The philosophy of chemistry has emerged in recent years as a new and autonomous field within the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. With the development of this new discipline, Eric Scerri and Grant Fisher's "Essays in the Philosophy of Chemistry" is a timely and definitive guide to all current thought in this field. This edited volume will serve to map out the distinctive features of the field and its connections to the philosophies of the natural sciences and general philosophy of (...) science more broadly. It will be a reference for students and professional alike. Both the philosophy of chemistry and philosophies of scientific practice alike reflect the splitting of analytical and continental scholastic traditions, and some philosophers are turning for inspiration from the familiar resources of analytical philosophy to influences from the continental tradition and pragmatism. While philosophy of chemistry is practiced very much within the familiar analytical tradition, it is also capable of trail-blazing new philosophical approaches. In such a way, the seemingly disparate disciplines such as the "hard sciences" and philosophy become much more linked. (shrink)

This roundtable discussion is based on an online symposium – The Promise of Photography: Scale, Measure and Proportion in a Conflicted Visual Milieu – which took place on 17 September 2021. Since its inception, photography has promised to set things to scale, to grant them measure and proportion, a series of promises that have also entailed moments of irrationality or conflict that persist in and continue to shape the era of global networked digital imaging technologies. The symposium started out (...) from the diagnosis that, whilst photography continues to promise an ordered, proportionate and measured world in which things can be set to their proper scale, it also acts in many ways as an agent of dismeasure, disproportion and the unscalable. In light of this, the roundtable discussion presented here examines a range of different meanings that scale, measure and proportion have accrued in the photographic context and sets out to explore conceptual frameworks and research methodologies through which the current situation might be understood. (shrink)

The ability to reflect on practice is a fundamental component of effective medical practice. In a sector increasingly focused on professionalism and patient-centred care, Developing Reflective Practice is a timely publication providing practical guidance on how to acquire the reflective skills necessary to become a successful clinician. This new title draws from a wide range of theoretical and practical multidisciplinary perspectives to assist students, practitioners and educators in embedding reflection in everyday activities. It also offers structures and ideas for more (...) purposeful and meaningful formal reflections and professional development. Developing Reflective Practice: Focuses on the developing practitioner and their lifelong learning and the development of professional identity through reflection Provides practical how-to information for students, practitioners and educators, including realistic case examples and practice-based hints and tips Examines and explains the theoretical and conceptual approaches to reflective practice, including its models and frameworks"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Do moral facts exist? What would they be like if they did? What does it mean to say that a moral claim is true? What is the link between moral judgement and motivation? Can we know whether something is right and wrong? And is morality a fiction? " Metaethics : An Introduction" presents a very clear and engaging survey of the key concepts and positions in what has become one of the most exciting and influential fields of philosophy. Free from (...) technicality and jargon, this book covers the main ideas that have shaped metaethics from the work of G. E. Moore to the latest thinking. Written specifically for beginning students, this book assumes no prior philosophical knowledge. This book highlights ways to avoid common errors, offers hints and tips on learning the subject, includes a glossary of core terms, and provides guidance for further study. (shrink)

The last twenty years or so have seen a surge of interest in the philosophy of music. However there is comparatively little philosophical literature devoted specifically to songs, singing and vocal music in general. This new collection of essays on the philosophical aspects of song and singing includes articles on the relationship between words and music in songs, the ontology of songs and recordings, meaning in songs, the metaphysics of vocal music in opera and the movies, and the ethical challenges (...) raised in song performance. The essays discuss a large range of examples, including rock, lieder, jazz songs, blues, doo wop, and rap. New essays by leading philosophers of art, including Peter Kivy (on "realistic song" in film), Jerrold Levinson (on jazz singing), Lee B. Brown (on the "minstrel hypothesis" in popular music), and Ted Gracyk (on linguistic pragmatics and song meaning). Papers that offer ground-breaking theories of the appreciation of rock recordings, the ethical implications of popular songs, the ontology of ephemeral artworks, the ontological status of cover versions, and of how a genre of popular music can both express and be a function of its social context papers that challenge existing accounts of much-debated topics, including operatic metaphysics and of the ontology of recorded music. Interdisciplinary essays that cut across aesthetics, philosophy of music, cultural music studies and musicology. Essays that are clearly written and engaging. (shrink)

