Volume 24, Issue 7, July 2024, Page 6-12.

Addressing Education: Purposes, Plans, and Politics is the first in the 10-volume series, Lynchburg College Symposium Readings, 3rd edition. Each volume presents primary texts organized around an interdisciplinary, liberal arts theme such as education, politics, social issues, science and technology, morals and ethics. The series has been developed by Lynchburg College faculty for use in the Senior Symposium and the Lynchburg College Symposium Readings Program (SS/LCSR). While these programs are distinctive to Lynchburg College, the texts are used on many college (...) campuses across the nation, as well as by readers interested in significant original texts on important topics. Addressing Education: Purposes, Plans, and Politics offers primary source readings on a wide range of topics in education. Here are the original writings that readers often only read about. In this volume, the educators speak for themselves in selections and excerpts from Plato (360 B.C. E.) to Paolo Freire (1968). Familiar luminaries Mann, Rousseau, DuBois, Keller, Jefferson, 21 in all gather together all in one volume to deliver these pivotal ideas with incomparable impact. Whether consumed cover-to-cover or piece-by-piece, the volume invites useful, critical debate on this important topic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Is it good to form positive beliefs about those you have faith in, such as God or a religious community? Doxastic partialists say that it is. Some hold that it is good, from the viewpoint of faith, to form positive beliefs about the object of your faith even when your evidence favours negative ones. Others try to maintain respect for evidence by appealing to a highly permissive epistemology. I argue against both forms of doxastic partiality, on the grounds that (...) they foster an epistemically problematic noetic entrenchment. I instead defend evidentialism—the view that it is good to strive for true beliefs about the object of your faith, be they positive or negative, given relatively stringent evidential norms. I address the objection that evidentialism fosters disloyalty to the other party, not least because it risks losing your faith altogether. What emerges are not just epistemic norms for beliefs about religious matters, but an evidentialist account of what makes for good faith itself. (shrink)

Highlighting main issues and controversies, this book brings together current philosophical discussions of symmetry in physics to provide an introduction to the subject for physicists and philosophers. The contributors cover all the fundamental symmetries of modern physics, such as CPT and permutation symmetry, as well as discussing symmetry-breaking and general interpretational issues. Classic texts are followed by new review articles and shorter commentaries for each topic. Suitable for courses on the foundations of physics, philosophy of physics and philosophy of science, (...) the volume is a valuable reference for students and researchers. (shrink)

Predicate nominals (e.g., “is a female”) seem to label or categorize their subjects, while their adjectival correlates (e.g., “is female”) merely attribute a property. Predicate nominals also elicit essentializing inferential judgments about inductive potential and stable explanatory membership. Data from psychology and semantics support that this distinction is robust and productive. I argue that while the difference between predicate nominals and predicate adjectives is elided by standard semantic theories, it ought not be. I then develop and defend a psychologically motivated (...) semantic account on which predicate nominals attribute kind membership and trigger a presupposition that underpins our essentialist judgments. (shrink)

Aristotle's Categories can easily seem to be a statement of a naïve, pre-philosophical ontology, centered around ordinary items. Wolfgang-Rainer Mann argues that the treatise, in fact, presents a revolutionary metaphysical picture, one Aristotle arrives at by (implicitly) criticizing Plato and Plato's strange counterparts, the "Late-Learners" of the Sophist. As Mann shows, the Categories reflects Aristotle's discovery that ordinary items are things (objects with properties). Put most starkly, Mann contends that there were no things before Aristotle. The author's (...) argument consists of two main elements. First, a careful investigation of Plato which aims to make sense of the odd-sounding suggestion that things do not show up as things in his ontology. Secondly, an exposition of the theoretical apparatus Aristotle introduces in the Categories--an exposition which shows how Plato's and the Late-Learners' metaphysical pictures cannot help but seem inadequate in light of that apparatus. In doing so, Mann reveals that Aristotle's conception of things--now so engrained in Western thought as to seem a natural expression of common sense--was really a hard-won philosophical achievement. Clear, subtle, and rigorously argued, The Discovery of Things will reshape our understanding of some of Aristotle's--and Plato's--most basic ideas. (shrink)

Through examining practices of torture, extra-judicial assassination, and first person accounts of soldiers on the ground, Bonnie Mann develops a new theory of gender.

