Emerging from the internationally recognised Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane conference series, the chapters in this book offer wide-ranging critiques of that most pervasive of ideas, 'normal'. In particular, they explore the precarious positions we are presented with and, more often than not, forced into by 'normal', and its operating system, 'normalcy' (Davis, 2010). They are written by activists, students, practitioners and academics and offer related but diverse approaches. Importantly, however, the chapters also ask, what if increasingly precarious encounters with, (...) and positions of, marginality and non-normativity offers us a chance (perhaps the chance) to critically explore the possibilities of 'imagining otherwise'? The book questions the privileged position of 'non-normativity'; in youth and unpacks the expectation of the 'normal' student in both higher and primary education. It uses the position of transable people to push the boundaries of 'disability', interrogates the psycho-emotional disablism of box-ticking bureaucracy and spotlights the 'urge to know' impairment. It draws on cross-movement and cross-disciplinary work around disability to explore topics as diverse as drug use, The Bible and relational autonomy. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, it explores the benefits of (re)instating 'normal'. By paying attention to the opportunities presented amongst the fissures of critique and defiance, this book offers new applications and perspectives for thinking through the most ordinary of ideas, 'normal'. (shrink)

Collections of living organisms are reservoirs of biological knowledge that operate across times and places. From the mid-20th century, scientific institutions dedicated to the cultivation of such collections have routinized and professionalized their care. But “care,” for these collections, is focused not just on individual organisms—instead, a principal aim of a curator is to maintain the integrity of a reproducing “strain,” “variety,” “line,” or “stock,” and the composition of a collection as a whole. This paper explores the forms, the material (...) dimensions, the temporalities, and the values of that care, to recover the conditions under which scientist-custodians maintain continuity of research over many decades. This paper does so by focusing on two rather different kinds of scientific collection: that of Drosophila fruit flies on the one hand, and plant seeds on the other. Their comparison is valuable because their vastly different needs and life cycles engender very different practices of care. Comparing the materialities, life cycles, needs, and values of these divergent collections helps to draw attention to the routine and the apparently mundane. First, the paper asks: what kinds of work go into managing such collections—that is, the day-to-day management and cultivation, surveillance, and administration of information? Second, it asks: how do these practices maintain the integrity of the strains and stocks, and the collections themselves? What kinds of value does this work create? Third, what are the future imaginaries that are rhetorically drawn into the funding strategies of these collections, and how do they envision future use, ownership, and control? (shrink)

Philosophers have long been interested in a series of interrelated questions about natural kinds. What are they? What role do they play in science and metaphysics? How do they contribute to our epistemic projects? What categories count as natural kinds? And so on. Owing, perhaps, to different starting points and emphases, we now have at hand a variety of conceptions of natural kinds—some apparently better suited than others to accommodate a particular sort of inquiry. Even if coherent, this situation isn’t (...) ideal. My goal in this article is to begin to articulate a more general account of ‘natural kind phenomena’. While I do not claim that this account should satisfy everyone—it is built around a certain conception of the epistemic role of kinds and has an obvious pragmatic flavour—I believe that it has the resources to go further than extant alternatives, in particular the homeostatic property cluster view of kinds. (shrink)

What sort of philosophical work are natural kinds suited for? Scientific realists often contend that they provide the ‘aboutness’ of successful of scientific classification and explain their epistemic utility (among other side hustles). Recent history has revealed this to be a tricky job — particularly given the present naturalistic climate of philosophy of science. As a result, we’ve seen an explosion of different sorts of theories. This phenomenon that has suggested to some that philosophical theorizing about natural kinds has reached (...) a sort of ‘scholastic twilight’ and that the concept (or family of concepts) has outlived its utility: perhaps there’s no work natural kinds are suited for. While I think this pessimistic take is unwarranted, I will argue that it is worth rethinking the roles to which a reasonably naturalistic account of natural kinds can be fruitfully put. Natural kinds deserve a shorter work week. (shrink)

Science communication via testimony requires a certain level of trust. But in the context of ideologically-entangled scientific issues, trust is in short supply—particularly when the issues are politically ‘entangled’. In such cases, cultural values are better predictors than scientific literacy for whether agents trust the publicly-directed claims of the scientific community. In this paper, we argue that a common way of thinking about scientific literacy—as knowledge of particular scientific facts or concepts—ought to give way to a second-order understanding of science (...) as a process as a more important notion for the public’s trust of science. (shrink)

