According to the logic of collective action, mere awareness of the causes of environmental degradation will not motivate rational agents to reduce pollution. Yet some government policies aim to enlist citizens in schemes of voluntary cooperation, drawing on an ethos of collective responsibility. Are such policies doomed to failure? This book provides a novel application of rational choice theory to a large-scale survey of environmental attitudes in The Netherlands. Its main findings are that rational citizens are motivated to cooperate towards (...) a less polluted environment to a large extent, but that their willingness to assume responsibility depends on the social context of the collective action problem they face. This empirical study is an important volume in the development of a more consistent foundation for rational choice theory in policy analysis, which seeks to clarify major theoretical issues concerning the role of moral commitment, self-interest and reciprocity in environmental behaviour. (shrink)

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick contrasts entitlement theories of justice and “traditional” theories such as Rawls', utilitarianism or egalitarianism, and advocates the former against the latter. What exactly is an entitlement theory of justice? Nozick's book offers two distinct characterizations. On the one hand, he explicitly describes “the general outlines of the entitlement theory” as maintaining “that the holdings of a person are just if he is entitled to them by the principles of justice in acquisition and (...) transfer, or by the principle of rectification of injustice ”. On the other hand, his famous “Wilt Chamberlain” argument against alternative theories is first said to apply to “non-entitlement conceptions”, and later to any “end-state principle or distributional patterned principle of justice” — which amounts to an implicit characterization of an entitlement conception as a conception of justice which is neither end-state nor patterned. (shrink)

To many in the Netherlands it seems that basic income’s time has come, following the wide appeal of several municipal experiments. These random-control trial designs study the effects on employment, social participation, health and well-being of exempting social assistance claimants from the duties of seeking work and participating in training activities under the workfare-oriented Participation Act. In some treatment groups, claimants also retain a larger percentage of earnings, thereby reducing the poverty trap. These two design features resemble an unconditional basic (...) income. I situate the experiments in the wider context of basic income and discuss their theoretical background and policy orientation. Under existing legal strictures, the experimental designs are too limited to judge the effects of replacing the conditional scheme of social assistance by an unconditional one. Yet these experiments point the way for future trials which can compare the effectiveness of basic income-oriented versus workfare-oriented treatments. (shrink)

"Entitlement theories of justice: From Nozick to Roemer and beyond", Economics and philosophy 1/1 : 69-81.

This article challenges the general thesis that an unconditional basic income, set at the highest sustainable level, is required for maximizing the income-leisure opportunities of the least advantaged, when income varies according to the responsible factor of labor input. In a linear optimal taxation model (of a type suggested by Vandenbroucke 2001) in which opportunities depend only on individual productivity, adding the instrument of a uniform wage subsidy generates an array of undominated policies besides the basic income maximizing policy, including (...) a “zero basic income” policy which equalizes the post-tax wage rate. The choice among such undominated policies may be guided by distinct normative criteria which supplement the maximin objective in various ways. It is shown that most of these criteria will be compatible with, or actually select, the zero basic income policy and reject the basic income maximizing one. In view of the model's limited realism, the force of this main conclusion is discussed both in relation to Van Parijs' argument for basic income in Real Freedom for All (1995) and to some key empirical conditions in the real world. Footnotes1 I am grateful for useful comments on various stages of this paper by Marc Fleurbaey, Susan Hurley, Mathias Hild, Dirk Van de gaer, Frank Vandenbroucke, Alex Voorhoeve, Roland van der Veen, Andrew Williams, Chris Woodard and an anonymous referee. Above all I thank Loek Groot for his contribution. The research has also been supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and the Social and Political Theory Program of the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. (shrink)

Politiek gaat over het verenigen van gemeenschappelijke en conflicterende belangen in bindende collectieve besluitvorming op een wijze die door winnaars en verliezers kan worden aanvaard. In dit artikel baseer ik mij op het politiek gezaghebbende duurzaamheidsconcept van de Brundtlandcommissie in Our Common Future: ‘Duurzame ontwikkeling is ontwikkeling die tegemoetkomt aan de behoeften in het heden zonder de mogelijkheid van toekomstige generaties om te voorzien in hun eigen behoeften in de weg te staan’ . Dan blijkt direct dat het vinden van (...) principes voor een duurzame politiek lastig is, want het gaat hier om een morele eis rekening te houden met de belangen van mensen in komende generaties die nu nog geen deel uitmaken van een politieke gemeenschap. (shrink)

