This volume presents a collection of refereed papers reflecting the state of the art in the area of over-constrained systems. Besides 11 revised full papers, selected from the 24 submissions to the OCS workshop held in conjunction with the First International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP '95, held in Marseilles in September 1995, the book includes three comprehensive background papers of central importance for the workshop papers and the whole field. Also included is an introduction by (...) one of the volume editors together with a bibliography listing 243 entries. All in all this is a very useful reference book relevant for all researchers and practitioners interested in hierarchical, partial, and over-constrained systems. (shrink)

In order to maximize human performance, defence forces continue to explore, develop, and apply human performance enhancement (HPE) methods, ranging from pharmaceuticals to (bio)technological enhancement. This raises ethical, legal, and societal concerns and requires organizing a careful reflection and deliberation process, with relevant stakeholders. We discuss a range of ethical, legal, and societal aspects (ELSA), which people involved in the development and deployment of HPE can use for such reflection and deliberation. A realistic military scenario with proposed HPE application can (...) serve as a starting point for such an iterative and participatory process. Stakeholders can discuss this application, modify its features, and design appropriate processes around it – for instance, procedures for informed consent. We propose that organizing aspects into these three categories – ethical, legal, and societal – can help involve appropriate interlocutors at different moments: legal aspects with people in strategy or management roles, from the start of a project; ethical aspects with people in operations and medical roles, during development; and societal aspects with people in communication and personnel roles, during deployment. Notably, we developed and discussed this framework and the three aspects in close collaboration with personnel from the military. (shrink)

While the story of Stanislav Petrov – the Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who likely saved the world from nuclear holocaust in 1983 – is often trotted out to advocate for the view that human beings ought to be kept “in the loop” of automated weapons’ responses, I argue that the episode in fact belies this reading. By attending more closely to the features of this event – to Petrov’s professional background, to his familiarity with the warning system, and to his decisions (...) to defy his protocol – it becomes clear that Petrov was not seamlessly working “in his loop,” but reassessing it entirely. I claim that this exhibits a paradox intrinsic to all automated loops: namely, that their optimum function in fact rests on unforeseen human interventions that cannot be reliably codified ex ante, that is, that good judgment cannot simply be “programmed into” their protocols. This dependence, moreover, reveals automation’s ineluctable need for virtue ethics – not in the usual sense (whereby ethics deliberates about, say, possible damages and loss of life), but in the sense that ethical judgment, rightly understood, entails the reassessment of all of the conditions surrounding a decision, including whether a protocol should be followed at all. (shrink)

Practical Reason and Norms focuses on three problems: In what way are rules normative, and how do they differ from ordinary reasons? What makes normative systems systematic? What distinguishes legal systems, and in what consists their normativity? All three questions are answered by taking reasons as the basic normative concept, and showing the distinctive role reasons have in every case, thus paving the way to a unified account of normativity. Rules are a structure of reasons to perform the required act (...) and an exclusionary reason not to follow some competing reasons. Exclusionary reasons are explained, and used to unlock the secrets of orders, promises, and decisions as well as rules. Games are used to exemplify normative systems. Inevitably, the analysis extends to some aspects of normative discourse, which is truth-apt, but with a diminished assertoric force. (shrink)

The article presents the results of a systematic review conducted according to the integrative review method, which investigates both the empirical and theoretical-descriptive literature to combine academic reflection with professional practices implemented in educational contexts. The review question aims at identifying effective educational practices to promote civic engagement in the 6-13 age group, regarding school contexts. We conducted the search of the records through disciplinary and generalist databases and with the use of digital libraries. The analysis of the (...) included materials made it possible to identify some recursive elements that characterize the educational activities aimed at promoting civic engagement in this age group. In this contribution, these elements will be analysed, highlighting how they can contribute to the design of an educational research path having as its focus the promotion of civic engagement and the sense of community. (shrink)

This article describes a project involving 13 community focus groups on the topic of anti-racism and belonging where the researchers concluded each group with a robust discussion about how the group would prefer to receive the findings from the project. Analysis of this data, existing literature, and the practical experiences of the researchers revealed that while there are multiple “bridges” researchers can take to connect their research with community-level users, and although it is desirable to offer tailored approaches for specific (...) audiences, there are significant barriers and challenges for truly effective engagement. By describing the various factors that determined which bridges were taken, we hope to help other community-based researchers imagine new ways of mobilizing knowledge, consider promising practices to guide the connection of knowledge to the community and shine a light on the very real constraints of time, budget, personnel, and university system considerations that impact knowledge mobilization decisions. (shrink)

