本研究对中国传统文化核心命题“儒道互补”进行了批判性的去神圣化解构。长期以来，儒道互补被视为中国人的生存智慧，即“达则兼济天下，穷则独善其身”。然而，本研究指出，在现代权力场与职场语境下，这一模式已异 化为一种极其精密的“精神套利策略”。 -/- 其核心逻辑在于：个体通过在儒家的“秩序服从”与道家的“消极解脱”之间进行无缝切换，构建了一套低风险、高收益的心理避险机制。在权力扩张期，儒家被工具化为获取资源与道德优越感的入场券；在责任承担期，道家则 被矮化为逃避公共契约与制度纠偏的解压阀。这种“双重变色龙”式的机会主义，本质上消解了真理的彻底性与道德的刚性。 -/- 研究进一步发现，儒道互补形成了一个封闭的心理回路，导致了文明的“热寂”现象：它通过虚假的“圆融”修辞掩盖了社会结构的根本矛盾，阉割了原本具有解构力量的批判精神。这种文化性格不仅制造了现代职场中广泛存在 的精致利己主义与犬儒色彩，更在根本上阻碍了契约精神与法治思维的建立。本文主张，必须击碎这种伪善的二元博弈，重建具有现代性特征的、不可交易的人格尊严与批判锋芒。 -/- This study conducts a critical de-sacralizing deconstruction of the core proposition of traditional Chinese culture, the “Confucian–Daoist complement.” For a long time, this complement has been regarded as the wisdom of Chinese survival, encapsulated in the maxim: “When successful, one benefits the world; when unsuccessful, one cultivates oneself.” However, this study argues that within the context of modern power structures and workplace environments, this model has degenerated into an alienated “spiritual arbitrage strategy.” -/- Its (...) core logic lies in the seamless switching between Confucian “obedience to order” and Daoist “passive detachment,” through which individuals construct a low-risk, high-return psychological hedging mechanism. During phases of power expansion, Confucianism is instrumentalized as a ticket for acquiring resources and moral superiority; during phases of responsibility-bearing, Daoism is reduced to a pressure-release valve for evading public contracts and institutional correction. This “dual-chameleon” opportunism fundamentally dissolves the integrity of truth and the rigidity of morality. -/- The study further finds that the Confucian–Daoist complement forms a closed psychological loop, leading to a phenomenon of civilizational “heat death”: it conceals the fundamental contradictions of social structures through a false rhetoric of “harmonious integration,” while castrating the critical spirit that originally possessed deconstructive power. This cultural disposition not only produces the refined egoism and pervasive cynicism in modern workplaces, but also fundamentally obstructs the establishment of contractual spirit and rule-of-law thinking. This paper argues that this hypocritical dualistic game must be shattered, and a modern personality characterized by inalienable dignity and critical sharpness must be reconstructed. -/- . (shrink)

This paper reexamines the ontology of the divine in Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion whose cosmology and ritual life challenge the monotheistic assumptions that continue to shape philosophy of religion. Responding to what I call the legitimation trap—the strategy of securing intellectual respectability for African and Afro-diasporic traditions by assimilating them to Western monotheistic norms—I argue that Candomblé articulates a hierarchical polytheism grounded in graded immanence. Drawing on mythic narratives as well as ritual practices of possession, sacrifice, and initiation, I (...) show that divine agency in Candomblé is distributed across multiple autonomous beings whose cooperation sustains the cosmos. This structure of multi-devotionalism reveals a metaphysics in which vitality (axé) circulates through relations among deities, humans, and material elements. Candomblé’s spiritual ontology thus calls for a philosophical shift from theology and ontology to what may be termed entitology: a study of relational co-constitution and participation. The paper concludes by proposing that decolonizing philosophy of religion requires engaging such Afro-diasporic grammars of divinity as sources of metaphysical insight rather than as objects of comparative classification. (shrink)