Recent advances in medical and information technologies, the availability of new types of medical data, the requirement of increasing numbers of study participants, as well as difficulties in recruitment and retention, all present serious problems for traditional models of specific and informed consent to medical research. However, these advances also enable novel ways to securely share and analyse data. This paper introduces one of these advances—blockchain technologies—and argues that they can be used to share medical data in a secure and (...) auditable fashion. In addition, some aspects of consent and data collection, as well as data access management and analysis, can be automated using blockchain-based smart contracts. This paper demonstrates how blockchain technologies can be used to further all three of the bioethical principles underlying consent requirements: the autonomy of patients, by giving them much greater control over their data; beneficence, by greatly facilitating medical research efficiency and by reducing biases and opportunities for errors; and justice, by enabling patients with rare or under-researched conditions to pseudonymously aggregate their data for analysis. Finally, we coin and describe the novel concept of prosent, by which we mean the blockchain-enabled ability of all stakeholders in the research process to pseudonymously and proactively consent to data release or exchange under specific conditions, such as trial completion. (shrink)

Eating disorders are mental illnesses that can have a significant and persistent physical impact, especially for those who are not treated early in their disease trajectory. Although many persons w...

When used clinically, psychedelics may appear unusual or even unique when compared to more familiar or long-standing medical interventions, prompting some to suggest that the ethical issues raised may likewise be exceptional. If that is correct, then perhaps psychedelics should be treated differently from other medical substances: for example, by being subjected to different ethical or evidentiary standards. Alternatively, it may be that psychedelics have more in common with various existing medical interventions than first meets the eye. We argue in (...) favor of the latter position, drawing on parallels from earlier debates around genetic exceptionalism in bioethics. We suggest there are risks to adopting a stance of “psychedelic ethical exceptionalism,” and propose that consistent ethical rules and evidentiary standards should be applied across all relevant areas of clinical medicine. Importantly, this does not preclude the possibility that changes to existing standards should be made; but if so, this should not be justified by appealing to the alleged uniqueness of psychedelics. (shrink)

This paper explores varieties of scientific structuralism. Central to our investigation is the notion of `shared structure'. We begin with a description of mathematical structuralism and use this to point out analogies and disanalogies with scientific structuralism. Our particular focus is the semantic structuralist's attempt to use the notion of shared structure to account for the theory-world connection, this use being crucially important to both the contemporary structural empiricist and realist. We show why minimal scientific structuralism is, at the very (...) least, a powerful methodological standpoint. Our investigation also makes explicit what more must be added to this minimal structuralist position in order to address the theory-world connection, namely, an account of representation. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Metaphysics Θ.8 argument for the priority of actuality to potentiality poses an immediate interpretive problem: the argument uses two distinct tests for priority, one of which threatens to reverse the results of the other. This paper argues that the standard approach to this passage, according to which one thing is prior to another when it satisfies the ontological independence test from Metaphysics Δ.11, fails to secure the argumentative unity of the passage. It introduces a new, causal account of priority (...) which explains both Aristotle’s claims about priority and the way he argues for them. (shrink)

I argue that, despite van Inwagen’s pessimism about the task, it is worth looking for answers to his General Composition Question. Such answers or ‘principles of composition’ tell us about the relationship between an object and its parts. I compare principles of composition with criteria of identity, arguing that, just as different sorts of thing satisfy different criteria of identity, they may satisfy different principles of composition. Variety in criteria of identity is not taken to reflect ontological variety in the (...) identity relation; I discuss whether variety in principles of composition should be taken to reflect ontological variety in the composition relation. (shrink)

I argue that faith is a type of trust. It is also part of a relationship in which both parties are called on to be faithful, where faithfulness is a type of trustworthiness. What distinguishes faith relationships from trust relationships is that both parties value the faith relationship intrinsically. I discuss how faith on this account can, and cannot, be rational when it goes beyond a person’s evidence. It turns out that faith has the same rationality conditions as trust, differing (...) from it only in the cases that fix our intuitions. (shrink)

Background Moral resilience is the integrity and emotional strength to remain buoyant and achieve moral growth amid distressing situations. Evidence is still emerging on how to best cultivate moral resilience. Few studies have examined the predictive relationship of workplace well-being and of organizational factors with moral resilience. Research aims The aims are to examine associations of workplace well-being (i.e., compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress) and moral resilience, and to examine associations of workplace factors (i.e., authentic leadership and perceived (...) congruence of organizational mission and behaviors) and moral resilience. Research design This study uses a cross-sectional design. Participants and research context Nurses practicing in a hospital in the United States were surveyed using validated instruments (N = 147). Individual factors were measured using demographics and the Professional Quality of Life Scale. Organizational factors were measured using the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire and a single item measuring organizational mission/behavior congruence. Moral resilience was measured using the Rushton Moral Resilience Scale. Ethical considerations The study was approved by an institutional review board. Findings Resilience was noted to have significant small correlations with burnout, secondary traumatic stress, compassion satisfaction, and organizational mission/behavior congruence. Burnout and secondary traumatic stress predicted less resilience, whereas compassion satisfaction and perceived congruence between organizational mission and behaviors predicted higher resilience. Discussion Burnout and secondary traumatic stress, increasingly experienced by nurses and other health professionals, have negative effects on moral resilience. Compassion satisfaction can increase resilience, which is especially important in nursing. Organizational practices promoting integrity and confidence can have positive effects on resilience. Conclusions Continued work to confront workplace well-being issues, especially burnout, is needed as a way of increasing moral resilience. Studies of organizational and work environment factors to bolster resilience are likewise needed to assist organizational leaders in devising the best strategies. (shrink)

