There is a very striking difference between even the simplest ethnographically known human societies and those of the chimps and bonobos. Chimp and bonobo societies are closed societies: with the exception of adolescent females who disperse from their natal group and join a nearby group (never to return to their group of origin), a pan residential group is the whole social world of the agents who make it up. That is not true of forager bands, which have fluid memberships, and (...) regular associations with neighbouring bands. They are components of a larger social world. The open and fluid character of forager bands brings with it many advantages, so the stability of this more vertically complex form of social life is not difficult to explain, once it establishes. But how did it establish, if, as is likely, earlier hominin social worlds resemble those of our close pan relatives in the suspicion (even hostility) of one band to another? How did hominin social organisation transition from life in closed bands, each distrustful of its neighbours, to the much more open social lives of foragers? I will discuss and synthesise two approaches to this problem, one ecological, based on the work of Robert Layton and his colleagues, and another that is organised around an expansion of kin recognition, an idea primarily driven by Bernard Chapais. The paper closes by discussing potential archaeological signatures both of more open social worlds, and of the supposed causal drivers of such worlds. (shrink)

1. Kant on the “Conditions of the Possibility” of Experience -- Claude Piché // 2. Plato and Kantian Transcendental Constructivism -- Tom Rockmore // 3. Kant and Fichte on the Notion of (Transcendental) Freedom -- Violetta L. Waibel // 4. Fichte, Transcendental Ontology, and the Ethics of Belief -- Steven Hoeltzel // 5. Transcendental Philosophy as “Therapy of the Mind”: Fichte’s “Facts of Consciousness” Lectures -- Benjamin D. Crowe // 6. From Transcendental Philosophy to Hegel’s Developmental Method -- William F. (...) Bristow // 7. How Transcendental Is Cohen’s Critical Idealism? -- Halla Kim // 8. Heidegger’s Failure to Overcome Transcendental Philosophy -- Eric S. Nelson // 9. Others as the Ground of Our Existence: Levinas, Løgstrup, and Transcendental Arguments in Ethics -- Robert Stern // 10. Raising Validity Claims for Reasons: Transcendental Reflection in Apel’s Argumentative Discourse -- Matthias Kettner // 11. Transcendental Arguments Based on Question-Answer Contradictions -- Yukio Irie // 12. Consequences of the Transcendental-Pragmatic Consensus Theory of Truth -- Michihito Yoshime // 13. On Jürgen Habermas’s Cognitive Theory of Morality -- Yasuyuki Funaba . (shrink)

The aim of this Swedish study was to develop the concept of moral sensitivity in health care practice. This process began with an overview of relevant theories and perspectives on ethics with a focus on moral sensitivity and related concepts, in order to generate a theoretical framework. The second step was to construct a questionnaire based on this framework by generating a list of items from the theoretical framework. Nine items were finally selected as most appropriate and consistent with the (...) research team’s understanding of the concept of moral sensitivity. The items were worded as assumptions related to patient care. The questionnaire was distributed to two groups of health care personnel on two separate occasions and a total of 278 completed questionnaires were returned. A factor analysis identified three factors: sense of moral burden, moral strength and moral responsibility. These seem to be conceptually interrelated yet indicate that moral sensitivity may involve more dimensions than simply a cognitive capacity, particularly, feelings, sentiments, moral knowledge and skills. (shrink)

Who should have a right to participate in a polity’s decision-making? Although the answers to this ‘boundary problem’ in democratic theory remain controversial, it is widely believed that the enfranchisement of tourists and children is unacceptable. Yet, the two most prominent inclusion principles in the literature – Robert Goodin’s ‘all (possibly) affected interests’-principle and the ‘all subjected to law’-principle – both enfranchise those groups. Unsurprisingly, democratic theorists have therefore offered several reasons for nonetheless exempting tourists and children from the franchise. (...) In this paper, I argue that their attempts fail. None of the proposed rationales can do the job without having unacceptable implications for the voting rights of other groups. I then develop a new specification of the affected interests-view, one that avoids such problems. According to my life plan-principle, a person is entitled to participate in a polity’s decision-making if and only if its decisions will actually affect her autonomously chosen life plans, or prevent her from developing or revising plans of that kind. I show that this principle straightforwardly avoids enfranchising tourists and children, and thus improves upon its two prominent rivals. The paper ends by considering and rejecting two objections to my new principle. (shrink)

In this article we defend the view that, on the All Affected Principle of voting rights, the weight of a person’s vote on a decision should be determined by and only by the degree to which that dec...

Secession is again a hot political topic. Consider the recent events in Catalonia. In an illegal referendum in October 2017, amid large-scale demonstrations and violent interventions by the Spanish...

Anthropogenic climate change is an existential threat to the people of sinking island states. When their territories inevitably disappear, what, if anything, do the world's remaining territorial st...