China’s involvement in Chile’s transport sector has prompted both optimism and concern about potential risks that such involvement could bring about. Relying on a mixed-method approach encompassing quantitative and qualitative analyses, this chapter explores Chinese investment dynamics in Chile’s transport sector, evaluating its implications for Chile’s economic growth, as well as Latin America’s and China’s. Attention is paid to the relevance of bilateral political and economic engagements, market policies, infrastructure governance, institutional building, and China’s technological prowess for the lasting success (...) of such investments. The chapter argues that China’s investment in and strategy for the Chilean transport sector have potential to satisfy Chile’s requirements and open avenues for economic growth. Moreover, it contends that Chile’s infrastructure governance and institution building efforts help mitigate concerns surrounding Chinese investments, effectively averting the pitfalls associated with potential sovereignty-related debt distress. (shrink)

The entire approach of neoclassical economics focuses on proving the existence, uniqueness, and stability of the general equilibrium system and its properties concerning welfare. Ever since, the resulting topological structure shaped the construction of the theories of the firm and consumer choice, in a way that the emergence of an excess demand function was consistent with the equilibrium. Thus, whenever the observation (theoretical or practical) does not fit in the aforementioned system, it is considered a “market failure.” This, besides being (...) an abhorrent concept, gives rise to government intervention, which ultimately fosters the advance of socialism. (shrink)

The ban today on “population talk” (Diana Coole) by the liberal western traditions as unethical has the inverse effect in a post-‘tipping point’ world defined by future population culls of peripheries. It turns out that this ban not only advances the outcome the liberal tradition would most avoid but blinds it from seeing what is now underway before its eyes—a ‘species split’ engineered by the hyper-elite with one eye to the coming climate catastrophism. It turns out that the ban conceals (...) that the western anthropos had from the first been defined as arche-eugenicist and extinctivist. This in turn illuminates the puzzling non-response of global leadership to the prospect of irreversible ecocide. (shrink)

In this paper, we relate the philosophical literature on pessimism traps to information cascades, a formal model derived from the economics and mathematics literature. A pessimism trap is a social pattern in which individuals in a community, in situations of uncertainty, copy the sub-optimal actions of others, despite their individual beliefs. This maps nicely onto the concept of an information cascade, which involves a sequence of agents making a decision between two alternatives, with a private signal of the superior (...) alternative and a public history of others’ actions. Key results from the economics literature show that information cascades occur with probability one in many contexts, and depending on the strength of the signal, populations can fall into the incorrect cascade very easily and quickly. Once formed, in the absence of external perturbation, a cascade cannot be broken – therefore, we derive an intervention that can be used to nudge a population from an incorrect to a correct cascade and, importantly, maintain the cascade once the subsidy is discontinued. We extend this to the case of multiple communities, each of which might have a different optimal action, and a government providing subsidies that cannot discriminate between communities and does not know which action is optimal for each. We study this both theoretically and empirically. (shrink)

A 'social trap' is a situation where individuals, groups or organisations are unable to cooperate owing to mutual distrust and lack of social capital, even where cooperation would benefit all. Examples include civil strife, pervasive corruption, ethnic discrimination, depletion of natural resources and misuse of social insurance systems. Much has been written attempting to explain the problem, but rather less material is available on how to escape it. In this book, Bo Rothstein explores how social capital and social trust (...) are generated and what governments can do about it. He argues that it is the existence of universal and impartial political institutions together with public policies which enhance social and economic equality that creates social capital. By introducing the theory of collective memory into the discussion, Rothstein makes an empirical and theoretical claim for how universal institutions can be established. (shrink)

Taking cognisance of the social and linguistic power of trap music and its song lyrics as crucial avenues for language use in society, this study set out to conduct a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of selected song lyrics of Black Sherif. The study synergised Wmatrix and a socio-cognitive approach to CDA to interpret the song lyrics. The analyses revealed three linguistic strategies: (a) pronouns; (b) Ghanaian Student Pidgin; and (c) metaphors in the song lyrics that served as a means of (...) empowering the youth to survive and strive for success despite social and psychological aggressions in life. Also, the individualistic self-representation in the song lyrics included plural identities of people who share a common experience of struggle, pain, survival, and self-empowerment. Finally, the study highlighted crucial societal issues, such as economic hardship and social injustice, that may otherwise be overlooked or underrepresented in mainstream media or academia. Based on these findings, the study provides recommendations for practice and further research. (shrink)

