We report the results of an experimental test of whether preaching the normative appeal of the sure-thing principle leads decision-makers to make choices that satisfy it. We use Allais-type decision problems to observe the incentive-compatible choices of 147 subjects, which either violate the sure-thing principle or adhere to it. Subjects are presented with normative arguments that support the counterfactual behaviour and then repeat their decisions. We observe violations of the sure-thing principle are robust to its normative justification. This result replicates (...) a famous small-sample observation using hypothetical tasks that was published by Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky almost half a century ago. We argue that this finding is as relevant now as it was then and that their design can be usefully applied to address contemporary issues in behavioural economics. (shrink)

In her poetry collection The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak (2021), Grace Lau, a Hong Kong-born Chinese Canadian poet, showcases different experiences of exclusion and inclusion, some connected to the long history of prejudice and discrimination. The aim of this article is to discuss depictions of three types of exclusion experienced by Lau – that of a postcolonial subject, a queer subject, and, finally, a queer subject of colour – and the impact those experiences have (...) on her identity. The analysis of three of Lau’s poems – "Birth/Right”, “Another God”, and “Perfect Groupie” – provides an insight into her reflections on different instances of exclusion she experienced, whether motivated by her ethnicity and nationality, her sexual orientation, or the combination of both, and the impact they had on her identity as a queer postcolonial subject. (shrink)

In accordance with environmental injustice, sometimes called environmental racism, minority communities are disproportionately subjected to a higher level of environmental risk than other segments of society. Growing concern over unequal environmental risk and mounting evidence of both racial and economic injustices have led to a grass-roots civil rights campaign called the environmental justice movement. The environmental ethics aspects of environmental injustice challenge narrow utilitarian views and promote Kantian rights and obligations. Nevertheless, an environmentaljustice value exists in all ethical world (...) views, although it involves a concept of equitable distribution of environmental protection that has been lacking in environmental ethics discussion. (shrink)

Laplacean Determinism (his so-called demon argument) is the thesis that every event that transpires in a closed universe is a physical event caused (i.e., determined) in full by some earlier event in accord with laws that govern their behavior. On this view, it is possible, in principle, to make perfect predictions of the state of the universe at any time Tn on the basis of complete knowledge of the state of the universe at time T1. Thus, if identity theory, epiphenomenalism (...) or any other instantiation of Laplacean Determinism is correct, mental events such as free will, intention and other forms of mental agency are tricks of the mind, misleading us into believing our volitional concerns have traction in a world ruled entirely by physical circumstance. Not surprisingly, advocates of free will and related acts of human volition have engaged in spirited debate with adherents to Laplacean orthodoxy, the results of which have been far from conclusive. Rather than join these deliberations, I wholly embrace the demon argument and then ask “what are the consequences of this allegiance?” As I hope to show, acceptance of this argument commits one to a belief in the existence of human precognition. This, I suggest, is a consequence that does not fit comfortably within a contemporary scientific worldview. (shrink)

Van Fraassen has maintained that acceptance of a scientific theory does not involve the belief that the theory is true. Blackburn, Mitchell and Horwich have claimed that acceptance, as understood by van Fraassen, is the same as belief; in which case, van Fraassen's position is incoherent. Van Fraassen identifies belief with subjective probability, so the question at issue is really whether acceptance of a theory involves a high subjective probability for the theory. Van Fraassen is not committed to this, and (...) hence the charge of incoherence is misplaced. Indeed, van Fraassen is correct on this point. However, he is wrong to think that acceptance requires a high subjective probability that the theory is empirically adequate; and his reason for thinking that science aims at empirical adequacy rather than truth rests on an overly crude theory of rational choice. (shrink)

Discussions of science and values in risk management have largely focused on how values enter into arguments about risks, that is, issues of acceptable risk. Instead this volume concentrates on how values enter into collecting, interpreting, communicating, and evaluating the evidence of risks, that is, issues of the acceptability of evidence of risk. By focusing on acceptable evidence, this volume avoids two barriers to progress. One barrier assumes that evidence of risk is largely a matter of objective scientific data and (...) therefore uncontroversial. The other assumes that evidence of risk, being "just" a matter of values, is not amenable to reasoned critique. Denying both extremes, this volume argues for a more constructive conclusion: understanding the interrelations of scientific and value issues enables a critical scrutiny of risk assessments and better public deliberation about social choices. The contributors, distinguished philosophers, policy analysts, and natural and social scientists, analyze environmental and medical controversies, and assumptions underlying views about risk assessment and the scientific and statistical models used in risk management. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the argument that rejects the widely held proposition that religious convictions are inherently nonrational or beyond reason and that religious convictions are subject to rational examination and are not beyond public scrutiny. The chapter makes a distinction between religious convictions that are unacceptable grounds for decision-making and those that are acceptable. The idea of arguing based on acceptable religious grounds is an idea of ecumenical politics, in which people speak to one another from their own traditions, (...) but with sufficient basis in community and shared ideas to engage in genuine dialogue. (shrink)

