Cheaters and noncheaters were assessed on 2 types of motivation, on perceived social norms regarding cheating, on attitudes about cheating, and on knowledge of institutional policy regarding cheating behavior. All 5 factors were significant predictors of cheating rates. In addition, cheaters were found lower in mastery motivation and higher in extrinsic motivation in courses in which they cheated than in courses in which they did not cheat. Cheaters, in courses in which they cheated, were also lower in mastery motivation and (...) higher in extrinsic motivation than were noncheaters. Finally, cheaters differed from noncheaters on perceived social norms regarding cheating, on their knowledge of institutional policy regarding cheating, and on their attitudes toward cheating. Implications of these findings for institutional interventions are discussed. (shrink)

A natural experiment was conducted studying the relations among student cheating, motivation, religiosity, and attitudes toward cheating. Students enrolled in a dual religious/college curriculum were surveyed regarding their cheating behavior, attitudes toward cheating, religiosity, and learning/grade motivations toward classes. Business and liberal arts college students were represented. Results strongly support the following conclusions. First, grade orientation is associated with increases in self-reported cheating. Second, among these religious students, more religiosity correlates with reduced reports of cheating in all courses. This result (...) appears to be due to the unique effect of religion on self-reported cheating rates and, depending on course content, on a reduction of grade orientation in religious students. Third, business students report more cheating than their liberal arts counterparts, even when taking the same courses. They have less critical attitudes toward cheating and greater grade orientation, both of which statistically contribute to this difference, but other factors are involved as well. Keywords: academic integrity, motivation, religiosity, cheating. (shrink)

A natural experiment was conducted studying the relations among student cheating, motivation, religiosity, and attitudes toward cheating. Students enrolled in a dual religious/college curriculum were surveyed regarding their cheating behavior, attitudes toward cheating, religiosity, and learning/grade motivations toward classes. Business and liberal arts college students were represented. Results strongly support the following conclusions. First, grade orientation is associated with increases in self-reported cheating. Second, among these religious students, more religiosity correlates with reduced reports of cheating in all courses. This result (...) appears to be due to the unique effect of religion on self-reported cheating rates and, depending on course content, on a reduction of grade orientation in religious students. Third, business students report more cheating than their liberal arts counterparts, even when taking the same courses. They have less critical attitudes toward cheating and greater grade orientation, both of which statistically contribute to this difference, but other factors are involved as well. Keywords: academic integrity, motivation, religiosity, cheating. (shrink)

In its restless metamorphosis, the environmental movement captures ideas and transforms them into principles, guidelines and points of leverage. Sustainability is one such idea, now being reinterpreted in the aftermath of the 1992 Rio Conference. So too is the precautionary principle. Like sustainability, the precautionary principle is neither a well defined principle nor a stable concept. It has become the repository for a jumble of adventurous beliefs that challenge the status quo of political power, ideology and civil rights. Neither concept (...) has much coherence other than it is captured by the spirit that is challenging the authority of science, the hegemony of cost-benefit analysis, the powerlessness of victims of environmental abuse, and the unimplemented ethics of intrinsic natural rights and inter-generational equity. It is because the mood of the times needs an organising idea that the precautionary principle is getting a fair wind. However, unless its advocates sharpen up their understanding of the term, the precautionary principle may not establish the influence it deserves. Its future looks promising but it is not assured. (shrink)

Despite an efflorescence of historical scholarship on the theme of monarchy in nineteenth-century Britain, the views of the great Victorian man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) in this regard have been explored only in fragmentary and incomplete fashion. The present article aims to offer a comprehensive survey of Carlyle's thought regarding monarchy, arguing that on the whole, Carlyle was strongly and consistently opposed to monarchy on the hereditary principle, claiming that this had become an absurd anachronism in the modern (democratic) (...) world. Instead, Carlyle strongly and consistently promoted a merit-based aristocracy of talent, in which the ‘best’ man would rule, regardless of heredity or social origin. Indeed, in his historical writings, he was quite prepared to endorse regicide as a means to replacing inept hereditary monarchs with low-born men of destiny such as Oliver Cromwell. Although Carlyle refrained from publicly demanding the abolition of the monarchy in contemporary Britain, his private correspondence and conversation were replete with sneers and snide asides regarding Queen Victoria and her predecessors. (shrink)

