I propose a theory of freedom of choice on which it is a variable quality of individual conscious choices that has several dimensions that admit of degrees, even though - as many theorists have traditionally supposed - it also has as a necessary condition the possession of a capacity that is all or nothing. I argue that the proposed account better fits the phenomenology of ostensibly free actions, as well as empirical findings in the human sciences.

The University of Michigan conference “Where Religion, Policy, and Bioethics Meet: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Islamic Bioethics and End-of-Life Care” in April 2011 addressed the issue of brain death as the prototype for a discourse that would reflect the emergence of Islamic bioethics as a formal field of study. In considering the issue of brain death, various Muslim legal experts have raised concerns over the lack of certainty in the scientific criteria as applied to the definition and diagnosis of brain (...) death by the medical community. In contrast, the medical community at large has not required absolute certainty in its process, but has sought to eliminate doubt through cumulative diagnostic modalities and supportive scientific evidence. This has recently become a principal model, with increased interest in data analysis and evidence-based medicine with the intent to analyze and ultimately improve outcomes. Islamic law has also long employed a systematic methodology with the goal of eliminating doubt from rulings regarding the question of certainty. While ample criticism of the scientific criteria of brain death (Harvard criteria) by traditional legal sources now exists, an analysis of the legal process in assessing brain death, geared toward informing the clinician’s perspective on the issue, is lacking. In this article, we explore the role of certainty in the diagnostic modalities used to establish diagnoses of brain death in current medical practice. We further examine the Islamic jurisprudential approach vis-à-vis the concept of certainty (yaqīn). Finally, we contrast the two at times divergent philosophies and consider what each perspective may contribute to the global discourse on brain death, understanding that the interdependence that exists between the theological, juridical, ethical, and medical/scientific fields necessitates an open discussion and active collaboration between all parties. We hope that this article serves to continue the discourse that was successfully begun by this initial interdisciplinary endeavor at the University of Michigan. (shrink)

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Al- though these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence (...) moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment. (shrink)

In this paper I am concerned with the question of whether degrees of belief can figure in reasoning processes that are executed by humans. It is generally accepted that outright beliefs and intentions can be part of reasoning processes, but the role of degrees of belief remains unclear. The literature on subjective Bayesianism, which seems to be the natural place to look for discussions of the role of degrees of belief in reasoning, does not address the question of whether degrees (...) of belief play a role in real agents’ reasoning processes. On the other hand, the philosophical literature on reasoning, which relies much less heavily on idealizing assumptions about reasoners than Bayesianism, is almost exclusively concerned with outright belief. One possible explanation for why no philosopher has yet developed an account of reasoning with degrees of belief is that reasoning with degrees of belief is not possible for humans. In this paper, I will consider three arguments for this claim. I will show why these arguments are flawed, and conclude that, at least as far as these arguments are concerned, it seems like there is no good reason why the topic of reasoning with degrees of belief has received so little attention. (shrink)

The moral of Buridan's Ass is that it can sometimes be rational to perform one action rather than another even though one lacks stronger reason to do so. Yet it is also commonly believed that it cannot ever be rational to believe one proposition rather than another if one lacks stronger reason to do so. This asymmetry has been taken to indicate a deep difference between epistemic and practical rationality. According to the view articulated here, the asymmetry should instead be (...) explained by the difference between rational intentions and rational actions. Thus, it turns out, Buridan's Ass-style cases do not indicate an asymmetry between epistemic and practical rationality as such. (shrink)

Philosophical interest in intentional action has flourished in recent decades. Typically, writers in the field of action theory seek necessary and sufficient conditions for a movement's being an action, conditions derived from a conceptual analysis of everyday action ascriptions. However, only a naturalistic account of intentional action, an account whose methods and aims are continuous with those of the empirical sciences, will truly help further our understanding of action as a biological phenomenon. ;Action is naturalized as a species of movement (...) that is both purposive and self-controlled, using these terms in novel senses. Various psychological and physiological models of purposiveness have been offered, including negative feedback, motor program, and dynamical systems models. However, while such non-historical models offer valuable insights into the nature of how organisms control their movements, they fail as general models of purposiveness because consideration of a movement's selectional history is required in order to classify movements as unitary behaviors rather than merely accidental motions. Non-historical models also fail to cover instances of unsuccessful purposive movements and cases of "functionally emergent behaviors." For such reasons, purposiveness must be seen as an historical property of movements; a movement is purposive insofar as it has a Millikanian proper function. ;An agent's capacity to exert a high degree of control over its movements marks the second key underlying property of action. I highlight an aspect of behavior-control which empirical theorists have largely ignored, namely the extent to which agents "could have done otherwise" than how they have in fact acted upon particular occasions. Self-control in this "could have done otherwise" sense is naturalized in terms of "modulatory interconnectivity." Modulatory interconnectivity involves the extent to which an agent's internal behavior-control modules facilitate behavioral interruptability via the interaction of informational links of inhibition and/or suppression. The greater the extent to which an agent's behavior-control modules have the capacity to modulate one another's activities, the more the agent has the capacity for self-control in the "could have done otherwise" sense. This view is elucidated and supported with the aid of models from robotics and neurophysiology. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, to make intentional actions fully intelligible, we need to posit representations of action the content of which is nonconceptual. I further argue that an analysis of the properties of these nonconceptual representations, and of their relation- ships to action representations at higher levels, sheds light on the limits of intentional control. On the one hand, the capacity to form nonconceptual representations of goal-directed movements underscores the capacity to acquire executable concepts of these movements, thus (...) allowing them to come under intentional control. On the other hand, the degree of autonomy these nonconceptual representations enjoy, and the specific temporal constraints stemming from their role in motor control, set limits on intentional control over action execution. (shrink)

