Philosophical Support Research Articles

Genuinely collective emotions

It is received wisdom in philosophy and the cognitive sciences that individuals can be in emotional states but groups cannot. But why should we accept this view? In this paper, I argue that there is substantial philosophical and empirical support for the existence of collective emotions. Thus, while there is good reason to be skeptical about many ascriptions of collective emotion, I argue that some groups exhibit the computational complexity and informational integration required for being in genuinely emotional states.

Women in sport management: advancing the representation through HRM structures

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to examine the effects of organizational characteristics, philosophical support, and substantive human resource management (HRM) programs on promoting gender equality within sport management.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire is developed to collect data on philosophical support and HRM practices within sport organizations and sent to 500 collegiate and professional sport organizations in the USA; 196 respondents (39 percent) returned their completed survey forms.FindingsFindings indicate significant confirmatory paths between experiencing a gender discrimination lawsuit and philosophical support (t=−3.14, p<0.05), philosophical support and substantive HRM programs (t=9.56, p<0.05) and philosophical support and representation of female managers (t=2.36, p<0.05). The paper concludes that philosophical support of top managers leads to the development of substantive HRM programs to promote gender equality in sport management and greater female manager representation.Originality/valueThe paper provides useful insights into the effect of philosophical support from top managers on HRM programs that promote gender equality in sport management.

A reflection of the contributions of “Women in sport management: advancing the representation through HRM structures”

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to offer a reflection of contributions made by the paper “Women in sport management: advancing the representation through HRM structures.”Design/methodology/approachThe approach the paper took in preparing this reflection was to offer the recollections as why the study was initiated and the significance it has had since being in print.FindingsIn this paper, four key outcomes of the original study are identified and discussed. They are that women rated their leaders as significantly less committed to gender equity than men did; that experiencing a gender equity lawsuit increased top management's philosophical support of gender equity, that top management support for gender equity is significantly positively associated with both substantive human resource management (HRM) practices and the percentage of female managers in the organization; and that the presence of substantive HRM practices for gender equity is unrelated to the employment of female sport managers.Originality/valueThe paper offers insight on the significance of the original paper and communicates the importance of further practical and scholarly efforts to increase gender equity within management.

Malignant Hyperthermia-Associated Diseases: State of the Art Uncertainty

Henry Rosenberg, MD† In one form or another, the following scenario is occurring daily in hospitals throughout the world: a 10-mo-old infant with progressive hypotonia and failure to thrive is scheduled for a surgical muscle biopsy and gastrostomy with general anesthesia. The neurological evaluation reveals a differential diagnosis that may include central white matter disease, metabolic encephalopathy, mitochondrial myopathy, or others. The neurologist recommends a nontriggering general anesthetic in the event that the infant is susceptible to malignant hyperthermia (MH). The anesthesiologist performs an uneventful general anesthetic with total IV anesthesia. Regardless of the results of the muscle biopsy, for each subsequent required anesthetic, a nontriggering technique is performed. What is the likelihood that any of these infants is truly MH-susceptible? This month’s issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia presents a series of articles that helps us answer this question more definitively, though inconclusively, than ever before. As hotline consultants for the Malignant Hyperthermia Association of the United States (MHAUS),* we commonly receive requests to help clinicians by defining the specific disease entities that predispose to MH susceptibility. With the exception of a small number of inherited conditions, the answer is elusive. With all of our knowledge to date on MH, why is this so? Because in clinical medicine, it is extremely difficult to establish definitive causal relationships without prospective randomized controlled trials, and cohort studies are impossible to perform for rare events. Therefore, we are left with a broad generalization derived from case control studies and case reports and series. To complicate matters, these historical reports did not have the benefit of genetic linkage and pedigree analysis which have, in the current era, furthered the definitive diagnosis of various syndromes and their link to MH. The path to this specialized issue on MH-associated diseases began several years ago when we and several other MHAUS hotline consultants hosted a series of panel discussions on MH at the annual meetings of the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia. At the 2006 winter meeting of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia (SPA), Barbara Brandom, Richard Kaplan, and Ron Litman participated on a panel of challenging pediatric MH cases. The response from the audience was overwhelming and clear: “Tell us who should and who shouldn’t receive a nontriggering technique.” Thus began a 3-yr process that now culminates with the articles presented herein. First, we identified international authoritative experts on each of the broad categories of diseases that have purportedly been linked to MH. Next, we created a partnership between SPA and MHAUS with the purpose of presenting a one-day symposium on MH-related diseases at the 2008 SPA winter meeting.† The organization and implementation of this symposium would not have been possible without the philosophical and financial support of SPA and MHAUS. By all accounts, the symposium was a resounding success. Each of our authorities presented a lecture on a specific category of disease and the From the *Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and †Saint Barnabas Medical Center, Livingston, New Jersey. Accepted for publication May 7, 2009. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Ronald S. Litman, DO, Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 34th St. & Civic Center Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19104. Address e-mail to litmanr@email. chop.edu. Copyright © 2009 International Anesthesia Research Society DOI: 10.1213/ane.0b013e3181ae6b96 *Available at: http://www.mhaus.org. †Available at: http://www.pedsanesthesia.org/meetings/2008winter/spa08_program.pdf.