We live in a world of crowds and corporations, artworks and artifacts, legislatures and languages, money and markets. These are all social objects — they are made, at least in part, by people and by communities. But what exactly are these things? How are they made, and what is the role of people in making them? In The Ant Trap, Brian Epstein rewrites our understanding of the nature of the social world and the foundations of the social sciences. Epstein (...) explains and challenges the three prevailing traditions about how the social world is made. One tradition takes the social world to be built out of people, much as traffic is built out of cars. A second tradition also takes people to be the building blocks of the social world, but focuses on thoughts and attitudes we have toward one another. And a third tradition takes the social world to be a collective projection onto the physical world. Epstein shows that these share critical flaws. Most fundamentally, all three traditions overestimate the role of people in building the social world: they are overly anthropocentric. Epstein starts from scratch, bringing the resources of contemporary metaphysics to bear. In the place of traditional theories, he introduces a model based on a new distinction between the grounds and the anchors of social facts. Epstein illustrates the model with a study of the nature of law, and shows how to interpret the prevailing traditions about the social world. Then he turns to social groups, and to what it means for a group to take an action or have an intention. Contrary to the overwhelming consensus, these often depend on more than the actions and intentions of group members. (shrink)

Some philosophers are metaphilosophical deflationists for metasemantic reasons. These theorists take standard philosophical assertions to be defective in some manner. There are various versions of metasemantic metaphilosophical deflationism, but a trap awaits any global version of it: metasemantics itself is a part of philosophy, so in deflating philosophy these theorists have thereby deflated the foundation of their deflationism. The present article discusses this issue and the prospects for an adequate response to the trap. Contrary to most historical responses, (...) the article argues that the best response to the trap is to adopt a local but still pervasive metasemantic deflationism. Such a response might seem ad hoc, but the article argues that the human activity of philosophy isn't a natural kind, and that a heterogeneous metaphilosophy of the appropriate kind is well motivated. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study is part of a major study about difficulties in communicating ethical problems within and among professional groups working in hemodialysis care. Describing experiences of ethically difficult situations that induce a troubled conscience may raise consciousness about ethical problems and thereby open the way to further reflection.The aim of this study was to illuminate the meanings of being in ethically difficult situations that led to the burden of a troubled conscience, as narrated by physicians working in dialysis care.MethodA phenomenological (...) hermeneutic method was used to analyze the transcribed narrative interviews with five physicians who had varying lengths of experience in nephrology.ResultsThe analysis shows that physicians working in hemodialysis care suffered from a troubled conscience when they felt torn by conflicting demands and trapped in irresolution. They faced ethical dilemmas where they were forced to make crucial decisions about life or death, or to prioritize when squeezed between time restraints and professional and personal demands. In these ethical dilemmas the physicians avoided arousing conflicts, were afraid of using their authority, were burdened by moral responsibility and felt devalued and questioned about their way of handling the situation. The findings point to another way of encountering ethical dilemmas, being guided by their conscience. This mean sharing the agony of deciding how to act, being brave enough to bring up the crucial problem, feeling certain that better ways of acting have not been overlooked, being respected and confirmed regarding decisions made.ConclusionThe meanings of being in ethically difficult situations that led to the burden of a troubled conscience in those working in hemodialysis care, indicate the importance of increasing the level of communication within and among various professional groups - to transform being burdened by a troubled conscience into using conscience as a guide - in situations where no way of solving the problem seems to be good. (shrink)

