This is an exploration of modernism and postmodernism in regard to knowledge: methods of inquiry, operations of the mind, the role of values, conceptions of self, and the problematic of reason.

Homeopathy is controversial and hotly debated. The conclusions of systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials of homeopathy vary from ‘comparable to conventional medicine’ to ‘no evidence of effects beyond placebo’. It is claimed that homeopathy conflicts with scientific laws and that homoeopaths reject the naturalistic outlook, but no evidence has been cited. We are homeopathic physicians and researchers who do not reject the scientific outlook; we believe that examination of the prior beliefs underlying this enduring stand-off can advance the debate. (...) We show that interpretations of the same set of evidence—for homeopathy and for conventional medicine—can diverge. Prior disbelief in homeopathy is rooted in the perceived implausibility of any conceivable mechanism of action. Using the ‘crossword analogy’, we demonstrate that plausibility bias impedes assessment of the clinical evidence. Sweeping statements about the scientific impossibility of homeopathy are themselves unscientific: scientific statements must be precise and testable. There is growing evidence that homeopathic preparations can exert biological effects; due consideration of such research would reduce the influence of prior beliefs on the assessment of systematic review evidence. (shrink)

Homeopathy is controversial and hotly debated. The conclusions of systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials of homeopathy vary from ‘comparable to conventional medicine’ to ‘no evidence of effects beyond placebo’. It is claimed that homeopathy conflicts with scientific laws and that homoeopaths reject the naturalistic outlook, but no evidence has been cited. We are homeopathic physicians and researchers who do not reject the scientific outlook; we believe that examination of the prior beliefs underlying this enduring stand-off can advance the debate. (...) We show that interpretations of the same set of evidence—for homeopathy and for conventional medicine—can diverge. Prior disbelief in homeopathy is rooted in the perceived implausibility of any conceivable mechanism of action. Using the ‘crossword analogy’, we demonstrate that plausibility bias impedes assessment of the clinical evidence. Sweeping statements about the scientific impossibility of homeopathy are themselves unscientific: scientific statements must be precise and testable. There is growing evidence that homeopathic preparations can exert biological effects; due consideration of such research would reduce the influence of prior beliefs on the assessment of systematic review evidence. (shrink)

Originally published in German in 1935, this monograph anticipated solutions to problems of scientific progress, the truth of scientific fact and the role of error in science now associated with the work of Thomas Kuhn and others. Arguing that every scientific concept and theory—including his own—is culturally conditioned, Fleck was appreciably ahead of his time. And as Kuhn observes in his foreword, "Though much has occurred since its publication, it remains a brilliant and largely unexploited resource." "To many scientists just (...) as to many historians and philosophers of science facts are things that simply are the case: they are discovered through properly passive observation of natural reality. To such views Fleck replies that facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction, a _made_ thing. A work of transparent brilliance, one of the most significant contributions toward a thoroughly sociological account of scientific knowledge."—Steven Shapin, _Science_. (shrink)

BackgroundJunior medical doctors have a key role in discussions and decisions about treatment and end-of-life care for people with dementia in hospital. Little is known about junior doctors’ decision-making processes when treating people with dementia who have advance care directives, or the factors that influence their decisions. To describe among junior doctors in relation to two hypothetical vignettes involving patients with dementia: their legal compliance and decision-making process related to treatment decisions; the factors influencing their clinical decision-making; and the factors (...) associated with accurate responses to one hypothetical vignette. MethodA cross-sectional survey of junior doctors, including trainees, interns, registrars and residents, on clinical rotation in five public hospitals located in one Australian state. The anonymous, investigator-developed survey was conducted between August 2018 and June 2019. Two hypothetical vignettes describing patients with dementia presenting to hospital with an ACD and either: bacterial pneumonia; or suspected stroke were presented in the survey. Participants were asked to indicate whether they would commence treatment, given the ACD instructions described in each vignette.ResultsOverall, 116 junior doctors responded. In Vignette 1, 58% of respondents selected the legally compliant option. Participants who chose the legally compliant option perceived ‘following patient wishes’ and ‘legal requirements to follow ACDs’ as equally important reasons for complying with the ACD. The most common reason for not selecting the legally compliant option in Vignette 1 was the ‘ACD is relevant in my decision-making process, but other factors are more relevant’. In Vignette 2, 72% of respondents indicated they would commence treatment and 18% selected they would not commence treatment.. Similar reasons influenced participant decision-making in Vignette 2, a less legally certain scenario.ConclusionsThere are critical gaps in junior doctors’ compliance with the law as it relates to the implementation of ACDs. Despite there being differences in relation to the legal answer and its certainty, clinical and ethical factors guided decision-making over and above the law in both vignettes. More education and training to guide junior doctors’ clinical decision-making and ensure compliance with the law is required. (shrink)

