Climate change evokes different emotions in people. Recently, climate emotions have become a matter of normative scrutiny in the public debate. This phenomenon, which we refer to as the normativization of climate emotions, manifests at two levels. At the individual level, people are faced with affective dilemmas, situations where they are genuinely uncertain about what is the right way to feel in the face of climate change. At the collective level, the public debate reflects disagreement about which emotions are appropriate (...) to feel in the climate context. The aim of this paper is to examine the normative reasons in favour of different climate emotions by combining normative criteria from philosophy and psychology, such as rationality-based and consequentialist ones. We conclude that these criteria provide partial reasons for or against different climate emotions and that the suitability of each criterion will depend on various considerations, including the specific object that the emotion is directed to. We suggest that emotional disagreement in climate contexts may generate distrust, potentially hindering cooperation for climate action. We propose that we can ease challenges like this if we come to terms with the complex nature of climate emotions and their normative justification. (shrink)

Deprivations normally give rise to undeserved inequality. It is commonly thought that one way of improving a situation with respect to equality is by reducing the incidence of deprivations. In this paper I argue that there is at least one respect in which reducing the incidence of deprivations can make things worse from the point of view of equality. While eliminating deprivations leads to the elimination of inequalities, reducing the incidence of deprivations leads to an uneven distribution of the pairwise (...) relations of inequality of a population, which leads to the concentration of pairwise relations of inequality in the worse off. If my argument is correct, egalitarians have reasons to broaden their dimensions of concern: egalitarians should not only be concerned about the unequal distribution of goods, but also about the unequal distribution of pairwise relations of inequality of a population. (shrink)

This thesis is an evaluation of the badness of disability and equality. It argues that disability poses a problem for equality and that, given the new advances in reproductive and gene technologies, egalitarians should strive to give an answer to how we should best reduce the inequality between disabled and non-disabled individuals of future generations. To support the claim that disabilities pose a problem for equality, I argue against the recently proposed Mere Difference View of disability. Firstly, the view is (...) not successful in responding to why, if disabilities are neutral, inflicting disability is still impermissible. Secondly, some intellectual disabilities, for example, do not bring about positive features capable of compensating for the negative features that they also bring about. If some disabilities are bad states of being, some disabled individuals will be worse off than non-disabled individuals other things being equal. Given that disabled individuals are subject to inequality due to their disability, I analyse how able traditional compensatory accounts of egalitarian justice are when it comes to improving this inequality. I conclude that given the existence of intellectual disabilities, traditional compensatory accounts are not fully satisfactory and that egalitarians should look at whether other means, like enhancements and preventive techniques, would do this job better. Paradoxically, techniques that lead to the reduction in the incidence of disabilities make things worse with respect to one new aspect of inequality, namely the concentration of inequality. In scenarios of disability reduction, where there are only a few remaining disabled individuals and a great number of non-disabled individuals, disabled individuals would be worse off than a great number of non-disabled individuals. This situation can potentially also have a negative impact in the wellbeing of the few remaining disabled individuals if the fact that disabled individuals become a very small minority puts less pressure in society to accommodate them. I conclude that reducing the incidence of disabilities can make things worse for inequality in at least one respect. This conclusion has crucial consequences for policy making. I recognise that the question remains about how this aspect should be weighed against the fact that scenarios of disability reduction promote utility - they contain more individuals with higher wellbeing - and against the fact that, under views that ascribe positive value to relations of equality, scenarios of disability reduction would also be, in one way, promoters of equality. (shrink)

In her ground-breaking and highly influential book Transformative Experience, L.A. Paul makes two claims: (1) one cannot evaluate and compare certain experiential outcomes (e.g. being a parent and being a non-parent) unless one can grasp what these outcomes are like; and (2) one can evaluate and compare certain intuitively horrible outcomes (e.g. being eaten alive by sharks) as bad and worse than certain other outcomes even if one cannot grasp what these intuitively horrible outcomes are like. We argue that the (...) conjunction of these two claims leads to an implausible discontinuity in the evaluability of outcomes. One implication of positing such a discontinuity is that evaluative comparisons of outcomes will not be proportionally sensitive to variation in the underlying features of these outcomes. This puts pressure on Paul to abandon either (1) or (2). But (1) is central to her view and (2) is very hard to deny. We call this the Shark Problem. (shrink)

Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) are two of the most commonly used health measures to determine resource prioritization and the population burden of disease, respectively. There are different types of problems with the use of QALYs and DALYs for measuring health benefits. Some of these problems have to do with measurement, for example, the weights they ascribe to health states might fail to reflect with exact accuracy the actual well-being or health levels of individuals. But even (...) if these weights represent accurately the well-being levels of individuals, there is room for questioning whether these measures capture everything that we care about in these cases, or whether there are important issues that they leave out, including considerations of fairness or equality. In this regard, the measures have been criticized for treating the aggregation of small benefits as greater than the aggregation of fewer but bigger benefits,1for disregarding fair chances in favor of utility maximization,2and for raising problems when applied in the context of variable population size.3Perhaps one of the most pervasive ethical issues that has been associated with the use of these measures is the fact that they seem to discriminate against disabled people.4Since the measures assume that disabled people have lower well-being and a shorter life span, treating a disabled person’s medical condition contributes less to the maximization of years of life with good health than treating a non-disabled patient’s medical condition. (shrink)

In this paper I analyse how procreative freedom poses a challenge for rule-consequentialism. First, I reconstruct the rule-consequentialist case for procreative freedom. Second, I argue that population scenarios resulting from very low fertility pose a problem for rule-consequentialism since such scenarios cannot secure population growth or even avoid human extinction in the long run. Third, I argue that population scenarios resulting from excessive procreation also pose a problem for rule-consequentialism since they are incompatible with the promotion of optimific consequences in (...) various ways. Were the rule-consequentialist to avoid these types of scenarios, the challenge would consist in doing so while retaining the liberal approach to individual rights and freedoms that made rule-consequentialism an advantageous competitor against moral theories like act-consequentialism. These population scenarios raise more general questions about how rule-consequentialism ought to conceptualise the application of universal rules in the long-term, intergenerational context. This is an important place for inquiry given that rule-consequentialism is originally conceived as a forward-looking theory. (shrink)

Definitions of disability are useful for different purposes and carry normative significance. However, defining disability has proven a difficult task. Communities with different theoretical backgrounds and practical aims disagree about how to define disability. Recently, Chong‐Ming Lim (2018) has attempted to define disability in a manner accommodating of the different interests and theoretical commitments of the disability and the medical communities. His account aims at broadening Elizabeth Barnes' (2016) definition of disability, which is not sufficiently inclusive of the interests of (...) the medical community and leaves out cases other than physical disabilities. Under the most plausible interpretation of his account, however, the account becomes more restrictive than that of Barnes. In this paper, I propose instead two kinds of accounts: a disjunctive one based on a reinterpretation of Lim's, and a cluster concept account of disability. Both accounts can avoid the restrictiveness problem faced by Lim's and Barnes' original accounts. (shrink)

According topositive egalitarianism, not only do relations of inequality have negative value, as negative egalitarians claim, but relations of equality also have positive value. The egalitarian value of a population is a function of both pairwise relations of inequality (negative) and pairwise relations of equality (positive). Positive andnegative egalitarianismdiverge, especially in different-number cases. Hence, an investigation of positive egalitarianism might shed new light on the vexed topic of population ethics and our duties to future generations. We shall here, in light (...) of some recent criticism, further develop the idea of giving positive value to equal relations. (shrink)

It is often acknowledged that public policies can constrain people's procreative opportunities, in some cases even infringing their procreative rights. However, a topic that is not often discussed is how the procreative choices of one generation can affect the procreative opportunities of later generations. In this article, we argue that the demographic fact that childbearing above the replacement fertility level is eventually unsustainable supports two constraints on universal procreation rights: a compossibility constraint and an egalitarian constraint. We explore the implications (...) of these two constraints and suggest that there are reasons to think of procreative opportunity as a finite resource that can be distributed more or less equally across generations. We also briefly discuss possible ways of meeting demands of intergenerational justice with respect to procreative opportunity. (shrink)

The article Transformative experience and the shark problem, written by Tim Campbell and Julia Mosquera, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s Internet portal on 31 January 2020 without open access.