One major way of arguing for the moral attractiveness of luck egalitarianism is indirect; it consists in showing that the view follows from competing views on distributive justice which one actually endorses. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (KLR) claims that luck egalitarianism is indirectly supported in this way by Rawls’s intuitive argument for the difference principle. That argument begins by asserting that the impact of social and natural contingencies on distributive shares is unjust. After clarifying the notion of indirect support, I argue against (...) KLR’s claim. Whether the argument goes on to support luck egalitarianism is a matter of interpretation which can only be decided by looking closer at what Rawls has to say about the difference principle than KLR’s own treatment of the argument allows. In its most plausible reading, the intuitive argument veers away from luck egalitarianism in favor of a non-egalitarian view of the difference principle as a principle of compensating advantage. On this view, inequality due to bad luck is not in any respect unjust when the least advantaged cannot be made better off under alternative arrangements. In conclusion I explain why there are good reasons of fairness to understand the difference principle in this way. (shrink)

In 2003, Peratt demonstrated that rock art images worldwide bear a remarkable similarity to high-energy plasma discharge formations. In later papers, Peratt located the plasma discharge column in which all of these would have occurred at the Earth’s South Pole. This article accepts the relation between the rock art images and the plasma formations, but concludes that the geometry of the reconstruction is incompatible with the global occurrence of the rock art images. As a corollary, the finer details of the (...) reconstructed column must also be called into question. In particular, the reconstruction of the top cusp, the two upper plasmoids, and the filamentary sheath in a single column at the South Pole cannot be reliably deduced from the data as presented by Peratt. All evidence points to a worldwide distribution of the phenomena. (shrink)

Research on social influences often distinguishes between social and quality incentives to ascribe meaning to the value that popularity conveys. This study examines the neural correlates of those incentives through which popularity influences preferences. This research reports an functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment and a behavioral task in which respondents evaluated popular products with three focus perspectives; unspecified focus, focus on social aspects, and focus on quality. The results show that value derived with a social focus reflects inferences of approval (...) and reward value, and positively affects preferences. Value derived with a quality focus reflects inferences of quality and negatively affects preferences. This study provides evidence of two distinct inferential routes on both a neurological level, represented by different regions in the brain, and a behavioral level. These results provide the first evidence that a single popularity cue can in different ways influence the value derived from product popularity. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 57 Heft: 1 Seiten: 138-154.

It is often alleged that Cantor’s views about how the set theoretic universe as a whole should be considered are fundamentally unclear. In this article we argue that Cantor’s views on this subject, at least up until around 1896, are relatively clear, coherent, and interesting. We then go on to argue that Cantor’s views about the set theoretic universe as a whole have implications for theology that have hitherto not been sufficiently recognised. However, the theological implications in question, at least (...) as articulated here, would not have satisfied Cantor himself. (shrink)

This study investigated the relationship between the development of students? self-regulated learning and students? perceptions of the learning environment in terms of autonomy support, the emphasis on relevance and collaborative learning. In addition, we compared innovative learning environments that aim to enhance self-regulated learning with traditional learning environments. Questionnaires for measuring self-regulated learning and perceptions of the learning environment were administered by 648 students. Self-regulated learning was measured at the start of secondary education and again half way through the first (...) year. The results point to the importance of how students perceive the learning environment for self-regulated learning. There was a positive relationship between autonomy support and relevance and self-regulated learning. Furthermore, students in innovative environments perceived more autonomy support, more emphasis on relevance and more collaborative learning than those in traditional environments. Students in innovative environments, however, reported no more self-regulated learning than students in traditional environments. (shrink)

