The Oxford English Dictionary defines fulfilment as ‘satisfaction or happiness as a result of fully developing one's potential or realizing one's aspirations; self-fulfillment’. Not only has the idea of fulfilment underpinned ‘approximately twenty centuries of philosophy’ as Lefebvre notes, it plays an indispensable role in both popular and scholarly accounts of education and upbringing. Experiences of education, of upbringing and of ‘life lessons’, however, are so often not about the fulfilment of oneself, about the discovery and actualisation of one's full (...) potential. Such experiences instead involve moments of sometimes irreparable failure and loss—a matter that has not received a great deal of attention in educational research and theory. After briefly examining the way that fulfilment is favourably framed both in humanistic psychology and in neo-humanist Bildungstheorie, this paper considers some of the exceptions to the nearly ubiquitous identification of education with fulfilment: Arthur Schopenhauer's view of the irrationality of human (developmental) experience and Ludwig Wittgenstein's use of the term ‘conditioning’ (Abrichtung) in some of his accounts of learning and socialisation. We then focus on failure and loss in education through an overview of the pedagogical theory of O.F. Bollnow. Bollnow, as is gradually being recognised in English-language scholarship, saw moments of uncertainty, disorientation and above all crisis as indispensable in educational experience—for both student and teacher. In this way, we show that instead of being the pursuit of self-fulfilment, education is unavoidably a matter of difficulty, disruption and also failure. It reshapes us, and this reshaping can be seen as being as much about formation as it is about deformation. (shrink)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines fulfilment as ‘satisfaction or happiness as a result of fully developing one's potential or realizing one's aspirations; self-fulfillment’. Not only has the idea of fulfilment underpinned ‘approximately twenty centuries of philosophy’ as Lefebvre notes, it plays an indispensable role in both popular and scholarly accounts of education and upbringing. Experiences of education, of upbringing and of ‘life lessons’, however, are so often not about the fulfilment of oneself, about the discovery and actualisation of one's full (...) potential. Such experiences instead involve moments of sometimes irreparable failure and loss—a matter that has not received a great deal of attention in educational research and theory. After briefly examining the way that fulfilment is favourably framed both in humanistic psychology and in neo-humanist Bildungstheorie, this paper considers some of the exceptions to the nearly ubiquitous identification of education with fulfilment: Arthur Schopenhauer's view of the irrationality of human (developmental) experience and Ludwig Wittgenstein's use of the term ‘conditioning’ (Abrichtung) in some of his accounts of learning and socialisation. We then focus on failure and loss in education through an overview of the pedagogical theory of O.F. Bollnow. Bollnow, as is gradually being recognised in English-language scholarship, saw moments of uncertainty, disorientation and above all crisis as indispensable in educational experience—for both student and teacher. In this way, we show that instead of being the pursuit of self-fulfilment, education is unavoidably a matter of difficulty, disruption and also failure. It reshapes us, and this reshaping can be seen as being as much about formation as it is about deformation. (shrink)

The exchange of goods and services between individuals is often formalised by a contract in which the parties establish norms to define what is expected of each one. Norms use deontic statements of obligation, prohibition, and permission, which may be in conflict. The task of manually detecting norm conflicts can be time–consuming and error-prone since contracts can be vast and complex. To automate such tasks, we develop an approach to identify potential conflicts between norms. We show the effectiveness of (...) our approach and its individual components empirically using two publicly available corpora, and contribute with a new annotated test corpus for norm conflict identification. (shrink)

Abstract: We are all familiar with the way in which social roles, such as mother, father, professor, club football coach, citizen, and so on, confront us with clusters of duties that purport to bind us. Though we generally experience these role-duties as normatively binding, we might question this. What reason do role-occupants have for conforming to the duties that define their roles? I argue that the agent who identifies with her role thereby has a weighty and important justificatory reason for (...) conforming to the role's defining duties: namely, the identifying agent realizes the fundamental goods of meaning and self-determination by doing so. This is an important normative ground of role-duties because it, unlike the grounds of natural duty or voluntary assumption, ensures that the duties it grounds are not alien impositions but rather are elements of the identifying agent's wellbeing. I also argue that role-identification provides a reason that shares many of the characteristics of a moral reason, and I argue that role-identification in tandem with the principle of fair play grounds a moral duty to conform to one's role-duties. (shrink)

