Embedding ethics modules within computer science courses has become a popular response to the growing recognition that CS programs need to better equip their students to navigate the ethical dimensions of computing technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics. However, the popularity of this approach has outpaced the evidence of its positive outcomes. To help close that gap, this empirical study reports positive results from Northeastern’s program that embeds values analysis modules into CS courses. The resulting data suggest (...) that such modules have a positive effect on students’ moral attitudes and that students leave the modules believing they are more prepared to navigate the ethical dimensions they’ll likely face in their eventual careers. Importantly, these gains were accomplished at an institution without a philosophy doctoral program, suggesting this strategy can be effectively employed by a wider range of institutions than many have thought. (shrink)

Chris Fujiwara _Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall_ Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 ISBN 0-8018-6561-1 xii + 328 pp.

Bryan Ronald Wilson, a Fellow of the British Academy, was a world-renowned sociologist of religion. He was awarded a D.Litt. by the University of Oxford in 1994, the same year that he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Wilson was also awarded an Arnold Gerstenberg studentship, which allowed him to take up a place at the London School of Economics, where Maurice Ginsberg introduced him to the literature of the sociology of religion and where he (...) developed a life-long interest in sectarian movements. He returned to Yorkshire to take up an Assistant Lectureship in Sociology in the Department of Social Studies at the University of Leeds in October 1955, being promoted to Lecturer in 1957. There Wilson taught courses on urban sociology, sociological theory, and the social institutions of modern Britain, as well as on the sociology of religion. He was a Fellow of All Souls College for thirty years. The themes of secularisation, rationalism, and sectarianism were of particular interest to Wilson throughout his academic life. (shrink)

The American administrative state is a feature of the new liberalism that is largely irreconcilable with the old, founding-era liberalism. At its core, the administrative state, with its delegation of legislative power to the bureaucracy, combination of functions within bureaucratic agencies, and weakening of presidential control over administration undercuts the separation-of-powers principle that is the base of the founders' Constitution. The animating idea behind the features of the administrative state is the separation of politics and administration, which was championed by (...) James Landis, the New-Deal architect of the administrative state for President Franklin Roosevelt. The idea of separating politics and administration, and the faith such a separation requires in the objectivity of administrators, did not originate with Landis or the New Deal but, instead, with the Progressives who had come a generation earlier. Both Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow were pioneers in advocating the separation of politics and administration, and made it the centerpiece of their broad arguments for constitutional reform. (shrink)

Research Articles Ronald J. Pestritto, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

This is a new Wittgensteinian account of the American Constitution that provides a fresh perspective on how judges can follow a legal document written in flexible language. The book shows why originalism is incompatible with the American legal system and challenges the views of Ronald Dworkin and numerous law professors.

Although the theory of moral development is widely used in business ethics research to measure the quality of an ethical decision, there have been ongoingconcerns about certain aspects of the theory. These concerns include questions about the distinctness and sequentiality of the stages, the logic for claiming that the higher levels are morally superior, and the ability of the theory to incorporate the universality of the dominant ethical theories and the particularism of the ethics of care. This paper suggests that (...) many of these concerns can be addressed through recent research, most importantly through the application of the Lectical Assessment System (LAS) (Dawson, 2002, 2003; Dawson, Xie, & Wilson, 2003). (shrink)

Professor Veatch's writings have a special significance here. In recent years he has been more concerned than most to accept this responsibility, and more concerned than many to insist upon its importance. Drawing out some of the implications of his earlier Intentional Logic and still—as then—relatively unconcerned about the fate of any particular necessary truth, he has attempted to relate a realistic doctrine of necessity to some non-realistic doctrines. His is, it should be remarked, not a realism which for its (...) logical inspiration finds anything of use in such random realists as Peirce or Cook Wilson; rather, there are muffled echoes of the early Russell and Moore, confident quotations from Aquinas, and a very firm reliance on the finality of the Aristotelian predicables. (shrink)

Some scientists and philosophers claimed that there is a converse to multiple realizability. While a given higher-level property can be realized by different lower-level properties (multiple realizability), a given lower-level property can in turn serve to realize different higher-level properties (this converse I dubbed the unfortunately obscure "constructival plasticity" to emphasize the constructive metaphysics involved in this converse to multiple realizability). I began by defining multiple realizabilty in a formal way. (Looking back, one point of interest is that I defined (...) modally weak and strong versions of realization, which is relevant to later views about contingent versus necessitarian grounding.) I then turned to the relation in question. By my analysis, for the converse claim to be true, a lower-level property G1 that realizes a higher-level F must be taken in conjunction with some other base condition G2 so that a difference in G2 allows G1 to determine some other higher-level property E but not F (otherwise there would be violations of supervenience). The realization law thus has the form: (G1 & G2) => F. As such, the base property G1 is insufficient by itself to produce F. It is an insufficient but necessary part of a sufficient condition. I also point out that this makes the realization base property an INUS condition, if combined with multiple realizability. Specifically, if F is multiply realized by properties other than the pair G1 and G2, then G1 is an insufficient but necessary part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition. This is just the first clear and explicit INUS condition view of realization in the literature. Looking back, this converse is also relevant to later views, such as Robert Wilson's view about metaphysically contextual realization. (shrink)

