In this extraordinary introduction to the study of the philosophy of technology, Andrew Feenberg argues that techonological design is central to the social and political structure of modern societies. Environmentalism, information technology, and medical advances testify to technology's crucial importance. In his lucid and engaging style, Feenberg shows that technology is the medium of daily life. Every major technical changes reverberates at countless levels: economic, political, and cultural. If we continue to see the social and technical domains as being seperate, (...) then we are essentially denying an integral part of our existence, and our place in a democratic society. Questioning Tecchnology convinces us that it is vital that we learn more about technology the better to live with it and to manage it. (shrink)

I defend a proposition-directed, sui generis account of agnosticism, according to which being agnostic about some proposition, P, involves a sceptical or questioning mental stance towards both the truth and falsity of P. Call this the questioning-attitude account. The questioning-attitude account contrasts with the question-directed attitude account of Jane Friedman, which holds that the object of agnosticism is a question rather than a proposition. I argue that the questioning-attitude account not only avoids a major weakness of (...) Friedman’s question-directed attitude account, but it also displays the following three attractive features: (1) it offers an explanation of why ascriptions of agnosticism often take an interrogative compliment, (2) it offers a univocal account of the content of all three doxastic attitudes, and (3) it fleshes out the claim that agnosticism is sui generis by describing what makes agnosticism distinct from both belief and disbelief. (shrink)

Irigaray's insistence on sexual difference as the primary difference arises out of a phenomenological perception of nature. Drawing on Heidegger's insights into physis, she begins with his critique of the nature/culture binary. Both philosophers maintain that nature is not matter to be ordered by technical know-how; yet Irigaray reveals that although Heidegger distinguishes physis from techn in his work, his forgetting of the potentiality of matter, the maternal-feminine, and the two-fold essence of being as sexual difference means that his own (...) concept of physis can be understood as another techn. Focussing in particular upon Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle's privileging of morphé over hylé as a description of presencing into appearance, I show that for Irigaray the movements of presencing and absencing emerge out of a metaphysics that does not take into account the fluidity, the mixtures and interpenetrations of a nature that is limited by fecundity not by death. Our oblivion to nature is the greatest danger, and thus attending to our embodied and hence sexuate nature holds the promise of a new age, since it is rooted in the possibilities of the flesh revealed through the cultivated perception of sexual difference. (shrink)

What happens now is that we (by which I mean the West) eradicate state sponsored terrorism. And we can achieve that only by replacing all political systems that perpetrate or collaborate with terrorism, by systems that respect human rights both domestically and internationally.

Questioning is a familiar, everyday practice which we use, often unreflectively, in order to gather information, communicate with each other, and advance our inquiries. Yet, not all questions are equally effective and not all questioners are equally adept. Being a good questioner requires a degree of proficiency and judgment, both in determining what to ask and in deciding who, where, when, and how to ask. Good questioning is an intellectual skill. Given its ubiquity and significance, it is an (...) intellectual skill that, I believe, we should educate for. In this paper, I present a central line of argument in support of educating for good questioning, namely, that it plays an important role in the formation of an individual’s intellectual character and can thereby serve as a valuable pedagogical tool for intellectual character education. I argue that good questioning plays two important roles in the cultivation of intellectual character: good questioning stimulates intellectually virtuous inquiry and contributes to the development of several of the individual intellectual virtues. Insofar as the cultivation of intellectually virtuous character is a desirable educational objective, we should educate for good questioning. (shrink)

This paper argues that corporate Codes of Ethics lose their ability to further moral responsiveness because of the narrow instrumental purposes that inform their adoption and use. It draws on Jacques Derrida's reading of Emmanuel Levinas to argue that, despite the fact that all philosophical language entails a certain violence, corporate Codes of Ethics could potentially play a more meaningful role in furthering ethical questioning within corporations. The paper argues that Derrida's reading of Levinas' notion of 'the third' could (...) precipitate the emergence of a broader sense of ethical responsibility towards multiple others within corporations. Codes may also present the opportunity for corporations to engage in the reconsideration of their own purposes in the light of questions of justice towards multiple others. How these changes in the establishment and use of Codes may be accomplished is explored towards the end of the paper. (shrink)