Deductive Cogency holds that the set of propositions towards which one has, or is prepared to have, a given type of propositional attitude should be consistent and closed under logical consequence. While there are many propositional attitudes that are not subject to this requirement, e.g. hoping and imagining, it is at least prima facie plausible that Deductive Cogency applies to the doxastic attitude involved in propositional knowledge, viz. belief. However, this thought is undermined by the well-known preface paradox, leading (...) a number of philosophers to conclude that Deductive Cogency has at best a very limited role to play in our epistemic lives. I argue here that Deductive Cogency is still an important epistemic requirement, albeit not as a requirement on belief. Instead, building on a distinction between belief and acceptance introduced by Jonathan Cohen and recent developments in the epistemology of understanding, I propose that Deductive Cogency applies to the attitude of treating propositions as given in the context of attempting to understand a given phenomenon. I then argue that this simultaneously accounts for the plausibility of the considerations in favor of Deductive Cogency and avoids the problematic consequences of the preface paradox. (shrink)

In the context of the current heated debate surrounding the pervasive influence of the English language and Anglo-American culture on other languages, as well as the widespread purist attitude towards some contact-induced language change phenomena, both abroad and in Romania, our article discusses the situation of English lexical borrowings in present-day Romanian, focusing on the perception and processing of the so-calledluxury Anglicisms(Sections 2and3) by young Romanian native speakers, in an attempt to see whether such an analysis can help clarify their (...) acceptability and diffusion across our target population. We propose an alternative cognitive, psycholinguistic approach to the study of contact-induced lexical borrowings, aiming to show that there is no difference in the young Romanian native speakers’ processing of sentences containing luxury Anglicisms and their established Romanian counterparts. Such findings may support our claim that the acceptability and diffusion of such Anglicisms are pervasive across our target population, even if the official position generally condemns such uses, considering them gratuitous and a burden in communication, even making it unintelligible sometimes.Our analysis starts from the observation that most (but not all) Romanian academics, whether linguists or not, tend to embrace a purist attitude, while on the other hand young Romanians accept such Anglicisms and tend to use them extensively. In fact, such uses are not limited to young people, who have been the subjects of our research, but are the ‘norm’ in daily conversations and elsewhere across the general population (Stoichițoiu Ichim 2006). Thus, there seems to be a gap between the actual acceptability and diffusion of luxury Anglicisms among Romanians and the ‘official’ recommendations. Based on the results of a sensicality task, meant to show how 188 Romanians, aged 18–22, process and perceive sentences with or without luxury Anglicisms (seeSection 6), we will try to show that luxury Anglicisms are accepted and, by recurrent use, diffused among the Romanian community. For a more accurate picture of their diffusion, the findings will be further correlated with data fromCoRoLa, the only official corpus ofpresent-day Romanian (beginning 1989) made available under the auspices of the Romanian Academy, as well as a corpus currently in the making, and the Internet (seeSection 7).Besides showing that luxury Anglicisms cannot really be blamed for burdening or impairing processing, and thus communication, and explaining why such uses should not be censured or disapproved, we hope that our study of acceptability and diffusion will demonstrate that we are dealing with a complex, multi-layered phenomenon that can be better understood by going beyond a diachronic and synchronic analysis of particular words and a frequency count, and should incorporate more experimental data.Last but not least, we suggest that, on the practical side, such experimental studies as the one described here could be used as an additional criterion for the lexicographic inclusion of lexical borrowings. (shrink)

It is argued that we need a richer version of Bayesian decision theory, admitting both subjective and objective probabilities and providing rational criteria for choice of our prior probabilities. We also need a theory of tentative acceptance of empirical hypotheses. There is a discussion of subjective and of objective probabilities and of the relationship between them, as well as a discussion of the criteria used in choosing our prior probabilities, such as the principles of indifference and of maximum entropy, and (...) the simplicity ranking of alternative hypotheses. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the task of defining the relationship between the results of production and rating experiments in the context of language variation. We address the following research question: how may the grammatical options available to a single speaker be distributed in the two domains of production and perception? We argue that previous studies comparing acceptability judgments and frequencies of occurrence suffer from significant limitations. We approach the correspondence of production and perception data by adopting an experimental design different (...) from those used in previous research: (i) instead of using a corpus we use production data obtained experimentally from respondents who are later asked to make judgments, (ii) instead of pairwise phenomena we examine language variation, (iii) judgments are collected formally using the conditions and materials from the production experiment, (iv) we analyze the behavior of each participant across the production and acceptability judgment experiments. In particular, we examine three phenomena of variation in Russian: case variation in nominalizations, gender mismatch, and case variation in paucal constructions. Our results show that there is substantial alignment between acceptability ratings and frequency of occurrence. However, the distribution of frequencies and acceptability scores do not always correlate. Speakers are not consistent in choosing a single variant across the two types of experiment. Importantly, the types of inconsistency they display differ, which means that the variation can be characterized from this point of view. We conclude that the degree of coherence of the two experiments reflects the effects of the evolution of variation over time. Another result is that elicited production and acceptability judgments vary with respect to how they reveal variation in language. In the case of the development or disappearance of variants, production indicates this earlier than judgments, and the rating task has the effect of restricting the choices available to respondents. However, the production method should not thereby be considered more sensitive. We argue that only a combination of production and judgment data makes it possible to estimate the directionality of changes in variability and to see the full distribution of different variants. (shrink)

