This book demonstrates how the pedagogical decision making of university academics can be shaped by engagement with an educational philosophy known as "relationship-centred education". Beginning with critical analysis of concepts such as student engagement, student satisfaction, and student-centred learning, the author goes on to investigate how literature relating to social justice challenges educators to consider these terms in particular ways. From this basis, the book explores the factors featuring in inclusive, respectful, diverse and student-centred environments. In analysing these factors, the (...) author illuminates the perspectives of university teachers who struggle with the unique challenges of working in the academy; including an increasingly broad set of employment demands and narrower criteria for determining 'impact', all while retaining focus on the transformative potential of higher education. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of transformative learning, as well as social justice within higher education. Leonie Rowan is Associate Professor in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Australia. (shrink)

ABSTRACTViolating a person's rights is disrespectful to that person. This is because it is disrespectful to someone to violate duties owed to that person. I call these ‘directed duties’; they are the flipside of rights. The aim of this paper is to consider why directed duties and respect are linked, and to highlight a puzzle about this linkage, a puzzle arising from the fact that many directed duties are justified independently of whether they do anything for those to whom they (...) are owed. (shrink)

This paper explores the perceptions of academic staff and students to student cheating behaviours in online exams and other online assessment formats. The research took place at three Australian universities in July and August 2020 during the emergency transition to online learning and assessment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study sought to inform decision making about the future of online exams at the participating universities. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected using online surveys. The findings of the study (...) led to seven key observations, most notably the need to redefine the characteristics of academic misconduct to account for changes wrought to examinations in a digital world. The study concludes with lessons learned in relation to enhancing academic integrity in digital examinations and assessments. (shrink)

In recent years, a significant body of literature has emerged on the subject of epistemic injustice: wrongful harms done to people in their capacities as knowers. Up to now this literature has ignored the role that attention has to play in epistemic injustice. This paper makes a first step towards addressing this gap. We argue that giving someone less attention than they are due, which we call an epistemic attention deficit, is a distinct form of epistemic injustice. We begin by (...) outlining what we mean by epistemic attention deficits, which we understand as a failure to pay someone the attention they are due in their role as an epistemic agent. We argue that these deficits constitute epistemic injustices for two reasons. First, they affect someone’s ability to influence what others believe. Second, they affect one’s ability to influence the shared common ground in which testimonial exchanges take place. We then outline the various ways in which epistemic attention deficits harm those who are subject to them. We argue that epistemic attention deficits are harms in and of themselves because they deprive people of an essential component of epistemic agency. Moreover, epistemic attention deficits reduce an agent’s ability to participate in valuable epistemic practices. These two forms of harm have important impacts on educational performance and the distribution of resources. Finally, we argue that epistemic attention deficits both hinder and shape the development of epistemic agency. We finish by exploring some practical implications arising from our discussion. (shrink)

This short but thought-provoking volume asks the question 'What is it that tragedy makes us know?'. The focus is on tragedy as a mode of representing the experience of radical suffering, pain, or loss, a mode of narrative through which we come to know certain things about ourselves and our world--about its fragility and ours. Through a mixture of historical discussion and close reading of a number of dramatic texts--from Sophocles to Sarah Kane--the book addresses a wide range of debates: (...) how tragedy is defined, whether there is such a thing as 'absolute tragedy', various modern attempts to rework the classical heritage and the relation of comedy to tragedy. There is also a fresh discussion of whether religious--particularly Christian--discourse is inimical to the tragic, and of the necessary tension between tragic narrative and certain kinds of political as well as religious rhetoric. Rowan Williams argues that tragic drama both articulates failure and frailty and, in affirming the possibility of narrating the story of traumatic loss, refuses to settle for passivity, resignation, or despair. In this sense, it still shows the trace of its ritual and religious roots. And in challenging two-dimensional models of society, power, humanity and human knowing, it remains an intrinsic part of any fully humanist culture. (shrink)

In this article I argue that, despite the views of such theorists as Locke, Hart and Raz, most of a person's property rights cannot be individualistically justified. Instead most property rights, if justified at all, must be justified on non-individualistic (e.g. consequentialist) grounds. This, I suggest, implies that most property rights cannot be morally fundamental ‘human rights’.