Normativity and the Will collects fourteen important papers on moral psychology and practical reason by R. Jay Wallace, one of the leading philosophers currently working in these areas. The papers explore the interpenetration of normative and psychological issues in a series of debates that lie at the heart of moral philosophy. Themes that are addressed include reason, desire, and the will; responsibility, identification, and emotion; and the relation between morality and other normative domains. Wallace's treatments of these topics are (...) at once sophisticated and engaging. Taken together, they constitute an advertisement for a distinctive way of pursuing issues in moral psychology and the theory of practical reason, and they articulate and defend a unified framework for thinking about those issues. The volume also features a helpful new introduction. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFacial stimuli are widely used in behavioural and brain science research to investigate emotional facial processing. However, some studies have demonstrated that dynamic expressions elicit stronger emotional responses compared to static images. To address the need for more ecologically valid and powerful facial emotional stimuli, we created Dynamic FACES, a database of morphed videos from younger, middle-aged, and older adults displaying naturalistic emotional facial expressions. To assess adult age differences in emotion identification of dynamic stimuli and to provide normative (...) ratings for this modified set of stimuli, healthy adults categorised for each video the emotional expression displayed, rated the expression distinctiveness, estimated the age of the face model, and rated the naturalness of the expression. We found few age differences in emotion identification when using dynamic stimuli. On... (shrink)

In this article, I analyze the evolution of Husserl's view on the normativity of logic and the corresponding changes in his phenomenological analysis of judgment. Initially, in the Prolegomena, Husserl claimed that the laws of pure logic are ideal and acquire normative status only as a result of application. Later, however, he revised this position and claimed that the same laws are at once ideal and normative. Sections 1 and 2 present textual evidence for attributing such a change of position (...) to Husserl, which is not generally acknowledged in the literature. Section 3 critically examines Husserl's early position, with specific attention to the model of instantiation. Sections 4–6 identify three key stages in the development of Husserl's theory of judgment that lead to the normative conception of pure logic: (1) the critique of the dissociation of ideal content and assertive force; (2) the rejection of the instantiation model of proposition and the development of a new account in terms of identification; (3) the genetic‐phenomenological interpretation of proposition and the elaboration of the three‐layer structure of pure logic. (shrink)

In normative multi-agent systems, the question of “how an agent identifies norms in an open agent society” has not received much attention. This paper aims at addressing this question. To this end, this paper proposes an architecture for norm identification for an agent. The architecture is based on observation of interactions between agents. This architecture enables an autonomous agent to identify prohibition norms in a society using the prohibition norm identification (PNI) algorithm. The PNI algorithm uses (...) association rule mining, a data mining approach to identify sequences of events as candidate norms. When a norm changes, an agent using our architecture will be able to modify the norm and also remove a norm if it does not hold in the society. Using simulations of a park scenario we demonstrate how an agent makes use of the norm identification framework to identify prohibition norms. (shrink)

The distinction between norms and norm-formulations commits legal theorists to treating legal norms as entities. In this article, I first explore the path from meaning to entities built by some analytical philosophers of language. Later, I present a set of problems produced by treating norms as entities. Whatever type of entities we deal with calls for a clear differentiation between the identification and individuation criteria of such entities. In the putative case of abstract entities, the differentiation collapses. By (...) changing the notions of the intension and extension of words by extensional and intensional aspects of what we talk about, I outline a methodological programme for Law and Legal Theory. That programme is based in the identification of normativity. (shrink)

People tend to contribute more—and think they have stronger obligations to contribute more—to rescuing an identified victim rather than a statistical one. Indeed, they are often disposed to contribute more to rescuing a single identified victim than a greater number of statistical ones. By an “identified victim,” I mean Terry Q., lying injured in the passenger seat of the wrecked automobile on the corner of Main Street and Broadway, or Jessica McClure, the child who fell into the Texas well in (...) 1987 and whose family was sent $700,000 in donations for her. We need not know their names, however, and we can accept a very minimal form of identification. By a “statistical victim,” I mean the person who, extrapolating from traffic records, will be in a similar, serious car accident tomorrow (and may then be identified), or the children who will fall into wells next year if we do not cap them better than we did the well that trapped Jessica. Does this disposition (or perceived obligation) have any normative force? I initially thought there could be no such normative force, but consequentialist and nonconsequentialist arguments, pro and con, have convinced me that reasonable people can disagree with each other. This disagreement poses a problem for political philosophy: how should policy choices take such disagreement into account? (shrink)