Peremptory norms of general international law (jus cogens) are universally binding prohibitions that override any consideration for non-compliance (e.g., genocide and slavery). The question is how nonconsensual norms emerge from a consensual international legal order. It appears that either the peremptoriness of jus cogens renders consent superfluous to the norm’s binding force or consent divests jus cogens of its peremptory status. The goal of this paper is to resolve the dilemma by explaining why jus cogens is exempt from the general (...) requirement of consent that binds states to the rules of international law. The paper provides an impartiality-based account of enforcement that explains why a state’s refusal to give consent to jus cogens may be overridden in a consensual legal order. (shrink)

In the context of digital monetary market integration, the importance of cross-border digital currency research is receiving prominent attention. This study integrated Extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) and initial trust factors (ITM) into an integrative framework, which synthetically complemented the objective measures and subjective insights of digital currencies. The results indicated the integrated framework, which verified its robustness predicting the acceptance and recommendation intention of digital currency. By analyzing the two different features of digital currencies, (...) this research puts forward a set of targeted solutions to ensure that users of Chinese and Korean digital currencies make a long-term policy for the sustainability, eventually benefitting the cross-border digital monetary transactions and economic cooperation in Asia, which leads the world to the sustainable development in the digital currencies field. (shrink)

In Logical Self-Defense , Johnson and I introduced the criteria of acceptability, relevance and sufficiency as appropriate for the evaluation of arguments in the sense of reasons offered in support of a claim. These three criteria have been widely adopted, but each has been subjected to a number of criticisms; and also 30 years of research have intervened. How do these criteria stand up today? In this paper I argue that they still have a place in argument analysis and evaluation, (...) but in much-modified roles. (shrink)

Dans cet article, je montre que quatre normes de rationalité associées aux intentions peuvent être déduites de normes similaires s’appliquant aux acceptations en contextes délibératifs, un type d’état mental apparenté mais irréductible aux croyances par lequel un agent tient certains faits pour acquis lorsqu’il délibère. Je montre que cette approche, que je nomme le pragmatisme hybride, évite certaines limitations de l’approche la plus prisée dans la littérature, le cognitivisme, et qu’en comparaison avec les approches purement pragmatistes, principales rivales du cognitivisme, (...) le pragmatisme hybride rend mieux justice à nos intuitions relatives aux normes associées aux intentions. Je montre enfin que le pragmatisme hybride permet d’expliquer comment les intentions influencent le raisonnement pratique, et de ce fait, comblent un vide important dans les théories contemporaines.In this paper, I show that four normative requirements on rational intentions follow from similar requirements on acceptations in deliberative contexts, a type of mental state close but irreducible to beliefs by which agents take some facts for granted in deliberation. I show that this approach, which I call hybrid pragmatism, avoid shortcomings of cognitivism, one of the most prominent one in the literature. I show furthermore that in comparison with purely pragmatist approaches, the main rivals of cognitivism, an hybrid form of pragmatism makes better justice to our intuitions regarding the sources of the normative requirements on rational intentions, and that it allows for understanding how intentions influence practical reasoning. (shrink)

Psychopathological delusions have a number of features that are curiously difficult to explain. Delusions are resistant to counterevidence and impervious to counterargument. Delusions are theoretically, affectively, and behaviorally circumscribed: delusional individuals often do not act on their delusions and often do not update beliefs on the basis of their delusions. Delusional individuals are occasionally able to distinguish their delusions from other beliefs, sometimes speaking of their “delusional reality.” To explain these features, I offer a model according to which, contrary to (...) appearances, delusions are not beliefs at all. Delusions are acceptances that are generated by pathologically powerful cognitive feelings. This model has implications for the way that we should think about non-pathological doxastic states and emotions. (shrink)

This month's issue presents arguments on three longstanding ethical issues: prostitution, euthanasia and organ donation. It also addresses three issues perhaps more directly linked to daily practice across clinical care and research: resource allocation, consent, and, in an interesting pair of papers, how a clinician's own experiences might affect their ethical judgement and therefore clinical care.In a provocative article, Ole Martin Moen argues that our increasing acceptance of casual sex, that is, sexual encounters which do not involve an emotional connection, (...) render our assumption that prostitution is always harmful out of date. If one form of impersonal encounter is acceptable, then why not another? Naturally, prostitution involves some degree of risk of harm. However, he argues that many occupations we do accept are likewise risky, or are also subject to similar objections to prostitution. He allows there is one remaining harm, which is genuine today, but which is open to change: the legal and social stigma, which we impose on prostitution due to our mistaken beliefs .Our two invited commentators, Anderson and McDougall focus on the empirical evidence of harm. When a new drug is developed, a plausible theory as to its effects, mechanism and safety is required. We might test that in a computer model. But until it is tested in real life, we cannot know its real benefits or harms. The same might be true of ethical arguments. As McDougall says: "Moen presents a compelling argument that the exchange of sex for money need not be intrinsically harmful to the seller, but for the individuals actually involved in prostitution, does this conclusion really matter?"The reader might ask why a journal of medical ethics is publishing an article on prostitution. There are clearly potential and …. (shrink)

