This article aims to deconstruct the concept of dignity in a way that is meaningful, in particular to nurses and other health workers who seek to promote the dignity of children in their care. Despite the emphasis in a variety of codes and policies to promote dignity, there is a lack of a clear definition of dignity in the literature. In particular there is little reference to dignity, theoretically or empirically, as it relates to children. Without clarity it is not (...) possible to act in an ethical way on behalf of children whose dignity could otherwise be compromised. The theoretical position taken has evolved from the medico-nursing and philosophical discourse concerning the nature of human dignity and more recent sociological texts that discuss the social construction of the child and childhood. The article is further influenced by additional insights derived from an ethnographic pilot study at a large district general hospital. This study was undertaken in an attempt to appreciate the subjective experience of dignity by children, and to begin to address the empirical gap in the literature and promote discussion. The concept of a macro and a micro dignity is discussed, together with the role of the nurse in articulating the relationship between the two. The importance of control and witnesses in the experience of dignity is discussed and, finally, also the ethical implications when seeking to promote the dignity of children. (shrink)

We agree with Grossmann that fear often builds cooperative relationships. Yet he neglects much extant literature. Prior researchers have discussed how fear (and other emotions) build cooperative relationships, have questioned whether fear per se evolved to serve this purpose, and have emphasized that human cooperation takes many forms. Grossmann's theory would benefit from a wider consideration of this work.

In this first part, Matthew Lipman offers the reader a glimpse at the thought processes that resulted in Philosophy for Children and, in so doing, ...

Few figures of the Middle Ages command the attention of so many modern disciplines as Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253). Theology, Philosophy, History, and Science are all areas which his life and thought continue to have significance and to inspire re-interpretation. Accompanied by a series of original commentaries, this new edition of Grosseteste's work, with English translation, draws together the perspectives of modern scientists and medieval specialists. Volume I of a six volume series, Knowing and Speaking presents two of the earliest (...) of Grosseteste's works, the treatises On the Liberal Arts and On the Generation of Sounds. These are accompanied by a significant Middle English treatise on the Seven Liberal Arts whose anonymous fifteenth-century author translated and excerpted passages from Grosseteste's treatises in a re-imagining of their structure and function.0Each work is treated separately within the volume, which is constructed in three parts. On the Liberal Arts sets Grosseteste's thoughts on the arts subjects and emphasises moral concerns about the purpose of learning. On the Generation of Sounds builds on the theories and statements of On the Liberal Arts in connection to the production of sound, elaborating the earlier position, relating the generation of sounds to human vocal and speech production. (shrink)

Outpatient services are increasingly recognised as an important component of health care provision and may be improved through the application of modern management techniques. We have performed a time and role audit of consultation and waiting times in two medical clinics using different queuing systems: namely, a serial processing clinic where patients wait in a single queue and a quasi-parallel processing clinic where patients are directed to the shortest queue to maintain clinic flow. Data collected were used to construct a (...) computer simulation of patient flows in clinic. Assessment of patient satisfaction in the clinic process was determined using a self-administered questionnaire. Mean waiting time was shorter in the quasi-parallel processing clinic: 26 (SD 17) minutes compared with 36(24) minutes in the serial processing clinic. In the serial processing clinic 61% of patients waited more than 30 minutes compared with 41% in the quasi-parallel processing clinic. In the serial processing clinic 8% of 142 patients surveyed complained of the time spent waiting. The computer simulation we produced was able to determine waiting times with different clinic structures. The simulation showed that reductions in waiting time up to 30% might be achieved by changing our serial processing clinic to a quasi-parallel processing one. Performance of medical outpatient clinics can be improved by examining and changing clinic management. Computer simulation of outpatient clinics offers a means of assessing the impact of such changes on waiting time in clinic and on waiting lists. (shrink)

Some of the early‐modern changes in the social framing of science, while often believed to be essential, are shown to be contingent. They contribute to the flawed public narrative around science today, and especially to the misconceptions around science and religion. Four are examined in detail, each of which contributes to the demise of the contemplative stance that science both requires and offers. They are: (1) a turn from an immersed subject to the pretense of a pure objectivity, (2) a (...) turn from imagination as a legitimate pathway to knowledge, (3) a turn from shared and participative science to a restricted professionalism, and (4) an overprosaic reading of the metaphor of the “Book of Nature.” All four, but especially the imperative to consider reading nature as poetry, and a deeper examination of the entanglements between poetry and theoretical science, draw unavoidably on theological ideas, and contribute to a developing “theology of science.”. (shrink)