Morphology and Literacy: Getting (and Keeping) Our Heads in the Game

M y hope is that you as the forum reader have learned a little more about morphology and its contribution to literacy and that you will be in a good position to add this component to your language “game plan” when necessary. Specifically, after reading this clinical forum, we know a little more developmentally, linguistically, and clinically about morphological awareness and its relationship to literacy. What does that look like for our language intervention “playbook?” From a developmental perspective, we now realize that children demonstrate derivational morphological skills as early as first grade and use these skills to their advantage when spelling. These findings have great potential for us as we work with our students in this early literacy stage. For example, in collaborating with firstand second-grade teachers and working with their students, we can include simple derivations in both language and spelling instruction, encouraging morphological strategies early in the game. From a linguistic perspective, we now have evidence that morphophonological patterns affect how easily a child can produce a derived word. Thus, we can modify our choice of assessment and treatment targets accordingly and address syllabification and prosody as necessary. When working with older students who are dealing with more advanced morphological constructions, this knowledge will allow us to factor in syllable and stress awareness when teaching derivational word study strategies. In addition, we have seen that students who are speakers of African American English do not have different morphological awareness skills as a result of their dialect. Given that many of these students struggle with literacy for other reasons, perhaps we can use morphological instruction to their advantage in reading and spelling instruction. With older elementary students, we could be in a position to either address these treatment targets in the classroom or help teachers appreciate the importance of specific morphological instruction in the context of reading and spelling activities. From a clinical perspective, we have seen two intervention programs with strong morphological components that have led to changes in the literacy skills of students of different ages and with varying language/ learning difficulties. The two treatment studies addressed very different areas of morphology (e.g., spelling rules accompanying the addition of inflectional morphological endings and derivational word study in reading contexts), illustrating its diverse application in the intervention arena. We are fortunate to have these contributions to our evidence base as we look for new and better techniques to serve our students with language and learning disabilities. In sum, the forum authors have provided us with excellent current theory and research regarding morphology. As speechlanguage pathologists, inherent in our work with school-age children is the idea of building language skills and strategies to increase academic success. We know that our students are extremely challenged to learn these new skills and rule systems, so we need to spend our time wisely. Now we not only have philosophical support for the inclusion of morphology, but we also have more research support that this skill can make a difference across several literacy domains. Thinking ahead, more intervention studies will be important as any recommendation for new treatment practices is stronger when it is supported by evidence from successful clinical and classroom treatment research. These studies might include students with varying language difficulties or differences (e.g., those with language/ learning disabilities, those using dialectal variations) and could be conducted in a variety of settings (e.g., classroom, private practice).

