This collection of original essays explores the connections between the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and the classical American pragmatists.

The philosophy of Wittgenstein is an unrivalled guide to the labyrinth of misleading pictures and intellectual illusions to which we are all prone, particularly when we try to think clearly about the topics that comprise the field of psychology. Wittgenstein and Psychology: A Practical Guide is a textbook exposition of Wittgenstein's insights to a scientific psychology. This book both introduces psychology students to the role and value of philosophical studies and enables philosophy students to see how Wittgenstein's insights reach out (...) beyond the domain of philosophy to reinvigorate a science. (shrink)

This is the first scholarly study of Atlas Shrugged, covering in detail the historical, literary, and philosophical aspects of Ayn Rand's magnum opus. Topics explored in depth include the history behind the novel's creation, publication, and reception; its nature as a romantic novel; and its presentation of a radical new philosophy.

This volume brings together many of the world¿s leading theorists of free will and philosophers of law to critically discuss the ground-breaking contribution of David Hodgson¿s libertarianism and its application to philosophy of law. The book begins with a comprehensive introduction, providing an overview of the intersection of theories of free will and philosophy of law over the last fifty years. The eleven chapters collected together divide into two groups: the first five address libertarianism within the free will debate, with (...) particular attention to Hodgson¿s theory, and in Part II, six contributors discuss Hodgson¿s libertarianism in relation to issues not often pursued by free will scholars, such as mitigation of punishment, the responsibility of judges, the nature of judicial reasoning and the criminal law process more generally. Thus the volume¿s importance lies not only in examining Hodgson¿s distinctive libertarian theory from within the free will literature, but also in considering new directions for research in applying that theory to enduring questions about legal responsibility and punishment.¿. (shrink)

Scholars of classical philosophy have long disputed whether Aristotle was a dialectical thinker. Most agree that Aristotle contrasts dialectical reasoning with demonstrative reasoning, where the former reasons from generally accepted opinions and the latter reasons from the true and primary. Starting with a grasp on truth, demonstration never relinquishes it. Starting with opinion, how could dialectical reasoning ever reach truth, much less the truth about first principles? Is dialectic then an exercise that reiterates the prejudices of one's times and at (...) best allows one to persuade others by appealing to these prejudices, or is it the royal road to first principles and philosophical wisdom? In From Puzzles to Principles? May Sim gathers experts to argue both these positions and offer a variety of interpretive possibilities. The contributors' thoughtful reflections on the nature and limits of dialectic should play a crucial role in Aristotelian scholarship. (shrink)

We provide the first demonstration of an artificial neural network encoding the perceptual templates that form an important component of the high level strategic understanding developed by experts. Experts have a highly refined sense of knowing where to look, what information is important and what information to ignore. The conclusions these experts reach are of a higher quality and typically made in a shorter amount of time than those of non-experts. Understanding the manifestation of such abilities in terms of both (...) the psychology of expert performance and the underlying neural mechanisms constitutes one of the most challenging problems in the cognitive sciences. Using perceptual templates we show how the amount of contextual information can change significantly even within a given task, the relationship between local and non-local contexts and finally why there is very little correlation between measures of intelligence and level of expertise in many of the most complex tasks performed by humans. (shrink)

This paper explores the application of positionality and reflexivity drawing on the experience of a British Minority Ethnic (BME) group senior nurse researching nurses with the same ethnic heritage in an IPA study. It explores how using IPA informed reflexivity and positionality as a researcher who shared the same ethnicity with the research participants. The IPA study allowed for the exploration of Internationally Educated Nurses' (IENs) perspectives on their integration into British healthcare and their navigation of career progression. The central (...) aims of an IPA study are to understand the participant's world, its description, the development of a clear, and open interpretative analysis with a descriptive focus on the social, cultural and theoretical context, and the participant's sense‐making of their lived experience. In this paper, we discuss how the lead researcher employed reflexivity, stated his intentionality and positionality in the conduct of the IPA study. This paper discusses some examples of the effects of positionality and reflexivity in the conduct of research by researchers of different racial background, and explicate the influence of personal and professional experiences of a researcher in using reflexivity and positionality to ensure cross‐cultural validity and reliability of an IPA research. This paper concludes that appropriate use of reflexivity and positionality in an IPA study may recognise the personal and professional influence of a researcher's experiences on the research process, including their ethnicity. (shrink)

