Scientists seeking hard evidence of prayer's curative powers misunderstand the nature of prayer in the Western theistic traditions. Yet theistically consonant ways in which religious belief may influence health do not figure as they should in current professional practice.

Introduction to the Institutional Logics Perspective -- Precursors to the Institutional Logics Perspective -- Defining the Inter-institutional System -- The Emergence, Stability and Change of the Inter-institutional System -- Micro-Foundations of Institutional Logics -- The Dynamics of Organizational Practices and Identities -- The Emergence and Evolution of Field-Level Logics -- Implications for Future Research.

Many authors treat freedom and responsibility as interchangeable and simply apply conclusions about responsibility to freedom. This paper argues that the two are distinct, thus allowing for a “semi-compatibilist” view, on which responsibility but not freedom (in the sense of freedom to do otherwise) is compatible with determinism. It thereby avoids the implausible features of recent compatibilist accounts of freedom without alternative possibilities—as if one could make oneself free just by accepting the limitations on one’s choice. In particular, the paper (...) puts forth two main arguments that responsibility does not imply freedom: an argument from “the stakes,” meaning what is at stake in a given action, or how seriously wrong it is, as affecting responsibility more than freedom, and an argument from temporal standpoint, that responsibility is often assessed from a standpoint farther back in time, when the agent could have taken steps to prevent being unfree later, whereas freedom is typically assessed at the time of action. These arguments are applied to the well-known case of Robert Alton Harris as in Watson (1988), in contrast to a Watsonian account of psychopaths as lacking moral responsibility because of “moral blindness.” Instead, what makes responsibility moral is the reasons for our blame, not necessarily what motivates the agent we take to be blameworthy. (shrink)

Overview -- Locke's internal sense and Kant's changing views -- Personal identity amd its problems -- Rationalist metaphysics of mind -- Consciousness, self-consciousness, and cognition -- Strands of Argument in the Duisburg Nachlass -- A transcendental deduction for a priori concepts -- Synthesis : why and how? -- Arguing for apperception -- The power of apperception -- "I-think" as the destroyer of rational psychology -- Is Kant's theory consistent? -- The normativity objection -- Is Kant's thinker (as such) a free (...) and responsible agent? -- Kant our contemporary. (shrink)

This article presents the results of a qualitative study on the ethical aspects of inclusion practice for radiotherapy patients taking part in clinical research. The study focused on the standards and values of this process. Patients and physicians were interviewed about their views and experiences. Analysis of these interviews showed that candidate research participants need better protection from unwanted factors that could influence their choice about participation. Researchers need proper education about regulation, codes and directives in the field of research (...) ethics, and they should be aware of the underlying ethical concepts of these regulations. A sound institutional ethics policy is necessary in order to guide medical staff in decisions about the inclusion of patients in trials. (shrink)

Inwiefern kann Heidegger in Sein und Zeit seinem Anspruch gerecht werden, die Bewusstseinsphilosophie zu überwinden? 'Dasein' soll als Konzept den Begriff des Subjekts nicht ersetzen, sondern vielmehr die Subjekt-Objekt-Spaltung als solche unterlaufen. So bringt 'In-der-Welt-sein' paradigmatisch zum Ausdruck, dass 'Dasein' immer schon handelnd bei seiner Welt ist und alle epistemologische Reflexion demgegenüber sekundär. Trotzdem kann die Fundamentalontologie als eine Form von Transzendentalphilosophie gedeutet werden. Denn den Anderen als mir äußerlichen, nicht von mir konstituierten zu denken, ist von entscheidender Bedeutung für (...) besagte Intention Heideggers. Dass es ihm nicht gelingt, diese Unabhängigkeit konzeptionell zu fassen, spiegelt sich in den immanenten Problemen der Mitseinsanalyse, die selbst als - explizit im Sinne Kants - transzendentalphilosophische deutbar sind. (shrink)

Banded geckos (Coleonyx variegatus) were trained, at the rate of five daily trials, on eight intradimensional spatial shifts to a criterion of 80% correct per reversal. In contrast to several previously reported failures to obtain reversal learning, Coleonyx demonstrated significant improvement on both errors and trials to criterion. Their reversal performance compares favorably with that of birds and mammals and a common index of reversal ability, the mean total error, did not differentiate between taxa.

