Cases of modest sociality are cases of small scale shared intentional agency in the absence of asymmetric authority relations. I seek a conceptual framework that adequately supports our theorizing about such modest sociality. I want to understand what in the world constitutes such modest sociality. I seek an understanding of the kinds of normativity that are central to modest sociality. And throughout we need to keep track of the relations—conceptual, metaphysical, normative—between individual (...) agency and modest sociality. In pursuit of these theoretical aims, I propose that a central phenomenon is shared intention. I argue that an adequate understanding of the distinctiveness of the intentions of individuals allows us to provide a construction of attitudes of the participants, and of relevant inter-relations and contexts that constitutes shared intention. I explain how shared intention, so understood, differs from a simple equilibrium within common knowledge. And I briefly contrast my views with aspects of views of John Searle and Margaret Gilbert. (shrink)

What is the relation between small-scale collaborative plans and the execution of those plans within interactive contexts? I argue here that joint attention has a key role in explaining how shared plans and shared intentions are executed in interactive contexts. Within singular action, attention plays the functional role of enabling intentional action to be guided by a prior intention. Within interactive joint action, it is joint attention, I argue, that plays a similar functional role of enabling the agents to act (...) in a collaborative way such that their actions are rationally guided by a prior shared intention. This understanding of joint attention – as having a key functional role of enabling the rational guidance of joint intentional action by a prior shared intention – allows for an alternative understanding of the kind of minimal cooperation that infants can engage in. On this understanding, infants’ capacity to engage in joint actions is already an incipient capacity to engage in rational and intentional joint actions, albeit a capacity that is necessarily scaffolded by an adult rational co-partner. (shrink)

A central claim in Michael Bratman’s account of shared agency is that there need be no radical conceptual, metaphysical or normative discontinuity between robust forms of small-scale shared intentional agency, i.e., modest sociality, and individual planning agency. What I propose to do is consider another potential discontinuity, whose existence would throw doubt on his contention that the structure of a robust form of modest sociality is entirely continuous with structures at work in individual planning agency. My (...) main point will be that he may be wrong in assuming that the basic cognitive infrastructure sufficient to support individual agency doesn’t have to be supplemented in significant ways to support shared agency. (shrink)

This is contribution to a symposium on Michael Bratman's book Shared Agency : A Planning Theory of Acting Together.

Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse explores the roles of stories, figures, dreams, theories, facts, delusions, advertising, institutions, economic arrangements, publishing practices, scientific advances, and politics in twentieth- century technoscience. The book's title is an e-mail address. With it, Haraway locates herself and her readers in a sprawling net of associations more far-flung than the Internet. The address is not a cozy home. There is no innocent place to stand in the world where the book's author figure, FemaleMan, encounters DuPont's controversial laboratory rodent, OncoMouse. (...) Haraway sees the world of contemporary technoscience as a drama. Information sciences and life sciences are at the center of the dramatic action. Scenes are set in landscapes where maps of human genetic differences are stored in databases, racialized bodies are reconfigured by morphing for photographs in popular magazines, and transgenic mice important to breast cancer research are patented intellectual property. The actors are many, and not all are human. Beginning with the Modest Witness, the key figure in the Science Revolution, Haraway shows us the trouble lurking in race and gender- marked practices for attesting to matters of fact. In later scenes, Haraway explores the kinship relations among the many cyborg creatures produced in the late twentieth-century--in nuclear research, genetic engineering, reproductive technologies, computer-mediated representational practices, and mutations in biological approaches to "race.". (shrink)

Recent attempts to explain why modesty should be considered a virtue have failed. A more adequate account is that modesty involves understanding how far one's accomplishments ought to be taken as definitive of one's value. Modest people communicate this self-understanding through behaviour motivated by the desire to ensure that their accomplishments do not cause pain to others. This virtuous mode of self-awareness involves recognizing that one is both defined by social standards of success and irreducible to these assessments. (...) class='Hi'>Modest agents do not think themselves ‘better’ than others, but recognize that they rank higher on the particular social standard in question. They thus both avoid causing pain and serve as exemplars of virtuous self-responsibility. (shrink)

