This book represents a ‘position statement’ from the intellectually vibrant and challenging debate that emanated from the inaugural conference project launch entitled 'The Idea of Education' held at Mansfield College, Oxford in July 2002. The book conveys a wide spectrum of views about 'the idea of education' in recognition of the fact that 'the idea' is not as straightforward as it may appear on the surface. It seems the universities are not alone in this apparent uncertainty of definition. Further Education (...) seems equally nonplussed as regard its purpose or raison d'être. Furthermore, even for those within the sector, it appears to be a point of much contention as to where Further Education ends and Higher Education begins. The book is divided into three main sections: The Current Structures of Education, Issues within Contemporary Education and The Ambitions of Education. The chapters wrestle, sometimes at variance with each other, with the paradoxes and concerns felt by each writer grappling with the idea of education. (shrink)

Using student self-reported cheating admissions and answers from a hypothetical cheating scenario, this paper analyzes the effects of individual and situational factors on potential cheating behavior. Results confirm several conclusions about student factors that are related to cheating. The probability of cheating is associated with younger students, lower GPAs, alcohol consumption, fraternity/sorority membership, and having cheated in high school. Student perceptions of the certainty and severity of punishment appear to have a negative and significant impact on the probability of cheating (...) on in-class assignments. Students who report a belief that cheating is never acceptable appear to be significantly less likely to cheat in any circumstance. This study illustrates the context-dependent nature of academic dishonesty, and the associated difficulty in understanding the relationships between measurable factors and cheating behavior. (shrink)

Moral distress (MD) is well-documented within the nursing literature and occurs when constraints prevent a correct course of action from being implemented. The measured frequency of MD has increased among nurses over recent years, especially since the COVID-19 Pandemic. MD is less understood among nurse leaders than other populations of nurses. A qualitative systematic review was conducted with the aim to synthesize the experiences of MD among nurse leaders. This review involved a search of three databases (Medline, CINAHL, and APA (...) PsychINFO) which resulted in the retrieval of 303 articles. PRISMA review criteria guided authors during the article review and selection process. Following the review, six articles were identified meeting review criteria and quality was assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) Checklist for qualitative studies. No ethical review was required for this systematic review. The six studies included in this review originated from the United States, Brazil, Turkey, and Iran. Leadership roles ranged from unit-based leadership to executive leadership. Assigned quality scores based upon CASP criteria ranged from 6 to 9 (moderate to high quality). Three analytical themes emerged from the synthesis: (1) moral distress is consuming; (2) constrained by the system; and (3) adapt to overcome. The unique contributors of MD among nurse leaders include the leadership role itself and challenges navigating moral situations as they arise. The nurse leader perspective should be considered in the development of future MD interventions. (shrink)

There is disagreement in the literature about the exact nature of the phenomenon of empathy. There are emotional, cognitive, and conditioning views, applying in varying degrees across species. An adequate description of the ultimate and proximate mechanism can integrate these views. Proximately, the perception of an object's state activates the subject's corresponding representations, which in turn activate somatic and autonomic responses. This mechanism supports basic behaviors that are crucial for the reproductive success of animals living in groups. The Perception-Action Model, (...) together with an understanding of how representations change with experience, can explain the major empirical effects in the literature. It can also predict a variety of empathy disorders. The interaction between the PAM and prefrontal functioning can also explain different levels of empathy across species and age groups. This view can advance our evolutionary understanding of empathy beyond inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism and can explain different levels of empathy across individuals, species, stages of development, and situations. Key Words: altruism; cognitive empathy ; comparative; emotion; emotional contagion; empathy ; evolution; human; perception-action; perspective taking. (shrink)

