This essay is an analysis of the central arguments in Plato’s Crito. The dialogue shows, in a variety of ways, that the opinion of another person can have practical relevance in one’s deliberations about what to do – e.g. as an argument, as a piece of expert advice, as a threat. Especially important among these forms of practical relevance is the relevance of authoritative commands. In the dialogue, the Laws of Athens argue that Socrates must accept his sentence (...) of death, because he must regard the court’s verdict as a command from a practical authority – the city. The Laws’ arguments rely on special features of authority-reasons that many commentators have overlooked. This article explains why the Law’s arguments are unsuccessful. Finally, it is argued that Socrates’ description of ‘the many’ suggests that the city lacks the deliberative capacity necessary for possessing practical authority. (shrink)

I argue for a new conception of practical authority based on an analysis of the relationship between authority and subject. Commands entail a demand for practical deference, which establishes a relationship of hierarchy and vulnerability that involves a variety of signals and commitments. In order for these signals and commitments to be justified, the subject must be under a preexisting duty, the authority’s commands must take precedence over the subject’s judgment regarding fulfillment of that duty, (...) the authority must accept the position and responsibilities of command, and the authority must be sufficiently trustworthy relative to how vulnerable the subject makes herself by deferring. This results in an instrumentalist conception of practical authority that can be favorably compared to Joseph Raz’s famous service conception. The relational conception’s main advantage is that it focuses on the authority as much as the subject, requiring that the authority accept responsibility for the relationship and be sufficiently trustworthy. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s much discussed service conception of practical authority has recently come under attack from Stephen Darwall, who proposes that we instead adopt a second- personal conception of practical authority.1 We believe that the best place to start understanding practical authority is with a pared back conception of it, as simply a species of normative authority more generally, where this species is picked out merely by the fact that the normative authority in (...) question is authority in relation to action, rather than belief. We do not wish to deny that there might be properties of practical authority (as distinct from the species of authority that is concerned with belief) that are peculiar to it, but, unlike both Raz and Darwall, we do not believe that such features play a role in defining or delimiting practical authority. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In contemporary societies, governance is becoming governance by experts or under expert advice. This paper offers a survey of the basic conceptual schema that underlies some legal and political uses of knowledge, which has been traditionally based on a two-fold principle of distribution of epistemic labour between public officials and experts. Building on the example of the European system of comitology and, particularly, on the European experiences in the field of nanotechnology regulation, where expert advice has proved to be (...) particularly controversial, I will argue that the principal-agent logic that has been conventionally placed at the core of the relationship between public authorities and experts must be enhanced or specified. Facing situations of qualified uncertainty, when epistemic privilege of experts tends to decline because of the absence of conclusive evidence, the standard division of epistemic labour becomes blurred and crucial questions of justice come to the fore. Moreover, I will show that, at that point, the demand for lay people participation becomes increasingly compelling. The underlying context of this discussion is the understanding that both politics of knowledge and politics of ignorance are already playing a crucial role in the governance of our increasingly ungovernable democracies. (shrink)

This paper brings together the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Alston in speech-act theory with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of the nature of divine speaking through the medium of Scripture. Despite the fecundity of Wolterstorff's seminal work on the philosophical theology of Scripture, aspects of his speech-act centric account are underdeveloped and would benefit from the contributions of William Alston. In particular, his account of divine speech-acts could be fruitfully expanded by incorporating the concept of ‘taking (...) responsibility’ that is central to Alston's analysis of the nature of illocutionary acts. This would elucidate both the way in which readers of Scripture encounter divine practical authority in the reading process and the nature of the response of faith that is demanded of them. (shrink)

Autonomy, at least in one sense of the term, requires sovereign authority over one’s choices and actions. In this paper, I argue that such authority is relational in at least two respects. First, I argue that sovereign authority may be shared – and, indeed, must be shareable – with others through the exercise of normative powers. Second, I argue that normative powers are themselves relational powers, powers that depend in part on the recognition of agents as having (...) an equal basic authority to exercise such powers in the first place. Drawing on feminist speech-act analyses of silencing and subordination, I examine how failures of uptake for exercises of normative powers compromise personal autonomy. (shrink)

