Alastair Wilson

This volume is a collection of cutting-edge research papers in scientifically informed metaphysics, tackling a range of philosophical puzzles which have emerged from recent work on chance and temporal asymmetry. How do the probabilities found in fundamental physics and the probabilities of the special sciences relate to one another? How can we account for the normative significance of chance? Can constraints on the initial conditions of the universe underwrite the second law of thermodynamics, and potentially also all other lawlike regularities? How does contemporary quantum theory bear on debates over the nature of chance and the arrow of time? What grounds do we have for believing in a fundamental temporal direction, or flow? And how do all these questions connect up with one another? The aim of the volume is both to survey and summarize recent debates about chance and temporal asymmetry and to push them forward. The authors bring perspectives from metaphysics, from philosophy of physics and from philosophy of probability. Mainstream approaches are subjected to searching new critiques, and bold new proposals are made concerning (inter alia) the semantics of chance-attributions, the justification of the Principal Principle connecting chance and degree of belief, the limits on inter-theoretic reduction and the source of the temporal asymmetry of human experience.

This paper argues that professionals who make boundary-related decisions should be guided by relationship-based practice. In our roles as service users and professionals, drawing from our lived experiences of professional relationships, we argue we need to move away from distance-based practice. This includes understanding the boundary stories and narratives that exist for all of us – including the people we support, other professionals, as well as the organisations and systems within which we work. When we are dealing with professional boundary issues, we should centre relationship-building skills that are central to many other aspects of our work. Skills that foster relationships at all levels – between professionals, service users, and services – need to be revalued. Our final recommendation is to create, develop, and foster safer spaces within and outside of organisations, as well as inter-professionally, for the discussion and exploration of boundary-related issues and practice. We are interested in hearing from those with experiences of being marginalised by boundaries so that they can inform a reshaping of our collective ideas around boundary related practices. To foster relationship-based practices in organisations, we have outlined several recommendations here; however, we recognize that these do not go far enough, and that collective action is needed to inform systemic change.