The following paper outlines the historical and philosophical development of, ‘community of inquiry’ in educational discourse. The origins of community of inquiry can be found in the philosophical work of C. S. Peirce. From Peirce the notion of community of inquiry is adopted and developed by educational theorists of different orientations. Community of inquiry denotes an approach to teaching that alters the structure of the classroom in fundamental ways. With particular consideration given to the unique philosophical origins of this approach, (...) this paper outlines and discusses how community of inquiry is situated in today's educational landscape. (shrink)

The phenomenon of contract cheating presents, potentially, a serious threat to the quality and standards of Higher Education around the world. There have been suggestions, cited below, to tackle the problem using legal means, but we find that current laws are not fit for this purpose. In this article we present a proposal for a specific new law to target contract cheating, which could be enacted in most jurisdictions.We test our proposed new law against a number of issues that would (...) need to be considered before any legal approach could be successful; would changing the legal status of contract cheating make it less likely to happen? Could this be achieved in a specific way? If so, who should actually be prosecuted and what offence are they committing? Would it actually address the causes of contract cheating? We suggest some answers to these questions, but then also identify a number of unintended potential consequences. We therefore additionally consider whether a legal approach is possible or even desirable.We conclude that a legal approach to contract cheating is possible, and, on balance, appropriate. Using UK law as an example, we offer a specific suggestion to lawmakers, around the world, for how this might be achieved, and conclude that the most successful approach would be to focus largely on a law targeting the providers of contract cheating, in particular commercial services. (shrink)

For the first time an award-winning Harvard professor shares the lessons from his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how these ancient ideas can guide you on the path to a good life today. The lessons taught by ancient Chinese philosophers surprisingly still apply, and they challenge our fundamental assumptions about how to lead a fulfilled, happy, and successful life. Self-discovery, it turns out, comes through looking outward, not inward. Power comes from holding back. Good relationships come (...) from small gestures. Spontaneity comes from practice. And excellence comes from what you choose to do, not your “natural” abilities. Counterintuitive. Countercultural. Even revolutionary. These powerful ideas have made Professor Michael Puett's course the third most popular at Harvard University in recent years, with enrollment surging every year since it was first offered in 2006. It's clear students are drawn by a bold promise Professor Puett makes on the first day of class: “These ideas will change your life.” Now he offers his course to the world. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Baumann's comments on "Can Knowledge Really be Non-fative?" In this paper Baumann's suggestions for how those who deny the factivty of knowledge might deal with the argument from inconsistency and explosion are addressed.

Human infection challenge studies (HCS) involve intentionally infecting research participants with pathogens (or other micro-organisms). There have been recent calls for more HCS to be conducted in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), where many relevant diseases are endemic. HCS in general, and HCS in LMICs in particular, raise numerous ethical issues. This paper summarises the findings of a project that explored ethical and regulatory issues related to LMIC HCS via (i) a review of relevant literature and (ii) 45 qualitative interviews (...) with scientists and ethicists. Among other areas of consensus, we found that there was widespread agreement that LMIC HCS can be ethically acceptable, provided that they have a sound scientific rationale, are accepted by local communities and meet usual research ethics requirements. Unresolved issues include those related to (i) acceptable approaches to trade-offs between the scientific aim to produce generalisable results and the protection of participants, (iii) the sharing of benefits with LMIC populations, (iii) the acceptable limits to risks and burdens for participants, (iv) the potential for third-party risk and whether the degree of acceptable third-party risk is different in endemic settings, (v) the conditions under which (if any) it would be appropriate to recruit children for disease-causing HCS, (v) appropriate levels of payment to participants and (vi) appropriate governance of (LMIC) HCS. This paper provides preliminary analyses of these ethical considerations in order to (i) inform scientists and policymakers involved in the planning, conduct and/or governance of LMIC HCS and (ii) highlight areas warranting future research. Insofar as this article focuses on HCS in (endemic) settings where diseases are present and/or widespread, much of the analysis provided is relevant to HCS (in HICs or LMICs) involving pandemic diseases including COVID19. (shrink)

In this article we examine the changing relationship to risk as revealed by the covid-19 pandemic and the ways this has, and may in future, alter sacramental practice, considering the radical effects this could have on traditional Christian practice. We consider the cultural trends that may lie behind this developing approach to risk, examining this in the context of an emergent transhuman identity that is technologically moderated and seeks to overcome risks of human mortality.

