One of the most important units of analysis for positive organizational psychology research is leaders and future leaders in the workplace. Leaders often have a large responsibility for and influence on the well-being and performance of their followers. They also face the unique challenge of serving their followers and the organization while needing to maintain their own vitality and well-being. Vitality can provide a foundation of energy resources to a leader to serve at their full capacity. This study develops and (...) empirically examines a new three factor scale to measure leader vitality which includes physical, psychological, and emotional components. In study 1, a total of 175 participants completed the Leader Vitality Scale and other positive psychology related measures. Exploratory factor analysis and then confirmatory factor analysis showed that the LVS is hierarchical with three distinct factors, with overall vitality as the higher-order factor. Correlational tests with two established vitality scales for general use showed that the LVS is positively related to existing scales, demonstrating convergent validity. In study 2, data was gathered from 92 top level leaders in the C-Suite, vice presidents, directors, and managers of organizations across the United States. Results showed that LVS scores significantly correlated with life satisfaction, positive emotions, positive functioning at work, and psychological capital. Overall, these findings suggest that the LVS is a valid measure for assessing leader vitality, and can used in future studies of well-being and positive functioning at work. (shrink)

Nietzsche's use of metaphor has been widely noted but rarely focused to explore specific images in great detail. A Nietzschean Bestiary gathers essays devoted to the most notorious and celebrated beasts in Nietzsche's work. The essays illustrate Nietzsche's ample use of animal imagery, and link it to the dual philosophical purposes of recovering and revivifying human animality, which plays a significant role in his call for de-deifying nature.

In this wide-ranging interview, Dave Elder-Vass discusses his main contributions to critical realist theory over two decades. In the first half, he explains his early work on emergence, agency, str...

Many who advocate dynamical systems approaches to cognitive science believe themselves committed to the thesis of extended cognition and to the rejection of representation. I argue that this belief is false. In part, this misapprehension rests on a warrantless re-conception of cognition as intelligent behavior. In part also, it rests on thinking that conceptual issues can be resolved empirically. Once these issues are sorted out, the way is cleared for a dynamical systems approach to cognition that is free to retain (...) the standard conception of cognition as taking place in the head, and over representations. (shrink)

In the following essay I set out the core argument expounded by Nicholas Rescher in regard of the link between reality and appearance, illustrating this argument based on chapter 6 of his Reality and its Appearance. Rescher’s argument overlaps with critical realist concerns based on his approach to metaphysical realism. I make the point that the argument exhibits the virtue of concision, but, as a result, suffers from under-elaboration in important areas; most particularly, an explicit engagement with standard philosophical problems (...) of appearance, such as Gettier, and, more generally, the fundamental issue of how appearance may or may not change in response to changes in the human condition. (shrink)

What psychological mechanisms enable people to reappraise a situation to change its emotional impact? We propose that reappraisal works by shifting appraisal outcomes—abstract representations of ho...

Setting out to understand Frege, the scholar confronts a roadblock at the outset: We just have little to go on. Much of the unpublished work and correspondence is lost, probably forever. Even the most basic task of imagining Frege's intellectual life is a challenge. The people he studied with and those he spent daily time with are little known to historians of philosophy and logic. To be sure, this makes it hard to answer broad questions like: 'Who influenced Frege?' But (...) the information vacuum also creates local problems of textual interpretation. Say we encounter a sentence that may be read as alluding to a scientific dispute. Should it be read that way? To answer, we'd need to address prior questions. Is it .. (shrink)

The paper describes the problem for robust moral realism of explaining the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral, and examines five objections to the argument: The moral does not supervene on the descriptive, because we may owe different obligations to duplicates. If the supervenience thesis is repaired to block, it becomes trivial and easy to explain. Supervenience is a moral doctrine and should get an explanation from within normative ethics rather than metaethics. Supervenience is a conceptual truth and should (...) be explained by the nature of our concepts rather than by a metaphysical theory. The moral does not supervene on the descriptive, because moral principles are not metaphysically necessary. It concludes that none of these objections is successful, so Robust Realists do have an explanatory debt to worry about. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is show that second-order logic, as understood through standard semantics, is intimately bound up with set theory, or some other general theory of interpretations, structures, or whatever. Contra Quine, this does not disqualify second-order logic from its role in foundational studies. To wax Quinean, why should there be a sharp border separating mathematics from logic, especially the logic of mathematics?