Naturalistic Descriptions and Normative-Intentional Interpretations Normative pragmatists about linguistic meaning such as Sellars and Brandom have to explain how norms can be implicit in practices described in purely naturalistic terms. The explanation of implicit norms usually offered in the literature commits pragmatists to equate actions with naturalistic events. Since this is an unacceptable consequence, I propose an alternative explanation of implicit norms that avoids this identification. To do so, one has to treat the normative-intentional concepts such as "norm", (...) "action", "sanction", "belief", "desire" as a holistic system, in the sense that one has to apply all of them to a given naturalistic practice simultaneously. This result might be taken to imply that the pragmatist strategy of explaining the content of assertions and beliefs in terms of norm-governed use is misguided because it presupposes that one can account for the concept "norm" independently of the concept "belief". I argue that this consequence does not follow. (shrink)

The paper presents a novel view of social norms that reflects the importance of different agent types, their specific motivations and roles. How one identifies with a role and behavioral options available to the agent is crucial for the sustainability of the social norms. The analysis of a simple case of social norm is suggested as a default model for analysis, and then the classification of subjects, enforcers, and audience is introduced. This triangular typology of agents is extended by (...) introducing a network of interlocking patterns underlying social behavior. Lastly, the paper describes two categories of transgressions based on misidentification. (shrink)

According to the traditional state sovereignty view in the ethics of immigration literature, societies have a great deal of latitude in determining and implementing their immigration policies. This view is typically defended by appealing to the rights of members of societies, for instance to political self-determination. Opponents of the view have often criticized its partiality to members, arguing that nonmembers can also make stringent demands on societies to be admitted and given the same treatment in matters of immigration policy as (...) other nonmembers. In this paper, I take a different approach to responding to the state sovereignty view. I argue that even if we grant the premise that the rights of members generally trump the rights of nonmembers in matters of immigration policy, societies are greatly constrained in setting their immigration policies by considerations of domestic justice. The considerations that I focus on involve relationships between members and nonmembers that hold due to a shared quality or set of qualities on the basis of which members identify with nonmembers. The argument appeals to premises and principles that defenders of the state sovereignty view are committed to but concludes that this view cannot serve as a satisfactory framework for the normative assessment of immigration policies. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the normative analysis—in the sense of the classic decision-theoretic formulation—of decision problems that arise in connection with forensic expert reporting. We distinguish this analytical account from other common types of decision analyses, such as descriptive approaches. While decision theory is, since several decades, an extensively discussed topic in legal literature, its use in forensic science is more recent, and with an emphasis on goals such as the analysis of the logical structure of forensic expert conclusions regarding, (...) for example, propositions of common source of evidential and known materials. Typical examples are so-called identification decisions, especially categorical conclusions according to which fingermarks come from a particular a person of interest. We will present and compare ways of stating forensic identification decisions in decision-theoretic terms and explain their underlying rationale. In particular, we will emphasize the importance of viewing this analysis as normative in the sense of providing a reflective rather than a prescriptive reference point against which people in charge of forensic identification decisions may compare their otherwise intuitive and informal reasoning, before acting. Normative decision analysis in forensic science thus provides a vector through which current practice can be articulated, scrutinized and rethought. (shrink)

Social norms have played a key role in the evolution of human cooperation, serving to stabilize prosocial and egalitarian behavior despite the self-serving motives of individuals. Young children’s behavior mostly conforms to social norms, as they follow adult behavioral directives and instructions. But it turns out that even preschool children also actively enforce social norms on others, often using generic normative language to do so. This behavior is not easily explained by individualistic motives; it is more likely a result of (...) children’s growing identification with their cultural group, which leads to prosocial motives for preserving its ways of doing things. (shrink)

Razlika med normami in ubeseditvami norm zavezuje pravoslovce k obravnavanju pravnih norm kot danosti. Avtorica najprej osvetli pot, ki so jo tlakovali nekateri analitični filozofi jezika in ki vodi od pomena do danosti. Nato predstavi sklop problemov, ki nastanejo zaradi obravnavanja norm kot danosti. Ne glede na to, s katero vrsto danosti imamo opraviti, moramo razlikovati med merili prepoznave in primeri poposameznjenja tovrstnih danosti. V predstavljenem primeru abstraktnih danosti pa to razlikovanje pade. S tem, da avtorica zamenja (...) pojma pomenske vsebine in pomenskega obsega besed za vsebinski in obsežnostni vidik tega, o čemer govorimo, očrta tudi predlog metodološkega načrta za pravo in pravno teorijo. (shrink)