For graduate students to succeed as professionals, they must develop a set of general “survival skills”. These include writing research articles, making oral presentations, obtaining employment and funding, supervising, and teaching. Traditionally, graduate programs have offered little training in many of these skills. Our educational model provides individuals with formal instruction in each area, including their ethical dimensions. Infusion of research ethics throughout a professional skills curriculum helps to emphasize that responsible conduct is integral to succeeding as a researcher. It (...) also leads to the consideration of ethical dimensions of professional life not covered in traditional ethics courses. (shrink)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's drug advisory committees provide expert assessments of the safety and efficacy of new therapies considered for approval. A committee hears from a variety of speakers, from six groups, including voting members of the committee, FDA staff members, employees of the pharmaceutical company seeking approval of a therapy, patient and consumer representatives, expert speakers invited by the company, and public participants. The committees convene at the request of the FDA when the risks and harms of (...) novel products are not immediately clear, and their final decisions carry significant weight, as most therapies that receive advisory committee approval are subsequently approved by the FDA. In recent years, across a series of diverse publications, the financial conflicts of interest of each category of participants in the meetings have been investigated. Here, we summarize these findings and their ethical implications, focusing on the FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee, and we suggest ways to move toward more transparent and impartial advisory committee meetings. (shrink)

Using practical formalism a deontological ethical analysis of peer relations in organizations is developed. This analysis is composed of two types of duties derived from Kant's Categorical Imperative: negative duties to refrain from the use of peers and positive duties to provide help and assistance. The conditions under which these duties pertain are specified through the development of examples and conceptual distinctions. A number of implications are then discussed.

Jeffery et al. suggest that three-dimensional environments are not represented according to their volumetric properties, but in a quasi-planar fashion. Here we take into consideration the role of visual experience and the use of technology for spatial learning to better understand the nature of the preference of horizontal over vertical spatial representation.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 5, Page 8-9, May 2012.

A benchmark volume at the intersection of philosophy and religion.

Tomis Kapitan’s work on Peirce’s conception of abduction was instrumental for our coming to see how Peircean abduction both relates to and is importantly different from inference to the best explanation (IBE). However, he ultimately concluded that Peirce’s conception of abduction was a muddle. Despite the deeply problematic nature of Peirce’s theory of abduction in these respects, Kapitan’s work on Peircean abduction offers insight into the nature of abductive inquiry that is importantly relevant to the task of making sense of (...) explanatory inquiry in the sciences in general. The view developed here stems from his work and involves disambiguating three forms of inference involved in Peircean abduction in terms of Reichenbach’s and Laudan’s context models of inquiry. Importantly, this includes understanding that abduction involves the context of pursuit. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a convergence of fields studying the processing of DNA, such as transcription, replication, and repair. This convergence has been centered around the packaging of DNA in chromatin. Chromatin structure affects all aspects of DNA processing because it modulates access of proteins to DNA. Therefore, a central theme has become the mechanism(s) for accessing DNA in chromatin. It seems likely that mechanisms involved in one of these processes may also be used in others. For example, the discovery (...) of transcriptional coactivators with histone acetyltransferase activity and chromatin remodeling complexes has provided possible mechanisms required for efficient repair of DNA in chromatin. BioEssays 21:596–603, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Any human enterprise that consumes billions of dollars, especially when those dollars are those of citizen tax payers, should be subject to at least occasional scrutiny and stock-taking. This Special Issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine is an attempt to do just that: to ask whether the massive investment of money, equipment and human scientific talent that has been poured into studying the human genome under the assumption that this enormous scientific endeavor will advance human health has been worth (...) it thus far, and whether it is likely to bear fruit in the futureThe expression that best encapsulates the goal of using genomic information to alter trajectories of... (shrink)

We argue that the strengths of the Theory of Event Coding (TEC) can usefully be applied to a wider scope of cognitive tasks, and tested by more diverse methodologies. When allied with a theory of conceptual representation such as Barsalou's (1999a) perceptual symbol systems, and extended to data from eye-movement studies, the TEC has the potential to address the larger goals of an embodied view of cognition.