The design argument has taken on different formulations among Muslim thinkers. Arguably, most of these approaches might be described as Paleyan. In this chapter, however, I seek to develop a non-Paleyan approach toward design discourse by focusing on the thought of the Muslim theologian, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328 CE). In developing a Taymiyyan model of design-based theistic belief, I argue that this model can resist some of the problems associated with Paleyan approaches. Specifically, it avoids concerns over the soundness or (...) cogency of the Paleyan inference amid Darwinian objections. I argue that this is because on the Taymiyyan model, design-based theistic beliefs are noninferential and concern the ultimate or metaphysical cause of the design in nature, such that they do not rival naturalistic scientific explanations of biological phenomena. Despite three noteworthy objections to the model, I suggest that it offers a plausible way to defend design-based theistic belief. (shrink)

The provider–patient relationship is typically regarded as an expert-to-novice relationship, and with good reason. Providers have extensive education and experience that have developed in them the competence to treat conditions better and with fewer harms than anyone else. However, some researchers argue that many patients with long-term conditions (LTCs), such as arthritis and chronic pain, have become “experts” at managing their LTC. Unfortunately, there is no generally agreed-upon conception of “patient expertise” or what it implies for the provider–patient relationship. I (...) review three prominent accounts of patient expertise and argue that all face serious objections. I contend, however, that a plausible account of patient expertise is available and that it provides a framework both for further empirical studies and for enhancing the provider–patient relationship. (shrink)

Chapter: WHITE PRIVILEGE AND THE COLOR OF FEAR This chapter focuses on the role that power, innocence and ignorance play in maintaining the position of white privilege. There are times when white people use their privilege in ways that overtly attempt to put and keep people of color in their places, but more often white privilege is less obvious. White privilege does not stand out in white peoples’ behavior at all times. When white behavior is normalized, it is masked. At (...) these times, white privilege and power hide behind the masks of innocence and the masks of ignorance. White people can mask from themselves and others their location with relations to power. In the film, The Color of Fear, David C. hides his power. As he hides his power, he keeps his privilege invisible, that is, behind a mask. In this chapter, we focus on the masking and unmasking of innocence and ignorance to get a better look at how the process of normalization of these masks makes whiteness powerful and consequently hides white privilege. The logic of power and privilege is reflected in the following relationship: -/- innocence + ignorance = Invisibility (of White Privilege) -/- . (shrink)

Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) has been a growing point of interest in medical education yet has not been assessed in the field of bioethics. This study evaluated the accuracy of ChatGPT-3.5 (April 2023 version) in answering text-based, multiple choice bioethics questions at the level of US third-year and fourth-year medical students. A total of 114 bioethical questions were identified from the widely utilised question banks UWorld and AMBOSS. Accuracy, bioethical categories, difficulty levels, specialty data, error analysis and character count (...) were analysed. We found that ChatGPT had an accuracy of 59.6%, with greater accuracy in topics surrounding death and patient–physician relationships and performed poorly on questions pertaining to informed consent. Of all the specialties, it performed best in paediatrics. Yet, certain specialties and bioethical categories were under-represented. Among the errors made, it tended towards content errors and application errors. There were no significant associations between character count and accuracy. Nevertheless, this investigation contributes to the ongoing dialogue on artificial intelligence’s (AI) role in healthcare and medical education, advocating for further research to fully understand AI systems’ capabilities and constraints in the nuanced field of medical bioethics. (shrink)

