_Growing up with Parents who have Learning Difficulties_ uses a life-story approach to present new evidence about how children from such families manage the transition to adulthood, and about the longer-term outcomes of such an upbringing. It offers a view of parental competence as a social attribute rather than an individual skill, assessing the implications for institutional policies and practices. The authors address the notion of children having to parent their disabled parents and argue for a shift in emphasis from (...) protecting children to supporting families. This innovative book provides a fresh approach to a subject rife with prejudice and challenges us to think again about many taken-for-granted ideas about the process of parenting and the needs of children. It also demonstrates the power of narrative research and its capacity for bringing alive people's experience in a way that enables us to better understand their lives. (shrink)

Signals to the brain from the flows of energy around the body, varied primarily by declining amounts of food energy in the stomach, can explain the pattern of meals in the laboratory rat, the differences between dark and light phases, and the development of obesity ion the rat wioth VMH lesions but normal sating.

Abstract (for the combined three Parts) This paper presents the simplest known theory of processes involved in a person’s unconscious and conscious achievements such as intending, perceiving, reacting and thinking. The basic principle is that an individual has mental states which possess quantitative causal powers and are susceptible to influences from other mental states. Mental performance discriminates the present level of a situational feature from its level in an individually acquired, multiple featured norm (exemplar, template, standard). The effect on output (...) of a moderate disparity between input and norm is scaled in a universal unit of discrimination (Weber’s fraction), with the norm’s level being zero. When one process converts separate sources of input into an output, their discriminative distances from norm are summated. Distinct processes converging on an output combine their discriminations from norm orthogonally. An output may be influenced by the constructs of other outputs as well as by inputs. Descriptive performance is the influence of one category of input on a verbal output. Reasoning is minimally the effect of one verbal process on another. In deeper mental processing, the influence on a response comes from a response construct modulating a description: this process gives the meaning to an emotion or a motive. Descriptive modulation of stimulation corresponds to a bodily sensation or other conceptualized percept. When an output is explained solely by sources of input, that response to the stimulation may be mediated unconsciously. Development of a person within physical and communal environments embodies such mental causation within material causation and acculturates that mind to social causation. (shrink)

This book presents the psychological basis, methodology, and application of Marton's phenomenographic approach to the theory of learning.

Learnt incentive controls behaviour, not indiscriminate rewarded rreponding.

Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives—from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon—contribute to literary criticism? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions, including iterary theorists Marshall Gregory, James Phelan, (...) and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections between literature, religion and philosophy. (shrink)

[Comment, pp 759-780] Lockhead (1992) [Target Article] is undoubtedly right to attack so-called intensity scaling or the estimation of subjective magnitudes as an invalid perversion of tasks requiring quantitative judgments of aspects of objects, stuffs, and situations. He goes too far, however, in claiming that feature scales do not exist... ... A perceived physical pattern (sensory feature or channel) and the cognitive process that integrates it with its context are characterized by determining to which particular combination of specified stimulus patterns (...) the response is most sensitive. This is the principle of causal system analysis that is at the basis of all theory-building science. (shrink)

Some individuals have a neurogenetic vulnerability to developing strong facilitation of ingestive movements by learned configurations of biosocial stimuli. Condemning food as addictive is mere polemic, ignoring the contextualised sensory control of the mastication of each mouthful. To beat obesity, the least fattening of widely recognised eating patterns need to be measured and supported.

The design and interpretation of self-experimentation need to be integrated with existing scientific knowledge. Otherwise observations on oneself cannot make a creative contribution to the advance of empirical understanding.

Money does not stimulate receptors in mimicry of natural agonists; so, by definition, money is not a drug. Attractions of money other than to purchase goods and services could arise from instincts similar to hoarding in other species. Instinctual activities without evolutionary function include earning a billion and writing for BBS. (Published Online April 5 2006).