Two meanings of "subjective consequentialism" are distinguished: conscious deliberation with the aim of producing maximally-good consequences, versus acting in ways that, given one's evidence set and reasoning capabilities, is subjectively most likely to maximize expected consequences. The latter is opposed to "objective consequentialism," which demands that we act in ways that actually produce the best total consequences. Peter Railton's arguments for a version of objective consequentialism confuse the two subjective forms, and are only effective against the first. After reviewing the (...) arguments of Eric Wiland and Frances Howard-Snyder against objective consequentialism, two of Railton's arguments which might seem to count against the second form of subjective consequentialism are shown to be ineffective. This leaves subjective consequentialism as a viable theory to replace objective consequentialism with. (shrink)

Forgiving wrongdoers who neither apologized, nor sought to make amends in any way, is controversial. Even defenders of the practice agree with critics that such “unilateral” forgiveness involves giving up on the meaningful redress that victims otherwise justifiably demand from their wrongdoers: apology, reparations, repentance, and so on. Against that view, I argue here that when a victim of wrongdoing sets out to grant forgiveness to her offender, and he in turn accepts her forgiveness, he thereby serves some important ends (...) of apology and reparation, no matter what else he did—or did not do—by way of repair. Although much overlooked, the simple act of accepting forgiveness joins victim and offender in affirming and acting upon some important shared background assumptions, including many of those expressed in standard apologies. Perhaps more surprisingly, I argue that accepting forgiveness also fulfills the duty to counteract any concrete harm wrongfully inflicted. The argument helps explain some otherwise puzzling features of forgiveness, including that a victim can change her offender’s normative status, making him a less fitting target of the resentment, indignation and shunning of others, and even his own guilt pangs, simply by forgiving him. (shrink)

This article studies argumentation for acceptability of corporate environmental actions in corporate environmental statements, with emphasis on stakeholder relations and environmental values. Stakeholder theory is commonly taken as the basis for corporate environmental management, and rhetoric typical of the stakeholder approach dominates the field. Although environmental issues are strongly charged with values, the dominant stakeholder approach does not stress the value dimension. The data of the study consists of environmental statements by Finnish forerunning business corporations in the forefront of corporate (...) environmental responsibility. The results of the study indicate that the statements argue for the acceptability of corporate environmental actions through three power-related rhetorical forms that are competing ways to produce acceptability in the data: dominance, subordination and equality, and joint action. Each rhetorical form describes a power-based relationship between stakeholders and the corporation and leans on a specific value type producing legitimacy for that rhetoric form. (shrink)

Next SectionIn an online study conducted separately in the UK and the US, participants rated the acceptability and fairness of four interventions: two types of financial incentives and two types of medical interventions. These were stated to be equally effective in improving outcomes in five contexts: weight loss and smoking cessation programmes, and adherence in treatment programmes for drug addiction, serious mental illness and physiotherapy after surgery. Financial incentives were judged less acceptable and to be less fair than medical interventions (...) across all five contexts. Context moderated the relative preference between rewards and penalties: participants from both countries favoured rewards over penalties in weight loss and treatment for serious mental illness. Only among US participants was this relative preference moderated by perceived responsibility of the target group. Overall, participants supported funding more strongly for interventions when they judged members of the target group to be less responsible for their condition, and vice versa. These results reveal a striking similarity in negative attitudes towards the use of financial incentives, rewards as well as penalties, in improving outcomes across a range of contexts, in the UK and the USA. The basis for such negative attitudes awaits further study. (shrink)