In the original publication of the article.

There is long standing agreement both among philosophers and linguists that the term ‘counterfactual conditional’ is misleading if not a misnomer. Speakers of both non-past subjunctive (or ‘would’) conditionals and past subjunctive (or ‘would have’) conditionals need not convey counterfactuality. The relationship between the conditionals in question and the counterfactuality of their antecedents is thus not one of presupposing. It is one of conversationally implicating. This paper provides a thorough examination of the arguments against the presupposition view as applied to (...) past subjunctive conditionals and finds none of them conclusive. All the relevant linguistic data, it is shown, are compatible with the assumption that past subjunctive conditionals presuppose the falsity of their antecedents. This finding is not only interesting on its own. It is of vital importance both to whether we should consider antecedent counterfactuality to be part of the conventional meaning of the conditionals in question and to whether there is a deep difference between indicative and subjective conditionals. (shrink)

Kierkegaard the Christian thinker is introduced, beginning with his cultural background, his basic assumptions about the structure of the Christian universe, and the development of his vocation as religious writer. The author shows why he is different from others in his treatment of Christianity, then follows his presentations of Christian ideality and the tension and opposition in his authorship between Christianity as godly enjoyment of the world and Christianity as renunciation and total self-denial. Distributed in the US by Books International. (...) Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Julia Kristeva refracts the impulse to hate (and our attempts to subvert, sublimate, and otherwise process it) through psychoanalysis and text, exploring worlds, women, religion, portraits, and the act of writing. Her inquiry spans themes, topics, and figures central to her writing, and her paths of discovery advance the theoretical innovations that are so characteristic of her thought. Kristeva rearticulates and extends her analysis of language, abjection, idealization, female sexuality, love, and forgiveness. She examines the "maladies of the soul," (...) utilizing examples from her practice and the ailments of her patients, such as fatigue, irritability, and general malaise. She sources the Bible and texts by Marguerite Duras, St. Teresa of Avila, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, and Georgia O'Keefe. Balancing political calamity and individual pathology, she addresses internal and external catastrophes and global and personal injuries, confronting the nature of depression, obliviousness, fear, and the agony of being and nothingness. Throughout Kristeva develops the notion that psychoanalysis is the key to serenity, with its processes of turning back, looking back, investigating the self, and refashioning psychical damage into something useful and beautiful. Constant questioning, Kristeva contends, is essential to achieving the coming to terms we all seek at the core of forgiveness. (shrink)

During the turbulent last years of the fifth century BC, Athens twice suffered the overthrow of democracy and the subsequent establishment of oligarchic regimes. In an in-depth treatment of both political revolutions, Julia Shear examines how the Athenians responded to these events, at the level both of the individual and of the corporate group. Interdisciplinary in approach, this account brings epigraphical and archaeological evidence to bear on a discussion which until now has largely been based on texts. Dr Shear (...) particularly focuses on the recreation of democracy and the city, both ritually and physically, in the aftermath of the coups and demonstrates that, whilst reconciliation after civil strife is difficult and contentious, it is also crucial for rebuilding a united society. Theories of remembering and forgetting are applied and offer a new way of understanding the dynamics in Athens at this time. (shrink)

We investigated the role of honour concerns in mediating the effect of nationality and gender on the reported intensity of anger and shame in reaction to insult vignettes. Spain, an honour culture, and The Netherlands, where honour is of less central significance, were selected for comparison. A total of 260 (125 Dutch, 135 Spanish) persons participated in the research. Participants completed a measure of honour concerns and answered questions about emotional reactions of anger and shame to vignettes depicting insults in (...) which type of threat was manipulated. It was found that Spanish participants responded especially intensely to insults that threaten family honour, and that this effect of nationality on emotional reactions to threats to family honour was mediated by individual differences in concern for family honour. (shrink)