The Simple View (SV) holds that for someone to intentionally A, he must intend to A. Critics of SV point to intentional actions which, due to belief-conditions or consistency constraints, agents cannot intend. By recognizing species of intention which vary according to the agent's confidence in acting, I argue that the stringency of consistency constraints depends on the agent's confidence. A more sophisticated SV holds that the species of intending is related to the degree of intentionality of the (...) action. Finally, I show that where agents do what they believe impossible, without intending to do so, the action is not intentional. (shrink)

The ascription of intentional states to the self involves knowledge, or at least claims to knowledge. Armed with the working definition of knowledge as 'the ability to do things, or refrain from doing things, or believe, or want, or doubt things, for reasons that are facts' [Hyman, J. Philos. Quart. 49:432—451], I sketch a simple competence model of acting and believing from knowledge and when knowledge is defeated by un-experienced changes of state. The model takes the form of three concentric (...) circles. The 'periphery' is analogous to Fodor's [(1983), The modularity of mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] input systems. The 'core' contains copies of peripheral representations, and between these representations there is executive competition. At the 'nucleus', operations are performed on the core representations of, at least, negation and recursion. I argue that this provides a fruitful way in which to conceptualise why theory-of-mind tasks challenge pre-school children, how some degree of first-person authority is mental state attribution is possible, and how executive inhibition is achieved. (shrink)

This paper examines the context in which Anscombe wrote Intention—focusing on the years 1956–1958. At this time Anscombe was engaged in a number of battles against her university, her colleagues, and, ultimately, “the spirit of the age,” which included her public opposition to Oxford University’s decision to award Harry Truman an honorary degree. Intention, I show, must be understood as a product of the explicitly ethical and political debates in which Anscombe was involved. Understanding the intention (...) with which she wrote Intention suggests that we need radically to rethink its nature and character, and that the consequences of the book for work in ethics—consequences Anscombe foresaw and intended—are yet to be understood. (shrink)

Ruth Leys starts with accounts that reduce emotion to a few simple states and emphasize the degree to which it is genetically wired. She then argues that other cultural theorists who emphasize the role of affect are driven in this direction, too, even when they wish to avoid such a trajectory. Much of the argument revolves around the charge of “anti-intentionalism” against us. Because of limitations of space, my response concentrates on my own thinking in this domain, though I (...) suggest some lines of connection to other theories of affect. I will not always try to unpack Leys’s views but will focus more on where mine deviate from her account of them. (shrink)

In 2012, the politician Todd Akin caused a firestorm by suggesting, in the context of an argument about the moral permissibility of abortion, that some forms of rape were. This seemed to imply that other forms of rape must not be legitimate. In response, several commentators pointed out that rape is a and that there are. While the intention of these commentators was clear, I argue that they may have played into the very stereotype of rape endorsed by Akin. (...) Such a response, I claim, actually obscures a range of sexual harms, including some that may not rise to the level of being a crime. I also offer some thoughts on the moral psychology behind anti-abortion arguments of the kind advanced by Akin. (shrink)

Given the success of the formal approach, within contemporary epistemology, to understanding degreed belief, some philosophers have recently considered its extension to the challenge of understanding intention. According to them, (1) intentions can also admit of degrees, as beliefs do, and (2) these degreed states are all governed by the norms of the probability calculus, such that the rational norms for belief and for intention exhibit certain structural similarity. This paper, however, raises some worries about (2). It considers (...) two schemes for representing degreed intention, and casts some doubt on applying probabilistic norms to degreed intention on each scheme. And it argues that the norms of Intention–Belief Consistency and Enkrasia cannot plausibly be turned into norms prescribing a simple correspondence relation between one’s degrees of belief and intention. The results suggest a potential structural discrepancy between the norms of theoretical and practical rationality—at least for degreed belief and intention. This potential discrepancy not only raises interesting questions about the intention–belief relation and rational norms for degreed intention. It also poses a new challenge for intention-based expressivism about normative judgment and cognitivism about practical rationality. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes two tasks. First, I examine in detail Edmund Husserl’s earliest philosophy of surrogates, as it is found in his 1890 “On the Logic of Signs ”. I analyze his psychological and logical investigations of surrogates, where the former is concerned with explaining how these signs function and the latter with how they do so reliably. His differentiation of surrogates on the basis of their genetic origins and degrees of necessity is discussed. Second, the historical importance of this (...) text is disclosed by showing how Semiotic serves as both the inspiration for, and the foil to, Husserl’s 1901 First Logical Investigation. Husserl not only adopts the idea that linguistic signs can function via association, but also maintains that such signs can motivate me to execute one of two experiences. The key difference between the texts is that Husserl abandons his theory of surrogates in 1901, instead holding that I can experience absent objects by means of empty intentions. The reasons why Husserl found it necessary to transform this tenet of his philosophy are discussed at length. (shrink)

