Recent research on the metaethical beliefs of ordinary people appears to show that they are metaethical pluralists that adopt different metaethical standards for different moral judgments. Yet the methods used to evaluate folk metaethical belief rely on the assumption that participants interpret what they are asked in metaethical terms. We argue that most participants do not interpret questions designed to elicit metaethical beliefs in metaethical terms, or at least not in the way researchers intend. As a result, existing methods are (...) not reliable measures of metaethical belief. We end by discussing the implications of our account for the philosophical and practical implications of research on the psychology of metaethics. (shrink)

Machery & Mallon [The moral psychology handbook (pp. 3–47). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010] argue that existing evidence does not support the claim that moral cognition, understood as a specific form of normative cognition, is a product of evolution. Instead, they suggest that the evidence only supports the more modest claim that a general capacity for normative cognition evolved. They argue that if this is the case then the prospects for evolutionary debunking arguments are bleak. A debunking argument (...) which relied on the fact that normative cognition in general evolved might threaten all areas of normative belief, including the epistemic norms upon which the argument relies. For the sake of argument, we accept their claim that specifically moral cognition did not evolve. However, we reject their contention that this critically undermines evolutionary debunking arguments of morality. A number of strategies are available to solve what we call the “containment problem,” or how to effectively debunk morality without thereby debunking normative cognition tout court. Furthermore, debunking arguments need not rely on the claim that normative cognition in general evolved. So long as at least some aspects of moral cognition have evolved, this may be sufficient to support an evolutionary debunking argument against many of our moral beliefs. Thus, even if Machery & Mallon are right that specifically moral cognition did not evolve, research in evolutionary psychology may have radical implications for moral philosophy. (shrink)

After two generations of emphasis on governmental inefficiency and the need for deregulation, we now see growing interest in the possibility of constructive governance, alongside public calls for new, smarter regulation. Yet there is a real danger that regulatory reforms will be rooted in outdated ideas. As the financial crisis has shown, neither traditional market failure models nor public choice theory, by themselves, sufficiently inform or explain our current regulatory challenges. Regulatory studies, long neglected in an atmosphere focused on deregulatory (...) work, is in critical need of new models and theories that can guide effective policy-making. This interdisciplinary volume points the way toward the modernization of regulatory theory. Its essays by leading scholars move past predominant approaches, integrating the latest research about the interplay between human behavior, societal needs and regulatory institutions. The book concludes by setting out a potential research agenda for the social sciences. (shrink)

(1992). Cognitive Style, Gender, Attitude toward Computer‐assisted Learning and Academic Achievement. Educational Studies: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 151-160.

Offering an inside look at the hidden dimensions of teaching, this provocative text presents insight into, and analysis of, the work of teaching--from preparing ...

This article examines the design and situated employment of reported `private thoughts' in both everyday and institutional interaction. By reported `private thoughts' we mean the `active voicing' of utterances characterized as `private thought' done in the first place for the speaker-feeler, rather than the listener. Examples are drawn from a large UK collection of over 240 instances from domestic telephone calls, interview talk, therapy sessions, and patient—provider interactions. Instead of treating reported `private thoughts' as neutral and transparent descriptions of the (...) inner mind, we focus on their `brought off ' nature. Drawing on the cumulative resources of conversation analysis and discursive psychology, we focus on lexical and non-lexical features of their design and its similarity to direct reported speech. We go on to illustrate the flexibilities of positioning reporting `private thoughts' affords, that is, how they can be done for the self as a `one-off ', as generalized or hypothetical and how they can be done for others. Our analyses draw attention to how `private thoughts' might be considered as a speaker's resource for handling everyday rational accountability in reporting and explaining actions and events. (shrink)

This article critiques the inadequate attention given to the question of meaning in mainstream clinical psychiatry and psychology. The author reviews the history of phenomenological and existential psychiatry, especially the work of Erwin Straus, and highlights the emphasis on the personal world of experience and on such existential dimensions as time and ethical experience. Aaron Beck's school of cognitive therapy appropriates many themes and concepts from phenomenology, including the central concept of meaning, and turns them into a systematic technology for (...) personal change. The author contrasts the phenomenological and cognitive approaches to meaning. The relationship between the cognitive and existential therapies is described by analogy to William James's healthy-minded and morbid-minded religion. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre and Barbara Adam, Gender, Space, and Time is a brilliant study that offers a unique and original threefold conceptualization of how space and time is developed and applied in an empirical study of women's lives. Moss conceptualizes women as centers of action and demonstrates the ways in which they construct personal pathways, connect different spheres of experience, intergrate new time demands into the multiple rhythms of their everyday lives, and carve out personal space.

Images and ideas associated with masculinity are forever in flux. In this book, Donald Moss addresses the never-ending effort of men—regardless of sexual orientation—to shape themselves in relation to the unstable notion of masculinity. Part 1 looks at the lifelong labor faced by boys and men of assessing themselves in relation to an always shifting, always receding, ideal of "masculinity." In Part 2, Moss considers a series of nested issues regarding homosexuality, homophobia and psychoanalysis. Part 3 focuses on the interface (...) between the body experienced as a private entity and the body experienced as a public entity—the body experienced as one’s own and the body subject to the judgments, regulations and punishments of the external world. The final part looks at men and violence. Men must contend with the entwined problems of regulating aggression and figuring out its proper level, aiming to avoid both excess and insufficiency. This section focuses on excessive aggression and its damaging consequences, both to its object and to its subjects. _Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Man _will be of great interest not only to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, but also to a much wider audience of readers interested in gender studies, queer studies, and masculinity. (shrink)

Hans Urs von Balthasar is one of the most prolific, creative and wide-ranging theologians of the twentieth century who is just now coming to prominence. But because of his own daring speculations about the meaning of Christ's descent into hell after the crucifixion, about the uniqueness of Christ as savior of a pluralistic world, and because he draws so many of his resources for his theology from literature, drama, and philosophy, Balthasar has never been an easily-categorized theologian. He is neither (...) liberal nor conservative, neither Thomist nor modernist and he seems to elude all attempts to capture the exact way he creatively reinterprets the tradition of Christian thought. For that reason, this Companion is singularly welcome bringing together a wide range of theologians both to outline and to assess the work of someone whom history will surely rank someday with Origen, John Calvin, and Karl Barth. (shrink)