The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005) is designed to measure the tendency to override a prepotent response alternative that is incorrect and to engage in further reflection that leads to the correct response. It is a prime measure of the miserly information processing posited by most dual process theories. The original three-item test may be becoming known to potential participants, however. We examined a four-item version that could serve as a substitute for the original. Our data show that it (...) displays a.58 correlation with the original version and that it has very similar relationships with cognitive ability, various thinking dispositions, and with several other rational thinking tasks. Combining the two versions into a seven-item test resulted in a measure of miserly processing with substantial reliability (.72). The seven-item version was a strong independent predictor of performance on rational thinking tasks after the variance accounted for by cognitive ability and thinking dispositions had been partialled out. (shrink)

Discussions about the nature of essence and about the inference problem for non-Humean theories of nomic modality have largely proceeded independently of each other. In this article I argue that the right conclusions to draw about the inference problem actually depend significantly on how best to understand the nature of essence. In particular, I argue that this conclusion holds for the version of the inference problem developed and defended by Alexander Bird. I argue that Bird’s own argument that this problem (...) is fatal for David Armstrong’s influential theory of the laws of nature but not for dispositional essentialism is seriously flawed. In place of this argument, I develop an argument that whether Bird’s inference problem raises serious difficulties for Armstrong’s theory depends on the answers to substantial questions about how best to understand essence. The key consequence is that considerations about the nature of essence have significant, underappreciated implications for Armstrong’s theory. (shrink)

In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.

According to the powerful qualities view, properties are both powerful and qualitative. Indeed, on this view the powerfulness of a property is identical to its qualitativity. Proponents claim that this view provides an attractive alternative to both the view that properties are pure powers and the view that they are pure qualities. It remains unclear, however, whether the claimed identity between powerfulness and qualitativity can be made coherent in a way that allows the powerful qualities view to constitute this sort (...) of alternative. I argue here that this can be done, given a particular conception of both the qualitativity and powerfulness of properties. On this conception, a property is qualitative just in the sense that its essence is fixed independently of any distinct properties, and it is powerful just if its essence grounds its dispositional role. (shrink)

La logica di Croce -- Croce oggi -- Lo storicismo assoluto e l'ideologia sociale -- Il negativo e l'ombra del male -- Il concetto della natura e la storia -- Universalismo e mondo tedesco nella Kulturphilosophie di Ernst Cassirer -- Storicismo e marxismo di Gramsci.

O artigo discute algumas considerações a respeito dos conceitos de vulnerabilidade e proteção, quando relacionados à prática e à pesquisa em psicologia. Estabelece ligações entre conceitos clássicos, principalmente na área da filosofia e demais ciências humanas, como ética, moral e educação e as circunstâncias cotidianas e contemporâneas, como o acesso facilitado às informações, o incentivo à formação de recursos humanos na área da pesquisa e o desenvolvimento tecnológico das últimas décadas. Ao fim, sinalizam-se alternativas práticas e possíveis para operacionalizar a (...) manutenção da pesquisa no contexto da vulnerabilidade e, ao mesmo tempo, para garantir o cumprimento das recomendações éticas vigentes. (shrink)

Ben Segal, our fiction curator, presents interviews with Maggie Nelson and Evan Lavender-Smith as well as "outtakes" from their books Bluets and From Old Notebooks. The authors discuss working with fragments, taxonomy, and narratology.

In her 2015 article, Helena Olofsdotter Stensöta notes that ‘the ethics of care is often used as a lens to dissect the current arrangement of care provision (or rather non-care provision) in polici...

Ambivalence is a form of inner volitional conflict that we experience as being irresolvable without significant cost. Because of this, very few of us relish feelings of ambivalence. Yet for many in the Western philosophical tradition, ambivalence is not simply an unappealing experience that's hard to manage. According to Unificationists--whose view finds its historical roots in Plato and Augustine and is ably defended by contemporary philosophers such as Harry Frankfurt and Christine Korsgaard--ambivalence is a failure of well-functioning agency. The reasons (...) for this, we're told, are threefold. First, it precludes agents from resolving their wills in a way that is necessary for autonomy. Second, it precludes agents from fully affirming their live and, in particular, from fully affirming the choices they make. As a result, ambivalence robs them of an important source of meaning. Finally, ambivalence causes agents to act in self-defeating ways. In so doing, they act without integrity. Ambivalence is thus seen as a threat to a trio of important agential goods, and as a result, it imperils the best forms of human agency. -/- Against the Unificationists, D. Justin Coates argues that ambivalence does not preclude volitional resolution or normatively significant forms of affirmation. Nor does it guarantee self-defeat. Consequently, ambivalence as such is no threat to autonomy, meaning, or integrity. In assessing these arguments, ambivalence is also revealed to have an important role in securing the very goods that unificationists contend it undermines. The reason for this is that each of these goods requires the agent to be normatively competent. But normative competence itself, Coates argues, often leads agents to be ambivalent. The best forms of human agency are therefore shown to be not only compatible with ambivalence but as regularly requiring it. Ambivalence is thus not a volitional defect, but a crucial constituent of well-functioning agency. (shrink)

