Why are the fundamentals of education apparently so little changed in our era of digital technology? Is their obstinate persistence evidence of resilience or obsolescence? Such questions can best be answered not by imagining an uncertain high-tech future, but by examining a well-documented past--a history of instruction and media that extends from Gilgamesh to Google. Norm Friesen looks to the combination and reconfiguration of oral, textual, and more recent media forms to understand the longevity of so many educational arrangements and (...) practices. Friesen examines the interrelationship of reading, writing, and pedagogy in the case of the lecture and the textbook--from their premodern to their postmodern incarnations. Over hundreds of years, these two forms have integrated textual, oral, and (more recently) digital media and connected them with changing pedagogical and cultural priorities. The Textbook and the Lecture opens new possibilities for understanding not only mediated pedagogical practices and their reform but also gradual changes in our conceptions of the knowing subject and of knowledge itself. Drawing on wide-ranging scholarship in fields as diverse as media ecology and German-language media studies, Foucauldian historiography, and even archaeological research, The Textbook and the Lecture is a fascinating investigation of educational media. (shrink)

The increasing use of online simulations as replacements for animal dissection in the classroom or lab raises important questions about the nature of simulation itself and its relationship to embodied educational experience. This paper addresses these questions first by presenting a comparative hermeneutic-phenomenological investigation of online and offline dissection. It then interprets the results of this study in terms of Borgmann’s (1992) notion of the intentional “transparency” and “pliability” of simulated hyperreality. It makes the case that it is precisely encumbrance (...) and disruption—elements that are by definition excluded from simulations and interfaces—which give dissection its educational value. (shrink)

Traditionally, the consequences of employees' behavior (teleology) and the norms attributed to the behavior (deontology) have been two familiar determinants of ethical decision making (EDM). More recently, emotions have also gained considerable attention for their ability to affect EDM. Marketing ethics literature overlooks how emotions are related with norms and consequences. Hence, this study investigates how normative, consequentialist, and emotional factors interactively influence EDM in a sales ethics context. Using scenarios with a 2 × 2 between-groups factorial design, (...) we collected data online from 303 sales professionals. Then we used independent samples t tests and hierarchical regression models to analyze the hypothesized relationships. Results indicate that violation of and obedience to deontological norms stimulate negative and positive anticipated emotions, respectively, leading to stronger EDM. However, to a lesser extent, when violation of and obedience to deontological norms do not stimulate anticipated emotions, those emotions lead to weaker EDM. Moreover, consequences do not stimulate any anticipated emotions. Instead, consequences moderate the relationship between anticipated emotions and EDM. In addition, deontological and teleological evaluations mediate the relationship between anticipated emotions and EDM. These findings highlight the importance of considering the interplay between normative, consequentialist, and emotional factors in the formation of ethical judgments and intentions. The article discusses the implications of these results for sales professionals and organizations and suggests future research directions. (shrink)

This book empirically investigates the nature of time biases. Many philosophers think that it is rationally permissible to prefer a life that is overall worse to one that is overall better, as long the badness of that life lies in the past rather than the future. These philosophers think that it is rationally permissible to be time biased. Time biased individuals differently value the wellbeing of their various selves in virtue of where those selves are located in time. This book (...) focuses on three key kinds of time bias: near, present, and future bias. It presents a rich picture of the conditions under which we display these biases, and it outlines several psychological explanations for them. It then uses this new empirical research we conducted to inform arguments regarding the normative status of these biases. At its heart it considers the question: does having time biased preferences of one sort or another make us better off or worse off? And it uses the answers to these questions to inform our theorizing about whether we have reason either to have, or to avoid having, such preferences. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of socialization on work-related norms (WORKNORM).We tested the hypothesis that organizational (ORGSOC) and professional socialization (PROFSOC) are antecedent influences on WORKNORM, employing a sample of 339 marketing practitioners. The results of covariance structural analysis indicate that ORGSOC and PROFSOC and WORKNORM are discriminant constructs within the tested model. The study also reveals that the influence of ORGSOC on WORKNORM is stronger than the influence of PROFSOC on these same norms.Because this social learning occurs (...) in work-related activities, in organizations, and in professional life, it is important that managers appreciate that these three separate domains influence decision making under ethical conditions. The limitations of the study and future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Since the middle of the last century, normative language has been much studied. In particular, the normative function performed by certain sentences and by certain speech acts has been investigated in depth. Still, the normative function performed by certain physical artifacts designed and built to regulate human behaviors has not yet been thoroughly investigated. We propose to call this specific type of artifacts with normative intent ‘deontic artifacts’. This article aims to investigate this normative phenomenon that is so widespread in (...) our daily reality, but so often forgotten by scholars of norms and normativity. (shrink)