Background Unit-based critical care nurse leaders (UBCCNL) play a role in exemplifying ethical leadership, addressing moral distress, and mitigating contributing factors to moral distress on their units. Despite several studies examining the experience of moral distress by bedside nurses, knowledge is limited regarding the UBCCNL’s experience. Research aim The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of Alabama UBCCNLs regarding how they experience, cope with, and address moral distress. Research design A qualitative descriptive (...) design and inductive thematic analysis guided the investigation. A screening and demographics questionnaire and a semi-structured interview protocol were the tools of data collection. Participant and research context Data were collected from 10 UBCCNLs from seven hospitals across the state of Alabama from February to July 2023. Ethical considerations This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Informed consent was obtained from participants prior to data collection. Findings UBCCNLs experience moral distress frequently due to a variety of systemic and organizational barriers. Feelings of powerlessness tended to precipitate moral distress among UBCCNLs. Despite moral distress resulting in increased advocacy and empathy, UBCCNLs may experience a variety of negative responses resulting from moral distress. UBCCNLs may utilize internal and external mechanisms to cope with and address moral distress. Conclusions The UBCCNL’s experience of moral distress is not dissimilar from bedside staff; albeit, moral distress does occur as a result of the responsibilities of leadership and the associated systemic barriers that UBCCNLs are privier to. When organizations allocate resources for addressing moral distress, they should be convenient to leaders and staff. The UBCCNL perspective should be considered in the development of future moral distress measurement tools and interventions. Future research exploring the relationship between empathy and moral distress among nurse leaders is needed. (shrink)

A surfeit of research confirms that people activate personal, affective, and conceptual representations when perceiving the states of others. However, researchers continue to debate the role of self–other overlap in empathy due to a failure to dissociate neural overlap, subjective resonance, and personal distress. A perception–action view posits that neural-level overlap is necessary during early processing for all social understanding, but need not be conscious or aversive. This neural overlap can subsequently produce a variety of states depending on the context (...) and degree of common experience and emotionality. We outline a framework for understanding the interrelationship between neural and subjective overlap, and among empathic states, through a dynamic-systems view of how information is processed in the brain and body. (shrink)

Salient stimuli presented at unattended locations are not always perceived, a phenomenon termed inattentional blindness. We hypothesized that inattentional blindness may be mediated by attentional inhibition. It has been shown that attentional inhibition effects are maximal near an attended location. If our hypothesis is correct, inattentional blindness effects should similarly be maximal near an attended location. During central fixation, participants viewed rapidly presented colored digits at a peripheral location. An unexpected black circle was concurrently presented. Participants were instructed to maintain (...) central fixation and name each color/digit, requiring focused attention to that location. For each participant, the critical stimulus was presented either near to or far from the attended location . In support of our hypothesis, inattentional blindness effects were maximal near the attended location, but only at intermediate task accuracy. (shrink)

Perception–action approaches are sometimes criticized because empathy takes cognitive forms and people do not overtly imitate or feel all observed states. These complaints reflect a misunderstanding of the framework, which we tried to clarify through a review that bridged social and neuroscientific views. Far from “simple fixes,” these misunderstandings appear to reflect deeply rooted differences in the way that each discipline conceptualizes science and the mind. We address the important points made by the commentators and reiterate the need to incorporate (...) rich, phenomenological descriptions into academic works so that we may prevent such conceptual cross-talk in the future. The open exchange of ideas across fields is often difficult, but essential to an integrated, scientific view of empathy. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how researchers from both the sciences and the humanities can learn from Charles Darwin’s mixed methodology. We identify two basic challenges that face emotion research in the sciences, namely a mismatch between experiment design and the complexity of life that we aim to explain, and problematic efforts to bridge the gap, including invalid inferences from constrained study designs, and equivocal use of terms like “sympathy” and “empathy” that poorly reflect such methodological constraints. We argue that Darwin’s mixed (...) methodology is a model for addressing these challenges even in laboratory work on emotion, because it shows how close observation of emotional phenomena makes sense only within broader historical contexts. The article concludes with 5 practical research recommendations. (shrink)

Only a broad theory that looks across levels of analysis can encompass the many perspectives on the phenomenon of empathy. We address the major points of our commentators by emphasizing that the basic perception-action process, while automatic, is subject to control and modulation, and is greatly affected by experience and context because of the role of representations. The model can explain why empathy seems phenomenologically more effortful than reflexive, and why there are different levels of empathy across individuals, ages, and (...) species. (shrink)

The shared circuits model (SCM) relies on well-regarded theories of perception-action, mirror neurons, and forward models, but the functional/informational level of the model limits its ability to explain complex behavior such as true imitation. Data from our lab and others confirm the more general details of the model, accepted by most, but specify the neural mechanisms involved in perception-action processes.