This paper investigates whether responsibility could be borne vicariously. I distinguish between three different senses of responsibility: attributional responsibility, practices of holding people responsible, and substantive responsibility. I argue that it is doubtful both whether attributional responsibility could be borne vicariously, and whether it could be appropriate to hold someone vicariously responsible. However, I suggest that substantive responsibility can genuinely be borne vicariously. Getting clear on these conceptual issues has important implications for how we approach more concrete legal and political (...) questions. More specifically, I argue these abstract arguments can be used to inform views on the common-law doctrine of joint enterprise, and on reparations for historic injustice. (shrink)

Trans and gender-nonconforming people sometimes say that certain gender norms are authentic for them. For example, a trans man might say that abiding by norms of masculinity tracks who he really is. Authenticity is sometimes taken to appeal to an essential, pre-social “inner self.” It is also sometimes understood as a moral notion. Authenticity claims about gender norms therefore appear inimical to two key commitments in feminist philosophy: that all gender norms are socially constructed, and that many domains of gender (...) norms are both morally and prudentially bad. I argue that that this apparent tension is illusory. Concordant with existing trans narratives of authenticity, I articulate an existentialist view that understands authenticity as a socially embedded, constructive project undertaken in a non-ideal social world, rather than a reflective uncovering of a pre-given, essential self. I then show that authenticity and morality can come apart; what is authentic for someone need not be either morally good or good for them. I conclude that the authenticity of gender norms does not cut against the feminist commitments that I identify. This conclusion enables a theoretical space that is both respectful of trans experience and critical of dominant gender norms, an important liberatory goal. (shrink)

Is it defensible to use the concept of a right? Can we justify this concept's central place in modern moral and legal thinking, or does it unjustifiably side-line those who do not qualify as right-holders? Rowan Cruft brings together a new account of the concept of a right. Moving beyond the traditional 'interest theory' and 'will theory', he defends a distinctive role for the concept: it is appropriate to our thinking about fundamental moral duties springing from the good of (...) the right-holder. This has important implications for the idea of 'natural' moral rights-that is, rights that exist independently of anyone's recognising that they do. Cruft argues that only rights that exist primarily for the sake of the right-holder can qualify as natural in this sense.In its relation to property, however, matters are far more complicated because much property is groundable only by common or collective goods beyond the right-holder's own good. For such property, Cruft argues that a non-rights property system-that resembles modern markets but is not conceived in terms of rights-would be preferable. The result of this study is a partial vindication of the rights concept that is more supportive of human rights than many of their critics might expect, and is surprisingly doubtful about property as an individual right. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Democracy for Realists, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue provocatively that the public falls far short of ideals of democratic citizenship, and they turn to political psychology to explain the empirics of mass political behavior. But their model of group identity fails to shed much light on the origins of political behavior and gives members of the public less credit than they deserve, for three reasons. First, group politics is not a hollow exercise; it depends on the identification of (...) a collective grievance that has a potential political solution. Second, concerns about group economics, status, and respect are more likely than individual economic considerations to animate political behavior, yet the former concerns are no less rational than the latter. Third, individuals vary in how strongly they identify with politically relevant groups, masking considerable variation in the degree to which group affiliations shape political behavior. Therefore, group identification is not a monolithic, irrational force that affects people regardless of their perceptions of political reality. (shrink)

Opponents and proponents alike of the freedom of the UK press to print prejudicial content about marginalised groups typically frame the debate in classic ‘free speech’ vs ‘harm principle’ terms. Those in favour of press freedom argue that the print press' right to freedom of expression beats any perceived or actual harm caused, and those against argue the opposite. Predictably, little progress is made in either party convincing the other. I suggest that we ought to instead ask, what grounds the (...) freedom of the press? I propose that one plausible answer is: the value of agential epistemic participation. And I argue that we cannot uphold that value at the same time as permitting discriminatory reporting against collectives of individuals. This offers a strong basis from which to argue for a change in UK press regulatory policy, to allow discrimination claims against groups of individuals to be heard. Further, when we consider the role of epistemic participation in one’s ability to perform as a person, we ought to find that most complaints will in practice find in the favour of the group in question, rather than the PPM. (shrink)

