One of us is a teacher educator (Margaret) and the other is a prospective teacher (Andrew). In our experiences within these roles, we increasingly see and hear little educative concern for the epistemological question "What counts as knowledge?" alongside the ontological question "What does it mean to be a teacher in classrooms?" Instead of grappling with these questions, curricular enactment in many classrooms proceeds through tightly controlled conditions with criteria that insist on pre-determined management modes with little time or space (...) for teachers to ask what ought to count as knowledge or what teaching for student understanding might feel and look like in practice. At the same time, many teachers are .. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between voluntary participation in environmental organisations and the justifiability of littering behaviour. Previous empirical work regarding determinants of littering and littering behaviour remains scarce, particularly in socio-economic analysis. We address these deficiencies, demonstrating a strong empirical link between environmental participation and reduced public littering in the European Values Survey (EVS) data for 30 Western and Eastern European countries. The results suggest that membership in environmental organisations is related to a stronger commitment to anti-littering behaviour, thereby (...) supporting improved environmental quality. (shrink)

This classic and controversial book examines the roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in modern life, and proposes a path for its recovery.

Let n be a positive integer and FAℓ be the free abelian lattice-ordered group on n generators. We prove that FAℓ and FAℓ do not satisfy the same first-order sentences in the language if m≠n. We also show that is decidable iff n{1,2}. Finally, we apply a similar analysis and get analogous results for the free finitely generated vector lattices.

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1984, given by Alasdair Maclntyre, a Scottish philosopher.

Alasdair MacIntyre explores some central philosophical, political and moral claims of modernity and argues that a proper understanding of human goods requires a rejection of these claims. In a wide-ranging discussion, he considers how normative and evaluative judgments are to be understood, how desire and practical reasoning are to be characterized, what it is to have adequate self-knowledge, and what part narrative plays in our understanding of human lives. He asks, further, what it would be to understand the modern (...) condition from a neo-Aristotelian or Thomistic perspective, and argues that Thomistic Aristotelianism, informed by Marx's insights, provides us with resources for constructing a contemporary politics and ethics which both enable and require us to act against modernity from within modernity. This rich and important book builds on and advances MacIntyre's thinking in ethics and moral philosophy, and will be of great interest to readers in both fields. (shrink)

Voters satisfy maximin or maximax in their choices between sets of alternatives and secure a Pareto improvement by all voting strategically under simple majority voting for particular sincere preferences. Thus the assumption that strategic voting is a bad thing is challenged and the idea that we should reject voting because of the possibility of misrepresentation dismissed.

The paper examines representative cases of ``dishonest'''' voting. In all but one case the claim that ``strategic voting'''' is ``dishonest'''' is refuted. In all cases the effects of ``misrepresentation'''' need never harm any majority. Indeed majorities may benefit from ``strategy'''' (in non-cycle cases too). In fact democracy demands ``strategy''''. Although the universal value of the choice set is disputed even in the one recalcitrant case, the result is, after all, an element in the ``honest'''' choice set.

The paper examines representative cases of ``dishonest'' voting. In all but one case the claim that ``strategic voting'' is ``dishonest'' is refuted. In all cases the effects of ``misrepresentation'' need never harm any majority. Indeed majorities may benefit from ``strategy'' (in non-cycle cases too). In fact democracy demands ``strategy''. Although the universal value of the choice set is disputed even in the one recalcitrant case, the result is, after all, an element in the ``honest'' choice set.

The central task to which contemporary moral philosophers have addressed themselves is that of listing the distinctive characteristics of moral utterances. In this paper I am concerned to propound an entirely negative thesis about these characteristics. It is widely held that it is of the essence of moral valuations that they are universalisable and prescriptive. This is the contention which I wish to deny. I shall proceed by first examining the thesis that moral judgments are necessarily and essentially universalisable and (...) then the thesis that their distinctive function is a prescriptive one. But as the argument proceeds I shall be unable to separate the discussion of the latter thesis from that of the former. (shrink)

How should we respond when some of our basic beliefs are put into question? What makes a human body distinctively human? Why is truth an important good? These are among the questions explored in this 2006 collection of essays by Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the most creative and influential philosophers working today. Ten of MacIntyre's most influential essays written over almost thirty years are collected together here for the first time. They range over such topics as the issues (...) raised by different types of relativism, what it is about human beings that cannot be understood by the natural sciences, the relationship between the ends of life and the ends of philosophical writing, and the relationship of moral philosophy to contemporary social practice. They will appeal to a wide range of readers across philosophy and especially in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

Impossibility theorems for 2-person and majority continuous games on the unit circle are presented. The emphasis is on simple methods, albeit generating new results, to offer insights into the sophisticated results of theorists in topological social choice.

Hard Truths is an important book in its own right. It is also the latest contribution to a complex and impressive project that Elijah Milligram has been developing from his first book onwards. There he characterized practical induction as a type of reasoning that enables agents to learn from experiences of the new and the unfamiliar, agents whose inferences are from beliefs that they have formed either ‘in ways that have a suitable amount to do with [their] truth’, or, when (...) ‘the appeal to truth is unhelpful’, in ways that underwrite such inferences as they are committed to drawing . In his introduction to his anthology on practical reasoning, Millgram catalogued the presently competing theories of practical reasoning, posing the question: what kind of reasoning should we employ in deciding between the claims of rival theories? The subtitle of his third book , ‘Practical Reasoning as a Foundation for Moral Theory’, already suggests its central thesis, that we should first survey the range of theories of practical reasoning , should then identify which moral theory it is with which each theory of practical reasoning is paired , should next decide which theory of practical reasoning is correct , and, finally, should adopt the moral theory paired with that theory of practical reasoning. There are at least three clusters of problems that badly need extended attention, if the claims of these three books are to be sustained: one concerning the account of truth presupposed by Millgram, a second to do with the inferences that we need to employ, and a third concerning the unity of reasoning agents. All three provide Hard Truths with subject-matter, but Millgram’s principal focus is …. (shrink)