We introduce an innovative technique that quantifies human expertise development in such a way that humans and artificial systems can be directly compared. Using this technique we are able to highlight certain fundamental difficulties associated with the learning of a complex task that humans are still exceptionally better at than their computer counterparts. We demonstrate that expertise goes through significant developmental transitions that have previously been predicted but never explicated. The first signals the onset of a steady increase in global (...) awareness that begins surprisingly late in expertise acquisition. The second transition, reached by only a very few experts in the world, shows a major reorganisation of global contextual knowledge resulting in a relatively minor gain in skill. We are able to show that these empirical findings have consequences for our understanding of the way in which expertise acquisition may be modelled by learning in artificial intelligence systems. This point is emphasised with a novel theoretical result showing explicitly how our findings imply a non-trivial hurdle for learning for suitably complex tasks. (shrink)

In this study, we discuss the role of senior nurses who sit on clinical commissioning groups that now plan and procure most health services in England. These nurses are expected to bring a nursing view to all aspects of clinical commissioning group business. The role is a senior level appointment and requires experience of strategic commissioning. However, little is known about how nurses function in these roles. Following Barrientos' methodology, published policy and literature were analysed to investigate these roles and (...) National Health Service England's claim that nursing can influence and advance a nursing perspective in clinical commissioning groups. Drawing on work by Berg, Barry and Chandler on ‘new public management’, we discuss how nurses on clinical commissioning groups work at the alignment of the interests of biomedicine and managerialism. We propose that the way this nursing role is being implemented might paradoxically offer further evidence of the devaluing of nursing rather than the emergence of a strong professional nursing voice at the level of strategic commissioning. (shrink)

This book builds on the idea that pragmatics and philosophy are strictly interconnected and that advances in one area will generate consequential advantages in the other area. The first part of the book, entitled ‘Theoretical Approaches to Philosophy of Language’, contains contributions by philosophers of language on connectives, intensional contexts, demonstratives, subsententials, and implicit indirect reports. The second part, ‘Pragmatics in Discourse’, presents contributions that are more empirically based or of a more applicative nature and that deal with the pragmatics (...) of discourse, argumentation, pragmatics and law, and context. The book presents perspectives which, generally, make most of the Gricean idea of the centrality of a speaker’s intention in attribution of meaning to utterances, whether one is interested in the level of sentence-like units or larger chunks of discourse. (shrink)

Agricultural industries in developed countries may need to consider transformative change if they are to respond effectively to contemporary challenges, including a changing climate. In this paper we apply a resilience lens to analyze a deliberate attempt by Australian governments to restructure the dairy industry, and then utilize this analysis to assess the usefulness of resilience thinking for contemporary agricultural transformations. Our analysis draws on findings from a case study of market deregulation in the subtropical dairy industry. Semi-structured interviews were (...) conducted with dairy producers, their service providers, and industry and government staff. We found the adaptive cycle concept contributed to understanding how deregulation changed industry structures and working practices, how those changes led to feedbacks within the production system and supply chain, and how the industry following deregulation has experienced periods of stability and instability. Regime shifts were associated with an increase in demand for human capital, a degradation of cognitive social capital and a reduction in farm income. Findings identified that were not readily explained by the resilience thinking conceptual framework include a producer’s ability to anticipate and make choices and the change in social and power relationships in the industry. (shrink)

This paper was presented at a session on "Three views of experiment: Atomic parity violations," in which Allan Franklin's study of an episode in the recent history of particle physics was discussed and criticized. Franklin argues in favor of what he calls "the evidence model," a general claim to the effect that physicists' theory choices are based on valid experimental evidence. He contrasts his position to that of the social constructivists, who, according to him, insist that social and cognitive (...) interests, and not the evidence, explains physicists' practical and theoretical judgments. My paper argues that Franklin miscasts the debate between experimental realism and social constructivism, because constructivists do not insist that evidence has no role whatsoever in experimental practice. My position draws lessons from Wittgenstein's later philosophy and ethnomethodological studies of scientific practices. The paper does not aim to support social constructivism against Franklin's arguments, so much as to suggest that the terms of the realist-constructivist debate provide a poor context for the examination of the temporal production of experiments and observations. (shrink)

In these three Tanner lectures, distinguished ethical theorist Allan Gibbard explores the nature of normative thought and the bases of ethics. In the first lecture he explores the role of intuitions in moral thinking and offers a way of thinking about the intuitive method of moral inquiry that both places this activity within the natural world and makes sense of it as an indispensable part of our lives as planners. In the second and third lectures he takes up the (...) kind of substantive ethical inquiry he has described in the first lecture, asking how we might live together on terms that none of us could reasonably reject. Since working at cross purposes loses fruits that might stem from cooperation, he argues, any consistent ethos that meets this test would be, in a crucial way, utilitarian. It would reconcile our individual aims to establish, in Kant's phrase, a "kingdom of ends." The volume also contains an introduction by Barry Stroud, the volume editor, critiques by Michael Bratman (Stanford University), John Broome (Oxford University), and F. M. Kamm (Harvard University), and Gibbard's responses. (shrink)

One important point that has emerged from recent work on the history and philosophy of experiment is that technology plays an integral role in experiment, and therefore in science. Technology determines what experimenters can measure and how well it can be measured. The importance of technology, along with several new questions that its use raises, has been made quite clear in the papers presented in this session.

