Can politically inspired property damage or destruction be justified? This question is hardly of mere academic interest, in light of recent political protests in Hong Kong, the USA, and elsewhere. Against some contemporary writers, I argue that placing property damage under an open-ended rubric of uncivil disobedience does not generate the necessary conceptual and normative distinctions. Drawing on Martin Luther King, Jr., I instead argue that property damage should not be equated or conflated with violence against persons; it also takes (...) a variety of quite different forms. Anyone hoping to pursue politically motivated property damage should meet preconditions whose stringency will be determined by a key question: Do their acts generate or at least plausibly relate to violence against persons? Our answer to the question provide some space for legitimate, politically motivated property damage. Although some theories of property resist the strict delineation of violence to persons from property damage I defend, they fail to capture the realities of property ownership in existing societies, including the USA and, as such, do not undermine my defense, under existing conditions, of limited property damage. (shrink)

Inspired by an analogy between moral and secondary properties, some moral philosophers have argued that moral properties are dispositions. According to one version of this view, most clearly represented by Jonathan Dancy, a moral property is the property of being such, having base properties such, that an entity with the property elicits morally merited and motivating responses. Its proponents have argued that this notion can explain how moral judgements can be objective in the sense of expressing (...) class='Hi'>properties that are independent of will and yet imply motivation by those who assert them. In special consideration of Dancy’s Moral Reasons, I argue that the dispositional account does not save the idea of objectivity in the required sense and implies an untenable view of moral motivation. I therefore conclude that the dispositional account fails to explain the two features of moral judgements. (shrink)

This paper sketches and motivates a metaphysics of mind that is both substance dualist and, to a large extent, property reductive. Call it “property reductive emergent dualism”. Section “Emergent Dualism” gives the broad outlines of the view. Sections “Problems of Mental Causation” and “Theoretical Virtues” argue that it can claim several advantages over non-reductive physicalist theories of mind. Section “Problems of Mental Causation” considers metaphysical challenges to mental causation in detail. Section “Theoretical Virtues” considers overall theoretical virtues: ontological and ideological (...) economy, unification with physical sciences, the promise of explanatory gain. On these grounds, I propose that the view coupling substance dualism with property reductivism deserves further philosophical attention. (shrink)

A central point of contention in the ongoing debate between Humean and anti-Humean accounts of moral motivation concerns the theoretical credentials of the idea of mental states that are cognitive and motivational at the same time. Humeans claim that this idea is incoherent and thereby unintelligible (M. Smith, The Moral Problem, Blackwell 1994). I start by developing a linguistic argument against this claim. The semantics of certain ‘learning to’ and ‘knowing to’ ascriptions points to a dispositional state that has (...) both motivational and cognitive properties: habitual knowledge, as we may call it. But there is nothing unintelligible or incoherent about such ascriptions as they figure in the explanation and assessment of action. This suggests that the idea of a state that has both cognitive and motivational properties is not an artefact of philosophical speculation. Moreover, I suggest that action explanations that appeal to habitual knowledge, which are a variety of habit explanation, present distinctive problems for Humean accounts. The discussion bears on the relationship between habitual knowledge and knowing-how, and its possible significance for anti-Humean accounts of moral motivation. (shrink)

This article discusses the English construction variously known as Locative Inversion or Stylistic Inversion. It shows that the construction displays a unique ensemble of grammatical and usage properties that can be stated but not motivated through purely grammatical means. In search of an explanatory approach, an analysis is presented that draws on concepts of Artificial Intelligence, in particular plans viewed as complex mental attitudes. It is claimed that utterances of Locative Inversion are associated with a particular communicative plan on (...) the speaker's part that motivates the grammatical and usage properties of the construction where grammar alone cannot. The final section of the article presents corpus examples showing that Locative Inversion is indeed used in the contexts predicted by the plan associated with the construction. This result is both theoretically and methodologically significant, insofar as it constitutes a case where the grammatical properties of a syntactic construction are better explained through its typical conditions of use than through grammatical means proper. (shrink)