A resilient issue in research ethics is whether and when a placebo-controlled trial is justified if it deprives research subjects of a recognized treatment. The clinicians' moral duty to provide the best available care seems to require the use of ‘active’ controlled trials that use an established treatment as a control whenever such a therapy is available. In another regard, ACTs are supposedly methodologically inferior to PCTs. Hence, the moral duty of the clinical researcher to use the best methods will (...) favor PCTs. In this target article, I analyze the three reasons for believing that ACTs are inferior to PCTs namely: 1) ACTs lack ‘assay sensitivity’; 2) ACTs do not measure absolute effect size; and 3) ACTs require more participants; and I contend that none are acceptable. Consequently the tension between clinical and research ethics dissolves: the moral duty of the clinician to avoid PCTs is unopposed by methodological considerations. (shrink)

The paper introduces a virtue-theoretic critique of recent “prosocial” revisions of shareholder primacy. The paper aims at widening the scope of virtue-based business ethics beyond its nearly exclusive focus on the character and virtue of managers, employees, and organizations. In contrast to MacIntyre-inspired research, the paper takes a “good intentions” approach that looks squarely at shareholders, regarding them as real people (not algorithms or institutions) occupying distinctive roles as principals of firms who are, ideally, virtuous moral agents. It is argued (...) that virtue ethics can play a part in questioning normative features of shareholder primacy and the objective function of the firm. Probing deeper than prudential and instrumental concerns, the paper poses normative questions about interpreting shareholder motivations: what _ought_ shareholders to prefer/want/desire?; _ought_ shareholders to desire profit maximization versus profit satisficing?; _ought_ shareholders to prefer other, prosocial goals, alongside of wealth?; should self-interested motivation in profit-seeking be considered virtuous? To lend focus, the paper taps Hart and Zingales’ recently revised “pro-social” version of shareholder primacy, as well as Munger and Russell’s analysis of “virtuous profit-seekers,” as normative frames of reference. Doing so enables a critical engagement with their respective accounts from the standpoint of virtue theory. Taking a “virtuous shareholders” perspective provides an aretaic standpoint, one that is appropriate, given that shareholders care about matters of justice and the common good. Shareholders are not simply concerned about making money. Hence it is the moral intentions and motivations of ideally virtuous shareholders which ought to modulate the profit-seeking activities of shareholders in accordance with maximizing their welfare. (shrink)

In a paper published in 2021, Thomas Metzinger proposed a global moratorium on development of synthetic phenomenology, with this beginning in 2021 and lasting until 2050, arguing that the development of conscious artifacts would bring about an explosion of human-like suffering on a global scale. The paper argues that Thomas Metzinger’s call for a global moratorium is unsound as it is currently formulated. Metzinger’s argument is based on a category error, a common mistake in AI discussions. For the sake of (...) clarity in AI discourse, and for reasons explained in the paper, such an error should be at least pointed out, if not corrected. This is the primary purpose of the paper. However, Metzinger’s proposal, can be taken as a generic warning against uncontrolled development of AI – the position we fully agree with. (shrink)

The article presents the transcendental reduction as a type of questioning, and by so doing formulates the problem of the structure and motivation of reduction. Transcendental questioning is presented as a permanent formulation and reformulation of questions, which, it is argued, make it possible to overcome the naïveté of the natural attitude. However, the phenomenologist does not overcome naïveté in the sense of excluding it; instead, he is conscious of it. It is argued that one should understand transcendental (...) questioning as a practical activity that makes the phenomenologist responsible for knowledge by leading toward the essence, which seems to be “unquestionable.”. (shrink)