Epistemologic Inquiries in Evidence-Based Medicine

Since the term "evidence-based medicine" (EBM) first appeared in the scientific literature in 1991, the concept has had considerable influence in many parts of the world. Most professional societies, the public,and funding agencies have accepted EBM with remarkable enthusiasm. The concept of evidence-based practice is now applied in management, education, criminology, and social work. Yet, EBM has attracted controversy: its critics allege that EBM uses a narrow concept of evidence and a naive conception of the relationships between evidence, theory, and practice. They also contend that EBM presents itself as a radical restructuring of medical knowledge that discredits more traditional ways of knowing in medicine, largely in the interests of people with a particular investment in the enterprise of large-scale clinical trials. Because EBM proposes aspecific relationship between theory, evidence, and knowledge, its theoretical basis can be understood as an epistemological system. Undertaking epistemological inquiry is important because the adoption of a particular epistemological view defines how science is conducted. In this paper, we challenge this critical view of EBM by examining how EBM fits into broad epistemological debates within the philosophy of science. We consider how EBM relates to some classical debates regarding the nature of science and knowledge. We investigate EBM from the perspective of major epistemological theories (logical-positivism/inductivism, deductivism/falsificationism/theory-ladeness of observations, explanationism/holism, instrumentalism, underdetermination theory by evidence). We first explore the relationship between evidence and knowledge and discuss philosophical support for the main way that evidence is used in medicine: (1) in the philosophical tradition that "rational thinkers respect their evidence," we show that EBM refers to making medical decisions that are consistent with evidence, (2) as a reliable sign, symptom, or mark to enhance reasonableness or truthfulness of some particular claim ("evidence as a guide to truth"), and (3) to serve as a neutral arbiter among competing views. Our analysis indicates that EBM does not have a rigorous epistemological stance. In fact, EBM enthusiastically draws on all major traditions of philosophical theories of scientific evidence. Our findings indicate that EBM should not be construed as a new scientific or philosophical theory that changes the nature of medicine or our understanding thereof. Rather, we should consider EBM as a continuously evolving heuristic structure for optimizing clinical practice.

Toward better mentoring for early career faculty: results of a study of US geographers

Interviews and a survey were conducted to assess both the structure and content of mentoring and advising provided to early‐career faculty in geography. Results indicated three broad conditions for structuring effective mentoring: 1) regular, proactive meetings; 2) engaging diverse groups of individuals within and outside of a department; and 3) leadership, resources, and philosophical support for professional development from departments and institutions. Within mentoring relationships, early career faculty would like a broader range of professional and career issues addressed. Although drawn from one discipline, the data suggest ways of improving mentoring practice in other fields. Des entretiens et un sondage ont été effectués de façon à évaluer les structures et le contenu d'un programme de mentorat et de conseil destiné aux nouveaux professeurs de géographie. Les résultats mettent en évidence trois grandes conditions permettant de structurer des programmes de mentorat efficaces: 1) des rencontres régulières et proactives; 2) la participation de divers groupes d'individus provenant du département et de l'extérieur de celui‐ci; 3) un soutien au développement professionnel en termes de leadership, de ressources et de philosophie de la part des départements et des institutions. A l'intérieur des relations de mentorat, les nouveaux professeurs préfèreraient qu'un éventail davantage varié de sujets liés à la profession ou à la carrière soient abordés. Bien que ces résultats ne proviennent que d'une discipline, les données semblent fournir des pistes quant à l'amélioration des pratiques de mentorat dans d'autres domaines.

Commonsense Realism and Triangulation

Realism about the external world enjoys little philosophical support these days. I rectify this predicament by taking a relatively pragmatist line of thought to defend commonsense realism; I support commonsense realism through an interpretation and application of Donald Davidson’s notion of triangulation, the triangle composed of two communicators coordinating and correcting their responses with a shared causal stimulus. This argument is important because it has a crucial advantage over the often used abductive argument for realism. My argument avoids unwarranted conclusions, whereas the abductive argument is “inflationary” because it reaches beyond the limits of evidence for its realist conclusion. To illustrate the problems of the abductive argument and motivate my Davidsonian approach, I take a brief look at the abductive argument for realism in Frederick Will’s work.

Human Welfare, Not Human Rights

Human rights treaties play an important role in international relations but they lack a foundation in moral philosophy and doubts have been raised about their effectiveness for constraining states. Drawing on ideas from the literature on economic development, this paper argues that international concern should be focused on human welfare rather than on human rights. A focus on welfare has three advantages. First, the proposition that governments should advance the welfare of their populations enjoys broader international and philosophical support than do the various rights that are incorporated in the human rights treaties. Second, the human rights treaties are both too rigid and too vague - they do not allow governments to adopt reasonable policies that advance welfare at the expense of rights, and they do not set forth rules governing how states may trade off rights. A welfare treaty could provide guidance by supplying a maximand along with verifiable measures of compliance. Third, the human rights regime and international development policy work at cross-purposes. Development policy favors the poorest states, while the human rights regime condemns the states with the worst governments: unfortunately, the poorest states usually have the worst governments. Various possible welfare treaties are surveyed.

Reference Librarianship: Notes from the Trenches

Reference Librarianship: Notes from the Trenches

Nursing involvement in euthanasia: how sound is the philosophical support?

