The focus of this article is the analysis of generative mechanisms, a basic concept and phenomenon within the metatheoretical perspective of critical realism. It is emphasized that research questions and methods, as well as the knowledge it is possible to attain, depend on the basic view – ontologically and epistemologically – regarding the phenomenon under scrutiny. A generative mechanism is described as a trans empirical but real existing entity, explaining why observable events occur. Mechanisms are mostly possible to grasp only (...) indirectly by analytical work, based however on empirical observations. In order to achieve such an explanatory analysis, five methodological steps are suggested and discussed, among them abduction and retroduction. These steps are illustrated throughout by examples drawn from empirical research regarding social work practice. The article is concluded with a discussion of the need for knowledge of generative mechanisms. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to describe variations in patient participation in decisions about care planning during the final phase of life for a group of gravely ill patients, and how the different actors’ manner of acting promotes or impedes patient participation. Thirty-seven qualitative research interviews were conducted with relatives of the patients. The patients’ participation in the decisions could be categorized into four variations: self-determination, co-determination, delegation and nonparticipation. The manner in which patients, relatives and caregivers acted (...) differed in the respective variations; this seemed either to promote or to impede the patients’ opportunities of participating in the decision making. The possibility for participation seems to be context dependent and affected by many factors such as the dying patient’s personality, the social network, the availability of different forms of care, cultural values, and the extent to which nurses and other caregivers of the different forms of care can and want to support the wishes of the patients and relatives in the decision-making process. (shrink)

This article explores the taxing legal questions that are raised in the context of withdrawing life sustaining treatment from patients who are in a minimally conscious state. The Court of Protection, for the first time in England, was recently asked to rule on this issue. This paper analyses the legal and ethical implications of this decision moving forward.

Peter Lewis ([1997]) has recently argued that the wavefunction collapse theory of GRW (Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber [1986]) can only solve the problem of wavefunction tails at the expense of predicting that arithmetic does not apply to ordinary macroscopic objects. More specifically, Lewis argues that the GRW theory must violate the enumeration principle: that 'if marble 1 is in the box and marble 2 is in the box and so on through marble n, then all n marbles are in the (...) box' ([1997], p. 321). Ghirardi and Bassi ([1999]) have replied that it is meaningless to say that the enumeration principle is violated because the wavefunction Lewis uses to exhibit the violation cannot persist, according to the GRW theory, for more than a split second ([1999], p. 709). On the contrary, we argue that Lewis's argument survives Ghirardi and Bassi' s criticism unscathed. We then go on to show that, while the enumeration principle can fail in the GRW theory, the theory itself guarantees that the principle can never be empirically falsified, leaving the applicability of arithmetical reasoning to both micro- and macroscopic objects intact. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The Principle of Limitation. For the benefit of the reviewer, whose task is, as we know from Sydney Smith, to cut a book and smell the paper ...

In this chapter, Rob Lovering provides some possible answers to the question of whether God—understood as an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, spiritual, personal deity who created the universe—knows what it’s like to undergo a positive, psychoactive, drug-induced experience; or, as he puts it for short, whether God knows what it’s like to get high. For either God knows what it’s like to get high or he does not and, in any case, interesting metaphysical, epistemological, and value theoretical questions arise. Lovering concludes (...) that, collectively, the possible answers he provides to the question of whether God knows what it’s like to get high generate an intriguing (and paradoxical) conclusion: It is hard to see how God could know what it’s like to get high, but it is also hard to see how he could not know what it’s like to get high. (shrink)

Some conspicuous characteristics of argumentation as we all know this phenomenon from our shared everyday experiences are in my view vital to its theoretical treatment because they should have methodological consequences for the way in which argumentation research is conducted. To start with, argumentation is in the first place a communicative act complex, which is realized by making functional verbal communicative moves.