During eighteenth century England the Excise Department was at the vanguard of negotiating the criteria and parameters of what I call "practical objectivity", namely, putting objectivity into administrative practice. This frequently required both the space of production and the actual product to be reconfigured to meet the criteria of the excise's form of measurement. As this essay shows this was a contested, mutable and ambiguous process. Within this context ultimate agreement over objectivity was administratively rather than philosophically driven.

In the history of philosophy, philosophers have defined philosophy based on their own perspectives. This situation shows that it is a difficult and meaningless endeavor to put forward an understanding of philosophy that has clear boundaries and is accepted by everyone. However, despite these differences in definitions, there are some common points. Perhaps the most important of these common points is that philosophy is a stance, a positioning activity in the face of truth. In this positioning, William James tried to (...) find the moderate path between the currents of rationalism and empiricism and took a stance based on concrete differences in life. Like the empiricists, he tried to keep people's relations with facts alive, but at the same time, he did not exclude religion by adopting a rationalist attitude. However, James argued that abstract concepts cannot have meaning unless they find their counterpart in life. According to James, a life based only on abstract principles would not be qualified. In this study, I will try reconciling William James’ attitude towards abstract principles with practical life. (shrink)

Four couple therapy first consultations involving clients with diagnosed narcissistic problems were examined. A sociologically enriched and broadened concept of narcissistic disorder was worked out based on Goffman’s micro-sociology of the self. Conversation analytic methods were used to study in detail episodes in which clients resist to answer a therapist’s question, block or dominate the development of the conversation’s topic, or conspicuously display their interactional independence. These activities are interpreted as a pattern of controlling practices that were prompted by (...) threats that the first couple therapy consultation imposes upon the clients’ self-image. The results were discussed in the light of contemporary psychiatric discussions of narcissism; the authors suggest that beyond its conceptualization as a personality disorder, narcissism should be understood as a pattern of interactional practices. (shrink)

Our team conducted a study with the primary objective of co-constructing, with 12 elementary school teachers, teaching and classroom management practices that support the implementation of reflective oral work among students. The relevance of aligning didactics and classroom management has already been highlighted by various research studies as a way to optimize teaching, can a similar parallel be drawn for evaluation? The results obtained show that in the context of reflective oral work, the teachers surveyed make little use of (...) diverse evaluation methods. When evaluation is conducted, it seems to be hindered by the lack of structured tools used. (shrink)

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am (...) I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live. (shrink)

This book provides an exciting and diverse philosophical exploration of the role of practice and practices in human activity. It contains original essays and critiques of this philosophical and sociological attempt to move beyond current problematic ways of thinking in the humanities and social sciences. It will be useful across many disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, science, cultural theory, history and anthropology.

Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan. Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe Jr. Hawai'i University Press, Honolulu 1998. xii, 303 pp. $45 ISBN 0-8248-2065-7; $22.95 ISBN 0-8248-209-8.

_The Practice of Psychotherapy_ brings together Jung's essays on general questions of analytic therapy and dream analysis. It also contains his profoundly interesting parallel between the transference phenomena and alchemical processes. The transference is illustrated and interpreted by means of a set of symbolic pictures, and the bond between psychotherapist and patient is shown to be a function of the kinship libido. Far from being pathological in its effects, kinship libido has an essential role to play in the work of (...) individuation and in establishing an organic society based on the psychic connection of its members with one another and with their own roots. (shrink)

The practice of corporate social responsibility has often been described as a balance of profitability and social or societal responsibility by scholars as well as practitioners. It is assumed that regulations and guidelines of CSR practices link competitiveness and responsibility together. While recognising that formal CSR statements represent a goal-oriented managerial approach to CSR, we argue based on the description of a qualitative case study that the relationship between profitability and social or societal responsibility is not as clear and (...) simple as it is often described. Instead, CSR should be considered as a continuously negotiated process between companies and stakeholders. Hence, the creation of a constructive link between profitability and social or societal responsibility is dependent on the amount of effort that has been put into exploring the concerns of the stakeholders, vis-a-vis the company, while simultaneously accepting changes when they are necessary. (shrink)