Many believe that the ethical problems of donation after cardiocirculatory death (DCD) have been "worked out" and that it is unclear why DCD should be resisted. In this paper we will argue that DCD donors may not yet be dead, and therefore that organ donation during DCD may violate the dead donor rule. We first present a description of the process of DCD and the standard ethical rationale for the practice. We then present our concerns with DCD, including the following: (...) irreversibility of absent circulation has not occurred and the many attempts to claim it has have all failed; conflicts of interest at all steps in the DCD process, including the decision to withdraw life support before DCD, are simply unavoidable; potentially harmful premortem interventions to preserve organ utility are not justifiable, even with the help of the principle of double effect; claims that DCD conforms with the intent of the law and current accepted medical standards are misleading and inaccurate; and consensus statements by respected medical groups do not change these arguments due to their low quality including being plagued by conflict of interest. Moreover, some arguments in favor of DCD, while likely true, are "straw-man arguments," such as the great benefit of organ donation. The truth is that honesty and trustworthiness require that we face these problems instead of avoiding them. We believe that DCD is not ethically allowable because it abandons the dead donor rule, has unavoidable conflicts of interests, and implements premortem interventions which can hasten death. These important points have not been, but need to be fully disclosed to the public and incorporated into fully informed consent. These are tall orders, and require open public debate. Until this debate occurs, we call for a moratorium on the practice of DCD. (shrink)

Background International collaborators face challenges in the design and implementation of ethical biomedical research. Evaluating community understanding of research and processes like informed consent may enable researchers to better protect research participants in a particular setting; however, there exist few studies examining community perspectives in health research, particularly in resource-limited settings, or strategies for engaging the community in research processes. Our goal was to inform ethical research practice in a biomedical research setting in western Kenya and similar resource-limited settings. Methods (...) We sought to use mabaraza , traditional East African community assemblies, in a qualitative study to understand community perspectives on biomedical research and informed consent within a collaborative, multinational research network in western Kenya. Analyses included manual, progressive coding of transcripts from mabaraza to identify emerging central concepts. Results Our findings from two mabaraza with 108 community members revealed that, while participants understood some principles of biomedical research, they emphasized perceived benefits from participation in research over potential risks. Many community members equated health research with HIV testing or care, which may be explained in part by the setting of this particular study. In addition to valuing informed consent as understanding and accepting a role in research activities, participants endorsed an increased role for the community in making decisions about research participation, especially in the case of children, through a process of community consent. Conclusions Our study suggests that international biomedical research must account for community understanding of research and informed consent, particularly when involving children. Moreover, traditional community forums, such as mabaraza in East Africa, can be used effectively to gather these data and may serve as a forum to further engage communities in community consent and other aspects of research. (shrink)

On the 65th anniversary of the late Allan Bloom's birth, a distinguished group of his former students honored the memory of this inspiring teacher. Includes a previously unpublished essay on Isocrates by Bloom.

Classic voltaic batteries of the silver/zinc and copper/zinc types are the ancestors of today's primary cells, and facilitated the development of many aspects of electrical technology. Nevertheless, they appear never to have been studied and evaluated in a quantitative manner, with results recorded in terms of volts, amps, ohms, and watts. Research of this nature is reported here, and has been conducted for the most part with copper/zinc cells. Log–log graphs of voltage versus load and current, and power versus load, (...) are presented for many electrolyte systems. It has been shown that, although the textbook electrolyte of dilute sulphuric acid does work, it is an order of magnitude inferior to a solution containing some additional nitric acid. The latter diminishes the current‐limiting phenomenon of polarization, and was in fact used by Davy, Faraday, and other early investigators. A quantitative consideration of Nicholson and Carlisle's discovery of the electrolysis of water with a silver/zinc voltaic pile is followed by examination of the electrolysis of pure water, trough batteries, and Davy's isolation of potassium and sodium. Every battery gives maximum power when its resistance is adjusted to match the resistance of the load: the maximum output of the ‘Great Battery’ of the Royal Institution is assessed at no more than 3 kW. The paper concludes with a note on the recognized hazard of long‐term exposure to mercury vapour and its possible relevance to the health of Michael Faraday. (shrink)