Between what we call “us” and what we call “them”, a line must be drawn, which immediately becomes a contentious border, or a divide, that brings to the fore who “we” are, and that consigns to the background, or to the margin, those people who do not count as “us”. Wherever this border is traced — whether along the lines of existing nation-states, racial or linguistic communities, or political affiliations — the resulting potential for antagonism leads to both internal social (...) tensions within a society and, at the level of nations, to outright war—the ultimate example of the friend/enemy divide conceptualized by Carl Schmitt. Once this is recognized, the problem we encounter is the following: can we think of nothing else along the boundaries between “us” and “them”, but an antithesis, nothing else but an antagonism? Under what conditions, “from within what axiomatic” (Derrida), can political thinkers be assured, that the “us/them” relation is by necessity one of hostility? In this paper I will set up a dialogue between Bernhard Waldenfels and Jacques Derrida around the figure of the stranger [_étranger_] — a figure which “frequently operates as a limit-experience for humans trying to identify themselves over and against others” (Kearney) — in order to challenge the logic of this presupposition. My aim is to show how the encounter between these thinkers allows us to challenge _at the same time_ the antagonistic view of the “us/them” relation and the logic of binary opposition that informs it. (shrink)

In 15 insightful essays, Jacques Derrida and an international group of scholars of religion explore postmodern thinking about God and consider the nature of forgiveness in relation to the paradoxes of the gift. Among the themes addressed by contributors are the possibilities of imagining God as unthinkable, imagining God as non-patriarchal, imagining a return to Augustine, and imagining an age in which praise is far more important than narrative. Questioning God moves readers beyond the parameters of metaphysical reason and (...) modernist rationality as it attempts to think the questions of God and forgiveness in a postmodernist context. Contributors include John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, Mark Dooley, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Robert Gibbs, Jean Greisch, Kevin Hart, Richard Kearney, Cleo McNelly Kearns, John Milbank, Regina M. Schwartz, Michael J. Scanlon, and Graham Ward. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor. (shrink)

Background: Nurses are often faced with complex situations that made them to make ethical decisions; and to make such decisions, they need to possess the power of moral reasoning. Studies in Iran show that the majority of nursing students lack proper ethical development. Socratic teaching is a student-centered method which is strongly opposed to the lecturing method. Objectives: This study was conducted to evaluate the impacts of Socratic questioning on the moral reasoning of the nursing students. Research design: In (...) a quasi-experimental study, Crisham’s Nursing Dilemma Test was used to evaluate the results of three groups before, immediately after, and 2 months after intervention. The data were analyzed using the SPSS statistical software (v 15). Participants and research context: Through random allocation, 103 nursing students were divided into three groups. In experiment group 1 (37 students), intervention consisted of Socratic questioning-based sessions on ethics and how to deal with moral dilemmas; experiment group 2 (33 students) attended a 4-h workshop; and the control group (33 students) was not subject to any interventions. Signed informed consent forms: This research was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University. All the participants signed written informed consents. Findings: There were significant differences between experiment group 1 and experiment group 2’s pre-test and post-test scores on moral reasoning (p ≤ 0.001, p ≤ 0.001), nursing principled thinking (p ≤ 0.001, p ≤ 0.001), and practical considerations (p ≤ 0.001, p ≤ 0.031). Discussion: Both the teaching approaches improved the subjects’ moral reasoning; however, Socratic questioning proved more effective than lecturing. Compared to other similar studies in Iran and other countries, the students had inadequate moral reasoning competence. Conclusion: This study confirms the need for the development of an efficient course on ethics in the nursing curriculum. Also, it appears that Socratic questioning is an effective method to teach nursing ethics and develop nursing students’ competence of moral reasoning. (shrink)

Philosophy in Education: Questioning and Dialogue in Schools is intended for philosophers and philosophy students, precollege classroom teachers, administrators and educators, policymakers, and pre-college practitioners of all kinds. This text book offers a wealth of practical resources and lesson plans for use in precollege classrooms, as well as consideration of many of the broader educational, social, and political topics in the field.