In this paper (which is, at best, a work in progress), I discuss different modes of scientific explanation identified by philosophers (Hempel, Salmon, Kitcher, Friedman, Hughes) and examine how well or badly they capture the "explanations" of phenomena that modern quantum theory provides. I tentatively conclude that quantum explanation is best seen as "structural explanation", and spell out in detail how this works in the case of explaining vacuum correlations. Problems and prospects for structural explanation in quantum theory are also (...) discussed. (shrink)

This book looks at the origins and the many contemporary meanings of the virtual. Rob Shields shows how the construction of virtual worlds has a long history. He examines the many forms of faith and hysteria that have surrounded computer technologies in recent years. Moving beyond the technologies themselves he shows how the virtual plays a role in our daily lives at every level. The virtual is also an essential concept needed to manage innovation and risk. It is real but (...) not actual, ideal but not abstract. The virtual, he argues, has become one of the key organizing principles of contemporary society in the public realms of politics, business and consumption as well as in our private lives. (shrink)

The troubling ethics and politics of philanthropy Is philanthropy, by its very nature, a threat to today’s democracy? Though we may laud wealthy individuals who give away their money for society’s benefit, Just Giving shows how such generosity not only isn’t the unassailable good we think it to be but might also undermine democratic values and set back aspirations of justice. Big philanthropy is often an exercise of power, the conversion of private assets into public influence. And it is a (...) form of power that is largely unaccountable, often perpetual, and lavishly tax-advantaged. The affluent—and their foundations—reap vast benefits even as they influence policy without accountability. And small philanthropy, or ordinary charitable giving, can be problematic as well. Charity, it turns out, does surprisingly little to provide for those in need and sometimes worsens inequality. These outcomes are shaped by the policies that define and structure philanthropy. When, how much, and to whom people give is influenced by laws governing everything from the creation of foundations and nonprofits to generous tax exemptions for donations of money and property. Rob Reich asks: What attitude and what policies should democracies have concerning individuals who give money away for public purposes? Philanthropy currently fails democracy in many ways, but Reich argues that it can be redeemed. Differentiating between individual philanthropy and private foundations, the aims of mass giving should be the decentralization of power in the production of public goods, such as the arts, education, and science. For foundations, the goal should be what Reich terms “discovery,” or long-time-horizon innovations that enhance democratic experimentalism. Philanthropy, when properly structured, can play a crucial role in supporting a strong liberal democracy. Just Giving investigates the ethical and political dimensions of philanthropy and considers how giving might better support democratic values and promote justice. (shrink)

The theory of justice that Hugo Grotius developed in De Jure Belli ac Pacis (The Law of War and Peace, 1625) set itself against a certain reading of Aristotle, according to which justice is conceived of as a mean between taking too much and taking too little. I argue that we can best understand the implications of Grotius' mature conception by considering the ends to which he had deployed this Aristotelian notion in his earlier work. Grotius came to perceive that (...) his earlier understanding of justice too easily ruled out the sorts of humanitarian concerns that could have a moderating effect. (shrink)

John Broome and Duncan Foley have argued that it is a ‘misperception’ that the ‘control of global warming is costly’ and that we can make ‘sacrifices unnecessary’. There are a number of assumptions that are essential for this idea to work. These assumptions can be challenged. Furthermore, my claim is not merely that the Broome/Foley argument is flawed, and therefore unlikely to be successful. I will argue that it is potentially harmful, leading to harms for the present generation and for (...) future generations. (shrink)

Political CSR scholars argue that multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) should be designed to facilitate deliberation among corporations, civil society groups, and others affected by corporate conduct for their decisions to be considered democratically legitimate. However, critics argue that decisions reached within deliberative MSIs will lack democratic legitimacy so long as corporations are granted a role in helping to make them. If the critics are correct, it leads to a paradox. Corporations must be excluded from holding decision-making authority within MSIs if they (...) are to function as democratically legitimate regulatory institutions at a global level. However, this risks severely diminishing the incentive of corporations to support and participate within MSIs, which often depend heavily for their success on the visibility provided them by corporate participants. In this paper, I argue that this apparent paradox should be considered irrelevant to the future study of MSIs since it is both unnecessary and impractical for researchers to focus on establishing democratically legitimate systems of governance within them. Instead, I recommend an approach informed by three touchstones of pragmatic philosophy to guide their future study—a criterion of usefulness, wariness of category disputes and commitment to experimentalism. I conclude by drawing on research in political science and social psychology that demonstrates an important practical role for deliberation within such organizations, arguing that researchers must zero in on the role that inclusive deliberation can play in bolstering their effectiveness as regulatory instruments. (shrink)