La identidad se ha constituido como una noción hegemónica y estática, sin embargo, la música de Herencia de Timbiquí consolida identidades múltiples y evidencia la hibridación racial, histórica y cultural por la que han pasado las comunidades Afro-Pacíficas desde la época de la Colonia y la esclavitud negra hasta la globalización y el conflicto armado colombiano. Estos hechos han ido transformando las identidades que originalmente traían las comunidades desde África, pues sus prácticas culturales se fueron entretejiendo con las prácticas indígenas (...) y españolas. Posteriormente, gracias a la globalización apareció un auge de los medios masivos de comunicación y la industria cultural, lo que hizo que los cantos Afro-Pacíficos comenzaran a hibridarse con ritmos populares provenientes de Norte América y Europa. Ahora bien, esta hibridación revela la ausencia de una noción de identidad purista y estática y, a la vez, evidencia los procesos de desterritorialización simbólica y física por los que han pasado las comunidades afro-Pacíficas a través de los siglos por la imposición de culturas dominantes. (shrink)

The predominant view of moral virtue can be traced back to Aristotle. He believed that moral virtue must involve intellectual excellence. To have moral virtue one must have practical wisdom - the ability to deliberate well and to see what is morally relevant in a given context. Julia Driver challenges this classical theory of virtue, arguing that it fails to take into account virtues which do seem to involve ignorance or epistemic defect. Some 'virtues of ignorance' are counterexamples to (...) accounts of virtue which hold that moral virtue must involve practical wisdom. Modesty, for example, is generally considered to be a virtue even though the modest person may be making an inaccurate assessment of his or her accomplishments. Driver argues that we should abandon the highly intellectualist view of virtue and instead adopt a consequentialist perspective which holds that virtue is simply a character trait which systematically produces good consequences. (shrink)

Die Herausbildung von transnationalen Räumen ist aufs Engste mit Geschlechterverhältnissen verwoben. Durch die Zunahme transnationaler politischer, sozialer und wirtschaftlicher Verflechtungsbeziehungen müssen die Geschlechterordnungen auf nationaler und lokaler Ebene grundlegend neu vermessen werden. Ziel des Bandes ist es, die vielfältigen Verflechtungen von Transnationalisierungsprozessen mit Geschlecht aus feministischer Perspektive auf politischer, sozialer und wirtschaftlicher Makro-, Meso- und Mikroebene zu beleuchten.

Metaphysics of Science is the philosophical study of key concepts that figure prominently in science and that, prima facie, stand in need of clarification. It is also concerned with the phenomena that correspond to these concepts. Exemplary topics within Metaphysics of Science include laws of nature, causation, dispositions, natural kinds, possibility and necessity, explanation, reduction, emergence, grounding, and space and time. Metaphysics of Science is a subfield of both metaphysics and the philosophy of science—that is, it can be allocated to (...) either, but it exhausts neither. Unlike metaphysics simpliciter, Metaphysics of Science is not primarily concerned with metaphysical questions that may already arise from everyday phenomena such as what makes a thing (a chair, a desk) the very thing it is, what its identity criteria are, out of which parts is it composed, whether it remains the same if we exchange a couple of its parts, and so forth. Nor is it concerned with the concrete entities (superstrings, molecules, genes, and so forth) postulated by specific sciences; these issues are the subject matter of the special philosophies of science (for example, of physics, of chemistry, of biology). Metaphysics of Science is concerned with more abstract and general concepts that inform all of these sciences. Many of these concepts are interwoven with each other. For example, metaphysicians of science inquire whether dispositionality, lawhood, and causation can be accounted for in nonmodal terms; whether laws of nature presuppose the existence of natural kinds; and whether the properties of macrolevel objects supervene on dispositional or nondispositional properties. This article surveys the scope (section 1), historical origin (section 2), exemplary subject matters (section 4), and methodology (section 5) of Metaphysics of Science, as well as the motivation that drives it (section 3). (shrink)