In an earlier essay I argued that perception involves an assentive propositional attitude. This essay completes the argument by examining the three most familiar propositional attitudes in order to determine which is best suited to perception. In Part I, I examine the contention of C.A. Campbell that perception involves judging, and I conclude that judging is too deliberative to be the assentive attitude in perception. On the other hand, in Part II, a study of David Armstrong’s and and George Pitcher’s (...) claims that perception involves belief concludes that belief is too dispositional to be the assentive attitude in perception. Finally, in Part III, I examine Cook Wilson’s notion of being under an impression that, H.H. Price’s notion of taking for granted, and Roderick Chisholm’s notion of sensible taking, and I conclude that taking is the assentive attitude best suited to perception since it is both spontaneous and an act. (shrink)

“Pick a card, any card. This has to be a completely free choice.” the magician tells you. But is it really? Although we like to think that we are using our free will to make our decisions, research in psychology has shown that many of our behaviours are automatic and unconsciously influenced by external stimuli (Ariely, 2008; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Newell & Shanks, 2014; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), and that we are often oblivious to the cognitive mechanisms that (...) underpin our decision (Wegner, 2002, 2003). Magicians have exploited this illusory sense of agency for a long time, and have developed a wide range of techniques to influence and control spectators’ choices of such things as card, word, or number (Annemann, 1933; Banachek, 2002a; Jones, 1994; Turner, 2015). These techniques are instances of what is called forcing. -/- Many forces are extremely effective, illustrating various weaknesses in our sense of control over decisions and their outcomes. Researchers have started to investigate them in various ways (Kuhn, Pailh s, & Lan, 2020; Olson, Amlani, Raz, & Rensink, 2015; Pailhes & Kuhn, 2020b, 2020c; Shalom et al., 2013) and are beginning to obtain valuable insights into decision-making processes as well as a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that lead people to experience an illusory sense of free will and of agency. -/- Although magicians have acquired large amounts of knowledge in covertly controlling people’s choices, much of this knowledge is only discussed in the context of individual magic tricks, or in books that are not readily accessible to non-magicans. As we and others have argued elsewhere (Ekroll, Sayim, & Wagemans, 2017; Kuhn, 2019; Kuhn, Amlani, & Rensink, 2008; Kuhn, Caffaratti, Teszka, & Rensink, 2014; Macknik et al., 2008; Olson et al., 2015; Olson, Landry, Appourchaux, & Raz, 2016; Shalom et al., 2013; Thomas, Didierjean, Maquestiaux, & Gygax, 2015), a particularly effective way of making this knowledge more available is via the creation of taxonomies centered around psychological mechanisms (Rensink & Kuhn, 2015). For example, the psychologically based taxonomy of misdirection (Kuhn et al., 2014) helps draw links between misdirection and formal theories of perception and cognition. -/- Our aim here is to apply a similar process to the knowledge magicians have about forcing. The present paper develops a psychologically based taxonomy of forcing techniques with two goals in mind. Firstly, it should help uncover the various psychological mechanisms that underlie forcing techniques. Secondly, it should facilitate knowledge transfer between magicians and psychologists. Among other things, this knowledge will allow researchers to gain new insights into the mechanisms underlying decision-making, and the feeling of free will and of agency over choice. We start by defining the magician’s force and then look at some of the past classifications of forcing. (shrink)

Did the Devil Make Darwin Do It? Modern Perspectives on the Creation-Evolution Controversy. David B. Wilson, Warren D. Dolphin, Science and Creationism. Ashley Montagu. Is God a Creationist? The Religious Case against Creation-Science. Roland Mushat Frye. A History of Modern Creationism. Henry M. Morris.