Previous studies on the follow-up effect of serendipity mostly focused on the positive effects and less on the negative effects. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to investigate the negative effect of serendipity on the purchase intention of unexpected products. To verify all hypotheses in this article, we used online and offline survey data in China. Three experimental results showed that serendipity contains a certain degree of uncertainty, which will cause consumers’ perceived risk and decrease the purchase (...) intention of unexpected products. Perceived risk plays a mediating role in the effect of serendipity on the purchase intention of unexpected products. Moreover, regulatory focus moderates the effect of serendipity on purchase intention of unexpected products. Specifically, for prevention-focused individuals, the negative effect of serendipity on the purchase intention of unexpected products is strengthened. For promotion-focused individuals, the negative effect of serendipity on the purchase intention of unexpected products is weakened. This article augments the understanding of the negative effects of serendipity and provides theoretical guidance and support for the management practice of marketers. (shrink)

Organisms engage in various activities that are directed at objects, whether real or imagined. Such activities may be termed “intentional relations.” We present a four-level framework of social understanding that organizes the ways in which social organisms represent the intentional relations of themselves and other agents. We presuppose that the information available to an organism about its own intentional relations (or first person information) is qualitatively different from the information available to that organism about other agents’ intentional relations (or third (...) person information). However, through the integration of these two sources of information, it is possible to generate representations of intentional relations that are uniformly applicable to the activities of both self and other. The four levels of the framework differ in the extent to which such integration occurs and in the degree to which imagination is involved in generating these representations. Most animals exist at the lowest level, at which integration of first and third person sources of information does not occur. Of nonhuman species, only great apes exhibit social understanding at intermediate levels, at which integration of these sources of information provides uniform representations of intentional relations. Only humans attain the highest level, at which it is possible to represent intentional relations with mental objects. We propose that with the development of the imagination, children progress through three stages, equivalent to the later three levels of the framework. The abnormalities in social understanding of autistic individuals are hypothesized to result from a failure to develop integrated representations of intentional relations. (shrink)

A multidimensional measure of ethical culture was examined for its relationship to person–organization fit, ethical intent and organizational citizenship behavior, using a sample of 525 employees from the financial industry in Spain. As hypothesized, relative to studies using unidimensional assessments, our measure of EC was more strongly related to ethical intent and organizational citizenship. Also, significant differences were found in the degree to which each the EC dimensions related to both ethical intent and OCB. Finally, in a first for (...) the literature, we demonstrated the important role of overall P–O fit in connection with EC, ethical intent, and organizational citizenship. Specifically, as hypothesized, P–O fit moderated positively the association between EC and ethical intent, but mediated the EC–OCB relationship. (shrink)

This study aims to develop and defend an account of practical rationality and intention that explains how weakness of the will is conceptually possible. I first present two sceptical arguments against the possibility of weakness and then distinguish two different responses to scepticism that defends its possibility. Both sceptical arguments are motivated by what many have believed is an analogy between theoretical and practical reasoning. This analogy holds that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an intention just as (...) the conclusion of theoretical reasoning is a belief. The particular version held by what I call the Socratic theorists claims, in addition, that the value of desirability is transferred from premisses to conclusion in practical reasoning, just as probability is transferred from premisses to conclusion in theoretical reasoning. One example of an author who takes the analogy as a basic premise and seek to explain how weakness of the will still may be possible, is Donald Davidson. Critics of Davidson object that the the kinds of difficulties that his account runs into shows that the Socratic version of the analogy must be false; not only is this account phenomenologically implausible, it also exaggerates the degree of irrationality of the weak agent. In this study I suggest the possibility of a weaker version of the Davidsonian account. The main source of difficulty for the Davidsonian account, I argue, may not be its reliance on the Socratic version of the analogy between practical and theoretical reasoning, but rather its particular understanding of this analogy in terms of an analogy between practical and inductive-statistical reasoning. This understanding may lead one to accept too “rationalistic” a picture of the reasoning processes behind weakness of the will which, in effect, may make the account vulnerable to objections that it is phenomenologically implausible and exaggerates the irrationality of the weak agent. The weaker version of the Davidsonian account that I propose, ties in the account of weakness with the notions of “satisficing” and “default reasoning”. Although it preserves the central idea of the stronger version that intentions are unconditional evaluative judgements, it proposes a different view of the contents of these judgements, as well as of the reasoning process that lie behind them. It is not difficult to motivate this weaker view: given our human finitary predicament, both satisficing and default reasoning seem to be likely results of an optimal trade-off between the speed and reliability of our computational processes. The question is how these notions may shape the concepts we use to understand weakness of the will. I argue that if we modify the account usually ascribed to Davidson in the light of these notions, the result is a less rationalistic picture of weakness of the will. The gains are more phenomenological credibility as well as a less extreme view of the degree of irrationality involved. (shrink)