Although the emotional and motivational characteristics of dreaming have figured prominently in folk and psychoanalytic conceptions of dream production, emotions have rarely been systematically studied, and motivation, never. Because emotions during sleep lack the somatic components of waking emotions, and they change as the sleeper awakens, their properties are difficult to assess. Recent evidence of limbic system activation during REM sleep suggests a basis in brain architecture for the interaction of motivational and cognitive properties in dreaming. (...) Motivational and emotional content in REM and NREM laboratory mentation reports from 25 participants were compared. Motivational and emotional content was significantly greater in REM than NREM sleep, even after controlling for the greater word count of REM reports. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Section 1 discusses properties and propositions, and some of the motivation for an account in which property instantiation and propositional truth behave ‘naively’. Section 2 generalizes a standard Kripke construction for naive properties and propositions, in a language with modal operators but no conditionals. Whereas Kripke uses a 3-valued value space, the generalized account allows for a broad array of value spaces, including the unit interval [0,1]. This is put to use in Section 3, where I add (...) to the language a conditional suitable for restricting quantification. The shift from a value space based on the ‘mini-space’ {0,, 1} to one based on the ‘mini-space’ [0,1] leads to more satisfactory results than I was able to achieve in previous work: a vast variety of paradoxical sentences can now be treated very simply. In Section 4 I make a further addition to the language, a conditional modeled on the ordinary English conditional, paying particular attention to how it interacts with the restricted quantifier conditional. This is all done in the [0,1] framework, and two alternatives are considered for how the ordinary conditional is to be handled; one of them results from adding a tweak to a construction by Ross Brady. Section 5 discusses a further alternative, a standard relevance conditional (for the ordinary conditional, perhaps for use with a different quantifier-restricting conditional), but argues that it is not promising. Section 6 discusses the identity conditions of properties and propositions (again in the setting of a value space based on [0,1]); the issue of achieving naivety for coarse-grained properties is seen to be more complicated than some brief remarks in Field [2010] suggested, but a way to get a fair degree of coarse-grainedness is shown. (shrink)

The present work is motivated by recent experiments aimed to measure the propagation velocity of bound electromagnetic field that reveal no retardation in the absence of EM radiation. We show how these findings can be incorporated into the mathematical structure of special relativity theory that allows us to reconsider some selected problems of classical and quantum electrodynamics. In particular, we come to the conclusion that the total four-momentum for a classical system “particles plus fields” ought to be a present state (...) function of moving charges if EM radiation is negligible. In quantum domain, we analyze novel definition of the momentum operator recently suggested in the study of quantum phase effects. It implies that bound EM field energy and momentum are to be present state functions, too. Being in agreement with reported experiments, these conclusions suggest the necessity to carry out more precise experimental verifications for additional and independent determination of propagation properties of bound EM fields. A scheme of a possible experiment on this subject is also proposed. (shrink)

I outline a theory of moral motivation which is compatible with the metaphysical claims of strong emotionism—a sentimentalist account of morality first outlined by Jesse Prinz and supported by myself which construes moral concepts and properties as a subset of emotion-dispositional properties. Given these claims, it follows that sincere moral judgements are necessarily motivating in virtue of their emotional constitution. I defend an indefeasible version of judgement motivational internalism which takes into consideration both positively and negatively valenced (...) affective states and how they promote both approach and avoidance motivation, respectively. On this view, in making sincere moral judgements agents are antecedently motivated by standing Desires to avoid or approach the stimuli picked out by their judgements. I also defend internalism against the objections from defeating circumstances and amoralists. As regards the former, I claim that the tendency of philosophers to frame the motivation debate in terms of positive moral judgements makes the argument from defeating circumstances appear more plausible than it is; as regards the latter, I claim the amoralist argument only has force if it is empirically well supported and that psychological data has hitherto been unconvincing. (shrink)

In this chapter, I outline dynamic models of motivation and emotion. These turn out not to be autonomous subsystems, but, instead, are deeply integrated in the basic interactive dynamic character of living systems. Motivation is a crucial aspect of particular kinds of interactive systems -- systems for which representation is a sister aspect. Emotion is a special kind of partially reflective interaction process, and yields its own emergent motivational aspects. In addition, the overall model accounts for some of the (...) crucial properties of consciousness. (shrink)

This paper explores how a regime recognizable as a Rawlsian property-owning democracy might be enshrined constitutionally in the context of the U.S. Five specific constitutional amendments are proposed: establishing an equal right to education, establishing a guaranteed social minimum, clarifying the legitimacy of regulating corporate political speech for the sake of political equality: establishing an individual right to a share of society’s productive wealth, and assuring communities of significant size the right to remain economically viable over time. The substance and (...) reasoning behind each proposal is discussed in length, and the paper also briefly discusses why a focus on constitutional amendments may be helpful both in clarifying how a property-owning democracy might be realized in practice and in establishing clear goals for social movements motivated by the aim of establishing a more equitable distribution of wealth, power, and opportunity in the United States. (shrink)

In this paper I summarize two versions of a new form of ethical theory in which all basic moral terms are defined by direct reference to exemplars of goodness. I call the Christian form Divine Motivation Theory in a book by the same name (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and the more general form I call Exemplarist Virtue Theory (Gifford Lectures 2015) or Exemplarist Moral Theory (forthcoming 2017, Oxford University Press). In the Christian form the supreme exemplar is God. In exemplarist (...) virtue theory exemplars are superbly admirable persons or fictional characters, whose goodness is identified through the emotion of admiration rather than through the satisfaction of descriptive properties. In both versions of the theory the terms ‘good person’, ‘virtue’, ‘good life’, ‘admirable act’, and ‘right act’ are defined by the acts, motives, judgments, and attitudes of exemplary persons. (shrink)