This paper argues that attempts to apply Alasdair MacIntyre’s positive moral theory to business ethics are problematic, due to the cognitive closure of MacIntyre’s concept of a practice. I begin by outlining the notion of a practice, before turning to Moore’s attempt to provide a MacIntyrean account of corporate governance. I argue that Moore’s attempt is mismatched with MacIntyre’s account of moral education. Because the notion of practices resists general application I go on to argue that a negative application, (...) which focuses on regulation, is more plausible. Large-scale regulation, usually thought antithetical to MacIntyre’s advocacy of small-scale politics, has the potential to facilitate practice-based work and reveals that MacIntyre’s own work can be used against his pessimism about the modern order. Furthermore, the conception of regulation I defend can show us how management is more amenable to ethical understanding than MacIntyre’s work is often taken to imply. (shrink)

The article considers several working anarchies in the networked environment, and whether they offer a model for improving on the persistent imperfections of markets and states. I explore whether these efforts of peer mutualism in fact offer a sufficient range of capabilities to present a meaningful degree of freedom to those who rely on the capabilities it affords, and whether these practices in fact remain sufficiently nonhierarchical to offer a meaningful space of noncoercive interactions. The real utopias I observe (...) here are perfect on neither dimension. Internally, hierarchy and power reappear, to some extent and in some projects, although they are quite different than the hierarchy of government or corporate organization. Externally, there are some spectacular successes, some failures to thrive, and many ambiguous successes. In all, present experience supports neither triumphalism nor defeatism in the utopian project. Peer models do work, and they do provide a degree of freedom in the capabilities they provide. But there is no inexorable path to greater freedom through voluntary open collaboration. There is a good deal of uncertainty and muddling through. The last part of the article suggests a theory of freedom that supports the significance of even these obviously imperfect peer systems with incomplete coverage of necessary human capabilities, and explains why expanding the domain of mutualism improves freedom and well-being under conditions of persistent market imperfection and an inevitably fallible state. Peer mutualism doesn’t have to be perfect; it merely needs to offer a new dimension or sufficient diversity in how it instantiates capabilities and transmits power to offer us, who inhabit the systems that these peer systems perturb, a degree of freedom. (shrink)

(2009). Practicing Critical Thinking in an Educational Psychology Classroom: Reflections from a Cultural-Historical Perspective. Educational Studies: Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 377-391.

In their theories of know how, proponents of Intellectualism routinely appeal to ‘practical modes of presentation’. But what are practical modes of presentation? And what makes them distinctively practical? In this essay, I develop a Fregean account of practical modes of presentation: I argue that there are such things as practical senses and I give a theory of what they are. One of the challenges facing the proponent of a distinctively Fregean construal of practical modes of presentation is to provide (...) an account of their nature on which they are plausible qua Fregean senses. I take up this challenge, arguing that we find examples of practical senses in the semantic values assigned to programs by operational semantics for programming languages. By looking at a species of practical senses, we will have taken one important step towards legitimizing the genus. In particular, I show that certain features of operational semantic values can be generalized towards a comprehensive theory of practical senses. The upshot is a full-fledged account of what practical senses are, which can be put to use in an explanatory theory of know how. (shrink)

When physicians take readings of health indices such as temperature or blood pressure, the practices that physicians and patients employ in discussing the readings both reflect and propose a set of expectations regarding the level of technical medical information the patients should acquire and understand. In this article we demonstrate how physicians’ reporting practices reflect and propose the roles of paternalism or independent expertise and how patients’ responding practices either ratify or contest the roles cast by the (...) physicians’ practices. In contrast to the usual assumption that roles are relatively stable for individuals over the course of encounters, we treat role enactments as matters that are negotiated turn by turn in interaction. Physicians’ practices for reporting test results implicate various sets of expectations about the knowledge, interest, and responsibility state of each participant; patients employ responding practices that ratify or contest the expectations implicated by the physicians’ prior report. In each subsequent turn within the information exchange sequence, a speaker indicates whether the level and kind of information being exchanged is appropriate/inappropriate and sufficient/insufficient for the participants. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper challenges a frequent objection to conceptualizing virtues as skills, which is that skills are merely capacities to act well, while virtues additionally require being properly motivated to act well. I discuss several cases that purport to show the supposed motivational difference by drawing our attention to the differing intuitions we have about virtues and skills. However, this putative difference between virtue and skill disappears when we switch our focus in the skill examples from the performance to the performer. (...) The ends of a practice can be used to judge not only the skilfulness of a performance, but also the motivational commitment of the performer. Being virtuous requires both acting well and being properly motivated to do so, which can be captured by viewing virtues as the moral subset of skills. In claiming this, though, I resist the idea that there is no element in virtue that is not found in other skills. Virtue requires being practically wise about how practices fit into a... (shrink)