In their recent books, National Responsibility and Global Justice and Intricate Ethics, David Miller and Frances Kamm give two similar arguments aimed at preventing their favoured accounts of the moral justification of rights from justifying an excess of demanding assistance rights. Both arguments appeal to the fact that a proliferation of assistance rights would conflict with other rights. In this paper, I show that these arguments fail. As Miller recognises in a footnote, the failure of such arguments appears to support (...) an alternative holistic approach to the moral justification of rights. But I will show that, without significant further argument that Miller and Kamm do not provide, this holistic approach offers no better support for Miller’s and Kamm’s claim that there are few demanding assistance rights. (shrink)

"Proof" has been and remains one of the concepts which characterises mathematics. Covering basic propositional and predicate logic as well as discussing axiom systems and formal proofs, the book seeks to explain what mathematicians understand by proofs and how they are communicated. The authors explore the principle techniques of direct and indirect proof including induction, existence and uniqueness proofs, proof by contradiction, constructive and non-constructive proofs, etc. Many examples from analysis and modern algebra are included. The exceptionally clear style and (...) presentation ensures that the book will be useful and enjoyable to those studying and interested in the notion of mathematical "proof.". (shrink)

Este trabalho parte de algumas considerações das perspectivas antropológicas de Paulo Freire e John Dewey, tomando o primeiro autor como um leitor do segundo, pelo menos por via indireta através de Anísio Teixeira, focalizando basicamente duas noções fundamentais: o inacabamento freiriano e o crescimento deweyano. Discutindo detalhes e consequências teóricas desses conceitos para a educação, utilizamos as críticas dos autores em relação à educação bancária e/ou tradicional para apresentar os argumentos que foram elaborados em favor de uma nova educação. Foi (...) nesse contexto de discussão que as implicações pedagógicas para a infância foram consideradas. This paper presents some considerations from the anthropological perspectives of Paulo Freire and John Dewey, taking the first author as a reader of the second one, at least by indirect means of Anísio Teixeira, and it focuses basically two fundamental notions: Freire’s incompleteness and Dewey’s growth. Discussing details and consequences of these theoretical concepts for education, we considered the criticisms of the authors in relation to banking education and / or traditional education in order to present the arguments that were drawn up in favor of a new education. It was in this context of discussion that the pedagogical implications for children were considered. (shrink)

Brazil’s Movement of the Landless emerges from this collection as one of the great social movements of modernity. In historical chapters we see its evolution from confrontations with landowners and police in land invasions in the South of Brazil in the 1970s to become a multi-faceted movement with a presence throughout Brazil. More than a pressure group for Land Reform, it turned to mount a comprehensive challenge, on linked legal, cultural, political and economic fronts to Brazil’s dominant model of development. (...) Its ‘social movement approach’, conjoining challenge to Brazil’s massive inequalities with the formation of active citizens among the marginalised rural poor, has become a model for movements in the urban scene. We see this not just through the rich descriptive accounts of MST actions, but because the contributing editor, Miguel Carter, has pointed the action portraits with theoretical acumen, and, with other contributors, placed them in historical context. (shrink)

Il saggio intende sviluppare una fenomenologia della violenza, a partire dagli Scritti di Franco Basaglia, che ha studiato il problema della violenza nell’istituzione psichiatrica e ha riflettuto sulla questione in una prospettiva fenomenologica. La sua tesi fondamentale è stata che la violenza dell’istituzione consista in una sostituzione e in un’alienazione. Il corpo vissuto, l’identità originaria di una persona, le sue esperienze e i suoi pensieri sarebbero rimpiazzati da quelli dell’istituzione, che diverrebbe così il ‘corpo’ di quella persona. La fenomenologia di (...) Basaglia traccia quindi, al seguito di Husserl, un’opposizione netta tra esperienza vissuta e istituzione, soggettività e segno sociale, identità privata e marca culturale. Possiamo tuttavia accogliere questa opposizione tanto semplice e trasparente? E in caso negativo, se la violenza non potesse essere descritta come la semplice irruzione dell’istituzione nello spazio del soggetto, se questa irruzione dell’Altro fosse anzi costitutiva del soggetto stesso, come pensare la violenza? Come definire una ‘politica’ di questa violenza originaria?This essay tries to develop a phenomenology of violence. Its approach is based on the Writings of Franco Basaglia, who studied the phaenomenon of violence in the psychiatric institutions and reflected on this issue from a phenomenological point of view. His main theses was that institutional violence means substitution and alienation. The lived body, the originary identity of a person, his experiences and thoughts are replaced by those of the institution. The institution itself becomes the ‘body’ of that person. Basaglia’s phenomenology thus traces, with Husserl, a neat opposition between lived experience and institution, subjectivity and social sign, private identity and cultural mark. Can we trust this simple and transparent opposition? And if violence cannot be described as an irruption of the institution in the subject’s space, if this irruption of the Other is constitutive of the subject itself, how to define violence? And how to define a ‘politics’ of this originary violence? (shrink)