Hybrid belief aggregation addresses aggregation of individual probabilistic beliefs into collective binary beliefs. In line with the development of judgment aggregation theory, our research delves into the identification of precise agenda conditions associated with some key impossibility theorems in the context of hybrid belief aggregation. We determine the necessary and sufficient level of logical interconnection between the propositions in an agenda for some key impossibilities to arise. Specifically, we prove three characterization theorems about hybrid belief aggregation: (i) Precisely the path-connected (...) and pair-negatable agendas lead to the ‘oligarchy result’—only oligarchic rules satisfy universal domain, proposition-wise independence, respect for unanimity, and deductive closure of collective beliefs. (ii) Precisely the negation-connected agendas lead to the ‘triviality result’—only unanimity rules satisfy those conditions as well as anonymity. (iii) Precisely the blocked agendas lead to the ‘non-existence result’—no rules satisfy those conditions as well as completeness and consistency of collective beliefs. Furthermore, we compare these novel findings with existing agenda-theoretic characterization theorems in the domains of judgment aggregation and belief binarization. (shrink)

Subjects enrolled in studies testing high risk interventions for incurable or progressive brain diseases may be vulnerable to deficiencies in informed consent, such as the therapeutic misconception. However, the definition and measurement of the therapeutic misconception is a subject of continuing debate. Our qualitative pilot study of persons enrolled in a phase I trial of gene transfer for Parkinson disease suggests potential avenues for both measuring and preventing the therapeutic misconception. Building on earlier literature on the topic, we developed and (...) tested an interview guide that focuses on how the subjects decided to participate, emphasizing the integration of subjects’ various statements that are relevant to assessing the therapeutic misconception, rather than evaluating them as isolated statements. The results indicate that a subject’s understanding of the purpose of research is best explored in juxtaposition to the subject’s motivation for participating. (shrink)

Typically developing 3-day-old newborns take significantly more forward steps on a moving treadmill belt than on a static belt. The current experiment examined whether projecting optic flows that specified forward motion onto the moving treadmill surface would further enhance forward stepping. Twenty newborns were supported on a moving treadmill without optic flow, with optic flow matching the treadmill’s direction and speed, with optic flow in the same direction but at a faster speed, and in a control condition with an incoherent (...) optic flow moving at the same speed as in the Congruent condition but in random directions. The results revealed no significant differences in the number or coordination of forward treadmill steps taken in each condition. However, the Faster condition generated significantly fewer leg pumping movements than the Random control condition. When highly aroused, newborns made significantly fewer single steps and significantly more parallel steps and pumping movements. We speculate the null findings may be a function of the high friction material that covered the treadmill surface. (shrink)

Currently, there is a resurgence of interests in phenomenology in education. This article sheds light on the importance of hermeneutical phenomenology in teaching and learning based on the lived experience of a Sioux Indian adolescent boy, elicited from an ethnographic case study conducted at an alternative high school in the US. Employing narrative inquiry, this article seeks phenomenological ways of understanding students' lived experiences and explores the meaning of the pedagogical practice of hermeneutical phenomenology in education. I delve into how (...) hermeneutical understanding of the phenomena of students' lived experience can catapult both students and teachers into the personal growth and development in a reciprocal way. It is my hope that such an understanding will facilitate an educational aim that focuses on the ontology of being and becoming while students' existence is brought to the center of teaching and learning. (shrink)

In this essay I take issue with Derek Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity.Parfit is concerned to respond to what he sees as flaws in the conception of the role of 'person' in self-interest theories. He attempts to show that the notion of a person as something over and above a totality of mental and physical states and events (in his words, a 'further fact'), is empty, and so, our ethical concerns must be based on something other than this. My (...) objections centre around the claim that Parfit employs an impoverished conception of 'life'. Parfit misconceives the connection between 'I' and one's body, and, so, despite his rejection of a metaphysical conception of 'self', remains within the logic of Cartesianism. What Parfit and other reductionists call an 'impersonal' perspective, I shall call the third-person perspective: a perspective which one in general may take. Against Parfit I shall offer a more complex conception of 'self' through the concept of 'bodily perspective'. I emphasize the irreducible ambiguities of human embodiment in order to show the presuppositions and the limitations of Parfit's view. Of interest is the conception of time and the model of continuity that is appropriate to an embodied subject's life. I employ Paul Ricoeur's concept of 'human time' to argue that the reflective character of human experience demands a model of temporality and continuity that differs significantly from the one Parfit employs. (shrink)

This longitudinal study examined the development of moral judgement in 37 nursing students attending a university in Suwon, Korea. The participants completed the Korean version of the Defining Issues Test to allow analysis of their level of moral judgement. The development of moral judgement was quantified using ‘the moral development score’ at each stage (i.e. the six stages detailed by Kohlberg) and the ‘P(%) score’ (a measure of the overall moral judgement level). The results were as follows: (1) the moral (...) development score for stage 5A was consistently the highest across the four years of the students’ course, showing significant differences in some sociodemographic factors including home, birth order and monthly income; and (2) the P(%) score was higher in fourth-year (47.47 ± 11.21) than in first-year (46.13±9.73) students. There was no significant difference in the P(%) score according to sociodemographic factors. Further studies will examine in detail the correlation between curriculum and moral judgement development. We suggest that courses in ethics education should be made more relevant. (shrink)