If medical complicity is understood as compliance with a directive to act against the professional's best medical judgment, the question arises whether it can ever be justified. This paper will trace the contours of what would legitimate a directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment (and in possible contravention of her oath) using Joseph Raz's service conception of authority. The service conception is useful for basing the legitimacy of authoritative directives on the ability of the putative (...) class='Hi'>authority to enable subjects to comply better with reasons that already apply to them. Hence, the service conception bases the legitimacy of practical authority on a certain kind of greater knowledge or expertise. This helps to focus the conundrum regarding complicity on the clash of expertise between the medical expert and the governing body tasked with coordinating behaviour and otherwise devising rules for the social good. The ethical dilemma presented by a hypothetically legitimate directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment also serves to highlight the moral dimension of one's duty to obey a legitimate authority. (shrink)

Séminaire de linguistique Responsable : Anne Carlier. Programme 20 octobre 2017 : linguistique anglaise Chris Barker : Vagueness, indeterminacy, and update Thomas Herbst : Restricting the rights of linguists 17 novembre 2017 : analyse de discours Paul Sambre : Multimodal socio-cognition and corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis Giuditta Caliendo : Longitudinal changes in the EU’s discursive practices: a corpus-assisted critical dis...

What does it mean to teach for human dignity? Pivoting around the recently published, Descriptive Inquiry in Teacher Practice: Cultivating Practical Wisdom to Create Democratic Schools, book authors and critics with disparate backgrounds will respond to this question. In the process, they will invite readers to also respond, working together to construct further understanding. In bringing together scholars around a shared question, the review borrows from Descriptive Inquiry – the method for studying teaching described in the book. Critics: Ashley (...) Taylor, Colgate University & Vikramadity Joshi, Teachers College, Columbia, Doris Santoro, Bowdoin College, Sam Rocha, University of British Columbia, Rachel Wahl, University of Virginia. (shrink)

Can there be a theory of law? -- Two views of the nature of the theory of law : a partial comparison -- On the nature of law -- The problem of authority : revisiting the service conception -- About morality and the nature of law -- Incorporation by law -- Reasoning with rules -- Why interpret? -- Interpretation without retrieval -- Intention in interpretation -- Interpretation : pluralism and innovation -- On the authority and interpretation of constitutions (...) : some preliminaries -- Postema on law's autonomy and public practical reasons : a critical comment. (shrink)

This book concentrates upon how economic rationalities have been embedded into particular historical practices, cultures, and moral systems. Through multiple case-studies, situated in different historical contexts of the modern West, the book shows that the development of economic rationalities takes place in the meeting with other regimes of thought, values, and moral discourses. The book offers new and refreshing insights, ranging from the development of early economic thinking to economic aspects and concepts in the works of classical thinkers such as (...) Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Karl Marx, to the role of economic reasoning in contemporary policies of art and health care. With economic rationalities as the read thread, the reader is offered a unique chance of historical self-awareness and recollection of how economic rationality became the powerful ideological and moral force that it is today. (shrink)

Upshot: This response focuses on the following issues, which summarize the points made by the commentaries: (i) further reflection on and details of the methodological framework that was applied to studying the proposed design of our innovation course, (ii) the issue of generalizability of the findings for teaching innovation (in this context the question of generic or transferable skills will become central), and (iii) finally, more precise explanation of what we mean by “learning from the future as it emerges.”.

A ‘practical’ theory of human rights should make sense of two claims: a ‘practice claim’ – that international human rights can fruitfully be regarded as an existing social practice – and an ‘authority claim’ – that participants in the practice have reasons to adhere to its norms. I elaborate both of these claims in this paper, taking into account important developments in the empirical study of international human rights in the last decade.