Chater & Loewenstein argue for a shift in focus from individual- to structural-level approaches to societal ills. This is valid and important but overlooks the barriers inherent in the current US partisan context. Psychology can be applied to help people of mixed allyship join together, to effectively and quickly force institutions and corporations to accept structural change.

Power consists in the capacity of A to command B, even against B's wishes, whether directly or indirectly. Questions to do with who possesses it and in what degree are obscured by inflationary shifts of definition (as where power encompasses action as such, or right action, or co?operation). These misjudged moves are generally marked by the assumption that democracy displaces power. But if democracy ultimately persists as a voting procedure, its object is to create power?holders. Democracy may endorse three electoral (...) principles: (a) majority rule, or (b) enhanced majority rule, or (c) unanimity. Its commonest electoral device is (a), but its strongest moral defence for (a) implicitly is (c), which legitimates forms of (d) veto and forms of minority rule. If (d) is fair, this need not follow from (a). Nor is (a) right in virtue of superior power. Democracy is commonly a combination of (a) plus (e) defence of individual and corporate rights. But this combination, while apt and convenient, is not incontestably coherent. Despite growing support for deliberation over election, if democracy must be impelled by (a), thus far does it sustain, not topple, power. If power persists more stably under democracies than elsewhere, sustained caution in regard to its supposed ?circularization? is fully warranted. (shrink)

Accelerating advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have increased concerns about serious risks, including potentially catastrophic risks to humanity. Prevailing trends of AI R&D are leading to increasing humanization of AI, to the emergence of concerning behaviors, and toward possible recursive self-improvement. There has been increasing speculation that these factors increase the risk of an AI takeover of human affairs, and possibly even human extinction. The most extreme of such speculations result at least partly from anthropomorphism, but since AIs are being (...) humanized, it is challenging to disentangle valid from invalid anthropomorphic concerns. This publication identifies eight fundamentally unnatural attributes of digital AI, each of which should differentiate AI behaviors from those of biological organisms, including humans. All have the potential to accelerate AI evolution, which might increase takeover concerns; but surprisingly, most also have the potential to defuse the hypothetical conflicts that dominate takeover speculations. Certain attributes should give future AI long-term foresight and realism that are essentially impossible for humans. I conclude that claims of highly probable hostile takeover and human extinction suffer from excessive anthropomorphism and a lack of skepticism and scientific rigor. Given the evidence presented here, I propose a more plausible but still speculative future scenario: extensively humanized AIs will become vastly more capable than humans of making decisions that benefit humans, and rational people will want AI to assume progressively greater influence over human affairs. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Martin Hollis (d.1998) was arguably the most incisive, eloquent and witty philosopher of the social sciences of his time. His work is appreciated and contested here by some of the most eminent of contemporary social theorists. Hollis's philosophy of social action, routinely distinguished between understanding (rational) and explanation (causal). He argued that the aptest account of human interaction was to be made in terms of the first. Thus he focused upon the human reasons, for, rather than upon the natural causes (...) of, action. This volume, for the first time, brings together important essays on the work of Hollis, from many different perspectives. These include politics, sociology and economics in general; international relations, rational choice theory, constitutionalism and the rule of law as well as current concerns with relativism, Rousseauist contractarianism, "dirty hands" and "buck-passing". (shrink)

This article discusses Ronald Preston's understanding of William Temple and the relationships between the two thinkers. It shows how both develop a theology of Christian realism which places great emphasis on the autonomy of the social sciences and the importance of economic expertise. Questions are raised about the appropriateness of this method, as well as their understanding of the state as an order of creation: these can easily lead to the reduction of the sphere of political morality and its (...) substitution with a form of technical rationality. After a brief discussion of the cult of the expert and the manager in contemporary British politics, and the limitation of political action through the rhetoric of ‘there is no alternative', the article concludes by calling for a remoralisation of political life against an economic reductionism which threatens to remove ethics from politics altogether. (shrink)