Adorno’s commitment to anti-foundationalism generates a concern over how his ethically normative appraisals of social phenomena can be founded. Drawing on both Kohlmann and Bernstein’s account, I produce a new reading which contends somatic impulses are capable of bearing intrinsically normative epistemic and moral content. This entails a new way of understanding Adorno’s contention that Auschwitz produced a new categorical imperative. Working with Bernstein’s account, I claim that Auschwitz makes manifest the hostility of the instrumentalization of reason to the somatic (...) grounds of reason. One’s mimetic identification with the victims of Auschwitz arouses a self-preserving desire to intercede in and re-orient the progress of reason itself, for the sake of one’s own somatic integrity. In closing, I claim – contra Zuidervaart – that this reading allows us to place the ethical as primary in Adorno, without reducing the political to it. (shrink)

Normativity and the Will collects fourteen important papers on moral psychology and practical reason by R. Jay Wallace, one of the leading philosophers currently working in these areas.The papers explore the interpenetration of normative and psychological issues in a series of debates that lie at the heart of moral philosophy. Part I, Reason, Desire, and the Will, discusses the nexus linking normativity to motivation, including the relations between desire and reasons, the role of normative considerations in explanations of action, and (...) the normative commitments involved in willing an end. Part II, Responsibility, Identification, and Emotion, looks at questions about the rational capacities presupposed by accountable agency and the psychic factors that both inhibit and enable identification with what we do. It includes an interpretation of the Nietzschean claim that ressentiment is among the sources of modern moral consciousness. Part III, Morality and Other Normative Domains, addresses the structure of moral reasons and moral motivation, and the relations between moral demands and other normative domains. Wallace's treatments of these topics are at once sophisticated and engaging. Taken together, they constitute an advertisement for a distinctive way of pursuing issues in moral psychology and the theory of practical reason. The book articulates and defends a unified framework for thinking about those issues, while offering sustained critical discussions of other influential approaches. It should be of interest to every serious student of moral philosophy. (shrink)

This essay deals with the impact of Hegel's philosophy of religion by examining his positions on religious identity and on the relationship between theology and history. I argue that his criterion for religious identity was socio-historical, and that his philosophical theology was historical rather than normative. These positions help explain some historical peculiarities regarding the effect of his philosophy of religion. Of particular concern is that although Hegel’s own aims were apologetic, his major influence on religious thought was in the (...) development of various historical and critical approaches to religion. (shrink)

Previous research indicates that the depletion of self-regulatory resources can promote unethical behavior that benefits the self. Extending this literature, we focus on norm-transgressing behavior that is intended to primarily benefit others. In particular, we predicted a differing effect of self-regulatory resource depletion on dishonesty that benefits one’s group, depending on the degree of identification with the group. Following a dual process approach, we argue that if identification with the group is strong, then people may have an (...) automatic inclination to benefit their group even perhaps by lying. In contrast, if identification with the group is weak, then the default, uncontrolled impulse may be to tell the truth. Accordingly, identification with the social group should interact with self-regulatory resource depletion in predicting group-benefiting dishonesty. Focusing on pro-organizational dishonesty, we tested our hypotheses in one field study with 1269 employees and in one experimental study with 71 university students. As predicted, the results revealed a highly significant interaction of organizational identification and self-control strength: Depletion of self-regulatory resources increased the level of pro-organizational dishonesty among those who identify highly with the organization, but decreased the level of such behavior among those who identify less. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher presents an ambitious account of pragmatic naturalism that incorporates an explanatory story of the emergence and development of ethics, a metaethical perspective on progress, and a normative stance for moral theorizing. This article contends that Kitcher's normative stance is incompatible with the explanatory and metaethical components of his project. Instead, pragmatic naturalists should endorse a normative ethics that is experimental, grounded in practice, and acutely aware of cognitive and informational limitations. In particular, the ethical project would benefit from (...) endorsing empirical work on participatory democracy for the identification of mechanisms to guide us on deep moral conflicts. (shrink)