We revisit Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence, published twenty years ago. The evolution of the relative plausibility theory of juridical proof is offered as evidence of the advantage of a naturalized approach to the study of the field and law evidence. Various alternative explanations of aspects of juridical proof from other disciplines are examined and their shortcomings described. These competing explanations are similar in their reductive, a priori approaches that are at odds with an empirically oriented naturalized approach. (...) The shortcomings of the various a priori approaches are driven by their common methodological commitments to employing weird hypotheticals to engage in intuition mining about the American legal systems that in turn ignore important aspects of the actual legal systems and consistently make impossible epistemological demands. As a result, both their descriptions of and prescriptions for American legal systems are implausible, unlike the relative plausibility theory. (shrink)

David Wallace has given a decision-theoretic argument for the Born Rule in the context of Everettian quantum mechanics. This approach promises to resolve some long-standing problems with probability in EQM, but it has faced plenty of resistance. One kind of objection charges that the requisite notion of decision-theoretic uncertainty is unavailable in the Everettian picture, so that the argument cannot gain any traction; another kind of objection grants the proof’s applicability and targets the premises. In this article I propose some (...) novel principles connecting the physics of EQM with the metaphysics of modality, and argue that in the resulting framework the incoherence problem does not arise. These principles also help to justify one of the most controversial premises of Wallace’s argument, ‘branching indifference’. Absent any a priori reason to align the metaphysics with the physics in some other way, the proposed principles can be adopted on grounds of theoretical utility. The upshot is that Everettians can, after all, make clear sense of objective probability. 1 Introduction2 Setup3 Individualism versus Collectivism4 The Ingredients of Indexicalism5 Indexicalism and Incoherence5.1 The trivialization problem5.2 The uncertainty problem6 Indexicalism and Branching Indifference6.1 Introducing branching indifference6.2 The pragmatic defence of branching indifference6.3 The non-existence defence of branching indifference6.4 The indexicalist defence of branching indifference7 Conclusion. (shrink)

Three main claims are made in this paper. First, it is argued that Onora O’Neill has uncovered a serious problem in the way medical ethicists have thought about both respect for autonomy and informed consent. Medical ethicists have tended to think that autonomous choices are intrinsically worthy of respect, and that informed consent procedures are the best way to respect the autonomous choices of individuals. However, O’Neill convincingly argues that we should abandon both these thoughts. Second, it is argued that (...) O’Neill’s proposed solution to this problem is inadequate. O’Neill’s approach requires that a more modest view of the purpose of informed consent procedures be adopted. In her view, the purpose of informed consent procedures is simply to avoid deception and coercion, and the ethical justification for informed consent derives from a different ethical principle, which she calls principled autonomy. It is argued that contrary to what O’Neill claims, the wrongness of coercion cannot be derived from principled autonomy, and so its credentials as a justification for informed consent procedures is weak. Third, it is argued that we do better to rethink autonomy and informed consent in terms of respecting persons as ends in themselves, and a characteristically liberal commitment to allowing individuals to make certain categories of decisions for themselves. Respect for autonomy is in trouble. In recent work in this journal1 and elsewhere,2 O’Neill has forcefully argued that respect for autonomy, as it has come to be used in medical ethics, is philosophically indefensible. If her arguments are sound, then, contrary to the standard view, respect for autonomy cannot be the source of the ethical requirement to seek informed consent before treating a patient or enrolling a participant in a trial. So her critique goes to the heart of contemporary medical ethics: if O’Neill is right, medical ethicists have systematically misunderstood two of the most fundamental concepts they deal with—respect for autonomy and informed consent. This paper has four sections. Section 1 distinguishes between three different ways of talking about respect for autonomy, and looks in more detail at the one that has come to be central to bioethical writing on informed consent—namely, the idea that we should respect autonomous choices. Section 2 argues, following O’Neill, that it is implausible to think that the purpose of informed consent requirements is to respect autonomous choices. Section 3 argues that O’Neill’s proposed reworking of autonomy and informed consent is inadequate. O’Neill’s approach requires us to adopt a more modest view of the purpose of informed consent procedures. In her view, the purpose of informed consent procedures is simply to avoid deception and coercion, and the ethical justification for informed consent derives from a different ethical principle, which she calls principled autonomy. I argue that contrary to what O’Neill claims, we cannot derive the wrongness of coercion from principled autonomy, and so its credentials as a justification for informed consent procedures is weak. Section 4 argues that we do better to rethink autonomy and informed consent in terms of respecting persons as ends in themselves, and a characteristically liberal commitment to allowing individuals to make certain categories of decisions for themselves. (shrink)

