In this article I describe the development of my collaboration with the textile artist Susie Freeman in the production of the visual arts project Pharmacopoeia. Over the last 3 years we have created a body of work that aims to provide information about common medical treatments in a way that engages the public imagination. The work is dominated by the use of active pharmaceuticals, both pills and capsules, which are incorporated into dramatic fabrics by a process known as pocket knitting. (...) These fabrics are then made into clothing and accessories, making their individual messages easier to ‘read’. The work aims to encourage people to think about their own medical and pharmacological history, and to reflect on their relationship with commonly prescribed drugs. It also reveals how dependent our society is on pharmaceuticals, how ambivalent we feel about them and yet how casually we use them. (shrink)

Volume 52, Issue 11, October 2020, Page 1109-1112.

Liz Jackson is Professor of Education and Head of Department of International Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. Liz served as the President of the Philosophy of Education Society...

Although ethics instruction has become an accepted part of the business school curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, some scholars have questioned its effectiveness, and research results have been mixed. However, studies yield interesting results regarding certain factors that influence the ethicality of business students and may impact the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. One of these factors is gender. Using personal and business ethics scenarios, we examine the main and interactive effects of gender and business ethics education (...) on moral judgment. We then analyze the relationships between gender and business ethics education on personal ethical perspectives. Our results indicate that women are generally more inclined to act ethically than men, but paradoxically women who have had business ethics instruction are less likely to respond ethically to business situations. In addition, men may be more responsive to business ethics education than women. Finally, women’s personal ethical orientations may become more relativistic after taking a business ethics class. (shrink)

The ethic of care provides not only a basis for understanding relationships of care at the micro level but also a potent form of political ethics, relevant to the development of welfare services. Williams (2001), for example, argues that the concept of care has the capacity to be a central referent in social policy?a point at which social and cultural transformations meet with the changing relations of welfare (Williams 2001, p. 470). English social care services are currently in another period (...) of change precipitated by the ?personalisation agenda?. This agenda is seen as having the potential to revolutionise social care, to create the conditions needed to tailor services to individual needs, and to give service users greater choice and control, including, where possible, control over their own service budgets or direct possession and management of care funds. These developments are inextricably linked to broader economic and social trends, key amongst which are the ageing of the population and changing economic conditions affecting both the labour market and the market for care services. This article applies the feminist ethic of care to an analysis of the personalisation agenda in the context of care for dependent older people. It highlights fundamental political questions posed concerning the nature and extent of older people's need for care, responsibility for meeting these needs and the associated costs. It questions whether the personalisation agenda could potentially offer a more responsive form of care, by placing more power and control in older people's hands. Key points considered are the individualisation of care and the ways in which control is conceptualised. The article concludes with an assessment of the feminist ethic of care as a basis for policy evaluation. (shrink)

There has been increasing attention given to the way in which racial genetic clusters are constructed within population genetics. In particular, some scholars have argued that the conception of “whiteness” presupposed is such analyses is inherently problematic. In light of these ongoing discussions, this article aims to further clarify and develop this implicit relationship between whiteness, purity and contemporary genetics by offering a Foucauldian critique of the discourse of race within these genetic admixture studies. The goals of this article, then, (...) are twofold: first, to unearth some of the presuppositions operative in this genetics discourse that make possible a biological conception of race; and second, to examine some of the social and historical origins of those presuppositions. To this end, this article provides a brief genealogy of racial purity beginning with its formal legal codification in the one-drop rule. (shrink)

Liz JacksonEducation University of Hong KongNel Noddings is known around the world for her contributions to philosophy and philosophy of education. Her work on caring and relational ethics broke ne...