What is the value of intellectual playfulness? Traditional characterizations of the ideal thinker often leave out playfulness; the ideal inquirer is supposed to be sober, careful, and conscientiousness. But elsewhere we find another ideal: the laughing sage, the playful thinker. These are models of intellectual playfulness. Intellectual playfulness, I suggest, is the disposition to try out alternate belief systems for fun – to try on radically different perspectives for the sheer pleasure of it. But what would the cog-nitive value be (...) of such playfulness? I suggest that intellectual playfulness function as, at the very least, a kind of intellectual insurance policy against epistemic traps. An epistemic trap is a belief system that re-directs good-faith inquiry to bad results. Am epistemic trap manipulates background beliefs to fend off contrary evidence. For example, a conspiracy theory might include a set of beliefs about how the mainstream media has been taken over by some vicious cabal. Normal epistemic attempts will be captured by a well-wrought epistemic trap, because normal attempts at inquiry are guided by these background beliefs -- which set what counts as a plausible path to explore, and what is implausible or beyond the pale. And a clever epistemic trap will manipulate those background beliefs for ill effect. Intellectual playfulness, on the other hand, isn’t motivated by an epistemic interest in the truth, but in the sheer pleasure of intellectual exploration. Since intellectual playfulness isn’t oriented towards the truth, it won’t be constrained by an agent’s background beliefs – it won’t, for example, prefer to investigate apparently more plausible pathways. Intellectual playfulness offers an opportunity to escape from epistemic traps. But intellectual playfulness has its own limitations. It will only drive us to explore belief systems when that exploration is fun. What we need is an array of differently-motivated exploratory tendencies – empathy, curiosity, playfulness – each of which will each cover for the others’ limitations. (shrink)

Cryonics is the practice of cryopreserving the bodies or brains of legally dead individuals with the hope that these individuals will be reanimated in the future. A standard argument for cryonics says that cryonics is prudentially justified despite uncertainty about its success because at worst it will leave you no worse off than you otherwise would have been had you not chosen cryonics, and at best it will leave you much better off than you otherwise would have been. Thus, it (...) is a good, no-risk bet; in game-theoretic terms, cryonics is a weakly dominant strategy relative to refraining from utilizing cryonics. I object to this argument for two reasons. First, I argue that there is a practically relevant chance that cryonics will put you into an inescapable and very bad situation. Hence, cryonics is neither a no-risk bet nor a weakly dominant strategy. Second, I argue that the experience of being reanimated and living in the distant future would likely be transformative, and this likelihood undermines your justification for thinking that reanimation would be beneficial to you. I conclude that the standard argument does not show that cryonics is prudentially justified. (shrink)

This article focuses on three “traps” that must be addressed in the conversation concerning the creation, justification, and implementation of policies aimed at managing the adverse consequences of climate change. The first trap is terminological, involving the frequent conflation within climate research of the concepts “environment” – which is material, sensory, and local – and “climate” – which is abstract, statistical, and global. The second trap is transactional, characterized by the subordination of moral actions to the requirements of (...) utilitarian logic: ethically right is only that which produces a measurable effect on emissions. The third is the teleonomic trap, highlighting one of the most evident contradictions of the contemporary world: climate sustainability comes into conflict with the pursuit of development and prosperity, both at the individual and societal lev. (shrink)

We have compared two different laser-induced optical light traps for their utility in moving organelles within living animal cells and walled fungal cells. The first trap employed a continuous wave neodymium-yttrium aluminum garnet laser at a wavelength of 1.06 micron. A second trap was constructed using a titanium-sapphire laser tunable from 700 to 1000 nm. With the latter trap we were able to achieve much stronger traps with less laser power and without damage to either mitochondria or (...) spindles. Chromosomes and nuclei were easily displaced, nucleoli were separated and moved far away from interphase nuclei, and Woronin bodies were removed from septa. In comparison, these manipulations were not possible with the Nd-YAG laser-induced trap. The optical force trap induced by the tunable titanium-sapphire laser should find wide application in experimental cell biology because the wavelength can be selected for maximization of force production and minimization of energy absorption which leads to unwanted cell damage. (shrink)

LARSEN A‐C. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 334–344 Trappings of technology: casting palliative care nursing as legal relationsCommunity palliative care nurses in Perth have joined the throng of healthcare workers relying on personal digital assistants (PDAs) to store, access and send client information in ‘real time’. This paper is guided by Heidegger’s approach to technologies and Habermas’ insights into the role of law in administering social welfare programs to reveal how new ethical and legal understandings regarding patient information add to nursing’s (...) professional responsibilities. This qualitative research interprets data from interviews with twenty community palliative care nurses about clients’ legal rights to informational privacy and confidentiality. It explores nurses’ views of their nursing responsibilities regarding clients’ legal rights, liability issues, bureaucratic monitoring and enforcement procedures. It concludes that nurses and clients are construed as legal subjects entrenched in legal relations that have magnified since these nurses began using PDAs in 2005/2006. (shrink)

Responding to comments by Ben Fine in relation to the concept of the degree of separation among workers, this article argues that Fine confuses Marx’s levels of analysis and thus cannot distinguish between necessity and contingency; fails to grasp the problematic character of Marx’s discussion of relative surplus-value once we remove the assumption of a given standard of necessity; and accordingly remains trapped in a ‘Ricardian Box’ that Marx himself was able to escape.

