What Does Good Science-Based Advice to Politics Look Like?

Journal for General Philosophy of Science - I address options for providing scientific policy advice and explore the relation between scientific knowledge and political, economic and moral values....     

What Do the Theologically Educated Look Like?

What do the theologically educated look like? Nine outcomes of a theological education are suggested that respond to this question, outcomes particularly pertinent to the contemporary cultural setting and mission challenge of Western Europe. These outcomes are compared with the nine learning outcomes that the Church of England uses at the present time to assess candidates for ordained ministry. In the light of this comparison some broad recommendations are made for future emphases in theological education.     

What Does a Prophet Know?

This essay on Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt (2016) challenges her argument from two opposing sides. First, it critiques all jeremiads. It asks how a person uttering prophetic indictments, whether in the form of a classical jeremiad or the more moderate form that Kaveny argues for, can possibly know of what she speaks, given the otherness of God. Second, it calls for more jeremiads. It asks whether a person, whether religious or not, might indeed know enough to offer withering jeremiads, in those cases where she sees the target of her jeremiad making flagrantly incompatible commitments.     

What is it Like to be a Phenomenologist?

In a recent paper, 'On the Persistence of Phenomenology' (in T. Metzinger (ed.), Conscious Experience , Paderborn, 1995), Diana Raffman presents a new argument for qualia, an argument that provides new focus for the qualia debate. We think Raffman's work relocates the debate to a better neighbourhood, a neighbourhood in which what tempts us to think that there must be qualia or phenomenal information is highlighted. Raffman, we argue, locates the core thought shared by many of the friends of qualia, namely, that our conceptual resources are inadequate for capturing the richness of experience. Experience is ineffably determinate. Moreover, Raffman's argument in support of this thought seems especially embarrassing to scientific-minded materialists, since the argument relies largely on well established empirical facts. We show, however, that Raffman's argument fails. So, if we are correct that her argument highlights what is tempting about qualia, then we have also shown that it is not tempting.     

Does God Know What It is Like to be Me?

Does God knows what it is like to be me? Scripture and religious tradition seem quite clear that God knows everything about us, even the deepest secrets of our hearts. There is nothing hidden from him. And this is an answer backed up by a more philosophical theology; for among the traditional list of divine attributes is omniscience: knowing everything that there is to know. The idea, moreover, seems essential to the ordinary religious consciousness, for how can God really help us, or fairly judge us, unless he knows exactly what things are like for us?     

What is it Like to be a Group Agent?

The existence of group agents is relatively widely accepted. Examples are corporations, courts, NGOs, and even entire states. But should we also accept that there is such a thing as group consciousness? I give an overview of some of the key issues in this debate and sketch a tentative argument for the view that group agents lack phenomenal consciousness (pace Schwitzgebel 2015 ). In developing my argument, I draw on integrated information theory, a much‐discussed theory of consciousness. I conclude by pointing out an implication of my argument for the normative status of group agents.     

Do Colours Look Like Dispositions? Reply to Langsam and Others

Dispositional theories of colour have been attacked by McGinn and others on the ground that 'Colours do not look like dispositions'. Langsam has argued that on the contrary they do, in 'Why Colours Do Look Like Dispositions', The Philosophical Quarterly , 50 (2000), pp. 68–75. I make three claims. First, neither side has made its case. Secondly, it is true, at least on one interpretation, that colours do not look like dispositions. Thirdly, this does not show that dispositionalism about colours is false.     

What Does Taste Represent?

What does vision represent? What does hearing represent? Smell? Touch? Competing answers to each of these questions have been defended. The present paper argues that the issue of what taste represents is categorically more complicated. In particular, it raises two very difficult dilemmas.     

What Is It Like to Be an Alien?