Social sciences face a well-known problem, which is an instance of a general problem faced as well by psychological and biological sciences: the problem of establishing their legitimate existence alongside physics. This, as will become clear, is a problem in metaphysics. I will show how a new account of structural explanations, put forward by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, which is designed to solve this metaphysical problem with social sciences in mind, fails to treat the problem in any importantly new (...) way. Then I will propose a more modest approach, and show how it does not deserve the criticism directed at a prototype by Jackson and Pettit. (shrink)

The long-term health of business ethics is suspect. In particular, there are some troubling trends within the discipline’s methodology that should be closely monitored and, in some cases, countered. Furthermore, business ethicists and management theorists should take some steps to make business ethics more robust and more relevant to actual business practice. Part 1 of this article argues that, while the dominance of the social science approach should be curtailed, relations between normative and empirical scholars need not be hostile; on (...) the contrary, there are some modest ways in which the two approaches could complement each other more than they have to date. Part 2 examines why business ethics needs more systems thinking. Part 3 explores why business ethicists in general should follow the lead of some of our colleagues who are engaging in powerful and influential research with direct and immediate practical applications. The article closes with a few modest suggestions for enhancing business ethics theorizing and provides some concrete ways for scholars to become more involved with business practitioners and business practice and to learn from the latter in ways that can productively feed research streams. (shrink)

Social sciences face a well-known problem, which is an instance of a general problem faced as well by psychological and biological sciences: the problem of establishing their legitimate existence alongside physics. This, as will become clear, is a problem in metaphysics. I will show how a new account of structural explanations, put forward by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, which is designed to solve this metaphysical problem with social sciences in mind, fails to treat the problem in any importantly new (...) way. Then I will propose a more modest approach, and show how it does not deserve the criticism directed at a prototype by Jackson and Pettit. (shrink)

This article seeks to contribute to ongoing debates on the nature and foundations of environmental law. In doing so, the article accepts the claim made in much of the recent analytical environmental law scholarship that the discipline suffers from a lack of coherence. In a response to this claim, the article probes the potential reasons behind this incoherence. In relying on recent scholarship in the disciplines of social psychology and cultural cognition, the article argues that individual understanding of environmental risks (...) in accordance with a priori held beliefs and values aided by cognitive biases, lends support to a scenario of multiple and diverse understandings of environmental problems. This diversity is in turn reflected in both the form and content of environmental law. In a response to this diversity and incoherence, the article identifies the philosophy of pragmatism and argues that a modest interpretation of pragmatism has the potential to alleviate the biases and heuristics that give rise to the individual understanding of environmental risks. (shrink)

In response to the growing social discontent at what is perceived as generational injustice, due to younger generations of voters facing long-term negative consequences from issues disproportionately decided by the votes of older generations of voters, there have been suggestions to introduce an upper age voting threshold. These have been all but universally dismissed as offensive and contrary to basic democratic values. In the present article, I show that the idea is in fact entirely consonant with present-day democratic practices and (...) far from without a precedent. Hence, I describe how the aforementioned generational injustice can be rectified using a simple vote weighting scheme which is easy to implement and interpret. Lastly, I discuss the societal effects that this alteration of the voting system would have on the distribution of the origins of political power. (shrink)

William James’s lead continues to provide a balancing act of inquiry and truth with plurality and conflict. First, this article considers this balancing act in neuroscience, both what we have been learning since James published The Principles of Psychology and in how neuroscience is done. As pragmatists have long argued against dualisms and absolutes, the authors situate contemporary understanding in its historical context. Humans have evolved as brains-in-bodies-in-cultures and navigate such worlds through good-enough strategies, not a disembodied reason. Embodied intelligence (...) is laden with instinct, habit, and emotion as much as it is about consciousness. Truth, for James, is focused on nuanced success outcomes, both modest and broad. James’s sense of fallibility is critical in terms of comfort and discomfort in a social group. More prosocial behavior tends to be honest and less sociopathic, of course unless it is myopic and only in group orientation, which it often is. Understanding ourselves through the neuroscience does not answer most of the questions nor solve all the problems. However, such understanding is an important tool in aiding our coping efforts, especially regarding contemporary life. (shrink)

This is a response to Samara Foster’s engaging critique of my book School Choice and Social Justice. In this response to her criticisms I clarify and try to correct some apparent misunderstandings of the book, but also take the opportunity to pose again a challenge to opponents of choice which neither she, nor other of my critics, has taken up.