To maintain my neutral monist or multi-aspect view of human reality (or indeed to defend the Cartesian dualism assumed by Puccetti & Dykes, it is wrong to relate the mind to the brain alone. A person's mind should be related to the physical environment, including the body, in addition to the brain. Furthermore, we are unlikely to understand the detailed functioning of an individual brain without knowing the history of its interactions with the external and internal environments during that person's (...) life, or indeed any inherited neurogenomics (circuitry innately adapted to ecology. (shrink)

Types of sensory receptor can only be identified by multidimensional discrimination of a familiar version of a sensed object from variants that disconfound putative types. By that criterion, there is as yet no evidence against just the four classic types of gustatory receptor, for sodium salts, alkaloids, sugars, and proton donors.

BackgroundSchool based running programmes, such as The Daily Mile™, positively impact pupils’ physical health, however, there is limited evidence on psychological health. Additionally, current evidence is mostly limited to examining the acute impact. The present study examined the longer term impact of running programmes on pupil cognition, wellbeing, and fitness.MethodData from 6,908 school pupils, who were participating in a citizen science project, was examined. Class teachers provided information about participation in school based running programmes. Participants completed computer-based tasks of inhibition, (...) verbal and visual-spatial working memory, as well as the Children’s Feeling scale and Felt arousal scale to determine subjective wellbeing. A multistage 20-m shuttle run test was used to estimate fitness.ResultsFrom our total sample of 6,908 school pupils, 474 participants had been taking part in a running programme for 3 months); and 5,430 did not take part in a running programme. The Longer Term participation group had higher fitness levels than both other groups and this remained significant when adjusted for age, sex and SES. Moderated regression analysis found that for the Shorter Term participation group, higher shuttle distance was associated with better visual-spatial working memory. Effect sizes were small though.ConclusionWe identified small and selective positive impact of participation in school based running programmes on fitness and cognition. While no long term benefit was identified for cognition or wellbeing, the impact on fitness and short term benefit suggest schools should consider participation. (shrink)

Suboptimality of decision making needs no explanation. High level accounts of suboptimality in diverse tasks cannot add up to a mechanistic theory of perceptual decision making. Mental processes operate on the contents of information brought by the experimenter and the participant to the task, not on the amount of information in the stimuli without regard to physical and social context.

It is tough to relate visual perception or other achievements to physiological processing in the central nervous system. The diagrammatic, algebraic, and verbal pictures of how sights seem to Lehar do not advance understanding of how we manage to see what is in the world. There are well-known conceptual reasons why no such purely introspective approach can be productive.

[Author's summary] Statement of empirical theory solely in words does not check if the theorising is effective in explaining observations, or even if it is self-consistent. It is important to complement words with a quantitative model that converts inputs to outputs through known mediating processes, although assumption and even the meanings of the model's terms remain open to challenge.

[Author's summmary, 2020]. Motivation specifically to drink (ingest watery materials) is widely assumed (still) to be innate, i.e. independent of exposure to fluids in contexts and sensory, somatic and/or social effects of their consumption. This comment floats the idea that human infants learn to differentiate textures of low-energy fluids from semi-solid and solid foods after they begin to be weaned from milk as sole drink and food.

Several philosophers think that we do not have duties to believe but that we can nevertheless sometimes be held to blame for our beliefs, since duties relevant to belief are exclusively duties to critical reflection. One important line of argument for this claim goes as follows: we at most have influence over our beliefs such that we are not responsible for belief, but responsible for the acts of critical reflection that influence them. We can be blameworthy not just for violating (...) a duty but also for the obtaining of a state of affairs that would not have obtained had we not violated a duty. We can thus also be blameworthy for our beliefs even though we have no duties to believe. The chapter levies several objections to this argument, and then defends an alternative argument for the same conclusion. Roughly stated, the argument goes: if S has a duty to believe that p, then S has a duty to reflect on whether p. But duties to reflect on whether p always undercut duties to believe that p. Thus, the duties relevant to belief are always duties to critical reflection. (shrink)

We assess J. Baird Callicott’s attempt in Earth’s Insights to reconcile his land ethic with the “environmental ethics” of indigenous peoples. We critique the rejection of ethical pluralism that informs this attempted rapprochement. We also assess Callicott’s strategy of grounding his land ethic in a postmodern scientific world view by contrasting it with the roles of “respect” and narrative in indigenous “ethics.”.