Consequentialism is the view that the rightness or wrongness of actions depend solely on their consequences. It is one of the most influential, and controversial, of all ethical theories. In this book, Julia Driver introduces and critically assesses consequentialism in all its forms. After a brief historical introduction to the problem, Driver examines utilitarianism, and the arguments of its most famous exponents, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, and explains the fundamental questions underlying utilitarian theory: what value is to (...) be specified and how it is to be maximized. Driver also discusses indirect forms of consequentialism, the important theories of motive consequentialism and virtue consequentialism, and explains why the distinction between subjective and objective consequentialism is so important. Including helpful features such as a glossary, chapter summaries, and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Consequentialism is ideal for students seeking an authoritative and clearly explained survey of this important problem. (shrink)

Sentences containing predicates of personal taste exhibit two striking features: whether they are true seems to lie in the eye of the beholder and whether they are true can be—and often is—subject to disagreement. In the last decade, there has been a lively debate about how to account for these two features. In this paper, I shall argue for two claims: first, I shall show that even the most promising approaches so far offered by proponents of so-called indexical contextualism fail (...) to account for the disagreement feature. They might be able to account for some disagreement data, but they have trouble accounting for two kinds of disagreement data that caused the estrangement from indexical contextualism and the migration to relativism in the first place: the denial and the retraction data. Second, I shall show that we still do not have to abandon indexical contextualism, because what I shall call the superiority approach—a new pragmatically extended version of indexical contextualism—can very well account for the data. (shrink)

This paper investigates the norm of presupposition, as one pervasive type of indirect speech act. It argues against the view that sees presuppositions as an indirect counterpart of the direct speech act of assertion and proposes instead that they are much more similar to the direct speech act of assumption. More concretely, it suggests that the norm that governs presuppositions is not an epistemic or doxastic attitude such as knowledge, justified belief, or mere belief; it's a practical attitude, most plausibly (...) the attitude of rational acceptance. This view has important ramifications well beyond debates in philosophy of language and linguistics. It affects not only our view of which speech act sequences are fine and which are off; it bears on whether presuppositions can function as testimony, whether they can be lies, and whether they are ontologically committal, thus addressing central topics in epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Many people follow Grice in thinking that all conversational implicatures are cancellable. And often enough, they use this insight as a test for conversational implicatures. If you want to find out whether something is a conversational implicature, the test has it, you should ask yourself whether the thing in question is cancellable; if you find that it is not cancellable, you can infer that it is not a conversational implicature. If you find that it is cancellable, you can infer that (...) it might well be a conversational implicature and that you should now do further testing. Various philosophers and linguists have questioned the test however. Some have held that Grice's cancellability claim is subject to counterexamples and that the test is not reliable. Others have argued that even though Grice's claim can be defended against the examples in question, the test is not as informative as people have hoped. This article provides an overview of the recent discussion on the cancellability test and suggests a way forward. (shrink)

People disagree frequently, about both objective and subjective matters. But while at least one party must be wrong in a disagreement about objective matters, it seems that both parties can be right when it comes to subjective ones: it seems that there can be faultless disagreements. But how is this possible? How can people disagree with one another if they are both right? And why should they? In recent years, a number of philosophers and linguists have argued that we must (...) become relativists about truth to understand faultless disagreements. This book shows that we can dispense with relativism. It combines a more standard semantics with a novel pragmatic theory to develop a superior approach. The book discusses both classic and recent literature in philosophy and linguistics. It provides a general introduction to the debate about the semantics and pragmatics of perspectival expressions, as well as an original contribution to the contemporary discussion. (shrink)

Julia Markovits develops a desire-based, internalist account of what normative reasons are--an account which is compatible with the idea that moral reasons can apply to all of us, regardless of our desires. She builds on Kant's formula of humanity to defend universal moral reasons, and addresses the age-old question of why we should be moral.

How should thinkers cope with uncertainty? Julia Staffel breaks new ground in the study of rationality by answering this question and many others. She also explains how it is better to be less irrational, because less irrational degrees of belief are generally more accurate and better at guiding our actions.