Programmed cell death (PCD) in unicellular organisms is in some instances an altruistic trait. When the beneficiaries are clones or close kin, kin selection theory may be used to explain the evolution of the trait, and when the trait evolves in groups of distantly related individuals, group or multilevel selection theory is invoked. In mixed microbial communities, the benefits are also available to unrelated taxa. But the evolutionary ecology of PCD in communities is poorly understood. Few hypotheses have been offered (...) concerning the community role of PCD despite its far-reaching effects. The hypothesis we consider here is that PCD is a black queen. The Black Queen Hypothesis (BQH) outlines how public goods arising from a leaky function are exploited by other taxa in the community. Black Queen (BQ) traits are essential for community survival, but only some members bear the cost of possessing them, while others lose the trait In addition, BQ traits have been defined in terms of adaptive gene loss, and it is unknown whether this has occurred for PCD. Our conclusion is that PCD fulfils the two most important criteria of a BQ (leakiness and costliness), but that more empirical data are needed for assessing the remaining two criteria. In addition, we hold that for viewing PCD as a BQ, the original BQH needs to include social traits. Thus, despite some empirical and conceptual shortcomings, the BQH provides a helpful avenue for investigating PCD in microbial communities. (shrink)

The construct of wellbeing has been criticised as a neoliberal construction of western individualism that ignores wider systemic issues such as inequality and anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, there have been increasing calls for a broader conceptualisation of wellbeing. Here we impose an interpretative framework on previously published literature and theory, and present a theoretical framework that brings into focus the multifaceted determinants of wellbeing and their interactions across multiple domains and levels of scale. We define wellbeing as positive psychological experience, (...) promoted by connections to self, community and environment, supported by healthy vagal function, all of which are impacted by socio-contextual factors that lie beyond the control of the individual. By emphasising the factors within and beyond the control of the individual and highlighting how vagal function both affects and are impacted by key domains, the biopsychosocial underpinnings of wellbeing are explicitly linked to a broader context that is consistent with, yet complementary to, multi-levelled ecological systems theory. Reflecting on the reciprocal relationships between multiple domains, levels of scale and related social contextual factors known to impact on wellbeing, our GENIAL framework may provide a foundation for a transdisciplinary science of wellbeing that has the potential to promote the wellbeing of individuals while also playing a key role in tackling major societal challenges. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a global threat to physical and mental health worldwide. Research has highlighted adverse impacts of COVID-19 on wellbeing but has yet to offer insights as to how wellbeing may be protected. Inspired by developments in wellbeing science and guided by our own theoretical framework, we examined the role of various potentially protective factors in a sample of 138 participants from the United Kingdom. Protective factors included physical activity, tragic optimism, gratitude, social support, and nature connectedness. (...) Initial analysis involved the application of one-sample t-tests, which confirmed that wellbeing in the current sample was significantly lower compared to previous samples. Protective factors were observed to account for up to 50% of variance in wellbeing in a hierarchical linear regression that controlled for a range of sociostructural factors including age, gender, and subjective social status, which impact on wellbeing but lie beyond individual control. Gratitude and tragic optimism emerged as significant contributors to the model. Our results identify key psychological attributes that may be harnessed through various positive psychology strategies to mitigate the adverse impacts of hardship and suffering, consistent with an existential positive psychology of suffering. (shrink)

This chapter advances a contextual view of evidence, through a reconsideration of Hempel's paradox of confirmation. The initial view regarding Hempel's paradox is that a non-black non-raven does confirm ‘All ravens are black’, but only in certain contexts. The chapter begins by reformulating the paradox as a puzzle about how the same entity can have variable evidential values for a given proposition. It then offers a three-stage solution to the reformulated paradox. The situation makes better sense when we reach a (...) deeper propositional understanding of evidence, recognising that each entity can be represented in multiple observational propositions. Some anti-contextualist intuitions can be defused by distinguishing two different senses of the word ‘evidence’, one applying to objects or events and the other applying to propositions; only the latter is relevant to inference. A fuller understanding comes from analysing the constitution and use of evidence in terms of epistemic action. These reflections on the ravens paradox suggest a general philosophical framework more suitable for understanding the function of evidence in scientific and everyday practices. (shrink)

Philosophy for Children has enabled schools to engage with what is typically thought of as an ‘academic’ discipline and has provided the opportunity to unlock a rich educational experience for children from a diverse range of backgrounds. A wide range of qualitative and quantitative studies have emerged looking at P4C in terms of the development of students at the social, academic and emotional level. However, while there have been many P4C papers that have ‘teacher’ in the title, these are often (...) about teacher training – including ‘hints and tips’ and curriculum development. Relatively few studies have looked at the effect of teaching P4C on teachers themselves. This paper considers how P4C affects teachers, in particular whether teaching P4C has led teachers to develop new pedagogical approaches, different ways of thinking critically and whether it has changed how they engage with their students, colleagues and their school. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 134-143, January 2022.