We use the Newell Test as a basis for evaluating ACT-R as an effective architecture for cognitive engineering. Of the 12 functional criteria discussed by Anderson & Lebiere (A&L), we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of ACT-R on the six that we postulate are the most relevant to cognitive engineering.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Intention and Wrongdoing: A Defense of the Principle of Double Effect by Joshua StuchlikMichael J. DegnanSTUCHLIK, Joshua. Intention and Wrongdoing: A Defense of the Principle of Double Effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xvi + 220 pp. Cloth, $99.99In this book Joshua Stuchlik vigorously defends the principle of double effect (PDE), which states, "There is a strict moral constraint against bringing about serious evil (harm) to an innocent (...) person intentionally, but it is permissible in a wider range of circumstances to act in a way that brings about serious evil incidentally, as a foreseen but non-intended side effect." After defining the terms of the principle and considering an intuitive case-based defense, he supports its truth based on a standard of solidarity. Since the PDE requires the distinction between intended consequences and nonintended side effects, he explains Elizabeth Anscombe's theory of intention, which supports the distinction's moral significance. He uses her theory to treat the closeness problem, the irrelevance of intention critique, and a challenge from Joshua Greene's empirical moral psychology that purports to undermine deontological constraints on causing harm.I present Stuchlik's grounding for the PDE followed by an uncontroversial example of its application. After this I consider two important objections to the PDE that Stuchlik critiques: the closeness problem and James Rachels's argument that intentions are irrelevant to judging the moral permissibility of actions. I conclude by examining Stuchlik's treatment of these challenges.Stuchlik interprets the PDE's very strict constraint against intentional killing or seriously harming the innocent as a near absolute prohibition, for he believes innocent persons are not suitable recipients of intentional harm. He grounds this constraint on the principle of solidarity. Being in solidarity with another is possessing concern for that other's sake. The ground for this concern is a shared human nature that enables members to think of themselves as making a "we." Human nature consists in the structured potentialities for knowing and freely choosing. Evidence of these rational potentialities is the human orientation toward the transcendent values of truth and goodness. Such embodied potentialities have inviolable worth.The scenarios of the precision bomber and the terror bomber illustrate the moral significance of the intended harm versus the nonintended but foreseen harm that Stuchlik adopts from Elizabeth Anscombe's action theory. Each bombers' goal is to help his country win a just war. The precision bomber pursues that goal by targeting a munitions factory. Though he foresees that many noncombatants will be killed or seriously [End Page 367] injured from the bomb, he does not necessarily intend these harms. By contrast, the terror bomber targets a civilian center necessarily intending harm for noncombatants. The PDE rules out his conduct.Anscombe's account of intention can lead to the problem of closeness in which the content of an intention is sufficiently fine-grained that an agent need not intend harm in almost any situation. Stuchlik illustrates the problem with Alexander Pruss's zookeeper scenario.An eccentric literalistic but always truthful magnate tells Sam he will donate to famine relief saving a hundred lives if and only if Sam follows his directions to the iota. Sam is to purchase a gun, sneak at night into a zoo owned by the magnate and kill the first mammal he sees. Sam sneaks into the zoo, sees a mammal in the distance, and forms the intention to shoot it. Then he notices that the mammal is human but shoots nonetheless on utilitarian grounds.In this case applying the PDE shows that Sam is simply intending that a mammal be killed. The fact that the mammal is a human is irrelevant, according to Anscombe's action theory.Stuchlik's response clarifies the scope of intention in the PDE. As stated above, the intention's content includes seriously harming an innocent human. However, if the intention ranges only over an intention to bring about an effect, E, and it turns out that E is a serious harm for an innocent human being, then applying the principle shows that Sam's action is wrong. The intended effect of killing the mammal is, as a matter of fact, an... (shrink)

This article examines Lamb, Gable & de Ruyter's critique of consent as the standard by which one can determine if a sexual encounter is ethical in their ‘Mutuality in sexual relationships: a standard of ethical sex?’. Their examination of this issue is to be welcomed for a number of reasons, including growing criticism of ‘consent’ as the gold standard in medical and social science research ethics. The focus of this article is specifically on school sex education (principally, for 11–16-year-olds). Contrary (...) to Lamb et al., I argue that it is difficult to maintain that ‘The standard of mutuality should be taught in all schools and the government should indeed demand or support this, even with checks to see if children have learned this standard, at least in attitudes about sexual behavior’ for three reasons. First, while there are good arguments in favour of school children being introduced to the ideal of mutuality, it seems too high a bar to require children to ‘have learned’—a phrase that can be taken to mean to ‘have come to accept’ rather than merely to ‘understand’—this; consent is a more appropriate requirement and is itself a sufficiently rich term that it merits analysis by students, aided by their teachers. Second, my judgement as a sex educator is that sex education is more effective when students are given the opportunity to explore what is good and what is right, rather than simply being told. Third, if we have to adopt a single principle, there is much to be said for ‘respect for others’ to trump both ‘consent’ and ‘mutuality’. (shrink)

This paper brings contemporary debate in analytic philosophy of religion regarding the notion of worship into conversation with Jewish sources and attempts to identify the most promising philosophical grounds for a Jewish account of the putative obligatoriness of worship. Some philosophers have recently debated the notion of worship, focusing in particular on the claim that human beings have an obligation to worship God and on whether and how such an obligation might be adequately grounded. I first canvass the major bases (...) for worshipping God that have featured in this debate. I then turn to some relevant liturgical and philosophical sources of Jewish tradition, identifying grounds for the obligatoriness of (exclusively) worshipping God that have been advanced in those sources. I next consider which grounds of the putative obligatoriness of worship are the most promising for a Jewish account in terms of both philosophical cogency and rootedness in Jewish tradition. I argue that a version of a divine command grounding of prayer in a Soloveitchikian mode is both well-rooted in Judaism and also plausibly surmounts philosophical objections to divine command accounts. In the final section, I briefly raise the issue of whether the concept of worship is truly well-suited to a Jewish context, suggesting that the rich Hebrew notions of _avodah_ and_ tefillah_ are perhaps more appropriate in articulating a fully adequate Jewish understanding of the pertinent issues. In particular, I argue that these notions fit well with the Soloveitchikian divine command grounding of the obligation to worship God. (shrink)

Articulating a creolizing theory of freedom and liberation, this book emphasizes a dynamic account of existence by appealing to a sonic metaphor of resonance and dissonance. It draws together a diverse set of figures and traditions including G. W. F. Hegel, Steve Biko, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sylvia Wynter, and Lewis Gordon.

Chalmers, Manley, and Wasserman's "Metametaphysics" anthology is reviewed.