Content note: This paper discusses rape throughout.Abstract. In this paper, I consider arguments in favor of jury trials. While I find these generally persuasive, I argue that there can be cases where juries are not fit for purpose. In those cases, I argue that they should be replaced by judge-only trials. In doing so, I propose a framework for determining whether a type of case is unsuitable for jury trials. Partly in response to low conviction rates, there have been recent (...) suggestions that rape trials should be conducted without juries. I suggest that there is strong evidence that these offences qualify under the criteria I have described. As a result, I argue that judge-only trials should be adopted for trying rape cases. (shrink)

Some astronomers believe that we have discovered that Pluto is not a planet. I contest this assessment. Recent discoveries of trans-Neptunian Pluto-sized objects do not require that we exclude Pluto from the planets. But the obvious alternative, that classificatory revision is a matter of arbitrary choice, is also unpalatable. I argue that this classificatory controversy — which I compare to the controversy about the classification of the platypus — illustrates how our classificatory practices are laden with normative commitments of a (...) distinctive kind. I argue that the “norm-ladenness” of classification has philosophically significant ramifications for how we think about scientific disputes and debates in the metaphysics of classification such as the monism/pluralism debate. (shrink)

The scientific community, we hold, often provides society with knowledge—that the HIV virus causes AIDS, that anthropogenic climate change is underway, that the MMR vaccine is safe. Some deny that we have this knowledge, however, and work to undermine it in others. It has been common to refer to such agents as “denialists”. At first glance, then, denialism appears to be a form of skepticism. But while we know that various denialist strategies for suppressing belief are generally effective, little is (...) known about which strategies are most effective. We see this as an important first step toward their remediation. This paper leverages the approximate comparison to various forms of philosophical skepticism to design an experimental test of the efficacy of four broad strategies of denial at suppressing belief in specific scientific claims. Our results suggest that assertive strategies are more effective at suppressing belief than questioning strategies. (shrink)

Supported by a qualitative study of triple bottom line firms—those that simultaneously prioritize economic, social, and environmental objectives—we investigated the market logic and practices of TBL firms to better understand how they fulfill their mission and achieve their goals. We explored if and how TBL firms may differ in their approach to stakeholders and the management of their resources, including dynamic capabilities. We employed a research design that emphasizes the iterative comparison of narrative data within themselves and with scholarly literature (...) [i.e., resource-based view ] to develop new theoretical insights. Because the RBV is commonly used to theorize how firms achieve competitive advantage, we explored whether TBL firms achieve competitive advantage differently from what RBV theory would predict. Our data suggest that how a firm defines value has a significant influence on the capabilities it creates and how it treats its resources. We find that TBL firms redefine value to not only focus on the end product or service but also to include the systemic cost of delivering goods. As a result, TBL firms differ from prevailing scholarly thought in RBV. They strive to have resources that are sustainable and therefore imitable, commonly found, and substitutable. Moreover, they are not only transparent in their processes but also collaborate with others in the value chain and in their sector. In doing so, they deliberately create new markets from which other firms can benefit. Rather than focusing on competitive advantage, they focus on collaborative advantage. (shrink)

As our interactions with nature occur increasingly within urban landscapes, there is a need to consider how ‘mundane nature’ can be valued as a route for people to connect to nature. The content of a three good things in nature intervention, written by 65 participants each day for five days is analysed. Content analysis produced themes related to sensations, temporal change, active wildlife, beauty, weather, colour, good feelings and specific aspects of nature. The themes describe the everyday good things in (...) nature, providing direction for those seeking to frame engaging conservation messages, plan urban spaces and connect people with nearby nature. (shrink)

Satisficing consequentialism is an unpopular theory. Because it permits gratuitous sub-optimal behaviour, it strikes many as wildly implausible. It has been widely rejected as a tenable moral theory for more than twenty years. In this article, I rehearse the arguments behind this unpopularity, before examining an attempt to redeem satisficing. Richard Yetter Chappell has recently defended a form of ‘effort satisficing consequentialism’. By incorporating an ‘effort ceiling’ – a limit on the amount of willpower a situation requires – and requiring (...) that agents produce at least as much good as they could given how much effort they are exerting, Chappell avoids the obvious objections. However, I demonstrate that the revised theory is susceptible to a different objection, and that the resulting view requires that any supererogatory behaviour must be efficient, which fails to match typical moral verdicts. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo examinar algunas ideas contemporáneas sobre el método científico inscritas en la corriente de pensamiento denominada "Racionalismo Crítico". En este sentido, destacan los planteamientos propuestos por Karl Popper, máximo representante de esta tesis; así como ..