Augmented Reality is itself a technology in which two ways of seeing are crossed. Our field of vision is thereby superimposed with digital information and images. But before this, the real environment is already perceived by machine seeing, it is redoubled by a 3D-model, scanned, located and linked. In this brief investigation, I will face the way of seeing in AR with traditional procedures, like ‘trompe-l'œil’ and the so-called ‘velo’, to distinguish between what remains classic and what has changed. It (...) is important to examine this as layering, because it is a very thin stack of techniques, technology, materials and media, we seek to watch through. Subsequently, I shall analyze a painting of the contemporary artist Laura Owens in which both ways are crossed, the traditional one and the one concerning AR. (shrink)

This work details the theological sources and moral significance of the life and work of the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790). The panel of contributors deepen our understanding of Adam Smith in his religious and theological context and the significance of this understanding for contemporary moral, economic, and political challenges to modern social life. The chapters cover a broad range of disciplinary and historical concerns, from Smith's view of providence and his famous "invisible hand" to the role of self-interest (...) and benevolence in Smith's social and economic thought. A better appreciation for the moral and theological dimensions of Smith's thought provides not only a better understanding of Smith's own context and significance in the Scottish Enlightenment, but also promises to assist in meeting the perennial challenges of properly connecting economic realities to moral responsibility. The book is of interest to advanced students and scholars of the history of economic thought, historical and moral theology, intellectual history, political science and philosophy. (shrink)

The paper discusses ten philosophical problems in deontic logic: how to formally represent norms, when a set of norms may be termed ‘coherent’, how to deal with normative conflicts, how contraryto-duty obligations can be appropriately modeled, how dyadic deontic operators may be redefined to relate to sets of norms instead of preference relations between possible worlds, how various concepts of permission can be accommodated, how meaning postulates and counts-as conditionals can be taken into account, and how sets of norms may (...) be revised and merged. The problems are discussed from the viewpoint of input/output logic as developed by van der Torre & Makinson. We argue that norms, not ideality, should take the central position in deontic semantics, and that a semantics that represents norms, as input/output logic does, provides helpful tools for analyzing, clarifying and solving the problems of deontic logic. (shrink)

The King Report on Corporate Governance (1994) evoked unprecedented interest in corporate governance in South Africa. This does not mean that corporate governance was not an issue of concern before the release of this historical report. To the contrary, corporate governance in its broader sense has been at stake since the inception of the first publicly owned companies in South Africa. This article intends to give an overview of corporate governance in South Africa. It starts by making a distinction between (...) broad and narrow conceptions of corporate governance. Before applying this distinction to the practice of corporate governance in South Africa, a brief overview of the corporate landscape in South Africa is provided. Then the South African situation with regard to broad and narrow corporate governance respectively is analysed. The article ends with a discussion of the review of corporate governance that currently is in the making in South Africa. Throughout the article both the financial and ethical dimensions of corporate governance is attended to. (shrink)

The King Report on Corporate Governance (1994) evoked unprecedented interest in corporate governance in South Africa. This does not mean that corporate governance was not an issue of concern before the release of this historical report. To the contrary, corporate governance in its broader sense has been at stake since the inception of the first publicly owned companies in South Africa. This article intends to give an overview of corporate governance in South Africa. It starts by making a distinction between (...) broad and narrow conceptions of corporate governance. Before applying this distinction to the practice of corporate governance in South Africa, a brief overview of the corporate landscape in South Africa is provided. Then the South African situation with regard to broad and narrow corporate governance respectively is analysed. The article ends with a discussion of the review of corporate governance that currently is in the making in South Africa. Throughout the article both the financial and ethical dimensions of corporate governance is attended to. (shrink)

In recent years, schools and education authorities world wide have been paying increasing attention to issues surrounding diversity and religious tolerance. The term 'tolerance' is, however, clouded by considerable confusion and vagueness. This article seeks to contribute to recent scholarly attempts at understanding tolerance and the term that denotes it. After a brief semantic analysis of the term 'tolerance', arguments concerning the onticity of tolerance as phenomenon or entity are discussed. By examining its onticity we explore and explain some of (...) the essential features of tolerance. The article ends with a brief discussion of some of the implications of our examination that we foresee for education. (shrink)