This article looks at some of the moral implications of the radical reforms in the United Kingdom since the Griffiths Report was first published in 1988. It is suggested that, among others, two outcomes are particularly problematic. These are firstly, findings that care managers (the preferred name in the UK for social workers dealing mainly with adults and older people who require social care support in the community) no longer spend much time with clients, and secondly, suggestions that many (...) aspects of care management practice promote forms of inequality, especially amongst already disadvantaged groups. The article also considers recent studies regarding the opinions of social work practitioners, and it is concluded that ultimately the care management hegemony is difficult to defend from an ethical perspective. (shrink)

Presented in the popular Cambridge Texts format are three early Platonic dialogues in a new English translation by Tom Griffith that combines elegance, accuracy, freshness and fluency. Together they offer strikingly varied examples of Plato's critical encounter with the culture and politics of fifth and fourth century Athens. Nowhere does he engage more sharply and vigorously with the presuppositions of democracy. The Gorgias is a long and impassioned confrontation between Socrates and a succession of increasingly heated interlocutors about political rhetoric (...) as an instrument of political power. The short Menexenus contains a pastiche of celebratory public oratory, illustrating its self-delusions. In the Protagoras, another important contribution to moral and political philosophy in its own right, Socrates takes on leading intellectuals (the 'sophists') of the later fifth century BC and their pretensions to knowledge. The dialogues are introduced and annotated by Malcolm Schofield, a leading authority on ancient Greek political philosophy. (shrink)

For students and the general reader, this is the best English translation of the entire 'Laws' available. I give several examples of important lines that are translated well in this edition, but I take issue with the translation of some other lines and with part of Schofield's introduction on grounds that these parts do not reveal Plato's political and cosmic holism as clearly as they could have.

The proposal that the concept of innateness expresses a 'folk biological' theory of the 'inner natures' of organisms was tested by examining the response of biologically naive participants to a series of realistic scenarios concerning the development of birdsong. Our results explain the intuitive appeal of existing philosophical analyses of the innateness concept. They simultaneously explain why these analyses are subject to compelling counterexamples. We argue that this explanation undermines the appeal of these analyses, whether understood as analyses of the (...) vernacular concept or as explications of that concept for the purposes of science. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Zachary Ardern criticizes our view that the most promising candidate for a naturalized criterion of disease is the "selected effects" account of biological function and dysfunction. Here we reply to Ardern’s criticisms and, more generally, clarify the relationship between adaptation and dysfunction in the evolution of health and disease.

We examine the randomness and triviality of reals using notions arising from martingales and prefix-free machines.

Morwenna Griffiths; The Teaching of Skills and the Skills of Teaching: a reply to Robin Barrow, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2.

This chapter analyzes the notion of human nature and the concept of inner nature from the perspective of developmental systems theory. It explores the folkbiology of human nature and looks at three features associated with traits that are expressions of the inner nature that organisms inherit from their parents: fixity, typicality, teleology.

It is argued that while quantum mechanics contains nonlocal or entangled states, the instantaneous or nonlocal influences sometimes thought to be present due to violations of Bell inequalities in fact arise from mistaken attempts to apply classical concepts and introduce probabilities in a manner inconsistent with the Hilbert space structure of standard quantum mechanics. Instead, Einstein locality is a valid quantum principle: objective properties of individual quantum systems do not change when something is done to another noninteracting system. There is (...) no reason to suspect any conflict between quantum theory and special relativity. (shrink)

The interventionist account of causation offers a criterion to distinguish causes from non-causes. It also aims at defining various desirable properties of causal relationships, such as specificity, proportionality and stability. Here we apply an information-theoretic approach to these properties. We show that the interventionist criterion of causation is formally equivalent to non-zero specificity, and that there are natural, information-theoretic ways to explicate the distinction between potential and actual causal influence. We explicate the idea that the description of causes should be (...) proportional to that of their effects. Then we draw a distinction between two ideas in the existing literature, the range of invariance of a causal relationship and its stability. The range of invariance is related to specificity and range of causal values. Stability concerns the effect of additional variables on the relationship between some focal pair of cause and effect variables. We show how to distinguish and measure the direct influence of background variables on the effect variable, and their influence on the relationship between the focal cause and the effect variable. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the information-theoretic approach, and offer prospects for complementary approaches. (shrink)