This is a book symposium on Why It’s OK to Be a Sports Fan, by Alfred Archer and Jake Wojtowicz, with contributions from Adam Kadlac, Joe Slater, Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt, and Nina Windgätter. The discussion covers a range of topics, including the form of love involved in fandom, the epistemic status of fans, fictionalism, and the role of communities in fandom.

El propósito de este artículo es realizar un análisis de las principales nociones que Wittgenstein elabora en este proceso de transición. La pregunta por resolver será, entonces, cómo Wittgenstein estructura su nueva visión del lenguaje. Para darle respuesta, en el inicio del artículo se trabajará una breve observación respecto al ansia de pureza cristalina, que, de algún modo, fue el plan que marcaba la pauta en la filosofía del Tractatus logico-philosophicus. A continuación, desde la discutida noción del significado como uso, (...) se abordarán los principales elementos que constituyen la nueva concepción del lenguaje del segundo Wittgenstein, a saber: el criterio definidor, los juegos de lenguaje, las formas de vida y los parecidos de familia. Por último, se analizará la relación que esta nueva concepción de lenguaje mantiene con las reglas y con el hecho de seguir una regla. (shrink)

The paper presents and applies Hilbert's Epsilon Calculus, first describing its standard proof theory, and giving it an intensional semantics. These are contrasted with the proof theory of Fregean Predicate Logic, and the traditional (extensional) choice function semantics for the calculus. The semantics provided show that epsilon terms are referring terms in Donnellan's sense, enabling the symbolisation and validation of argument forms involving E-type pronouns, both in extensional and intensional contexts. By providing for transparency in intensional constructions they support a (...) Model Conceptualism to contrast with traditional intensional logic's Modal Realism. But epsilon-terms also symbolise fictions, and through their difference from iota terms enable the solution of a number of outstanding puzzles about Direct Reference and de re beliefs. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic and global climate change crisis remind us that widespread trust in the products of the scientific enterprise is vital to the health and safety of the global community. Insofar as appropriate responses to these crises require us to trust that enterprise, cultivating a healthier trust relationship between science and the public may be considered as a collective public good. While it might appear that scientists can contribute to this good by taking more initiative to communicate their work (...) to public audiences, we raise a concern about unintended consequences of an individualistic approach to such communication. (shrink)

This article considers that reasoning over archives is a joint enterprise between archivists and researchers and that both groups are increasingly using machine agents to assist them in it. It starts by considering the processing of archivists, researchers and machine agents separately. Using the different perspectives this brings to highlight different aspects of that processing, as a process of sense-making, as scholarly research activity, as practices that realise and achieve data for the drawing of further inference, it reasserts the argument (...) that archives cannot be regarded as raw data to be reasoned over, but must be seen as the result of multiple representative and interpretive acts, of iterative realisation and activation as ‘data’ potentially involving many, many additional actors. It then goes on to consider how the involvement of machine agents fits into and potentially alters this picture by providing more detail about the basis on which they currently perform such acts. (shrink)

When using cases to teach corporate strategy and ethical decision-making, the aim is to demonstrate to students that leadership decision-making is at its most effective when all affected stakeholders are considered, from shareholders and employees, to the local, national, and global societies in which the company operates. This paper challenges the obstructive perception of many Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) advocates that the interests of private organizations in the alleviation of social problems should not be vested, but instead should originate from (...) charitable purposes. We evaluate an alternative approach to the role of business in contributing to social progress - Creating Shared Value (CSV), and present a case study that illuminates key features of CSV. We share pedagogical strategies for a classroom discussion of the Zynga.org case that encourage students to investigate the merits and hurdles of CSV as a pathway to harmonize the twin goals of economic value creation and social change. (shrink)