Drawing on examples from the history of warfare from the crusades to the present day, "The ethics of war" explores the limits and possibilities of the moral regulation of war. While resisting the commonly held view that 'war is hell', A.J. Coates focuses on the tensions which exist between war and morality. The argument is conducted from a just war standpoint, though the moral ambiguity and mixed record of that tradition is acknowledge and the dangers which an exaggerated view of (...) the justice or moral worth of war poses are underlined. In the first part, the broad image of the just war is compared with the competing images of realism, militarism and pacifism. In the second part, the moral issues associated both with the decision to go to war and with the manner in which war is conducted are explored. Was the allied decision to go to war in the Gulf premature? were economic sanctions a more effective and morally preferable option? was Britain justified in going to war over the Falklands? did the allied bombing of Germany in the Second World War constitute a war crime? should the IRA's claim to belligerent status be recognised? these questions and more are raised in this important book. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it is inappropriate for us to blame others if it is not reasonable for us to believe that they are morally responsible for their actions. The argument for this claim relies on two controversial claims: first, that assertion is governed by the epistemic norm of reasonable belief, and second, that the epistemic norm of implicatures is relevantly similar to the norm of assertion. I defend these claims, and I conclude by briefly suggesting how this (...) putative norm of blame can serve as the basis for general norms of interpersonal generosity. (shrink)

Epistemic akrasia arises when one holds a belief even though one judges it to be irrational or unjustified. While there is some debate about whether epistemic akrasia is possible, this paper will assume for the sake of argument that it is in order to consider whether it can be rational. The paper will show that it can. More precisely, cases can arise in which both the belief one judges to be irrational and one’s judgment of it are epistemically rational in (...) the sense that both are supported by sufficient evidence. (shrink)

Blame is usually discussed in the context of the free will problem, but recently moral philosophers have begun to examine it on its own terms. If, as many suppose, free will is to be understood as the control relevant to moral responsibility, and moral responsibility is to be understood in terms of whether blame is appropriate, then an independent inquiry into the nature and ethics of blame will be essential to solving (and, perhaps, even fully understanding) the free will problem. (...) In this article we first survey and categorize recent accounts of the nature of blame – is it action, belief, emotion, desire, or something else? – and then we look at several proposed requirements on appropriate blame that look beyond the transgressor himself, considerations that will form part of a full account of the ethics of blame. (shrink)

According to Frantz Fanon, the psychological and social-political are deeply intertwined in the colonial context. Psychologically, the colonizers perceive the colonized as inferior and the colonized internalize this in an inferiority complex. This psychological reality is co-constitutive of and by material relations of power—the imaginary of inferiority both creates and is created by colonial relations of power. It is also in this context that violence takes on significant political import: violence deployed by the colonized to rebel against these colonial relations (...) and enact a different world will also be violent in its fundamental disruption of this imaginary. The ethics of care, on the other hand, does not seem to sit well with violence, and thus Fanon’s political theory more generally. Care ethics is concerned with everything we do to maintain and repair our worlds as well as reasonably possible. Violence, which ruptures our psycho-affective, material, and social-political realities, seems antithetical to this task. This article seeks to reconsider this apparent antinomy between violence and care via a dialogue between Fanon and the ethics of care. In so doing, this article mobilizes a relational conceptualization of violence that allows for the possibility that certain violences may, in fact, be justifiable from a care ethics perspective. At the same time, I contend that violence in any form will also eventually demand a caring response. Ultimately, this productive reading of Fanon’s political theory and the ethics of care encourages both postcolonial philosophers and care ethicists alike to examine critically the relation between violence and care, and the ways in which we cannot a priori draw lines between the two. (shrink)

This is the first chapter to our edited collection of essays on the nature and ethics of blame. In this chapter we introduce the reader to contemporary discussions about blame and its relationship to other issues (e.g. free will and moral responsibility), and we situate the essays in this volume with respect to those discussions.