Habermas entende os direitos humanos como produtos do mundo da vida; e é no interior do debate público, com a participação efetiva dos cidadãos, que deve ocorrer a produção deles como normas e princípios. A questão central abordada inicialmente no texto concerne ao status dessas normas e ao seu modo de instituição, dependente das relações de reciprocidade entre os sujeitos. Uma vez que, em sociedades complexas, apenas idealmente parece ser possível sustentar a participação de todos os sujeitos no processo de (...) elaboração de normas, o texto procura analisar a viabilidade da concepção de Habermas. Ao considerar os elementos conceituais que orbitam essa questão, processa-se no curso do texto um deslocamento para outra, a saber, a relativa ao quanto o modo de sustentação da normatividade jurídica de um ordenamento social o determina como democrático ou não. Este é o ponto decisivo ao tratamento das normas relativas aos direitos humanos: a análise de Habermas é ideal, mas o pêndulo entre moral e empiria se mantém sempre, de modo que, pelo escopo conceitual, se não há como confirmar a identificação entre legitimidade dos direitos humanos e direitos humanos produzidos democraticamente, torna-se impossível querer negá-la. Habermas understands human rights as products of the lifeworld, and it is within the public debate, with the effective participation of citizens, that their production must occur as norms and principles. The initial focus of the text concerns the status of these norms and how they are instituted, which depends on the reciprocal relationships between subjects. Given that in complex societies it seems to be only ideally possible to sustain the participation of all those involved in the elaboration of norms, this article seeks to analyze the feasibility of Habermas' conception. In considering the conceptual elements related to this issue, there takes place in the course of the text a shift to another issue, namely, that of how the mode of support of the juridical normativity of a legal order determines it as being democratic or not. This is the turning point in the treatment of norms relative to human rights: Habermas' analysis is ideal, but the oscillation between the moral and the empirical is always remains, such that, within the conceptual scope, if there is no way to confirm the legitimacy of the identification of human rights with democratically produced human rights, this oscillation becomes impossible deny. (shrink)

This contribution aims at proposing a framework for articulating different kinds of “normativities” that are and can be attributed to “algorithmic systems.” The technical normativity manifests itself through the lineage of technical objects. The norm expresses a technical scheme’s becoming as it mutates through, but also resists, inventions. The genealogy of neural networks shall provide a powerful illustration of this dynamic by engaging with their concrete functioning as well as their unsuspected potentialities. The socio-technical normativity accounts for the manners (...) in which engineers, as actors folded into socio-technical networks, willingly or unwittingly, infuse technical objects with values materialized in the system. Surveillance systems’ design will serve here to instantiate the ongoing mediation through which algorithmic systems are endowed with specific capacities. The behavioral normativity is the normative activity, in which both organic and mechanical behaviors are actively participating, undoing the identification of machines with “norm following,” and organisms with “norminstitution”. This proposition productively accounts for the singularity of machine learning algorithms, explored here through the case of recommender systems. The paper will provide substantial discussions of the notions of “normative” by cutting across history and philosophy of science, legal, and critical theory, as well as “algorithmics,” and by confronting our studies led in engineering laboratories with critical algorithm studies. (shrink)

Endurance athletes work at creating habits and lifestyles which correspond to Aristotle’s notion of eudomania. They spend time and energy dedicating themselves to their craft. They relinquish other interests in pursuit of excellence. They fully accept William James’ notion of precipitousness as they create goals and work toward achievement. In this paper, we examine normative issues related to endurance sport participation, the potential dark side of this pursuit of excellence. Our overriding concern is how best to work toward and experience (...) human flourishing while simultaneously remaining attentive to relationships and responsibilities. In terms of potential perils associated with endurance sport, we address questions of autonomy, authenticity and identification. We contend that endurance athletes concerned with these questions benefit from transcendental and pragmatic notions of the good life. (shrink)

In the field of psychology, filial piety is usually defined in terms of traditional Chinese culture-specific family traditions. The problem with this approach is that it tends to emphasize identification of behavioral rules or norms, which limits its potential for application in other cultural contexts. Due to the global trend of population aging, governments are searching for solutions to the accompanying financial burden so greater attention is being focused on the issue of elder care and its relevance to filial (...) practices. We contend that the psychological investigation of filial piety in Chinese societies has progressed to the point that it can now provide a solid structure for research targeting intergenerational relations in other cultures. We describe an indigenous psychology approach that integrated Chinese historical, philosophical, and social trends to construct a model of filial piety in terms of the dual reciprocal and authoritarian filial aspects underlying parent-child relations: the dual filial piety model (DFPM). We use this model to re-conceptualize filial piety from its usual definition as a set of Chinese culture-specific norms to a contextualized personality construct represented by a pair of culturally-sensitive psychological schemas of parent-child interaction. We then describe how the DFPM can provide a framework for research on filial relations on individual, structural, societal, and cross-cultural levels. We conclude with a discussion of how the model may be able to integrate and extend Western research on intergenerational relations and contribute to the issue of elder care beyond Chinese societies. (shrink)