Many attempts of contemporary philosophers to reduce ‘mind’ to ‘body’ notwithstanding, where the ‘body’ is understood in the Cartesian framework, the continental philosophers in general repeatedly remind us that body has a significance that goes beyond its materiality as a bio-chemical physical substance. In “questioning body,” we wish to take up the philosophical underpinnings of the significance of body as a framework or tool to understand ‘technology’. By doing so, we are able to see the link between technology and (...) body as more than a fortuitous relation. Relying on the writings of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Ihde, the paper attempts to show how a “sense of body,” particularly the notion of “agentive body” as distinguished from the “symbolic body,” hermeneutically evolves from the way in which it is entangled in the technological matrix. (shrink)

By analyzing session exchanges and questionnaires administered to family therapy clients, this article examines questioning as conversational practice grounded in institutional goals that are therapist-directed and therapist-conceived. In their manifestation in talk and text, therapeutic questions function to replace client accounts with the nosological accounts of institutional psychiatry. The analysis illuminates three ways in which questioning works in the session and then locates these in therapy's professional and institutional logic. A critical reflection on psychotherapy's questioning practices in (...) a social context concludes the article. (shrink)

We may usefully distinguish between one’s having fallible knowledge and having a fallibilist stance on some of one’s knowledge. A fallibilist stance could include a concessive knowledge-attribution. But it might also include a questioning knowledge-attribution. Attending to the idea of a QKA leads to a distinction between what we may call closed knowledge that p and open knowledge that p. All of this moves us beyond Elgin’s classic tale of the epistemic capacities of Holmes and of Watson, and towards (...) a way of resolving Kripke’s puzzle about dogmatism and knowing. (shrink)

This article introduces the special issue on questions, questioning, and institutional practices. We begin by considering how questioning as a discursive practice is a central vehicle for constructing social worlds and reflecting existing ones. Then we describe the different ways questions and question have been defined, typologized, and critiqued, in general and within seven institutions including policing, the courts, medicine, therapy, research interviews, education, and mediated political exchanges. The introduction concludes with a preview of the articles in the (...) special issue. (shrink)

Both questions as abstract objects and the speech acts, here called requests, by which we ask them play an enormous role in all argumentative practices. Nonetheless, there is hardly a proper systematic treatment of questions and requests in current argumentation theories. This paper is a first attempt at providing such a systematic treatment. This is achieved by following the ideal model of a critical discussion as elaborated over the years by the Amsterdam school of pragma-dialectics. After introducing the distinction between (...) questions and requests, the paper sets forth and illustrates the norms of questioning which implicitly underlie the four stages of a critical discussion in the standard order: confrontation, opening, argumentation, and conclusion. Among other things, it is shown that crucial insights of pragma-dialectics are illuminated by the questioning perspective, in particular the distinction between single and multiple differences of opinion, the duties of the antagonist and protagonist roles, the precise character of the argumentation stage, and the different ways in which a disagreement can be resolved. (shrink)

In accord with the motto of the Passionists—“We preach Christ crucified”—Breton located the essence of Christianity in a faith and love marked by open-ended questioning and dialogue and by an exodic movement of the spirit. Neoplatonism enabled him to raise his love of free inquiry to a high spiritual plane, and to bring into lucid focus the figure of Christ, ridding it of false absolutizations. Seeing the encounter with Buddhism as the next step in this purification of Christian vision, (...) he pored over Nagarjuna in his last days. The totality of Breton’s life and work enacts a lighter, humbler understanding of the Gospel, one fully responsive to modern and postmodern questions. (shrink)

Introduction Joseph Dunne, Attracta Ingram, Frank Litton This volume of essays has two main objectives: first, to pay tribute to Fergal O'Connor, ...