It is widely held that if an agent is not morally responsible for her action – i.e., if she is not deserving of blame – then we have a (decisive) reason to refrain from blaming her. But though this is true, the fact that someone is deserving of blame isn’t clearly sufficient for there to be most allthings- considered reason for blaming that person. Other considerations bear on this question as well. Coates offers an account of some of these considerations (...) – particularly those that can serve as deontic constraints on blame. He also offers a reply to those skeptical of the “ethics of blame” on the grounds that such theorizing invariably appeals to the “wrong kind of reasons.”. (shrink)

On Dan Zahavi’s Husserlian account of the subject, the self-temporalization of subjectivity presupposes what he calls an “immediate impressional self-manifestation.” It follows from this view that self-awareness is an inherent power of the one who will be subject, rather than a product of sociality introduced into life from without. In this paper, I argue against Zahavi’s position by going over the development of Husserl’s account of time-consciousness, examining the positions Husserl takes and the reasons that he comes to these positions. (...) Once we reach Husserl’s ultimate account, it becomes evident that Zahavi’s position is untenable. (shrink)

Children are presumptively regarded as incompetent to make their own medical decisions, and the responsibility for making such decisions typically falls to parents. Parental authority is not unlimited, however, and ethical guidelines identifying appropriate bounds on this authority are needed. One proposal currently gaining support is the Harm Threshold (HT), which asserts that the state may only legitimately intervene in parental decision-making when serious and preventable harm to children is likely. This paper considers two questions: in virtue of what underlying (...) principle or property does the HT gain its purported justification?; and does this underlying principle or property ground the HT as its proponents conceive of it? I identify two separate grounds represented in the literature: (i) J.S. Mill’s Harm Principle; and (ii) the liberty interests of parents. I find that the HT is not sufficiently grounded in either of these, revealing a substantial conceptual difficulty for its advocates. (shrink)

This book brings together anthropological studies of human-animal relations among Indigenous Peoples in three regions of the Americas: the Andes, Amazonia and the American Arctic. Through ethnographic essays, the authors illustrate and compare entanglements of human and other-than-human lives.

As the title of my article has probably made clear already, this will be an essay on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and John Rawls—and while I might not be the first person ever to compose a paper about Levinas and Rawls together, I'll probably be the second or third if not. There's no question, in any event, that a gulf of sorts separates the thought or work of these two thinkers, yet however much I believe that it would be (...) worthwhile to bridge this chasm for its own sake, that won't be my motivation in these pages; rather, my present purpose will be more "practical," for I'm going to try to bring together the thought of Rawls and Levinas in order to resolve an unsettled difficulty plaguing each of their accounts... (shrink)

This paper explores the moments of overlap between Augustine’s pedagogical approach in De magistro and feminist theories of care. I argue that Augustine not only offers a useful model for those who wish to reclaim the centrality of students within education. He also encourages us to critique the narrative that women are more ‘naturally’ suited for caring relationships. I conclude by outlining the benefits of such critique. What do we gain when we allow a diversity of gendered experiences to inform (...) the practice of care in the classroom? (shrink)

What can postmodernism do for, or to, educational research? The article discusses its potential for resisting closure and simplification. Developing a ‘preposterous’, anachronistic postmodern method that is caught up with surrealism and the baroque, the article plays with trompel'oeil paintings and outmoded popular entertainments such as magic lanterns, peep shows and clockwork automata as figures for critique and analysis. It argues for defamiliarisation, fascination, recalcitrance and frivolity as methodic practices for research in the compromised conditions of postmodernity, and as forms (...) of ethical resistance to the risk-averse literalism that pervades contemporary education policy. (shrink)

In this article, the authors explore the interaction of language and culture through a metaphorical analysis of the ideas written of in Gregory Stock's book, Metaman, as well as explain how education shares the implicit assumptions of Metaman, thus perpetuating and strengthening a modern-day discourse that embeds a technological manifest destiny enveloped in deficiency as a guiding metaphor.