Preference utilitarians are concerned to maximize the autonomous choices of individuals; for this reason, they argue that nurses ought to advocate for those patients who desire assistance with ending their lives. This approach prompts us to consider, then, the moral validity of nursing involvement in measures intended to end the lives of patients. In this article, the terms of preference utilitarianism are set out and considered in order to determine whether this approach offers sufficient philosophical support for sanctioning a role for nursing in euthanasia. Ultimately, it is found that preference utilitarianism is lacking in this respect, as well as in its fitness for guiding nursing activity in general. In particular, it is found that nurses are required to exchange a handmaiden relationship with the medical profession for an equally undignified relationship with patients. If nursing involvement in measures intended to end the lives of patients is to find sufficient philosophical support, then we need to look elsewhere.

Health promotion in Brazil

Brazil, a Latin American country of continental proportions and contrasts, demographic inequalities, and social inequities, concomitantly faces the challenge of preventing and controlling infectious diseases, injuries, and non-communicable diseases. The loss of strength of the biomedical paradigm, the change in epidemiological profile, and the sociopolitical and cultural challenges of recent decades have fostered the emergence of new formulations about public health thinking and practice. Among them, are the paradigms of Brazilian Collective Health and Health Promotion. The former provides philosophical support for Brazil's Unified Health System (SUS). The aim of this article is to discuss the development of public health within the country's history, and to analyze and compare the theoretical assumptions of Health Promotion and Collective Health. We conclude that health promotion, based on the principles and values disseminated by the international Charters and concerned with social actors and social determinants of the health-disease process, has significant potential to promote the improvement of living and health conditions of the population. This frame of reference guided the formulation of the National Policy of Health Promotion within the Unified Health System, which was institutionalized by a ministerial decree. The importance and application of evaluating the effectiveness of health promotion processes and methodologies in Brazil have been guided by various frames of reference, which we clarify in this article through describing historical processes.

The Anti-philosophical Stance, the Realism Question and Scientific Practice

In recent years a general consensus has been developing in the philosophy of science to the effect that strong social constructivist accounts are unable to adequately account for scientific practice. Recently, however, a number of commentators have formulated an attenuated version of constructivism that purports to avoid the difficulties that plague the stronger claims of its predecessors. Interestingly this attenuated form of constructivism finds philosophical support from a relatively recent turn in the literature concerning scientific realism. Arthur Fine and a number of other commentators have argued that the realism debate ought to be abandoned. The rationale for this argument is that the debate is sterile for it has, it is claimed, no consequence for actual scientific practice, and therefore does not advance our understanding of science or its practice. Recent “softer” accounts of social constructivism also hold a similar agnostic stance to the realism question. I provide a survey of these various agnostic stances and show how they form a general position that I shall refer to as “the anti-philosophical stance”. I then demonstrate that the anti-philosophical stance fails by identifying difficulties that attend its proposal to ban philosophical interpretation. I also provide examples of instances where philosophical stances to the realism question affect scientific practice.

Utrum inhaerentia sit de essentia accidentis. Francis of Marchia and the Debate on the Nature of Accidents

AbstractThis paper attempts to provide a general reconstruction of Francis of Marchia's doctrine of accidental being. The paper is divided into two parts. (1) In the first part, I begin by reconstructing the debate on the nature of accidents held before Marchia, showing that such a debate is characterised by a progressive shift concerning the way to understand accidents. While the first Aristotelian interpreters regard accidents especially as inhering modes of being of substances, the majority of theologians and philosophers in the second half of the thirteenth century regard accidents as absolute beings. For them, the problem is no longer to explain if and, if so, how accidents can be distinct from substances, but how accidents and substances can make some one thing. Metaphysically, their primary focus is on explaining what the ontological status of inherence is. Although it is especially the consideration of the Eucharistic case that induces this change, I point out that many philosophers and theologians find in Aristotle's texts the philosophical support for taking this step. (2) In the second part, I focus more closely on Marchia's doctrine, arguing that Marchia's position is a slightly revised version of Scotus's. Unlike Aquinas and Bonaventure, Marchia explains Aristotle's metaphysics of accidents by way of the metaphysics of the Eucharist and not vice versa. So, in order to explain the philosophical consistency of this miraculous case, Marchia maintains that one does not need to modify the notion of inherence by distinguishing actual from potential inherence and including the latter in the accident's essence; rather it is necessary to take the case of the Eucharist seriously and, on this basis, to remove inherence totally from an accident's essence. In conclusion, the Eucharist shows that accidents are absolute beings to which actual inherence pertains contingently, potential inherence necessarily. But like Scotus's, Marchia's doctrine faces some difficulties that remain unresolved.