BackgroundThe brain death standard allowing a declaration of death based on neurological criteria is legally endorsed and routinely practiced in the West but not in Asia. In China, attempts to legalize the brain death standard have occurred several times without success. Cultural, religious, and philosophical factors have been proposed to explain this difference, but there is a lack of empirical studies to support this hypothesis.Methods476 medical providers from three academic hospitals in Hunan, China, completed a selfadministered survey including a 12-question (...) brain death clinical knowledge assessment and hypothetical vignettes describing brain dead patients.ResultsThe response rate was 95.2 %. Almost all of the providers had heard of the term “brain death.” More than half have encountered presumed brain dead patients. Two-thirds accepted brain death as an ethical standard to determine human death. The mean knowledge score was 8.50 ± 1.83 out of 12. When given the description of a brain dead patient, 50.7 % considered the patient dead, 51.9 % would withdraw life support, and 40.6 % would allow organ procurement. Both provider and patient characteristics contributed to the providers’ decisions. Ethical acceptance was the most important independent predictor for brain death acknowledgement, followed by high knowledge scores, and the belief that the soul lives in the brain. Religious faith and associated beliefs did not have a significant effect.ConclusionsNotwithstanding scarce official accounts, recognition of the brain death standard is not uncommon in China. Chinese medical providers can adequately define the medical characteristics of brain death and accept it in theory, but hesitate to apply it to practice in the vignettes. Legalization is paramount in providing the protection providers need to comfortably declare brain death. However the medical decision-making surrounding brain death is complex and the provider's past experiences and emotions may also influence the process. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to contribute to the recent debate on non-empirical theory confirmation by analyzing why scientists accept and trust their theories in the absence of clear empirical verification in social sciences. Given that the philosophy of social sciences traditionally deals mainly with economics and sociology, organization theory promises a new area for addressing a wide range of key questions of the modern philosophy of science and, in particular, to shed a light on the puzzling question of non-empirical (...) theory assessment, acceptance, corroboration and development. Although institutional theory of organizations cannot be directly tested and evaluated via empirical data, this theory nevertheless became a dominant theory of organization-environment relations and most organizational researchers routinely use it as a standard theoretical framework for making sense of empirical findings. We analyze the trajectory of institutional theory development and proliferation and argue that it enjoys its current status of the standard theory of organizational sociology because (1) it is flexible enough to account for most organizational processes and phenomena; (2) it has suppressed existing alternative theories that are less flexible; (3) because scientists do not tend to look for alternatives for once winning theory and (4) due to the dysfunctional requirement to “develop theory” in top journals in organization and management studies. Finally, we argue that “a too-much-plasticity effect”, has a negative impact on institutional theory in the long run. It is explained why, despite the dominant position in organizational research, institutional studies cannot be regarded as a normal science while the progress of this theoretical problem is rather an illusory effect then a growth of knowledge. (shrink)

Time sensitivity seems to affect our intuitive evaluation of the reasonable risk of fallibility in testimonies. All things being equal, we tend to be less demanding in accepting time sensitive testimonies as opposed to time insensitive testimonies. This paper considers this intuitive response to testimonies as a strategy of acceptance. It argues that the intuitive strategy, which takes time sensitivity into account, is epistemically superior to two adjacent strategies that do not: the undemanding strategy adopted by non-reductionists and the cautious (...) strategy adopted by reductionists. The paper demonstrates that in adopting the intuitive strategy of acceptance, one is likely to form more true beliefs and fewer false beliefs. Also, in following the intuitive strategy, the listener will be fulfilling his epistemic duties more efficiently. (shrink)

Based on real-life intergroup animosities originating from a historical conflict, the current study examined how the perceived stance of the outgroup about the conflict affects the dehumanization of the outgroup. In Study 1 (N= 120), Korean undergraduates attributed morehuman natureto the Japanese after reading an article that the Japanese government did (vs. refused to) issue an official apology for a historical wrong. In turn, the more human nature assigned to the Japanese predicted higher expectations about positive mutual relations in the (...) future. Similarly, in Study 2 (N= 209), Japanese undergraduates attributed morehuman uniquenessto Koreans after reading an article that an official apology for a historical wrong from Japan was accepted (vs. rejected) by Koreans. The higher the perceived human uniqueness of Koreans was, the higher were the willingness to help and the expectations of a positive relationship in the future. The findings demonstrate how mutual dehumanization can be reduced as a result of the other side’s reconciliatory stances and can further contribute to improving intergroup relations. (shrink)

Elga (2010) argues that no plausible decision rule governs action with imprecise credences. I follow Moss (2015a) in claiming that the solution to Elga’s challenge is found in the philosophy of mind, not in devising a special new decision rule. Moss suggests that in decision situations that involve imprecise credences, we must identify with a precise credence, but she says little about identification. By reflecting on the common conception of identification and on what is necessary for Moss’s solution to succeed, (...) I argue that identifying with a precise credence is fundamentally accepting (in the sense of Bratman 1992; Cohen 1989) a proposition about probabilities. The norm on action with imprecise credences is then a special case of the general norm on action and acceptance. I delineate a number of attractive features of this position. (shrink)

Odor detection and identification by machines is currently being done to evaluate perfumes, wine, olive, oil, and even find people buried in rubble. Extending body odor detection to authentication may seem far-fetched and unrealistic. Yet such an application is plausible, given that like a fingerprint or iris, the human body odor is unique. Although such technology still has strides to make before being applicable as either a stand-alone or supplemental technology to existing biometric tools, it still warrants research, especially in (...) how the technology is perceived. Numerous studies have addressed the public perception of biometric technologies, although odor scanning is one that has been under-addressed. This exploratory study addresses perceptions and attitudes of odor scanning and recommends directions for future research and practice. This study has found that odor scanning is little understood, and its benefit to security and privacy are perceived as low. Should body odor scanning develop into a viable method of biometric authentication, issues of perception and acceptance will need further attention by both research and practice. (shrink)