One of the earliest issues in cognitive ethology concerned the meaning of animal signals. In the 1970s and 1980s this debate was most active with respect to the question of whether animal alarm calls convey information about the emotional states of animals or whether they “refer” directly to predators in the environment (Seyfarth, Cheney, & Marler 1980; see Radick 2007 for a historical account), but other areas, such as vocalizations about food and social contact, were also widely discussed. In the (...) 1990s, ethologists largely came to a consensus that such calls were “functionally referential” (Evans & Marler 1995) even if they did not satisfy all the semantic requirements imposed by philosophers of language. More recently, though, it has been argued that ethologists should eschew the concept of reference and return to a focus on the affective aspects of animal communication (Rendall & Owren 2002). We propose to take a new look at this debate in the light of recent developments in the philosophy of language under the heading of “Neo-Expressivism” (Bar-On 2004). This view provides two different senses.. (shrink)

That science is more than the unilinear application of general theories to specific empirical circumstances is, one hopes, no longer something that is controversial or requires detailed argument. To be sure, there were times when devising universally applicable theories was seen as the most worthy task of science, with less lofty activities such as experimentation and scientific modeling being relegated to the underbelly of “proper science.” Arguing for a pluralistic recognition of the diversity of scientific practices, methods, and goals, might—at (...) least on the pages of this journal—amount to preaching to the converted. Yet, once the diversity and heterogeneity of science is acknowledged, the real work only starts:... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to engage with the interplay between representational content and design in chemistry and to explore some of its epistemological consequences. Constraints on representational content arising from the aspectual structure of representation can be manipulated by design. Designs are epistemologically important because representational content, hence our knowledge of target systems in chemistry, can change with design. The significance of this claim is that while it has been recognised that the way one conveys information makes a (...) difference to the inferences one can draw from representations in spite of the invariance of informational content, the present paper argues that in chemistry and biochemistry it is often the case that designs have cognitive priority relative to informational content. (shrink)

Focusing on computational studies of pericyclic reactions from the late twentieth century into the twenty-first century, this paper argues that computational diagnostics is a key methodological development that characterize the management and coordination of plural approximation methods in computational organic chemistry. Predictive divergence between semi-empirical and ab initio approximation methods in the study of pericyclic reactions has issued in epistemic dissent. This has resulted in the use of diagnostics to unpack computational greyboxes in order to critically assess the effect of (...) specific misrepresentations on predictive accuracy given that approximations and idealizations must be made to render computational models tractable. Furthermore, benchmarking is used to determine the applicability of approximation methods depending on how accurate the results need to be in a given research context. The epistemology of benchmarking consists of the co-generation of data sets in a hybrid computational–experimental form used to standardize computational methods but does not determine a unique quantitative method to be used across computational organic chemistry. (shrink)

_Arguing about Metaethics_ collects together some of the most exciting contemporary work in metaethics in one handy volume. In it, many of the most influential philosophers in the field discuss key questions in metaethics: Do moral properties exist? If they do, how do they fit into the world as science conceives it? If they don’t exist, then how should we understand moral thought and language? What is the relation between moral judgement and motivation? As well as these questions, this volume (...) discusses a wide range of issues including moral objectivity, truth and moral judgements, moral psychology, thick evaluative concepts and moral relativism. The editors provide lucid introductions to each of the eleven themed sections in which they show how the debate lies and outline the arguments of the papers. _Arguing about Metaethics_ is an ideal resource text for students at upper undergraduate or postgraduate level. (shrink)

It is difficult to place jazz within a philosophy of music dominated by the concepts and practices of classical music. One key puzzle concerns the nature and role, if any, of musical works in jazz. I briefly describe the debate between those who deny that there are musical works in jazz (Kania) and those who affirm that there are such (Dodd and others). I argue that musical works are performed in jazz but that jazz performance of works is very different (...) from performance of classical music works. The first step toward resolving the puzzle is to embrace the descriptive concept of a musical work and reject inappropriate normative concepts of a musical work. In particular, I argue against the accounts of musical works by Kania and Goehr, each of which implies a no-works thesis for jazz performance. I contrast the norms governing work performance in classical music with the practices governing performances of works in jazz, which I call realization or staging. Finally, I propose a model of jazz appreciation that incorporates a role for jazz works and that differs from the appreciation of classical music. (shrink)