We studied the relationship between perceived social image and life satisfaction in four different cultural groups. One-hundred nine Indian (63 females, 46 males), 67 Pakistani/Bangladeshi (36 females, 31 males), 76 White British (43 females, 33 males), and 94 European Americans (43 females, 48 males) completed measures on the cultural importance of social image, positive and negative emotions, academic achievement, and perceived social image. Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi participants valued social image more than White British and European-American participants. Consistent with this value (...) difference, a positive perceived social image predicted life satisfaction among Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi participants only. For these participants, perceived social image predicted life satisfaction above and beyond the effects of emotions and academic achievement. Academic achievement only predicted life satisfaction among White British and European Americans. Emotions were significant predictors of life satisfaction for all participants. (shrink)

Insults elicit intense emotion. This study tests the hypothesis that one's social image, which is especially salient in honour cultures, influences the way in which one reacts to an insult. Seventy-seven honour-oriented and 72 non-honour oriented participants answered questions about a recent insult episode. Participants experienced both anger and shame in reaction to the insult. However, these emotions resulted in different behaviours. Anger led to verbal attack (i.e., criticising, insulting in return) among all participants. This relationship was explained by participants’ (...) motivation to punish the wrongdoer. Shame, on the other hand, was moderated by honour. Shame led to verbal disapproval of the wrongdoers behaviour, but only among the honour-oriented participants. This relationship was explained by these participants’ motivation to protect their social image. By contrast, shame led to withdrawal among non-honour-oriented participants. (shrink)

A través de esta obra el autor va respondiendo a diferentes cuestiones sobre la realidad, que va enlazando entre sí, dándoles respuesta y preocupándose por la actualidad socioeconómica a través de las reflexiones y cuestiones filosóficas. Realiza una crítica a la ideología capitalista actual y a los pilares que la sostienen.

Some expressions, such as ‘generous’ and ‘stingy’, are used not only to describe the world around us. They are also used to evaluate the things to which they are applied. In this paper, I suggest a novel account of how this evaluation is conveyed—the conventional triggering view. It partly agrees and partly disagrees with both the standard semantic view and its popular pragmatic contender. Like the former and unlike the latter, my view has it that the evaluation is conveyed due (...) to the conventional meaning of the sentences in question. Unlike the former and much like the latter, my view suggests that the evaluation is a secondary rather than a primary content. (shrink)

Altered Conditions provides a bold new intervention into existing theories of the human body and its meanings in a variety of cultural contexts. By exploring the history of medical narratives, especially medical case histories, as well as the exciting work that has been done in feminist and lesbian and gay studies, Julia Epstein poses a number of provocative questions about the relations between bodies, selves, and identities. Epstein focuses on a number of diagnoses that shed light on what is (...) at stake when cultures regulate human bodies, including hermaphroditism, birth malformations, and AIDS. She pays special attention to the regulation of sexual minorities and women and looks carefully at the ways in which cultures attempt to define and control behaviors seen as threatening or subversive. (shrink)

O presente trabalho trata dos usos que destacados filósofos italianos têm dado à noção de biopolítica. O estudo é a continuação do diálogo transdisciplinar entre a filosofia da educação e a agroecologia. P arte da pesquisa de doutorado na área de educação, onde se analisaram as práticas pedagógicas da agroecologia, o qual denominamos como agroecopedagogia. Utilizando a ferramenta arqueogenealógica, a pesquisa indagou pelas relações de poder veiculadas em ditas práticas. Aqui apresentamos parte dessa discussão, incorporando também a chamada ecopedagogia. Como (...) se sabe a biopolítica é uma noção antiga atualizada pelos trabalhos do pensador francês Michel Foucault e a qual abriu uma série de importantes debates no pensamento crítico, especialmente, em questões relacionadas a um suposto progresso da humanidade atrelado à relação saber-poder. Neste artigo descrevemos como dois de seus comentadores mais importantes interpelaram a re-leitura da biopolítica por parte do filósofo do poder criando assim tensões para as pedagogias que tem como fundamento o saber ecológico. Inicialmente, abordamos a duplicidade da biopolítica, presente no livro Bíos, Biopolítica y filosofía de Roberto Esposito, articulada como a política da vida e a política sobre a vida ; desta abordagem por parte do professor italiano surgem duas noções chaves para tensionar a ecopedagogia: comunitas/ immunitas. Seguidamente, introduzimos a discussão apresentada pelo também italiano, Giorgio Agamben a partir de duas de suas obras mais comentadas no campo da filosofia da educação, Estado de exceção e Homo Sacer: O poder soberano e a vida nua. A nosso ver, os comentários do Agamben oferecem uma radical discussão em torno da diferença e da democracia, o que nos parece levar a um nível de tensão insuspeitado o discurso agroecológico e a educação ambiental em seu princípio crítico vinculado a um desejo de emancipação, libertação e transformação; de tal forma que esta radical discussão se torna de uma importância vital não só para a própria coerência das práticas supracitadas, mas de forma geral, para um mundo por-vir delimitado cada vez pelo biopoder. (shrink)