Upshot: Building on the open peer commentaries on my article, I structure their main suggestions and ideas into a set of four focus areas valuable for future conference organizers.

In Thinking like a Mall Steven Vogel argues that there is no authoritative nature independent of human standards to which one can appeal to correct damaging environmental practices. Human practices are the only basis for interpreting the environment and our ecologically destructive practices have made our environment into the degraded thing that it is. Revising these flawed practices requires becoming alienated from them; only then can we be responsible for them. Alienation is overcome by a democratic community who chooses the (...) practices that correct deficient ones and that we can recognise as expressions of ourselves and be at home in. This paper argues that there is a key step missing in this process, which is how we become alienated from our practices. It is only by appreciating the broader social and institutional horizon, ‘Ethical Life’, by which norms receive their authority and lose it, that we can understand alienation and the normative change necessary to correct it. (shrink)

This article looks at negotiations with state authorities and the evidentiary criteria they create in culturally contrasting contexts when phenomena deal with elements that for the dominant society are conceptualized as “supernatural.” We draw from the level of experiences of other-than-human beings, especially spirits and “ungraspable” presences, as social practices in and of themselves as well as acts of mobilizing those which are meaningful for knowledge production in Indigenous Amazonia and North European contexts. Our two cases show how in state (...) territorial protection debates and health services, visibility, quantification, measurability, Euro-American dominant, mainly binary, and bounded concepts are employed to create the grounds of validity. Yet, for actual individual or collective experiences, new types of evidence work can emerge in collaborations. Thus, this article sheds light on the needs for contextual and communicative actions to overcome contrasting onto-epistemologies in the context of the state. (shrink)

The concepts of ‘tradition’ and ‘authority’ are generally understood to be problematical in history curriculum design. Drawing on MacIntyre’s account of disciplines as social practices, this article argues that, to the contrary, these are concepts that need to be incorporated into any curriculum theory that attempts to build a school subject on the foundations provided by an academic discipline. In history education, there is a strong consensus towards deriving the ideas of the history curriculum from the discipline of history, (...) and this article argues that it is therefore necessary for history curriculum theory to account for the concepts of ‘tradition’ and ‘authority’ as they exist in disciplinary practice. (shrink)

Standards for professional training and practice are defined by accrediting organisations or statutory bodies. These describe the arena in which the practitioner may speak with authority. The sphere of authorised practice is further delineated by the external resources available. Within this explicit framework, unconscious mental processes can affect the professional response in potentially adverse ways. This is particularly important in mental health practice. Professionals must be prepared to examine their own responses on this basis in order to enhance their (...) knowledge of the patient and minimise the possibilities of the patient becoming the victim of the professional's own psychopathology. The maintenance of such a position in an institution or organisation requires a similar process within its structure in order to provide the necessary setting and define the limits of good practice. In this paper, the field of adolescent mental health is specifically examined. (shrink)

In a morally non-ideal legal system, how can law bind its subjects? How can the fact of a norm’s legality make it the case that practical reason is bound by that norm? Moreover, in such circumstances, what is the extent and character of law’s bindingness? I defend here an answer to these questions. I present a non-ideal theory of legality’s ability to produce binding reasons for action. It is not a descriptive account of law and its claims, it is (...) a normative theory of legal reasoning for particular social circumstances. The approach is, somewhat like Raz’s influential account, instrumental in character. Yet, it denies that the morally binding legal norms are, in whole or part, exclusionary reasons for the responsible subject. Law’s instrumentality must be given an alternative characterization. (shrink)