This is a response to Samara Foster’s engaging critique of my book School Choice and Social Justice. In this response to her criticisms I clarify and try to correct some apparent misunderstandings of the book, but also take the opportunity to pose again a challenge to opponents of choice which neither she, nor other of my critics, has taken up.

This is a response to Samara Foster’s engaging critique of my book School Choice and Social Justice. In this response to her criticisms I clarify and try to correct some apparent misunderstandings of the book, but also take the opportunity to pose again a challenge to opponents of choice which neither she, nor other of my critics, has taken up.

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. (...) I suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

Assessing social risks has proven difficult for IRBs. We undertook a novel effort to empirically investigate social risks before an HIV prevention trial among drug users in Thailand and China. The assessment investigated whether law, policies and enforcement strategies would place research subjects at significantly elevated risk of arrest, incarceration, physical harm, breach of confidentiality, or loss of access to health care relative to drug users not participating in the research. The study validated the investigator's concern that drug users were (...) subject to serious social risks in the site localities, but also suggested that participation in research posed little or no marginal increase in risk and might even have a protective effect. Our experience shows that it is feasible to inform IRB deliberations with actual data on social risks, but also raises the question of whether and when such research is an appropriate use of scare research resources. (shrink)

The main argument of this paper is that there are reasons for judges not only to evaluate the substantive merit of legislation, but to advert to the fact that the place of elected legislatures in our scheme of government gives legislation a standing, an entitlement to consideration, that may go beyond judicial estimates of its intrinsic merit.

"The main argument of this paper is that there are reasons for judges not only to evaluate the substantive merit of legislation, but to advert to the fact that the place of elected legislatures in our scheme of government gives legislation a standing, an entitlement to consideration, that may go beyond judicial estimates of its intrinsic merit." [Is this just a statement of procedural legitimacy?] "To answer the question [of who assigns rights], courts must take a view as to the (...) proper role of courts vis-a-vis legislatures; they must take a view about the allocation of power in our legal/political system. In drawing this line, courts can take one of two approaches. First, they can make decisions solely on the basis of considerations internal to the relevant clauses of the Constitution, perhaps by giving them a moral reading. Second, they can include in their thinking institutional considerations regarding the role of popular decision-making bodies in our governmental structure." Claims that Dworkin advocates the first [which is false], and that we should accept the second, which is advocated by advocates of judicial restraint. It is appropriate for a judge to give weight to the fact that a decision was reached by a legislature. "Specifically, I think it appropriate that courts presume the constitutionality of such laws, understanding that their own role demands that they overturn them if they are not merely different from what the judges might have decided on their own, but are beyond acceptability." Reasons for the presumption of constitutionality: value of compromise, allocation of power ), appropriateness of humility, integrity and community. (shrink)

If we are going to understand morality, it is important to understand the nature of societies. What is fundamental to them? What is the glue that holds them together? What is the role of shared norm acceptance in constituting a society? Michael Bratman’s account of modest sociality in his book, Shared Agency, casts significant light on these issues. Bratman’s account focuses on small-scale interactions, but it is instructive of the kinds of factors that can enter into explaining (...) class='Hi'>sociality more generally. Norms of “social rationality” play an important role in Bratman’s account. I agree with his idea that these norms have normative force. I contend that these norms actually are morally significant. On the resulting view, social glue consists of actual and intended meshing of intentions and shared knowledge combined with a kind of normative pressure that has normative authority—along with other more familiar factors such as familial connections, cooperative arrangements, and affective states such as loyalties. (shrink)

Although Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ was published over fifty years ago and has been widely discussed, its main argument is still notoriously difficult to pin down. The most common – but in my view, mistaken – interpretation of Strawson’s argument takes him to be providing a ‘relentlessly’ naturalistic framework for our responsibility practices. To rectify this mistake, I offer an alternative interpretation of Strawson’s argument. As I see it, rather than offering a relentlessly naturalistic framework for moral responsibility, Strawson (...) actually develops a transcendental argument, which grounds our moral responsibility practices in the practical perspective of social agents. However, the aims of this essay are not purely interpretative. Strawson’s essay continues to have important implications for a number of issues that arise in the contemporary debates that concern free will and moral responsibility. In particular, it puts significant pressure on moral responsibility sceptics like Derk Pereboom [Living Without Free Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001] who think that the truth of moral responsibility scepticism has no worrisome implications for our lives with others. (shrink)

Laudan's "progress and its problems" is of two, incompatible, minds. proto-laudan argues that science is indexed to historical contexts, such that scientific rationality depends on progress and not vice-versa. deutero-laudan claims that sociology assumes "a rationality" and so misunderstands science. the latter is confused and offers no argument against sociology which does not also apply against historical approaches to philosophy of science, proto-laudan included. such tribal warfare is unprogressive, and best abandoned.

