The discipline of academic philosophy suffers from serious problems of diversity and inclusion whose acknowledgement and amelioration are often resisted by members of our profession. In this paper, I distinguish four main modes of resistance—naiveté, conservatism, pride, and hostility—and describe how and why they manifest by using them as the basis for a typology of types of ‘resister’. This typology can hopefully be useful to those of us trying to counteract such resistance in ways sensitive to the different motives and (...) strategies that these resisters tend to employ. (shrink)

In a commercial society, said Adam Smith, “every man becomes in some measure a merchant.” If Smith is right, what does that mean for the character of the society? This paper addresses the character forming effects of the market—and, specifically its impact on the “virtues.” There is a long tradition of viewing commerce as subversive of the virtues. In this view, the market is held to have legitimated the pursuit of narrow self-interest at the expense of social and civic obligations (...) and moral restraints. But, as Albert Hirschman has shown, many Enlightenment moralists saw commercial society as a moralizing force. Which view is right? This paper examines how many of the character traits that we commonly call virtues are rewarded— and so presumably reinforced and diffused—by the market. In this way, the market (as it were by a hidden hand) strengthens its own foundations and reproduces a moral culture that is functional to its own needs. (shrink)

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 3, Page 193-209, July 2022. This study aimed to explore experiences and practices of key research team members in obtaining informed consent for pharmacogenetics research and to identify the approaches used for enhancing understanding during the consenting process. Data collection involved 15 qualitative, in-depth interviews with key researchers who were involved in obtaining informed consent from HIV infected individuals in Uganda for participation in pharmacogenetic clinical trials. The study explored two prominent themes: approaches used to (...) convey information and enhance research participants’ understanding and challenges faced during the consenting process. Several barriers and facilitators for obtaining consent were identified. Innovative and potentially effective consenting strategies were identified in this study that should be studied and independently verified. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 2, February 2025, Page 140-142.

Wikipedia is a goldmine of information; not just for its many readers, but also for the growing community of researchers who recognize it as a resource of exceptional scale and utility. It represents a vast investment of manual effort and judgment: a huge, constantly evolving tapestry of concepts and relations that is being applied to a host of tasks. This article provides a comprehensive description of this work. It focuses on research that extracts and makes use of the concepts, relations, (...) facts and descriptions found in Wikipedia, and organizes the work into four broad categories: applying Wikipedia to natural language processing; using it to facilitate information retrieval and information extraction; and as a resource for ontology building. The article addresses how Wikipedia is being used as is, how it is being improved and adapted, and how it is being combined with other structures to create entirely new resources. We identify the research groups and individuals involved, and how their work has developed in the last few years. We provide a comprehensive list of the open-source software they have produced. (shrink)

The view that pleasure's value might be merely instrumental has not received much support from philosophers. Indeed, few things seem more clearly to be of intrinsic value than pleasure. However, Matthew Pianalto has provided a sophisticated defense of the purely instrumental view. In this paper I respond to Pianalto's argument. I defend it from some recent criticism, while nevertheless ultimately concluding that it fails.

Bryce, Ian The following are my personal observations based on several visits to public hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. I've also included media reports, and what I've learnt from contacts with interest groups. I recommend others sit in a public hearing for a day, to see the system in action.

Raymond Boudon is the doyen of French sociology. His 2004 book The Poverty of Relativism counters the relativist plague with philosophical, historical, and comparative deconstruction and proposes an alternative: a cognitive notion of values that rehabilitates the notions of reason, correctness, and progress. More surprising is his rehabilitation of moral evolutionism that restores to it a human face. Will his efforts staunch relativism? Some considerations pro and con are offered. Key Words: relativism • reason • truth • morality • social (...) facts. (shrink)