This review critically engages with Radhika Desai’s concept of geopolitical economy as a framework for understanding the evolution of the capitalist state system. While presenting a useful challenge to many of the most deeply-held beliefs in International Relations theory, Desai’s over-reliance on a geopolitical lens produces a relatively one-sided account of the ways in which capitalism forges distinct international regimes and ideological formations under a given set of historical conditions of possibility. Thus, Desai’s somewhat opaque reading of the international relations (...) of capitalism clouds our understanding of what the current conjuncture might entail for any possible future beyond the social discipline of capital. (shrink)

Suppose that it would be best if some set of people all did A, significantly worse if they all did B, and worst of all if some did A while some did B. Now suppose that they’re all going to do B, regardless of what the others do. It seems as though each of these people ought to pick B, given what the others are going to do. Yet it also seems as though something has gone wrong. This leads to (...) a puzzle: how can it be wrong for everyone to act as they ought? In this paper, I resolve this puzzle by arguing that there are joint ‘oughts’ which apply irreducibly to pluralities of agents, and which can pull in different directions to ‘oughts’ holding of given individuals; even if everyone individually ought to pick B, what they jointly ought to do is all pick A. (shrink)

Gender norms can guide our sense of what we feel like we ought to do, even when we don't want them to. Understanding this norm responsiveness is an important part of understanding how oppressive gender systems are sustained. According to a social constructionist position, gender norm responsiveness happens as a result of social training, or socialization. It's often assumed that this training depends on our gender categories—that, for example, those who occupy the category “man” will be responsive to masculine norms, (...) and so on. Call this a category-based view. But trans and gender-nonconforming people are often responsive to gender norms that don't match our gender categories. This is sometimes taken as evidence for the conclusion that normative masculinity and femininity are somehow innate or pre-socialized. I reject this inference. I argue that we should instead dispense with a category-based view, and instead adopt a traits-based view. Gender norms apply to individuals on the basis of the gender-coded traits that they express. A traits-based view represents a social constructionist account of gender norms which leaves room for trans and GNC experiences of normative gender, and thus represents an important step towards creating inclusive theory. (shrink)

In May 2021, Alan Bechaz, Racher Du, Will Cailes and Thomas Spiteri interviewed Sandra Leonie Field for UPJA’s Conversations from the Region. A series of discussions that invites philosophers from or based in Australasia to share their student and academic experiences. The segment looks into what inspires people to study philosophy, how they pursue their philosophical interests, and gives our audiences a better idea of philosophy as an undergraduate.

Stove attempts to undermine Hume's argument on induction by denying Hume the claim that induction presupposes the uniformity of nature. I argue that Stove's attack on Hume's argument fails. *A paper from which the present piece was derived was read at the Hume Symposium. Flinders Medical Centre, South Australia, in July 1990, where George Couvalis and David Gauthier made helpful criticisms of my argument.

Virtual assistants (VAs), like Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, and Apple’s Siri, are on the rise. However, despite allegedly being ‘assistants’ to users, they ultimately help firms to maximise profits. With more and more tasks and leeway bestowed upon VAs, the severity as well as the extent of conflicts of interest between firms and users increase. This article builds on the common law field of fiduciary law to argue why and how regulators should address this phenomenon. First, the functions of VAs (...) resemble established fiduciaries, namely mandataries when they perform tasks on behalf of users, and increasingly advisors whenever they provide recommendations or suggestions. Second, users grant firms deploying VAs ever more discretion over their economic, and more and more significant non-economic interests, such as their health or finances. This delegation of power renders users vulnerable to abuse of power and inadequate performance by firms deploying VAs. Moreover, neither specification or monitoring nor market forces are alternatives that can sufficiently protect users. Thus, regulation is needed, departing from the recognition of the relationship between firms deploying VAs and users as a fiduciary relationship. In the EU, this could be realised through fiduciary requirements for VAs. First and foremost, to adequately protect users from abuse of power by firms deploying VAs, the core fiduciary duty of loyalty should be converted into corresponding fiduciary requirements for VAs, obliging firms to align VAs with their users. (shrink)

In Why We Build Rowan Moore shows how buildings are driven by human emotions and desires – such as hope, power, money, sex, and the idea of home – and how buildings then shape our experiences.