Orthodoxy has it that only metaphysically elite properties can be invoked in scientifically elite laws. We argue that this claim does not fit scientific practice. An examination of candidate scientifically elite laws like Newton’s F = ma reveals properties invoked that are irreversibly defined and thus metaphysically non-elite by the lights of the surrounding theory: Newtonian acceleration is irreversibly defined as the second derivative of position, and Newtonian resultant force is irreversibly defined as the sum of the component (...) forces. We think that scientists are happy to invoke metaphysically non-elite properties in scientifically elite laws for reasons of convenience, such as to simplify the equations and to make them more modular. On this basis, we draw a deflationary moral about laws themselves, as being merely convenient summaries. 1 Introduction2 Orthodoxy2.1 Orthodoxy stated2.2 Orthodoxy explained2.3 A worrisome commitment: Term objectivism3 The Loose View3.1 The argument from practice3.2 Finding the scientifically elite equations3.3 Diagnosing the metaphysically non-elite properties3.4 Situating our challenge4 Newtonian Mechanics4.1 Newtonian acceleration4.2 Newtonian resultant force4.3 A metaphysical discovery?5 Objections5.1 Metaphysically elite after all?5.2 Scientifically non-elite after all?5.3 But our world is not Newtonian!6 Consequences6.1 Consequences for the motivations for link6.2 Consequences for metaphysically elite properties6.3 Consequences for lawhood. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to identify some of the motivations that can be found for taking a realist position concerning mathematical entities and to examine these motivations in the light of a case study in contemporary mathematics. The motivations that are found are as follows: (some) mathematicians are realists, mathematical statements are true, and finally, mathematical statements have a special certainty. These claims are compared with a result in algebraic topology stating that a certain sequence, the so-called Mayer-Vietoris (...) sequence, has different properties when placed in different categories. The conclusion is that the before mentioned motivations should be modified and it is suggested that they could also be explained by a position claiming that mathematical entities are introduced by mathematicians. (shrink)

Physicalists about the mind are committed to claims about property identities. Following Kripke's well-known discussion, modal arguments have emerged as major threats to such claims. This paper argues that modal arguments can be resisted by adopting a counterpart theoretic account of modal claims, and in particular modal claims involving properties. Thus physicalists have a powerful motive to adopt non-Kripkean accounts of the metaphysics of modality and the semantics of modal expressions.

The study investigated psychometric properties of the Sport Motivation Scale-6, assessing intrinsic regulation, four extrinsic regulation constructs, and amotivation among athletes competing at a regional and national level. In particular, we tested the factorial structure of SMS-6, its short-term stability, and the associations of SMS-6 constructs with self-efficacy, self-esteem, motivational climate, and satisfaction with sport performance. Participants were 197 athletes, representing team and individual disciplines. The measurement was repeated at the three-week follow-up. Results yielded support for the six (...) first-order factor structure. More autonomous forms of motivation were related to higher levels of self-efficacy, performance satisfaction, and taskoriented motivational climate in sport organizations. Sequential multiple mediation analysis showed that the association between general self-efficacy and performance satisfaction at a follow-up was mediated by introjected regulation and personal-barrier self-efficacy. (shrink)

There is an intuition, notoriously difficult to formalise, that only some predicates express real properties. J. M. Dunn formalises this intuition with relevance logic, proposing a notion of relevant predication. For each first order formula Ax, Dunn specifies another formula that is intuitively interpreted as "Ax expresses a real property". Chapter I calls such an approach an object language approach, since the claim that Ax expresses a real property is rendered as a formula in the object language. On a (...) metalanguage approach, on the other hand, the claim that Ax expresses a real property would be metalinguistic, mentioning but not using the formula Ax. ;Our Introduction begins by investigating Dunn's motivation for relevant predication, and argues that it implicitly presupposes some interpretation of identity. Indeed, part of the dissertation's work is to use relevant predication as a key to a coherent account of relevant identity. ;Chapter I re-motivates relevant predication. We consider P. Geach's distinction between real and "Cambridge" change, and suggest that there is an underlying distinction between real and Cambridge predicates. We further argue that no classical object language approach can formalise this distinction. So we turn to relevance logic, remotivating relevant predication, with Geach's distinction in mind. ;In light of this new motivation, we argue that relevant prediction relies on a logically weak notion of identity, according to which "x = y" means "x and y share all relevant properties". Identity is taken up in a more technical setting in Chapters IV and V. ;Subsequent chapters investigate technical issues that flow from Chapter I. Chapter II investigates metalinguistic grammatical characterisations of relevant predication. Chapter III concerns the semantics of first order relevance logic. Chapter IV investigates the identity in R and its relationship to relevant predication. In particular, Chapter IV argues against introducing the axiom, $\to$ Ay), in relevance logic, since the resulting systems are unstable, in a sense motivated by the notion of relevant identity underlying Dunn's notion of relevant predication. Finally Chapter V investigates the possibility of a coherent theory of identity in R's modal relatives ${\bf R}\sp\square$ and E. (shrink)

