Human adults incline toward moral objectivism but may approach things more relativistically if different cultures are involved. In this study, 4-, 6-, and 9-year-old children (N = 136) witnessed two parties who disagreed about moral matters: a normative judge (e.g., judging that it is wrong to do X) and an antinormative judge (e.g., judging that it is okay to do X). We assessed children’s metaethical judgment, that is, whether they judged that only one party (objectivism) or both parties (relativism) could (...) be right. We found that 9-year-olds, but not younger children, were more likely to judge that both parties could be right when a normative ingroup judge disagreed with an antinormative extraterrestrial judge (with different preferences and background) than when the antinormative judge was another ingroup individual. This effect was not found in a comparison case where parties disagreed about the possibility of different physical laws. These findings suggest that although young children often exhibit moral objectivism, by early school age they begin to temper their objectivism with culturally relative metaethical judgments. (shrink)

Human social life is structured by social norms creating both obligations and entitlements. Recent research has found that young children enforce simple obligations against norm violators by protesting. It is not known, however, whether they understand entitlements in the sense that they will actively object to a second party attempting to interfere in something that a third party is entitled to do — what we call counter-protest. In two studies, we found that 3-year-old children understand when a person is entitled (...) to do something, and so they actively defend this person’s entitlement against unjustified interference from second parties. In some cases, they even enforce second-order entitlements, for example, in the case of ownership where an owner is entitled to entitle others to use the owner’s property. (shrink)

Schelling’s masterpiece investigating evil and freedom.

Roland Allen’s emphasis on the ministry in missionary churches opens the door to a number of ways in which the church can work to change society, and he makes some very important connections between the promises of the prophets, Jesus announcement of the coming kingdom, and Paul’s missionary methods. In doing so, he again invites the church to bring the good news of the Kingdom of God to the modern world.

Social norms have played a key role in the evolution of human cooperation, serving to stabilize prosocial and egalitarian behavior despite the self-serving motives of individuals. Young children’s behavior mostly conforms to social norms, as they follow adult behavioral directives and instructions. But it turns out that even preschool children also actively enforce social norms on others, often using generic normative language to do so. This behavior is not easily explained by individualistic motives; it is more likely a result of (...) children’s growing identification with their cultural group, which leads to prosocial motives for preserving its ways of doing things. (shrink)

Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature changes. We find that there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in the tropics. Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in (...) the tropical troposphere are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”.This emerging reconciliation of models and observations has two primary explanations. First, because of changes in the treatment of buoy and satellite information, new surface temperature datasets yield slightly reduced tropical warming relative to earlier versions. Second, recently developed satellite and radiosonde datasets now show larger warming of the tropical lower troposphere. In the case of a new satellite dataset from remote sensing systems, enhancedRSS warming is due to an improved procedure of adjusting for inter-satellite biases. When the RSS-derived tropospheric temperature trend is compared with four different observed estimates of surface temperature change, the surface warming is invariably amplified in the tropical troposphere, consistent with model results. Even if we use data from a second satellite dataset with smaller tropospheric warming than in remote sensing systems RSS, observed tropical lapse rates are not significantly different from those in all model simulations.Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”. (shrink)

Research on children's developing moral cognition has mostly focused on their evaluation of, and reasoning about, others' intrinsically harmful (non-)verbal actions (e.g., hitting, lying). But assertions may have morally relevant (intended or unintended) consequences, too. For instance, if someone wrongly claims that “This water is clean!”, such an incorrect representation of reality may have harmful consequences to others. In two experiments, we investigated preschoolers' evaluation of others' morally relevant factual claims. In Experiment 1, children witnessed a puppet making incorrect assertions (...) that would lead to harm or to no harm. In Experiment 2, incorrect assertions would always lead to harm, but the puppet either intended the harm to occur or not. Children evaluated the puppet’s factual claim more negatively when they anticipated harmful versus harmless consequences (Experiment 1) and when the puppet’s intention was bad versus good over and above harmful consequences (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that preschoolers’ normative understanding is not limited to evaluating others’ intrinsically harmful transgressions, but also entails an appreciation of the morally relevant consequences of, and intentions underlying, others’ factual claims. (shrink)