This highly readable book is aimed at anyone with an interest in the food they eat. In conversational tone, and avoiding academic jargon, it provides an honest and objective account of the consequences of food consumption choices and policies, through the lens of economics.

The ways in which knowledge relates to power have been much discussed in radical education theory. New emphasis on the role of gender and the growing debate about subjectivity have deepened the discussion, while making it more complex. In Getting Smart , Patti Lather makes use of her unique integration of feminism and postmodernism into critical education theory to address some of the most vital questions facing education researchers and teachers.

This important book proposes a new account of the nature of language, founded upon an original interpretation of Wittgenstein. The authors deny the existence of a direct referential relationship between words and things. Rather, the link between language and world is a two-stage one, in which meaning is used and in which a natural language should be understood as fundamentally a collection of socially devised and maintained practices. Arguing against the philosophical mainstream descending from Frege and Russell to Quine, Davidson, (...) Dummett, McDowell, Evans, Putnam, Kripke and others, the authors demonstrate that discarding the notion of reference does not entail relativism or semantic nihilism. A provocative re-examination of the interrelations of language and social practice, this book will interest not only philosophers of language but also linguists, psycholinguists, students of communication and all those concerned with the nature and acquisition of human linguistic capacities. (shrink)

Increasingly there are calls for climate services to be “co-produced” with users, taking into account not only the basic information needs of users but also their value systems and decision contexts. What does this mean in practice? One way that user values can be incorporated into climate services is in the management of inductive risk. This involves understanding which errors in climate service products would have particularly negative consequences from the users’ perspective (e.g., underestimating rather than overestimating the change in (...) an impact variable) and then prioritizing the avoidance of those errors. This essay shows how inductive risk could be managed in climate services in ways that serve user values and argues that there are both ethical and practical reasons in favor of doing so. (shrink)

In an attempt to determine the epistemic status of computer simulation results, philosophers of science have recently explored the similarities and differences between computer simulations and experiments. One question that arises is whether and, if so, when, simulation results constitute novel empirical data. It is often supposed that computer simulation results could never be empirical or novel because simulations never interact with their targets, and cannot go beyond their programming. This paper argues against this position by examining whether, and under (...) what conditions, the features of empiricality and novelty could be displayed by computer simulation data. I show that, to the extent that certain familiar measurement results have these features, so can some computer simulation results. (shrink)

Abstract:During recent years, the principle and practice of employment-at-will have been under attack. While progress has been made in eroding the practice, the principle still governs the philosophical assumptions underlying employment practices in the United States, and, indeed, EAW has been promulgated as one of the ways to address economic ills in other countries. This paper will briefly review the major critiques of EAW. Given the failure of these arguments to erode the underpinnings of EAW, we shall suggest new avenues (...) for approaching employment issues to achieve the desirable goal of employee dignity and respect. (shrink)

The literature on values in science struggles with questions about how to describe and manage the role of values in scientific research. We argue that progress can be made by shifting this literature’s current emphasis. Rather than arguing about how non-epistemic values can or should figure into scientific assessment, we suggest analyzing how scientific assessment can accommodate non-epistemic values. For scientific assessment to do so, it arguably needs to incorporate goals that have been traditionally characterized as non-epistemic. Building on this (...) insight, we show how the adequacy-for-purpose framework recently developed for assessing scientific models can provide a general framework for describing scientific assessment so that it goes beyond purely epistemic considerations. Adopting this framework has significant advantages and opens the possibility of effecting a partial rapprochement between critics and proponents of the value-free ideal. (shrink)

Wendy S. Parker and I have advanced an inductive-risk approach to the provision of climate information that relies on the contextual values of information users. This approach aims to improve the e...