This paper argues that Philosophical Intelligence is an important form of human intelligence best developed in children through philosophical dialogue. Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) is critically reviewed. MI theory, it is argued, requires clearer definition and a theory of pedagogy to make it practical and applicable in school settings. This paper focuses on redefining the concept of existential intelligence and on identifying a workable pedagogy through which it can be developed. Gardner’s ‘existential intelligence’ is redefined in terms (...) of Philosophical Intelligence and linked to the historical tradition of philosophical enquiry. The community of enquiry provides a pedagogical basis for developing Philosophical Intelligence. Ways that Philosophical Intelligence can be developed through communities of enquiry are illustrated with recent research using ‘Stories for Thinking’ and other forms of stimulus. (shrink)

The focus falls within the boundaries of what happens to persons and to a person's sense of identity when confronted by pain, suffering, and death. ...

Teaching Thinking is a guide to ways of using discussion in the classroom to develop children's thinking, learning and literacy skills. It shows the reader how to engage children in a special kind of discussion called a 'community of enquiry'. This book illustrates how philosophical discussion helps promote critical thinking and the moral and social values essential for citizenship in a democratic society. It shows how a community of enquiry can be created in any classroom, enriching learning across the whole (...) curriculum. Teaching Thinking is a sourcebook of ideas to help teachers, students and others interested in education to understand and engage in philosophical enquiry with children. (shrink)

This editorial introduces a revised set of publication requirements for papers, submitted to Homeopathy, that involve animal experimentation. Journals that publish studies involving animal experimentation have a major role to play in the maintenance of ethical standards because researchers are reliant upon them for publication of their findings. With an increasing global trend towards greater transparency and accountability in animal experimentation, many academic journals, such as the British Journal of Pharmacology, 1 and 2 are taking action to improve reporting standards. (...) In recognition of this need, members of Homeopathy's Editorial Board have been working together to examine the scientific rationale and the most relevant ethical guidelines for the use of animals in research. In addition, they have examined existing published studies in homeopathy research and current practice within the broad domain of medical research. Each of these aspects has informed the revised publication policy, whose overarching objectives are to maximise the ethical standards and scientific quality of animal research in homeopathy, and thereby ultimately to avoid any unnecessary suffering of animals used in such research. The following description details the background that was considered, the rationale for this development, and the steps that will be taken. (shrink)

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)

Community food security and environmental justice are parallel social movements interested in equity and justice and system-wide factors. They share a concern for issues of daily life and the need to establish community empowerment strategies. Both movements have also begun to reshape the discourse of sustainable agriculture, environmentalism and social welfare advocacy. However, community food security and environmental justice remain separate movements, indicating an incomplete process in reshaping agendas and discourse. Joining these movements through a common language of empowerment and (...) systems analysis would strongly enhance the development of a more powerful, integrated approach. That opportunity can be located in the efforts to incorporate community food security and environmental justice approaches in current Farm Bill legislation; in particular, provisions addressing community food production, direct marketing, community development, and community food planning. (shrink)

Part of Robert Kane’s response to the contemporary cultural condition of pluralism is to attempt to ground morality in the _search_ for wisdom about how to live. With regard to the right, Kane argues, roughly, that a new principle capturing what all morally permissible actions have in common warrants belief on the part of all inquirers, even in the face of reasonable uncertainty, because it is justified as an essential means to ascertaining wisdom. Upon embarking for wisdom, one quickly (...) discovers an important chunk of it about right action, namely, that wisdom will not be found unless one treats others in a particular kind of way. Although, as I discuss, this rationale has some similarities with transcendental arguments to be found in the literature, it is novel and merits careful attention from meta-ethicists. In this critical notice, I focus largely on Kane’s interesting justification of a principle of right action, paying somewhat less attention to the content of this principle, which is akin to Kant’s Formula of Humanity, and the not-merely-mental account of the good that Kane also advances; however, these elements of Kane’s intricate worldview about how to live should also be of interest to normative ethicists. (shrink)