Workplace bullying is a phenomenon that can have serious detrimental effects on health, work-related attitudes, and the behavior of the target. Particularly, workplace bullying exposure has been linked to lower level of general well-being, job satisfaction, vigor, and performance and higher level of burnout, workplace deviance, and turnover intentions. However, the psychological mechanisms behind these relations are still not well-understood. Drawing on psychological contract and self-determination theory (SDT), we hypothesized that perceptions of contract violation and the frustration of basic needs (...) mediate the relationship between workplace bullying exposure and well-being, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes. Self-reported data were collected among employees with different working backgrounds (N= 1,257)viaAmazon's Mechanical Turk in an online survey. Results showed that feelings of contract violation and frustration of basic needs accounted for unique variation in well-being, work satisfaction, burnout, vigor, and turnover intentions, pointing to individual contributions of both psychological mechanisms. However, when controlled for frustration of basic needs, feelings of psychological contract violation were no longer a mediator between workplace bullying exposure and work performance. Helping employees to deal effectively with workplace bullying exposure might buffer its negative effects and reduce their experienced frustration of basic needs, preserving their well-being, vigor, and work performance and, eventually, prevent burnout. The present study is the first to concurrently elucidate the proposed psychological mechanisms and unique contributions of psychological contract violation and frustration of basic needs in the context of workplace bullying. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to argue that the ontological setting of objects in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is a version of structural realism. According to our plan, one of the opening statements of the Tractatus – The world is the totality of facts, not of things – introduces structuralist perspective: structures are superior to their constituents. However, structuralists use the notion ‘superior’ in various senses, but this paper argues that the Tractatus places its objects within the framework of ontic structural (...) realism in its moderate form. That form puts structures and individuals on the same ontological footing. Such thesis contradicts traditional object-ontology that dominates Tractarian literature. (shrink)

Wittgenstein´s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be regarded as the first attempt to use the concept of possible world in the analysis of language. Since Wittgenstein does not use the expression possible world, the author of this paper draws attention to those parts of Tractatus that presuppose such concept. Then the author concentrates on the relation of Wittgenstein´s conception of possible world to the metaphysics of Tractatus. For Wittgenstein, the possible world is any combination of state of affairs. On the other hand, (...) some combinations of states of affairs are by the metaphysics of Tractatus excluded as illogical. The same is true of all possible distributions of attributes to ordered sets of objects that constitute states of affairs. It seems that Wittgenstein did not recognize these difficulties. (shrink)

There are two rival theories of time: static and dynamic. The Special Theory of Relativity is one of the strongest arguments for static time. However, the defenders of dynamic time claim that their approach is also possible in a relativistic setting. This debate supported the third theory: the hybrid theory of time. The aim of this paper, however, is to argue that the hybrid theory is against the nature of the Special Theory of Relativity. The argument is motivated by H. (...) Stein’s attempt to separate definite past from indefinite future by timelike and lightlike relations in and on the past pointing light cone. The paper shows that this approach leads to restricted and extremely unintuitive notion of co-presence. This is considered as a serious objection against the animation of static time in a relativistic setting. (shrink)

Neptunus et Apollo dicuntur Troiam muro cinxisse; his rex Laomedon uouit quod regno suo pecoris eo anno natum esset immolaturum. id uotum auaritia fefellit. alii dicunt †parum eum promisisse. The story that Neptune and Apollo together built the walls of Troy for Laomedon is well known from Homer. At the end of their year's service the perfidious king refused to pay the agreed wages. Ovid tells the familiar story in one of his transitional sections in the Metamorphoses. Hyginus' account poses (...) the textual problem indicated above. H. I. Rose comments on ‘parum’ as follows: ‘procul dubio corruptum hoc neque arridet Schmidtii coniectura promsisse. fuitne partum equarum? hoc enim plerumque narratur, equos quos a Ioue accepisset promisisse Laomedontem mercedis nomine…sed Herculi; quod facile ad deos mercennarios transferri potuit; atque non equos sed equas fuisse tradit Apollod. II, 104’. Rose rightly rejects Schmidt's emendation ‘promsisse’. ‘Promisisse’ has every sign of soundness and the difficulty lies, as Rose sees, with ‘parum’. Rose's own conjecture ‘partum equarum’, however, will not do. Apart from the oddity of the expression, one would need a good deal more persuasion than Rose offers to accept that the well-known promise of Zeus' horses which Laomedon made to Hercules was transferred from Hercules to Neptune and Apollo. There is no suggestion anywhere in the sources that Laomedon promised to give Neptune and Apollo the famous horses as payment for building the walls. (shrink)