Studies of scientific authorship have been developing for forty years. This phenomenon is becoming increasingly well documented. However, most of these studies deal with fields considered in only one national context. This article tries to understand the specific modalities of sociological authorship within two national contexts: the United States and France. The analysis yields an understanding of the logic intimately linking texts and contexts, throwing light not only on the way research and authorship practices are partly shaped by their (...) particular institutional and historical contexts but also on the interactions between cognitive content and patterns of publication. (shrink)

The central and paradigmatic cases of knowledge discussed in philosophy involve the possession of truth. Is there in addition a distinct type of practical knowledge, which does not aim at the truth? This question is often approached through asking whether states attributed by “know-how” locutions are distinct from states attributed by “know-that”. This paper argues that the question of practical knowledge can be raised not only about some cases of “know-how” attributions, but also about some cases of so-called “know-wh” attributions; (...) and that certain features of this practical knowledge-wh put pressure on the standard analysis of know-wh. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that if an agent acts intentionally, she must know what she is doing. Although the scholarly consensus for many years was to reject the thesis in light of presumed counterexamples by Donald Davidson, several scholars have recently argued that attention to aspectual distinctions and the practical nature of this knowledge shows that these counterexamples fail. In this paper I defend a new objection against the thesis, one modelled after Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. Since this argument relies on (...) general principles about the nature of knowledge rather than on intuitions about fringe cases, the recent responses that have been given to defuse the force of Davidson’s objection are silent against it. Moreover, the argument suggests that even weaker theses connecting practical entities with knowledge are also false. Recent defenders of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between knowledge and intentional action are motivated by the insight that this connection is non-accidental. I close with a positive proposal to account for the non-accidentality of this link without appeal to necessary connections by drawing an extended analogy between practical and perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter presents two contemporary pictures of practical reasoning. According to the Rule-Guidance Conception, roughly, practical reasoning is a rule-guided operation of acquiring (or retaining or giving up) intentions so as to meet synchronic requirements of rationality. According to the Reasons-Responsiveness Conception, practical reasoning is a process of responding to reasons we take ourselves to have, and its standards of correctness derive from what we objectively have reason to do, if things are as we suppose them to be. I argue (...) that a version of the latter has some significant advantages. This has some surprising consequences for how we should conceive of the structure of instrumental reasoning in particular. (shrink)

I demonstrate that the two major ethical traditions agree that there are given desires which provide extra-rational practical reasons. Empiricist theories ground ethics in such desires, but the extra-rationality of this foundation appears to lead to stultifying subjectivism. Rationalist theories justify the appeal to an independent Kantian Reason as necessary to gain control over such desires. But the status of these desires as providing motivating reasons guarantees that such independent Reason can never be more than one among competing sources of (...) practical rational motivation. ;I then argue that the generalization and extension of the epistemological argument against the given provides compelling evidence that there can be no such given desires. This argument demonstrates that episodes which can provide reasons cannot be extra-rational, indeed must be constituted through rational endorsement. This critical argument is applied to the work of Dennis Stampe and Thomas Hobbes , and extended from desires to preferences . ;In order to provide rational warrant, a desire must itself be rationally endorsed in a context of other endorsed episodes within which its own warrant is secured. There are no given desires, no extra-rational practical reasons in which the crude empiricist can ground practical reasoning. But there is also no need to postulate Reason independent of desire to gain rational control over such desires. I close by suggesting that this critical argument provides a framework for the construction of a middle ground between the two traditions which incorporates their central insights while avoiding their chronic failings. (shrink)

Practical Reality is a lucid original study of the relation between the reasons why we do things and the reasons why we should. Jonathan Dancy maintains that current philosophical orthodoxy bowdlerizes this relation, making it impossible to understand how anyone can act for a good reason. By giving a fresh account of values and reasons, he finds a place for normativity in philosophy of mind and action, and strengthens the connection between these areas and ethics.