The constructs of motivation (or needs, motives, etc.) to explain higher-order behavior have burgeoned in psychology. In this article, we critically evaluate such high-level motivation constructs that many researchers define as causal determinants of behavior. We identify a fundamental issue with this predominant view of motivation, which we called the black-box problem. Specifically, high-level motivation constructs have been considered as causally instigating a wide range of higher-order behavior, but this does not explain what they actually are or how behavioral tendencies (...) are generated. The black box problem inevitably makes the construct ill-defined and jeopardizes its theoretical status. To address the problem, we discuss the importance of mental computational processes underlying motivated behavior. Critically, from this perspective, motivation is not a unitary construct that causes a wide range of higher-order behavior --- it is an emergent property that people construe through the regularities of subjective experiences and behavior. The proposed perspective opens new avenues for future theoretical development, i.e., the examination of how motivated behavior is realized through mental computational processes. (shrink)

Physical activity, and likely the motivation for it, varies throughout the day. The aim of this investigation was to create a short assessment (CRAVE: Cravings for Rest and Volitional Energy Expenditure) to measure motivation states (wants, desires, urges) for physical activity and sedentary behaviors. Five studies were conducted to develop and evaluate the construct validity and reliability of the scale, with 1,035 participants completing the scale a total of 1,697 times. In Study 1, 402 university students completed a questionnaire inquiring (...) about the want or desire to perform behaviors “at the present moment (right now).” Items related to physical activity (e.g., “move my body”) and sedentary behaviors (e.g., “do nothing active”). An exploratory structural equation model (ESEM) revealed that 10 items should be retained, loading onto two factors (5 each for Move and Rest). In Study 2, an independent sample (n= 444) confirmed these results and found that Move and Rest desires were associated with stage-of-change for exercise behavior. In Study 3, 127 community-residing participants completed the CRAVE at 6-month intervals over two years- two times each session. Across-session interclass correlations (ICC) for Move (ICC = 0.72–0.95) and Rest (ICC = 0.69–0.88) were higher than when they were measured across 24-months (Move: ICC = 0.53; Rest: ICC = 0.49), indicating wants/desires have state-like qualities. In Study 4, a maximal treadmill test was completed by 21 university students. The CRAVE was completed immediately pre and post. Move desires decreased 26% and Rest increased 74%. Changes in Move and Rest desires were moderately associated with changes in perceived physical fatigue and energy. In Study 5, 41 university students sat quietly during a 50-min lecture. They completed the CRAVE at 3 time points. Move increased 19.6% and Rest decreased 16.7%. Small correlations were detected between move and both perceived energy and tiredness, but not calmness or tension. In conclusion, the CRAVE scale has good psychometric properties. These data also support tenets of the WANT model of motivation states for movement and rest (Stults-Kolehmainen et al., 2020a). Future studies need to explore how desires to move/rest relate to dynamic changes in physical activity and sedentarism. (shrink)

Russellian physicalism is a view on the nature of consciousness which promises to satisfy the demands of both traditional physicalists and non-physicalists. It does so by identifying subjective experience with physically acceptable categorical properties underlying structural and dispositional properties described by science. Though promising, the view faces at least two serious challenges: (i) it has been argued that science deals in both categorical and non-categorical properties, which would undercut the motivation behind Russellian physicalism, and (ii) it has (...) been argued that only nonphysicalist Russellian views—like panpsychism—are useful when it comes to explaining consciousness. I address these criticisms, arguing that there is no viable reason for maintaining that science deals in categorical properties of the sort which a Russellian physicalist is interested in, and that features of fully-physical categorical properties can be described which provide useful explanations for various essential features of subjective experience. These projects are connected: it turns out that when the explanatory relevance of Russellian physicalism is explained in detail, constraints are put the sort of categorical properties that Russellian physicalists can say are left out of science. Specifically, Russellian physicalists are forced to subscribe to the view that science leaves out any categorical properties whatsoever, as opposed to the view that some scientifically scrutable properties are categorical, but not the ones which Russellian physicalists are interested in. I hope that by addressing these criticisms of Russellian physicalism, and drawing logical connections between the responses, further appeal is added to a promising, but so far relatively unexplored, view. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate how different views about the vertical and horizontal structure of reality affect the debate between reductive and nonreductive physicalism. This debate is commonly assumed to hinge on whether there are high-level, special-science properties that are distinct from low-level physical properties and whether the alleged multiple realizability of high-level properties establishes this. I defend a metaphysical interpretation of nonreductive physicalismin the absence of both of these assumptions. Adopting an independently motivated, discipline-relative account of (...) natural properties and appealing to a phenomenon I call “multiple determinativity,” in which a single physical property simultaneously realizes different kinds of special-science properties, is sufficient to show that some special-science properties are irreducible to physical properties and that nonreductive physicalism is not merely a terminological variant of reductive physicalism. (shrink)