Some members from the cast of New Essays in Philosophical Theology set the tone of this anthology, although with essays not included in that volume. The Flew-Hare-Mitchell-Crombie discussion on falsifiability is the only selection from that volume included here. Also included in the same section are Wisdom's "Gods," much of Braithwaite's Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief, and selections by Diogenes Allen and John Hick. The opening section of the book is on the logical status of religious language. (...) Besides essays by MacIntyre, McPherson, and Crombie, it contains William Christian's article on truth-claims in religion and also a clear, sympathetic account by Father Bochenski on the formal structure of religious discourse. The section of the book on the question of literalness includes selections from Ayer, Tillich, Mascall, Buber, and Bultmann. The section on the possibility of religious knowledge includes essays by Calvin O. Schrag, Paul F. Schmidt, and Kierkegaard. Santoni's introduction discusses all the essays, ties them together, and consequently gives a rationale for their inclusion. On the whole, the anthology is thorough, unified, and, in spite of its restricted and well-worn theme, remarkably nonrepetative.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Did the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. cause the values of teenagers in the U.S. to change? Did their previously important self-esteem and self-actualization values become less important and their survival and safety values become more important? Changes in the values of teenagers are important for practitioners, managers, marketers, and researchers to understand because high school students are our current and future employees, managers, and customers, and research has shown that values impact work and consumer-related attitudes and (...) behaviors. Further, studies that compared higher to lower performing for-profit and not-for-profit companies have found that higher performing organizations had strong values that permeated their organizations [Collins J. C., and J. I. Porras: 1994, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York, Harper Business); O’Reilly, C. A. and J. A. Chatman: 1996, in B. M. Staw and L. L. Cummings (eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, vol. 18 (JAI Press, Greenwhich, CT), pp. 157–200; O’Reilly, C. A.: 1989, California Management Review 31(4), 9–25; Posner, B. Z., and W. H. Schmidt: 1996, Public Personnel Management, 25(3), 277–298; Rousseau, D.: 1990, Group and Organization Studies 15(4), 448–460; Schein, E. H.: 2004, Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco, Jossey Bass)]. While one study of adults found value changes, no known studies have explored if the values of teenagers also changed post-9/11. This study filled that research gap by exploring the values of a random sample of 1000 U.S. teenagers in grades 9 to 12 pre- and post-9/11, using a demographic questionnaire and the Rokeach Value Survey. The research results indicated that teenage survival, safety, and security values (a world at peace, freedom, national security, and salvation) increased in importance while their self-esteem and self-actualization values (a sense of accomplishment, inner harmony, pleasure, self-respect, and wisdom) decreased in importance, mirroring the changes for adults. The meaning of these findings for practitioners, managers, marketers and researchers was discussed. (shrink)

Neptunus et Apollo dicuntur Troiam muro cinxisse; his rex Laomedon uouit quod regno suo pecoris eo anno natum esset immolaturum. id uotum auaritia fefellit. alii dicunt †parum eum promisisse. The story that Neptune and Apollo together built the walls of Troy for Laomedon is well known from Homer. At the end of their year's service the perfidious king refused to pay the agreed wages. Ovid tells the familiar story in one of his transitional sections in the Metamorphoses. Hyginus' account poses (...) the textual problem indicated above. H. I. Rose comments on ‘parum’ as follows: ‘procul dubio corruptum hoc neque arridet Schmidtii coniectura promsisse. fuitne partum equarum? hoc enim plerumque narratur, equos quos a Ioue accepisset promisisse Laomedontem mercedis nomine…sed Herculi; quod facile ad deos mercennarios transferri potuit; atque non equos sed equas fuisse tradit Apollod. II, 104’. Rose rightly rejects Schmidt's emendation ‘promsisse’. ‘Promisisse’ has every sign of soundness and the difficulty lies, as Rose sees, with ‘parum’. Rose's own conjecture ‘partum equarum’, however, will not do. Apart from the oddity of the expression, one would need a good deal more persuasion than Rose offers to accept that the well-known promise of Zeus' horses which Laomedon made to Hercules was transferred from Hercules to Neptune and Apollo. There is no suggestion anywhere in the sources that Laomedon promised to give Neptune and Apollo the famous horses as payment for building the walls. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 207-208 [Access article in PDF] Society Cosponsors International Conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand Payap University and Payap University's Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture will be sponsoring a week-long International Academic Conference on "Religion and Globalization in Chiang Mai, Thailand" beginning the last week of July 2003. The conference is being cosponsored by the American Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. Ruben Habito, vice-president of (...) the Society, is serving as a member of the planning committee and as the liaison between Payap University and the Society. Other members of the planning committee include Donald Swearer, Michael von Brueck, David Chappell, Wolfgang Schmidt, Parichart Suwanbubbha, Saeng Chandrangam, and John Butt. It is hoped that a large contingent of members of the American Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies will participate in the conference both by submitting academic papers and by attending.Other cosponsoring organizations include the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, the Museum of World Religions based in Taiwan, the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter, the Church of Christ in Thailand (CCT), and a number of other academic and religious organizations from around the world and within Thailand.The conference will be held on the main Payap University campus beginning with dinner on Sunday evening, July 27. It will end with lunch on Saturday, August 2, 2003. Lodging will be provided at the four-star Amari Rincome Hotel located near the Payap campus. Following the conference, Payap is arranging for several optional post-conference excursions to important religious and historical sites in Thailand and neighboring countries for those wishing to extend their stay in Southeast Asia.The overall theme of the conference is "Religion and Globalization". Plenary speeches, academic papers, discussions, and workshops will be organized around three broad themes:Religious Diversity and Interfaith Relations in a Global Age This section will include topics concerning religious pluralism, missions, religious conflict and reconciliation, and religious dialogue.Religion and a Global Society This section will focus on specific topics related to issues of social and economic justice, such as the relation between religion and human rights, structural violence, gender, tourism, prostitution, HIV/AIDS, the natural environment, media, technology, arts, and culture. [End Page 207]Religious Reform and Reformulation for a Global Age This section will focus on the reformulation of religious teachings and doctrines as well as on reforms of religious rituals, practices, and institutions in relationship to globalization.Several reasons make Thailand an appropriate and attractive site for this conference. Thailand has the largest percentage of Buddhists of any country in the world. It also has significant Islamic, Christian, and Hindu minorities. Animistic beliefs and practices underlie the religious faith of most of the Thai people. Over the past century and especially during the past several decades the country and the region have experienced rapid and profound changes as a result of modernization and globalization. For all these reasons Chiang Mai presents an excellent venue for examining how the Theravada Buddhist tradition and other major religious traditions are affecting and being affected by globalization. In addition, the Chiang Mai area has been an important "crossroads" for various religious and cultural movements since the beginning of the Common Era. For over 2,000 years Thailand has been both a receiver and a sender of religious missions. Thus, Chiang Mai provides a superb locale for critically reexamining religious missions and interfaith relations.The complete cost for the seven-day conference (including all meals, lodging, local transportation, site visits, entertainment, and conference registration) will be $575 (U.S.). International air travel to Chiang Mai will be additional. But based on current fares, travel from the North America to Chiang Mai should be no more than between $800 and $1,200 (U.S.). The exact international travel cost will depend on the carrier and the place of origin. Optional post-conference excursions will involve some additional expense and will vary depending on the destination and length of the excursion.Details regarding procedure for registration and submitting papers, lodgings, the conference schedule, optional post-conference excursions, and travel... (shrink)