Three decades ago, James Bogen and James Woodward argued against the possibility and usefulness of scientific explanations of data. They developed a picture of scientific reasoning where stable phenomena were identified via data without much input from theory. Rather than explain data, theories ‘save the phenomena’. In contrast, I argue that there are good reasons to explain data, and the practice of science reveals attempts to do so. I demonstrate that algorithms employed to address inverse problems in remote-sensing applications should (...) be understood as attempts to identify phenomena by explaining the data. Thus, this paper furthers understanding of data-to-phenomena reasoning in science, and demonstrates theory may play a more central role in phenomena identification than previously recognized. (shrink)

Biopolitics and Utopia explores the intersection of biopolitics and utopian thought. As an interdisciplinary work, it addresses many salient biopolitical issues (state and medical interventions in the body, fears over scientific progress, resistance to state biopower, and ethical concerns), while also engaging in the utopian drive behind biopolitical efforts. The book is structured into four main sections: Actions, Speculations, Reactions, and Reflections. The chapters in Actions examine the practices of direct, medical intervention to 'normalize' citizens' bodies. The next section, Speculations, (...) approaches the intersection of utopia and biopolitics through a literary lens, reviewing science fiction texts as expressions of cultural and social fears about scientific progress. Reactions outlines potential acts of resistance in the face of biopower. Finally, Reflections offers a more philosophical essay, which engages the reader in the potential for creating an ethics for scientific standards. (shrink)

Animal welfare is emerging as one of the most controversial issues in modern livestock agriculture. Although consumers can buy free range products in niche markets, some have argued that existing markets cannot solve the animal welfare dilemma because there are individuals who care about animal well-being who do not eat animal products. This paper proposes a market-based solution to at least partially manage animal welfare externalities. After discussing the current lack of market incentives to promote farm animal well-being, a potential (...) scheme to quantify and trade units of farm animal well-being is proposed. The potential merits and efficacy of an animal welfare market are also discussed. (shrink)

Current treatments of practical rationality understand reasons as considerations counting in favor of or against some practical option, treating the positive and the negative case as symmetrical. Typically the focus is on examples of positive reasons. However, I want to shift the spotlight to negative reasons, as making a tighter or more direct link to rationality — and ultimately to morality, which is what much of the current interest in reasons is meant to clarify. Recognizing a positive/negative asymmetry in normative (...) force will let us reconcile the view of moral or other requirements as based on reasons with the denial that reasons as such, even all-thingsconsidered reasons, yield requirements — or as I like to put it, rationally compel. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of a survey of students majoring in STEM fields whose education contained a significant history, philosophy and sociology of science component. The survey was administered to students in a North American public 4-year university just prior to completing their HPS sequence. The survey assessed students’ attitudes towards HPS to gauge how those attitudes changed over the course of their college careers, and to identify the benefits and obstacles to studying HPS as a component of their (...) STEM education. The survey reveals that students generally found unexpected value in taking HPS within their STEM curriculum. It also reveals that framing HPS courses as a means of gaining communication skills necessary to be an influential scientist seems to resonate with students. However, students also identified several factors limiting engagement with HPS content, including the length and density of required readings and assessment via essays and papers. (shrink)

Despite considerable growth in understanding of various aspects of sporting and exercise embodiment over the last decade, in-depth investigations of embodied affectual experiences in running remain limited. Furthermore, within the corpus of literature investigating pleasure and the hedonic dimension in running, much of this research has focused on experiences of pleasure in relation to performance and achievement, or on specific affective states, such as enjoyment, derived after completing a run. We directly address this gap in the qualitative literature on sporting (...) and exercise embodiment by contributing novel insights on the mind-body pleasures of running via focusing analytic attention towards the pleasures recalled by runners as experienced during positive, rewarding running experiences. Applying conceptual insights drawn from sociological phenomenology, we analyse data from an in-depth, event-focused interview study with distance runners who reported positive, rewarding experiences in recent recreational runs. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we present findings in relation to three themes: (1) ‘running feels like it should’; (2) sensory engagements; and (3) time out. The study contributes fresh perspectives, both conceptually and in relation to data-collection approach, to a small literature on the lived experience of pleasure in sport, exercise and physical cultures. (shrink)