Summary The paper reports the results of a longitudinal case study conducted in Australia and New Zealand. The study compares the reading and comprehension age of children in their fifth and sixth years in school. Reading and comprehension ages of 121 children who had Reading Recovery intervention at age 6 were compared with those of a Comparison group of 121 children, drawn from the same classes who, at age 6 years, had been better performers in literacy. Reading and comprehension assessment (...) was conducted with the use of the Neale Analysis of Reading and analysed by means of a t?test. Results show that the mean reading age of ex?Reading Recovery children was nearly 12 months superior to that of the Comparison group and that the mean comprehension age was nearly 13 months superior at very highly significant levels. The results strongly suggest that Reading Recovery tuition at age 6 years enabled the 121 ex?Reading Recovery children to make greater progress in literacy than children in the Comparison group. (shrink)

Basic research is often weird, and it's often boring. It's the years spent mapping the neurons of zebra fish, so that future scientists can have a more detailed biological model to work with. It's the chemical analysis that has to happen, so that two decades from now somebody else can discover a new cancer-fighting drug. Basic research is about curiosity, and knowledge for knowledge's sake. By it's very nature, basic research relies on public funding. But by it's very nature, it's (...) hard to explain how the public benefits from the basic research we fund. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper argues that the retort ‘easy for you to say’ is a complaint about the target’s standing, but that it invokes a standing norm that is unjustified. Moreover, I argue that in many cases the person for whom it is ‘easy to say’ should speak.

Ordinarily, we take moral responsibility to come in degrees. Despite this commonplace, theories of moral responsibility have focused on the minimum threshold conditions under which agents are morally responsible. But this cannot account for our practices of holding agents to be more or less responsible. In this paper we remedy this omission. More specifically, we extend an account of reasons-responsiveness due to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza according to which an agent is morally responsible only if she is appropriately (...) receptive to and reactive to reasons for action. Building on this, we claim that the degree to which an agent is responsible will depend on the degree to which she is able to recognize and react to reasons. To analyze this, we appeal to relations of comparative similarity between possible worlds, arguing that the degree to which an agent is reasons-reactive depends on the nearest possible world in which given sufficient reason to do otherwise, she does so. Similarly, we argue that the degree to which an agent is reasons-receptive will depend on the intelligibility of her patterned recognition of reasons. By extending an account of reasons-responsiveness in these ways, we are able to rationalize our practice of judging people to be more or less responsible. (shrink)

Maggie Günsberg explores the intersection between gender portrayal and other social categories of class, age and the family in the Italian theatre from the Renaissance to the present day. She examines the developing relationship between patriarchal strategies and the formal properties of the dramatic genre such as plot, comedy and realism. She also considers conventions specific to drama in performance, including images of both femininity and masculinity. An interdisciplinary approach, drawing on semiotics, psychoanalysis, philosophy, theories of spectatorship and dramatic (...) theory from a feminist perspective, informs Günsberg's critique of landmarks in Italian theatrical history, including work by Machiavelli, Ariosto, Goldoni, D'Annunzio and Pirandello. The book concludes with a chapter on the plays of Franca Rame, assessing the impact of this important figure on contemporary Italian theatre. (shrink)

In signaling games, a sender has private access to a state of affairs and uses a signal to inform a receiver about that state. If no common association of signals and states is initially available, sender and receiver must coordinate to develop one. How do players divide coordination labor? We show experimentally that, if players switch roles at each communication round, coordination labor is shared. However, in games with fixed roles, coordination labor is divided: Receivers adjust their mappings more frequently, (...) whereas senders maintain the initial code, which is transmitted to receivers and becomes the common code. In a series of computer simulations, player and role asymmetry as observed experimentally were accounted for by a model in which the receiver in the first signaling round has a higher chance of adjusting its code than its partner. From this basic division of labor among players, certain properties of role asymmetry, in particular correlations with game complexity, are seen to follow. (shrink)

According to a well-known argument against dispositional essentialism, the nature of unmanifested token powers leaves dispositional essentialists with an objectionable commitment to the reality of non-existent entities. The idea is that, because unmanifested token powers are directed at their non-existent token manifestations, they require the reality of those manifestations. Arguably the most promising response to this argument works by claiming that, if properties are universals, dispositional directedness need only entail the reality of actually existing manifestation types. I argue that this (...) response fails, because no version of the response can adequately accommodate dispositions of the sort that follow from Coulomb’s law. This result both defeats an important argument that dispositional essentialists ought to be realists about universals and appears to leave dispositional essentialists with a problematic commitment to either non-relational connections or a Meinongian ontology. (shrink)

In this entry we provide a critical review of recent work on the nature and ethics of blame, including issues of moral standing.