Recognized as one of the greatest philosophers in classical China, Chu Hsi is especially known in the West through translations of one of his many works, theChin-su Lu. Julia Ching, a noted scholar of Neo-Confucian thought, provides the first book-length examination of Chu-Hsi's religious thought, based on extensive reading in both primary and secondary sources.

This paper discusses the inefficacy problem that arises in contexts of “collective harm.‘ These are contexts in which by acting in a certain sort of way, people collectively cause harm, or fail to prevent it, but no individual act of the relevant sort seems to itself make a difference. The inefficacy problem is that if acting in the relevant way won’t make a difference, it’s unclear why it would be wrong. Each individual can argue, “things will be just as bad (...) whether or not I act in this way, so there’s no point in doing otherwise.‘ The goal of this paper is to give an overview of some of the main responses available to the problem and to highlight central issues that arise for each type of response. In the final section, I explain what I take to be the most promising strategy and discuss the form that this strategy should take. (shrink)

This reply to an ongoing debate between conspiracy theory researchers from different disciplines exposes the conceptual confusions that underlie some of the disagreements in conspiracy theory research. Reconciling these conceptual confusions is important because conspiracy theories are a multidisciplinary topic and a profound understanding of them requires integrative insights from different fields. Specifically, we distinguish research focussing on conspiracy *theories* (and theorizing) from research of conspiracy *belief* (and mindset, theorists) and explain how particularism with regards to conspiracy theories does not (...) mean we cannot define a problematic subclass of conspiracy beliefs, while avoiding the problems of generalism. We hope this reply helps conspiracy theory researchers recognize the differences between studying conspiracy theories and conspiracy beliefs and appreciate the possibilities for fruitful, integrative, and interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

In The Virtues of Ignorance the author demonstrates that classical theories of virtue are flawed and developes a consequentialist theory of virtue. ;Virtues are excellences of character. They are traits which are considered to be valuable in some way. A person who is virtuous is one who has a tendency to act well. Classical philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, believed that virtues, as human excellences, could not involve ignorance in any way. On their view, the virtuous agent, when acting (...) well, knows what she is doing under the description which makes the action conform to virtue. For example, the generous person must know that she is, in fact, helping others in need. Yet, there is a class of virtues, the "virtues of ignorance," which essentially involve ignorance. For example, modesty requires that the agent underestimate self worth. In the first portion of the dissertation, this class of virtues is discussed, and problems raised for the traditional theories of virtue. ;In the latter portion of the dissertation, the author outlines a consequentialist theory of virtue. It is argued that the only hope of developing a unified theory of virtue is along consequentialist lines, because attempts at identifying the psychological state which is necessary for virtue have failed. On a consequentialist theory, a virtue is defined in terms of its consequences. Thus, the moral quality of the character trait is determined by how much good it brings about . The virtues of ignorance can easily be accommodated in such a theory because these traits do bring about good, even if the agent possessing the trait acts out of ignorance. (shrink)

In response to the lack of empirical studies examining the internal disclosure behavior in the Chinese context, this study tested a whistleblowing -decision-making process among employees in the Chinese banking industry. For would-be whistleblowers, positive affect and organizational ethical culture were hypothesized to enhance the expected efficacy of their whistleblowing intention, by providing collective norms concerning legitimate, management-sanctioned behavior. Questionnaire surveys were collected from 364 employees in 10 banks in the Hangzhou City, China. By and large, the findings supported the (...) hypotheses. Issues of whistleblowing in the Chinese context and implications were discussed. (shrink)