This article examines how the availability of Big Data, coupled with new data analytics, challenges established epistemologies across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and assesses the extent to which they are engendering paradigm shifts across multiple disciplines. In particular, it critically explores new forms of empiricism that declare ‘the end of theory’, the creation of data-driven rather than knowledge-driven science, and the development of digital humanities and computational social sciences that propose radically different ways to make sense of culture, (...) history, economy and society. It is argued that: Big Data and new data analytics are disruptive innovations which are reconfiguring in many instances how research is conducted; and there is an urgent need for wider critical reflection within the academy on the epistemological implications of the unfolding data revolution, a task that has barely begun to be tackled despite the rapid changes in research practices presently taking place. After critically reviewing emerging epistemological positions, it is contended that a potentially fruitful approach would be the development of a situated, reflexive and contextually nuanced epistemology. (shrink)

In his recent article On Relativity Theory and Openness of the Future (1991), Howard Stein proves not only that one can define an objective becoming relation in Minkowski spacetime, but that there is only one possible definition available if one accepts certain natural assumptions about what it is for becoming to occur and for it to be objective. Stein uses the definition supplied by his proof to refute an argument due to Rietdijk (1966, 1976), Putnam (1967) and Maxwell (1985, 1988) (...) that Minkowski spacetime leaves no room for objective becoming whatsoever. However, Stein's proof does not seem to go far enough. By considering only what events have become from the standpoint of any given event, Stein's uniqueness proof fails from the outset to allow for a more general kind of becoming whereby it is understood to occur from the standpoint of events on the particular worldlines followed by observers. This suggests that there may, after all, be more than one way to define objective becoming in Minkowski spacetime once each observer's worldline is allowed to figure in the definition. This suspicion is further aroused by two recent proposals for objective, worldline-dependent becoming due to Peacock (1992) and Muller (1992) who advocate ways of defining becoming that are not equivalent to the definition Stein's uniqueness proof delivers. Nevertheless, we show that Stein's uniqueness proofcan be extended in a natural way to cover this more general kind of becoming, provided one does not enrich standard Minkowski spacetime by privileging certain sets of worldlines over others in an unwarranted manner. Thus we aim to reinforce Stein's point that standard Minkowski spacetime does make room for objective becoming, but in essentially only one way, despite arguments and proposals to the contrary. (shrink)