In its ideal conception, the post-apartheid education landscape is regarded as a site of transformation that promotes democratic ideals such as citizenship, freedom, and critical thought. The role of the educator is pivotal in realising this transformation in the learners she teaches, but this realisation extends beyond merely teaching the curriculum to the educator herself, as the site where these democratic ideals are embodied and enacted. The teacher is thus centrally placed as a moral agent whose behaviour, in the classroom (...) space particularly, should, ideally, represent and communicate the values we aspire to cultivate in post-apartheid South African society generally. Thus, this notion of what teaching encompasses fits broadly into the conception of a “practice” in the sense developed by Alasdair MacIntyre, in that it is a transformative activity the enactment of which not only benefits the practitioner, but also extends to and benefits the broader community as well. Furthermore, practices are grounded in features of social or moral life we hold to be significant and, importantly, it is only through their active cultivation that they can be made tangible and further developed. MacIntyre’s theory of virtue is based on a three-fold interrelationship between practices, how they meaningfully narrate and shape an individual life, and how, in turn, this builds and sustains our moral and social traditions. Using these ideas to analyse post-apartheid South Africa, and the structural transformation paradox it is in, reveals the difficult and complex nature of a society that is in this transitional space. The claim is that attentiveness to practices in the educational space, and to the way they shape and inform moral and social traditions, is necessary to more fully understand and guide this societal transformation. (shrink)

The aim of appraisal theory in the psychology of emotion is to identify the features of the emotion-eliciting situation that lead to the production of one emotion rather than another². A model of emotional appraisal takes the form of a set of dimensions against which potentially emotion-eliciting situations are assessed. The dimensions of the emotion hyperspace might include, for example, whether the eliciting situation fulfills or frustrates the subject’s goals or whether an actor in the eliciting situation has violated a (...) norm. Richard Lazarus’s well-known model of emotional appraisal has six dimensions, and the regions of the resulting hyperspace that correspond to particular emotions are summarized by Lazarus as the ‘core relational themes’ of those emotions. Anger, for examples, is elicited by the core relational theme ‘a demeaning offence against me and mine’, sadness by ‘having experienced an irrevocable loss’ and guilt by ‘having transgressed a moral imperative’ (Lazarus, 1991). (shrink)

Given their large number of adherents, and the land and property they own, religious communities have been identified as groups that could have an influence on achieving carbon net-zero. The theological views held by religious communities relating to ecological matters – their “ecotheological values” – play an important role in motivating their environmental concern and action. But which ecotheological ideas are most, and which are least, efficacious in this respect? This paper presents findings salient to this question from a recent (...) survey (n = 319) conducted amongst Christian activists and advocates concerned with climate change. It reports on which ecotheological ideas are most widely and firmly held amongst samples from six Christian environmental activist and advocacy groups in the UK, and discusses the extent to which these ideas are either continuous with mainstream Christian theology, or indicate innovative theological thinking. We find examples of both: some mainstream views are popular, and some are unpopular, amongst our sample, whilst some innovative and newer ideas are becoming more popular, whilst others are resisted. These results will be useful in seeking to promote a greater pro-environmental stance within Christian communities more widely. (shrink)

Is mercy more important than justice? Since antiquity, mercy has been regarded as a virtue. The power of monarchs was legitimated by their acts of clemency, their mercy demonstrating their divine nature. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, mercy had become “an injustice committed against society... a manifest vice.” Mercy was exiled from political life. How did this happen? In this book, Malcolm Bull analyses and challenges the Enlightenment’s rejection of mercy. A society operating on principles of (...) rational self-interest had no place for something so arbitrary and contingent, and having been excluded from Hobbes’s theory of the state and Hume’s theory of justice, mercy disappeared from the lexicon of political theory. But, Bull argues, these idealised conceptions have proved too limiting. Political realism demands recognition of the foundational role of mercy in society. If we are vulnerable to harm from others, we are in need of their mercy. By restoring the primacy of mercy over justice, we may constrain the powerful and release the agency of the powerless. And if arguments for capitalism are arguments against mercy, might the case for mercy challenge the very basis of our thinking about society and the state? An important contribution to contemporary political philosophy from an inventive thinker, On Mercy makes a persuasive case for returning this neglected virtue to the heart of political thought. (shrink)

Developmental systems theory is a general theoretical perspective on development, heredity and evolution. It is intended to facilitate the study of interactions between the many factors that influence development without reviving `dichotomous' debates over nature or nurture, gene or environment, biology or culture. Several recent papers have addressed the relationship between DST and the thriving new discipline of evolutionary developmental biology. The contributions to this literature by evolutionary developmental biologists contain three important misunderstandings of DST.