Recent science funding policy scholars and practitioners have advocated for the use of lotteries, or elements of random chance, as supplementations of traditional peer review for evaluating grant applications. One of the primary motivations for lotteries is their purported openness to innovative research. The purpose of this paper is to argue that current proponents of funding science by lottery overestimate the viability of peer review and thus unduly restrict the scope of lotteries in science funding practice. I further show how (...) this analysis suggests a different way of introducing lotteries into science funding policy. (shrink)

Abstract -/- “The Obvious Invisibility of the Relationship Between Technology and Social Values” -/- We all too often assume that technology is the product of objective scientific research. And, we assume that technology’s moral value lies in only the moral character of its user. Yet, in order to objectify technology in a manner that removes it from a moral realm, we rely on the assumption that technology is value neutral, i.e., it is independent of all contexts other than the context (...) in which it is used morally or immorally by someone. However, there is a power to technology. At the very least, technology should be seen as reflecting the values that it rises from: a developmental context. Consequently, we can make the invisible moral realm visible as we investigate the relationship between culture and technology. Pragmatically, we can trace how cultural values inform what counts as a scientific question. When we look at the 1980s epidemiological model for AIDS we see how the presuppositions within a culture frame the type of question asked, i.e. What population do we see AIDS occurring in? This question initially leads scientific research away from actual individual behaviors until a different question is asked that leads the question towards behavioral epidemiological models rather than population models. Secondly, we can make visible the circumstance that depicts that what constitutes a scientific problem has a direct relationship to the types of technologies that are developed. We can more clearly see this circular relationship between culture and technology by looking at clinical research and practice regarding heart disease. Men who were dying of diagnosed heart disease were showing symptoms of problems in large arteries of the heart. Women were also dying of heart disease, but since their large arteries were not overwhelmingly compromised they were not being properly diagnosed until recently. Different technologies and protocol were needed to “see” different symptoms in the smaller vessels of women. Thirdly, I show how the types of technology developed, in turn, can create new values or enhance preexisting values within a culture. DNA research can be used to investigate long, unanswered questions about qualitative dimensions of life in quantitative manners. Yet, long held unanswered questions about a biological basis of race or intelligence are themselves rarely challenged as uninteresting or misguided even when they are tied to prejudicial qualitative assumptions if the chance of a “scientific” answer is possible. When existing technologies or modifications of existing technologies can be used they seem to direct human reactions and behaviors in predictable ways. The technologies themselves may be said to direct culture in ethically valenced manners. (shrink)

Feyerabend is infamous for his defense of pluralism, which he extends to every topic he discusses. Disagreement, a by-product of this pluralism, becomes a sign of flourishing critical communities. In Feyerabend’s political works, he extends this pluralism from science to democratic societies and incorporates his earlier work on scientific methodology into a procedure for designing just policy. However, a description and analysis of Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement is lacking. In this paper, I reconstruct and assess Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement, with (...) a particular emphasis on the role of experts, and its role in the formation of science policy. I go on to assess this argument in light of recent literature on manufactured disagreement on politically contentious science policy. I conclude by suggesting some prospects and problems for de-idealizing Feyerabend’s position on disagreement to see whether it may be plausibly implemented. (shrink)

This chapter discusses whether Quasi-Realism gains any advantage over Robust Realism with respect to the problem of explaining supervenience. The chapter starts with a summary of what the supervenience problem is and recounts the history of expressivist thinking about supervenience: the supervenience problem was a challenge raised by expressivist Robust Realists, with the idea that expressivism had an excellent explanation of the phenomenon and realism had none. The chapter then contrasts Quasi-Realism and Robust Realism in order to bring the big (...) problem out in the open, namely that Quasi-Realists have not provided any explanation at all for the phenomenon of supervenience. In this respect they are, it appears, in the same boat as Robust Realists. The chapter maps out the possible paths for Quasi-Realists to travel in pursuit of Quasi-Explananda, and gives some reasons to be optimistic. The chapter ends with a suggestive analogy and a synopsis of the state of the dialectic. (shrink)

In reference to the philosophical theology of medieval Islamic theologian Ibn Taymiyya, this paper outlines a parallel between Taymiyyan thought and Alvin Plantinga’s thesis of ‘Reformed Epistemology’. In critiquing a previous attempt to build an account of ‘Islamic externalism’, the Taymiyyan model offers an account that can be seen as wholly ‘Plantingan’.