Within the historiography of early modern science, trust and credibility have become synonymous with genteel identity. While we should not overlook the cultural values attached to social hierarchy and how it shaped the credibility of knowledge claims, this has limitations when thinking about how contemporaries regarded the origins of that knowledge and its location in different types of workers and skillsets. Using the example of seamen in the circles of the Royal Society, this article employs the category of experience, and (...) by extension expertise, to illustrate how recognized forms of knowledge and skill acted as routes to credibility and authority in early modern science. It argues that, within the experimental community, the seaman’s authority derived from their direct experience of novel and remote phenomena and the cumulative effect of their wider experience. The accumulated experience they acquired from frequent practice, observation, and exposure translated into a form of “expertness” that rendered seamen trustworthy and credible observers and thinkers. The gentlemanly trust model does not accommodate nor acknowledge the ways the seaman’s direct and accumulated experience (and that of many other professional groups) were recognized and valued in inquiry and discourse. The article therefore sets out a new model for understanding trust, credibility, and authority in early modern science that can take us beyond a restrictive mono-model that locates trust in one sociocultural category to highlight the multiple, and sometimes competing, claims to epistemological authority. (shrink)

This article looks at the ethical quandaries, and their social and political context, which emerge as a result of international nuclear waste substitution. In particular it addresses the dilemmas inherent within the proposed return of nuclear waste owned by Japanese nuclear companies and currently stored in the United Kingdom. The UK company responsible for this waste, British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), wish to substitute this high volume intermediate-level Japanese-owned radioactive waste for a much lower volume of much more highly radioactive (...) waste. Special focus is given to ethical problems that they, and the UK government, have not wished to address as they move forward with waste substitution. The conclusion is that waste substitution can only be considered an ethical practice if a set of moderating conditions are observed by all parties. These conditions are listed and, as of yet, they are not being observed. (shrink)

Questions of medical ethics are often treated as especially difficult casuistical problems or as difficult cases illustrative of paradoxes or advantages in global moral theories. I argue here, in opposition to such approaches, for the inseparability of questions of social history and social theory from any normative assessment of medical practices. The focus of the discussion is the question of the legitimacy of the social authority exercised by physicians, and the insufficiency of traditional defences of such authority in (...) liberal societies (voluntarist, informed consent approaches), as well as traditional attacks on such strategies (ideology critique). Seeing such authority as institution bound and role based, it is argued, can help reframe, more broadly and more adequately, what is an “ethical problem” in medical practice and why. (shrink)

According to the general rule explaining apparent authority, if the behaviour of a principal gives reasonable grounds for the third party to think that the principal has appointed the other person to be his agent, contracts concluded by the third party in the principal’s name shall be binding on the principal, notwithstanding the fact that the agent was not authorised by the principal to conclude particular contracts. In the absence of evidence of apparent authority the agent shall have (...) to redress the damage incurred on a third party in cases where the third party was not aware, and was under no obligation to be aware, of circumstances that the person acted in other person’s name without their express authorisation or in excess of their authority. The principal shall be liable for actions of the apparent agent if the following three requirements are proven: words or conduct of the principal caused the impression of authority; third party could reasonably presume the existence of sufficient authority; third party acted in good faith. The third party’s legitimate expectations must be aligned with the principal’s will in order to apply the doctrine of apparent authority efficiently. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan argues that it doesn’t matter whether a state has authority in the sense of being able to create binding obligations for its citizens, so long as it is morally justified in wielding political power. In this paper, I look at this issue from a slightly different angle. I argue that it matters a great deal whether citizens relate to their state in an obligatory fashion. This is for two reasons. First, a fully morally justified state must be (...) an efficacious state; it must be able to realise its values and make its rules stick. My contention will be that enduring stability can only be secured when citizens, or at least a significant proportion of citizens, are tangibly bound to regulate their conduct in accordance with a principle of obedience to just states. Second, it is only when individuals interact in the right way with the justification for state power that the state itself as a pervasive and coercive entity does not pose a problem for them as reason-responsive agents. In fac.. (shrink)

Academic accounting researchers often offer anecdotal evidence that the publishing process is rife with unfair and unethical practices, and similar contradictory evidence supports accounting journal editors' claims that the process is fair and ethical. This study compares the perceptions of accounting authors and editors on the ethicacy and frequency of specific author, editor and reviewer practices. Both authors and editors are in general agreement about the ethical nature of editors and author practices. However, there are significant differences between the groups (...) regarding reviewer behavior, and regarding the frequency of occurrence of questionable author, editor and reviewer practices. Additionally, the majority of authors believe that codes of publishing ethics are needed, while editors do not. Women authors are significantly more supportive of such ethical codes when compared to their male counterparts. (shrink)