The consideration of normative ethics and methodology is a relatively recent phenomena in Catholic moral theology. Similar to any nascent discussion, having adopted terms and concepts from one conceptual genre, Britisch-analytic philosophy, into a radically other genre, Catholic moral theology, one then needs to begin the work of clarifying how, and to what extent, those terms and concepts contribute to the overall project of moral theology as a science. As Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor attests, this incorporation has (...) met with a great deal of resistance based on misunderstandings of the nature and purpose of normative ethics and methodology. Deontology and Teleology is a pioneer account which exposes and clarifies many of the terminological and conceptual ambiguities inherent to this discussion. It begins with an investigation of C.D. Broad's meta-ethical division of theories into deontology and teleology, and the epistemological/ontological foundations on which he established this division. An analysis of how and why Broad's theory has been incorporated into Catholic discussions on the foundation and formulation of norms along with the inherent difficulties of such an incorporation is then taken up. Finally, this study argues and substantiates through detailed historical analysis that a fundamental difference between traditionalists and revisionists in their relative perspectives on norms rest in the traditional understanding and moral evaluation of the human act, specifically, the objectum, circumstantiae and finis (fontes moralitates). This is an indispensable resource work for those interested in fundamental moral theology and lays the foundation for pursuing further the complex question of normative ethics in Catholic moral theology. (shrink)

In the recent epistemological literature much has been written about the nature of suspending judgement or agnosticism. There has also been a surge of recent interest in the nature of ignorance. But what is the relationship between these two epistemically significant states? Prima facie, both suspension and ignorance seem to involve the lack of a correct answer to a question. And, again prima facie, there may be some intuitive attraction to the idea that when one is ignorant whether p, one (...) ought to suspend judgement whether p. In this paper we will explore a range of different possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension of judgement. We will also discuss how both ignorance and suspension are related to having inconclusive evidence. As we will see, the issues can become quite complex due to the fact that there are different, competing views about the nature of ignorance and also about the nature of suspension. Moreover, there are importantly different kinds of epistemic norms. Our overall aim then will be to systematically chart how these different choices will impact the possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension. (shrink)

Through constructive arguments covering the principal topics and controversies in epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, Autonomy and Normativity demonstrates how truth, right and beauty can retain universal validity without succumbing to the mistaken Enlightenment strategy of seeking foundations for rational autonomy. Presenting a compact, yet comprehensive statement of a powerful and provocative alternative to the reigning orthodoxies of current philosophical debate, Richard Winfield employs Hegelian techniques and presents a radical and systematic critique of the work of mainstream thinkers including: Kant, Rawls, (...) Husserl and Habermas. This book offers an invaluable resource for students of both analytic and continental philosophical traditions, and related areas of law, social theory and aesthetics. (shrink)

A widespread opinion holds that norms and codes of conduct as such can only be established via words, that is, in some lexical form. This perspective can be criticized: some norms produced by human acts are not word-based at all. For example, many norms are actually conveyed through graphics (e. g. road signs and land-use maps), sounds (e. g. the referee’s whistle), a silent gesture (the traffic warden’s signal to halt). In this article, we will focus on (...) the norms that are created by means of drawings and can be termed “drawn norms” or “graphical norms.” Specifically, we will inquire into the phenomenon of graphical norms with particular regard to traffic signs and land-use plans, and we will discuss the philosophical and legal problems to which these phenomena give rise. (shrink)