There are three major themes in the dialogue thought to be Plato’s Statesman: the nature of statesmanship, the difference between perfect and less than perfect regimes and the method of division. In this paper I focus on the first two themes. I argue, first, that the dialogue makes a plausible case for what it takes to be a wise statesman. In doing so, I play down the importance of the second theme: the difference between regimes. In fact, I consider this (...) discussion to be deeply flawed and even irrelevant to the argument of the first. My main purpose is to provide a critical analysis of the political theory articulated in the dialogue. My analysis is made plausible by abandoning the traditional view that the Statesman was written Plato in its entirety as a unified whole. In my view, a close reading of the text supports the hypothesis that it is, at best, semi-authentic; namely, that it is most likely a collage of fragments written at different times by Plato and other members of the Academy. (shrink)

The author argues that Quijano’s conceptualization of race within the theory of coloniality of power is limited and theoretically insufficient given its lack of elaboration regarding the role of anti-Blackness in Spanish colonization. This article contrasts the idea of coloniality of power with Cedric Robinson’s elaboration of racial capitalism to demonstrates how Robinson has a more complex and historically rich analysis of race that centers the expansion of racial capitalism with the invention of the Negro subject. The article closes with (...) an attempt to bridge the history of anti-Blackness and the idea of coloniality using Sylvia Wynter’s adaptation of the idea of coloniality, which is attentive to the Portuguese expeditions prior to Columbus and how coloniality disproportionally affected people of African descent in the Américas. (shrink)

The suspicion of this article is that we don't really understand why questions matter. It addresses this topic by examining the connection Hans-Georg Gadamer draws in Truth and Method between questioning and the possibility of experience. It outlines what Gadamer means by "experience " and shows why he is convinced that we cannot have experiences without asking questions.

This article provides a review of scholarly approaches to assessing the impact of certification standards for sustainability. While we observe that some theoretical advances have afforded a better understanding of the potential impacts of adopting such standards, we also find that progress has been constrained due to a strong emphasis on assessing impact via linear causal pathways. This linear focus on the net effects for single stakeholders, such as farmers and producers, local communities and ecosystems, falls short of adequately capturing (...) the broader impact of certifications across social and ecological dimensions. Inspired by theories on complex systems thinking, we present a framework based on a systems-based impact logic that better captures and assesses the impacts of certification standards within broader social-ecological systems. Our framework can be used as a heuristic to design impact-related studies and assess the impact of certification standards across disciplinary vantage points and empirical contexts. (shrink)

Considerable demand for academic research and publications is not a new subject of discussion in the academic field. In Indonesia, there is increasing challenge and pressure to conduct scientific publications, making it a very competitive field for academics, particularly for lecturers and postgraduate students. The present study examines Indonesian scholars’ perceptions of academic publishing as a demand from institutions and the government, as well as their understanding of academic misconduct. We conducted a survey with open-ended questions to 55 scholars. The (...) results suggest that Indonesian scholars are knowledgeable about academic publishing and believe that this obligation is inevitable and beneficial for them. To what extent academic misconduct in publications falls under their understanding, though, is still unclear. When presented with information on academic misconduct, in particular using unethical publication services, they show an ambiguous and inconsistent manner, as if the misconduct is understandable. Interestingly, they also reveal other ethically dubious behaviors that appear to be common among Indonesian scholars. The findings indicate that the issue of academic misconduct is still addressed ambiguously by using publication demands as a scapegoat to justify certain unethical publication practices. (shrink)

There are norms for asking questions. Inquirers should not ask questions to which they know the answer. The literature on the norms of asking has focused on such speaker-centered norms. But, as I argue, there are addressee-centered norms as well: inquirers should not ask addressees who fall short of a certain epistemic status. That epistemic status, I argue here, is knowledge.

