative response. One natural question is whether there are cases where probability pooling gives the supra-Bayesian result. This has been called the problem of Bayes-compatibility for pooling functions. It is known that in a common prior setting, under standard assumptions, linear pooling cannot be nontrivially Bayes-compatible. We show by contrast that geometric pooling can be nontrivially Bayes-compatible. Indeed, we show that, under certain assumptions, geometric and (...) Bayes-compatible pooling are equivalent. Granting supra-Bayesianism its usual normative status, one upshot of our study is thus that, in a certain class of epistemic contexts, geometric pooling enjoys a normative advantage over linear pooling as a social learning mechanism. We discuss the philosophical ramifications of this advantage, which we show to be robust to variations in our statement of the Bayes-compatibility problem. (shrink)

This volume captures the individuality, the national and personal identity, the cultural exchange, and the self-consciousness that have long been sensed as peculiarly potent in the Hellenistic world. The fields of history, literature, art, philosophy, and religion are each presented using the format of two essays followed by a response. Conveying the direction and focus of Hellenistic learning, eighteen leading scholars discuss issues of liberty versus domination, appropriation versus accommodation, the increasing diversity of citizen roles and the dress and gesture (...) appropriate to them, and the accompanying religious and philosophical ferment. The result is an arresting view of the incredible and unprecedented diversity of the Hellenistic world. (shrink)

This article is about the history of logic in Australia. Douglas Gasking (1911?1994) undertook to translate the logical terminology of John Anderson (1893?1962) into that of Ludwig Wittgenstein's (1921) Tractatus. At the time Gilbert Ryle (1900?1976), and more recently David Armstrong, recommended the result to students; but it is reasonable to have misgivings about Gasking as a guide to either Anderson or Wittgenstein. The historical interest of the debate Gasking initiated is that it yielded surprisingly little information about Anderson's traditional (...) (syllogistic or Aristotelian) logic and its relation to classical (first-order predicate or Russellian) logic, the ostensible topic; but the materials now exist to interpret Anderson's logic in classical logic, possibly as an algebra of classes. This would be of little interest to contemporary logicians, but it might shed some light on Anderson's philosophy. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to delimit what can and cannot be claimed on behalf of second-order logic. The starting point is some of the discussions surrounding my Foundations without Foundationalism: A Case for Secondorder Logic.

Public-private partnerships are established to specifically harness the potential of Big Data in healthcare and can include partners working across the data chain—producing health data, analysing data, using research results or creating value from data. This domain paper will illustrate the challenges that arise when partners from the public and private sector collaborate to share, analyse and use biomedical Big Data. We discuss three specific challenges for PPPs: working within the social licence, public antipathy to the commercialisation of public sector (...) health data, and questions of ownership, both of the data and any resulting intellectual property or products. As a specific example we consider the case of the UK National Health Service providing patient data to Google’s DeepMind AI program to develop a diagnostic app for kidney disease. This article is an application of the framework presented in this issue of ABR. Please refer to that article for more information on how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end. We use four specific values to help analysis these issues: public benefit, stewardship, transparency and engagement. We demonstrate how the Deliberative Framework can support ethical governance of PPPs involving biomedical big data. (shrink)

"The availability of a paperback version of Boyle's philosophical writings selected by M. A. Stewart will be a real service to teachers, students, and scholars with seventeenth-century interests. The editor has shown excellent judgment in bringing together many of the most important works and printing them, for the most part, in unabridged form. The texts have been edited responsibly with emphasis on readability.... Of special interest in connection with Locke and with the reception of Descarte's Corpuscularianism, to students of (...) the Scientific Revolution and of the history of mechanical philosophy, and to those interested in the relations among science, philosophy, and religion. In fact, given the imperfections in and unavailability of the eighteenth-century editions of Boyle’s works, this collection will benefit a wide variety of seventeenth-century scholars." --Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

Just about every theorist holds that vague terms are context-sensitive to some extent. What counts as ?tall?, ?rich?, and ?bald? depends on the ambient comparison class, paradigm cases, and/or the like. To take a stock example, a given person might be tall with respect to European entrepreneurs and downright short with respect to professional basketball players. It is also generally agreed that vagueness remains even after comparison class, paradigm cases, etc. are fixed, and so this context sensitivity does not solve (...) the problems with vague terms. In this paper, I briefly sketch the main features of my broadly contextualist account of vagueness, that of the late Ruth Manor, and that of Agustín Rayo, showing how the three accounts relate to, and reinforce, each other, noting a seeming difference. A key item used to articulate my own view is David Lewis's notion of conversational score. This is used to track which borderline cases have been called in the course of a conversation. Manor alludes to Lewis's notion of accommodation, a key aspect of the kinematics of conversation, and Rayo invokes Stalnaker's notion of common ground. I'll show how the conversational score could be employed to develop and extend their views, showing how vague terms, as they construe them, are (or can be) deployed in conversation, consistent with both the underlying indeterminacy of the terms and normal communicative goals. To help develop all three views further, I invoke Craige Roberts's notion of Retrievability, a tool developed to show how definites, such as definite descriptions, singular pronouns, and proper names, are deployed in conversation, in a Lewis-style scorekeeping framework. This, I think, is exactly the right way to understand conversations in what Manor calls non-sorities situations and, to invoke my own view, in sorites situations as well. (shrink)

The interaction between philosophy and mathematics has a long and well articulated history. The purpose of this note is to sketch three historical case studies that highlight and further illustrate some details concerning the relationship between the two: the interplay between mathematical and philosophical methods in ancient Greek thought; vagueness and the relation between mathematical logic and ordinary language; and the study of the notion of continuity.