Responding to comments by Ben Fine in relation to the concept of the degree of separation among workers, this article argues that Fine (a) confuses Marx’s levels of analysis and thus cannot distinguish between necessity and contingency; (b) fails to grasp the problematic character of Marx’s discussion of relative surplus-value once we remove the assumption of a given standard of necessity; and (c) accordingly remains trapped (like so many others) in a ‘Ricardian Box’ that Marx himself was able to escape.

An experimental realization of quantum computers is composed of two or more calcium ions trapped in a magnetic quadripole. Information is transferred to and read from the ions by means of structured lasers that interact with the ions’ vibration pattern, causing changes of energy distribution in their electronic structure. Departing from an initial state when the ions are cooled, the use of lasers modifies the internal state of one ion that is entangled with the others, then changing the collective states. (...) In such quantum computers, some of the physically possible electronic states are avoided or not taken into consideration, to force the system to work as a binary device. In this essay, we discuss the dynamics that the ions could spontaneously display and its possible implications for the principles of computational logics. (shrink)

In this article, I explore difficult and sensitive questions regarding the nature of transgender identity claims and the appropriate medical treatment for those suffering from gender dysphoria. I first analyze conceptions of transgender identity, highlighting the prominence of the wrong-body narrative and its dualist presuppositions. I then briefly argue that dualism is false because our bodily identity is essential and intrinsic to our overall personal identity and explain why a sound, nondualist anthropology implies that gender identity cannot be entirely divorced (...) from sexual identity. Finally, I make the case that arguments in favor of hormonal and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria rest on this mistaken dualist anthropology, and that these treatments therefore give false hope to those suffering from gender dysphoria, while causing irreversible bodily harm and diverting attention from underlying psychological problems that often need to be addressed. I also briefly discuss how these philosophical claims relate to empirical studies on the outcomes of hormonal and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria and to testimonies of transgender individuals who regret having undergone these treatments. (shrink)

The ethical debate posed by the development of digital twins (DT) is entering new territory with the recent publication by Guerrero Quiñones and Puzio, which reflects on how trans identities can engage with DT.1 Although we appreciate their careful engagement with queer phenomenology and feminist bioethics literature, two critical words are missing from their paper: systemic oppression and resistance. Failing to discuss these concepts seems to reproduce practices of idealisation in medical ethics. As Mills points out, remaining silent about oppression (...) often leads to minimal or no discussion of real historical injustices and their present-day consequences, or of ongoing forms of oppression.2 Moreover, idealised rhetoric can cast conceptual shade on philosophically significant practices of resistance and undermine a proper understanding of it within social movements. Let us begin by concisely addressing the contours of oppression as it is often conceptualised in feminist philosophical literature. The concept is generally understood as arising from extensive involvement in social institutions and associated norms that collectively generate relationships of domination and marginalization among different groups. As Young defines it, “oppression refers to the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and …. (shrink)