I introduce a new version of Moral Error Theory, which I call Type-B Moral Error Theory. According to a Type-B theorist there are no facts of the kind required for there to be morality instricto sensu, but there can be irreducible ‘normative’ properties which she deems, strictly speaking, to be morally irrelevant. She accepts that there areinstrumentalall things considered oughts, andcategoricalpro tanto oughts (both of which she deems morally irrelevant), but denies that there arecategoricalall things considered oughts on pain of (...) requiring ‘queer’ facts to obtain. I detail the most central motivation of this version of the theory against its more traditional rival, according to which there are no irreducible normative properties at all. The motivation is that it, unlike its rival, can successfully be defended against the notorious charge of self-defeat. (shrink)

Based on social exchange and customer relationship marketing theory, this study examines how ethical leadership contributes to inter-organizational conflict management (task conflict (TC) and relationship conflict), and the moderating role of task interdependence in these relationships. Data was collected from 81 suppliers and 45 corresponding managers of a large group company in China. Results show that ethical leadership is negatively associated with the levels of inter-organizational conflict, whether task or relationship. Task interdependence significantly moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and (...) TC. Managerial implication in terms of creating sound buyer–supplier relationship through an ethical perspective is discussed. (shrink)

What I am calling for is not as radically new as it may sound to ears that are still tuned to positivist frequencies. A very large part of what we value as our cultural monuments can be thought of as metaphoric criticism of metaphor and the characters who make them. The point is perhaps most easily made about the major philosophies. Stephen Pepper has argued, in World Hypotheses,1 that the great philosophies all depend on one of the four "root metaphors," (...) formism, mechanism, organicism, and contextualism, and they are great precisely because they have so far survived the criticism of rival metaphors. Each view of the totality of things claims supremacy, but none has been able to annihilate the others. They all thus survive as still plausible, pending further criticism through further philosophical inquiry. In this view, even the great would-be literalists like Hobbes and Locke are finally metaphorists—simply committed to another kind of metaphor, one that to them seems literal. Without grossly oversimplifying we could say that the whole work of each philosopher amounts to an elaborate critique of the inadequacy of all other philosophers' metaphors. What is more, the very existence of a tradition of a small group of great philosophies is a sign that hundreds of lesser metaphors for the life of mankind have been tested in the great philosophical—that is, critical—wars and found wanting. · 1. World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence . In Concept and Quality: A World Hypothesis , Pepper suggests that "the purposive act" is a fifth root metaphor. Wayne C. Booth's is the author of, among other works, Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Kenneth Burke's Way of Knowing" , "Irony and Pity Once Again: Thais Revisited" , "M. H. Abrams: Historian as Critic, Critic as Pluralist" , "'Preserving the Exemplar': Or, How Not to Dig our Own Graves" , "Notes and Exchanges" , with Wright Morris: "The Writing of Organic Fiction: A Conversation" , and with Robert E. Streeter, W. J. T. Mitchell: "Sheldon Sacks 1930-1979". (shrink)

What, according to proponents of doxastic deontologism, is responsible belief? In this paper, we examine two proposals. Firstly, that responsible belief is blameless belief (a position we call DDB) and, secondly, that responsible belief is praiseworthy belief (a position we call DDP). We consider whether recent arguments in favor of DDP, mostly those recently offered by Brian Weatherson, stand up to scrutiny and argue that they do not. Given other considerations in favor of DDP, we conclude that the deontologist should (...) maintain that doxastic responsibility is a concept about freedom from appropriate blame. (shrink)

I introduce a new version of Moral Error Theory, which I call Type-B Moral Error Theory. According to a Type-B theorist there are no facts of the kind required for there to be morality in stricto sensu, but there can be irreducible ‘normative’ properties which she deems, strictly speaking, to be morally irrelevant. She accepts that there are instrumental all things considered oughts, and categorical pro tanto oughts, but denies that there are categorical all things considered oughts on pain of (...) requiring ‘queer’ facts to obtain. I detail the most central motivation of this version of the theory against its more traditional rival, according to which there are no irreducible normative properties at all. The motivation is that it, unlike its rival, can successfully be defended against the notorious charge of self-defeat. (shrink)