According to terror management theory, humans rely on meaningful and permanence-promising cultural worldviews, like religion, to manage mortality concerns. Prior research indicates that, compared to religious individuals, atheists experience lower levels of meaning in life following reminders of death. The present study investigated whether reminders of death would change atheists’ meaning in life after exposure to normative support for atheism. Atheists were either reminded of death or a control topic and exposed to information portraying atheism as either common or rare, (...) and then asked to rate their perceived meaning in life. Results showed that reminders of death reduced meaning in life among atheists who were told that atheism is common. Results were consistent with the view that atheism reflects the rejection of religious faith rather than a meaningful secular terror managing worldview. Discussion considers implications for maintaining healthy existential wellbeing, identifies limitations, and highlights future research directions. (shrink)

Over recent decades International Relations scholars have investigated norm dynamics processes at some length, with the norm entrepreneur concept having become a common reference point in the literature. The focus on norm entrepreneurs has, however, resulted in a bias towards investigating the agents and processes of successful normative change. This book challenges this inherent bias by explicitly focusing on those who resist normative change - norm antipreneurs. The utility of the norm antipreneur concept is explored through a series of case (...) studies encompassing a range of issue areas and contributed by a mix of well-known and emergent scholars of norm dynamics. In examining the complexity of norm resistance, particular attention is paid to the nature and intent of the actors involved in norm-contestation, the sites and processes of resistance, the strategies and tactics antipreneurs deploy to defend the values and interests they perceive to be threatened by the entrepreneurs, and whether it is the entrepreneurs or the antipreneurs who enjoy greater inherent advantages. This text will therefore be of interest to scholars and students of International Relations, International Law, Political Science, Sociology and History. ". (shrink)

This research consists of two studies with interrelated objectives. The purpose of the first study is to develop and validate scales measuring whistle-blowing subjective norms, attitudes, and intentions. The objective of the second study is to test a model of whistle-blowing intentions, motivated by the theory of reasoned action, across two contrasting cultures: the collectivist Thai and the individualistic American. To achieve cross-cultural comparisons, we first perform measurement and structural invariance tests. Tests of latent mean differences lend support for (...) our prediction that individuals in the collectivist Thai culture have higher means on subjective norms, attitudes, and intentions for whistle-blowing than members of the individualist American culture. Our models indicate that subjective norms for whistle-blowing, even though significantly different for American and Thai participants, have a direct effect on whistle-blowing attitudes as well as direct and indirect effects on reporting intentions for both subject groups. Compared to American subjects, the whistle-blowing intentions of Thai participants are more strongly influenced by subjective norms for whistle-blowing. (shrink)

Assertions are our standard communicative tool for sharing and acquiring information. Recent empirical studies seemingly provide converging evidence that assertions are subject to a factive norm: you are entitled to assert a proposition p only if p is true. All these studies, however, assume that we can treat participants' judgments about what an agent 'should say' as evidence of their intuitions about assertability. This paper argues that this assumption is incorrect, so that the conclusions drawn in these studies are unwarranted. (...) It shows that most people do not interpret statements about what an agent 'should say' as statements about assertability, but rather as statements about what is in the agent's interest to do. It identifies some effective measures to force the intended reading of statements about what an agent 'should say', and shows that when these measures are implemented, people's judgments consistently and overwhelmingly align with non-factive accounts of assertion. (shrink)

Normativity is assessed as we evaluate and compare the environmental reporting practices of a sample of French and Canadian companies through the lens of institutional legitimacy. More specifically, we examine how French and Canadian firms changed their reporting practices in reaction to the promulgation of laws and regulations in their respective countries, i.e., the NER and Grenelle II Acts in France, and National Instrument 51-102 and CSA Staff Notice NR 51-333, issued by the Canadian Securities Administrators. The firms’ voluntary disclosures (...) according to GRI guidelines are also investigated. Substantive legitimacy theory is used to explore the level of substantive disclosures provided by Canadian and French firms. The findings reveal that the French parliamentary regime is more successful than the Canadian stock exchange regulation in triggering environmental reporting, and that the GRI combined with local regimes prompts environmental disclosures. Notwithstanding the improvements in environmental reporting under all three regimes, a very low level of substantive disclosure is noted in both countries. (shrink)