This article draws on theoretical resources from economic sociology and sociology of law to intervene in economic debates about the relationship between intellectual property and industrialization. Utilizing historical evidence from the earliest period of American intellectual property law and from a formative company in the New England textile industry, I propose a social process of influence that connects intellectual property law to industrialization. I argue that, consistent with the findings of New Economic Sociology, social relationship structures and social capital are (...) the proximate influential force in industrialization. However, I also argue that transformative changes in those social relationship structures are rooted in the emergence of a particular type of political culture: what I call here, borrowing from Hannah Arendt and Frank Dobbin, a “Natal-Industrial Culture.” A Natal-Industrial Culture, as I propose it here, is a political culture in which collective hopes for the future are placed in new technologies and new cultural products, as means for achieving economic growth. Intellectual property law contributed to the emergence of this new type of political culture by holding out the promise of property, as a reward for the provision of new technologies or new cultural products. Because of the way that hope works on motivation—through cognitive pre-rehearsals of future attainment, which involve semantically-meaningful propositions and contribute to positive emotional experience—the promise of property provided a powerful stimulant to social capital formation. Working through the semantic resonances of property, intellectual property law contributed to a political culture in which invention and creativity were expected to secure a future of growth within the political community, both for particular members and for the political community, as a whole. By fostering a Natal-Industrial Culture, intellectual property law contributed to systematic invention and social capital-formation, leading, in turn, to the transformative changes in working and material provisioning that constitute industrialization. (shrink)

For non-analytic ethical naturalists, externalism about moral motivation is an attractive option: it allows naturalists to embrace a Humean theory of motivation while holding that moral properties are real, natural properties. However, Michael Smith has mounted an important objection to this view. Smith observes that virtuous agents must have non-derivative motivation to pursue specific ends that they believe to be morally right; he then argues that this externalist view ascribes to the virtuous agent only a direct de dicto (...) desire to do what is morally right, but not a direct motivation to be kind, help those in need, et. I first clarify this “fetishism objection”; I then show how the non-analytical naturalist can provide an understanding of virtuous motivation that is immune to this objection. (shrink)

I want to motivate an account of what it is for an object to have a property, which may as well be called a deflationary view about properties. Such a view follows from a conception of predication I ground in the work of Donald Davidson, some of which remains unpublished. I claim that if we take seriously Davidson’s account of predication, by maintaining that sentences are the primary linguistic unit, we can define properties in terms of predicates. The (...) aim of this paper is twofold. First, I argue that this account is present in Davidson’s systematic treatment of the problem of predication. Second, I claim that this account is serviceable and economical, as it can accommodate a wide scope of properties and abstract objects without appealing to entities such as truthmakers or joints in nature. (shrink)

§1. Introduction.The motivation of this work comes from two different directions: infinite abelian groups, and ordered algebraic structures. A challenging problem in both cases is that of classification. In the first case, it is known for example (cf. [KA]) that the classification of abelian torsion groups amounts to that of reducedp-groups by numerical invariants called theUlm invariants(given by Ulm in [U]). Ulm's theorem was later generalized by P. Hill to the class of totally projective groups. As to the second case, (...) let us consider for instance the class of divisible ordered abelian groups. These may be viewed as ordered ℚ-vector spaces. Their theory being unstable, we cannot hope to classify them by numerical invariants. On the other hand, being o-minimal, the theory enjoys several good model theoretic properties (cf. [P-S]), so the search for some reasonable invariants is well motivated. The common denominator of the two cases, as well as of many others, is valuation theory. Indeed given an ordered vector space, one can consider it as a valued vector space, endowed with the natural valuation. Also, the socleG[p] of a reduced abelianp-groupG, endowed with the height functionhG, is a valued vector space over(the prime field of characteristicp) with values in the ordinals (cf. [F]). (shrink)

Knowledge of diverse sexual motivations can have profound implications for our comprehension of the causes, correlations, and consequences of sexual behavior. This study had two objectives: on the one hand, to determine the different motives why young Spanish university students have sex and their relationship with different sociodemographic and psychosexual variables and sexual behavior; on the other hand, to review and improve the psychometric properties of the Sexual Motivations Scale and validate it in Spanish. Participants were 805 university students (...) of both sexes, aged between 18 and 26 years, who completed a battery of online questionnaires. Significant associations were found between young people's sexual motives, especially the motives of coping, peer pressure, and enhancement, the sociodemographic variables, sexual behavior, and psychosexual variables. Also, a new structure of the Sexual Motivations Scale was proposed, with the elimination of the factor of Self-Affirmation. The discussion highlights the relevance of the results obtained due to their implications in the promotion of sexual health, in addition to achieving the first instrument validated in Spanish for the evaluation of sexual motivations. (shrink)