An important recent debate in the philosophy of action has focused on whether there is a persistence requirement on intention and, if there is, what its proper formulation should be. At one extreme, Bratman has defended what I call Strong Persistence, according to which it’s irrational to abandon an intention except for an alternative that is better supported by one’s reasons. At the other extreme, Tenenbaum has argued that there isn’t a persistence requirement on intention at all. (...) In the middle, philosophers like Broome, Ferrero, and Paul have defended persistence requirements with varying degrees of stringency while agreeing that Bratman’s proposed requirement is too strong. In this paper I side with Bratman in defending Strong Persistence. I argue, however, that Bratman’s own argument in favor of it is defective and an easy prey to the multiple objections that have been leveled against it. I thus offer in its place a “first-personally addressed constitutivist argument” whose aim is to show to the minimally reflective agent the kind of commitment involved in deciding and forming an intention in situations of incomparability—which are taken to be the litmus test for persistence requirements—and the persistence rational requirement governing it. Along the way I respond to the objections against Strong Persistence and explain why my argument represents an improvement over Bratman’s. (shrink)

The current study presents the findings of an empirical inquiry into the effects of Confucian ethics and collectivism, on individual whistleblowing intentions. Confucian Ethics and Individualism–Collectivism were measured in a questionnaire completed by 343 public officials in South Korea. This study found that Confucian ethics had significant but mixed effects on whistleblowing intentions. The affection between father and son had a negative effect on internal and external whistleblowing intentions, while the distinction between the roles of husband and wife had a (...) positive effect on those intentions. The effects of collectivism were also different depending on the specific types of collectivism. Horizontal collectivism had a positive effect on both types of whistleblowing intentions, whereas vertical collectivism did not show any significant effects on whistleblowing intentions. These results indicate that cultural traits such as Confucian ethics and collectivism may affect an individual’s whistleblowing intentions in degree and direction, making blanket predictions about cultural effects on whistleblowing difficult. (shrink)

To understand the mechanism of boundary personnel opportunistic behaviors in collaborative R&D projects to reduce the risk of companies suffering from opportunism in collaboration. This study is conducted based on the context of collaborative R&D in the equipment manufacturing industry in Northeast China. This research mainly explored the mechanism of boundary personnel opportunistic intentions. Drawing on the theory of reasoned action, this study investigated the relationship between boundary personnel Guanxi, organizational loyalty, opportunistic attitudes, subjective norms, and intentions. In addition, this (...) research examined the moderating role of the degree of dependence on the collaborator. In total, 524 valid questionnaires were finally collected. The data analysis results suggested that Guanxi inhibits opportunistic attitudes and subjective norms. Organizational loyalty promotes opportunistic attitudes and subjective norms. Opportunistic attitudes and subjective norms positively predict intentions. Opportunistic attitudes mediate between organizational loyalty and opportunistic intentions. Opportunistic subjective norms mediate between Guanxi and opportunistic intentions. Opportunistic subjective norms also mediate between organizational loyalty and opportunistic intentions. Dependence on the collaborator positively moderates the relationship between opportunistic attitudes and intentions. Therefore, it can be argued that in collaborative R&D in the equipment manufacturing industry, the corporate could stimulate boundary personnel to build good Guanxi to eliminate opportunism. At the same time, companies should lead employees to show loyalty properly, which opportunism is not wise in collaborative R&D. Finally, enterprises should objectively understand and evaluate the dependence relationship between the two partners in collaborative R&D to adopt the right strategy. (shrink)

The availability of time is a deciding factor for participation of adults in continuing vocational education and training. In view of the importance of time for participation, the present study investigates the impact of employer offered leave of work on employees’ participation behavior in CVET. Leave of work provides a specific timeframe for CVET by enabling the use of working time as learning time. The rationale of the intention-behavior relation as theorized by the theory of planned behavior provides the (...) theoretical framework for the study. The theory allows the integration of individual and contextual factors in explaining individual behavior and the underpinning decision-making process. The theory conceptualizes time as an element of behavioral control that is required to act on an intention. Behavioral control is theorized to moderate the intention-behavior relation. Two modes of behavioral control are distinguished. We use employer offered leave of work as a proxy for actual behavioral control and the degree of perceived behavioral control regarding the availability of temporal resources to participate in CVET to investigate the theorized moderating role of behavior control on the intention-behavior relation. To test the hypotheses, two waves of panel data from the German National Educational Panel Study are used. Aiming at causal inferences, hybrid logit models are employed. We find that a participation intention is a significant predictor of CVET participation. However, the results provide no evidence regarding the theorized moderating role of actual behavioral control in terms of an employer offered leave of work on the intention-behavior relation. Furthermore, the results provide evidence that the degree of perceived behavioral control regarding the availability of temporal resources to participate in CVET does neither moderate the intention-behavior relation nor is a proxy for actual behavioral control. Finally, we discuss possible future developments of the theory of planned behavior by integrating action-theoretical assumptions from the value-expectancy theory. (shrink)

This paper analyzes communication with a language that is vague in the sense that identical messages do not always result in identical interpretations. It is shown that strategic agents frequently add to this vagueness by being intentionally vague, i.e. they deliberately choose less precise messages than they have to among the ones available to them in equilibrium. Having to communicate with a vague language can be welfare enhancing because it mitigates conflict. In equilibria that satisfy a dynamic stability condition intentional (...) vagueness increases with the degree of conflict between sender and receiver. (shrink)