The present paper investigates the nature of norms in correlation to the philosophical notions of intentionality and disposition. Following Amselek (2017; 2020), norms are here understood as tools giving the measure of what is possible to do. Intentionality, understood as “being-about”, in relation to norms allows us both to form a description of reality in the norm, and to correct our actions in order to correspond to the norm. Through the notion of disposition, i.e., on the one (...) hand, the linguistic manifestation of the norm and, on the other hand, the physical presence of individual mental states or social states-of-affairs, the paper investigates the “force of norms” and the “mystery of effectiveness”. Elaborating on the notion of “nomotropism”, which highlights the different ways in which a norm may work or operate, and drawing inspiration from Dennett’s philosophy of mind, the paper suggests that legal norms, which allow for the expectation that social behaviors will be measured by specific standards or yardsticks, clearly offer an evolutionary advantage in the regulation of human relationships. (shrink)

In this paper, we engage in a philosophical investigation of how blockchain technologies such as cryptocurrencies can mediate our social world. Emerging blockchain-based decentralised applications have the potential to transform our financial system, our bureaucracies and models of governance. We construct an ontological framework of “narrative technologies” that allows us to show how these technologies, like texts, can configure our social reality. Drawing from the work of Ricoeur and responding to the works of Searle, in postphenomenology and STS, we show (...) how blockchain technologies bring about a process of emplotment: an organisation of characters and events. First, we show how blockchain technologies actively configure plots such as financial transactions by rendering them increasingly rigid. Secondly, we show how they configure abstractions from the world of action, by replacing human interactions with automated code. Third, we investigate the role of people’s interpretative distances towards blockchain technologies: discussing the importance of greater public involvement with their application in different realms of social life. (shrink)

Some fundamental epistemic norms govern the conduct of the activity of inquiry and the progress of theoretical deliberation. We monitor our deliberations by raising questions about how they should be conducted and about how effectively they have been carried out. Such questions ‘occur’ to us: we are often passive recipients of them. The paper discusses what determines when questions should occur to us and it investigates how far these observations can be seen as threatening our freedom of mind. These (...) phenomena help us to see the role of states such as virtues in epistemic evaluation. (shrink)

Assertion is fundamental to our lives as social and cognitive beings. Philosophers have recently built an impressive case that the norm of assertion is factive. That is, you should make an assertion only if it is true. Thus far the case for a factive norm of assertion been based on observational data. This paper adds experimental evidence in favor of a factive norm from six studies. In these studies, an assertion’s truth value dramatically affects whether people think it should be (...) made. Whereas nearly everyone agreed that a true assertion supported by good evidence should be made, most people judged that a false assertion supported by good evidence should not be made. The studies also suggest that people are consciously aware of criteria that guide their evaluation of assertions. Evidence is also presented that some intuitive support for a non-factive norm of assertion comes from a surprising tendency people have to misdescribe cases of blameless rule-breaking as cases where no rule is broken. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether different philosophers’ claims about “normativity” are about the same subject or (as recently argued by Derek Parfit) theorists who appear to disagree are really using the term with different meanings, in order to cast disambiguating light on the debates over at least the nature, existence, extension, and analyzability of normativity. While I suggest the term may be multiply ambiguous, I also find reasons for optimism about a common subject-matter for metanormative theory. This is supported partly by (...) sketching a special kind of hybrid view of normative judgment, perspectivism, that occupies a position between cognitivism and noncognitivism, naturalism and nonnaturalism, objectivism and subjectivism, making it more plausible that radically different metanormative theories could be about the same thing. I explore three main fissures: between (i) the “normativity” of language/thought versus that of facts and properties, (ii) abstract versus substantive senses, and (iii) formal versus robust senses. (shrink)

In this article we investigate whether non-culpably benefiting from wrongdoing or injustice generates a moral requirement to disgorge these benefits in order to compensate the victims. We argue that a strong requirement to disgorge such benefits is generated only if other conditions or factors are present. We identify three such factors and claim that their presence would explain why the normative features of certain types of cases of benefiting from wrongdoing differ from cases of benefiting from simple misfortune or bad (...) luck. (shrink)