A globe-spanning investigation into the Transhumanist movement, considering the tech billionaires, scientific luminaries, and DIY body-hackers attempting to prolong, improve, and ultimately transcend the limits of human life.

Twentieth century criticism has pointed out that many of Jonathan Swift´s works are linked with Irish conditions as well as some theories, which have remained particularly obscure for many literary investigations, in spite of the fact that they might be the key to a better understanding of the Irish author. Remarkable scholars noticed three main theoretical fields: economical, scientific and philosophical/linguistic. In the following pages, we will take into account some recent works on Swift in order to point out how (...) A Modest Proposal develops its satiric energy from a hesitating biopolitics, which criticises modernity and some of its knowledge, and also casts some light on human being’s contemporary condition. La crítica del siglo XX ha hecho ver que varias de las obras de Jonathan Swift están vinculadas tanto con las condiciones sociales, políticas y culturales irlandesas como con algunas teorías, las cuales han quedado en la oscuridad para algunas investigaciones literarias, a pesar del hecho de que puedan ser la clave de un mejor entendimiento del autor irlandés. Importantes investigadores han distinguido tres campos teóricos principales a los que se refiere la obra de Swift: el económico, el científico y el filosófico/lingüístico. En las siguientes páginas, tomaremos en cuenta algunos de los trabajos recientes sobre Swift con la intención de hacer ver que Una Modesta Proposición desarrolla su fuerza satírica a partir de una biopolítica que duda y critica la modernidad y algunos de los saberes de la modernidad, arrojando luz acerca de la condición contemporánea del ser humano. (shrink)

This chapter argues that for human, technological, and human-technological reasons, disagreement, critique, and counterspeech on social media fall squarely into the province of non-ideal theory. It concludes by suggesting a modest but challenging disposition that can help us when we are torn between opposing oppression and contributing to a flame war.

Simion and Kelp defend a non-anthropocentric account of trustworthy AI, based on the idea that the obligations of AI systems should be sourced in purely functional norms. In this commentary, I highlight some pressing counterexamples to their account, involving AI systems that reliably fulfil their functions but are untrustworthy because those functions are antagonistic to the interests of the trustor. Instead, I outline an alternative account, based on the idea that AI systems should not be considered primarily as tools but (...) as technological participants in social practices. Specifically, I propose to source the obligations of an AI system in the norms that should govern the role it plays within the social practices it participates in, taking into account any changes to the social practices that its participation may bring about. This proposal is anthropocentric insofar as it ascribes obligations to AI systems that are similar to those of human participants in social practices, but only modestly so, as it does not require trustworthy AI to have contentious anthropomorphic capacities (e.g. for consciousness or moral responsibility). (shrink)

Although previous studies primarily claim that government-dependent firms can actively engage in compliance activities in order to achieve political legitimacy, access government resources, and build competitive advantages, these studies largely ignore how firms react when firm-dependent governments exert coercive pressures. We thus introduce institutional theory and the behavioral theory of social performance to develop a model of modest imitation, and we propose that the more governments depend on privately owned firms, the more firms demonstrate average social performance in order (...) to balance efficiency concerns with political legitimacy threats. Meanwhile, whether firms imitate peers’ social performance depends on the magnitude of institutional rigidity. In turn, issue salience and spatial proximity undermine modest imitation, and political connections strengthen modest imitation. We study how all listed, privately owned firms react to the Chinese government’s call for social engagement in poverty alleviation initiated in 2015. This study uses a two-stage Heckman selection model to correct for sample-selection bias, and the results provide strong support for our arguments. This research thus extends our understanding of modest imitation in response to coercive pressure from-dependent governments. (shrink)