This paper explores the idea that wellbeing and healthy development should be the central goal of school music programs. After establishing a framework of student wellbeing, the metaphor of rites of passage experiences is employed—through Joseph Campbell's hero's journey and Jane McGonigal's analysis of the benefits of online gaming—as one way to think about high school music programs as potential sites for contributing to optimal adolescent wellbeing. Writing at the nexus of practice and theory the authors analyze two rites of (...) passage examples from their high school music classrooms. Musicking experiences that offer students openings for embarking upon rites of passage hold potential for addressing students' needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence—needs Richard Ryan and Edward Deci document as predictive of psychological wellbeing in all cultures and that Dissanayake argues are evolved psychobiological needs. (shrink)

Mind-body dualism conceptualizes mind and body as distinct, but there are different ways that dualism may be instantiated. In this study, we examined how Hierarchical Dualism (the belief that mind and body are distinct, and the mind is superior) and Mutual-Influence Dualism (the belief that mind and body are separate but interrelate) related to health behaviors and mental health in three student samples: exclusively queer, exclusively straight, and a mixed university subject pool (N = 535). Participants in each sample endorsed (...) Mutual-Influence Dualism at a higher rate than Hierarchical Dualism. Mutual-Influence dualism was consistently associated with greater engagement in health-promoting behaviors and greater well-being, whereas Hierarchical Dualism differed by sample. These results suggest that dualist beliefs do not uniformly shape the lives of those who hold them: rather, the relation between dualist beliefs and health differs as a function of the type of dualism and the identities we hold. (shrink)

Morality can help guide behavior and facilitate relationships. Although moral judgments by autistic people are similar to neurotypical individuals, many researchers argue that subtle differences signify deficits in autistic individuals. Moral foundation theory describes moral judgments in terms of differences rather than deficits. The current research, aimed at assessing autistic individuals’ moral inclinations using Haidt’s framework, was co-designed with autistic community members. Our aim was to describe autistic moral thinking from a strengths-based perspective while acknowledging differences that may pose interpersonal (...) challenges among autistic youth. We assessed 25 autistic and 23 neurotypical children’s moral judgments using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire for Kids. We used semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis with a subset of participants to describe children’s moral reasoning. Analyses suggested that autistic and neurotypical children make similar judgments about moral transgressions across all five moral foundations. General linear mixed modeling showed that the greatest predictor of recommending punishment was how bad children deemed moral transgressions to be. We also found a trend that autistic children were more likely to recommend punishment for harmless norms violations than were neurotypical children. Future research could use longitudinal methods to understand the development of moral judgments among autistic and neurotypical children. (shrink)

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence This article provides a comprehensive overview of the main ethical issues related to the impact of Artificial Intelligence on human society. AI is the use of machines to do things that would normally require human intelligence. In many areas of human life, AI has rapidly and significantly affected human society … Continue reading Ethics of Artificial Intelligence →.

"The book provides an excellent historical summary of the debates over continental drift theory in this century." —Contemporary Sociology "This is a useful discussion of the way that science works. The book will be of value to philosophers of science... " —Choice "... will find an important place in university and department libraries, and will interest afficionados of the factual and intellectual history of the earth sciences." —Terra Nova "... an excellent core analysis... " —The Times Higher Education Supplement "... (...) an ambitious and important contribution to the new sociology of science." —American Journal of Sociology "... Stewart's book is a noble effort, an interesting and readable discussion, and another higher notch on the scoreboard of critical scholarship that deserves wide examination and close attention." —Geophysics This fascinating book describes the rise and fall and rebirth of continental drift theory in this century. It uses the recent revolution in geoscientinsts' beliefs about the earth to examine questions such as, How does scientific knowledge develop and change? The book also explores how well different perspectives help us to understand revolutionary change in science. (shrink)

The contributors in _Expanding and Restricting the Erotic_ offer a multidisciplinary perspective on the ways in which what is considered acceptable within the realm of the erotic has altered over time to the current situation where the erotic is being both expanded and restricted.