: As Heidegger acknowledges, our understanding is essentially situated and so limited by the context and tradition into which it is thrown. But this ‘situatedness’ does not exhaust Heidegger's concept of ‘thrownness’. By examining this concept and its grammar, I develop a more complete interpretation. I identify several different kinds of finitude or limitation in our understanding, and touch on ways in which we confront and carry different dimensions of our past.

In this chapter, we argue that Du Châtelet’s account of motion is an important contribution to the history of the absolute versus relative motion debate. The arguments we lay out have two main strands. First, we clarify Du Châtelet’s threefold taxonomy of motion, using Musschenbroek as a useful Newtonian foil and showing that the terminological affinity between the two is only apparent. Then, we assess Du Châtelet’s account in light of the conceptual, epistemological, and ontological challenges posed by Newton to (...) any relational theory of motion. What we find is that, although Du Châtelet does not meet all the challenges to their full extent, her account of motion is adequate for the goal of the Principia: determining the true motions in our planetary system. (shrink)

Capturing the lively modernist milieu of Kenneth Burke's early career in Greenwich Village, where Burke arrived in 1915 fresh from high school in Pittsburgh, this book discovers him as an intellectual apprentice conversing with "the moderns." Burke found himself in the midst of an avant-garde peopled by Malcolm Cowley, Marianne Moore, Jean Toomer, Katherine Anne Porter, William Carlos Williams, Allen Tate, Hart Crane, Alfred Stieglitz, and a host of other fascinating figures. Burke himself, who died in 1993 at the (...) age of 96, has been hailed as America's most brilliant and suggestive critic and the most significant theorist of rhetoric since Cicero. Many schools of thought have claimed him as their own, but Burke has defied classification and indeed has often been considered a solitary, eccentric genius immune to intellectual fashions. But Burke's formative work of the 1920s, when he first defined himself and his work in the context of the modernist conversation, has gone relatively unexamined. Here we see Burke living and working with the crowd of poets, painters, and dramatists affiliated with Others magazine, Stieglitz's "291" gallery, and Eugene O'Neill's Provincetown Players; the leftists associated with the magazines The Masses and Seven Arts; the Dadaists; and the modernist writers working on literary journals like The Dial, where Burke in his capacity as an associate editor saw T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" into print for the first time and provided other editorial services for Thomas Mann, e.e. cummings, Ezra Pound, and many other writers of note. Burke also met the iconoclasts of the older generation represented by Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken, the New Humanists, and the literary nationalists who founded Contact and The New Republic. Jack Selzer shows how Burke's own early poems, fiction, and essays emerged from and contributed to the modernist conversation in Greenwich Village. He draws on a wonderfully rich array of letters between Burke and his modernist friends and on the memoirs of his associates to create a vibrant portrait of the young Burke's transformation from aesthete to social critic. (shrink)

This is a very introductory introduction to some ways in which the special and general theories of relativity may bear upon metaphysical questions about the nature of time and space, and the persistence of objects.

This paper considers Kant's understanding of conceptual representation in light of his view of geometry.

Dans la vie d'un lecteur, certains auteurs occupent une place à part : lectures inaugurales, compagnons de tous les jours, sources auxquelles on revient. La collection "Les auteurs de ma vie" invite de grands écrivains contemporains à partager leur admiration pour un classique, dont la lecture a particulièrement compté pour eux. Dans sa jeunesse, Thomas Mann a lu et médité Schopenhauer, philosophe de la volonté et du pessimisme, qui a largement influencé l'oeuvre de celui qui deviendra l'un des plus (...) grands écrivains modernes de la décadence. Cet hommage à son maître nous offre une clé précieuse de son parcours intellectuel. (shrink)