Intellectual property (IP) can internalize positive externalities associated with the creation and discovery of ideas, thereby increasing investment in efforts to create and discover ideas. However, IP law also causes negative externalities. Strict IP rights raise the transaction costs associated with consuming and building on existing ideas. This causes a tragedy of the anticommons, in which valuable resources are underused and underdeveloped. By disincentivizing creative projects that build on existing ideas, IP protection, even if it increases original innovation, can inadvertently (...) reduce the rate of iterative innovation. The net effect of IP law on innovation and welfare depends on the relative magnitude of these positive and negative externalities. We argue that the current regime probably suffers from excessive, and excessively rigid, IP protection. This motivates the search for institutional alternatives and complements. We suggest that a monocentric IP rights regime may not be the only, or the most efficient, way to internalize the positive externalities of innovation. The knowledge economy supports the emergence of diverse, polycentric forms of bottom-up self-governance, both market and community led, that entail the citizen coproduction of the norms and practices of intellectual creation and discovery. (shrink)

Psychometric properties of Attentional Control Scale: The preliminary study on a Polish sample The presented study was focused primarily on a psychometric analysis of the Attentional Control Scale, but they also enhanced the understanding of the role of effortful attentional skills in determining the individual well-being, general adaptation or emotional disorders. The analyses included basic item and scale descriptions as well as convergent and discriminant validity. 218 Polish undergraduate students completed the battery of the self-report techniques and two paper (...) —pencil attentional tests. Data revealed a unidimensional of a 20-item ACS. It can be used validly to assess long-term individual differences in attentional skills related to the voluntary executive functions. The analysis of content, internal and construct validity as well as reliability provided evidence of the scale's significant convergent and discriminant validity when correlated with attentional tests and other personality techniques. We found strong, systematic relations between the attentional control and selected measures of temperament, arousal, emotionality, and motivation. The results allow assuming that good attentional control, may protect individuals from the emotional disorders by regulating perceptual, conceptual, and response processing. (shrink)

According to the most important objection to the existence of moral beauty, true judgements of moral beauty are not possible as moral judgements require being motivated to act in line with the moral judgement made, and judgements of beauty require not being motivated to act in any way. Here, I clarify the argument underlying the objection and demonstrate that it does not show that moral beauty does not exist. I present two responses: namely, that the beauty of moral beauty does (...) not lie in the moral goodness per se (the ‘adjacent properties’ response), and that only a dispositional motivation to act is required for the moral judgements that are typically made as part of judgements of moral beauty, whereas aesthetic judgements only rule out state motivations to act (the ‘equivocation of motivation required’ response). In addressing the objection, I show how moral beauty is consistent with disinterestedness, and so should be accepted more widely; also clarifying where the beauty in moral beauty resides, and how the moral–aesthetic distinction should be drawn. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to offer a novel reconstruction of Sartre's theory of motivation. I argue for four related claims: (a) Sartre's theory of motivation revolves around the Schelerian‐inspired notion of affectivity and the peculiar way affectivity provides us access to evaluative properties of the objects in our environment; (b) according to Sartre, the structure of intentional action, and in particular the act of choice and commitment to projects, is inextricably linked with “affectivity”; (c) the inextricable link (...) between intentional action and affectivity is to be analyzed in terms of the fundamental structure of consciousness as being self‐present, thus making the agent nonpositionally aware of her choices and commitments; (d) an agent is motivated to act when her affective disclosure of value is in part constituted by the awareness of her commitments to relevant projects. (shrink)