Suppose that two competing norms, N1 and N2, can be identified such that a given person’s response can be interpreted as correct according to N1 but incorrect according to N2. Which of these two norms, if any, should one use to interpret such a response? In this paper we seek to address this fundamental problem by studying individual variation in the interpretation of conditionals by establishing individual profiles of the participants based on their case judgments and reflective attitudes. (...) To investigate the participants’ reflective attitudes we introduce a new experimental paradigm called the Scorekeeping Task. As a case study, we identify the participants who follow the Suppositional Theory of conditionals (N1) versus Inferentialism (N2) and investigate to what extent internally consistent competence models can be reconstructed for the participants on this basis. After extensive empirical investigations, an apparent reasoning error with and-to-if inferences was found in one of these two groups. The implications of this case study for debates on the proper role of normative considerations in psychology are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore an under-investigated question concerning the class of formal models that aim at providing normative guidance. We call such models normative models. In particular, we examine the question of how normative models can successfully exert normative guidance. First, we highlight the absence of a discussion of this question – which is surprising given the extensive debate about the success conditions of descriptive models – and motivate its importance. Second, we introduce and discuss two potential accounts of (...) the success conditions of normative models. Our tentative conclusion is that the second account is more promising. (shrink)

Although the use of stakeholder analysis to investigate corporate responsibilities has burgeoned over the past two decades, there has been relatively little workon howcorporate responsibilities may change for firms with operations in developing countries. This article argues, from a critical theory perspective, that two sets of factors tend to come together to increase the responsibilities of corporations active in developing countries to a full range of stakeholder groups: (a) the different (economic, political, and sociocultural) circumstances under which corporations have to (...) operate in developing countries and (b) several key normative principles, which typically do not come into play in the context of developed countries. (shrink)

This volume sets out to discuss the role of norms and normativity in both language and linguistics from a multiplicity of perspectives. These concepts are centrally important to the philosophy and methodology of linguistics, and their role and nature need to be investigated in detail. The chapters address a range of issues from general questions about ontology, epistemology and methodology to aspects of particular subfields (such as semantics and historical linguistics) or phenomena (such as construal and code-switching). The volume (...) aims to further our understanding of language and linguistics as well as to encourage further discussion on the metatheory of linguistics. Due to the fundamental nature of the issues under discussion, this volume will be of interest to all linguists regardless of their background or fields of expertise and to philosophers concerned with language or other normative domains. (shrink)

People more frequently select norm-violating factors, relative to norm- conforming ones, as the cause of some outcome. Until recently, this abnormal-selection effect has been studied using retrospective vignette-based paradigms. We use a novel set of video stimuli to investigate this effect for prospective causal judgments—i.e., judgments about the cause of some future outcome. Four experiments show that people more frequently select norm- violating factors, relative to norm-conforming ones, as the cause of some future outcome. We show that the abnormal-selection effects (...) are not primarily explained by the perception of agency (Experiment 4). We discuss these results in relation to recent efforts to model causal judgment. (shrink)

Each of the three essays constituting the dissertation's body explores a theoretical approach to conceptual content, as well as to particular kinds of concepts. A concluding chapter defends a distinction between two varieties of intentionality. ;Chapter 1 identifies a distinctive model of intentionality in Locke's discussion of our "ideas of the sorts of substances." Properly understood, his doctrine of the "inadequacy" of substance-ideas reveals that the sort represented by such an idea isn't settled by the idea's descriptive content. The key (...) to his compromise between classificatory conventionalism and essentialism is an injunction to "rectify" each substance-idea, one that reflects a norm governing natural-historical inquiry. Interestingly, Locke regards the resulting picture of the natural kinds represented by substance-ideas as compatible with his descriptivist account of how the extensions of substance-names are fixed. ;Chapter 2 examines Gupta and Belnap's theory of "circular concepts," which likewise appeals to a semantic "revision rule." Besides promising to explain semantic paradox when applied to the concept of truth, their theory significantly liberalizes the framework of truth conditional semantics. I criticize the rationale behind that liberalization by investigating the significance attributed to the revision rule, and propose invoking pragmatic ideas to do justice to some of the theory's motivating intuitions. ;Chapter 3 first argues that Brandom's appeal to normatively characterized linguistic practice subserves two approaches to content: one expressivist and the other reductionist. The criterion of adequacy motivating his "inferentialist" reduction of contentfulness, I then argue, is one he should dismiss in view of his deflationism about truth. Moreover, Brandom fails to vindicate the priority of attributions of inferential norms over attributions of propositional content. This criticism doesn't affect the expressivist elucidation of intentional concepts resulting from Brandom's normative-pragmatic description of assertional practice. ;My conclusion draws on this elucidation to defend a distinction prefigured in my construal of Locke as divorcing the aboutness of substance-ideas from assessments of truth. I argue that we should distinguish between a "representational" kind of intentionality whose attribution subserves explanations of successful inductive and explanatory practices, and a "semantic" kind whose attribution makes explicit normative features of the essentially communicative practice of assertion. (shrink)