Responding to the Special Issue's call for “new thinking” on gender and governance in developing societies, we introduce our research on the social organization of development knowledge and its ethical implications. Our feminist‐based approach, institutional ethnography, analyses the ruling relations of development and the standpoints represented in knowledge about development and its governance. Our paper offers an alternative to what we see as “the institutional standpoint” prevailing, but taken for granted, in business and society scholarship addressing development. Instead of theorizing (...) development relationships between institutions and their “stakeholders,” we illustrate what can be learned about the social relations of development beginning from the experiences of local subjects. Our analysis of an environmental research and development project in Uzbekistan shows that being missed is knowledge about development subjects that could have revealed what is locally relevant and needed. Instead, we discover gender inequality being constituted, unknowingly, within this project's institutionally generated knowledge and the activities it authorizes. (shrink)

This paper discusses what implications global luck egalitarianism (GLE) has for border control. Some authors suggest that an open‐borders policy follows from GLE. The idea is that various unchosen inequalities inevitably follow from differences in birthplace, such that GLE will always have principled reason to condemn closed borders. Others are skeptical of the assumption that GLE will have liberal implications for border control, because open borders may have other, adverse effects that outweigh the reductions in unjust inequality. Against such skeptics, (...) we argue that GLE will (typically) have quite liberal implications for border control. However, this connection is not a principled one: Whether (and to what extent) GLE favors opening or closing borders will depend upon empirical circumstances. (shrink)

Comments on G. Marcus' criticisms (see record 1996-24670-001) of K. Plunkett's and V. Marcham's (see record 1994-35650-001) connectionist account of the acquisition of the English past tense (verb morphology). The original model is reviewed. Graphing, overregularization, and other criticisms are addressed (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2000 APA, all rights reserved).

Perceptual expertise refers to learning that is specific to a domain, that transfers to new items within the trained domain, and that leads to automatic processing in the sense that expertise effects can be measured across a variety of tasks. It can be argued that most of us possess some degree of perceptual expertise in a least one, if not several domains, thereby giving the study of perceptual expertise broad application. Some object categories may in fact be objects of perceptual (...) expertise to the majority of people: Faces appear to be one such example. Thus, the use of face stimuli, or the comparison of face and object perception, can be a powerful way to ask whether a given process is influenced by perceptual expertise. Here, we emphasize one characteristic way that face processing appears to differ from nonface processing: that is, the degree to which they recruit a “holistic” rather than a “featural” perceptual strategy. This review brings evidence that expertise influences perceptual processing together with recent findings that the capacity of visual short-term memory is greater in perceptual experts and explores the relationship between the two. (shrink)

Selected response items and constructed response items are often found in the same test. Conventional psychometric models for these two types of items typically focus on using the scores for correctness of the responses. Recent research suggests, however, that more information may be available from the CR items than just scores for correctness. In this study, we describe an approach in which a statistical topic model along with a diagnostic classification model was applied to a mixed item format formative test (...) of English and Language Arts. The DCM was used to estimate students’ mastery status of reading skills. These mastery statuses were then included in a topic model as covariates to predict students’ use of each of the latent topics in their written answers to a CR item. This approach enabled investigation of the effects of mastery status of reading skills on writing patterns. Results indicated that one of the skills, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas, helped detect and explain students’ writing patterns with respect to students’ use of individual topics. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This study investigates the role of language in cross‐sector collaboration between mental health hospitals and municipalities, focusing on the challenges of maintaining continuity of care and integrating patient‐centered approaches. Using Fairclough's framework for critical discourse analysis, we examined focus group interviews with 21 healthcare professionals, including nurses, social workers, and psychiatrists, to identify key themes and patterns in how cross‐sector collaboration is discussed. The analysis revealed a dominant medicalized discourse in hospital settings, which often emphasized structured care processes like treatment (...) plans and medication management, overshadowing more flexible, patient‐centered approaches common in community‐based services. Power dynamics were evident, with hospital professionals frequently positioned as active agents, while patients and community‐based workers were portrayed in more passive roles. Although efforts to involve patients in decision‐making were noted, these were often controlled by professionals, reflecting a mediated approach to patient empowerment. The findings highlight the cultural and structural divides between hospital and community services and suggest the need for improved communication strategies, integrated care pathways, and a shift toward more inclusive, patient‐centered care models. Addressing these discursive barriers is crucial for achieving more effective, integrated, and patient‐centered care, ultimately improving outcomes for patients. (shrink)