Francis of Assisi: History, Hagiography and Hermeneutics in the Early Documents (review)

Reviewed by: Francis of Assisi: History, Hagiography and Hermeneutics in the Early Documents David Flood Francis of Assisi: History, Hagiography and Hermeneutics in the Early Documents. Edited by Jay M. Hammond . (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press. 2004. Pp. 290. $19.95 paperback.) This book follows on the three-volume publication (1999-2001, New City Press) of "Early Documents" on Francis of Assisi (1182-1226). The "Early Documents" begin with the writings of Francis and his brothers from 1209 to 1226; they continue with narratives about Francis of Assisi, from his death down to Arnald of Sarrant's collection of material in 1365. J. A. Wayne Hellmann opens the essays under review with a survey of the three volumes. Hellmann belonged to the group of three (with Regis J. Armstrong and William J. Short) that initiated the project and guided it to its happy conclusion. Hellmann knows the three volumes from the inside, sort of as a beloved cross he bore for ten years. His [End Page 764] "Francis of Assisi: Saint, Founder, Prophet" (pp. 15-38) is a fine survey of the volumes to which then the following essays refer. In his foreword to these essays, Joseph Chinnici refers to a reader's hesitation when looking at the three hefty volumes, wondering: "Where do I begin?" And he offers the essays as a "much-needed beginner's guide" (p. 10). On the other hand, the editor of the book, Jay Hammond, characterizes these essays as "forays into the Early Documents" ("Preface," p. 13), eager as he is to test the "new research possibilities" offered by the volumes. Certainly Hammond's own contribution to the collection, "Saint Francis's Doxological Mysticism in Light of His Prayers" (pp. 105-152), ventures more deeply into a limited selection of texts, in critical dialogue with a wide array of scholarship, than a beginner might want to go. The same can be said for a few other contributions, more involved with debating scholarship than with easing entry into the literature on Francis. Still, Chinnici's beginners will find much help in Hellmann's survey. And Ingrid Peterson's pages, "Clare of Assisi: Hidden Behind What Image of Francis?" (pp. 39-63), will certainly help a beginner interested in Clare of Assisi and, at the same time, get the reader used to the "Early Documents." William Short offers a reader good guidance for a critical perusal of Thomas of Celano's 1229 "Life of Saint Francis" (pp. 153-163). Then there are two essays that neither introduce nor study the "Early Documents." Lawrence Cunningham offers his thoughts on Francis' clothes, both thosehe put on and those he took off. His sensitive essay ("Francis Naked and Clothed: A Theological Meditation," pp. 165-178) exemplifies the human feelings Francis awakened in artists then and awakens in many today. Marilyn Hammond's "Francis as Struggling Hermeneut" (pp. 210-228) gives philosophical support to the interpretations we ceaselessly conduct, although she does not show much acquaintance with the "Early Documents" themselves. Chinnici refers to "the communities of memory" that used Francis to legitimate their ways as Franciscan (p. 10). The differences between the communities manifest themselves starkly in the debatable distinction between the official and unofficial accounts of Francis' life. (The distinction is debatable because of the role it has played in the politics of scholarship on Francis of Assisi.) I think it is important to point out that we have to do with distinct "communities of (scholarly) memory" today still. The publication of the "Early Documents" derives from the polemics around the narrative sources for Francis of Assisi's history, touched off around 1900. The close attention given the early Franciscan writings ("The Writings of Saint Francis") developed from work made public after World War II. The former will always be more literary, whereas the latter more historical. David Flood The Franciscan Institute St. Bonaventure, New York Copyright © 2004 The Catholic University of America Press

In Support of Felix Wilfred: Some Implications of Wittgenstein's World‐Pictures for Interreligious Dialogue