This article explores the influence of idiomatic syntactic constructions (i.e., constructions whose phrase structure rules violate the rules that underlie the construction of other kinds of sentences in the language) on the acquisition of phrase structure. In Experiment 1, participants were trained on an artificial language generated from hierarchical phrase structure rules. Some participants were given exposure to an idiomatic construction (IC) during training, whereas others were not. Under some circumstances, the presence of an idiomatic construction in the input aided (...) learners in acquiring the phrase structure of the language. Experiment 2 provides a replication of the first experiment and extends the findings by showing that idiomatic constructions that strongly violate the predictive dependencies that define the phrase structure of the language do not aid learners in acquiring the structure of the language. Together, our data suggest that (a) idiomatic constructions aid learners in acquiring the phrase structure of a language by highlighting relevant structural elements in the language, and (b) such constructions are useful cues to learning to the extent that learners can keep their knowledge of the idiomatic construction separate from their knowledge of the rest of the language. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to argue that the value of understanding derives in part from a kind of subjective stability of belief that we call epistemic resilience. We think that this feature of understanding has been overlooked by recent work, and we think it’s especially important to the value of understanding for social cognitive agents such as us. We approach the concept of epistemic resilience via the idea of the experience of epistemic ownership and argue that the (...) former concept has Platonic pedigree. Contrary to longstanding exegetical tradition, we think that Plato solves the “Meno problem” with an appeal to the epistemic resilience characteristic of understanding, not the well-groundedness characteristic of canonical cases of propositional knowledge. Finally, we apply our discussion to the case of science outreach and the challenge of global warming skepticism and conclude with directions for future research. (shrink)

Trust in the scientific enterprise — in science as an institution — is arguably important to individuals’ and societies’ well-being. Although some measures of public trust in science exist, the recipients of that trust are often ambiguous between trusting individual scientists and the scientific community at large. We argue that more precision would be beneficial — specifically, targeting public trust of the scientific community at large — and describe the development and validation of such an instrument: the Scientific Community Trust (...) Index (SCTI). We show the results of initial field testing to establish instrument reliability and validity. We then demonstrate certain advantages of the SCTI against other measures of trust and deference, and present correlations between the SCTI and participant scores in two trust-in-science scenarios. Our results suggest that the SCTI is a useful and compact tool for measuring public trust in the scientific community. (shrink)

It is clear that Tarski's T‐scheme, ‘T”p” if and only if p’, does not hold universally. It is not expected to hold, for instance, with ambiguous sentences, or with indexical sentences. Making explicit the circumstances where it does hold, however, is not just logical housekeeping: it turns out to have more radical consequences for the whole approach to Semantics associated with Tarski than has previously been envisaged.

Cyberspace, the internet and vituality are widely understood in terms of poststructuralist or antiessentialist expectations that when identity is separated from physical bodies it is experienced as self-evidently performative: we might therefore expect that new kinds of identities will be enacted on-line, and that participants will frame these identities as performances rather than judging them in terms of their truth or authenticity. This article uses a long-term ethnographic engagement with one internet social setting - the `sexpics' trade on Internet Relay (...) Chat (IRC) - to argue that neither of these expectations is met there. First, the sexual act and identities performed tend to be conventional in relation to off-line heterosexual norms and (pornographic) representations. Second, authenticity is a fundamental criterion by which participants understand and manage their on-line experiences: they veer between complete cynicism (their inability to authenticate the other meant according the relationship and the other no weight or commitment) and a desire for involvement that depended on pursuing startegies for authenticating the other, for being able to treat the other's performances as real rather than merely realistic. Significantly, these strategies of authentication were attempts to fix the other in a body or body-like presence, one which persists over time and is locatable in space, and which is therefore ethically accountable and trustworthy. (shrink)

This paper argues that Kant’s most famous objection to the ontological argument -- that existence is not a real predicate -- is not, in fact, his most effective objection, and that his ”neglected objection’ to the argument deserves to be better known. It shows that Kant clearly anticipates William Rowe’s later objection that the argument begs the question, and discusses why Kant himself seems to have overlooked the force of this criticism in his attempt to demolish the traditional proofs for (...) God’s existence. (shrink)