In the following review essay I explore the limitations of effective and constructive critique of Tony Lawson’s realism in economics as articulated in Ontology and Economics. In the first section I summarize the different framing procedures that shape the different critiques. In the second section I illustrate the limitations this creates using Caldwell’s contribution and in the third section I explore the way Lawson is conditioned to respond in terms of contestation, clarification and restatement. In the fourth section I add (...) some additional detail based on Samuelson’s approach to modelling in order to illustrate what is at issue between Caldwell and Lawson and to emphasize what this suggests in terms of a common pattern across the contributions to the text. In the fifth section and in the conclusion I link the limitations of the various critiques found in Ontology and Economics to a basic issue of the vulnerability of realism to critique in order to make some suggestions regarding constructive critique and development for realism in economics. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 2, April 2024, Page 237-242.

The problem of religious disagreement between epistemic peers is a potential threat to the epistemic justification of one’s theistic belief. In this paper, I develop a response to this problem which draws on the central epistemological thesis of skeptical theism concerning our inability to make proper judgements about God’s reasons for permitting evil. I suggest that this thesis may extend over to our judgements about God’s reasons for self-revealing, and that when it does so, it can enable theists to remain (...) steadfast amid disagreement with epistemic peers who hold a contrary theistic belief (i.e., atheistic belief). For if we’re unable to make proper judgements about God’s reasons for self-revealing, then for all we know, God has some reason for not revealing Himself to our apparent epistemic peer. Thus, their epistemic credentials needn’t provide reason to reduce one’s confidence to such a degree as to no longer uphold one’s theistic belief. (shrink)

The current practices of refugee protection refugees largely leave the burdens of the refugee regime to lie where they fall. Those states which are geographically proximate to refugee-producing regions, already amongst the least advantaged, bear the bulk of these burdens. In this paper, I critically assess two proposals which seek to address this maldistribution: a market in asylum services and a principle of comparative advantage. I argue that from the standpoint of justice, these proposals share two objectionable features. First, they (...) enable relations of domination between states, because they ignore the background relations of inequality upon which they depend for their effectiveness. Second, they institute an injustice of ‘misframing,’ in that they preclude consideration of refugees’ legitimate claims to be hosted (or not to be hosted) in a particular state. The failings of these approaches are illuminating and, I argue, provide us with some theoretical desiderata for a positive account of justice in the distribution of responsibilities to refugees. (shrink)

Climate change is reshaping patterns of displacement around the world. Extreme weather events destroy homes, environmental degradation threatens the viability of livelihoods, sea level rise and coastal erosion force communities to relocate, and risks to food and resource security magnify the sources of political instability. Climate displacement—the displacement of people driven at least in part by the impacts of climate change—is a pressing moral challenge that is incumbent upon us to address. -/- This book develops a political theory of climate (...) displacement. Most work on climate displacement has tended to take an idealized ‘climate refugee’ as its focus. But focusing on the figure of the climate refugee obscures the complexity and heterogeneity of climate displacement. Instead, this book takes the empirical dynamics of climate displacement as its starting point. It examines the moral and political problems raised by the interaction of climate change and displacement in five domains: community relocation, territorial sovereignty, labour migration, refugee movement, and internal displacement. In each context, climate displacement raises distinct questions, which this book explores on their own terms. At the same time, this book treats climate displacement as a unified phenomenon by examining the overarching questions of responsibility and fairness that it raises. The result is an empirically grounded political theory that both maps the conceptual terrain of climate displacement and charts a course for meeting the moral challenge that it raises. (shrink)