This paper reassesses the domain of the business ethics curriculum and, drawing on recent shifts in the business environment, maps out some suggestions for extending the core ground of the discipline. It starts by assessing the key elements of the dominant English-language business ethics textbooks and identifying the domain as reflected by those publications as 'where the law ends' and 'beyond the legal minimum'. Based on this, the paper identifies potential gaps and new areas for the discipline by drawing on (...) four main aspects. First, it argues that the domain of business ethics requires extensions dependent on the particular geographic region where the subject is taught. A second factor for broadening the scope is the impact of recent scandals, which arguably direct the focus of ethical inquiry towards the nature of the business systems in which individuals and corporations operate. Third, the impact of globalization and its result on growing corporate involvement in regulatory processes is discussed. Fourth and finally, business ethics reaches beyond the traditional constituencies of 'economic stakeholders' as new actors from civil society enter the stage of ethical decision making in business. We conclude by suggesting that a reconsideration of the domain of business ethics, especially in Europe, is timely, but that to do so represents a major challenge to business ethics educators. (shrink)

_A provocative close reading revealing a radical, proto-phenomenological Socrates._.

ABSTRACTAccording to many governments and educationalists, education should aim to develop dispositions conducive to political participation and solidarity, because democratic citizenship presupposes participation and solidarity. But there are radically different views on the nature of good citizenship. We examine the implications of this dissensus for citizenship education. Education, we contend, should involve and develop autonomy and open-mindedness. We argue that this requires a more critical approach than is possible when political participation and solidarity are conceived of as goals of education.

Most literature about vaccine hesitancy has been focused on parental attitudes. Less attention has been devoted to both scientists and experts who raise criticism about immunization policies and intervene in the public debate. This consideration aims to balance the current emphasis in the literature on parents’ attitudes about vaccination, offering a complementary angle to reframe and widen the controversy. Focusing on scientists and experts, an unattended complex picture of multiple attitudes towards vaccines and vaccinations has been discovered through a qualitative (...) content analysis of texts related to the harsh public debate, held between March 2017 and November 2018, triggered by the legislative proposal of making ten vaccinations mandatory for children. Unlike oversemplications that misleading dichotomies reproduce, the analysis reveals nine different positions along the continuum of immunisation attitudes, ranging from radical acceptance of vaccinations to radical rejection, which constitute a fuzzy set. Consequently, a twofold reality emerges: on the surface, the conflict seems between pro-vaxxers versus hesitant, pro-choice and anti-vaxxers; beneath it is amid standardized versus a varieties of contextual and personalised approaches to health. (shrink)

Parent–teacher relations are often characterized as highly conflictual in the educational literature, with scant empirical evidence of how the disagreements occur in everyday talk. Close analysis of a teacher's account of an intense conflict with a student's mother over the National Honor Society grounds the abstract discourses of merit and difference in the worlds of parents, teachers and students. Narrating primarily through reported speech, in a ‘she said, I said’ fashion, the teacher recreates her conversations about the National Honor Society (...) and the graduation ceremony. Creating the social milieu through reported speech and the inner reality by telling what she left unspoken, she captures the derision between parents and teachers. Moreover, the adult struggles obscure the adolescents' initial concerns about elitism. Exposed to reform debates, the teacher reveals her consciousness about diversity and privilege. The mother's understanding reflects traditions of individualism and meritocracy without regard to barriers created by race, sex, class and disability. The encounter ends without opportunity for fuller articulation. Notwithstanding these tendencies, the individual parent–teacher conference remains the most widely employed format in US schools, emblematic of an extremely privatized notion of that relationship. The author frames the conflict in terms of school community and public education at large to identify possibilities for more generative communication. (shrink)

There are at least two assumptions which, except for very few occasions, have not been discussed by philosophers who have written on the metaphysics of technological objects. The first assumption is that to be a technology is an absolute matter and that all technological objects are equally technological. The second assumption is that the property of being technological is abstracted from existing things which happen to have this property in common. I appeal to the definition of technological objects as problem-solving (...) physical instruments to show that things can be technological to different degrees, and that the property of being technological is more fundamental than being a technology. (shrink)