What is artificial life? Much has been said about this interesting collection of efforts to artificially simulate and synthesize lifelike behavior and processes, yet we are far from having a robust philosophical understanding of just what Alifers are doing and why it ought to interest philosophers of science, and philosophers of biology in particular. In this paper, I first provide three introductory examples from the particular subset of artificial life I focus on, known as ‘soft Alife’ (s-Alife), and follow up (...) with a more in-depth review of the Avida program, which serves as my case study of s-Alife. Next, I review three well-known accounts of thought experiments, and then offer my own synthesized account, to make the argument that s-Alife functions as thought experimentation in biology. I draw a comparison between the methodology of the thought-experimental world that yields real-world results, and the s-Alife research that informs our understanding of natural life. I conclude that the insights provided by s-Alife research have the potential to fundamentally alter our understanding of the nature of organic life and thus deserve the attention of both philosophers and natural scientists. (shrink)

Liz JacksonEducation University of Hong KongGiven how important textbooks continue to be in education, how textbooks are read for learning and research remains poorly understood. As Michael Apple n...

Volume 52, Issue 2, February 2020, Page 120-125.

Nicholas Gresson 2001L-RUniversity of Auckland, Faculty of Education PhD graduates in 2001:Elizabeth Grierson/Gresson, Tina Besley, Ho-Chia Chueh, Janet Mansfield, Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul, Nesta De...

In this paper we address the interrelated questions of why and how certain features of an organism’s environment become meaningful to it. We make the case that knowing the biology is essential to understanding the foundation of meaning-making in organisms. We employ Miguel Nicolelis et al’s seminal research on the mammalian somatosensory system to enrich our own concept of brain-objects as the neurobiological intermediary between the environment and the consequent organismic behavior. In the final section, we explain how brain-objects advance (...) the ongoing discussion of what constitutes a biosemiotic system. In general, this paper acknowledges Marcello Barbieri’s call for biology to make room for meaning, and makes a contribution to that end. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultations exist to support patients, families and clinicians who are facing ethical or moral challenges related to patient care. They provide a forum for open communication, where all stakeholders are encouraged to express their concerns and articulate their viewpoints. Ethics consultations can be requested by patients, caregivers or members of a patient’s clinical or supportive team. Althoughpatientsand by extension their families (especially in cases of decisional incapacity) are the common denominators in most ethics consultations, these constituents are theleastlikely (...) to request them. At many healthcare organisations in the USA, ethics consultations are overwhelmingly requested by physicians and other clinicians. We believe it is vital that healthcare institutions bridge the knowledge gaps and power imbalances over access to ethics consultation services through augmented policies, procedures and infrastructure. With enhanced education and support, patients and families may use ethics consultation to elevate their voices and prioritise their unique characteristics and preferences in the delivery of their healthcare. Empowering patients and families to request ethics consultation can only strengthen the patient/family–clinician relationship, enhance the shared decision-making model of care and ultimately lead to improved patient-centred care. (shrink)

Volume 52, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 17-21.

Humility is regarded as beneficial for individuals, relationships, and society. It is believed to increase well-being and tolerance of difference and enhance interpersonal relationships. Educating for humility could be regarded as an important element and goal of education as it helps students realise their limitations and consider different (even opposite) perspectives. However, as with other virtues, humility may be conceptualised and expressed differently across diverse cultural communities. Similarly, how to educate for humility may look different in schools around the world. (...) This special issue includes varied explorations of the philosophical and theoretical roots underpinning different conceptions of humility and their implications for education. Taken together, the papers in this issue provide a foundation for understanding the importance of humility across cultural and historical traditions of past and present, particularly those of western and Chinese societies. As such, this special issue can be informative to colleagues in virtue ethics, comparative philosophy, and moral education, as well as others who are interested in understanding contexts and meanings of humility around the world, in society and education today. (shrink)

What is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and ‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that (...) ‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experience. (shrink)

Felicity Haynes earned Honours degrees in English and French literature from The University of Western Australia and completed her doctorate on reason and understanding at the University of Illinoi...