Rob Clifton was one of the most brilliant and productive researchers in the foundations and philosophy of quantum theory, who died tragically at the age of 38. Jeremy Butterfield and Hans Halvorson collect fourteen of his finest papers here, drawn from the latter part of his career (1995-2002), all of which combine exciting philosophical discussion with rigorous mathematical results. Many of these papers break wholly new ground, either conceptually or technically. Others resolve a vague controversy intoa precise technical problem, which (...) is then solved; still others solve an open problem that had been in the air for soem time. All of them show scientific and philosophical creativity of a high order, genuinely among the very best work in the field. The papers are grouped into four Parts. First come four papers about the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics. Part II comprises three papers on the foundations of algebraic quantum field theory, with an emphasis on entanglement and nonlocality. The two papers in Part III concern the concept of a particle in relativistic quantum theories. One paper analyses localization; the other analyses the Unruh effect (Rindler quanta) using the algebraic approach to quantum theory. Finally, Part IV contains striking new results about such central issues as complementarity, Bohr's reply to the EPR argument, and no hidden variables theorems; and ends with a philosophical survey of the field of quantum information. The volume includes a full bibliography of Clifton's publications. Quantum Entanglements offers inspiration and substantial reward to graduates and professionals in the foundations of physics, with a background in philosophy, physics, or mathematics. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the professional engineering institutions ought to develop a Declaration of Climate Action. Climate change is a serious global problem, and the majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from industries that are enabled by engineers and represented by the engineering professional institutions. If the professional institutions take seriously the claim that a profession should be self-regulating, with codes of ethics that go beyond mere obedience to the law, and if they take their own ethical codes (...) seriously, recognising their responsibility to the public and to future generations, the professional institutions ought to develop a declaration for engineers, addressing climate change. Our argument here is largely inspired by the history of the Declaration of Helsinki. The Declaration of Helsinki was created by the medical profession for the profession, and it held physicians to a higher standard of ethical conduct than was found in the legal framework of individual countries. Although it was not originally a legal document, the influence of the Declaration can be seen in the fact that it is now enshrined in law in a number of different countries. Thus, we argue that the engineering profession could, and should, play a significant role in the abatement of climate change by making changes within the profession. If the engineering profession sets strict standards for professional engineers, with sanctions for those who refuse to comply, this could have a significant impact in relation to our efforts to develop a coordinated response to climate change. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper I explore the role of imagination in ethical life. I do so by discussing the thought of Kierkegaard and Murdoch, both of whom stress the importance as well as the dangerousness of imagination for ethical life. Both distinguish between proper imagination and mere fantasy in dealing with the tension. Anti-Climacus’s views on imagination emphasize that the proper use of the imagination plays a vital role in realizing the fundamental ethical task of becoming ourselves, whereas fantasy only (...) alienates us from ourselves. Murdoch’s account of imagination stresses that a proper use of the imagination contributes to the realization of a selfless attunement to the world, whereas fantasy only reinforces the (what she describes as) ‘fat, relentless ego’. In the final part of the paper I discuss some existing comparisons between both accounts. I conclude by drawing attention to the fundamental choice that comparing their views on the role of imagination in ethical life confronts us with: should we be existentialists or mystics in ethics? (shrink)

Entanglement has long been the subject of discussion by philosophers of quantum theory, and has recently come to play an essential role for physicists in their development of quantum information theory. In this paper we show how the formalism of algebraic quantum field theory (AQFT) provides a rigorous framework within which to analyse entanglement in the context of a fully relativistic formulation of quantum theory. What emerges from the analysis are new practical and theoretical limitations on an experimenter's ability to (...) perform operations on a field in one spacetime region that can disentangle its state from the state of the field in other spacelike-separated regions. These limitations show just how deeply entrenched entanglement is in relativistic quantum field theory, and yield a fresh perspective on the ways in which the theory differs conceptually from both standard non-relativistic quantum theory and classical relativistic field theory. (shrink)

ObjectiveSome people experience post-traumatic growth, entailing positive changes such as a greater appreciation of life following traumatic events. We examined PTG in the context of the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, notably working from home and social distancing. We aimed to assess whether distinct sub-groups of individuals experiencing PTG could be identified by how they appraised and coped with the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodFor this cross-sectional study, we used convenience sampling. In total, 951 participants from the general population completed an online (...) questionnaire with items focusing on primary and secondary appraisal, positive reappraisal, rumination, and coping flexibility. For the latent profile analysis, we selected a sample of 392 individuals who had experienced moderate degrees of pandemic-related PTG, reporting at least two of the 10 positive changes in the PTG Inventory-Short Form.ResultsWe identified two distinct profiles among people experiencing PTG. The first was characterised by low levels of primary appraisal and stressfulness and higher levels of secondary appraisal, increased coping flexibility and greater use of positive reappraisal. The second was characterised by higher levels of stressfulness and primary appraisal and greater use of rumination.ConclusionThe two sub-groups evidently appraised and coped with the COVID-19 pandemic differently. Therefore, future research should account for these different profiles of people experiencing PTG. (shrink)

Theories of the present have converged on changes in spatialization or the spatial order of societies. This article discusses the focus on borders and boundaries in programmatic statements on reflexive modernity or remodernization (RM) by Latour and Beck. It is insufficient to say that boundary-marking and border-making become simply more fraught or obvious. There is an historicity and dynamic quality which are central to these analyses which are best understood in terms of the intangible aspects, or virtuality, of borders and (...) boundaries. A dynamic, four-part ontology is advanced to elucidate the functioning of borders as interfaces and liminal zones with their own internal semiotics and emergent meanings and effects. This is the basis of a critique of RM. Further, a more diverse set of methods than might be supposed is required to research boundary phenomena, which social sciences are ill-equipped to undertake. (shrink)