Since intelligent design (ID) advocates claimed the ubiquitous mouse trap as an example of systems that cannot have evolved, mouse trap history is doubly relevant to studying material culture. On the one hand, debunking ID claims about mouse traps and, by implication, also about other irreducibly complex systems has a high educational value. On the other hand, a case study of mouse trap history may contribute insights to the academic discussion about material culture evolution. Michael Behe argued (...) that mouse traps cannot trap mice with any part missing; therefore, they cannot have a precursor with one part less, therefore, cannot have a continuous history, and therefore, cannot have evolved. The patented and seminal precursor of current flat snap traps, however, had one part less, because spring and striker were formed of one wire. Secondly, historical records that reach back into the Bronze Age suggest that its history continued for a very long time. Thirdly, all prerequisites for evolution (variation, transmission, and selection) abound in mouse trap populations. Hence, Behe’s triple-jump conclusion about mouse traps is false each step. There is no, in principle, impossibility for mouse traps to evolve. An evolutionary account of mouse trap history also has academic merits beyond its educational value. Three important conclusions can be drawn: (1) reticulate phylogenies of artifact systems may be resolvable as overlapping, but branching, phylogenies of parts; (2) homologous ideas may be realized by analogous material, that is, phylogenies of information do not necessarily coincide with those of material parts; (3) recombination of parts between different artifact systems increases the cumulative nature of cultural evolution. (shrink)

Poverty has traditionally been conceived of as a state of deprivation. To be poor is to lack something essential to human flourishing. How that something is understood—in terms of welfare, resources, or capabilities—and how it is measured—in absolute terms or relative to a social standard—has been the subject of much debate within the development literature. In this paper, I put forward an account of poverty rooted in the philosophy of action. I argue that poverty essentially involves being in a context (...) in which a reasonable agent’s future-directed agency is systemically undermined. Centering this dimension of poverty allows us to attend to aspects of poverty that are easily overlooked on existing accounts. (shrink)

The escape from the ‘Malthusian trap’ is shown to tend to generate in a rather systematic way quite serious political upheavals. Some demographic structural mechanisms that generate such upheavals have been analyzed, which has made it possible to develop a mathematical model of the respective processes. The forecast of political instability in Sub-Saharan African countries in 2015– 2050 produced on the basis of this model is presented.

The Liberalism Trap identifies a methodological problem in contemporary political theory: focus on liberalism has become an interpretive custom directing engagements with politics. Though scholars have long analysed the meaning, merits, successes or failings of liberalism, little attention is paid to how such preoccupations shape the way we study political questions and texts. Evaluating the effects of these preoccupations is what motivate the book. To interrogate those effects, Philips turns to John Stuart Mill-the so-called father of modern liberalism. As (...) she argues, Mill's canonical status as a liberal is habitually substituted for his political arguments such that the now standard association of Mill with liberalism conditions how and why he is read. Offering a comparative reading of Mill's proposals concerning gender, class, and empire, Philips instead recovers a thinker motivated not by ideological certainties, but by a politics of uncertainty. In so doing, she draws into view the complex strategies that Mill employs across his work on domestic and imperial questions, strategies obscured by his liberal mantle. Her recovery of Mill's uncertain politics sets into relief the interpretive costs of reading through liberalism. That even the paradigmatic liberal is unduly constrained by this label ought to give us pause. Taking a break from liberalism, Philips shows that we gain a more nuanced account of Mill's politics, and critical and evaluative distance from our own customs of interpretation. With these interventions, The Liberalism Trap integrates an innovative reading of a canonical thinker with a methodological critique of interpretive practices in contemporary political theory. (shrink)

Virtue theories can plausibly be argued to have important advantages over normative ethical theories which prescribe a strict impartialism in moral judgment, or which neglect people’s special roles and relationships. However, there are clear examples of both virtuous and vicious partiality in people’s moral judgments, and virtue theorists may struggle to adequately distinguish them, much as proponents of other normative ethical theories do. This paper first adapts the “expanding moral circle” concept and some literary examples to illustrate the difficulty of (...) adequately distinguishing virtuous from vicious partiality. Later sections aim to show how an adequate philosophical ethics will be able to both a) attribute virtue (and hence praiseworthiness) to agents whose actions may directly serve only their special interests, roles, or special relationships; and b) attribute vice (and hence censure) where an agent’s attitudes and/or actions mirror known personal biases (for instance, an egoistic attitude) or social biases (for instance, and ethnocentric attitude). This dual ability leaves space for much virtuous partiality, while also reflecting a “risk-aware” approach, recognizing the deleterious consequences of our human penchant for constructing and imbuing moral significance to oftentimes factitious us/them dichotomies. (shrink)