This paper sought to test whether student demographics (gender, age, religion, type of degree and number of courses done containing ethics) influenced the likelihood of engaging in unethical business practices. The study involved the use of a questionnaire being administered to a sample of 231 undergraduate students in Barbados. It was found that gender, religiousness, type of degree and number of courses taken containing ethics significantly impacted on the intentions to engage in unethical behaviour. It was also found (...) that the impact of age was not conclusive. The study has several limitations including low generalisability due to the use of a non-probability sampling method, and the possibility of social desirability bias. The study informs educators about the need to integrate ethics into the curriculum as an essential component of professional training for future managers and business people. This study makes an important contribution to the ethics literature on small island developing states, since the study was done in the country of Barbados. (shrink)

This research adopted the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology to emphasize the use of the PX Pay mobile payment app for PX Mart, the most popular supermarket in Taiwan, and examine the degree of involvement as a moderator. The influence of factors related to PX Mart’s target customer groups on their shopping intentions and usage behaviors were discussed, with subsequent benefits and optimization directions. This study indicated the following results. First, performance expectations, ease-of-use expectations, and social (...) impact enhance consumers’ behavioral intention and behavioral intention significantly influence usage behavior. Second, gender has no significant moderating effect on the proposed model. Third, age has a moderating effect from performance expectations and ease-of-use expectations, social influence on behavioral intention. Fourth, use is more significantly affected by perceived stakeholders for customers over age 50 than for those age 30–39. Fifth, the degree of involvement significantly affects the relationship between behavioral intention and usage behavior in terms of social influence and facilitating conditions effects. Finally, we provided academic and practical implications and make contributions to both the online payment industry and academia. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a preliminary explication of the role of and the relation between mental states, action, and blame in Medhātithi’s commentary on the most influential juridical text of the Sanskrit world – the jurisprudential text attributed to Manu. In defining what it means to act and what constitutes engaging in intentional and unintentional action, this paper makes three claims. First, enjoined actions (e.g., sacrifices) require particular mental states to be performed. Notwithstanding the role of mental states in (...) enjoined actions, actions lacking the corresponding mental states can be blameworthy. In fact, unintentional actions (including also actions done intentionally, but under a description that foregoes what renders the conduct sanctionable) can indeed constitute blameworthy conduct. Second, although unintentional action still meets the threshold for constituting blameworthy conduct, mental states generally play an important role regarding the degree of blame assignable to a person. Third, there are several possible rules that make sense of the seemingly inconsistent use and impact of intention throughout Manu’s Code of Laws as Medhātithi’s commentary shows. The paper also sheds light on the relation between intentions and desires according to Medhātithi. (shrink)

Social stimuli grab our attention: we attend to them in an automatic and bottom-up manner, and ascribe them a higher degree of saliency compared to non-social stimuli. However, it has rarely been investigated how variations in attention affect the processing of social stimuli, although the answer could help us uncover details of social cognition processes such as action understanding. In the present study, we examined how changes to bottom-up attention affects neural EEG-responses associated with intentional action processing. We induced (...) an increase in bottom-up attention by using hypnosis. We recorded the electroencephalographic µ-wave suppression of hypnotized participants when presented with intentional actions in first and third person perspective in a video-clip paradigm. Previous studies have shown that the µ-rhythm is selectively suppressed both when executing and observing goal-directed motor actions; hence it can be used as a neural signal for intentional action processing. Our results show that neutral hypnotic trance increases µ-suppression in highly suggestible participants when they observe intentional actions. This suggests that social action processing is enhanced when bottom-up attentional processes are predominant. Our findings support the Social Relevance Hypothesis, according to which social action processing is a bottom-up driven attentional process, and can thus be altered as a function of bottom-up processing devoted to a social stimulus. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is a preface paradox for intention. The preface paradox for intention shows that intentions do not obey an agglomeration norm, requiring one to intend conjunctions of whatever else one intends. But what norms do intentions obey? I will argue that intentions come in degrees. These partial intentions are governed by the norms of the probability calculus. First, I will give a dispositional theory of partial intention, on which degrees of (...) class='Hi'>intention are the degrees to which one possesses the dispositions characteristic of full intention. I will use this dispositional theory to defend probabilism about intention. Next, I will offer a more general argument for probabilism about intention. To do so, I will generalize recent decision theoretic arguments for probabilism from the case of belief to the case of intention. (shrink)