This article modestly anticipates the still-unfolding reception of the laudable document For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church by two broadly-envisioned communities—those of non-Orthodox Christians and Coptic Orthodox Christians. There is much to be commended by the former, especially regarding the document's balanced assessment amidst complicated issues uncharted in the Orthodox world. This balance is possible through the effective coalescence of a theocentric worldview, a comfort with mystery, and a loosely-defined Orthodox anthropology. Regarding (...) the latter community, the document serves as a pioneering and bold example that does not neglect social relevance at the behest of theological commitments. At the same time, Coptic Orthodox Christians, in their insistence on the centrality of desert spirituality, are likely to question the document's sometimes tepid allusions to spiritual transformation, since the principal means out of which come social change, right action and good conscience for Orthodox Christians is through a life entrenched in Godward ascetic spirituality. (shrink)

Abstract:The concept of social progress I hope to rehabilitate will be local, far from locally complete, and permit only modest extensions; it will be pragmatic rather than teleological. In this way, it will hope to avoid treating the multiplicity of goods as if there were always the possibility of comparing them on a single scale, to abandon the idea of a final state toward which history is tending or should tend, and to substitute piecemeal accomplishments for utopian ends. Its (...) emphasis on local comparisons will allow it to forgo sweeping historical comparisons, those juxtaposing the “enlightened” with “lesser breeds without the law,” or the “ancients” with the “moderns.” A restrained pragmatic concept of social progress honors the insights of critics of the notion of social progress, seeing them as questioning alleged presuppositions that can be given up. (shrink)

Since social skills are highly significant to the evolutionary success of humans, we should expect these skills to be efficient and reliable. For many Evolutionary Psychologists efficiency entails encapsulation: the only way to get an efficient system is via information encapsulation. But encapsulation reduces reliability in opaque epistemic domains. And the social domain is darkly opaque: people lie and cheat, and deliberately hide their intentions and deceptions. Modest modularity [Currie and Sterelny (2000) Philos Q 50:145–160] attempts to combine efficiency (...) and reliability. Reliability is obtained by placing social skills in un-encapsulated central cognition; efficiency by having the social system sensitive to encapsulated socially tagged cues. In this paper, I argue that this approach fails. I focus on eye-gaze as a plausible example of a socially significant encapsulated cue. I demonstrate contra modest modularity that eye-gaze is subject to influence from central cognition. (shrink)

In this essay, I provide normative guidelines for developing a philosophically interesting and plausible version of social constructivism as a philosophy of science, wherein science aims for social-epistemic values rather than for truth or empirical adequacy. This view is more plausible than the more radical constructivist claim that scientific facts are constructed. It is also more interesting than the modest constructivist claim that representations of such facts emerge in social contexts, as it provides a genuine rival to the scientific (...) axiologies of scientific realists and constructive empiricists. I further contrast my view with positions holding that the aims of science are context dependent, that the unit of normative analysis is the scientific community, and that the aims of science are non-epistemic social values. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that to create a genomics that offers more gifts than weights, central attention must be paid to questions of justice. This will require expanding bioethical imaginations so that they grasp and can respond to questions of structural inequity. It will necessitate building novel coalitions and collaborations that turn the attention of bioethical governance away from narrow individual questions such as, “Do I consent?” and toward the broader collective question, is this just? What kind of lives (...) and collectivities are made possible? What rights and principles should govern them? The essay ends with one example of this novel coalition building arising from the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It draws lessons from this effort to build new alliances that bridge the social sciences and natural sciences, arts and engineering, to create new kinds of training and thinking that create a genomics that more adequately responds to fundamental questions of justice. (shrink)

In this new edition of his critically acclaimed book, Jon Elster examines the nature of social behavior, proposing choice as the central concept of the social sciences. Extensively revised throughout, the book offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms, drawing on many case studies and experiments to explore the nature of explanation in the social sciences; an analysis of the mental states – beliefs, desires, and emotions – that are precursors to action; a systematic comparison of rational-choice models of behavior (...) with alternative accounts, and a review of mechanisms of social interaction ranging from strategic behavior to collective decision making. A wholly new chapter includes an exploration of classical moralists and Proust in charting mental mechanisms operating “behind the back” of the agent, and a new conclusion points to the pitfalls and fallacies in current ways of doing social science, proposing guidelines for more modest and more robust procedures. (shrink)