Shah, N. The Philosophical Quarterly, 56, 481–498 (2006) has defended evidentialism on the premise that only it (and not pragmatism) is consistent with both (a) the deliberative constraint on reasons and (b) the transparency feature of belief. I show, however, that the deliberative constraint on reasons is also problematic for evidentialism. I also suggest a way for pragmatism to be construed so as to make it consistent with both (a) and (b) and argue that a similar move is not available (...) to the evidentialist. Thus, far from settling the debate in favour of evidentialism, considerations concerning the deliberative constraint on reasons support pragmatism. (shrink)

Chimpanzee language studies have generated much heated controversy, as Roger Fouts can attest from firsthand experience. Perhaps this is because language is usually considered to be what truly distinguishes humans from apes. If chimps can indeed be taught the rudiments of language, then the difference between them and us is not as great as we might have thought. It is a matter of degree rather than kind, a continuity, and our species is not so special after all. The advantage of (...) this continuity thesis, as Fouts has emphasized, is that it conforms to the general tenets of evolutionary theory, and fits well with the evidence from paleontology and genetics that suggests that apes and humans are close cousins. It also .. (shrink)

ContentsThe Self-Images of a Discipline: A Genealogy of International Relations Theory/Steve SmithThe End of the Cold War and International Relations: Some Analytic and Theoretical Conclusions/Fred HallidayInternational Relations and the Triumph of Capitalism/Richard LittleInternational Political Theory and the Idea of World Community/Chris BrownThe Political Theory of International Society/Robert H. JacksonInternational Political Theory and the Global Environment/Andrew HurrellPolitical Economy and International Relations/Susan StrangeRe-visioning Security/J. Ann TicknerThe Level of the Analysis Problem in International Relations Reconsidered/Barry BuzanThe Post-Positivist Debate: Reconstructing Scientific Enquiry and International (...) Relations Theory After Enlightenment's Fall/John A. VasquezNeo-realism in Theory and Practice/Andrew LinklaterInternational Politics and Political Theory/Jean Bethke ElshtainQuestions About Identity in International Relations/Marysia Zalewski and Cynthia EnloeInternational Relations and the Concept of the Political/R. B. J. WalkerDare Not to Know: International Relations Theory Versus the Future/Ken Booth. (shrink)

That holobionts are units of selection squares poorly with the observation that microbes are often recruited from the environment, not passed down vertically from parent to offspring, as required for collective reproduction. The taxonomic makeup of a holobiont’s microbial community may vary over its lifetime and differ from that of conspecifics. In contrast, biochemical functions of the microbiota and contributions to host biology are more conserved, with taxonomically variable but functionally similar microbes recurring across generations and hosts. To save what (...) is of interest in holobiont thinking, we propose casting metabolic and developmental interaction patterns, rather than the taxa responsible for them, as units of selection. Such units need not directly reproduce or form parent-offspring lineages: their prior existence has created the conditions under which taxa with the genes necessary to carry out their steps have evolved in large numbers. These taxa or genes will reconstruct the original interaction patterns when favorable conditions occur. Interaction patterns will vary in ways that affect the likelihood of and circumstances under which such reconstruction occurs. Thus, they vary in fitness, and evolution by natural selection will occur at this level. It is on the persistence, reconstruction, and spread of such interaction patterns that students of holobiosis should concentrate, we suggest. This model also addresses other multi-species collectively beneficial interactions, such as biofilms or biogeochemical cycles maintaining all life. (shrink)

This biography of Hypatia, the female philosopher and mathematician in Christian Egypt, provides background on her work and her life as an elite woman at this time. There are many myths about Hypatia, including her research, inventions and the impact of her murder, all based on a handful of contemporary resources. Through presenting the different theories and myths alongside the available evidence, this book will enable the reader to make their own interpretations about her life. Whilst the evidence does leave (...) many questions unanswered, this book provides the evidence as it stands, separating the myth from reality. There is very little published on Hypatia and she forms quite a niche market in the history of ancient Egypt. However, she is an interesting example of how multicultural Alexandria functioned at such an unstable political time, and provides anecdotal evidence of the atrocities that occurred. This book will appeal to scholars, lay people and political and religious researchers, and will show that the history of Egypt does not end at Cleopatra. (shrink)