Active at the time when the social sciences were founded, Max Weber's social theory contributed significantly to a wide range of fields and disciplines. Considering his prominence, it makes sense to take stock of the Weberian heritage and to explore the ways in which Weber's work and ideas have contributed to our understanding of the modern world. Using his work as a point of departure, The Oxford Handbook of Max Weber investigates the Weberian legacy today, identifying the enduring problems and (...) themes associated with his thought that have contemporary significance: the nature of modern capitalism, neo-liberal global economic policy, nationalism, religion and secularization, threats to legality, the culture of modernity, bureaucratic rule and leadership, politics and ethics, the value of science, power and inequality. These problems are global in scope, and the Weberian approach has been used to address them in very different societies. Thus, the Handbook also features chapters on Europe, Turkey, Islam, Judaism, China, India, and international politics. The Handbook emphasizes the use and application of Weber's ideas. It offers a journey through the intellectual terrain that scholars continue to explore using the tools and perspectives of Weberian analysis. The essays explore how Weber's concepts, hypotheses, and perspectives have been applied in practice, and how they can be applied in the future in social inquiry, not only in Europe and North America, but globally. The volume is divided into six parts exploring, in turn: Capitalism in a Globalized World, Society and Social Structure, Politics and the State, Religion, Culture, and Science and Knowledge. (shrink)

While scientific interest in the relationship between psychotherapeutic praxis and spirituality is growing, there is still little knowledge on this topic, especially in an East Central European context. To explore how psychotherapists understand spiritual issues and experiences they encounter in their work and to learn what happens to these issues in the course of psychotherapy, this study analyses semi-structured interviews with 30 Hungarian psychotherapists. Applying a grounded theory analytical strategy, three main topics were identified: the therapist's attitude towards spirituality leaves (...) a discernible trace in the psychoterapeutic treatment; the therapist influences the way spiritual issues are treated; and the therapist may have a shared spiritual experience with the client. We present individual variations of these experiences as they appear in the code tree. Results are interpreted with reference to a systemic view of the psychotherapeutic process, the intersubjective space of patient and therapist, and the notion of the therapists’ mentalizational capacity. (shrink)

In this essay Kelvin Beckett argues that Richard Peters's major work on education, Ethics and Education, belongs on a short list of important texts we can all share. He argues this not because of the place it has in the history of philosophy of education, as important as that is, but because of the contribution it can still make to the future of the discipline. The limitations of Peters's analysis of the concept of education in his chapter on “Criteria of (...) Education” are well known. In the chapter on “Education as Initiation,” however, Peters offered a synthetic sketch of education that, Beckett argues, points us toward a more comprehensive definition of education, one which, he maintains, can be accepted by all philosophers, regardless of the tradition they work in. (shrink)

The editors of the JRE collected short essays from scholars of religion in response to a recent incident at Hamline University that made national headlines. Last fall, Hamline University administrators refused to extend a contract to an adjunct professor of art history after a Muslim student accused her of Islamophobia for showing a 14th‐century image of Mohammad in an online class. The event provoked intense conversations about issues of academic freedom, religious diversity, the status of contingent faculty, and race. These (...) essays bring together scholarly and personal reflections about the incident at Hamline and what it means for the pedagogy of religious studies. (shrink)

David Hume was a highly original thinker. Nevertheless, he was a writer of his time and place in the history of philosophy. In this book, M. A. Stewart puts Hume’s writing in context, particularly that of his native Scotland, but also that of British and European philosophy more generally. Through meticulous research Stewart brings to life the circumstances by means of which we can get a deeper understanding of Hume’s writings on the nature and reach of human reason, (...) the foundation of morals, and, especially, on the philosophy of religion. Stewart pays particular attention to Hume’s intellectual development, beginning with his education at the College of Edinburgh, the writing of his Treatise of Human Nature, and his subsequent philosophical responses to criticisms of that book. He argues that Hume’s scepticism set him at odds with the Christian Stoicism of Scottish contemporaries including that of Francis Hutcheson - and shows that this conflict played a major role in his failure to obtain the Edinburgh Moral Philosophy Chair in 1745. Stewart’s detailed study of the physical character of Hume’s surviving manuscripts in Chapters 8 and 9 provides the best available dating of his early ‘Essay on Modern Chivalry’, his ‘Early Fragment on Evil’ and the periods of composition of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Other chapters compare Hume’s theory of abstraction with that of Locke and Berkeley, provide the 17th and 18th century philosophical context of the central argument of his essay ‘Of miracles’, and consider the 18th and 19th century reception of his writings in England and Ireland. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Amusement, Delight, and Whimsy: Humor Has Its Reasons that Reason Cannot Ignore” by Edith K. Ackermann. Upshot: Ackermann tackles “humor” as an agentive participant in the process of knowledge construction. Performing her thesis in her writing, she give a reflective account of how oblique ways of knowing have always been present in debates concerning epistemology, albeit not given equal status as rational ones. As such, her endeavors in this text are geared towards lifting (...) up the position of “humor” to a much deserved higher level in educational and learning practices. Consequently, our endeavors in this commentary are targeted towards a little more in this direction by focusing on how “humor” becomes a way of accessing the process of knowledge construction and of unraveling its significance. (shrink)

It describes and explains the patient-centered model examining and evaluating qualitative and quantitative research. It comprehensively covers the evolution and the six interactive components of the patient-centered clinical method, taking the reader through the relationships between the patient and doctor and the patient and clinician. All the editors are professors in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.