A good theory of rationality should accommodate debates over first principles, such as those of rationality. The modest challenge made in this article is that relativists try to explain the (intellectual) value of some debates about first principles (absolute presuppositions, basic assumptions, intellectual frameworks, intellectual commitments, and paradigms). Relativists claim to justify moving with relative ease from one framework to another, translating chunks of one into the other; this technique is essential for historians, anthropologists and others. Thus ideas concerning (...) false prophecy are transferable to contemporary discussions. Ancient false prophets offered illusions of overcoming difficult problems cheaply; relativists do that too. The problem that relativism purports to solve cheaply is that of legitimizing pluralism. As the absolutist theory of truth is intuitively problematic, relativism seems intuitively more acceptable, but this intuitive advantage vanishes when it manifests as false prophecy. (shrink)

Several attempts have been made in the recent literature to provide a viable definition of the virtue of modesty. The most prominent of these comes from Julia Driver, who claims that modesty is the virtue of being disposed to persistently underestimate one’s self-worth despite available evidence to the contrary. In this paper, I argue that none of the recently presented definitions of modesty manage to capture its elusive nature. I argue that Driver and her critics fail to accurately define modesty (...) because they do not adequately account for the virtue’s social dimensions. Modesty is a valuable disposition for human agents to possess because it alleviates the jealousy, bitterness and other caustic emotions that arise in social contexts where our comparative merits are publicly acknowledged. This social function of modesty is often recognized, but it is consistently set aside when definitions of the virtue are presented. To correct this oversight, I propose a definition of modesty that faithfully captures our intuitions about the motives and behaviour of modest agents without failing to do justice to the social dimensions of the virtue. (shrink)

In Public Reason Confucianism, Sungmoon Kim presents an important Confucian political theory that seeks to combine a specific conception of Confucianism and the ideal of public reason. My article examines this theory and identifies some of the theoretical complications with Rawlsian public reason.

ABSTRACT In this paper, we will highlight the correspondences between the Socially Engaged Buddhism movement, especially as defined in the practice of the late Thich Nhat Hanh, and the core principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence originally adopted by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. These principles also underpin the neutral, impartial and independent approach to humanitarian action, used by agencies working under the auspices of the United Nations’ Inter-Agency Standing Committee and Office for the Coordination of (...) Humanitarian Affairs, along with those who have signed the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations in Disaster Relief. We hope this paper is a modest but useful contribution to create better understanding and to generate dialogue among different stakeholders in the humanitarian field, particularly in the context of armed conflict. (shrink)

Socially responsible investments (SRI) suffer from a lack of investments from individual investors, despite their positive attitudes toward SRI. This attitude–behavior gap is a serious issue, as SRI is often perceived as a way to promote sustainable development. We investigate nudges, especially the default option, as a way to encourage SRI. In a pre-registered study conducted in October 2021 with 1050 US investors, we pit four nudges against one another to encourage individual investors to invest in SRI. All nudges significantly (...) increased investment in SRI compared with the control group. Making SRI the default option with frictions to opt-out is the most efficient intervention. This is closely followed by a default option without friction to opt out and option partitioning, which are not significantly different from each other. Precommitment, although statistically significant, has a modest effect on investment in SRI and is inferior to the other nudges. Overall, the two types of default as well as option partitioning are significant and impactful solutions for increasing investment in SRI. (shrink)

CSR has become an important element in the business strategy of a growing number of companies worldwide. A large number of initiatives have been developed that aim to support companies in developing, implementing, and communicating about CSR. The Global Compact (GC), initiated by the United Nations, stands out. Since its launch in 2000, it has grown to about 2900 companies and 3800 members in total. The GC combines several mechanisms to support CSR strategies: normative principles, networks for learning and co-operation, (...) and communication and transparency about CSR activities. However, up to now only a few empirical evaluations of the contribution of the GC to CSR strategies have been conducted that however have not differentiated between different types of companies (regarding type of industry or regarding the maturity of CSR). This paper aims to partly fill this knowledge gap by a case study examination of three frontrunner companies in the telecommunications industry. The results show that the GC is only one of the many initiatives that these companies employ in shaping, implementing, and reporting about their CSR strategies, and that its role is at most modest. There are two important reasons. One is that many of the CSR issues that these companies deal with are industry specific and are hence addressed in specific networks. The second reason is that the GC principles are perceived as minimum requirements that do not provide many incentives to the three case study companies to perform better. A differentiation of norms for GC members is expected to enhance the contribution of the GC to CSR strategy employment, not only for frontrunner companies but as well for other categories of companies. (shrink)

