School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemPredicting reliability through structured expert elicitation with repliCATS (Collaborative Assessments for Trustworthy Science)(Early Release, 2021-02-22)
Replication is a hallmark of scientific research. As replications of individual studies are resource intensive, techniques for predicting the replicability are required. We introduce a new technique to evaluating replicability, the repliCATS (Collaborative Assessments for Trustworthy Science) process, a structured expert elicitation approach based on the IDEA protocol. The repliCATS process is delivered through an underpinning online platform and applied to the evaluation of research claims in social and behavioural sciences. This process can be deployed for both rapid assessment of small numbers of claims, and assessment of high volumes of claims over an extended period. Pilot data suggests that the accuracy of the repliCATS process meets or exceeds that of other techniques used to predict replicability. An important advantage of the repliCATS process is that it collects qualitative data that has the potential to assist with problems like understanding the limits of generalizability of scientific claims. The repliCATS process has potential applications in alternative peer review and in the allocation of effort for replication studies.
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ItemThe time of reconciliation & the space of politics( 2003-08)In this paper, I presuppose that it is a political mistake to think of reconciliation in (moral community) terms, given the starkly opposed narratives in terms of which members of a divided polity typically make sense of past political violence. A project of reconciliation is unlikely to ever get off the ground, in such contexts, if it is made conditional on first establishing a shared moral account of the nature of past wrongs. Community can not be presupposed because the politics of reconciliation turn precisely on the question of belonging, of who"we" a
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ItemFrom slaughter to abduction: coming to terms with the past in Australia( 2003-04)This paper will concentrate primarily on 'reconciliation' – its adequacy, meaning and requirements. However, the possibility of reconciliation as acknowledgment and recompense for past wrongs depends on an idea of collective responsibility which encompasses responsibility for historical injustices. I will use the debate about apology to explain why citizens have a responsibility for making recompense for historical injustices committed by past officials of their nation. This explanation suggests a particular approach to dealing with these past injustices and a view about what reconciliation should accomplish, and I will relate this approach to the debate about Aboriginal land claims. Finally, I will consider some of the problems that arise when people are asked to comprehend injustices that do not fit common conceptions of harm. The debate about removal of children involves a conceptual difficulty of this kind
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ItemObligations to the elderly and generational equity( 2003-02)Do grown up children have obligations to their parents? Do the younger members of a society have obligations to their elders? Most people think that the question in both cases is answered by an appeal to the benefits which those now old conferred on the young: that children owe benefits to those who brought them into the world or brought them up; that the young of a society owe benefits to those who subsidised their upbringing and education. The obligation, in other words, is perceived to be one of reciprocity between people in different age cohorts or family generations. What distinguishes these cases is the existence of a considerable gap in time between receiving the benefit and making the return. I am going to present and argue for a different approach to answering the above questions. I will argue that grown children have obligations to their parents and, more generally, the young to the old, not because of benefits received but because they have good moral reasons to participate in an intergenerational moral practice which requires the young of each generation to fulfil obligations to their predecessors. The view I am going to present construes duties of the young to the old as truly intergenerational responsibilities – and not as cases of delayed reciprocity. The people of each generation fulfil obligations to their elders and reasonably expect to be cared for in their turn by their children or other members of younger generations. I will argue that this way of looking at the matter not only avoids difficulties associated with other attempts to justify obligations to the elderly. It also provides a procedure for determining what these obligations are. In so doing it is in a good position to contribute to recent public debates about generational equity as well as to answer questions about family responsibilities for the aged. An approach to these issues which derives responsibility for care for the elderly from a conception of intergenerational obligation