Our thesis in this paper is that consideration of Wright’s account of what it is to be judgement-dependent leads us to the conclusion that teaching is judgement dependent. We begin with a consideration of Wright’s account of what it is to be judgement-dependent. We then make the case that teaching satisfies the conditions on what it is to be judgement-dependent. Our intention is not to delve into the independent plausibility of such a view. Our focus is simply on showing the (...) connection between Wright’s account of judgement-dependence and what it is to teach. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the connection between the act of teaching and the imparting of knowledge. Our overarching aim is to demonstrate that the connection between them is less tight than one might suppose. Our stepping off point is a recent paper by David Bakhurst who (on one reading, at least) takes a strong view, opposed to our own. On our reading, Bakhurst argues that there is a tight conceptual connection between teaching and the imparting of knowledge. We argue (...) that this is not the case; the connection does not hold. We then consider several ways we might weaken the alleged conceptual connection between teaching and knowledge, finally considering two ways of severing the conceptual connection altogether, whilst at the same time allowing that much teaching does indeed lead to the imparting of knowledge. We argue that such views are to be preferred. (shrink)

This article introduces an evolving project of visual mapping initiated by Israeli photographers Miki Kratsman and Shabtai Pinchevsky under the title of Anti-Mapping. Placing this critical project in the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict, the article examines how Kratsman and Pinchevsky develop complex, strategic and critically sophisticated approaches to visualizing the conditions that produce victims of violence and that place Palestinian villages under threat of destruction. The article explores their strategic, technical and critical approaches to the difficulties of representing particular (...) contested places in this geopolitical context. (shrink)

Tailored to the Ethics components of AQA Philosophy and OCR Religious Studies. What does pleasure have to do with morality? What role, if any, should intuition have in the formation of moral theory? If something is ‘simulated’, can it be immoral? -/- This accessible and wide-ranging textbook explores these questions and many more. Key ideas in the fields of normative ethics, metaethics and applied ethics are explained rigorously and systematically, with a vivid writing style that enlivens the topics with energy (...) and wit. Individual theories are discussed in detail in the first part of the book, before these positions are applied to a wide range of contemporary situations including business ethics, sexual ethics, and the acceptability of eating animals. A wealth of real-life examples, set out with depth and care, illuminate the complexities of different ethical approaches while conveying their modern-day relevance. -/- This concise and highly engaging resource is tailored to the Ethics components of AQA Philosophy and OCR Religious Studies, with a clear and practical layout that includes end-of-chapter summaries, key terms, and common mistakes to avoid. It should also be of practical use for those studying Philosophy as part of the International Baccalaureate or an introductory Philosophy course at university. -/- Ethics for A-Level is of particular value to students and teachers, but Fisher and Dimmock’s precise and scholarly approach will appeal to anyone seeking a rigorous and lively introduction to the challenging subject of ethics. (shrink)

This interview with the art historian and curator Julian Stallabrass was conducted by Alex Fletcher and Andrew Fisher over the winter of 2022–23. It takes as its point of departure Stallabrass’s recent and large-scale study Killing for Show: Photography, War, and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq (2020), in order to consider the changing ways in which images have been used to both document and to wage war. The interview explores Stallabrass’s central historical contrast between photography in the (...) Iraq and Vietnam Wars. It considers the relative critical values of photojournalism and art in their engagements with violence and what the problems and possibilities of photojournalism tell us about the wider fate of liberal notions of the public sphere. The interview ends by linking these themes in Killing for Show to the photographic mediation of current conflicts and the visual cultures of contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

The question ‘Is it worth it?’, as originally applied to artworks by Tolstoy and here reintroduced by Sheila Lintott, opens a fruitful avenue for understanding land art. It is, however, a question...

In Finite and Infinite Goods, Robert Adams defends his metaphysical account that good is resemblance to God via an ‘open-question’ intuition. It is, however, unclear what this intuition amounts to. I give two possible readings: one based on the semantic framework Adams employs, and another based on Adams's account of humankind's epistemological limitations. I argue that neither of these readings achieves Adams's advertised aim.