Conference environments enable diverse roles for academics. However, conferences are hardly entered into by participants as equals. Academics enter into and experience professional environments differently according to culture, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and more. This paper considers from a philosophical perspective entering and initiating culturally into academic conferences as a woman. It discusses theories of gender and emotional labor and emotional management, focusing on Arlie Hochschild’s foundational work, and affect in gendered social relations, considering Sara Ahmed’s theorization of the feminist (...) killjoy and the affect alien. It applies these lenses to explore problematic experiences of women initiates at conferences. The paper proceeds with a theoretical discussion of gender, emotional labor, and affect. Then the paper discusses women academics’ experiences generally and at conferences, including educational research conferences, with reference to relevant higher education researc... (shrink)

One major aspect of interest in Filipino philosophy is education. Reflecting on the nature, aims, and problems of education, Filipino philosophy of education investigates philosophical issues and emerging trends of philosophical thinking in education which are distinctive to the Filipino context. Filipino philosophy of education has a rich potential that encompasses revisiting cultural and historical narratives, considering inclusivity, reevaluating the educational system, challenging existing pedagogies, and re-discovering indigeneity. In this context it is worth exploring it further. Taking off from a (...) collective work on Filipino philosophy of education by a group of Filipino scholars, this special issue provides a more elaborate discussion of major aspects of Filipino philosophy providing traction on the conversation that which furthers the truth of the existence of Filipino Philosophy, its nuances, and its relevance to education. More specifically, this special issue provides philosophical and theoretical reflections that bring to the fore the state of Filipino philosophy of education and discussions about the nature of Filipino cultural, political, and intellectual heritage. As such, it will be of interest to students and scholars in philosophy of education in the Philippines and globally. (shrink)

This article shares reflections from members of the community of philosophers of education in the United States and Canada who were invited to express their insights in response to the theme ‘Snaps...

There is a long history in science and technology studies of tracking problematic objects, such as controversies, matters of concern, and issues, using various digital tools. But what happens when public problems do not play out in these familiar ways? In this paper, we will think through the methodological implications of studying “problems” in relation to recent events surrounding the sharing of patient data in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. When a data sharing agreement called care.data was (...) announced in 2013, nearly 1.5 million citizens chose to opt out. Yet, in subsequent years, there has been little evidence of a robust public mobilising around data sharing. We will attempt to track this elusive ‘non problem’ using some digital tools developed in STS for the purpose of mapping issues and problem definitions within science. Although we find these digital tools are unable to capture the “problem,” the process of searching helps us map the terrain of the case and forces us to consider wider definitions. (shrink)

In a healthcare setting, a multitude of ethical and moral challenges are often present when patients and families direct uncivil behavior toward clinicians and staff. These negative interactions may elicit strong social and emotional reactions among staff, other patients, and visitors; and they may impede the normal functioning of an institution. Ethics Committees and Clinical Ethics Consultation Services (CECSs) can meaningfully contribute to organizational efforts to effectively manage incivility through two distinct, yet inter-related channels. First, given their responsibility to promote (...) a humane, respectful, and professional climate, many CECSs and Ethics Committees may assist institutional leadership in evaluating and monitoring incivility policies and procedures. Second, when confronted with individual incidents of patient/family incivility, Ethics Consultants can and often do work with all stakeholders to address and mitigate potentially deleterious impacts. This manuscript presents an overview of the multifaceted ethical implications of incivility in the healthcare environment, discusses the inherent qualifications of Ethics Consultants for assisting in the management of incivility, and proposes specific mitigating actions within the purview of CECSs and Ethics Committees. We also invite healthcare organizations to harness the skills and reputation of their CECSs and Ethics Committees in confronting incivility through comprehensive policies, procedures, and training. (shrink)

In a conversation in Interview magazine, the painter Manuel Solano reflects on the shifts in their artistic practice after going blind at 26 years old. Their first museum show came after this devel...