In a series of important papers, Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson argue that all extant neo-sentimentalists are guilty of a conflation error that they call the moralistic fallacy. One commits the moralistic fallacy when one infers from the fact that it would be morally wrong to experience an affective attitude—e.g., it would be wrong to be amused—that the attitude does not fit its object—e.g., that it is not funny. Such inferences, they argue, conflate the appropriateness conditions of attitudinal responses with (...) the fittingness conditions of the associated evaluative properties. Further, they argue that moral considerations are irrelevant for determining if amusement fits its object. We agree that a strong moralizing of humor is wrongheaded and that jokes can be quite funny even in cases where we have a compelling moral reason to not be amused. However, we argue that pace D’Arms and Jacobson moral considerations can be relevant for property ascription. On our view, in order for a joke to be funny, a properly sensitive agent must take herself to have a contributory reason to be amused, and in some cases that she lacks such a reason is best explained by appeal to moral considerations. We use this constraint as the basis of what we call our modest proposal for a modest sentimentalism. (shrink)

In its restless metamorphosis, the environmental movement captures ideas and transforms them into principles, guidelines and points of leverage. Sustainability is one such idea, now being reinterpreted in the aftermath of the 1992 Rio Conference. So too is the precautionary principle. Like sustainability, the precautionary principle is neither a well defined principle nor a stable concept. It has become the repository for a jumble of adventurous beliefs that challenge the status quo of political power, ideology and civil rights. Neither concept (...) has much coherence other than it is captured by the spirit that is challenging the authority of science, the hegemony of cost-benefit analysis, the powerlessness of victims of environmental abuse, and the unimplemented ethics of intrinsic natural rights and inter-generational equity. It is because the mood of the times needs an organising idea that the precautionary principle is getting a fair wind. However, unless its advocates sharpen up their understanding of the term, the precautionary principle may not establish the influence it deserves. Its future looks promising but it is not assured. (shrink)

We defend a fitting-attitude theory of the funny against a set of potential objections. Ultimately, we endorse a version of FA theory that treats reasons for amusement as non-compelling, metaphysically non-conditional, and alterable by social features of the joke telling context. We find that this version of FA theory is well-suited to accommodate our ordinary practices of telling and being amused by jokes, and helpfully bears on the related faultless disagreement dispute.

While much of the social and political attention surrounding the nationwide opioid epidemic has focused on the dramatic increase in overdose deaths among white, middle-class, suburban and rural users, the impact of the epidemic in Black communities has largely been unrecognized. Though rates of opioid use at the national scale are higher for whites than they are for Blacks, rates of increase in opioid deaths have been rising more steeply among Blacks than whites over the last five years. Moreover, the (...) rate of opioid overdose deaths among Blacks already exceeds that of whites in several states. The lack of discussion of Black overdose deaths in the national opioid discourse further marginalizes Black people, and is highly consistent with a history of framing the addictions of people of color as deserving of criminal punishment, rather than worthy of medical treatment. This article argues that, because racial inequalities are embedded in American popular and political cultures as well as in medicine, the federal and state governments should develop more culturally targeted programs to benefit Black communities in the opioid crisis. Such programs include the use of faith-based organizations to deliver substance use prevention and treatment services, the inclusion of racial impact assessments in the implementation of drug policy proposals, and the formal consideration of Black people's interaction with the criminal justice system in designing treatment options. (shrink)

We report on the development and initial validation of the Moralization of Everyday Life Scale, designed to measure variations in people's assignment of moral weight to commonplace behaviors. In Study 1, participants reported their judgments for a large number of potential moral infractions in everyday life; principal components analysis revealed 6 main dimensions of these judgments. In Study 2, scores on the 30-item MELS showed high reliability and distinctness from the Big 5 personality traits. In Study 3, scores on the (...) MELS were strongly correlated with scores on an early scale of moral judgments, suggesting convergent validity. (shrink)

Background: Research involving adults lacking mental capacity relies on the involvement of a proxy or surrogate, although this raises a number of ethical concerns. Empirical studies have examined attitudes towards proxy decision-making, proxies’ authority as decision-makers, decision accuracy, and other relevant factors. However, a comprehensive evidence-based account of proxy decision-making is lacking. This systematic review provides a synthesis of the empirical data reporting the ethical issues surrounding decisions made by research proxies, and the development of a conceptual framework of proxy (...) decision-making for research. Methods: A systematic review was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines. Databases including MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CINAHL were searched using a combination of search terms, and empirical data from eligible studies were retrieved. The review followed the framework synthesis approach to refine and develop a conceptual framework. Results: Thirty-four studies were included in the review. Two dimensions of proxy decision-making emerged. The ethical framing criteria of decision-making used by proxies: use of a substituted judgement, use of a best interests approach, combination of substituted judgement and best interests, and ‘something else’, and the active elements of proxy decision-making: ‘knowing the person’, patient-proxy relationship, accuracy of the decision, and balancing risks, benefits and burdens, and attitudes towards proxy decision-making. Interactions between the framing criteria and the elements of decision-making are complex and contextually-situated. Conclusions: The findings from this systematic review challenge the accepted reductionist account of proxy decision-making. Decision-making by research proxies is highly contextualized and multifactorial in nature. The choice of proxy and the relational features of decision-making play a fundamental role: both in providing the proxy’s authority as decision-maker, and guiding the decision-making process. The conceptual framework describes the relationship between the framing criteria used by the proxy, and the active elements of decision-making. Further work to develop, and empirically test the proposed framework is needed. (shrink)