Many preventive intervention studies with adolescents address high-risk behaviors such as drug and alcohol use, and unprotected sex. Randomized controlled trials (RCT) are the gold standard methodology used to test the effectiveness of these behavioral interventions. Interventions outside the rigidly described protocol are prohibited. However, there are ethical challenges to implementing inflexible intervention protocols, especially when the target population is young, experiences many stressful events, and lives in a resource-poor environment. Teens who are at high risk for substance use or (...) sexual risk behaviors tend to be at risk for other problems such as exposure to violence, sexual and physical abuse, depression, and homelessness. How should investigators deal with the psychological and social needs of teenagers in prevention programs in an ethically appropriate way and at the same time preserve the validity of RCT results? We have identified program characteristics, participant characteristics, interaction with parents, and problems with adolescents not in the study as sources of ethical dilemmas in RCT with at-risk adolescents. As a result of our experience, we recommend that every behavioral intervention study develop an ethics protocol, which should include rules for providing help to participants, has contact information for experts to provide guidance, and an emergency procedure for dealing with life threatening situations. In addition, studies should have a resource manual, train research staff in these ethical issues, and work with a data safety and monitoring board or ethics committee. (shrink)

In this article, I consider how the epistemic problem of religious disagreement has been viewed within the Islamic tradition. Specifically, I consider two religious epistemological trends within the tradition: Islamic Rationalism and Islamic Traditionalism. In examining the approaches of both trends toward addressing the epistemic problem, I suggest that neither is wholly adequate. Nonetheless, I argue that both approaches offer insights that might be relevant to building a more adequate response. So, I attempt to combine insights from both by drawing (...) a distinction between inferential and noninferential reflective responsibility. Given this distinction, I argue that it may be possible for a theist to remain steadfast in upholding their tradition-specific theistic belief, without having to hold that belief by way of inference; but nevertheless, having to be sufficiently reflectively responsible in forming their theistic belief noninferentially. (shrink)

We are more used to thinking of medicine in relation to the ways that it alleviates the effects of violence. Yet an important thread in the academic literature acknowledges that medicine can also be responsible for perpetuating violence, albeit unintentionally, against the very individuals it intends to help. In this essay, I discuss definitions of violence, emphasizing the importance of understanding the term not only as a physical perpetration but as an act of power of one person over another. I (...) next explore the paradox of a healing profession that is permeated with violence sometimes necessary, often unintentional, and almost always unrecognized. Identifying the construct of “physician arrogance” as contributory to violence, I go on to identify different manifestations of violence in a medical context, including violence to the body; structural violence; metaphoric violence; and the practice of speaking to or about patients (and others in the healthcare system in ways that minimize or disrespect their full humanity. I further suggest possible explanations for the origins of these kinds of violence in physicians, including the fear of suffering and death in relation to vicarious trauma and the consequent concept of “killing suffering”; as well as why patients might be willing to accept such violence directed toward them. I conclude with brief recommendations for attending to root causes of violence, both within societal and institutional structures, and within ourselves, offering the model of the wounded healer. (shrink)

After a brief account of the problem of higher-order vagueness, and its seeming intractability, I explore what comes of the issue on a linguistic, contextualist account of vagueness. On the view in question, predicates like 'borderline red' and 'determinately red' are, or at least can be, vague, but they are different in kind from 'red'. In particular, 'borderline red' and 'determinately red' are not colours. These predicates have linguistic components, and invoke notions like 'competent user of the language'. On my (...) view, so-called 'higher-order vagueness' is actually ordinary, first-order vagueness in different predicates. I explore the possibility that, nevertheless, a pernicious regress ensues. (shrink)

A common philosophical account of expertise contends that (a) the good of expertise lies in the fact that it is grounded in reliably true beliefs or knowledge in a domain and (b) rejecting this truth-linked view threatens the authority of experts and opens one to epistemic relativism. I argue that both of these claims are implausible, and I show how epistemic authority and objectivity can be grounded in the current state of understanding and skill in a domain. Further, I argue (...) that what I call a ‘cognitive systems’ approach is consistent with this domain-linked account of expert authority, is empirically supported, and provides a philosophical foundation for both empirical and conceptual work on the nature and scope of expertise. (shrink)