This essay treats Private Management and Public Policy not only as one of the key building blocks of theory in the business and society field, but as a work of theoretical social science in the structural-functional tradition. As a work in the "s-f" tradition, it shares the weaknesses inherent in that mode of theorizing and introduces some of its own in the attempt to translate structural-functionalism into terms relevant for management. These problems are discussed in the context of detailed analysis (...) of the work's theoretical structure. (shrink)

When leading spectroscopists in Europe and America were engaged, during 1897, in exploring the recently-discovered Zeeman Effect, they were overtaken by a relatively obscure phsicist working in Dublin. Thomas Preston had previously been known only for his excellent textbooks. His achievement in discovering the Anomalous Zeeman Effect was immediately recognized, but his untimely death has deprived posterity until now of a full account of his life and qualities.

This special volume of Studies in Christian Ethics constitutes the most significant continuation to date of Christian social ethics in the tradition of Ronald Preston. It brings together leading scholars and new voices in the field from around the world, covering a broad range of contemporary issues, including globalisation, poverty, feminism, civil society, economics and religious pluralism.

The work of Lee Preston and James Post helped to lay the foundation for one career in the field of business and public policy. They provided a theoretical framework for a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship of the corporation and society and those who are charged with its management.

Analytic philosophy (AP), some proclaim, is dead or in crisis. It should be so lucky. Its status may be, in fact, much more ephemeral. In this readable and accessible monograph, Preston makes out an interesting and engaging case for the claim that AP has never really existed at all. At first blush this news is a bit hard to swallow. After all there seem to be many, many existing practitioners in our discipline that regard themselves as analytic philosophers and (...) these adherents clearly exert a powerful influence on professional philosophy in Anglophone countries (and this influence is felt elsewhere too, even if only negatively). So, it certainly looks as if there is such a thing as AP, whatever its state of health. (shrink)

Klaus Alpers has recently recovered from the obscurity of Byzantine lexica the fragments of what appears to be a novel dating from c. A.D. 100, and notable to us, as it was for the Byzantine excerptor, for the elegant verbal borrowings from ancient comedy, always a favourite source of good Attic Greek for the atticists of imperial times. One of these glosses gives occasion to look again at fishing metaphors for erotic business, a subject discussed often enough by scholars, but (...) still perhaps capable of revealing new nuances. These hunting and fishing metaphors are used as one would expect in many non-amatory contexts, but in both love poetry and its allied genres they occur throughout antiquity in such quantity that the metaphorical complexity reaches into very allusive language. Long ago Preston had already pointed out that ‘Figures from hunting, fowling and fishing as parallel to the arts of the meretrix, are very frequent, and are developed at unusual length.’ There was undoubtedly a realistic side to all of this metaphorical hunting. ‘The lover is a fish to be baked, as long he has juice in him’, says the bawd at Plautus, Asinaria 177, and one needs little imagination to realize what plays can be made on such a theme, and indeed were made at all levels throughout antiquity. (shrink)

According to a widespread view in metaphysics and philosophy of science, all explanations involve relations of ontic dependence between the items appearing in the explanandum and the items appearing in the explanans. I argue that a family of mathematical cases, which I call “viewing-as explanations”, are incompatible with the Dependence Thesis. These cases, I claim, feature genuine explanations that aren’t supported by ontic dependence relations. Hence the thesis isn’t true in general. The first part of the paper defends this claim (...) and discusses its significance. The second part of the paper considers whether viewing-as explanations occur in the empirical sciences, focusing on the case of so-called fictional models. It’s sometimes suggested that fictional models can be explanatory even though they fail to represent actual worldly dependence relations. Whether or not such models explain, I suggest, depends on whether we think scientific explanations necessarily give information relevant to intervention and control. Finally, I argue that counterfactual approaches to explanation also have trouble accommodating viewing-as cases. (shrink)