Some particularists have argued that even virtue properties can exhibit a form of holism or context variance, e.g. sometimes an act is worse for being kind, say. But, on a common conception of virtuous acts, one derived from Aristotle, claims of virtue holism will be shown to be false. I argue, perhaps surprisingly, that on this conception the virtuousness of an act is not a reason to do it, and hence this conception of virtuous acts presents no challenge to particularist (...) claims about the context variance of reasons. Still, I argue that the virtues nevertheless have important implications for our understanding of the particularism debate. Specifically, we can accept the particularist claim that reasons do not need to be principled in order to have the normative status that they do have, while still maintaining that sound moral thought and judgement has a principled structure understood in terms of the virtues. (shrink)

Recently, Walter Sinott-Armstrong and Justin Snedegar have argued for a general contrastivist theory of reasons. According to the contrastivist account of reasons, all reasons claims should be understood as a relation with an additional place for a contrast class. For example, rather than X being a reason for A to P simpliciter, the contrastivist claims that X is a reason for A to P out of {P,Q,R…}. The main goal of this paper is to argue that the contrastivist account of (...) reasons will be ill-fitted for accommodating certain features of moral reasons. In brief, the reason why the contrastivist analysis fails is that it cannot adequately allow for cases of morally correct whole-hearted action—cases where consideration of any alternate course of action would be misguided. But, if all consideration of alternate courses of action is misguided, then it is hard to see how one can set the relevant contrast class that is essential to the contrastivist view—any contrast class will seem out of place. In addition, I address some of the arguments that have been given in favor of the contrastivist account of reasons and argue that there are at least two ways that the non-contrastivist can respond to these arguments. (shrink)

Alternative schools are popular interventions for marginalized students, including students with disabilities, but little research has focused on professionals in these settings. Today, close to 11,000 public alternative schools or programs are believed to exist in the United States education system (Foley & Pang, 2006) and as many as one million students are currently attending alternative learning programs in the United States (Lehr, Tan, & Ysseldyke, 2009). While public alternative schools can vary from one another in many ways, they exist (...) to serve youth marginalized in traditional public settings. In this study, we explore the ways teachers, administrators, and nurses in alternative settings collaborate to support mentally healthy school environments for marginalized student populations. Drawing on the process of rationale development ( Hawley & Crowe, 2016 ; Hawley & Jordan, 2014 ; Shaver, 1977 ; Shaver & Strong, 1982) as rooted in social studies education, we explore the perceived purposes of these professionals as they work with some of the nation's most marginalized children. Through focus groups and one-on-one interviews, the data bridge social studies themes rooted in democracy and equity with special education themes of inclusiveness. This work offers insight into the rationales of teachers and professionals engaged in critical work, and provides a platform for helping professionals undergo the rationale development process. (shrink)

This article details an interpretive, qualitative interview study that explored rationales developed by seven social studies graduate students, all experiencedteachers, at a large Midwestern university. Interviews revealed three common themes regarding the influence of the rationale development process. The threethemes were: providing structure, connecting purpose and practice, and improving professionalism. The themes demonstrate the complex nature of articulating a sense of purpose, even for experienced teachers. While similar, there were considerable differences in the ways the participants conceptualized their purposes. Untangling (...) these differences has implications for social studies teacher educators interested in integrating rationale development into their work with experienced teachers. (shrink)