Analytic philosophy took a wrong turn when it rehabilitated direct realism. From the perspective of cognitive science, it seems that we can have the directness-claim or the realism-claim but not both together. Up until the mid-1900s the vast majority of philosophers dismissed direct realism as hopelessly naïve, but by the close of the century it had become the orthodoxy within analytic philosophy. In contrast, mainstream cognitive science has remained constant in its opposition to the directness-claim, and when the directness-claim is (...) maintained, by an avowedly-radical minority, it is at the expense of the realism-claim. (shrink)

Are extreme beliefs constitutive of echo chambers, or only typically caused by them? Or are many echo chambers unproblematic, amplifying relatively benign beliefs? This paper details the conceptual relations between echo chambers and extreme beliefs, showing how different conceptual choice-points in how we understand both echo chambers and extreme beliefs affects how we should evaluate, study, and engage with echo chambering groups. We also explore how our theories of extreme beliefs and echo chambers shape social scientific research and contribute in (...) a practical way when treating these phenomena, focusing on examples of climate change scepticism. (shrink)

My paper examines a vital but neglected aspect of Frank Sibley's pioneering account of aesthetic concepts. This is the claim that many aesthetic qualities are such that they can be characterized adequately only by metaphors or ‘quasi-metaphors’. Although there is no indication that Sibley embraced it, I outline a radical, minimalist conception of the experience of perceiving an item as possessing an aesthetic quality, which, I believe, has wide application and which would secure Sibley's position for those aesthetic qualities that (...) conform to it. (shrink)

Representationalism (aka intentionalism) has been the most significant weapon in the late twentieth century defence of direct realism. However, although the representationalist objection to the Phenomenal Principle might provide an effective response to the arguments from illusion and hallucination, plausible representationalist theories of perception are, when fleshed-out, incompatible with metaphysical direct realism’s directness-claim. Indeed within cognitive science, direct perception is the avowedly-radical anti-representationalist heterodoxy. Drawing on both the philosophy and cognitive science, we develop a robust argument against representationalist direct realism (...) which does not rest on illusory cases or the notion of an object of immediate awareness. None of the representations so far posited, or in prospect, can supply the content required of a representation in a direct realist theory of veridical perception. (shrink)

The widely cited Nuffield Council on Bioethics ‘Intervention Ladder’ structurally embodies the assumption that personal autonomy is maximized by non-intervention. Consequently, the Intervention Ladder encourages an extreme ‘negative liberty’ view of autonomy. Yet there are several alternative accounts of autonomy that are both arguably superior as accounts of autonomy and better suited to the issues facing public health ethics. We propose to replace the one-sided ladder, which has any intervention coming at a cost to autonomy, with a two-sided ‘Balanced Intervention (...) Ladder,’ where intervention can either enhance or diminish autonomy. We show that not only the alternative, richer accounts of autonomy but even Mill’s classic version of negative liberty puts some interventions on the positive side of the ladder. (shrink)

Every person in the course of his or her life has some contact with the medical profession. And in recent years that profession has been revolutionised in the fields of research, of technology and of practice. Hardly has one advance been declared than it is superseded by another. At the same time, while community attitudes themselves change, group practices have taken some weight from doctors but perhaps have diminished the doctor/ patient relationship of previous years. Another change in the oversight (...) of the medical profession has been the growth of what is called medical ethics. What, for example, is the amount of information a doctor should give a patient prior to performing an experimental procedure? Amongst all these changes there are still fundamental issues where doctors have to use their personal judgment as to what to do or what to say. For Max Griffiths this is where ethical considerations become matters of medical morality. He outlines a broad range of situations which frequently confront both doctor and patient, requiring sympathetic understanding on each side. Some of these arise out of the radical changes which have occurred in community attitudes and practices. Abortion and euthanasia are two important examples. Others range from growing pains and teenage trauma to ageing and dealing with dying and with loss. From his extensive associations with patients in a wide variety of situations the author tackles those issues which demonstrate what makes a good doctor. The result is a book that is for doctors and patients alike. Max Griffiths' involvement in medical matters range from responsibility for outback hospitals in places like Birdsville, Oodnadatta, Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing to long term membership of the board of the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. In this latter capacity he chaired committees responsible for the oversight of medical research, especially the protection of patients' rights. He was also involved in similar committees at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne and the Royal Darwin Hospital. As a long term minister of religion his visits to his parishioners both at home and in hospitals gave him a deep insight into their anxieties. He was also a foundation member of Ronald McDonald House and chairman of several institutions engaged in the care of children with disabilities. [Subject: Sociology, Health Care, Medical Ethics]. (shrink)