This paper investigates how inquiry into normative language can improve substantive normative theorizing. First I examine two dimensions along which normative language differs: “strength” and “subjectivity.” Next I show how greater sensitivity to these features of the meaning and use of normative language can illuminate debates about three issues in ethics: the coherence of moral dilemmas, the possibility of supererogatory acts, and the connection between making a normative judgment and being motivated to act accordingly. The paper concludes with several brief (...) reflections on the theoretical utility of the distinction—at least so-called—between “normative” and “non-normative” language and judgment. Clarifying the language we use in normative conversation and theorizing can help us diagnose problems with bad arguments and formulate better motivated questions. This can lead to clearer answers and bring into relief new theoretical possibilities and avenues to explore. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation into the metaphysics of social objects such as political borders, states, and organizations. I articulate a metaphysical puzzle concerning such objects and then propose a novel account of social objects that provides a solution to the puzzle. The basic idea behind the puzzle is that under appropriate circumstances, seemingly concrete social objects can apparently be created by acts of agreement, decree, declaration, or the like. Yet there is reason to believe that no concrete object can (...) be created in this way. The central idea of my positive account is that social objects have a normative component to them, and seemingly concrete social objects have both normative and material components. I develop this idea more rigorously using resources from the Aristotelian hylomorphic tradition. The resulting normative hylomorphic account, I argue, solves the puzzle by providing a satisfying explanation of creation-by-agreement and the like, while also avoiding the difficulties facing extant accounts of social objects. (shrink)

Norms, Values, and Society is the second Yearbook of the Vienna Circle Institute, which was founded in October 1991. The main part of the book contains original contributions to an international symposium the Institute held in October 1993 on ethics and social philosophy. The papers deal among others with questions of justice, equality, just social institutions, human rights, the connections between rationality and morality and the methodological problems of applied ethics. The Documentation section contains previously unpublished papers by Rudolf (...) Carnap, Philipp Frank, Charles W. Morris and Edgar Zilsel, and the review section presents new publications on the Vienna Circle. The Vienna Circle Institute is devoted to the critical advancement of science and philosophy in the broad tradition of the Vienna Circle, as well as to the focusing of cross-disciplinary interest on the history and philosophy of science in a social context. The Institute's Yearbooks will, for the most part, document its activities and provide a forum for the discussion of exact philosophy, logical and empirical investigations, and analysis of language. (shrink)

This commentary questions Elqayam & Evans' (E&E's) claims that thinking tasks are doomed to have multiple normative readings and that only applied research allows normative evaluations. In fact, some tasks have just one undisputed normative reading, and not only pathological gamblers but also normal individuals sometimes need normative guidance. To conclude, normative evaluations are inevitable in the investigation of human thinking.

Children’s understanding of status and group norms influence their expectations about social encounters. However, status is multidimensional and children may perceive status stratification differently across multiple status dimensions. The current study investigated the effect of status level and norms on children’s expectations about intergroup affiliation in wealth and popularity contexts. Participants were randomly assigned to hear two scenarios where a high- or low-status target affiliated with opposite-status groups based on either wealth or popularity. In one scenario, the group (...) expressed an inclusive norm. In the other scenario, the group expressed an exclusive norm. For each scenario, children made predictions about children’s expectations for a target to acquire social resources. Novel findings indicated that children associated wealth status to some extent, but they drew stronger inferences from the wealth dimension than from the popularity dimension. In contrast to previous evidence that children distinguish between high- and low-status groups, we did not find evidence to support this in the context of the current study. In addition, norms of exclusion diminished children’s expectations for acquiring social resources from wealth and popularity groups but this effect was more pronounced between wealth groups. We found age differences in children’s expectations in regards to norms, but not in regards to status. The implications of how these effects, in addition to lack of effects, bear on children’s expectations about acquiring resources are discussed. (shrink)