The debate between the Mendelians and the (largely Darwinian) biometricians has been referred to by R. A. Fisher as ‘one of the most needless controversies in the history of science’ and by David Hull as ‘an explicable embarrassment’. The literature on this topic consists mainly of explaining why the controversy occurred and what factors prevented it from being resolved. Regrettably, little or no mention is made of the issues that figured in its resolution. This paper deals with the latter topic (...) and in doing so reorients the focus of the debate as one between Karl Pearson and R. A. Fisher rather than between the biometricians and the Mendelians. One reason for this reorientation is that Pearson's own work in 1904 and 1909 suggested that Mendelism and biometry could, to some extent, be made compatible, yet he remained steadfast in his rejection of Mendelism. The interesting question then is why Fisher, who was also a proponent of biometric methods, was able to synthesise the two traditions in a way that Pearson either could not or would not. My answer to this question involves an analysis of the ways in which different kinds of assumptions were used in modelling Mendelian populations. I argue that it is these assumptions, which lay behind the statistical techniques of Pearson and Fisher, that can be isolated as the source of Pearson's rejection of Mendelism and Fisher's success in the synthesis. (shrink)

This article offers a critique of Thomas Scanlon's well-known account of promissory obligation by reference to the rights of promisees. Scanlon's account invokes a moral principle, the "principle of fidelity". Now, corresponding to a promisor's obligation to perform is a promisee's right to performance. It is argued that one cannot account for this right in terms of Scanlon's principle. This is so in spite of a clause in the principle relating to the promisee's "consent", which might have been thought to (...) do the trick. Most likely this argument can be applied to all "moral principle" accounts of promissory obligation. An alternative both to these and to "social practice" accounts is needed. (shrink)

Extending the approach to a ‘theology of science’ developed in Faith and Wisdom in Science, I expand its theme of the tension between chaos and emergent order, within the arc of the Biblical story of creation, towards a theology of evolutionary science. In addition to the material in Job, the book of Wisdom provides a remarkable account of transmutation of species, within a recapitulation of the Exodus theme, that I juxtapose with a modern genotype-phenotype theory of evolutionary dynamics, exploiting analogies (...) with statistical mechanics. The dual and connected structures of microscopic and macroscopic provide a locus for the Joban tensions of chaos and emergent order, and provide an interpretative narrative for the emergent directionality of evolution, and a theology that situates within a creation of freedom to explore the potential of the created order. (shrink)

Fifteen original essays open up a novel area of inquiry: the distinctively ethical dimensions of women's experiences of and in aging. Contributors distinguished in the fields of feminist ethics and the ethics of aging explore assumptions, experiences, practices, and public policies that affect women's well-being and dignity in later life. The book brings to the study of women's aging a reflective dimension missing from the empirical work that has predominated to date. Ethical studies of aging have so far failed to (...) emphasize gender. And feminist ethics has neglected older women, even when emphasizing other dimensions of 'difference.' Finally work on aging in all fields has focused on the elderly, while this volume sees aging as an extended process of negotiating personal and social change. (shrink)

Takes a fresh approach to the 'science and religion' debate, taking a scientist's reading of the enigmatic and beautiful Book of Job as a centrepiece, and asking what science might ultimately be for. Rather than conflicting with faith, science can be seen as a deeply religious activity.

Under the influence of the evangelical movement in the 18th and early 19th centuries education, in one form or another, was brought to a vast number of people in England and Wales. Originally published in 1969, it is this phenomenon that forms the subject of Dr McLeish’s book. The two central figures are Griffith Jones and Hannah More and the movements are seen almost entirely through their work. Dr McLeish examines the nature and aims of the schools which (...) were established; their economics and organisation; their progress and achievement; the social background in which they flourished. In the second part of his book Dr McLeish attempts a bold synthesis. He analyses these data in light of four essentially modern social theories – Marxist dialectics, the functionalist anthropology of Malinowski, Freudian psychoanalysis, and the sociology of Talcott Parsons. The author does not pretend to provide all the answers. What he suggests is a way of looking at history that is open-minded and eclectic and vitalizing in the perspectives which it offers. (shrink)

A commonplace in traditional historiography is the claim that an important aspect of the demise of Aristotelianism during the Scientific Revolution was a change in the concept of causality, a change which eliminated final causes from science. Projecting twentieth-century metaphysical presuppositions onto the ostensibly revolutionary thought of early modern natural philosophers, E. A. Burtt declared.