The power to exercise control is a crucial feature of agency. Necessarily, if S cannot exercise some degree of control over anything - any state of affairs, event, process, object, or whatever - S is not an agent. If S is not an agent, S cannot act intentionally, responsibly, or rationally, nor can S possess or exercise free will. In my dissertation I reflect on the nature of control, and on the roles consciousness plays in its exercise. I first (...) consider the fragmented state of philosophical and empirical work on control. I argue that a mature philosophy of agency stands in need of a detailed personal-level account of control, and I begin by explicating a notion I call intentional control. On this explication, an agent J exercises intentional control in service of an intention X to the degree that behavior of J's for which X plays a (non-deviant) causal role approximates the representational content of X. With this explication in hand, I offer analyses of theoretically salient points along a degreed spectrum (covering, e.g., the exercise of minimal, successful, and perfect intentional control). Next, I develop an account of the degrees of intentional control's possession. This involves elucidation of ingredients of intentional control, i.e. those features of agents and environments that constitute an agent's causal potency and skill. It turns out that an agent's possession of control regarding an intention is intimately tied to her ability to repeatedly execute that intention across some specified (hypothetical) set of scenarios. Finally, I discuss a number of potentially fruitful applications of the account. In chapter three I confront a strong intuition, persistent in both philosophy and cognitive science, that consciousness is somehow intimately involved in the exercise of control. In this connection recent empirical work indicates the causal powers of consciousness remain poorly understood. I argue that Functional Agnosticism - the view that any claim regarding a function of consciousness for behavior is currently underdetermined by the data - is the wisest position on the causal powers of consciousness. Recognition of this unsatisfying state of affairs motivates reflection on what might enable progress beyond it. I argue that establishing a causal function for consciousness is facilitated by clarity on several issues. First, what is the sense of consciousness at issue? I isolate state consciousness, discuss the potential relevance of various types of conscious states, and distinguish between ambitious and modest approaches to the causal powers of state consciousness. In short, ambitious approaches seek to understand the causal contributions of a conscious mental state in virtue of the fact that the state is conscious; modest approaches seek to understand the causal contributions of conscious mental states, full stop. I argue that for various theoretical purposes, both approaches can be useful. Second, what is the sense of control at issue? I argue that for many important theoretical purposes, intentional control is the relevant sense. Finally, I illustrate the usefulness of clarity on these issues by examining recent work on the roles of conscious and unconscious vision for action. This work suggests that some important subset of our overt action is controlled by non-conscious processes. I apply insights developed earlier, noting common mistakes made in this literature, and highlighting important empirical possibilities these mistakes obscure. In later chapters I develop a novel account of conscious control. In chapter four I develop a central part of the account, which involves a view on the intentional structure of conscious trying. The leading view entails that conscious trying possesses a descriptive (or thetic) structure. Based on relevant empirical work concerning deafferented and paralyzed patients, I argue for the view that conscious trying is (at least) partially constituted by directive (or telic) structure. Finally, I argue that the exercise of conscious control is best understood as an exercise of intentional control for which the experience of trying plays a constitutive role. After presenting arguments for this view and defending the view against objections, I discuss the importance of conscious control for a mature philosophy of mind and agency. (shrink)

Written against the background of her controversial opposition to the University of Oxford's awarding of an honorary degree to Harry S. Truman, Elizabeth Anscombe's /Intention/ laid the groundwork she thought necessary for a proper ethical evaluation of actions like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devoutly Catholic Anscombe thought that these actions made Truman a murderer, and thus unworthy of the university's honor — but that this verdict depended on an understanding of intentional action that had been (...) widely rejected in contemporary moral philosophy. /Intention/ was her attempt to work out that understanding and argue for its superiority over a conception of intention as an inner mental state. -/- Though recognized universally as one of the definitive works in analytic philosophy of action, Anscombe's book is often dismissed as unsystematic or obscure, and usually read through the lens of philosophical concerns very far from her own. Schwenkler's Guide offers a careful and critical presentation of Anscombe's main lines of argument at a level appropriate to advanced undergraduates but also capable of benefiting specialists in action theory, moral philosophy, and the history of analytic philosophy. Further, it situates /Intention/ in a context that emphasizes Anscombe's debts to Aristotle, Aquinas, and Wittgenstein, and her engagement with the work of contemporaries like Gilbert Ryle and R. M. Hare, inviting new avenues of engagement with the ideas of historically important philosophers. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to develop an integrative model linking the effect of authoritarian leadership and differential leadership on employee turnover intention, and further explore the moderating role of the in-group/out-group on the above-mentioned relationships. We collected a sample of 624 supervisor–subordinate dyads from 87 teams in Mainland China and Taiwan. We find that, at the individual level, authoritarian leadership is positively related with employee turnover intention, and the relationship will be enhanced especially when the subordinate (...) is an in-group member. Through hierarchical linear modeling analysis, we find a negative relationship between differential leadership and employee turnover intention, significantly moderated by the within-team mean degree and the within-team variance degree of in-group/out-group. Contributions, limitations, and future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Braddon-Mitchell and Miller put forward the claim that the relation of being-the-same-person is gradable: a person can be the same person tomorrow as today, but only half the same. To justify their thesis, they propose a model of persons that is intended to be metaphysically neutral. This article sets out to show that such a model implicitly contains strong metaphysical assumptions that run contrary to the authors’ own statements. Using Roman Ingarden’s phenomenological ontology, we aim to demonstrate that within the (...) model in question persons exist intentionally, where this leads to a caricature rather than an adequate account of persons. In opposition to Braddon-Mitchell and Miller, we argue that the justification presented for the thesis of the gradability of the relation of being-the-same-person in fact makes it reasonable to demand that an adequate model of persons be posited. We present Kurt Lewin’s holistic topological-dynamic model, and show that in this context it is not being-the-same-person that is gradable, but rather the characteristic (of persons) that is dimension. Thus, we reject the thesis of the gradability of the relation of being-the-same-person involved in personal identity. (shrink)

Whether or not youth work should professionalise and to what degree governments should regulate youth work services have been a widely debated topic within the Australian youth sector in recent tim...