This special issue includes a series of interviews with the past women presidents of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA), including Felicity Haynes, Nesta Devine, Tina Besley, and Liz Jackson. This article sets the stage for reading the interviews, though an extended dialogue between the two authors of this project. In what follows, the authors reflect on insights gleaned from the interviews, and the past and future of women leadership in philosophy of education. Using a dialogical format, it (...) highlights different experiences and similar challenges across generations, questions what has changed versus what has stayed the same over decades, and elaborates on the value of the interviews for readers coming from different academic generations and subject positions. It reflects on the state of the field and its future directions from the perspectives of two women philosophers working and thinking across generations. (shrink)

This study offers a new interpretation of Hegelian recognition – a central tenet of German Idealism – focusing on positive ethical behaviours, such as love and forgiveness. Building on the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Disley reassesses Hegel’s approach to the subject/object dialectic and explores the previously neglected theological dimensions of his writings. Her new interpretation offers an innovative reading of Hegel’s stance on the relationship between intersubjectivity, forgiveness and repentance in his social theory.0.

The Philosophy of Education Society of Australia (PESA) has been immensely proud of owning the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT), which over its 55 years of existence has become one...

This paper is about perception and its objects. My aim is to suggest a new way to articulate some of the central ideas of direct realism. Sections 1 and 2 offer from different perspectives a panoramic view of the main problems and options in the philosophy of perception. Section 3 introduces the notion of “camouflage” as an interesting and promising alternative in order to explain the nature of the intentional objects of perception. Finally, section 4 makes use of this new (...) notion in the analysis of the relationships between the intentionality of perception, the intentionality of thought, and the intentionality of language. (shrink)

Educating students for emotional wellbeing is a vital task in schools. However, educating emotions is not straightforward. Emotional processes can be challenging to identify and control. How emotions are valued varies across societies, while individuals within societies face different emotional expectations. For example, girls face pressure to be happy and caring, while boys are often encouraged to be brave. This text analyses the best practices of educating emotions. The focus is not just on the psychological benefits of emotional regulation, but (...) also on how calls for educating emotions connect to the aims of society. The book explores psychology's understanding of emotions, 'the politics of emotions', and philosophy. It also discusses education for happiness, compassion, gratitude, resilience, mindfulness, courage, vulnerability, anger, sadness, and fear. (shrink)

Schools and other forms of education and have significant impacts on people's views about emotions and emotional experiences. It shows how we often take it for granted that certain emotions, such as happiness, are 'positive', while others are 'negative' and how personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, and race, can make an unfair difference when it comes to what emotions are expected or accepted. Written in an accessible format, the book encourages broad reflection on what emotions are and why they (...) matter, in relation to the aims of education, what it means to be a good person, and equality and social justice. (shrink)

This special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory considers the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement as an educational event, which has impacted attitudes and outlooks and conceptions of young people’s role, of education, and of society. This essay serves as an introduction to the more substantive pieces that follow. It describes two alternative perspectives on youth civic engagement in Hong Kong historically; and in so doing, it addresses some of the challenges related to free academic expression that hinder scholarly research and (...) publishing on the area of Hong Kong-China relations looking into the future. It concludes with a brief glimpse of the contributions that follow. (shrink)

Since the early days of artificial intelligence (AI), many logics have been explored as tools for knowledge representation and reasoning. In the spirit of the Crossley Festscrift and recognizing John Crossley’s diverse interests and his legacy in both mathematical logic and computer science, I discuss examples from my own research that sit in the overlap of logic and AI, with a focus on supporting human–AI interactions.