Background/Aim: The law on consent has changed in Scotland with the introduction of the Adults with Incapacity Act 2000. This Act introduces the concept of proxy consent in Scotland. Many patients in intensive care are unable to participate in the decision making process because of their illness and its treatment. It is normal practice to provide relatives with information on the patient’s condition, treatment, and prognosis as a substitute for discussion directly with the patient. The relatives of intensive care patients (...) appeared to believe that they already had the right to consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. The authors’ aim was to assess the level of knowledge among relatives of intensive care patients of both the old and new law using a structured questionnaire.Methods: The next of kin of 100 consecutive patients completed a structured questionnaire. Each participant had the questions read to them and their answers recorded. Patients were not involved in the study.Results: Few were aware of the changes. Most thought that they previously could give consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. Only 13% have ever discussed the preferences for life sustaining treatment with the patient but 84% felt that they could accurately represent the patient’s wishes.Conclusions: There appeared to be a lack of public awareness of the impending changes. The effectiveness of the Act at improving the care of the mentally incapacitated adult will depend largely on how successful it is at encouraging communication and decision making in advance of incapacity occurring. (shrink)

The subject of this book, which is the first to be devoted to a single photograph, is Camille Silvy's remarkable River Scene.

While rooted in careful study of Mead’s original writings and transcribed lectures and the historical context in which that work was carried out, the papers in this volume have brought Mead’s work to bear on contemporary issues in metaphysics, epistemology, cognitive science, and social and political philosophy.

Booth explains that international relations are a critical level in the business of determining who gets what across the world. He gives an introduction and shows how they directly or indirectly affect all our lives.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

A materialist view of economics presumes that from material possession flows the best of life’s satisfactions. A postmaterialist view claims instead that the best of human satisfactions come not just from material possessions but from the experience of life’s social, cultural and natural wonders as well. This article sets out a theory of postmaterial experience economics and uses survey research findings from the World Values Survey to establish whether or not postmaterial orientations to economic experience exist in global society and (...) whether Schwartz’s basic human values and Inglehart’s postmaterial values predict orientations to postmaterial experience. Expanded global participation in postmaterial experience matters economically because it can lead to increased unemployment from reduced demand for material goods if not off... (shrink)

