Ethical dimensions of friendship have rarely been explicitly addressed as aspects of friendship quality in studies of children's peer relationships. This study identifies aspects of moral virtue significant for friendship, as a basis for empirically investigating the role of ethical qualities in children's friendship assessments and aspirations. We introduce a eudaimonic conception of friendship quality, identify aspects of moral virtue foundational to such quality, review and contest some grounds on which children have been regarded as not mature enough to have (...) friendships that require virtue, and report a qualitative study of the friendship assessments and aspirations of children aged nine and ten. In focus group sessions conducted in ten schools across Great Britain, moral qualities figured prominently in children's assessments of friendship quality. The findings provide evidence of children having friendships exhibiting mutual respect, support, and valuing of each other's good character. (shrink)

This paper presents a theoretical elaboration of the ethical framework of classical capitalism as formulated by Adam Smith in reaction to the dominant mercantilism of his day. It is seen that Smith's project was profoundly ethical and designed to emancipate the consumer from a producer and state dominated economy. Over time, however, the various dysfunctions of a capitalist economy — e.g., concentration of wealth, market power — became manifest and the utilitarian ethical basis of the system eroded. Contemporary capitalism, dominated (...) as it is by large corporations, entrenched political interests and persistent social pathologies, bears little resemblance to the system which Smith envisioned would serve the common man. Most critiques of capitalism are launched from a Marxian-based perspective. We find, however, that by illustrating the wide gap between the reality of contemporary capitalism and the model of amoral political economy developed by Smith, the father of capitalism proves to be the most trenchant critic of the current order. (shrink)

The role of nurses in leading the design and delivery of primary health care services to address health inequities is growing in prominence, specifically in rural Australia. However, limited evidence exists to inform nurse‐led primary health care in this context. Based on a focus group with nursing executives and semi‐structured interviews with registered nurses we describe nurse experiences of leading the design of a primary health care service in rural Australia and nurse transition to and practice in this service. Nurse (...) experiences were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The study reveals the centrality of relational integration in service design and nurse acquisition of relational practice as it relates to nurse to care recipient and nurse to nurse relationships. Tensions between primary health care nurses and their peers, and resultant de‐valuing of primary health care practice, are described. The acquisition of nurse professional agency draws attention to investments required to position nurses to lead and sustain care innovations external to hospital settings. The authors propose that relational approaches may provide nurses with the opportunity to reframe their leadership and service contributions towards community literate primary health care provision and provide a pathway to professional emancipation from constrained practice expectations. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to clarify a confusion in the brain death literature between logical sufficiency/necessity and natural sufficiency/necessity. We focus on arguments that draw conclusions regarding empirical matters of fact from conceptual or ontological definitions. Specifically, we critically analyze arguments by Tom Tomlinson and Michael B. Green and Daniel Wikler. which, respectively, confuse logical and natural sufficiency and logical and natural necessity. Our own conclusion is that it is especially important in discussing the brain death issue to observe (...) the distinction between logical and natural sufficiency/necessity in a strict fashion. (shrink)

The legal requirements and justifications for collecting patient-identifiable data without patient consent were examined. The impetus for this arose from legal and ethical issues raised during the development of a population-based disease register. Numerous commentaries and case studies have been discussing the impact of the Data Protection Act 1998 and Caldicott principles of good practice on the uses of personal data. But uncertainty still remains about the legal requirements for processing patient-identifiable data without patient consent for research purposes. This is (...) largely owing to ignorance, or misunderstandings of the implications of the common law duty of confidentiality and section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2001. The common law duty of confidentiality states that patient-identifiable data should not be provided to third parties, regardless of compliance with the DPA1998. It is an obligation derived from case law, and is open to interpretation. Compliance with section 60 ensures that collection of patient-identifiable data without patient consent is lawful despite the duty of confidentiality. Fears regarding the duty of confidentiality have resulted in a common misconception that section 60 must be complied with. Although this is not the case, section 60 support does provide the most secure basis in law for collecting such data. Using our own experience in developing a disease register as a backdrop, this article will clarify the procedures, risks and potential costs of applying for section 60 support. (shrink)