Much contemporary scholarship on ziran and wuwei views these concepts, which are often coupled, as being 1) anti-intention, effort, purpose, and self-consciousness; 2) indicative of a distinct type of ethics and/or morality; and 3) a rejection of following custom and convention. This paper will draw largely on the philosophy of Guo Xiang to demonstrate that these widely agreed upon avenues of interpretation are limited and run contrary to other more nuanced readings of ziran and wuwei. I argue that ziran (...) and wuwei are better appreciated as speaking to attitudes, that they should be understood in terms of degrees rather than categories, and that the Laozi and Zhuangzi offer them as advice for ways of reflecting—they are not standardizable ethical rules. In this way, we can see how ziran and wuwei include intention and effort, are anti (most forms of) ethics and morality, and are inherently intertwined with customs and convention. (shrink)

There are two kinds of view in the literature concerning the relevance of intention to permissibility. While subjectivism assumes that an agent acts permissibly if he or she believes that the conduct is necessary for a moral purpose, for objectivism the de facto presence of an objective reason to justify one’s deeds is what matters. Recently, Scanlon and Hanser defend a moderate version of objectivism and subjectivism, respectively. Although I have a degree of sympathy toward both views, I (...) will argue that the truth lies somewhere in between. The view that I suggest in this paper hopefully occupies a space between subjectivism and objectivism and can accommodate the intuitions that neither of those views cannot account for. (shrink)

Much contemporary scholarship on ziran and wuwei views these concepts, which are often coupled, as being 1) anti-intention, effort, purpose, and self-consciousness; 2) indicative of a distinct type of ethics and/or morality; and 3) a rejection of following custom and convention. This paper will draw largely on the philosophy of Guo Xiang to demonstrate that these widely agreed upon avenues of interpretation are limited and run contrary to other more nuanced readings of ziran and wuwei. I argue that ziran (...) and wuwei are better appreciated as speaking to attitudes, that they should be understood in terms of degrees rather than categories, and that the Laozi and Zhuangzi offer them as advice for ways of reflecting—they are not standardizable ethical rules. In this way, we can see how ziran and wuwei include intention and effort, are anti (most forms of) ethics and morality, and are inherently intertwined with customs and convention. (shrink)

What are the objects of speaker meaning? The traditional answer is: propositions. The traditional answer faces an important challenge: if propositions are the objects of speaker meaning then there must be specific propositions that speakers intend their audiences to recover. Yet, speakers typically exhibit a degree of indifference regarding how they are interpreted, and cannot rationally intend for their audiences to recover specific propositions. Therefore, propositions are not the objects of speaker meaning (Buchanan 2010; MacFarlane 2020a; 2020b; and Abreu (...) Zavaleta 2021). In this paper I do two things. Firstly, I outline a collective analogue of this challenge that undermines the most prominent responses to the original challenge. Secondly, I provide a new solution: typical utterances are backed by a cluster of partial communicative intentions. This response resolves both individual and collective variants of the problem and allows us to retain the traditional propositional view of speaker meaning. (shrink)

How do people decide what category an artifact belongs to? Previous studies have suggested that adults and, to some degree, children, categorize artifacts in accordance with the design stance, a categorization system which privileges the designer’s original intent in making categorization judgments. However, these studies have all been conducted in Western, technologically advanced societies, where artifacts are mass produced. In this study, we examined intuitions about artifact categorization among the Shuar, a hunter-horticulturalist society in the Amazon region of Ecuador. (...) We used a forced-choice method similar to previous studies, but unlike these studies, our scenarios involved artifacts that would be familiar to the Shuar. We also incorporated a community condition to examine the possible effect of community consensus on how artifacts are categorized. The same scenarios were presented to university student participants in the UK. Across populations and conditions, participants tended to categorize artifacts in terms of a creator’s intent as opposed to a differing current use. This lends support to the view that the design stance may be a universal feature of human cognition. However, we conclude with some thoughts on the limitations of the present method for studying artifact concepts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. For once, (...) Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

This article considers the various suggestions that have been put forward by German scholars to replace the traditional concept of intention, which the author has criticized elsewhere (Taylor 2004). The debate on this topic has become a minor academic industry in Germany, and should be better known as the English-speaking world struggles with its own concepts of intention. Despite the great amount of effort and ingenuity devoted to this topic in Germany, however, the author concludes that only one (...) theory of intention, that put forward by Professor Wolfgang Frisch, shows any substantial degree of promise. (shrink)

We propose a theoretical model to explain the usage of time-inconsistent behavior as a strategy to exploit others when reputation and trust have secondary effects on the economic outcome. We consider two agents with time-consistent preferences exploiting common resources. Supposing that an agent is believed to have time-inconsistent preferences with probability p, we analyze whether she uses this misinformation when she has the opportunity to use it. Using the model originally provided by Levhari and Mirman (Bell J Econ 11(1):322–334, 1980), (...) we determine the optimal degree of present bias that the agent would like to have while pretending to have time-inconsistent preferences and we provide the range of present-bias parameter under which deceiving is optimal. Moreover, by allowing the constant relative risk aversion class of utility form, we characterize the distinction between pretending to be naive and sophisticated. (shrink)