This article explores the normative nature of institutions. The starting point of my investigation is Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler's notion of the reference transaction from which I derive a recursive relationship between normative judgements and social practices (i. e. regular, routinised actions in a social group), an implication of which I call the "self-justification of practices". Drawing on John Dewey, I demonstrate how prevailing practices influence normative standards and thus how institutions become normative entities. I then show how, despite the (...) conservative bias of normative standards, institutional change comes about. Finally, I enquire into the possibility of normative critique of prevailing practices and institutions. (shrink)

There are many factors that may affect the analysis of ethical problems: the physical acts that occur, the relevant history, verbal communication, contracts, etc. One factor that can be difficult to incorporate is the role that socials norms play. This is because norms can vary widely between societies, and even within societies individuals are not usually consciously aware of the norms that they act upon. This paper examines how norms can effect ethical problems and gives one (...) approach for investigating their effect. (shrink)

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) uses the conceptualization of psychopathology to make psychiatric diagnoses operational. The use of explicit operational criteria appears to be based on an implicit neo-positivist epistemology. Operationalism involves an excessive focus on quantitative descriptions of behavior manifestations, contesting that psychopathology is understood as a deviation from the normal or the average in a given population. Consequently, the normal and the psychopathological become homogeneous. Our analysis investigates if this neo-positivist epistemology narrows (...) psychopathology conceptualization and endanger integration with the hybrid biopsychosocial model of psychiatry. Based on Georges Canguilhem’s theorization of a qualitative approach to the individual organism who is in a state of morbidity, we show that the (psychiatric) pathology also contains differences in quality. Moreover, that humans are norm-producing organisms that actively respond to changes in their internal and external environment. In this regard, the operationalization of mental disorders could include the normativity in humans, i.e., the ability to produce norms. We argue this will mitigate the one-sided psychopathology conceptualization and strengthen the relationship between psychiatric nosology and psychiatry’s hybrid biopsychosocial model. (shrink)

Although belief formation is sometimes automatic, there are occasions in which we have the power to put it off, to wait on belief-formation. Waiting in this sense seems assessable by epistemic norms. This paper explores what form such norms might take: the nature and their content. A key question is how these norms relate to epistemic norms on belief-formation: could we have cases in which one ought to believe that p but also ought to wait on (...) forming a belief on whether p? Plausibly not. But if not, how can we explain this impossibility? I suggest that the best resolution is to view the traditional core norms on belief as themselves conditional in a certain sense, one that I think has independent plausibility. The results of this investigation may also tell us something about epistemic norms on suspension, on the assumption, which I defend elsewhere, that suspension is waiting. (shrink)

Although normative systems, or social laws, have proved to be a highly influential approach to coordination in multi-agent systems, the issue of compliance to such normative systems remains problematic. In all real systems, it is possible that some members of an agent population will not comply with the rules of a normative system, even if it is in their interests to do so. It is therefore important to consider the extent to which a normative system is robust, i.e., the extent (...) to which it remains effective even if some agents do not comply with it. We formalise and investigate three different notions of robustness and related decision problems. We begin by considering sets of agents whose compliance is necessary and/or sufficient to guarantee the effectiveness of a normative system; we then consider quantitative approaches to robustness, where we try to identify the proportion of an agent population that must comply in order to ensure success; and finally, we consider a more general approach, where we characterise the compliance conditions required for success as a logical formula. We furthermore introduce a logic for specifying properties of norm compliance in general and norm robustness in particular. (shrink)