The role of sovereign authority in Hobbes' political philosophy is to establish peace and stability by serving as a definitive and unambiguous source of law. Although these broad outlines of Hobbes' account of political authority are uncontentious, matters quickly become more complicated once one seeks its normative basis. This much is evident from recent debates on the normative status of the laws of nature and the related issue as to whether Hobbes is better categorised as an incipient legal (...) positivist or as a heterodox natural law thinker. In this paper I argue that although the positivist and natural law commitments in Hobbes' theory of political authority can be partially reconciled, such a reconciliation points to the need for more substantive theories of practical reason and truth than are to be found in Hobbes' official statements on these topics. Section II examines the positivist and natural law dimensions in Hobbes' thought and suggests that the role of sovereign authority in providing the definitive interpretation of the laws of nature allows a partial reconciliation to be effected. In section III, I consider the tension between this reconciliation and Hobbes' instrumentalism about practical reason and equivocal separation of authority and truth. (shrink)

In recent years, disagreement as a philosophical topic has started to attract considerable attention, giving rise to rich debates not only on the logical nature of disagreement but also on specifically political and religious forms of it. Moreover, in some recent documents of the Catholic Church, we see corresponding attempts at understanding religious pluralism, dialogue among religions, and doctrinal tensions that sometimes arise within various parts of the Church itself. In such debates, many assume that the realm of the humanities (...) is clearly distinct from that of the natural sciences and, as a consequence, the dynamics of disagreement within the two realms is distinct as well. This paper challenges this assumption. Sociological studies of science are undermining the idea of a strict dichotomy between the dynamics of disagreement within the sciences and that within other areas of inquiry. Engaging in comparative methodology, this paper critically evaluates the dynamics of ecclesial disagreement and the associated idea of doctrinal authority by comparing them with what happens in the sciences. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the transformation of the field of early education in Germany. It poses the question whether these changes can be generally related to the German concept of Bildung – as denoting the children's autonomous activity of engaging themselves and the world. Investigating film material on practices of documentation in early education the paper seeks to clarify the impacts that Bildung has for the constitution of children's subjectivity. Does Bildung bring about a regime of individualization that obfuscates (...) modes of sociality and being with? Are there alternative ways to interpret the modes of subjection in observation? (shrink)

In 2004, Robert Nelson noted in creative, practice-led research degrees that the exegesis had been reconceptualised as a cultural contribution to scholarship. He suggested that the challenge this posed was the need for writing to interface effectively with the nature and calibre of the creative work. A decade on from his observation, this article employs a case study to discuss emerging approaches to the exegesis in the work of graphic design doctoral candidates at AUT University in New Zealand. Accepting the (...) multi-perspectival and multi-voiced nature of the practice-led exegesis writer, it discusses approaches to both structure and presentation. In so doing, it also considers specific issues, including negotiated relationships between the role and the nature of the designer’s voice, systems of narration, and issues impacting upon both digital and print formats. (shrink)

What is the proper task of Kantian ethical theory? This paper seeks to answer this question with reference to Kant's reply to Christian Garve in Section I of his 1793 essay on Theory and Practice . Kant reasserts the distinctness and natural authority of our consciousness of the moral law. Every mature human being is a moral professional—even philosophers like Garve, if only they forget about their ill-conceived ethical systems and listen to the voice of pure practical reason. (...) Normative theory, Kant argues, cannot be refuted with reference to alleged experience. It is the proper task of the moral philosopher to emphasize this fact. The paper also discusses Kant's attempts to clarify his moral psychology, philosophy of value and conception of the highest good in the course of replying to Garve's challenge. Key Words: Christian Garve • ethical theory and practice • Immanuel Kant • moral psychology • theory of value. (shrink)