Background: Double degrees in nursing and midwifery have evolved in Australia as a proposed solution to possible impending shortages of qualified midwives in the healthcare workforce. The double degree is seen as a more acceptable option in non-metropolitan areas in particular. Concern has been expressed however, about dilution of midwifery philosophy and graduates opportunities in respect of future clinical practice. Aim: This study aimed to provide a better understanding of motivations and intentions of students who undertake the Bachelor of (...) Nursing Science/Bachelor of Midwifery double degree. Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was employed at four universities that offered double degrees in nursing and midwifery in three states of Australia. Students enrolled in first and fourth year of a double degree and graduates of a double degree were invited to complete an online survey comprised of Likertscales and items requiring free text responses. Quantitative data was analysed using SPSS and thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data. Findings: Participants indicated a clear preference for midwifery as a career with this preference increasing for each cohort at each stage of study. Discussion: Primary reasons for selecting a double degree were perceived increased opportunity for employment and use of nursing skills to enhance midwifery practice in a population with growing co-morbidities. A strong identification with midwifery philosophy and identity was also demonstrated.Conclusion: An understanding of motivations and career intentions of students undertaking double degree studies can inform future program development and workforce planning. (shrink)

A corporate culture strengthened by ethical values and other positive business practices likely yields more favorable employee work responses. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess the degree to which perceived corporate ethical values work in concert with group creativity to influence both job satisfaction and turnover intention. Using a self-report questionnaire, information was collected from 781 healthcare and administrative employees working at a multi-campus education-based healthcare organization. Additional survey data was collected from a comparative convenience (...) sample of 127 sales and marketing employees working for a variety of firms operating in the south-central United States. The results indicated that group creativity and corporate ethical values were positively related, and that both variables were associated with increased job satisfaction. Conversely, corporate ethical values and job satisfaction were associated with decreased turnover intention. Sales managers should create work cultures that precipitate increased ethical values and group creativity, and suggestions about how they may institutionalize these factors are provided. (shrink)

This paper examines the ironic speaker’s intentions, drawing distinctions on the basis of two criteria: communicative priority and manifestness. It is argued that these provide useful insights into the widely discussed categories of speaker’s intentions. First of all, “ironic meaning” is viewed as comprising a set of different types of meaning, including a bundle of implicatures that can be hierarchically ranked in terms of both communicative priority and inferential priority. Secondly, examples of different degrees of manifestness of the ironist’s intentions (...) are discussed in light of the communicative complexities of irony, which is viewed as a higher-order phenomenon. The final discussion attempts to bring together the analyses of the speaker’s and the hearer’s perspectives, contributing to a dynamic model of ironic discourse. (shrink)

The quality of doctoral-level biochemistry (N=139), botany (N=83), cellular/molecular biology (N=89), microbiology (N=134), physiology (N=101), and zoology (N=70) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: (1) program size; (2) characteristics of graduates; (3) reputational factors (scholarly quality of faculty, effectiveness of programs in educating research scholars/scientists, improvement in program quality during the last 5 years); (4) university library size; (5) research support; and (6) publication records. Chapter I discusses prior attempts (...) to assess quality in graduate education, development of the study plans, and the selection of disciplines and programs to be evaluated. Chapter II discusses the methodology used, focusing on each of the assessment measures. Chapters III to VIII present, respectively, findings from the analyses of the biochemistry, botany, cellular/molecular biology, microbiology, physiology, and zoology programs. Chapter IX includes a summary of results, correlations among measures, several additional analyses, and suggestions for future studies. Among the findings reported are those indicating that cellular/molecular biology programs had, on the average, the largest number of faculty and that students in cellular/molecular biology, biology, biochemistry, microbiology, and physiology received a relatively high fraction of financial support. (Survey instruments and supporting documentation are included in appendices.) (JN). (shrink)

BackgroundTurnover intention, an employee’s intention to voluntarily leave their jobs, affects workforce sustainability. However, scarce data are available about turnover intention and its associated factors among psychiatrists in China, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current research was designed to address this gap.MethodsAn anonymous, nationwide online survey was disseminated to psychiatrists in 41 psychiatric hospitals in China. We collected demographic data, job-related information, and participants’ turnover intention in the next 12 months.ResultsIn total, 3,973 psychiatrists completed the (...) survey. The sample was predominantly female and married, and nearly three-fourths had children. More than one-third had a master’s or doctoral degree in addition to their medical degree. The overall level of job satisfaction was moderate. The rate of turnover intention was 22.0% and was comparable in males and females. Psychiatrists who had participated in the frontline work of COVID-19 were more likely to report an intention to leave their current job. Multiple regression analyses suggested that turnover intention was significantly associated with having insomnia, longer working hours, and more working days per week.ConclusionDuring the pandemic period, approximately one-fifth of psychiatrists in China reported turnover intention. Factors associated with turnover intention included high job-related burdens, low job satisfaction, participation in the frontline work against COVID-19, and insomnia. To improve psychiatric workforce sustainability, policymakers and hospital administrators need to be aware of this potential challenge and address the concerns of psychiatrists in China. (shrink)