Imagine you are a cycling fan and are watching Lance Armstrong decimate his rivals in the time trial up L’Alpe d’Huez. However, before the event ends you are called away from the TV. You quickly put a videotape in and press record. You get time to watch the video the next morning and have successfully avoided finding out the result. Are you as excited about watching the video as you were when you sat down to watch the event on TV? (...) I suggest not. I think this example highlights an interesting topic that has escaped the atten- tion of philosophers of sport. The question I aim to answer in this article is, why are we significantly less interested in watching sport when we believe that we are not watching it at the same time as other people? Obviously, this presupposes an empirical claim, and it is to this that I first address myself. I then consider a number of ways of explaining this phenomenon, all of which I think ultimately fail. I then propose my own tentative explanation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Aesthetic preservationism Aesthetic value The biophilia hypothesis What is an aesthetic response to nature? Perceiving nature as nature Positive aesthetics Mixed and influenced environments Conclusion.

Can we help philosophy students become employable without offending those who say that such a task is not the job of an academic? Can we do this by using the insights from the literature that suggest the most effective way to teach employability is a close link to employers? We are happy to report that the answer is ‘yes.’ In this paper we share what we achieved and why we believe it was effective. We briefly discuss the background and genesis (...) of ‘Communicating Philosophy,’ our employability course. We provide a detailed description of the objectives and content of the lectures and seminars and reflect on how the course was received by students. We then, using the notion of ‘transfer’ and ‘boundary-crossing,’ reflect on why our approach has been successful. We end by discussing some limitations of our course and about how the course might be developed in the future. (shrink)

This article sets out to substantiate an understanding of the photographic image as a constellation of scaled relations, with a focus on the significance of historically neglected questions of scale in and for the present. It explores two recurrent themes in Walter Benjamin’s writings: his celebrated methodological-epistemological concept of constellation and his less often remarked fascination for relationships of scale, processes of scaling and the scale effects these produce. These are investigated in light of the mutable and composite character of (...) the contemporary photographic image and its unprecedented scale as a mass form. Key phenomena and prevalent conceptions of photography are approached as already structured by intercalated facts, operations and experiences of scale, scaling and scalability. On this basis, a constellation of three historical essays that examine questions of scale in photography is constructed. The guiding aim of this construction is that such a constellation might stand as a pre-history of scale and its significance in and for photography today. (shrink)

This article sets out to develop a critical and theoretical interpretation of what scale means in and for photography, an investigation provoked by the expansive character of photography in the context of networked digital culture that also involves questions relating to historical practices and theorisations of photography. Scale has many different meanings in these contexts and these are normally addressed separately in specialised discursive frameworks. This article explores an alternative, namely, that it is its very diversity which gives the clue (...) to what scale means for photography. The article projects a concept of ‘photographic scale’ to delineate the relational form of scale in photography and argues that photographic scale has ontological significance for photography. This concept denotes a ubiquitous, variegated and compound play between differing but necessarily associated scales that inform the spatiotemporality of photography, that allow for its sense as a form of visual representation, that structure its modes of materialisation and that figure significantly in determinations of its global geo-political processes. (shrink)

This article focuses on documents made by the Soviet military secret service detailing the arrest, interrogation, trial and execution of Sergei Tret’iakov in Moscow in 1937. The original documents were published in Russian in 1997 as part of Return my Freedom, a collection of archival records edited by Vladimir Kolyazin that details the fate of Russian and German cultural figures who fell victim to the Stalinist terror. This record of Tret’iakov’s violent death has received little attention, even in Russia or (...) in Russian studies. The book presents facsimiles of 60 separately numbered and dated sheets containing records of Tret’iakov’s arrest and the search of his home. There are two written confessions; a first short admission of guilt and a second longer account of his supposed crimes that also claims parts of the first to be fictitious. These are followed by a transcript of his interrogation, a very brief account of his trial and the even briefer report of his execution. A historical gap separates these from documents of Tret’iakov’s official rehabilitation in 1954 which his wife, Olga Tret’iakov was instrumental in securing. Return my Freedom also contains the record of her arrest, interrogation and release in 1937. The article presents translated extracts from the official record of Tret’iakov’s interrogation and execution for the first time in English, and it explores these documents in relation to core strategies and critical commitments that shaped Tret’iakov’s influential conception of Factography. (shrink)