How does Kant understand the representation of an empirical self? For Kant, the sources of the representation must be both a priori and a posteriori. Several scholars claim that the a priori part of the ‘self’ representation is supplied by the category of ‘substance,’ either a regular substance (Andrew Chignell), a minimal substance (Karl Ameriks) or a substance analog (Katharina Kraus). However, Kant opens the Paralogisms chapter by announcing that there is a thirteenth ‘transcendental’ concept or category: “We now come (...) to a concept that was not entered in the above general list of transcendental concepts, and that must yet be classed with them … This is the concept – or, if one prefers, the judgment – I think.” (A341/B399). I argue that it is the ‘I think’ that provides the a priori framework for the representation of the empirical self. (shrink)

The Animal Catalyst deals with the 'question' of 'what is an animal' and also in some instances, 'what is a human'? It pushes the critical animal studies in important new directions; it re-examines its basic assumptions, suggests new paradigms for how we can live and function ecologically, in a world that is not simply "ours." It argues that it is not enough to recognise the ethical demands placed upon us by our encounters with animals, or to critique our often murderous (...) treatment of them: this simply reinforces human exceptionalism. Featuring contributions from leading academics, lawyers, artists and activists, the book examines key issues such as: - How "compassion" for animals reinforces ideas of what distinguishes human beings from other animals. - How animal documentaries highlight the problematics of human-based representations of nonhumans. - How speciesism and human centricity are built into the legal system. - How individualist subjectivity works in relation to animals who may not think of themselves in the same way. - How any consideration of animal others must involve a radical deconstruction of our very notion of the "human." This volume is a unique project which stands at the cutting edge of both animal rights philosophies and posthuman/artistic/abstract philosophies of identity. It will be of great interest to undergraduates and researchers in philosophy, ethics, particularly continental philosophy, critical theory and cultural studies. (shrink)

(NB Published in translation as“Hobbes’ theorie der Zivilreligion”, in Dirk Bantl, Rolf Geiger, Stephan Herzberg, eds, Philosophie, Politik und Religion: Klassische Modelle von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. The Hague: de Gruyter, 2013, pp. 117-132. ABSTRACT: Hobbes's Epicureanism was a house of many mansions. Under the banners of antiquity he could flag modern positions on religion that if openly presented as such would have made him liable to charges of heresy or blasphemy, given the censorship of the modern state. But (...) Hobbes's Epicureanism was also serious and there are important continuities, doctrinal and political, between ancient and modern Epicureanism. (shrink)

Vaesen infers unique properties of mind from the appearance of specific cultural innovation – a correlation without causal direction. Shifts in habitat, population density, and group dynamics are the only independently verifiable incentives for changes in cultural practices. The transition from Acheulean to Late Stone Age technologies requires that we consider how population and social dynamics affect cultural innovation and mental function.

The papers from the 2000 symposium of the Royal Society of Canada explore the crucial relationship between science and ethics.

In this innovative study Patricia Kitcher argues that we can only understand the deduction of the categories in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in terms of his attempt to fathom the psychological prerequisites of thought. Thus a consideration of his conception of psychology is essential to an understanding of his philosophy. Kitcher specifically considers Kant's claims about the unity of the thinking self; the spatial forms of human perceptions; the relations among mental states necessary for them to have content; (...) the relations between perceptions and judgment; and the limits of philosophical insight into psychological processes. (shrink)

How the science of probabilistic extreme event attribution might inform climate change adaptation is hotly debated. Central to these debates is an understanding that event attribution’s backward-lo...

This study used historical research methodology to assess the work of US nurses caring for patients with cancer from 1920 to 1950. Primary sources, obtained from several US archives, included nursing procedure books, student nurses’ lecture notes, hospital and nursing annual reports, and meeting minutes. Secondary sources included journal articles and textbooks. The aim was to document the clinical work of nurses caring for patients with cancer and assess this work for evidence of emerging specialization in cancer nursing. Following a (...) review of cancer in the 1920s, nursing education specific to cancer, nursing care related to specific cancer therapies, and the practice of concealing a diagnosis of cancer, were examined. Nurses were consistently educated in cancer nursing, but their cancer education became more focused over the decades. Nurses were closely involved with cancer patients as they monitored their patients’ radium or assisted patients following radical surgery. The issue of concealing the diagnosis of cancer was problematic to some nurses. This paper reveals the nature of nurses’ hospital work with cancer patients and demonstrates a core body of cancer nursing knowledge. The emergence of cancer nursing as a specialty is presented. (shrink)