Drawing on the puzzling behavior of ordinary knowledge ascriptions that embed an epistemic (im)possibility claim, we tentatively conclude that it is untenable to jointly endorse (i) an unfettered classical logic for epistemic language, (ii) the general veridicality of knowledge ascription, and (iii) an intuitive ‘negative transparency’ thesis that reduces knowledge of a simple negated ‘might’ claim to an epistemic claim without modal content. We motivate a strategic trade-off: preserve veridicality and (generalized) negative transparency, while abandoning the general validity of contraposition. (...) We criticize various approaches to incorporating veridicality into domain semantics, a paradigmatic ‘information-sensitive’ framework for capturing negative transparency and, more generally, the non-classical behavior of sentences with epistemic modals. We then present a novel information-sensitive semantics that successfully executes our favored strategy: stable acceptance semantics, extending a vanilla bilateral state-based semantics for epistemic modals with a knowledge operator loosely inspired by the defeasibility theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Praise and blame can function to manage membership in informal social groups. We can be praised into groups, like if you remark on my good taste in music and invite me to have lunch with you. We can be blamed out of groups, like if I’m rude to your spouse and you stop inviting me to parties. These can move in the opposite direction, with praise removing you from a group and blame drawing you in. If we attend to the (...) way praise and blame shape our social world, we can revisit some debates about the ethics of praise and blame with new eyes. (shrink)

For years there was no focus within the U.S. federal government for alternatives to animal toxicity testing. Questions coming to regulatory agencies fell upon individuals to address in the best way they could. Given this void, the ad hoc Interagency Regulatory Alternatives Group was founded by staff in a number of federal agencies in the late 1980s to coalesce efforts in the field. The group sponsored two international workshops on eye irritation, the first making proposals for change in the current (...) test method in rabbits, the second reviewing available data on in vitro alternatives. The result has been that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is considering revision of the in vivo eye irritation test guideline to incorporate a number of the workshop deliberations. However, movement of the in vitro eye irritation alternatives has been disappointing; attempts to determine their practical testing significance have thus far been unrewarding. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the implications of an acceptability test designed to evaluate the Swedish native speakers's reluctance to form the neuter gender of certain adjectives such as the defective adjectives. This chapter provides some observations related to the Löwenadler paper. While the paper focused on the certain Swedish adjective forms which are regarded as ungrammatical by most Swedish speakers, the present chapter places emphasis on the actual evaluation of the logically possible yet unacceptable neuter alternatives. To provide a better understanding (...) of the reluctance of speakers to use neuter gender, the chapter provides some additional factors aside from the inflectional process that define the judgements derived from the acceptability test. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman maintains that there is a plurality of internally consistent, equally privileged, well-made actual worlds constructed through the use of very special symbol systems—right or ultimately acceptable world versions. Using evidence from American Indian traditions, I will argue that Goodman’s criteria for ultimately acceptability are culturally biased against any non-Western world version—especially a Native version. I will then offer a culturally sensitive interpretation of Goodman’s criteria for ultimate acceptability that an American Indian world version satisfies, and (...) so is numbered among the internally consistent, equally privileged, well-made actual worlds. (shrink)

Background In the context of discussions between supporters and opponents of euthanasia, and legal regulations regarding this type of practices, the attitude of young people with respect to this phenomenon is a very interesting issue. According to Polish law, euthanasia is prohibited. The aim of this study was to determine the degree of acceptance of euthanasia among students from Polish universities across three different fields of study: psychology, medicine, and economic-technical disciplines, and to identify the factors associated with the acceptance (...) of this phenomenon. Methods The study included 627 persons studying in Lublin, Poland: medicine (280), psychology (170), and economic-technical studies (177). The study was conducted as a survey using questionnaire containing items concerning students’ attitudes towards euthanasia. The analysis of the collected data was conducted using the SPSS software (version 29) with the following methods: Chi2, Student’s t-test, Phi test, Cramer’s V test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, one-way ANOVA with Dunnett’s post hoc test, linear regression analysis, and categorical regression analysis using optimal scaling (CATREG). Results Nearly half of the students participating in the study (45.9%) rated the practice of euthanasia as decidedly negative. The highest number of strongly negative evaluations was found among psychology students, and the least among students of economic-technical disciplines. The level of acceptance of euthanasia is significantly associated with religious involvement and studying psychology. Being religious and being a psychology student both contribute to lower acceptance of euthanasia and a lower willingness to consent to euthanasia. Consent to euthanasia is more commonly declared by individuals with experience of living with elderly people. Conclusions Although nearly half of the respondents expressed a negative attitude towards euthanasia, considering the secularization process among Polish youth, it can be assumed that the level of acceptance of euthanasia in this social group will increase. The lower level of acceptance of euthanasia among psychology and medical students compared to students of economic-technical disciplines suggests that the curricula of these studies present alternative solutions to the problems of terminally ill patients other than euthanasia. (shrink)