Shuford, Albert and Massengill proved, a half century ago, that the logarithmic scoring rule is the only proper measure of inaccuracy determined by a differentiable function of probability assigned the actual cell of a scored partition. In spite of this, the log rule has gained less traction in applied disciplines and among formal epistemologists that one might expect. In this paper we show that the differentiability criterion in the Shuford et. al. result is unnecessary and use the resulting simplified characterization (...) of the logarithmic rule to give novel arguments in favor of it. (shrink)

A critical reading of Sarah Moss's "Probabilistic Knowledge".

Schoenfield has constructed examples of proper inaccuracy measures that value verisimilitude (in a certain sense) in spaces of worlds equipped with a particular variety of verisimilitude metric. However, Schoenfield left it as an open question whether ‘for every space of worlds, there is a proper inaccuracy measure that values verisimilitude’. Here I answer this question in the affirmative.

Michael Huemer argues, on statistical grounds, that ``existence is evidence for immortality". On reasoning derived from the anthropic principle, however, mere existence cannot be evidence against any non-indexical, ``eternal'' hypothesis that predicts observers. This note attempts to advertise the much-flouted anthropic principle's virtues and workings in a new way, namely by calling attention to the fact that it is the primary intension of one's indexically-described evidence that best characterizes one's epistemic position.

We address problems (that have since been addressed) in a proofs-version of a paper by Eva, Hartmann and Rad, who where attempting to justify the Kullback-Leibler divergence minimization solution to van Fraassen’s Judy Benjamin problem.

Remco Heesen has recently argued in favor of the editorial practice of triple-anonymous review on the grounds that ``an injustice is committed against certain authors'' under non-anonymous review. On the other hand, he concedes that the information waste of triple-anonymous review does handicap editors, in particular sacrificing a boost in the average quality of accepted papers that would otherwise be conferred by non-anonymous review. In this paper it is observed that by devoting comparatively greater reviewing resources to the papers of (...) unfamiliar authors, editors practicing non-anonymous review can, without loss of information, avoid subjecting authors to the sorts of injustices observed by Heesen. Thus they can reap the efficiency gains of non-anonymous review without sacrificing fairness. (shrink)

Van Fraassen's Judy Benjamin problem asks how one ought to update one's credence in A upon receiving evidence of the sort ``A may or may not obtain, but B is k times likelier than C'', where {A,B,C} is a partition. Van Fraassen's solution, in the limiting case of increasing k, recommends a posterior converging to the probability of A conditional on A union B, where P is one's prior probability function. Grove and Halpern, and more recently Douven and Romeijn, have (...) argued that one ought to leave credence in A unchanged, i.e. fixed at P(A). We argue that while the former approach is superior, it brings about a Reflection violation due in part to neglect of a ``regression to the mean'' phenomenon, whereby when C is eliminated by random evidence that leaves A and B alive, the ratio P(A):P(B) ought to drift in the direction of 1:1. (shrink)

A puzzle of an unmarked clock, used by Timothy Williamson to question the KK principle, was separately adapted by David Christensen and Adam Elga to critique a principle of Rational Reflection. Both authors, we argue, flout the received relationship between ideal agency and the classical distinction between systematic and random error, namely that ideal agents are subject only to the latter. As a result, these criticisms miss their mark.

We offer a critical evaluation of a recent proposal of E. Tal and J. Comesa\~na on the topic of when evidence of evidence constitutes evidence. After establishing that attempts of L. Moretti and W. Roche to discredit the proposal miss their mark, we fashion another, which does not.

Individual and Society in Buddhism. W. G. Weeraratne. Metro Printers Ltd., Colombo. 101pp £2.