The pro tanto duty not to harm is arguably the most widely accepted basis for moral demand. However, in the case of global poverty, even if we accept that individual members of wealthier nations are responsible for harming the global poor (through their constitution of, or participation in or with, global institutions that harm), it remains difficult to claim that individuals violate a negative duty in doing so. For an agent to hold a duty, that duty must be at least (...) (a) recognizable to a reasonably competent observer, and (b) fulfillable, two criteria which do not appear to be met. This paper argues that we have misunderstood the way in which the global community harms the global poor. As a result, there are a range of acts—the provision of financial aid—which the global community largely fails to undertake and which form a part of violating the negative duty not to harm. In relation to these global acts, it is straightforward for individuals both to recognize what they would need to do to avoid participating in the harm of global poverty and to achieve that avoidance: individuals simply need to provide financial aid. As such, assuming that individuals are culpable for the harms committed by intersecting global institutions, then their participation in harm also violates a negative duty not to inflict such harm. This opens up a further remedial duty to provide financial aid for past harms committed. (shrink)

InWorld Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge presents a range of attractive policy proposals—limiting the international resource and borrowing privileges, decentralizing sovereignty, and introducing a “global resources dividend”—aimed at remedying the poverty and suffering generated by the global economic order. These proposals could be motivated as a response topositive dutiesto assist the global poor, or they could be justified onconsequentialistgrounds as likely to promote collective welfare. Perhaps they could even be justified onvirtue-theoreticgrounds as proposals that a just or benevolent person (...) would endorse. But Pogge presents them as a response to the violation ofnegative duties; this makes the need for such remedial policies especially morally urgent—on a par with the obligations of killers to take measures to stop killing.In this essay, I focus on the claim that responsibility for world poverty should be conceived in terms of a violation of negative duties. I follow Pogge in distinguishing two questions (p. 134): What kind of duties (positive or purely negative?) would we be subject to in a just global society where everyone fulfilled their duty and there was no significant risk of injustice? And what kind of duties (positive or purely negative?) do we face given that our global society falls short of the just society?I tackle these questions in reverse order below. I argue, in contrast to Pogge, that positive duties are relevant to our answers to both questions. (shrink)

For stem cells, life is full of potential: they have a high capacity to proliferate and a wide choice of future identities. When they differentiate, cells leave behind this freedom and become ever more committed to a single fate. Intriguingly, the Polycomb and Trithorax groups of proteins are vital to the very different natures of both stem cells and differentiated cells, but little is known about how they make the transition from one cell type to the other. A recent paper1 (...) throws light on this mystery, showing that the Polycomb proteins dramatically change their behaviour at a crucial moment of differentiation. BioEssays 28: 330–334, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics Catherine Lu argues that structural reconciliation, rather than interactional reconciliation, ought to be the primary normative goal for political reconciliation efforts. I suggest that we might have good reason to want to retain relational approaches – such as that of Linda Radzik – as the primary focus of reconciliatory efforts, but that Lu’s approach is invaluable for identifying the parties who ought to bear responsibility for those efforts in cases of structural injustice. First, (...) I outline Lu’s analysis of reconciliation, where she argues for the normative priority of structural approaches within the global political sphere, and propose that it will be useful to identify whether or not a relational account could instead identify underlying structural injustices. Second, I examine one particular relational account of reconciliation (based on Radzik’s account of atonement) and argue that this type of account brings to light underlying structural injustices of the kind Lu is concerned with. Finally, I identify an issue for relational accounts in identifying relevant responsible parties for reconciliation before returning to Lu’s structural account to address this gap. (shrink)

To understand what the Psalms “made of” Augustine is to grasp the central issues of faith and ecclesiology as Augustine understood them. To read the Psalms is to make our own voice the voice of the Body of Christ in worship.