Recently highly-efficient quantum engines were devised by exploiting the stochastic energy changes induced by quantum measurement. Here we show that such an engine can be based on an interaction-free measurement, in which the meter seemingly does not interact with the measured object. We use a modified version of the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester, an interferometric setup able to detect the presence of a bomb triggered by a single photon without exploding it. In our case, a quantum bomb subject to a gravitational (...) force is initially in a superposition of being inside and outside one of the interferometer arms. We show that the bomb can be lifted without blowing up. This occurs when a photon traversing the interferometer is detected at a port that is always dark when the bomb is located outside the arm. The required potential energy is provided by the photon even though it was not absorbed by the bomb. A natural interpretation is that the photon traveled through the arm which does not contain the bomb—otherwise the bomb would have exploded—but it implies the surprising conclusion that the energy exchange occurred at a distance despite a local interaction Hamiltonian. We use the weak value formalism to support this interpretation and find evidence of contextuality. Regardless of interpretation, this interaction-free quantum measurement engine is able to lift the most sensitive bomb without setting it off. (shrink)

SummaryBorn to a noble family in the Italian Trentino, Prati studied philosophy in Austria and Germany. Returning to Italy, he joined the carbonari, a network of revolutionary secret societies. Forced into exile in Switzerland, he worked as an educator alongside Pestalozzi. Following his expulsion from Switzerland, Prati sought refuge in Britain, becoming acquainted with Coleridge, the Benthamite utilitarians, and the Owenites. Following the July Revolution, Prati went to Paris, where he became a Saint-Simonian. Returning to Britain, he sought to convert (...) the British to Saint-Simonism, before undertaking a series of other literary projects. He eventually returned to Italy, where he entered into correspondence with the Roman Catholic philosopher Antonio Rosmini. Prati left behind him a trail of letters, newspaper articles, pamphlets, and books, written in four different European languages. These have been hitherto neglected by scholars, and constitute the basis of the current article. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se abordan algunas de las políticas para la contención del Covid-19 adoptadas en los centros penitenciarios de Chile, partiendo de un diagnóstico de vulnerabilidad que afecta al grupo de personas reclusas, previo a la pandemia, pero que se profundiza con ella. Se propone la incorporación de la categoría de discriminación estructural en el sistema de ejecución penal, como una herramienta de análisis de la cuestión carcelaria.

In this essay, I argue that the role for exclusionary reasons in a sound account of practical rationality is, at most, much more circumscribed than proponents of exclusionary reasons might suppose. Specifically, I argue that an attractive account of moral motivation is in tension with the idea that moral reasons can be excluded. Limiting ourselves to the tools of first order moral reasons—including such relations as outweighing, and disabling—allows us to preserve a more attractive account of the relationship between what (...) there is strongest reason to do, what one is motivated to do, and that for which one is praiseworthy or blameworthy. In closing, I argue that we can capture the normativity associated with legal decision-making using only the resources of the first-order model. (shrink)

In a series of papers, Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star defend the following general account of reasons: R: Necessarily, a fact F is a reason for an agent A to Φ iff F is evidence that an agent ought to Φ.In this paper, I argue that the reasons as evidence view will run afoul of a motivational constraint on moral reasons, and that this is a powerful reason to reject the reasons as evidence view. The motivational constraint is as follows: (...) M: For some consideration C to be a moral reason for an agent to Φ it must be possible for C to figure as part of the agent’s motivation for Φing without thereby undercutting (either partially or wholly) the positive moral evaluation of the agent in acting as she does.M presents a problem for Kearns and Star’s view because there will be cases where some consideration is evidence that an agent ought to Φ, but where if an agent was motivated by that consideration the agent’s action would thereby be worse from a moral perspective for that very reason. Further, I argue that this problem will likely arise on any moral theory that evaluates the motivation of an agent as a component of assessing the moral status of acts. (shrink)

That the great Scottish man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) exercised a formative influence over late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century ‘British Idealism’ has long been recognized by historians. Through works such as Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), Heroes and Hero-Worship (1841), Past and Present (1843), and Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Carlyle transmitted his ideas regarding the immanence of the divine in nature and man, the infinite character of duty, and the ethical role of the state to a generation of subsequent philosophers. The following article will (...) extend this insight, arguing that through the agency of an array of migrant Scottish intellectuals, Carlyle's writings made an equally significant contribution to the development of Idealism in English-speaking Canada. (shrink)

Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are shaped in critical ways by our beliefs about how we compare to other people. Prior research has predominately focused on the consequences of believing oneself to be better than average (BTA). Research on the consequences of worse-than-average (WTA) beliefs has been far more limited, focusing mostly on the downsides of WTA beliefs. In this paper, we argue for the systematic investigation of the possible long-term benefits of WTA beliefs in domains including motivation, task performance, (...) and subjective well-being. We develop a conceptual framework for examining these possible benefits, we explore the usefulness of this framework to generate novel insights in an important psychological domain (skill learning), and we conclude with broader recommendations for research in other domains such as friendship formation, moral, and political decision making. (shrink)