This brief article is concerned with an aspect of Jonathan Glover's book, Alien Landscapes?. After reflecting a little on the book as a whole, the question that is taken up is, ‘Why might a book that seeks to help those without mental disorders understand what they are like “from the inside” be of interest to laymen and practitioners in the criminal law?’. One answer lies in part in the way that ‘what it is like from the inside’ might interact with judgements of criminal responsibility. Taking its cue from examples used by Glover the article considers, and puts pressure on, the ‘dual view’ he proposes: that when dealing with those with mental disorders we should treat them as responsible agents in the sense of not withholding from them Strawson's ‘reactive attitudes’, while nevertheless accepting that their personalities and behaviours are the results of large doses of ‘bad luck’.     

What Difference Does It Make?

Abstract. The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion has its most direct influence on faculty members who teach in colleges, universities, and theological schools. These faculty members, in turn, have an impact upon churches through their leadership and teaching in local communities. Wabash workshops encourage faculty to continue to develop four qualities that make a difference in their teaching and scholarship, in the lives of students who become community and church leaders, and ultimately in the life of the church: these are the abilities to (1) help pastoral leaders integrate multiple kinds of knowledge, (2) value context and particularity, (3) strengthen their skills as public theologians and community leaders, and (4) cultivate the encouragement to live lives of wholeness. The gift of hospitality at Wabash workshops provides the environment and space for faculty to engage these qualities in their teaching, research, scholarship, and living.     

Does Children's Colour Use Reflect the Emotional Content of their Drawings?

When children draw in clinical contexts, clinicians sometimes rely on children's colour use to make inferences about their emotional reaction to the subject of the drawing. Here, we examined whether children use colour to portray emotion in their drawings. In Experiment 1, children indicated their colour preferences and then coloured in outlines of figures characterized as nasty or nice. Children also drew complex, multi‐coloured pictures about their own happy or sad experiences. In Experiment 2, hospitalized children drew about being worried or scared in hospital and about their positive experiences. In both experiments, we examined the relation between children's colour use and their colour preferences. Three‐ to 10‐year‐old children used more preferred colours to colour in the nice outline. Although they were more likely to use non‐preferred colours to colour in the nasty outline, they tended to used a mix of preferred and non‐preferred colours. When both normal and hospitalized children produced drawings about positive and negative events, there was no relation between children's colour choices and their colour preferences; children primarily used preferred colours. These data suggest that clinicians should exercise extreme caution when interpreting the meaning of colour in children's drawings. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What is What it’s Like? Introducing Perceptual Modes of Presentation

The central claim of this paper is that what it is like to see green or any other perceptible property is just the perceptual mode of presentation of that property. Perceptual modes of presentation are important because they help resolve a tension in current work on consciousness. Philosophers are pulled by three mutually inconsistent theses: representational externalism, representationalism, and phenomenal internalism. I throw my hat in with defenders of the first two: the externalist representationalists. We are faced with the problem of explaining away intuitions that favor phenomenal internalism. Perceptual modes of presentation account for what it is like to see properties in a way that accommodates those intuitions without vindicating phenomenal internalism itself. Perceptual MoPs therefore provide a new way of being an externalist representationalist.     

What If the Preferred Applicant Rejects a Job Offer? A Look at Smaller Applicant Pools

Purpose

This article presents the first theoretical framework for examining how expected new-hire performance is affected in situations where the preferred applicant in a small pool rejects a job offer. It addresses questions such as: What is the expected decrease in performance when a lower ranked (as opposed to the top) candidate in an already small pool is hired? What is the likelihood that a lower ranked candidate in that small pool will perform as well as, or better than, the first choice would have? And under what conditions might it be advantageous, from either a performance or a financial perspective, for the employer to seek additional applicants rather than offer a position to a lower ranked candidate?

Design/Methodology/Approach

Order statistics provide a conceptual framework for answering these questions.

Findings

This method estimates expected decreases in performance if a second- or third-ranked candidate, rather than the first choice, is hired. It can also show the likelihood that the top-choice’s job performance would be better than a lower choice candidate’s. The order statistics approach is combined with utility analysis to address the question of when the expected value of generating more applicants might exceed the expected value of hiring a lower ranked candidate.

Implications/Originality/Value

This article presents the first rigorous framework for understanding the probable impact of offer rejections on expected new-hire quality and for determining what is most likely to be the best response to an offer rejection in the small-pool context.