Face recognition payment, an innovative financial technology service, is a recently developed mode of payment service that has garnered attention in the offline market, particularly in China. However, studies examining the adoption of FRP by consumers are scarce. Therefore, this study proposed a causal model built on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, and key predictors related to the intention of using FRP were identified. The structural equation model-based results obtained from 305 Chinese participants demonstrated that the (...) intention was most affected by relative advantage. In addition, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and perceived risk also had a significant impact. However, trust was found to not significantly affect consumers’ intentions, despite it negatively influencing perceived risk. Thus, the results of this study are expected to provide a set of guidelines for companies regarding the implementation of FRP. (shrink)

Piero Moraro argues that people who engage in civil disobedience do not have a pro tanto reason to accept punishment for breaking the law, although they do have a duty to undergo prosecution. This is because they have a duty to answer for their actions, and the state serves as an agent of the people by calling the lawbreaker to answer via prosecution. I argue that Moraro does not go far enough. Someone who engages in civil disobedience does not even (...) have to show up for the trial, provided that they answer for their actions adequately via some other means. This is because sometimes states are not agents of the people who can call lawbreakers to account, and even those states which are agents cannot demand that lawbreakers answer for their crimes in the form of a trial. (shrink)

As the ongoing literature on the paradoxes of the Lottery and the Preface reminds us, the nature of the relation between probability and rational acceptability remains far from settled. This article provides a novel perspective on the matter by exploiting a recently noted structural parallel with the problem of judgment aggregation. After offering a number of general desiderata on the relation between finite probability models and sets of accepted sentences in a Boolean sentential language, it is noted that a (...) number of these constraints will be satisfied if and only if acceptable sentences are true under all valuations in a distinguished non-empty set W. Drawing inspiration from distance-based aggregation procedures, various scoring rule based membership conditions for W are discussed and a possible point of contact with ranking theory is considered. The paper closes with various suggestions for further research. (shrink)

A proof-theoretical treatment of collectively accepted group beliefs is presented through a multi-agent sequent system for an axiomatization of the logic of acceptance. The system is based on a labelled sequent calculus for propositional multi-agent epistemic logic with labels that correspond to possible worlds and a notation for internalized accessibility relations between worlds. The system is contraction- and cut-free. Extensions of the basic system are considered, in particular with rules that allow the possibility of operative members or legislators. Completeness (...) with respect to the underlying Kripke semantics follows from a general direct and uniform argument for labelled sequent calculi extended with mathematical rules for frame properties. As an example of the use of the calculus we present an analysis of the discursive dilemma. (shrink)

“Forms of Atheism” is, despite its title, a plea for modest expectations in the economic and social sphere. Polanyi identifies five kinds of false “gods” who have led our culture astray. Although he criticizes an ideal of progress inspired by the Christian tradition, he affirms the importance of love and praises “the British sense of national brotherhood” as a force for good that derives from “obeying the will of God.” What Polanyi means by “God” is left to the reader’s sympathetic (...) intuition into Polanyi’s character. (shrink)

Neo-Fregean logicism attempts to base mathematics on abstraction principles. Since not all abstraction principles are acceptable, the neo-Fregeans need an account of which ones are. One of the most promising accounts is in terms of the notion of stability; roughly, that an abstraction principle is acceptable just in case it is satisfiable in all domains of sufficiently large cardinality. We present two counterexamples to stability as a sufficient condition for acceptability and argue that these counterexamples can be avoided only by (...) major departures from the existing neo-Fregean programme. (shrink)

This study investigates Japanese compliments produced at a distinct sequential position and how the complimentees treat the compliments. In ordinary conversation, speakers sometimes talk about their accomplishments. Drawing on Conversation Analysis and multimodal interaction analysis, the study demonstrates how telling recipients deploy compliments at the possible completion of such tellings of accomplishment. The analysis also shows how the tellers deal with the complimentary telling responses, taking into consideration the design of tellings and the possibility of engaging in self-praise. The study (...) illuminates a context-sensitive nature of complimenting activity and managing two conflicting preferences by illustrating a specific interactional pattern of compliment sequences in Japanese ordinary conversation. (shrink)

This article explores morality and credibility struggles in connection to two officially sanctioned public Swedish experiments launched in the late 1960s to investigate the (ab)use of alcohol and illicit drugs, especially in relation to young people, and the subsequent decisions to terminate the experiments and research. We argue that these 1960s struggles on how to analyze the effects of increased availability of psychoactive substances must be understood in the light of a simultaneous development of modern (social) science studies. The public (...) display of conflicting expert views on how to investigate and interpret questions of alcohol and drugs in modern society played out in concordance with the growth of social science alcohol and drug research and expertise. The article focuses on the 1960s, a decade that was characterized by profound transformations in Swedish society. In so doing, the article contributes from the perspective of history to debates on the nexus between knowledge production and policy in modern societies. (shrink)

Despite being an established and accepted scientific theory for 150 years, repeated public polls show that evolution is not believed by large numbers of people. This essay examines why people do not accept evolution and argues that its poor representation in some science textbooks allows misconceptions, established and reinforced in early childhood, to take hold. There is also a lack of up‐to‐date examples of evidence for evolution in school textbooks. Poor understanding by science graduates and teachers of the nature (...) of science and incorrect definitions by them of key terminology, serve only to undermine efforts to improve public understanding of evolution. This paper has several recommendations, including the introduction of evolution to primary age children and a call to bring evolution back as the central tenet of biology. (shrink)