Adams' Thesis states that the probability of a conditional is the probability of the consequent conditional on the antecedent. S. Kaufmann introduced a rival method, the so-called ``local interpretation'', for calculating the probability of a conditional that, according to a purported majority, squares better with intuition in some circumstances. He also gives an example purporting to show that this new method sometimes corresponds to rational action. We challenge the intuitions and expose a mathematical error in the example. We also offer (...) a model for the local interpretivist semantics. This model puts theoretical local interpretivists on ground as solid as that of Thesis abiders for whom conditionals have truth conditions. (shrink)

Brief, unfinished draft of a proposal for a novel and demanding, yet arguably well motivated, necessary condition for justified credence.

The philosophy of patient-centred care has become widely embraced but its implementation is dependent on interrelated factors. A factor that has received limited attention is the role of policy tools. In Ontario, one method government can use to promote healthcare priorities is through health regulatory colleges, which set the standard of practice for health professionals. The degree to which government policy in support of patient-centered care has influenced the direction provided by health regulatory colleges to their members, and ultimately impacted (...) actual patient care, remains unclear. This study investigates the extent to which Ontario’s health regulatory colleges have provided explicit written guidance to members related to the importance of patient-centred care. It also explores applied and theoretical explanations that may further our understanding of why patient-centred care has not been more fully embraced. Findings reveal that guidance provided by Ontario’s health regulatory colleges varies widely. Institutional barriers and the choice of policy tools for disseminating government preferences may hinder full implementation of the principles of patient-centred care. More fully understanding the role health regulatory colleges’ play in facilitating the implementation of health policy will contribute positively to dialogue and to efforts to achieve positive health system reforms. (shrink)

In Recent Decades, Many Moral Philosophers Have Begun to Think More Carefully about the significance of our inveterate storytelling habits for moral reflection. For some time those who promoted narrative's central role for ethics on a variety of levels seemed to be commanding the field; but more recently skeptics of narrative's relevance have begun to mount a vigorous resistance. Some of these struggles have played out on the terrain of Kierkegaard studies, and this book seeks to move the battle lines (...) forward, both with respect to the significance of narrative more generally and to its place in Kierkegaard's authorship. Three theses about the presuppositions, ends, and limits of Kierkegaard's use of narrative are at its heart. First, Kierkegaard's account of the moral life in terms of gift and task, a structure that lends itself naturally to narrative display, provides a compelling rationale for the pervasive presence of narrative forms in his writings. Second, Kierkegaard chiefly intends his use of narrative as a pedagogical tool for building up his reader in virtues that are acquired in a narrative pattern he calls "repetition," a pattern of loss and then recovery in a new key. Finally, despite the importance of narrative in Kierkegaard's moral reflection, he does recognize its limits, though he does not find them in the same places as today's narrative skeptics. Instead his arguments and writings entail that narratives, necessary for giving meaning to the passing moments of our lives, must also be contextualized in the moment of encounter with the eternal and divine, the moment that is the fullness of time. Colton advances these theses through detailed readings of several Kierkegaardian texts as well as interactions with contemporary moral philosophers and narrative theorists, furthering both our understanding of Kierkegaard's thought and the current debate on the significance of narrative for ethics. Book jacket. (shrink)

Dawid, DeGroot and Mortera showed, a quarter century ago, that any agent who regards a fellow agent as a peer--in particular, defers to the fellow agent's prior credences in the same way that she defers to her own--and updates by split-the-difference is prone to diachronic incoherence. On the other hand one may show that there are special scenarios in which Bayesian updating approximates difference splitting, so it remains an important question whether it remains a viable response to ``generic" peer update. (...) We look at arguments by two teams of philosophers against difference splitting. (shrink)