According to Charles Taylor, practical reasoning helps us overcome cultural conflicts of val-ue when we are able to show that the passage from one value to another represents an epistemic gain. This paper argues that practical reasoning can be effective in pathological cases of cultural convergence but only if it is understood as a species of the creative social imagination.

Practical conflicts pervade human life. Agents have many different desires, goals, and commitments, all of which can come into conflict with each other. How can practical reasoning help to resolve these practical conflicts? In this collection of essays a distinguished roster of philosophers analyse the diverse forms of practical conflict. Their aim is to establish an understanding of the sources of these conflicts, to investigate the challenge they pose to an adequate conception of practical reasoning, and to assess the degree (...) to which that challenge can be met. These essays will serve as a major resource for students of philosophy but will also interest students and professionals in related fields of the social sciences such as psychology, political science, sociology and economics. (shrink)

This book focuses on six key practices for engaged learning: acknowledging and building on students' prior knowledge and experiences; facilitating relationships; offering feedback; framing connections to broader contexts; fostering reflection and metacognition; and promoting integration and transfer of knowledge and skills.

This paper presents the epistemic practices account, a theory about the nature of epistemic normativity. The account aims to explain how the pursuit of epistemic values such as truth and knowledge can give rise to epistemic norms. On this account, epistemic norms are the internal rules of epistemic social practices. The account explains four crucial features of epistemic normativity while dissolving some apparent tensions between them. The account also provides a unified theory of epistemic and zetetic normativity.

A handbook of best practices for television and broadcast journalists, encouraging practices that the public will see as being fair, thereby helping assure that television news gathering remains free.

The concept of practical knowledge is central to G.E.M. Anscombe's argument in Intention, yet its meaning is little understood. There are several reasons for this, including a lack of attention to Anscombe's ancient and medieval sources for the concept, and an emphasis on the more straightforward concept of knowledge "without observation" in the interpretation of Anscombe's position. This paper remedies the situation, first by appealing to the writings of Thomas Aquinas to develop an account of practical knowledge as a distinctive (...) form of thought that "aims at production" of things that lie within an agent's power; and then by showing how this Thomistic understanding of practical cognition seems to have been Anscombe's, too. Having done this, I question whether the thesis that agential knowledge is practical knowledge entails that an agent always has non-observational knowledge of what she is intentionally doing. I answer "Not": Anscombe's claims to the contrary rest on a misleading assimilation of human beings' finite agency to that of an infinite agent like God. (shrink)

The Practical Turn in Political Theory sounds like the monograph political theorists have been waiting for – a monograph that identifies ‘practices’ as a uniting theme that runs through several recently influential debates on non-ideal theory, practice dependence, realism and pragmatist theories of legitimacy and democracy, and then discusses the promise and limits of this uniting theme for the future of political theory. However, The Practical Turn is driven by selective portrayals, omissions and misrepresentation, and hence is not a (...) good source to turn to for understanding the debates it surveys or whether they manifest a ‘practical turn in political theory’ or not; rather, it serves as a warning of how struggles over power can influence and even structure seemingly the most purely intentioned of practices. (shrink)

_A groundbreaking study of the development of form in eighteenth-century aesthetics_ In this original work, Abigail Zitin proposes a new history of the development of form as a concept in and for aesthetics. Her account substitutes women and artisans for the proverbial man of taste, asserting them as central figures in the rise of aesthetics as a field of philosophical inquiry in eighteenth-century Europe. She shows how the idea of formal abstraction so central to conceptions of beauty in this period (...) emerges from the way practitioners think about craft and skill across the domestic, industrial, and so-called high arts. Zitin elegantly maps the complex connections among aesthetics, form, and formalism, drawing out the understated presence of practice in the writings of major eighteenth-century thinkers including Locke, Addison, Burke, and Kant. This new take on an old story ultimately challenges readers to reconsider form and why it matters. (shrink)