SUMMARYThis Study reviews the prevalent concepts of maturation and motivation, and develops the following points :1. Developmental and clinical child Psychology are held apart less because of à differing focus of interests than because of differing concepts of maturation and motivation.2. Maturation is à term applied in biology and Psychology to, the development of the individual by growth processes, as distinguished from development by exercise and learning. It is defined in terms of à sequence or order of phases.3. Sequences can (...) be affected by conditioning. It is suggested that only the groundplan of life, the order of phases from birth through maturity and reproduction to death, is unalterable. Maturation is but one contributing factor, or principle, which co‐determines the more complex process of development.4. The goal‐determining factor in the individuals striving is called motivation. There are two major categories of motivation changes : the basic tendency of life is to establish the individuals equilibrium. From this point of view, all changes of direction are due to environmental influences which call for adaptation to reestablish equilibrium . The second category, the thesis of this Study, is that life is expansion , à process involving the homeostatic mechanism. In the course of the expansive as well as of the adaptive process, the individual changes its direction. Direction changes may be experienced in the act of reproduction when the individual transmits energies to new life; again, in the act of self‐limitation when the productive energies have been exhausted; another change of direction is that from flight movements to experimentation with and mastery of stimuli.5. Three developmental theories have been forwarded. The first, based on the concept of evolution, is à structuralization theory of development. The second, à biogenic theory of development, is related to the growth process and hypothecates à parallel of physical and Psychological development. The third developmental theory describes development as à change of motivation– an adaptation process resulting from the individuals dynamic relationship to his environment.The three theories emphasize three indispensable aspects of the developmental process: organization, content and form, Dynamics and objectives.6. Only the last of these three theories explained the fact of personality immaturity in relationship to the physical maturation, since the adaptive and the physical growth process could be conceived of as relatively independent from each other.7. Objections are raised against this theory of adaptation, to the extent that it claims adaptation to be identical with development.8. Objections are raised against the definition of the discharge principle as the basic tendency of the organism and against the identification of the discharge with the homeostasis principle.9. Since homeostasis is defined as an optimal tension level, and not as its lowest possible level, there must be states of tension which are overly‐low as well as overly‐high. In states of too‐low tension, charging must be à basic tendency of the organism.10. The main properties of life are growth and reproduction– that is, expansion, in which the environment is being exploited, adapted to life, mastered by the living being. Adaptation to the environment is only à partial aspect of life, and may be used as à detour to the opposite goal.11. All living beings have à course of life during which they develop structures that anticipate future needs. Theľ work with reserves. Anľ given need of à living being must be considered as related to the present, past and future of its life. As à consequence, it is impossible to assume that à tendency related only to the moment plays à basic role in the life of the individual. The acute release tendency relates only to acute phases or features of the needs of the immediate present.12. Consequently, deferral occurs not onlt in the course of adaptation, and as an imposed phenomenon; deferral may also occur as unimposed, unlearned behavior whenever the individual is not quite prepared for à desired experience.13. Motivation during growth and during decline is described and analyzed.14. Creativity is defined as constructive activity, à process which has its biological substratum in growth and reproduction. It consists of forming new products which develop, first, from experimentation with materials, and second, from the masterful handling of those materials.15. The probability of the processes of unlearned cooperation is presented.16. Neurosis is found to originate in connection with feelings of guilt and remorse over failing oneself as well as over failing others.17. The aim of life is seen in the contribution of biologically and/or culturally constructive products which can be utilized in the building process of life and of culture. (shrink)

In everyday life, we typically explain what people do by attributing mental states such as beliefs and desires. Such mental states belong to a class of mental states that are _intentional_, mental states that have content. Hoping that Johnny will win, and believing that Johnny will win are of course rather different mental states that can lead to very different behaviour. But they are similar in that they both have the same content : what is being hoped for and believed (...) is the very same thing. According to the thesis of externalism that has been defended most notably by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, not all of the contents of our mental states are determined by our intrinsic properties. Instead, the contents of our beliefs and desires are often determined in part by our relations to the environment. They are, so to speak, "wide" contents that are "not in our heads." Although externalism is accepted by most philosophers, many have argued that mental states with wide contents must also have a kind of content wholly determined by the intrinsic properties of the individuals who are in those states. This kind of content is called "narrow content". The aim of this paper is to distinguish between three rather different motivations for postulating narrow content. I argue that, given a certain conception of narrow content that I shall explain below, none of these three motivations succeed in establishing the existence of narrow content. (shrink)

According to the most important objection to the existence of moral beauty, true judgements of moral beauty are not possible as moral judgements require being motivated to act in line with the moral judgement made, and judgements of beauty require not being motivated to act in any way. Here, I clarify the argument underlying the objection, and show that it does not show that moral beauty does not exist. I present two responses: namely, that the beauty of moral beauty does (...) not lie in the moral goodness per se (the “adjacent properties” response); and that only a dispositional motivation to act is required for the moral judgements that are typically made as part of judgements of moral beauty, whereas aesthetic judgements only rule out state motivations to act (the “equivocation of motivation required” response). In addressing the objection, I show how moral beauty is consistent with disinterestedness, and so should be accepted more widely; and also clarify where the beauty in moral beauty resides, and how the moral-aesthetic distinction should be drawn. (shrink)

Sometimes when we describe our own sensory experiences we seem to attribute to experience itself the same sorts of familiar properties – such as shape or colour – as we attribute to everyday physical objects. But how literally should we understand such descriptions? Can there really be phenomenal elements or aspects to an experience which are, for example, quite literally square? This paper examines how these questions connect to a wide range of different commitments and theories about the metaphysics (...) of mind. In particular, I consider whether there may be phenomenological reasons to accept or reject the idea that there are elements or aspects of conscious experience itself which instantiate familiar spatial properties. I also explore how some general theses about the nature of empirical properties can motivate different answers to these questions. (shrink)

The idea that the world is human construction is fairly familiar and generally disparaged. One version of this claim is partially defendedhere. This subjectivist thesis concerns a debate about the objectivityof rightness of categorization. A problem about the discriminatoryrole of properties is both presented and motivated. The subjectivistthesis is articulated and defended against two powerful objections.Finally, this thesis is shown to be conceptually independent ofboth verificationism and empirical idealism.