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ItemGlobal justice and ideals( 2002)An approach to justice that is capable of transcending existing institutions is clearly required if we are to have anything worthwhile to say about justice in global society.An approach that begins with ideals, considers how they ought to be understood and might be put intopractice is as relevant to this problem as it is to problems of global justice.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableIs there such a thing as a rogue state?( 2002)My main concern in this paper is not the issue of whether the states usually identified as 'rogue' – North Korea, Iraq, and Iran, for example – deserve to be so classified, or whether the term can be plausibly applied to the United States or even Australia. I want to concentrate on the notion of rogue or outlaw state itself – what meaning it has, what it is supposed to imply; whether its use can ever be justified, andhow it is supposed to relate to ideas about just war and international justice that have informed philosophical thinking about relations between state
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ItemDo we need a normative account of the decision to parent?( 2002)This paper provides an analysis of several philosophically interesting results of a recent study of the fertility decision-making of thirty-five childless/childfree Australian and American women. While most women endorsed and expanded on longstanding normative prescriptions for how a"good" mother ought to feel and behave, they were at a loss (at times quite literally) to explain why a woman should decide to mother in the first place. For several women, this difficulty led them to conclude that a decision to have a child was"irrational." I argue that applied philosophers bear some causal and moral responsibility for women's negative conclusions about the rationality of deciding to mother and are obligated to respond to these findings by beginning work on normative accounts of the decision to parent. Suggestions are made about what such accounts should include, and avoid, to ensure relevance to women and acceptability to both feminist and non-feminist philosophy
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ItemMoral Fictionalism( 2002-10)We define and defend fictionalism about moral discourse as a preferable alternative to other anti-realist, quasi-realist or error-theoretic accounts of morality.
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ItemThe Turing Triage Test( 2002)If, as a number of writers have predicted, the computers of the future will possess intelligence and capacities that exceed our own then it seems as though they will be worthy of a moral respect at least equal to, and perhaps greater than, human beings. In this paper I propose a test to determine when we have reached that point. Following Alan Turing's (1950) original 'Turing test', which argued that we would be justified in conceding that machines could think if they could fill the role of a person in a conversation, I propose a test for when computers have achieved moral standing by asking when a computer might take the place of a human being in a moral dilemma, such as a 'triage' situation in which a choice must be made as to which of two human lives to save. We will know when machines have achieved moral standing comparable to a human when the replacement of one of these people with an artificial intelligence leaves the character of the dilemma intact. That is, when we might sometimes judge that it is reasonable to preserve the continuing existence of a machine over the life of a human being. This is the 'Turing Triage Test'. I argue that if personhood is understood as a matter of possessing a set of important cognitive capacities then it seems likely that future AIs will be able to pass this test. However this conclusion serves as a reductio of this account of the nature of persons. I set out an alternative account of the nature of persons, which places the concept of a personat the centre of an interdependent network of moral and affective responses, such as remorse, grief and sympathy. I argue that according to this second, superior, account of the nature of persons, machines will be unable to pass the Turing Triage Test until they possess bodies and faces with expressive capacities akin to those of the human for
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ItemBetter off deaf?( 2002)Criticism of Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough's decision, reported in the Washington Post, to seek out and employ a sperm donor with a family history of deafness in order to maximise their chances of having a deaf child, has concentrated on two aspects of this decision. The first is that they are consciously seeking the birth of a child that the vast majority of people would consider to be"disabled". The second argument, which may or may not presume the first, questions their decision to bring a child into the world who is likely to have greatly reduced opportunities by virtue of being deaf. In my response to the controversy surrounding the case, I want to concentrate on the second of these arguments. The idea that deafness need not be a disability and can instead be an entry point to a minority culture coalesced around a signed language, and the foundation of a cultural identity as"Deaf", is one that I am personally sympathetic to. But this argument has been well made elsewhere, by Harlan Lane and others, and for reasons of space I shall not repeat it here.1 In any case, settling the question as to whether D/deafness is a disability or a cultural identity does not in itself resolve the question of the ethics of deliberately seeking to bring about the birth of a D/deaf child. One may concede that deafness is a disability but hold that this is unimportant because deaf children can have sufficient opportunities in life to justify bringing them into the world. Alternatively, one may agree that deafness is a cultural identity, but still be concerned for the opportunities available to the child as a member of that culture. The question of the obligations of parents with regard to the opportunities available to the children they choose to bring into the world remains crucial.