At least some of these commentators have then, rather naturally, taken a step which it will be the business of this essay to criticize. They have suggested that Leibniz’s "counter-part theory" can be understood as providing an interpretation of counter-factuals and certain forms of modal discourse within his system. For example, Mondadori writes.

Most discussions of sexual harassment and laws addressing sexual harassment focus solely on sexual harassment in the workplace and/or in academe. In this paper, I will explore sexual harassment in public spaces such as streets and public transportation. Street and/or transportation harassment is a major problem for women in a number of countries. These forms of harassment constrain women’s freedom of movement, preventing them from taking advantage of opportunities at school, at work, and in politics. I will argue that such (...) harassment must be eliminated if women are to have equal opportunities in society. (shrink)

In a recent series of papers, Matthias Steup has defended doxastic voluntarism against longstanding objections. Many of his arguments center on the following conditional: if we accept a compatibilist notion of voluntary control, then, in most instances, belief-formation is voluntary and doxastic voluntarism the correct view. Steup defends two versions of this conditional. The first is universal, moving from compatibilism considered generally to doxastic voluntarism: if compatibilism is true, then doxastic voluntarism is true. The second is more particular, moving from (...) the specific form of reasons-responsive compatibilism to doxastic voluntarism: if reasons-responsive compatibilism is true, then doxastic voluntarism is true. I argue that Steup’s arguments for both conditionals fail, in which case we lack reason to believe in either of them. In the final section of the paper, I argue that the impossibility of epistemic akrasia provides prima facie reason to think the latter conditional is false. (shrink)

It is characteristic of Aristophanes that, in the fifth-century debate on the conflicting moral claims of and he tended to adopt a conservative stance, and in general to support the claims of Most of his plots concern an imbalance.in cosmic order , and the hero's which is undertaken to correct it. Often the cosmic imbalance is caused by the pre-eminence of those who place their own above , and the hero's self-imposed task is to reverse this state of affairs.

We summarise the contributions to the discussion and the links between them. The complex relationship between the physical and biological sciences demonstrates three “axes of tension”: the role of simulation, the interplay between levels of explanation, and the generality of “laws”. We identify examples of true synergy between approaches that genuinely explore new research territory, and underscore the contemporary value of the type of discussions contained in this volume.

The online panel discussion following the 2021 Boyle Lecture, “The Re‐discovery of Contemplation through Science” was very rich, both in terms of the topics raised by the panel members, and the extensive list of questions and suggestions posed by the online participants. Here, I record some initial thoughts in response, grouped under the following headings: Overall Rationale and Purpose, Contemplative Methodologies in Scientific Insight and Broader Practice, Science Culture and Politics, Psychological and Meditative Consequences, Natural Theology of Old and New (...) Kinds, New Atheism, Education, Christian Practice, and Lessons from the History of Science and Technology. (shrink)

The model theoretic `back and forth' construction of isomorphisms and automorphisms is based on the proof by Cantor that the theory of dense linear orderings without endpoints is ℵ 0 -categorical. However, Cantor's method is slightly different and for many other structures it yields an injection which is not surjective. The purpose here is to examine Cantor's method (here called `going forth') and to determine when it works and when it fails. Partial answers to this question are found, extending those (...) earlier given by Cameron. We also give fuller characterisations of when forth suffices for model theoretic classes such as structures containing Jordan sets for the automorphism group, and ℵ 0 -categorical ω-stable structures. The work is based on the author's Ph.D. thesis. (shrink)