The title of this symposium, “Formal Simplicity as a Weight in the Acceptability of Scientific Theories,” to some people might seem to suggest that we are to be making positive proposals about how the concept of simplicity could be defined for formalized languages, defined so as to figure in a formalized theory of confirmation. I must confess at the start that I do not have any such ambitious object in view. I now feel, indeed, that premature formalizations have little power (...) to illuminate the philosophically interesting questions which cluster round the problem of the role of simplicity in scientific thinking. So in this short paper I wish merely to present some elementary considerations, not very novel ones, concerning the role which simplicity seems to me to play in our non-demonstrative reasoning about matters of empirical fact. Although many writers have sought to analyze the logical character of such reasoning, little unanimity has been attained in their over-all views; thus it is that though the considerations which I wish to present are elementary, they are not wholly uncontroversial. But because these matters are elementary in nature, I do feel it appropriate in discussing them to use homely examples of uncomplicated kinds, rather than elaborate examples drawn from the more sophisticated reaches of scientific theory; in doing so, I am taking it for granted that scientific inference as regards its logical character is fundamentally a refinement of everyday thinking, rather than a procedure of some essentially different nature. (shrink)

During the early 19th century, a peculiarly systematic way of organizing books emerged in Germany. This systematization, which purported to be a rational organization of subject matter, was an outgrowth of the philosophy of Hegel. This article attempts to outline Hegel's organizational practice. It argues that Hegel's encyclopedia was a reaction against the Enlightenment encyclopedia, and that it attempted to restore the systematic mindset of pre-modern reference books. Yet it did this, not in a straightforward fashion, but by developing a (...) method for organizing material that both stresses the interconnectedness of knowledge and promises to be highly scalable. In its attempt to trace the Hegelian organizational method, this article revisits and calls attention to a forgotten work in Hegel scholarship by Michael John Petry, who was the first writer to seriously stress the importance of classification in Hegel's work. This article is an attempt to demonstrate that Hegelianism and information organization can be brought into fruitful and mutually beneficial dialogue. (shrink)

В книге анализируется дискуссия о природе сознания в современной аналитической философии. Для философов, ученых и всех, интересующихся проблемой сознания.

“The forms of thought are first set out and stored in human language,” we read in the preface to the second edition of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Man thinks through language, and everything he “transforms into language and expresses in it contains a category, whether concealed, mixed, or well defined”. Language, then, harbors thought categories. There is a philosophy of language, but there is also a philosophy implied in language. How is this supposed to work? More specifically, how is this (...) supposed to work in Hegel’s own use of language?This paper is an attempt to give a simple answer to this question. There have been scholarly attempts to tie Hegel’s philosophy to his use of language.1 This paper... (shrink)