Felix Wilfred, a Catholic theologian working in an Indian context, provides a trenchant critique of traditional Western theology’s ability to find relevance in India’s multi-religious context. This article explores how Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of world-pictures provides a philosophical support for Wilfred’s critique and indicates a different, more productive model of interreligious dialogue.There is a large amount of interreligious dialogue that is interested in ascertaining what is indeed true about the world. When different religious traditions make different and sometimes conflicting assertions about the world, the question arises about the relationship between these various claims. As these claims are part and parcel of the traditions themselves, springing from the core of the various religions, the question becomes how the religious systems themselves are related and what is the relationship between the truth claims of various religions? Various approaches to this can be categorized in three broad categories, exclusivist, inclusivist and relativist.In his last book, On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein addressed the problem of making truth-claims, how anyone can validly say they were “certain” that something was indeed the case. He noticed that truth- claims were intrinsically connected to world-pictures with which they mutually arise, and that no truth-claim can therefore claim a status that transcends all world-pictures. This critique casts suspicion on the usefulness of the exclusivist-inclusivist-relativist categorization of theories of religious pluralism and points to a more productive model of interreligious dialogue that respects and utilizes the differences in different religions. Rather than comparing statements made by various faiths and determining which in fact are correct, I propose a model of dialogue that allows each side to attain a better perspective on their own position as they come to see a different way of understanding the world.

Deepening the Controversy over Metaphysical Realism

A significant ontological commitment is required to sustain metaphysical realism—the view that there is a single, objective way the world is—in order to defend it from common sense objections. This involves presupposing the existence of properties (or tropes, or universals) and relations between them which define the objective structure of the world. This paper explores the grounds for accepting this ontological assumption and examines a sceptical argument which questions whether, having assumed the world is objectively divided into fundamental properties, we could ever know which properties these are. It then assesses the responses available to the metaphysical realist, arguing that the sceptical difficulty cannot merely be dismissed by means of another assumption in the manner of radical scepticism, as David Lewis suggests, but that the sceptic's argument might be defused by the non-question-begging success of some form of strong scientific realism which links the predicates of our scientific theories directly to the fundamental properties the world contains. It remains unclear however whether this widely accepted metaphysical theory can find principled philosophical support.

Women in sport management: advancing the representation through HRM structures

Examines the effects of organizational characteristics, philosophical support, and substantive human resource management (HRM) programs on promoting gender equality within sport management. A questionnaire was developed to collect data on philosophical support and HRM practices within sport organizations and sent to 500 collegiate and professional sport organizations in the USA; 196 respondents (39 per cent) returned their completed survey forms. Findings indicated significant confirmatory paths between experiencing a gender discrimination lawsuit and philosophical support (t = –3.14, p < 0.05), philosophical support and substantive HRM programs (t = 9.56, p < 0.05) and philosophical support and representation of female managers (t = 2.36, p < 0.05). Concludes that philosophical support of top managers leads to the development of substantive HRM programs to promote gender equality in sport management and greater female manager representation.

Financial Support for Adult Children in Australia

Financial gifts from parents to children appear to amount to large sums in the wealthier industrialised nations, but little is known about these intergenerational transfers in Australia. This paper reports some preliminary research into parental attitudes to such transfers and finds the level of parental education is closely linked to the giving of financial gifts. Interestingly, philosophical support for financial assistance to adult children is found to be not directly linked to income or wealth. However, belief in supporting adult children during the years of higher education is linked to education, occupation, income and wealth of the parents. Regarding the question of whether financial support changes the economic behaviour of recipients, the data suggest that recipients are more likely to be savers than non-recipients. Moreover, the only statistically significant demographic difference between savers and non-savers among recipients is annual income, with a higher proportion of the non-savers having low (<$30,000) annual household income.

Role‐play in inquiring systems and information systems development

Churchman's framework for inquiring systems has been used by authors interested in taking more than just a positivistic approach to information systems development. This framework is used by Churchman to explore the nature of the design process and the philosophical implications arising. Inquiring systems are supported by a set of conditions and statements which define three generic roles played in the design and implementation of inquiring systems. These roles are compared with the generic roles of information systems development identified by Hirschheim and Klein. Churchman develops his ideas using the cause–effect model of physical science which supports the software engineering approach to information systems development. However, this does not support interpretative approaches to information systems development, such as Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology. Paradoxically, Checkland claims philosophical support from Singerian Inquiring Systems for his methodology. The problems found are shown to relate, in part, to the measure of performance and how it is implemented. However, the main problem is the spectrum of environments that information systems development takes place in, not all of which follow the cause–effect paradigm. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.