Certain examples involving negatively relevant evidence are trouble for reliabilists, since they show that reliability is not sufficient for justification. Two approaches for dealing with these examples within the reliabilist framework have been taken. Neither approach, however, can account for all cases involving nre. This I will argue. I will explain the two approaches briefly, then describe a counter example which calls for a difference approach. To handle the case I describe, one needs torequire that the agent's belief be ‘internally (...) acceptable’ as well as reliable.Many examples show that reliability is insufficient. Consider a modification of an example by Goldman, which he used to make a different point. Driving through the country, Andy looks to the right, sees a barn, and comes to believe that the object he sees is a barn. His belief, however, is not justified because he possesses nre, viz., his false, but justified, belief that the majority of bam-like objects in the area are barn facsimiles which, under the present visual circumstances, are almost indistinguishable from real barns. (shrink)

This paper aims at developing a logical theory of perspectival epistemic attitudes. After presenting a standard framework for modeling acceptance, where the epistemic space of an agent coincides with a unique epistemic cell, more complex systems are introduced, which are characterized by the existence of many connected epistemic cells, and different possible attitudes towards a proposition, both positive and negative, are discussed. In doing that, we also propose some interesting ways in which the systems can be interpreted on well known (...) epistemological standpoints. (shrink)

X-Phi and Theory Acceptance in Political Philosophy -/- What is the relevance of experimental philosophy (X-Phi) to theory acceptance in political philosophy? To answer this question, the paper distinguishes between four views, to wit: (i) X-Phi as a systematic method to avoid or reduce biases in our moral intuitions—The De-Biasing View; (ii) X-Phi as a tool for assessing the fruitfulness or consequences of various concepts—The Fruitfulness View; (iii) X-Phi as the best way to unearth the kind of moral principles we (...) are interested in as political philosophers—The Unearthing Principles View; and (iv) X-Phi as a way of testing the coherence of principles with folk intuitions—The Defeasible Reason (or Squatters’ Rights) View. The paper argues that the first two views and the last—subject to some clarifications—describe important X-Phi contributions to theory acceptance as this is traditionally understood within contemporary political philosophy. In contrast, the third view goes too far in suggesting that X-Phi can supplant more traditional, in part non-empirical, methods. -/- Keywords: Experimental philosophy (X-Phi); Theory acceptance in political philosophy; The De-Biasing View; The Fruitfulness View; The Unearthing Principles View; The Defeasible Reason (or Squatters’ Rights) View. (shrink)

Children have the right not to be exploited by the desire of adults. When a brain dead child has said nothing about brain death, we have to think that the child has a right to live and die peacefully, fully protected against the interests of others.

Rape myth acceptance, perceived barriers, and self-efficacy were examined as predictors of likelihood to report different types of rape to law enforcement among 409 undergraduates. Participants had lower likelihood to report incapacitated compared to physically forced rape. Men had lower reporting likelihood than women for rape perpetrated by the same and opposite sex and were more likely to perceive several barriers. RMA and perceived barriers predicted a lower likelihood to report several types of rape. Among men, higher self-efficacy predicted increased (...) reporting likelihood. Targeting RMA and decreasing perceived barriers is imperative to increase college students’ likelihood to report rape to local and campus law enforcement. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Jie Gao (Synthese 194:1901–17, 2017) has argued that there are acceptance-based counterexamples to the knowledge norm for practical reasoning (KPR). KPR tells us that we may only rely on known propositions in practical reasoning, yet there are cases of practical reasoning in which we seem to permissibly rely on merely accepted propositions, which fail to constitute knowledge. In this paper, I will argue that such cases pose no threat to a more broadly conceived knowledge-based view (...) of practical reasoning. I will first motivate the view that rational acceptance depends on a knowledge-based condition being met. I will then show how KPR can be amended—yielding what I call KPR+—to include this condition. I will argue that KPR+ not only avoids Gao’s counterexample, but harbours additional explanatory power by providing an account of the normative role of acceptance in practical reasoning. Finally, I will defend KPR+ against objections by employing theoretical tools that are readily available to those sympathetic to knowledge-based views. (shrink)

Perhaps the topic of acceptable risk never had a sexier and more succinct introduction than the one Edward Norton, playing an automobile company executive, gave it in Fight Club: “Take the number of vehicles in the field (A), multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), and multiply the result by the average out of court settlement (C). A*B*C=X. If X is less than the cost of the recall, we don’t do one.” Of course, this dystopic scene also gets (...) to the heart of the issue in another way: acceptable risk deals with mathematical calculations about the value of life, injury, and emotional wreckage, making calculation a difficult matter ethically, politically, and economically. This entry will explore the history of this idea, focusing on its development alongside statistics into its wide importance today. (shrink)