RESUMEN Durante el siglo XVII, el reloj parece el modelo más adecuado para pensar los seres vivos. El filósofo alemán G. W. Leibniz es parte de la tradición mecanicista que concibe los seres vivos a partir del modelo del reloj o de los autómatas, pero establece una distinción esencial entre máquinas naturales y artificiales, que muestra los límites de este modelo. Las primeras son máquinas infinitamente complejas, máquinas dentro de máquinas ad infinitum, las segundas no, alcanzan un límite de complejidad. (...) Esta distinción obliga a ir más allá del reloj como modelo de los seres vivos, pues este modelo resulta insuficiente para comprender la dinámica propia de los seres vivos, en al menos dos aspectos: a) deja sin explicar el origen de la estructura o forma del ser vivo; b) no establece un principio interno de actividad que fundamente la unidad dinámica y estructural del ser vivo. Con su noción de organismo o máquina natural, Leibniz intenta resolver estas insuficiencias del modelo puramente mecánico: a) en su propuesta el ser vivo no se constituye de manera mecánica o serial, sino de una vez, por un acto de creación; b) la conservación del ser vivo en el tiempo sólo es comprensible a partir de un principio de actividad intrínseca que dota de unidad, actividad y estructura al viviente. ABSTRACT During the seventeenth century, the clock seems the most appropriate model for thinking about living beings. The German philosopher G. W. Leibniz, is part of the mechanical tradition that conceives living beings from the clock or the automata’s model, but he establishes an essential distinction between natural and artificial machines. This distinction shows the limits of the mechanical model. The machines of nature are infinitely complex machines, machines within machines ad infinitum; the artificial machines, instead, reach a limit of complexity. This distinction forces us to go beyond the clock as a model of living beings, because this model is insufficient to understand the dynamics of living beings, in at least two aspects: a) it is not able to explain the origin of the living being’s structure or form; b) it does not establish an internal principle of activity grounding the living being’s dynamic and structural unit. With his notion of organism or natural machine, Leibniz tries to solve these insufficiencies of the purely mechanical model: a) in his proposal, the living being is not constituted mechanically or serially, but at once, by an act of creation; b) the conservation of the living being in time is only understandable from a principle of intrinsic activity that provides unity, activity and structure to living beings. (shrink)

The problem of providing mandated medical care has become commonplace as correctional systems in the United States struggle to manage unprecedented increases in its aging prison population. This study explores older incarcerated women’s perceptions of prison health care policies and their day-to-day survival experiences. Aggregate data obtained from a sample of 327 older women residing in prison facilities in five Southern states were used to identify a baseline of health conditions and needs for this vulnerable group. With an average of (...) 4.2 chronic health conditions, frequently histories of victimization, and high rates of mental health issues, the women’s experiences of negotiating health care was particularly challenging. By incorporating the voices of older women, we expose the contradictions, dilemmas, and obstacles they experience in their attempts to obtain health care. It is clear from the personal accounts shared that, despite court mandates, penal harm practices such as delaying or denying medical treatment as well as occasional staff indifferences are common in women’s prisons. With older women having the greatest need for health care, an age- and gender-sensitive approach is recommended. (shrink)

Liberty and freedom are frequently invoked to justify political action. Presidents as diverse as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush have built their policies on some version of these noble values. Yet in practice, idealist agendas often turn sour as they confront specific circumstances on the ground. Demonstrated by incidents at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the pursuit of liberty and freedom can lead to violence and repression, undermining our trust (...) in universal theories of liberalism, neoliberalism, and cosmopolitanism. Combining his passions for politics and geography, David Harvey charts a cosmopolitan order more appropriate to an emancipatory form of global governance. Political agendas tend to fail, he argues, because they ignore the complexities of geography. Incorporating geographical knowledge into the formation of social and political policy is therefore a necessary condition for genuine democracy. Harvey begins with an insightful critique of the political uses of freedom and liberty, especially during the George W. Bush administration. Then, through an ontological investigation into geography's foundational concepts—space, place, and environment—he radically reframes geographical knowledge as a basis for social theory and political action. As Harvey makes clear, the cosmopolitanism that emerges is rooted in human experience rather than illusory ideals and brings us closer to achieving the liberation we seek. (shrink)

Proceedings held May 1989. Topics include temporal logic, hierarchical knowledge bases, default theories, nonmonotonic and analogical reasoning, formal theories of belief revision, and metareasoning. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

As the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology works to encourage greater genuine dialogue among proponents of disparate philosophical positions and traditions related to psychology, I am pleased for the second time in three years to have the opportunity to publish another set of commentaries on a paper previously published in Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology , together with the author's reply. I am also delighted to know that the future of the Journal has been placed in the wise (...) and energetic care of Thomas Teo, but more of that in the announcement to follow. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Critical discussion of Quine's concepts of purely referential occurrence/position. It is argued from the perspective of a Russellian view of truth that existential generalization and substitutivity of identity are non-equivalent tests for referential occurrence/position, and that the former rather than the latter is the appropriate test.