A large number of Swedish public authorities produce ‘platform of values’ texts that present core values. This article presents a study of how such texts and practices, including the core values they revolve around, are legitimized. Using Van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework, three different data sets are analysed: 47 ‘platform of values’ texts, a focus group discussion with seven senior HR officers, and a quantitative questionnaire study answered by civil servants at three public authorities. The analysis shows how the existence of (...) ‘platform of values’ texts and practices is legitimized through rationalizations, above all by describing the texts as concrete means for reaching specific ends and, with regard to the choice of core values, through a custom-conformity type of authority. Thus, this article addresses discursive transformations of contemporary organizations with a particular focus on available discursive space for critical thinking in the wake of New Public Management and related developments. (shrink)

(2007). Classroom Authority: Theory, Research, and Practice. Judith L. Pace and Annette Hemmings, eds. Mahwah, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2006. pp. 193 $24.50 (paper). Educational Studies: Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 259-263.

For many, Rorty was a postmodern relativist and Popper was a positivist and Cold War liberal ideologue. The argument developed here rejects such views and explores how Rorty?s work is best understood from a Popperian problem-solving perspective. It is argued that Rorty erred in seeking justification for beliefs, unlike Popper who replaced the search for justification with criticism. Nonetheless, Rorty?s arguments about post-Nietzschean theory and reformism function as important updates to Popper?s arguments about methodological essentialism and piecemeal social engineering, respectively.

Upshot: We seek to address several questions and statements made in the commentaries by elaborating on the four main aspects of the M-N-L framework. Before doing so, we discuss the issue of constructivist teaching in the context of schools. We conclude by hypothesizing on what would be lost in the M-N-L framework by taking constructivism out of the picture.

This chapter contains sections titled: * Introduction * Epistemic versus Practical Authority * Scientific Authority and Its Limits * The Validation for Acknowledging Authority * Ecclesiastical Authority * Which One? * Note * References * Further Reading.

Each developed economic system is based on the principle of division of labor and can’t be imagined without the delegation of certain powers to agents. Any economic activity, particularly carried out through legal entity, is not able to function without the party’s right to authorize other persons to negotiate and make contracts on behalf of the principal. Due to the complexity of the economic order it is sometimes difficult to a third party to ascertain whether the agent acts with (...) class='Hi'>authority. Therefore legal regulation expands the scope of authority of the representatives beyond the actually granted powers—often the need to check the credentials of the representatives is rejected, when it is obvious from the facts that they have been granted necessary powers. (shrink)

In broad outlines, the first of these claims that beliefs and other cognitive states, on their own, can never motivate a new desire, intention, or action. Rather, on this view, what motivates us to desire, intend, or act is always the cooperation of some desire (or other conative state) with such cognitive states. Thus, on HTM, practical motivation is always the product of two fundamentally distinct categories of mental states operating in conjunction with one another.

The motivation for this study originated from a review of literature which led the current researcher to the realisation that not much critical study has been performed on the theology and practice of Bible inspiration and its authority in Christ Apostolic Church. This article set out to identify the tenet of faith of the church on inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, locate this tenet in the context of Evangelical theology and compare the initial understanding of the concept (...) of Bible inspiration in CAC with the way it is perceived by the church members today. Primary sources of data for the work comprised the Bible, editions of CAC constitution and structured interviews. Secondary sources of data comprised Bible commentaries, books, journal articles and the Internet. Data collected were analysed using Conservative Evangelical theological framework. The study discovered that CAC held to word-for-word inerrancy of the Scriptures, even of its vernacular translations, and its binding authority on Christians in all areas of their lives. The study revealed that the belief of CAC on Bible inspiration and its authority located CAC at the centre of Evangelical theology which researchers have identified as inerrancy. Finally, the study discovered that the initial position of CAC on the inspiration and authority of the Bible remained the same as held by contemporary members of the church. The work provides theological relevance for the study of one of the doctrines of Pentecostalism in Nigeria. (shrink)