By exhibiting a violation of a novel form of the Bell-CHSH inequality, \.{Z}ukowski has recently established that the quantum correlations exploited in the standard perfect teleportation protocol cannot be recovered by any local hidden variables model. Allowing the quantum channel state in the protocol to be given by any density operator of two spin-1/2 particles, we show that a violation of a generalized form of \.{Z}ukowski's teleportation inequality can only occur if the channel state, considered by itself, violates a Bell-CHSH (...) inequality. On the other hand, although it is sufficient for a teleportation process to have a nonclassical fidelity---defined as a fidelity exceeding $2/3$---that the channel state employed violate a Bell-CHSH inequality, we show that such a violation does \emph{not} imply a violation of \.{Z}ukowski's teleportation inequality or any of its generalizations. The implication does hold, however, if the fidelity of the teleportation exceeds $2/3(1+1/2\sqrt{2})\approx .90$, suggesting the existence of a regime of nonclassical values of the fidelity, less than $.90$, for which the standard teleportation protocol can be modelled by local hidden variables. (shrink)

Emotion, Sense, Experience calls on historians of emotions and the senses to come together in serious and sustained dialogue. The Element outlines the deep if largely unacknowledged genealogy of historical writing insisting on a braided history of emotions and the senses; explains why recent historical treatments have sometimes profitably but nonetheless unhelpfully segregated the emotions from the senses; and makes a compelling case for the heuristic and interpretive dividends of bringing emotions and sensory history into conversation. Ultimately, we envisage a (...) new way of understanding historical lived experience generally, as a mutable product of a situated world-brain-body dynamic. Such a project necessarily points us towards new interdisciplinary engagement and collaboration, especially with social neuroscience. Unpicking some commonly held assumptions about affective and sensory experience, we re-imagine the human being as both biocultural and historical, reclaiming the analysis of human experience from biology and psychology and seeking new collaborative efforts. (shrink)

Interactive technology assessment is a novel approach to evaluating (health) technology, which philosophically draws from the works of Rawls and Habermas. That is, it seeks to organise a practical setting for discursive ethics in order to find a legitimate basis for policy to be pursued when the technology under scrutiny features a moral controversy. Interactive technology assessment involves a cycle of interviews with all stakeholders, who are explicitly asked to respond (anonymously) to the concerns and issues raised by other participants. (...) This cycle is completed repeatedly, so that a process of vicarious learning develops. This process aims at identifying issues agreed and disagreed upon, on the basis of which widely endorsed policy recommendations can be formulated. This chapter involves an interactive technology assessment of paediatric cochlear implantation. The rationale, the design, and the results are explained, as well as the main ethical aspects of the procedure. (shrink)

Perfect adaptation in a dynamical system is the phenomenon that one or more variables have an initial transient response to a persistent change in an external stimulus but revert to their original value as the system converges to equilibrium. With the help of the causal ordering algorithm, one can construct graphical representations of dynamical systems that represent the causal relations between the variables and the conditional independences in the equilibrium distribution. We apply these tools to formulate sufficient graphical conditions for (...) identifying perfect adaptation from a set of first-order differential equations. Furthermore, we give sufficient conditions to test for the presence of perfect adaptation in experimental equilibrium data. We apply this method to a simple model for a protein signalling pathway and test its predictions in both simulations and using real-world protein expression data. We demonstrate that perfect adaptation can lead to misleading orientation of edges in the output of causal discovery algorithms. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 35, Issue 1, pp 1 - 18 This introduction to the papers of the 2011 conference in Potsdam on De veritate aims to put the reception of the work during the Enlightenment into perspective, while introducing the several articles and their distinctive takes on Grotius and his theology. The importance of early-modern apologetics, its relations to natural theology, to rationalism and Deism, as well as to the changing self-image of Calvinism, are discussed. De veritate has been – (...) and maybe still is – a mirror to reflect important issues of Enlightenment and religion. (shrink)