As social media becomes increasingly popular, human subjects researchers are able to use these platforms to locate, track, and communicate with study participants, thereby increasing participant retention and the generalizability and validity of research. The use of social media; however, raises novel ethical and regulatory issues that have received limited attention in the literature and federal regulations. We review research ethics and regulations and outline the implications for maintaining participant privacy, respecting participant autonomy, and promoting researcher transparency when using social (...) media to locate and track participants. We offer a rubric that can be used in future studies to determine ethical and regulation-consistent use of social media platforms and illustrate the rubric using our study team’s experience with Facebook. We also offer recommendations for both researchers and institutional review boards that emphasize the importance of well-described procedures for social media use as... (shrink)

This article introduces a special issue of Philosophical Papers devoted to the topic of meaning in life. In the paper, I engage with articles by Robert Audi, David Velleman, John Martin Fischer, Laurence Thomas, Berit Brogaard, Barry Smith and Larry James, laying out their central views, criticizing them, and suggesting ways they could be developed.

A critical overview of some central work on the meta-ethical question of what the question of life's meaning means, as appearing in Joshua Seachris, ed., Exploring the Meaning of Life: An Anthology and Guide. It discusses contributions from Paul Edwards, R. W. Hepburn, Robert Nozick, Garrett Thomson, Arjan Markus and Thaddeus Metz.

I examine John Rawls' objection to libertarianism that it permits economic shares to be distributed in a morally arbitrary way. This argument was dropped largely for two reasons. First, talk of "arbitrariness" has been vague and associated with implausible views about moral desert, collective assets, and noumenal selves. Second, several criticisms which Robert Nozick made 25 years ago have gone unanswered. In this essay, I reconstruct the arbitrariness argument, giving it a new, Kantian interpretation, and I show that the (...) new version is intuitively plausible and avoids Nozick's major objections. (shrink)

There are two ways that philosophy could transform a philosopher’s life to make it substantially more meaningful: on the one hand, philosophical inquiry might reveal other activities beyond it that would make the life meaningful, enabling a philosopher to live meaningfully as a result of the inquiry, while, on the other hand, it might be that doing philosophy is in itself one way to make the philosopher's life notably meaningful. In this chapter I explore the latter path. I argue against (...) views of meaning in life entailing that philosophy could not itself be particularly meaningful or only rarely could be, after which I critically reflect on respects in which philosophical reflection might enhance the meaning in the philosopher's life. In particular, I critically discuss views of Bertrand Russell, W. D. Ross, Joseph Mintoff, and Robert Nozick that purport to explain how philosophy itself confers meaningfulness in terms of the extensiveness of its object, contending that their explanations are not as comprehensive and explanatorily deep as the new one I provide. (shrink)

This chapter supposes that certain bads are necessary for substantial goods, and poses the question of how one ought to react emotionally to such bads. In recent work, Robert Adams is naturally read as contending that one ought to exhibit positive emotions such as gladness towards certain ‘necessary evils’. A rationale he suggests for this view is that love for a person, which involves viewing the beloved as good, requires being glad about what is necessary for her to exist, (...) even if it is something bad such as a war that should be hated considered apart from being required for her existence. I critically discuss this argument, aiming to enrich understanding of the implications of the normativity of love for proper emotions towards necessary evil. (shrink)

This paper considers recent heated debates led by Jerry A. Coyne andMichael J. Wade on issues stemming from the 1929–1962 R.A. Fisher-Sewall Wrightcontroversy in population genetics. William B. Provine once remarked that theFisher-Wright controversy is central, fundamental, and very influential.Indeed,it is also persistent. The argumentative structure of therecent (1997–2000) debates is analyzed with the aim of eliminating a logicalconflict in them, viz., that the two sides in the debates havedifferent aims and that, as such, they are talking past each (...) other. Given aphilosophical analysis of the argumentative structure of the debates,suggestions supportive of Wade's work on the debate are made that areaimed, modestly, at putting the persistent Fisher-Wright controversy on thecourse to resolution. (shrink)