Intuitions may seem to play a fundamental role in philosophy: but their role and their value have been challenged recently. What are intuitions? Should we ever trust them? And if so, when? Do they have an indispensable role in science—in thought experiments, for instance—as well as in philosophy? Or should appeal to intuitions be abandoned altogether? This collection brings together leading philosophers, from early to late career, to tackle such questions. It presents the state of the art thinking on the (...) topic.Readership: Scholars and advanced students of philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Our Best RhetorologistWayne C. BoothAristotle’s Rhetoric: An Art of Character, by Eugene Garver; 328 pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, $53.95.Eugene Garver’s new book is not only an original and challenging account of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It is one of the fullest and most responsible encounters ever with philosophical, political, and ethical issues raised by the theory and practice of rhetoric. I’ll go even further. Because Garver grapples so (...) well with how Aristotle’s problems differ from ours, and how his solutions do not quite fit what we most need, I hereby confer upon him, without irony, the title of supreme “rhetorologist” (a term he needs but does not use).A rhetorologist is not just “rhetorician” or “rhetorical theorist” or “philosopher of rhetoric.” Garver’s work dramatizes our need for a term for the “comparativist of rhetorics,” the thinker who probes how disparate rhetorical practices and theories compete and are finally, inescapably related. In earlier times when all philosophers were trained to think about rhetoric the term “genuine philosopher” might have served the trick. But it won’t work today.Garver has spent decades on this masterwork of rhetorology, and he thus joins those rare masters-of-interrelated-rhetorics—Kenneth Burke, Richard McKeon, who else?—those who do justice both to the importance and the complexities of a subject that Aristotle has led us into but himself could never have dreamed of, since he had available no fully developed alternative “rhetorics” to do a “-logy” on. [End Page 116]The book is too ambitious and complex to allow full justice here. It is a book not just to read but to study; it is a book to teach from. All attentive readers will find themselves drawn into issues previously dodged, or engaged in quarrels about theses they’ve never met before. Those like me whose interests overlap strongly with Garver’s will of course dispute about some points. What will prove important, as the book gets discussed, will be our recognition of just why the project itself has led Garver, and leads us, into some inescapable juggling with several different and potentially contradictory theses, each of them so important that it must at moments have invited Garver to consider it as primary. Indeed, when an original thinker bites off more than anyone can chew, let alone fully digest, we should not be surprised if we have a hard time deciding just what the main point is. Several times in my first reading I thought, “Garver has mistitled this book: it should be called...”—and then I’d try out a title that fit the argument at that point but would not fit precisely what came next.The result is that different sympathetic readers will find different books here, with at least the following ambiguously related purposes—all of them to my mind either firmly achieved or at least pursued so effectively that refutation will prove difficult. Some of them are the overt theses of particular chapters, but all are found echoed or implied in every chapter. And all are finally and impressively interrelated.IFirst, Garver works, as he must, to show the faults of past readings of the Rhetoric. The chief of these has been the reduction to a handbook for rhetors; it is not a technical handbook, though it can be used as that, but an effort to “construct a civic relation between argument and ethos, so between techn̄e and phron̄esis [prudence]” (p. 77). “Aristotle’s political project is to maximize the active—energeia—side of rhetoric and so civilize the activity of influencing beliefs and judgments and convert into a minor irritant the role played by disreputable tactics such as playing on irrelevant emotions in the hearers” (p. 40). “I have... assumed that instead of doing that job [the ‘handbook’ job] badly, Aristotle is in fact trying to accomplish something else. I see him exhibiting the internal values and standards of rhetorical argument to legislators and citizens” (p. 235), [and thus making possible] “a new conception of the ethical, and of the relation of logos and ethos” (p. 16). “Aristotle’s Rhetoric is about a civic art... (shrink)

In recent years there has been a major revival of interest in the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Thinkers have looked to Kant's theories about knowledge, history, the moral self and autonomy, and nature and aesthetics to seek the foundations of their own political philosophy. This volume, written by established authorities on Kant as well as by new scholars in the field, illuminates the ways in which contemporary thinkers differ regarding Kantian philosophy and Kant's legacy to political and ethical theory. (...) The book contains essays by Patrick Riley, Lewis White Beck, Mary Gregor, and Richard L. Velkley that place Kant in the tradition of political philosophy; chapters by Dieter Henrich, Susan Shell, Michael W. Doyle, and Joseph M. Knippenberg that examine Kantian perspectives on history and politics; contributions by William A. Galston, Bernard Yack, William James Booth, and Ronald Beiner that judge the Kantian legacy; and classic discussions by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Hans-Georg Gadamer that present different perspectives on contemporary debates about Kant. (shrink)

Over last half of the twentieth century, a silent revolution in post-material values made significant advances around the world. The formation of post-material values also resulted in expanded part...

This paper provides a defence of the thesis that responsible belief is permissible rather than obliged belief. On the Uniqueness Thesis (UT), our evidence is always such that there is a unique doxastic attitude that we are obliged to have given that evidence, whereas the Permissibility Thesis (PT) denies this. After distinguishing several varieties of UT and PT, we argue that the main arguments that have been levied against PT fail. Next, two arguments in favour of PT are provided. Finally, (...) two motivations for PT are put forward by showing that PT is entailed by two views that are quite popular among theorists working on doxastic responsibility. If the arguments in this paper are successful, we not only have good reasons to prefer PT over UT, but also good reasons to think that the gap between the ways in which we are meant to normatively assess belief and action may not be as wide as has been thought. (shrink)