E.O. Wilson (1975) described humans as one of the four pinnacles of social evolution. The other pinnacles are the colonial invertebrates, the social insects, and the non-human mammals. Wilson separated human sociality from that of the rest of the mammals because, with the exception of the social insect like Naked Mole Rats, only humans have generated societies of a grade of complexity that approaches that of the social insects and colonial invertebrates. In the last few millennia, human societies have even (...) begun to exceed, in numbers of individuals and degree of complexity, the societies of ants, termites, and corals. (shrink)

This article is about a sidebar in James Gibson's last book, The ecological approach to visual perception. In this sidebar, Gibson, the founder of the ecological perspective of perception and action, argued that to perceive an affordance is not to classify an object. Although this sidebar has received scant attention, it is of great significance both historically and for recent discussions about specificity, direct perception, and the functions of the dorsal and ventral streams. It is argued that Gibson's acknowledgment of (...) Wittgenstein's ideas of classification suggests a limited scope of his theory of direct perception?it cannot account for the classification of objects. The implications for both the specification debate and theorizing about the brain's dorsal and ventral pathways are explored. Based on a recent ecological conception of information and direct perception, we ultimately argue that both affordance perception and classification are direct. (shrink)

This paper develops and explores a pedagogical innovation for integrating virtue theory into business students' basicunderstanding of general management. Eighty-seven students, in 20 groups, classified three managers' real-time videotaped activitiesaccording to an elaboration of Aristotle's cardinal virtues, Fayol's management functions, and Mintzberg's managerial roles. The study's empirical evidence suggests that, akin to Fayol's functions and Mintzberg's roles, Aristotle's virtues are also amenable to operationalization, reliable observation, and meaningful description of managerial behavior. The study provides an oft-called-for empirical basis for further (...) work in virtue theory as an appropriate conceptual framework for the study and practice of management. The results indicate that virtue theory may be used to re-conceive our fundamental understanding of management, alongside its capacity to weigh moral judgment upon it. implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

'Shades of Goodness' is aimed at readers interested in moral theories, and particularly those wishing to construct or defend a moral theory.

Theoretical physicists and philosophers of science tackle the conceptual problems of quantum mechanics from a variety of mathematical and philosophical angles in 18 papers, most from a conference at the University of Western Ontario in the autumn of 1994. Nearly half treat the largely uncharted territory of relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Others provide innovative approaches to longstanding problems about measurement, irreversibility, nonlocality, contextualism, and the classical limit of quantum mechanics. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., (...) Portland, OR. (shrink)

The availability, range, cost and quality of food in Western societies have never been more favourable, yet food is also the focus of a great deal of anxiety. There are concerns that our current diets will mean we will get steadily fatter and more unhealthy while consuming ‘junk food', with consequences for our quality of life, our children's behaviour and even the environment. This book challenges these ideas and places the food debate in a wider context. As the political imagination (...) and the scope of social policy have narrowed, the focus on the personal and corporeal has filled this gap, creating an inward, individualised perspective that breeds a personal sense of vulnerability and distracts from issues of broader social importance.The book also examines the current use of ‘food as metaphor’ – the way that ‘bad food’ and obesity, for example, have become code words for an elite disdain for the masses, implicitly promoting the idea that the consequences of poverty are the fault of the poor, and that a solution to the problems of social inequality lies in the consumption of five fruit and veg a day.The author also discusses how health fears around food are used as a lever for greater official control of our everyday lives, from lunchbox inspections and school food crusades, to endless media health advice and scientifically-dubious ‘healthy labelling’ initiatives. The upshot of these connected trends is misplaced anxiety and wasted effort fixing what, for the most part, does not need to be fixed. Our modern food system allows us to be healthier than ever before, while transforming food from fuel into a source of entertainment, pleasure and choice.Rob Lyons is Deputy Editor of Spiked Online. (shrink)