From 1908 to 1922, William Beebe, the curator of birds at the Bronx Zoo, tried unsuccessfully to bring tropical birds known as hoatzin to the zoological park in the Bronx run by the New York Zoological Society. Beebe was committed to bringing hoatzin to the zoo because he thought they could reveal scientific truths about ecology and evolution to him and the visiting public. While contemporary scholarship about zoo science in the United States has focused on how environmental conservation shaped (...) the scientific practices of zoos at the turn to the 20th century, Beebe's efforts to bring hoatzin to the Bronx shows that evolutionary theory and ecology were central issues at the institution. Beebe wanted to use zoo displays to conduct research into the relationships between organisms and environments in order to investigate how certain animal behaviors, such as flight, developed. Beebe's employers, Madison Grant and Henry Osborn, were less interested in Beebe's experimentation with zoo exhibits, and more invested in using the zoo as a place to disseminate evolutionary ideas they already understood as scientific truths about heredity, racial hierarchies, and eugenics. Whereas Beebe saw his scientific practice as dependent on ecological connections, Grant and Osborn stressed a narrative of purity and separation (of species and race) that governed the conservation projects and scientific focus of the Zoological Society, as well as the presentation of animals on zoo grounds. Ultimately, Grant and Osborn's evolutionary concerns and their vision of a hierarchical natural world dictated the scientific direction of the Bronx Zoo in a way that prevented the institution from becoming a site for ecological research. (shrink)

We show that for random bit strings, Up, with probability, image, the first order quantifier depth D) needed to distinguish non-isomorphic structures is Θ, with high probability. Further, we show that, with high probability, for random ordered graphs, G≤,p with edge probability image, D)=Θ, contrasting with the results for random graphs, Gp, given by Kim et al. [J.H. Kim, O. Pikhurko, J. Spencer, O. Verbitsky, How complex are random graphs in first order logic? Random Structures and Algorithms 26 119–145] of (...) D)=log1/pn+O. (shrink)

The doctrine of divine simplicity, the doctrine that God has no physical or metaphysical complexity whatsoever, is not a doctrine designed to induce immediate philosophical acquiescence. There are severe questions about its coherence. And even if those questions can be answered satisfactorily in favour of the doctrine, there remains the question why anyone should accept it. Thomas V. Morris raises both sorts of questions about a version of the doctrine which I have put forward. In the following pages I shall (...) respond to what I take to be the most serious of Morris's objections. I shall argue that the doctrine survives Morris's onslaught, but that one observation of his points it in a direction I had hitherto not taken seriously. The bulk of Morris's paper raises questions of the first sort; perforce the bulk of my paper will also. I shall offer, at the end, a reason for thinking that neither of us is yet in a position to pronounce categorically on the second question. My remarks in this paper constitute an interim report on how I think things presently stand with divine simplicity. (shrink)

Earlier discussions of care have both insisted on its importance to political life and decried the unequal burden borne by women in care work. Yet they have failed to demonstrate why for reasons above and beyond the instrumental ends it serves. We ought to make the cultivation of an ongoing practice of caregiving a political priority. This article redefines and reframes care as a thoroughly critical and deeply embodied practice that is central to the flourishing of human beings. By way (...) of Aristotle, I situate philia and embodied practices of care at the center of the shaping of the citizen and demonstrate a deeper significance of relations of care to our political life. When this is done alongside attention to habituation to right action and thinking, we can see more clearly how a particular kind of embodied politics can activate and sustain an ethic that cultivates citizens' capacities and desires to care. (shrink)

One of Martin Heidegger’s enduring philosophical legacies is his overall vision of what it is to be us. We—whoever that turns out to include—are cases of Dasein, and as such we are distinctively open to entities, including others and ourselves. In this essay, I paint a picture of that openness that aims to capture why Heidegger’s vision has so powerfully gripped so many. Drawing on Heidegger’s thought both early and late, I present a synoptic view of us as open to (...) the encounter with entities' bursting forth into presencing. We can be more or less closed off to this upsurge, but we can also allow it in its full power: in philosophical and poetic openness. I draw on Borgmann, Buber, Plato’s Socrates, Rilke, and others to capture our openness at its Heideggerian best—and we ourselves at our best, showing up radiantly for encounter. (shrink)

Aristotle is often taken to define priority in being in Metaphysics Δ.11, where he says that those things are prior in being which “admit of being without other things, while these others cannot be without them: a division which Plato used” (1019a3-4). But Aristotle’s pattern of arguments about priority – some of which use Plato’s Test and others of which use distinct, causal tests – looks puzzling if Plato’s Test is his definition. This paper offers a new interpretation of Δ.11 (...) on which it offers a guide to the Aristotelian use of Plato’s Test, given that being is said in many ways, rather than endorsing it as Aristotle’s own definition of priority. This reading illuminates Aristotle’s pattern of arguments in the corpus – explaining why Aristotle uses Plato’s Test in some cases and departs from it in others – and suggests a plausible story about how these arguments were shaped by engaging with Plato. (shrink)