This book provides an elaboration and evaluation of the dominant conceptions of genetic counseling as they are accounted for in three different models: the teaching model; the psychotherapeutic model; and the responsibility model. The elaboration of these models involves an identification of the larger traditions, visions and theories of communication that underwrite them; the evaluation entails an assessment of each model’s theses and ultimately a comparison of their adequacy in response to two important concerns in genetic counseling: the contested (...) values of non-directiveness and the recognition of differences across perspectives, with special focus on how religious and spiritual beliefs of patients are coordinated with the networks of meaning in genetics. Several insights are made explicit in this project through the work of Robert Brandom. Brandom’s deontic scorekeeping model demonstrates how dialogue is at the root of grasping a conceptual content. Against this backdrop, professional communications such as genetic counseling can be seen as late developments in linguistic practices that have structural challenges. Brandom’s model reminds us that the professional needs the client’s understanding to grasp conceptual content in a particular context. (shrink)

In the United States, approximately 2.53 million people sustain a concussion each year. Relative to adults, youth show greater cognitive deficits following concussion and a longer recovery. An accurate and reliable imaging method is needed to determine injury severity and symptom resolution. The primary objective of this study was to characterize concussions with diffusion tensor imaging. This was performed through a normative Z-scoring analysis of DTI metrics, fractional anisotropy, axial diffusivity, and radial diffusivity, to quantify patient-specific injuries and identify commonly (...) damaged brain regions in paediatric concussion patients relative to healthy controls. It was hypothesized that personalizing the detection analysis through normative Z-scoring would provide an understanding of trauma-induced microstructural damage. Concussion patients were volunteers recruited from the Emergency Department of the McMaster Children’s Hospital with a recent concussion, 9 males and 17 females, mean age 14.22 ± 2.64, while healthy paediatric brain DTI datasets were obtained from an MRI data repository. Significant abnormalities were commonly found in the longitudinal fasciculus, fronto-occipital fasciculus, and corticospinal tract, while unique abnormalities were localized in a number of other areas reflecting the individuality of each child’s injury. Total injury burden, determined by the number of regions containing outliers per DTI metric per patient, was used as the metric to quantify the overall injury severity of each patient. The primary outcome of this analysis found that younger patients experienced a significantly greater injury burden when measured using fractional anisotropy. These results show that DTI was able to detect microstructural changes caused by concussion, on a per-person basis, and has the potential to be a useful tool for improving diagnostic accuracy and prognosis of a concussion. (shrink)

This dissertation articulates a new model for understanding the moral psychology of social identity. It argues that it is best to think of social identities as social roles that are defined by socio-normative rules. When agents identify with social roles the result is a social identity. Social identities give an agent a unique source of reasons to act.

In the paper we provide an overview of issues related to the models used in the research on the logic of norms and actions. We present two models of the variability of the world: temporal (acyclic) and atemporal (cyclic). In the first one the past is always clearly defined, and the future is potentially “branched”. The second type of model allows for a return to the situation that took place. Next we describe different approaches towards agency modeling. We present the (...) most important paradigms, including the logic of actions, where actions are interpreted as transitions between the situations and STIT logic, which states only the responsibility of the agent for particular states of affairs. We discuss questions of determinism and indeterminism of actions, identification of basic actions and operations and the issue of identity. The final part of the paper is devoted to deontic categories. In particular, the applicability of the concepts of strong and weak permission and prohibition in different situational contexts, and their relationship to the two concepts of obligation: abstract and derived. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt has claimed that some of our desires are ‘internal’, i.e., our own in a special sense. I defend the idea that a desire's being internal matters in a normative, reasons-involving sense, and offer an explanation for this fact. The explanation is Kantian in spirit. We have reason to respect the desires of persons in so far as respecting them is a way to respect the persons who have them (in some cases, ourselves). But if desires matter normatively in (...) so far as they belong to persons, then it matters whether they really do belong to the persons who have them. Thus Kantian considerations explain why identification (or internality) is a normatively relevant category. This account is superior to others, and does not lead to reasons bootstrapping or a self-centred conception of deliberation. (shrink)