Normative reasons are reasons to do and believe things. Intellectual inquiry seems to presuppose their existence, for we cannot justifiably conclude that we exist; that there is an external world; and that there are better and worse ways of investigating it and behaving in it, unless there are reasons to do and believe such things. But just what in the world are normative reasons? In this book a case is made for believing normative reasons are favouring relations that have a (...) single, external source, filling this significant gap in the literature in an area within contemporary philosophy that has quickly grown in prominence. Providing a divine command metanormative analysis of normative reasons on entirely non-religious grounds, its arguments will be relevant to both secular and non-secular audiences alike and will address key issues in meta-ethics, evolutionary theory - especially evolutionary debunking threats to moral reasons and the normative more generally - and epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper we carry out an algebraic investigation of the weak nilpotent minimum logic and its t-norm based axiomatic extensions. We consider the algebraic counterpart of WNM, the variety of WNM-algebras and prove that it is locally finite, so all its subvarieties are generated by finite chains. We give criteria to compare varieties generated by finite families of WNM-chains, in particular varieties generated by standard WNM-chains, or equivalently t-norm based axiomatic extensions of WNM, and we study their standard completeness (...) properties. We also characterize the generic WNM-chains, i. e. those that generate the variety [MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL W]ℕ[MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL M], and we give finite axiomatizations for some t-norm based extensions of WNM. (shrink)

Work is an integral part of modern society. However, the question of the normative conditions that distinguish just from unjust work has been under-investigated in political theory. This article, b...

Background: According to Gelfand et al., COVID-19 infection and case mortality rates are closely connected to the strength of social norms: “Tighter” cultures that abide by strict social norms are more successful in combating the pandemic than “looser” cultures that are more permissive. However, countries with similar levels of cultural tightness exhibit big differences in mortality rates. We are investigating potential explanations for this fact. Using data from Germany and Japan—two “tight” countries with very different infection and mortality (...) rates—we examined how differences in socio-demographic and other determinants explain differences in individual preventive attitudes and behaviors. Methods: We compared preventive attitudes and behaviors in 2020 based on real-time representative survey data and used logit regression models to study how individual attitudes and behaviors are shaped by four sets of covariates: individual socio-demographics, health, personality, and regional-level controls. Employing Blinder-Oaxaca regression techniques, we quantified the extent to which differences in averages of the covariates between Japan and Germany explain the differences in the observed preventive attitudes and behaviors. Results: In Germany and Japan, similar proportions of the population supported mandatory vaccination, avoided travel, and avoided people with symptoms of a cold. In Germany, however, a significantly higher proportion washed their hands frequently and avoided crowds, physical contact, public transport, peak-hour shopping, and contact with the elderly. In Japan, a significantly higher proportion were willing to be vaccinated. We also show that attitudes and behaviors varied significantly more with covariates in Germany than in Japan. Differences in averages of the covariates contribute little to explaining the observed differences in preventive attitudes and behaviors between the two countries. Conclusion: Consistent with tightness-looseness theory, the populations of Japan and Germany responded similarly to the pandemic. The observed differences in infection and fatality rates therefore cannot be explained by differences in behavior The major difference in attitudes is the willingness to be vaccinated, which was much higher in Japan. Furthermore, the Japanese population behaved more uniformly across social groups than the German population. This difference in the degree of homogeneity has important implications for the effectiveness of policy measures during the pandemic. (shrink)

This volume offers eleven philosophical investigations into our future relations with social robots--robots that are specially designed to engage and connect with human beings. The contributors present cutting edge research that examines whether, and on which terms, robots can become members of human societies. Can our relations to robots be said to be "social"? Can robots enter into normative relationships with human beings? How will human social relations change when we interact with robots at work and at home? The authors (...) of this volume explore these questions from the perspective of philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and robotics. The first three chapters offer a taxonomy for the classification of simulated social interactions, investigate whether human social interactions with robots can be genuine, and discuss the significance of social relations for the formation of human individuality. Subsequent chapters clarify whether robots could be said to actually follow social norms, whether they could live up to the social meaning of care in caregiving professions, and how we will need to program robots so that they can negotiate the conventions of human social space and collaborate with humans. Can we perform joint actions with robots, where both sides need to honour commitments, and how will such new commitments and practices change our regional cultures? The authors connect research in social robotics and empirical studies in Human-Robot Interaction to recent debates in social ontology, social cognition, as well as ethics and philosophy of technology. -/- The book is a response to the challenge that social robotics presents for our traditional conceptions of social interaction, which presuppose such essential capacities as consciousness, intentionality, agency, and normative understanding. The authors develop insightful answers along new interdisciplinary pathways in "robophilosophy," a new research area that will help us to shape the "robot revolution," the distinctive technological change of the beginning 21st century. (shrink)