The paper raises some difficulties for the typical motivations behind set reductionism, the view that sets are reducible to entities identified independently of set theory.

In Morals by Agreement David Gauthier proposes four criteria for classifying a society's advancement toward ‘higher stages of human development.' Significantly, these criteria — material well-being, breadth of opportunity, average life-span, and density of population — do not include as an equally valuable achievement the society's capacity to sustain its standard of living. Nonetheless Gauthier presents three arguments intended to show that a community founded on his distributive theory will view depletionary resource policies as unreasonable and unacceptable. I shall contend (...) that these arguments do not succeed in motivating sustainable rates of resource exploitation. Furthermore, I argue that if truly just and rational resource use policies can be arrived at, such policies could only succeed by employing a conception of property rights substantially different from Gauthier's. (shrink)

This paper presents a type-free property-theoretic system in the spirit of a framework proposed by Menzel and then supplements it with a theory of truth and exemplification. The notions of a truth-relevantly complex (simple) sentence and of a truth-relevant subsentence are introduced and then used in order to motivate the proposed theory. Finally, it is shown how the theory avoids Russell's paradox and similar problems. Some potential applications to the foundations of mathematics and to natural language semantics are sketched in (...) the introduction. (shrink)

We consider whether given a simple, finite description of a group in the form of an algorithm, it is possible to algorithmically determine if the corresponding group has some specified property or not. When there is such an algorithm, we say the property is recursively recognizable within some class of descriptions. When there is not, we ask how difficult it is to detect the property in an algorithmic sense. We consider descriptions of two sorts: first, recursive presentations in terms of (...) generators and relators, and second, algorithms for computing the group operation. For both classes of descriptions, we show that a large class of natural algebraic properties, Markov properties, are not recursively recognizable, indeed they are \-hard to detect in recursively presented groups and \-hard to detect in computable groups. These theorems suffice to give a sharp complexity measure for the detection problem of a number of typical group properties, for example, being abelian, torsion-free, orderable. Some properties, like being cyclic, nilpotent, or solvable, are much harder to detect, and we give sharp characterizations of the corresponding detection problems from a number of them. We give special attention to orderability properties, as this was a main motivation at the beginning of this project. (shrink)

Mackie doubted anything objective could have the motivational properties of a value. In thinking we are morally required to act in a certain way, he said, we attribute objective value to the action. Since nothing has objective value, these moral judgments are all false. As to whether Mackie proved his error theory, opinions vary. But there is broad agreement on one issue. A litany of examples, ranging from amoralism to depression to downright evil, has everyone convinced that Mackie (...) vastly overstated the motivational implications of moral judgment. Mackie did go overboard. But did he have to? I think not. Even on the most modest motivational assumptions, Mackie can make objective value look queer and morality look like a sham. I begin with a sketch. (shrink)

The common discourse on intellectual property rights rests mainly on utilitarian ground, with implications on the question of justice as well as moral significance. It runs like this: Intellectual property rights are to reward the originators for his/her intellectual labour mainly in monetary terms, thereby providing incentives for originators to engage in future innovative labouring. Without such incentives, few, if not none, will engage in creative activities and the whole human community will, thereby, suffer because of reduced inventions. However, such (...) utilitarian argument on piracy as de-motivation may not be necessarily justified. In fact, intellectual property arrangement is one among different institutions concerning how the society may handle new ideas and creative works. In reality, private ownership over one's intellectual product is merely a modern western concept that is being ' advertised' as being normative, which, by itself, is highly debatable. Alarming still, such normative argument assumes both justness and moral dimensions. This article will analyse whether such argument is philosophically sound. (shrink)

Divine Motivation theory is an ethical theory with a theological foundation, attempting to explain the relation between religion and morality in the context of Christian theology with emphasizing on neo-Aristotelian and motivation-based ethics. This theory that is presented by Linda Zagzebski, provides a new form of virtue ethics that God's motives, especially that of love, are foundations of moral life and these motivational states are considered ontologically and explanatorily the basis for all moral properties and values. This theory (...) uses five steps to advance its destination. In the first step, this theory proves the personhood of God. In the second step, it argues that God has perfect virtues and motives. In the third step, it shows that God's motive in the Creation is motive of love that is the central and fundamental divine motive. In the fourth step, it discusses the doctrine of imitatio Dei and focuses on the problems of this doctrine. In the last step, it attempts to link this doctrine to the doctrine of the incarnation to resolve its problems. (shrink)