Nesta Devine is Professor at the Auckland University of Technology and served as the third woman President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia from 2009–2011. She completed her ba...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical LifeLiz DisleyRobert B. Pippin. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xi + 308. Paper, $29.99In this work, Pippin offers an interpretation of freedom, rationality, and agency in Hegel’s work and adds substantive content to the key concept of recognition. In doing so, he offers not only a compelling elucidation of a particularly (...) opaque part of Hegel’s analysis of human action and interaction, but also demonstrates the relevance of his practical philosophy to contemporary discussions about free will, intersubjectivity, autonomy, recognition, and liberalism. Pippin provides a substantial defense of Hegel’s position in the context of contemporary political philosophy, arguing against a commonly-held view that Hegelian political philosophy must be much closer to modern communitarian theories than those of classical or modern liberalism. Pippin’s work is central to the recent resurgence of interest in Hegel’s theoretical philosophy by analytical philosophers such as Robert Brandom and John McDowell, as well as the renewed study of recognition in a practical context.Controversially, Pippin claims that Hegel has only one theory of intersubjectivity and recognition from the time of the Jena writings to the Philosophy of Right. The theory develops from an initial stage, where “the desideratum of mutual recognition is posed and explored,” to a realization that ethical life as described in the Philosophy of Right provides the necessary conditions for rational, mutual recognition (184n4). Thus, he rejects the common view in recent Continental Hegel scholarship, asserted by critics including Jürgen Habermas, Michael Theunissen, and Axel Honneth, that Hegel fails to develop adequately the theory of intersubjectivity initially present in his earlier writings and subsumes intersubjectivity into a “grand metaphysical process” of the Absolute Subject’s self-manifestation (184).Pippin defends Hegel from this common charge on the basis of his “very unusual” concept of freedom (185). The key claim here is that Hegel does not set recognition or indeed other-relation as a precondition for any kind of self-relation, but rather, “A true individual [End Page 112] is a free subject and recognition relations function in a complex way as conditions for that possibility” (186). This seems like a promising method of demonstrating that Hegel’s intersubjectivity does not, after all, dissolve in the face of a monological divine conception of reality. The difficulty with the approach, as Pippin concedes, is that it involves making a series of radical, strange, and controversial claims. These claims, in general, focus on the temporal priority of freedom, recognition, and rationality: deeds can count as “mine” in Pippin’s special sense only if they are undertaken rationally, but this state of rationality depends on being in a social state of recognizing and being recognized (190). However, it is neither radical nor strange to make a clear distinction between human interdependence in terms of our particular social psychology and in terms of “an ideal of normative mutuality inherent in any attempt to act” (211).Pippin appreciates that defenders of Hegel’s concept of recognition do not want to say that I cannot be a free subject by myself, but at the same time want to leave the door open for there to be some kind of possibility of ascertaining moral harm in cases of failure to recognize. For Pippin, free actions, and actions committed out of free will, are those committed by agents in a particular social context, namely being situated within norm-governed relations of reciprocal recognition to others. Such an approach fulfills neither of these criteria, since it means I cannot be free by myself but also that, in the case of my being placed in a situation where I am not within these relations of reciprocal recognition to others, there is no obvious originator of moral harm caused by this recognition (218). Pippin accepts that there is no clear answer to this difficulty, but his account of the genesis of norms and social rationality does save Hegel’s account from the objection by Theunissen, Habermas, Honneth et al. mentioned above. Like Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Pippin sees the answer to charges of introducing a... (shrink)

In this article the author seeks to establish a theoretical framework within which the contemporary concerns about young women’s unhappy and unhealthy relationships with their bodies can be elucidated. Symbolic interactionist theories are considered to explicate the imperative of producing visual identity, and modern interactionist work (Giddens) to consider the consumer capitalist context of this imperative. Post-structural feminist work is interrogated for its robust engagement with the contradictory approaches to the possibility of female agency in relation to ‘doing looks’. The (...) structural tradition is briefly utilized to consider the social position of the young people who increasingly, it is argued, seek identification through appearance. Finally, symbolic interactionist work is returned to for its ability to theorize the intersubjective production and subjective experience of body-hatred. (shrink)

In “The Genealogy ofive Practices,” Mary Beth Mader addresses a peculiar problem seemingly inherent to Foucauldian genealogy—namely, all genealogies require the use of abstractive practices in order to be conducted; however, abstraction itself, just like the object of genealogy, is historically contingent. How, then, would one conduct a genealogy of abstraction itself? How to conduct, in other words, a genealogy whose object of inquiry is, at the same time, one of its operative tools? This commentary seeks to expand on Mader's (...) analysis by examining its implication for understanding Foucault's methodology in general. That is, if Mader is correct, then it seems that Foucault does not in fact provide a rigid methodology, but rather aims to orient our attention to the contingent and discontinuous nature of history. In doing so, he aims to develop certain sensitivities and attitudes by virtue of which one is able to recognize epistemic ruptures that mark the transition between distinct epistemes. (shrink)