Dozens of articles have addressed the challenge that gambles having undefined expectation pose for decision theory. This paper makes two contributions. The first is incremental: we evolve Colyvan's ``Relative Expected Utility Theory'' into a more viable ``conservative extension of expected utility theory" by formulating and defending emendations to a version of this theory proposed by Colyvan and H\'ajek. The second is comparatively more surprising. We show that, so long as one assigns positive probability to the theory that there is a (...) uniform bound on the utility of possible gambles (and assuming a uniform bound on the amount of utility that can accrue in a fixed amount of time), standard principles of anthropic reasoning (as formulated by Brandon Carter) place lower and upper bounds on the expected values of gambles advertised as having no expectation--even assuming that with positive probability, all gambles advertised as having infinite expected utility are administered faithfully. Should one accept the uniform bound premises, this reasoning thus dissolves (or nearly dissolves, in some cases) several puzzles in infinite decision theory. (shrink)

Paying strict attention to Brandon Carter's several published renditions of anthropic reasoning, we present a ``nutshell'' version of the Doomsday argument that is truer to Carter's principles than the standard balls-and-urns or otherwise ``naive Bayesian'' versions that proliferate in the literature. At modest cost in terms of complication, the argument avoids commitment to many of the half-truths that have inspired so many to rise up against other toy versions, never adopting posterior outside of the convex hull of one's prior distribution (...) over the ``true chance'' of Doom. The hyper-pessimistic position of the standard balls-and-urn presentation and the hyper-optimistic position of naive self-indicators are seen to arise from dubiously extreme prior distributions, leaving room for a more satisfying and plausible intermediate solution. (shrink)

This article contributes to conversations about the “Hitler problem” in leadership ethics and the use of literary narratives in leadership studies by proposing Tolkien’s fiction as a model of leadership. Resonating with Aristotelian and Thomistic themes, these narratives present leadership as more a matter of practical wisdom than of morally neutral craft, or, more precisely, they model leadership as a matter of using craft for the sake of wisdom’s ends. Those ends become intelligible in terms of a triadic account of (...) human action that depicts it as a response to a gift or call. I argue that this model of leadership suggests that Hitler-type leaders are corrupted leaders, rather than partially excellent leaders or no leaders at all. I also maintain that these insights demonstrate the fruitfulness for leadership studies of approaching literary narratives in something like the way scientists treat their models. (shrink)

We introduce a ``rarity of defeat'' principle, valid in cases of deference to an expert, to address intuitions involved in a puzzle of Nissan-Rozen concerning epistemic deference and evidential screening-off.

Adam Elga has argued that holders of imprecise credences fall prey to missed arbitrages, so that rational credences should be sharp. A decision rule proposed by Rohan Sud, Forward Looking, enables imprecise Bayesians to sidestep missed arbitrages and other ``bad books'' in isolated fixed-evidence binary betting sequences such as those of Elga. We show that Forward Looking imprecise Bayesians are committed to a bad book of bets when faced with a particular 3-bet variable-evidence binary betting sequence.

Anubav Vasudevan characterized van Fraassen’s “Infomin” solution to the Judy Benjamin Problem (i.e. the solution by way of minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the posterior and prior) as an implementation of a “brand of epistemic charity” taking “the form of an assumption on the part of Judy Benjamin that her informant’s evidential report leaves out no relevant information”. After an analysis of the example that led Vasudevan to this way of thinking about Infomin, as well as of a new one (...) that supports the rival position of Douven and Romeijn in favor of minimizing the inverse Kullback-Leibler divergence between the posterior and the prior, we come to a different and more enlightening characterization of Infomin’s implicit assumptions. (shrink)

"Beauty died today. Or maybe yesterday. I can't be sure." --Later draft of "Sleeping Beauty: A Critical Survey".

Rambling, largely unreadable survey of the Sleeping Beauty literature.

Cian Dorr considered the case of a fair coin that is tossed every day throughout an infinite past and an infinite future (an ``Eternal Coin''). Against intuition, he argued that, conditional on the Coin having landed {\it heads} throughout the past, one should believe, with full probability, that it will also land {\it heads} today. In this paper, we critique Dorr's arguments, as well as part of a reply by Myrvold.

Parodic earlier draft of "Sleeping Beauty: why violations of probability laws are `Deal' breakers".

Unremarkable earlier draft of "Sleeping Beauty: A Critical Survey".