Michael Winkelman, who is a senior lecturer in the department of anthropology, Arizona State University, and director of its ethnographic field school, has provided a rich overview of the neurophenomenology of shamanism in his book, Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness. Written in the tradition of Laughlin, McManus, and d'Aquili's 1992 classic, Brain, Symbol, and Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Consciousness, Winkelman considers shamanism in many of its facets. He explores shamanism's social and symbolic content, and the implications of (...) its neurological underpinnings both for shamanic practitioners and for their clients. (shrink)

There is thinking, conducted by a single person, about how to live. And there is thinking together– a kind of “language infused”(5) shared activity – about how to live together. In the first of these fascinating and deeply probing Tanner Lectures Allan Gibbard is concerned with both of these phenomena and with how they interact.

Resumo: As apropriações de conceitos da teoria marxista por parte de teólogos da libertação podem ser consideradas incoerentes, seja pela histórica relação de condenação mútua entre marxistas e clérigos, seja pela distinção entre religião e economia-política, típica da modernidade. Diante disso, o conceito de afinidade eletiva de Weber, na interpretação do sociólogo franco-brasileiro Michael Löwy, possibilita renovar os estudos dos fenômenos sociais nos quais o marxismo e a teologia cristã parecem fundir-se em uma crítica social radical, como teologia da (...) libertação. Esse instrumental analítico permite identificar o sentido no qual algumas categorias marxistas são apropriadas, em forte confluência nos marcos do cristianismo de libertação. Para isso, em uma análise bibliográfica referenciada na obra de Löwy, apresenta-se o desenvolvimento do conceito de afinidade eletiva na tradição webero-marxista, identificando elementos dessa convergência na teologia do cristianismo de libertação. Por fim, buscam-se exemplos desses elementos em textos de diferentes expressões da teologia da libertação. Trata-se de um exercício teórico que almeja colaborar para a consolidação de uma abordagem específica do tema.: The appropriation of concepts of Marxist theory by liberation theologians can be considered incoherent, whether in terms of the historical relationship of mutual condemnation between Marxists and clerics, or in terms of the distinction between religion and political economy that is typical of modernity. However, Weber’s concept of elective affinity, in the interpretation of the Franco-Brazilian sociologist Michael Löwy, makes it possible to renew the studies of social phenomena in which Marxism and Christian theology seem to merge into a radical social critique, as in the case of liberation theology. This analytical approach enables us to identify the sense in which some Marxist categories are appropriated within the framework of liberation Christianity. In a bibliographical analysis that makes reference to Löwy’s work, we present the development of the concept of elective affinity in the Weberian-Marxist tradition and identify elements of its convergence with the theology of liberation Christianity. Finally, we look for examples of these elements in texts from different expressions of liberation theology. (shrink)

EXCERPT.--With exception to early essays by George von Glahn and Mark Sanders, serious critical scholarship on the writings of Ted Kooser began after the 1980 release of the now-classic Sure Signs, Kooser’s fifth major collection of poems. Looking back over the thirty-plus years since then, only about a dozen or so significant studies—none of which book-length—currently boulder out against the relative flatscape of secondary materials constituted mostly by quick and dirty reviews. Aside from the essays by Wes Mantooth, Allan (...) Benn, and Mary K. Stillwell in this special issue of Midwestern Miscellany, the following works particularly stand out and, in my view, must be consulted by the Kooser scholar: David Baker’s “Ted’s Box”; William Barillas’s Chapter 7 of The Midwestern Pastoral; Victor Contoski’s “Words and Raincoats”; Dana Gioia’s “The Anonymity of the Regional Poet”; Jeff Gundy’s “Among the Erratics”; Jonathan Holden’s “The Chekov of American Poetry”; Denise Low’s “Sight in Motion”; David Mason’s “Introducing Ted Kooser”; and both Mary K. Stillwell’s “The ‘In Between’” and her “When a Walk is a Poem.”. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the essential task of a university is not teaching students to be experts in some field of endeavor but educating them, so they might learn how to act in accord with the basic moral constraints governing any endeavor. With the help of ideas from Plato, Aristotle, and Michael Oakeshott, this argument is developed by distinguishing actions from practices and prudential from moral practices. Our moral practices, which comprise our character, cannot be taught, but they can (...) be learned—through conversations and similar educational contexts in which possible actions are imaginatively explored and critiqued in an open-ended manner, with the focus not on what we think or do but how. The difficulty for universities, amid so many practical pressures to do otherwise, to keep this essential educational task as their primary concern is acknowledged. Nevertheless it is the right thing for them to do. (shrink)