The question I seek to answer is what the relationship is between judgments of people’s lives as meaningful, on the one hand, and as worth living, on the other. Several in the analytic and Continental literature, including the likes of Albert Camus and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and more recently, Robert Solomon and Julian Baggini, have maintained that the two words mean the same thing, in that they have the same referents or even the same sense. My primary aim is to (...) refute such a position, and instead to provide conclusive reason to believe that, while a meaningful life shares many properties with a worthwhile one, they are not one and the same thing. Differentiating the meaningful from the worthwhile is essential for making accurate and complete appraisals of the value of people’s lives; they are distinct aspects of a good life, with both being necessary for the best one. (shrink)

Surrogate (proxy) decision makers must make research decisions for people with dementia who lack decision-making capacity. Proxies’ decision-making processes are minimally understood. We randomly assigned 82 proxies of AD patients to informed consent for one of three hypothetical protocols with differing levels of risk and benefit. Proxies answered questions about potential benefits of the described research to the patient and society, as well as about whether they would enroll their relative and why or why not. Proxies interested in enrolling their (...) relative cited the potential for direct benefit to their relative, altruism, and trust in researchers. Those declining cited risks, inconvenience, and stage of illness. Proxies weighed numerous factors, incorporating both substituted judgment and best interests standards in their decision-making processes. Although further empirical work is needed to understand the influences on and adequacy of proxies’ decision making regarding research, these findings can help inform policy regarding surrogate consent. (shrink)

Although largely remembered as an astronomer, the Reverend George Fisher played a significant part in studying the performance and possible improvement of marine chronometers in the mid-nineteenth century. Appointed astronomer to the Royal Navy's Arctic expedition of 1818, while on the voyage Fisher carried out research into the effects of magnetism on the accurate running of chronometers on board ship. By this time, chronometers were standard equipment on many ships and their reliability was a matter of importance to (...) all mariners. Fisher's published findings from this research led to considerable contemporary debate, and also influenced the work of others in the field. Moreover, as papers held at the National Maritime Museum show, he carried on his chronometer research in later life, making further contributions to the subject that have remained somewhat neglected. (shrink)

This booklet consists of a letter I wrote to Dr. Robert Solomon, a world-renowned philosopher of emotions. I used the evolutionary scheme of Ken Wilber as a context for critiquing much of Dr. Solomon's work on emotions...

In January 1729 a paper written by James Bradley was read at two meetings of the Royal Society. On a newly discovered motion of the fixed stars, later described as the theory of the aberration of light, it was to transform the science of astrometry. The paper appeared as a narrative of a programme of observation first begun at Kew and finalized at Wanstead, but it was, in reality, a careful reconstruction devised to enhance his reputation in response to a (...) recognition that the programme was initially conducted in terms that were inimical to what he conceived to be his interest. The planned attempt to repeat Robert Hooke's celebrated experiment by James Pound, Samuel Molyneux and George Graham was set up at Molyneux's residence in Kew with James Bradley replacing Pound after his untimely and sudden demise. The unexpected and counterintuitive behaviour of the object star γ Draconis and the eradication of any suspicion of instrumental or systemic error led to the abandonment of the attempt to measure annual parallax and the initiation of new conjectures. An annual nutation was proposed but after the observation of a control star, 35 Camelopardalis, this conjecture was abandoned. Unknown to Bradley and Graham a premature approach was made by Molyneux to Newton claiming that the ‘nutation’ negated the whole of Newton's system. In the abandonment of the nutation yet another conjecture opposed to Newtonian theory was proposed and abandoned. Bradley determined to use his own instrument designed on different principles by Graham to observe the phenomenon in Wanstead. At Wanstead Bradley observed many stars to determine the parameters of the phenomenon. With the law of the motion described, Bradley proposed a hypothesis to explain it. Drawn from his earlier work on the ephemerides of Jupiter's satellites his hypothesis of the ‘new-discovered motion’ was quickly presented to the Royal Society as Bradley was working on a later and more definitive version of his paper. It is this later, third, unpublished version that is commonly referred to throughout this essay. It issued a challenge to ‘anti-Copernicans’ to offer an explanation of the observed phenomenon in geostatic terms. One such astronomer, Eustachio Manfredi, had examined the phenomenon of ‘aberrations’ in detail, the term being his. It was Bradley who first applied the term to the ‘new-discovered motion’ and within a short time ‘aberration’ was being applied by astronomers in the reduction of their observations. Annual aberration was widely accepted as evidence of the motion of the Earth. The paper enhanced Bradley's reputation and projected him into the forefront of European astronomers. (shrink)