This paper considers the justifiability of criminalising anti-social behaviour through two-step prohibitions such as the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). The UK government has recently proposed to abolish and replace the ASBO; however, the proposed new orders would retain many of its most controversial features. The paper begins by criticising the definition of anti-social behaviour employed in both the current legislation and the new proposals. This definition is objectionable because it makes criminalisation contingent upon the irrational judgements of (putative) victims, and (...) its often modest preventive benefits come at a high cost to citizens’ liberty and autonomy. The paper then goes on to propose a new definition of anti-social behaviour that would meet these objections: that is, as a course of conduct that causes others to experience serious and justifiable anxiety about the safety of their local community. Whilst this definition identifies a serious form of wrongdoing, its precise scope is inevitably uncertain. The paper thus concludes that we have good reason to use two-step prohibitions such as the ASBO to regulate such conduct, so as to enable the use of the criminal law against it whilst minimising possible concerns of legality arising from the proposed definition’s uncertain scope. (shrink)

One of the more compelling features of Denis Dutton’s The Art Instinct is its theoretical parsimony. Utilizing what essentially amounts to one explanatory principle—that of Darwinian selection—Dutton advances a theory of aesthetics that is at once general enough to account for cross-cultural variations in artistic production and sufficiently nuanced to promote insights into individual artworks. In doing this, Dutton’s work could not offer a greater contrast to some of the more vocal trends in contemporary aesthetic theory, where ponderous theorizing and (...) rebarbative jargons have violently opposed the idea—otherwise so modest—that aesthetic activities might draw on the evolved capacities of the human imagination. On .. (shrink)

This chapter discusses various attempts at deriving metaethical conclusions from claims about the function of morality. In doing so, it will, for the most part, grant the truth of such function claims and focus on what metaethical theses they do and do not support. After briefly surveying various recent proposals that rely on functions claims in an attempt to debunk the possibility of robust moral truth and knowledge, the chapter focusses on the contrary, vindicatory project. The proponents of this project (...) argue that a proper understanding of morality’s function not only supports the idea that there are moral truths that we can gain knowledge of, but also provides us with a better understanding of the grounds of those truths, an understanding, moreover, that reconciles the existence of such truths with a naturalistic worldview. A critical assessment of their proposals reveals that while a promising vindicatory role for a function claim can be found in elaborating a non-representationalist conception of the truth of moral judgments, grounding moral truth in morality’s function in that way allows for naturalizing ethics in a modest sense at the most. (shrink)

This paper draws some bold conclusions from modest premises. My topic is an old one, the Neohumean view of practical rationality. First, I show that this view consists of two independent claims, instrumentalism and subjectivism. Most critics run these together. Instrumentalism is entailed by many theories beyond Neohumeanism, viz. by any theory that says rational actions maximize something. Second, I give a new argument against instrumentalism, using simple counterexamples. This argument systematically undermines consequentialism and rational choice theory, I show, (...) using detailed examples of their many social science applications. There is no obvious fix. (shrink)

John Horton has argued for an associative theory of political obligation in which such obligation is seen as a concomitant of membership of a particular polity, where a polity provides the generic goods of order and security. Accompanying these substantive claims is a methodological thesis about the centrality of the phenomenology of ordinary moral consciousness to our understanding of the problem of political obligation. The phenomenological strategy seems modest but in some way it is far-reaching promising to dissolve some (...) long-standing problems of political theory. However, it fails at just the point at which a theory of political obligation is needed, namely when individuals question the grounds of their political obligation. A principle of obligation is needed to provide individuals with a reason for compliance with authoritative social rules when the exercise of that obligation is irksome. It is at this point that we need to invoke the idea of society as an implicit social contract, in which obligations are seen as stemming from those terms that it would be in the interests of individuals to agree in a social contract. This is consistent with the method of reflective equilibrium. (shrink)