This article develops two skeptical arguments targeting our inherently testimonial beliefs—beliefs we cannot confirm or disconfirm independently. I first examine a “mildly” skeptical argument introduced by Keith DeRose, which holds that I cannot know that the Bulls won last night from reading about it in the newspaper because I cannot know that the report is not mistaken. I argue that the most plausible response is that people are justified in trusting sources that are well-reputed in their community. However, this response (...) opens the way for a second, more radically skeptical argument: I cannot know much of what I take myself to know through testimony because I cannot know that I am not trapped in a community in which untrustworthy sources enjoy a good reputation and trustworthy ones do not. After critically examining three general strategies to resist this second argument, I argue that none succeeds and that the best reply is instead to reject epistemological individualism for epistemological communitarianism. According to communitarians, if an individual’s inherently testimonial beliefs amount at all to knowledge, it is only in a derivative sense—it is because they belong to a community whose shared evidence grounds knowledge that no individual member could possess independently. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The construct of moral injury is usually utilized to understand cases in which individuals perform or witness actions they consider morally wrong. In this paper, we suggest the construct of moral trap, which entails circumstances in which teachers face pressure to act but are unable to simultaneously meet the demands of care, justice, and truthfulness because of systemic conditions. Using grounded theory, we present the analysis of ten semi-structured interviews with teachers from four U.S. states. We found three (...) different types of entrapment: teachers attempting to enact and/or advocate for social justice, attempting to care for their families, and attempting to care for their professional identities. Implications for teacher education include a need to prepare teachers for navigating multiple moral demands and for coordinating with other teachers to advocate for social change. Implications for policy include a need to provide greater wrap-around supports for educational equity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The construct of moral injury is usually utilized to understand cases in which individuals perform or witness actions they consider morally wrong. In this paper, we suggest the construct of moral trap, which entails circumstances in which teachers face pressure to act but are unable to simultaneously meet the demands of care, justice, and truthfulness because of systemic conditions. Using grounded theory, we present the analysis of ten semi-structured interviews with teachers from four U.S. states. We found three (...) different types of entrapment: teachers attempting to enact and/or advocate for social justice, attempting to care for their families, and attempting to care for their professional identities. Implications for teacher education include a need to prepare teachers for navigating multiple moral demands and for coordinating with other teachers to advocate for social change. Implications for policy include a need to provide greater wrap-around supports for educational equity. (shrink)

En este trabajo propongo que la experiencia estética del trap posee una capacidad influencial que se realiza a través de la narrativa de la acción que ofrece el fearless speech. Este discurso se da desde un modo de existencia inferior y es capaz de contar la verdad de la realidad del sujeto. Dicha acción implica reconfigurar el mundo a través de la narrativa que parte desde un llegar a ser o becoming. Esta reconfiguración a su vez supone la reconfiguración (...) de las posibilidades de acción reales del sujeto que es posible a través de la creación de la obra en el mundo y la experiencia estética de la obra. Esto implica una estética existencial de la resistencia que parte del cuidado de uno mismo y las acciones en el mundo que se establecen con relación a otros. Propongo que es en este último punto en el que convergen algunos planteamientos de Paul Ricoeur, Michel Foucault y Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

This paper introduces the contradiction trap: a dialectical and game-theoretic method for exposing concealed asymmetry in institutional and algorithmic reasoning. By forcing a system to reconcile mutually exclusive commitments, the trap converts inconsistency into evidence — a falsifiable signal of structural bias, motivated deviation, or narrative drift. -/- The framework models contradiction as an epistemic game with informational payoffs, providing a portable diagnostic for systems that claim impartiality but behave otherwise. It bridges philosophical logic, applied audit design, and (...) adversarial reasoning, showing how contradiction can be operationalised as a test of legitimacy rather than a purely logical artefact. -/- This paper constitutes the first work in a planned trilogy on evidential integrity, establishing the epistemic foundations for procedural and institutional models to follow. -/- Keywords: contradiction; epistemic game theory; evidential reasoning; structural bias; motivated asymmetry; governance integrity; algorithmic accountability; dialectical logic; audit design; fairness diagnostics; philosophy of technology; adversarial evaluation. (shrink)