This article offers a prolegomenon for an African feminist philosophy. The prompt for this as an interrogation of Oluwole’s claim that an African feminist philosophy cannot develop until identifiable African worldviews that guide the relationship between men and women have been established. She argues that until there is general agreement about the nature of African philosophy itself, African feminist philosophy will remain impoverished. I critique this claim, unpacking Oluwole’s argument, and examine the contested nature of both African and Western philosophy. (...) Drawing from the work of Mignolo and decolonial thinking, I then argue for the possibility of “epistemic disobedience” concerning the emergence of an African feminist philosophy. Engaging with precolonial African examples which disrupt modern normative gender assumptions and looking at the project of decoloniality, I issue a call for an African feminist philosophy unfettered by the falsely universal claims of modernity/coloniality. My call is for an African feminist philosophy from African loci of enunciation, rooted in the epistemes and experiences of African women. (shrink)

Curve-fitting typically works by trading off goodness-of-fit with simplicity, where simplicity is measured by the number of adjustable parameters. However, such methods cannot be applied in an unrestricted way. I discuss one such correction, and explain why the exception arises. The same kind of probabilistic explanation offers a surprising resolution to a common-sense dilemma.

It is shown how all the major conceptual difficulties of standard (textbook) quantum mechanics, including the two measurement problems and the (supposed) nonlocality that conflicts with special relativity, are resolved in the consistent or decoherent histories interpretation of quantum mechanics by using a modified form of quantum logic to discuss quantum properties (subspaces of the quantum Hilbert space), and treating quantum time development as a stochastic process. The histories approach in turn gives rise to some conceptual difficulties, in particular the (...) correct choice of a framework (probabilistic sample space) or family of histories, and these are discussed. The central issue is that the principle of unicity, the idea that there is a unique single true description of the world, is incompatible with our current understanding of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Especially insightful are articles on ethics and gender, autonomy and pornography, feelings, and a responsible and democratic epistemology." —Choice The essays in this book introduce to American readers the work of a group of British ...

Genetic determinism is the idea that many significant human characteristics are rendered inevitable by the presence of certain genes. The psychologist Susan Oyama has famously compared arguing against genetic determinism to battling the undead. Oyama suggests that genetic determinism is inherent in the way we currently represent genes and what genes do. As long as genes are represented as containing information about how the organism will develop, they will continue to be regarded as determining causes no matter how much evidence (...) exists to the contrary. Philip Kitcher has strongly disputed Oyama’s diagnosis, arguing that the conventional ‘interactionist’ perspective on development is the correct framework for understanding the role of the genes in development. While acknowledging the legitimacy of many of Kitcher’s observations, I believe that Oyama’s view is substantially correct. In this paper I provide several lines of support for support the Oyama diagnosis. (shrink)

-/- Professor Hick's recent contribution to Religious Studies, ‘On Grading Religions’, is, like all his work, lucidly written and full of philosophical meat. A complete discussion of his paper in the light of his earlier work would require a lengthy study for which there is no space here; the intention of this short reply to Professor Hick is different. We feel that the view expressed in this and other works of Professor Hick's is in danger of becoming the conventional wisdom (...) about the functions of reason in assessing religious truth-claims among philosophers of religion on both sides of the Atlantic, and that this should not be permitted to happen without some wider ventilation of the extremely important philosophical issues at stake. This reply is thus an attempt to stimulate controversy and to explore alternatives. (shrink)

This paper will reflect on the possibility of epistemic decolonization, particularly in terms of curriculum, as a transformative educational process in the context of the South African university, and with respect to my own positionality. The argument will centre around two difficult interdependent positions. On the one hand I will argue for the university’s task as transformational, even offering, via Cornel West, the ‘salvific’ possibility that knowledge offers those who seek it. To develop this claim, I will draw on and (...) develop the notion of paideia though the work of Plato and Heidegger.On the other hand, within the postcolonial African university, the question of decolonization in the tertiary space cannot be elided, particularly since the 2015 #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements. The university is a powerful colonial relic, and it can be used to reinforce and perpetuate epistemic violence through unreflective or unconscious pedagogical and curriculum decisions. Here I draw on decolonial thinkers such as Santos, Mignolo, Maldonado-Torres, and Mbembe: I argue for a reckoning with the forces of coloniality, and advocate for epistemic justice and criticality, as part of the decolonizing project. In conclusion, working with ideas from Cornel West, I argue to reconcile paideia, as the ‘turning of the soul’, with the decolonizing African university. (shrink)