In this second paper, I continue my discussion of the problem of reference for scientific realism. First, I consider a final objection to Kitcher’s account of reference, which I generalise to other accounts of reference. Such accounts make attributions of reference by appeal to our pretheoretical intuitions about how true statements ought to be distibuted among the scientific utterances of the past. I argue that in the cases that merit discussion, this strategy fails because our intuitions are unstable. The interesting (...) cases are importantly borderline—it really isn’t clear what we ought to say about how those terms referred. I conclude that in many relevant cases, our grounds for thinking that the theoretical terms of the past referred are matched by our grounds for thinking that they failed to refer, in such a way that deciding on either result is arbitrary and bad news for the realist. In response to this problem, in the second part of the paper I expand upon Field’s account of partial reference to sketch a new way of thinking about the theoretical terms of the past—that they partially referred and partially failed to refer.Keywords: Scientific realism; Reference; Partial denotation; Theoretical terms; Philip Kitcher; Hartry Field. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Kitcher’s account of reference for the expressions of past science. Kitcher’s case study is of Joseph Priestley and his expression ‘dephlogisticated air’. There is a strong intuitive case that ‘dephlogisticated air’ referred to oxygen, but it was underpinned by very mistaken phlogiston theory, so concluding either that dephlogisticated air referred straightforwardly or that it failed to refer both have unpalatable consequences. Kitcher argues that the reference of such terms is best considered relative to each token—some (...) tokens refer, and others do not. His account thus relies crucially on how this distinction between tokens can be made good—a puzzle I call the discrimination problem. I argue that the discrimination problem cannot be solved. On any reading of Kitcher’s defence of the distinction, the grounds provided are either insufficient or illegitimate. On the first reading, Kitcher violates the principle of humanity by making Priestley’s referential success a matter of the mental contents of modern speakers. The second reading sidesteps the problem of beliefs by appealing to mind-independent facts, but I argue that these are insufficient to achieve reference because of the indeterminacy introduced by the qua problem. On the third and final reading, Priestley’s success is given by what he would say in counterfactual circumstances. I argue that even if there are facts about what Priestley would say, and there is reason for doubt, there is no motivation to think that such facts determine how Priestley referred in the actual world.Keywords: Philip Kitcher; Scientific realism; Reference; Joseph Priestley; Phlogiston; Principle of humanity. (shrink)

Truthmaker theory has been used to argue for substantial conclusions about the categorial structure of the world, in particular that states of affairs are needed to play the role of truthmakers. In this paper, I argue that closely considering the role of aboutness in truthmaking, that is considering what truthbearers are about, yields the result that there is no good truthmaker-based reason to think that truthmakers must be states of affairs understood as existing entities, whether complex or simple. First, I (...) introduce an aboutness-based account of truthmaking as a metaphysically modest alternative to the orthodox necessitarian account of truthmaking. Second, I discuss the distinction between states and events that has been made on the basis of linguistic evidence regarding aspectual markers and nominalisation. I argue that the modest approach to truthmaking allows us to accept that there is a real distinction between states and events without requiring that the distinction is ontologically substantial. Specifically, what we are talking about with state-truthbearers really differs from what we are talking about with event-truthbearers, but this difference need not be understood as a difference in kinds of entities. Because of its overall modesty, this is a theoretically virtuous result. (shrink)

This article examines different conceptions of causation and their implications for understanding educational phenomena and conducting educational research. Specifically, I discuss four research designs for pursuing questions about causation in education. Two of these research designs take a variance approach to causation , while the other two take a process approach . The point of the discussion is to illustrate, first, their respective strengths and, second, their necessary interdependence. Ultimately, I argue that just as both hammers and saws are needed (...) to build a good house, both variance and process approaches are needed to build a good understanding of causation in education. (shrink)

Volume 18, Issue 5, October 2019, Page 535-544.

In this paper, I first present an overview of Asay’s _A Theory of Truthmaking_, highlighting what I take to be some of its most attractive features, especially his re-invigoration of the ontological understanding of truthmaking and his defence of ontology-first truthmaking over explanation-first truthmaking. Then, I articulate what I take to be a puzzling potential inconsistency: (a) he appeals to considerations to do with aboutness in criticising how well ontological views account for truth while (b) ruling out aboutness from the (...) right account of truthmaking. He argues, instead, that necessitation is both necessary and sufficient for truthmaking (§3.3). I suggest that adding aboutness to one’s account in the right way is not just compatible with but important for ontology-first truthmaking. I do all this to invite Asay to clarify his position on these matters. Overall, Asay’s worldview displays the fruitfulness of an ontologically serious approach to metaphysics that puts truthmaking centre-stage. (shrink)