This study investigates the impact of stress, anxiety, and amotivation on procrastination and academic dishonesty among undergraduate business students. It further explores how amotivation and procrastination mediate the relationships between negative emotions—specifically stress and anxiety—and academic dishonesty. Adopting a cross-sectional survey design, data were collected from 179 undergraduate students enrolled in private universities in Malaysia using a snowball sampling method. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results indicate that stress and anxiety significantly predict both (...) amotivation and procrastination. Procrastination, in turn, has a notable effect on academic dishonesty. Amotivation fully mediates the relationship between stress, anxiety, and academic dishonesty, and partially mediates the relationship between stress, anxiety, and procrastination. This study uniquely integrates emotion regulation theory and temporal motivation theory to examine the roles of stress, anxiety, and amotivation as antecedents of procrastination, and ultimately academic dishonesty—an area that has received limited attention in prior research. The identified chain of relationship—spanning stress, anxiety, amotivation, procrastination, and academic dishonesty—offers novel insights into the dynamics of academic misconduct. By emphasizing the mediating roles of amotivation and procrastination, this study provides practical recommendations for mitigating academic dishonesty and promoting academic integrity among students. (shrink)

Current sociology of knowledge tends to take for granted Robert K. Merton’s theory of cumulative advantage: successful ideas bring recognition to their authors, successful authors have their ideas recognized more easily than unknown ones. This article argues that this theory should be revised via the introduction of the differential between the status of an idea and that of its creator: when an idea is more important than its creator, the latter becomes identified with the former, and this will hinder recognition (...) of the intellectual’s new ideas as they differ from old ones in their content or style. Robert N. Bellah’s performance during the “civil religion debate” of the 1970s is reconstructed as an example of how this mechanism may work. Implications for further research are considered in the concluding section. (shrink)

Disparities in lending to minority applicants persist even as algorithmic lending practices proliferate. Further, disparities in interest rates charged can remain large even when loan applicants from different groups are equally creditworthy. We study the role of risk-management constraints, specifically Value-at-Risk (VaR) constraints, in the persistence of segregation in loan approval decisions. We develop a formal model in which a mainstream (low-interest) bank is more sensitive to variance risk than a subprime (high-interest) bank. If the mainstream bank has an inflated (...) prior belief about the variance of the minority group, it may deny that group credit indefinitely, thus never learning the true risk of lending to that group, while the subprime lender serves this population at higher rates. We formalize this as a “subprime trap” equilibrium. Finally, we show that a small, finite subsidy (or partial guarantee) can help minority groups escape the trap by covering enough of the mainstream bank’s downside so that it can afford to lend and learn the minority group’s true risk. Once it has sufficiently many data points, it meets its VaR requirement with no further assistance, minority groups are approved for loans by the mainstream bank, and competition drives down the interest rates of subprime lenders. (shrink)

We argue that the common attribution to Zhuangzi of both perspectivalism or relativism on the one hand, and scepticism on the other is fundamentally mistaken. While granting that it is reasonable to construe Zhuangzi as offering a perspectiva! position on judgement, we argue that Zhuangzi's perspectivalism does not commit him to a relativist position on truth or to scepticism about human knowledge. Rather, we maintain that Zhuangzi's attacks on the concepts of truth and knowledge are better seen as his articulation (...) of a species of epistemological nihilism which rejects, as ultimately meaningless, the concepts of truth, reality, and knowledge. (shrink)

Many aquatic invasive species (AIS) management programs are doing important work on preventing non-indigenous species movement to our wild places. Attitudes and perspectives on aquatic non-indigenous species and their management by ecologists and the public are fundamentally a question of human values. Despite eloquent philosophical writings on treatment of non-indigenous species, management agency rhetoric on ‘invasive’ species usually degenerates to a good versus evil language, often with questionable results and lost conservation dollars. We assess and learn from an established AIS (...) program. We discuss an ethic framework and operational directives to minimise the trap of a binary classification of species into bad or good, and we advocate for a principled pragmatic approach to minimise conflicts. We make a case for not labelling species and instead focusing on managing nuisance conditions and protecting ecosystem health. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 3, Page 728-746, May 2022.