These chapters analyze texts from Isaac Newton’s work to shed new light on scientific understanding at his time. Newton used the concept of “sensorium” in writings intended for a public audience, in relation to both humans and God, but even today there is no consensus about the meaning of his term. The literal definition of the Latin term 'sensorium', or its English equivalent 'sensory', is 'thing that feels’ but this is a theoretical construct. The book takes readers on a process (...) of discovery, through inquiry into both Newton’s concept and its underlying model. It begins with the human sensorium. This part of his concept is situated in the context of the aforesaid writings but also in the context of the writings of two of Newton's contemporaries, the physicians William Briggs and Thomas Willis, both of whom were at the forefront of their respective specialties of ophthalmology and neurology. Only once the human sensorium has been explored is it possible to generalize to the unobservable divine sensorium, because Newton's method of reasoning from experience requires that the second part of his concept is last in the order of knowledge. And the reason for this sequence is that his method, the short-hand term for which is 'analogy of nature', proceeds from that which has been observed to be universally true to that which is beyond the limits of observation. Consequently, generalization passes insensibly into reasoning by analogy. Readers will see how certain widespread assumptions can be called into question, such as that Newton was a theological voluntarist for whom the will is superior to the intellect, or that, for Newton, not only the world or universe but also God occupies the whole extent of infinite space. The insights afforded through this book will appeal to scholars of the philosophy of science, human physiology, philosophy of mind and epistemology, among others. (shrink)

This paper examines the pressures leading two very different Early Modern philosophers, Descartes and Locke, to invoke two ways in which thought is directed at objects. According to both philosophers, I argue, the same idea can simultaneously count as “of” two different objects—in two different senses of the phrase ‘idea of’. One kind of intentional directedness is invoked in answering the question What is it to think that thus-and-so? The other kind is invoked in answering the question What accounts for (...) the success of our proper methods of inquiry? For Descartes as well as Locke, the two kinds of “ofness” come apart as a result of strong rationalist commitments. However, I will suggest that even if we reject such commitments, we go wrong if we assume that a single kind of intentional directedness suffices to address both questions. (shrink)

Priority monism has been criticised on the grounds that monists cannot give an informative story about how the world is heterogeneous: how can there be qualitative variation in the world, given we cannot explain the world’s qualitative variation in terms of its proper parts? I will argue that none of the traditional solutions to this problem are plausible, and instead argue that we should hold that what accounts for the world’s heterogeneity is that the Cosmos is identical to the collective (...) plurality of all the world’s tropes, and each individual trope, in the plurality, is non-distributively grounded in the plurality/bundle of all the world’s tropes. I go onto note that as well as providing a solution to the monistic problem of heterogeneity, this view – which I call (PUT) – could well be a promising trope bundle theory in its own right. (shrink)

Aristotle follows the Socrates of Plato's Gorgias in contrasting rhetoric with teaching. For him, premises of arguments must in rhetoric be reputable ( endoxa), but in teaching be archai of the relevant science. And teaching requires recognition of the speaker's authority, rhetoric does not. Like Socrates, he thinks teaching but not rhetoric requires knowledge of your subject. Unlike Socrates, Aristotle does not for this reason reject rhetoric as dangerous, but accepts it as useful for public and interpersonal deliberation.

This paper investigates the claim that immigrants have a moral duty to integrate. I argue that socially excluded immigrant minorities have a moral permission to form enclaves, which means that they have at most only limited duties to integrate. Positively, I argue that enclaves can play an important role in supporting the self-respect of socially excluded immigrants. Negatively, I argue social exclusion makes the putative duty to integrate—when it conflicts with enclave formation—unreasonably burdensome. I also argue that even if integration (...) is a genuine duty, it cannot be permissibly enforced as a social expectation vis-à-vis socially excluded immigrants because members of dominant social groups lack standing to blame socially excluded immigrants for failing to integrate. My argument is pessimistic because it recognizes that integration may nonetheless play an important role in tackling relational inequality. Social exclusion thus means that immigrant minorities have only limited duties to integrate, but it also makes integration particularly valuable. (shrink)