The rise of multi-stakeholder institutions (MIs) involving the ultra-processed food (UPF) industry has raised concerns among food and public health scholars, especially with regards to enhancing the legitimacy and influence of transnational food corporations in global food governance (GFG) spaces. However, few studies have investigated the governance composition and characteristics of MIs involving the UPF industry, nor considered the implications for organizing global responses to UPFs and other major food systems challenges. We address this gap by conducting a network analysis (...) to map global MIs involving the UPF industry, drawing data from web sources, company reports, business and market research databases, and academic and grey literature. We identified 45 such global food system MIs. Of these, executives from the UPF industry or affiliated interest groups held almost half (_n_ = 263, or 43.8%) of the total 601 board seat positions. Executives from a small number of corporations, especially Unilever (_n_ = 20), Nestlé (_n_ = 17), PepsiCo Inc (_n_ = 14), and The Coca-Cola Company (_n_ = 13) held the most board seat positions, indicating centrality to the network. Board seats of these MIs are dominated by executives from transnational corporations (_n_ = 431, or 71.7%), high-income countries (_n_ = 495, or 82.4%), and four countries (United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) (_n_ = 350, or 58.2%) in particular. This study shows that MIs involving the UPF industry privilege the interests of corporations located near exclusively in the Global North, draw legitimacy through affiliations with multi-lateral agencies, civil society groups and research institutions, and represent diverse corporate interests involved in UPF supply chains. Corporate-anchored multi-stakeholderism, as a form of GFG governance, raises challenges for achieving food systems transformation, including the control and reduction of UPFs in human diets. (shrink)

Background: Serious Illness Conversations aim to discuss patient goals. However, on acute medicine units, seriously ill patients may undergo distressing interventions until death. Objectives: To investigate the feasibility of using the Surprise Question, “Would you be surprised if this patient died within the next year?” to identify patients who would benefit from early Serious Illness Conversations and study any changes in the interdisciplinary team’s beliefs, confidence, and engagement as a result of asking the Surprise Question. Design: A prospective cohort pilot (...) study with two Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles. Participants/context: Fifty-eight healthcare professionals working on Acute Medicine Units participated in pre- and post-intervention questionnaires. The intervention involved asking participants the Surprise Question for each patient. Patient charts were reviewed for Serious Illness Conversation documentation. Ethical considerations: Ethical approval was granted by the institutions involved. Findings: Equivocal overall changes in the beliefs, confidence, and engagement of healthcare professionals were observed. Six out of 23 patients were indicated as needing a Serious Illness Conversation; chart review provided some evidence that these patients had more Serious Illness Conversation documentation compared with the 17 patients not flagged for a Serious Illness Conversation. Issues were identified in equating the Surprise Question to a Serious Illness Conversation. Discussion: Appropriate support for seriously ill patients is both a nursing professional and ethical duty. Flagging patients for conversations may act as a filtering process, allowing healthcare professionals to focus on conversations with patients who need them most. There are ethical and practical issues as to what constitutes a “serious illness” and if answering “no” to the Surprise Question always equates to a conversation. Conclusion: The barriers of time constraints and lack of training call for institutional change in order to prioritise the moral obligation of Serious Illness Conversations. (shrink)

Despite decades of concerted efforts to communicate to the public on important scientific issues pertaining to the environment and public health, gaps between public acceptance and the scientific consensus on these issues remain stubborn. One strategy for dealing with this shortcoming has been to focus on the existence of scientific consensus on the relevant matters. Recent science communication research has added support to this general idea, though the interpretation of these studies and their generalizability remains a matter of contention. In (...) this paper, we describe results of a qualitative interview study on different models of scientific consensus and the relationship between such models and trust of science, finding that familiarity with scientific consensus is rarer than might be expected. These results suggest that consensus messaging strategies may not be effective. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with locating the specific assumption that led Frege into Russell's Paradox. His understanding of reflexive pronouns was weak, for one thing, but also, by assimilating concepts to functions he was misled into thinking one could invariably replace a two-place relation with a one-place property. /// Este trabajo se ocupa de localizar el supuesto específico que llevó a Frege a la Paradoja de Russell. Por una parte, su comprensión de los pronombres reflexivos era débil pero, por otra, (...) al asimilar los conceptos a las funciones pensó equivocadamente que siempre podíamos reemplazar una relación diádica con una propiedad monádica. (shrink)

The evolutionary debunking argument advanced by Sharon Street, Michael Ruse, and Richard Joyce employs the logic of Paul Griffiths and John Wilkins to contend that humans cannot have knowledge of moral truths, since the evolutionary process that has produced our basic moral intuitions lacks causal connections to those (putative) truths. Yet this argument is self-defeating, because its aim is the categorical, normative claim that we should suspend our moral beliefs in light of the discoveries about their non-truth-tracking origins, when it (...) is precisely this claim that relies upon the normativity under attack. This article cites Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) to argue that such self-defeat can be avoided by expanding upon the basic structure of the argument put forth by Griffiths and Wilkins, provided that one embraces a version of realism that corresponds with Peirce's doctrine of final causation. So construed, final causation reconciles real generals (including real moral values) with natural selection and undergirds further speculation of moral facts within values per se. (shrink)