Previous philosophical work on distrust in science has argued that understanding public distrust in science and scientific interventions requires that we pay careful attention not only to epistemic considerations (that is, beliefs about science), but also to values, and the emotional contexts in which assessments of scientific credibility are made. This is likely to be a truncated list of relevant factors for understanding trust/distrust, but these are certainly key areas of concern. The aim of this paper is not to further (...) innumerate the list of relevant factors. Rather, it is to map the ways that these key areas (beliefs, values, and emotions) are related to each other. These are not distinct categories, but rather they interact, making our picture of distrust more complicated than we might otherwise imagine. This discussion will take place in the context of resistance to medical interventions. Notably, Ebola interventions in West Africa, HIV/AIDS testing in South Africa, and vaccines across the world. (shrink)

The lies about the reasons for the U.S. war against Iraq provoked no mass public outcry in the United States against the war. What is the process of justification for this war, a process that seems to need no reasons? Mann argues that the process of justification is not a process of rational deliberation but one of aesthetic self-constitution, of rebuilding a masculine national identity. Included is a feminist reading of the National Defense University document Shock and Awe.

This article traces the rapid progression of policy pertaining to human genome germline modifications using genome editing. It provides an overview of how one fertility physician implemented and advertised experimental techniques as part of his fertility clinic services, examines US law and policy, and assesses the impact of rhetoric influencing global policy and interpretation of the law. This article provides an in-depth examination of the medical rationale driving the acceptance of genome editing human embryos in two contexts: to cure disease (...) and treat infertility. It describes complexities in genomics and outlines risks currently associated with genome editing, asserting the available evidence fails to demonstrate genome editing constitutes a curative therapy. (shrink)

This paper describes a presentation on ethics for accounting and business students. In 2001 and 2002, major corporate failures such as Enron and Worldcom, combined with questionable accounting practices, made ethics a paramount concern to persons working in business and accounting. While financial statement analysis and regulatory requirements are important technical topics, the issue of ethics provides faculty a unique and very appropriate setting to discuss deeper truths about doing business and living life well. This paper briefly describes the development (...) and assessment of one approach to presenting ethics built around a computerized slide show (PowerPoint). The goal of the presentation is to increase students’ understanding of the essential role of ethics to accounting and business. Following the presentation, students indicated a heightened recognition of the importance of ethics. Educators should do all that they can to encourage students to do the “right” thing, even in difficult circumstances. This encouragement may serve them well in school and later in their careers. (shrink)

Proteins and RNAs move between the nucleus and cytoplasm by translocation through nuclear pore complexes in the nuclear envelope. To do this, they require specific targeting signals, energy, and a cellular apparatus that catalyzes their transport. Several of the factors involved in nucleocytoplasmic trafficking of proteins have been identified and characterized in some detail. The emerging picture for nuclear transport proposes a central role for the small GTPase Ran and proteins with which it interacts. In particular, asymmetric distribution of these (...) proteins between nucleus and cytoplasm appears to be responsible for the vectorial nature of nucleocytoplasmic transport. Here, we summarize the role of Ran and Ran-binding proteins in nuclear trafficking of proteins with classical nuclear localisation signals. We also discuss examples of the growing number of alternative pathways that are involved in transport of proteins across the nuclear envelope. BioEssays 21:579–589, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Background: Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy Sartre's Account of Action Some Wider Background Assessment: Internal Relations Assessment: Human Beings and the Human World References.

This paper responds to comments on the paper "True Faith: Against Doxastic Partiality about Faith (in God and Religious Communities) and in Defense of Evidentialism" (Australasian Philosophical Review). I begin with some clarifications on faith and its normativity (section 1). I then zero in on doxastic normativity (section 2), where an ideological rift emerges between evidentialism and partialist critiques (section 3). I then discuss evidentialist reason and its relationship to objectivity (section 4), and the sort of norms at issue (section (...) 5). (shrink)

Altruism is a well-studied phenomenon in the social sciences, but online altruism has received relatively little attention. In this article, we examine several cases of online altruism, and analyse the key characteristics of the phenomenon, in particular comparing and contrasting it against models of traditional donor behaviour. We suggest a novel definition of online altruism, and provide an in-depth, mixed-method study of a significant case, represented by the r/Assistance subreddit. We argue that online altruism can be characterized by its differing (...) experiences compared to traditional giving, from a giver’s point of view, and unique mechanisms and actions made possible by the internet. These findings explain why people give to anonymous strangers online and provide a new perspective on altruism that is important in building a more altruistic internet and society. (shrink)