Although the world of sports has witnessed numerous corruption scandals, the effects of perceived corruption in sports have not been sufficiently investigated in the literature. The aim of this paper is to examine how sports team identification weakens people’s perceptions of corruption in sports, and how it dampens corruption’s negative effects on spectator behavior. The study also examines how prevalent social norms regarding corruption in a country strengthen or weaken these effects. A survey of 1,005 sports spectators from four (...) Sub-Saharan African countries reveals how the interplay between team identification and perceived corruption can encourage or discourage sports attendance under different conditions. Corruption is investigated through the theoretical lenses of the pluralistic nature of morality. Findings indicate that particularistic values linked to moral obligations toward the team collide with the universalistic values that demand fairness in sports. In addition, social norms of corruption moderate the clash between universalistic and particularistic values. (shrink)

There are two prevalent accounts of semantic normativity: the prescriptive account, which can be found in some of Wittgenstein’s remarks, and the regularity account, which may have been Sellars’s view and is nowadays defended by some antinormativists. On the former account, meanings are norms that govern the use of words; on the latter, they are regularities of use which, in themselves, do not engender any prescriptions. I argue that only the prescriptive view can account for certain platitudes about meaning, which (...) motivate the very idea of semantic normativity. After some preliminary clarifications about the form that alleged semantic norms should take in order to be prima facie plausible, I argue—against some antinormativists—that whatever normativity is involved in the meaning of words cannot be brought back to a general norm of truth as distinct from specifically semantic norms, for semantic norms already involve a norm of truth. Next, I examine what I take to be the strongest objection to semantic normativity, namely the identification of meaning with use: as use is just a bunch of facts, it cannot be attributed any normative import. Nowadays, this view has been defended by Paul Horwich. After criticizing Horwich’s claim that meaning, though not normative in itself, has unmediated normative implications, I propose a different view of the relation between use and meaning, on which meaning is not quite identical with use but is grounded on use. I propose as a model the idea of a hyperconformist social system: a system in which customs, and only customs, generate norms. I suggest that language is such a system, and describe two reasons why it is plausible for language to work like that. Finally, I analyze statements of meaning on the model of Ruth Millikan “pushmi-pullyu” representations, i.e. as having both descriptive and normative import. I point out that, however, there are exceptions to meaning’s being grounded on use, as there are cases in which semantic norms are dictated by authorities of several kinds. Lastly, I briefly discuss the suggestion that meaning supervenes on use, showing that, aside from its inherent difficulties, it does not explain why meaning would supervene on use. (shrink)

This article identifies and analyses issues related to defining and evaluating the so-called scientific imperialism. It discusses John Dupré's account, suggesting that it is overly conservative and does not offer a definition of scientific imperialism in not presenting it as a phenomenon of interdisciplinarity. It then discusses the recent account by Steve Clarke and Adrian Walsh, taking issue with ideas such as illegitimate occupation, counterfactual progress, and culturally significant values. A more comprehensive and refined framework of my own is then (...) summarized. It suggests types and aspects of scientific imperialism as a dynamic interdisciplinary relationship, distinguishing between imperialism of scope, style and standing, for example. It also suggests normative constraints on scientific imperialism. This enables us to distinguish, in principle, recommendable from non-recommendable kinds of it, while recognizing the difficulties involved in trying to do this in practice. (shrink)

Andrea Westlund's account of love involves lovers becoming a Plural Subject mirroring Margaret Gilbert's Plural Subject Theory. However, while for Gilbert the creation of a plural will involves individuals jointly committing to pool their wills and the plural will directly normatively constraining those individuals, Westlund, in contrast, sees the creation of a plural will as a continual process thus rejecting the possibility of such direct normative constraint. This rejection appears to be required to explain the flexibility that allows for a (...) central place for reciprocity in loving relationships. However, this paper argues against the existence of such flexibility and presents instead the case that variance in the normative pain of rebelling against the collective will can be accommodated by replacing Gilbert's notion of all-or-nothing pooling of wills with an account that see wills as becoming entangled through levels of identification with the plural subject. (shrink)

People’s attitudes towards social norms play a crucial role in understanding group behavior. Norm psychology accounts focus on processes of norm internalization that influence people’s norm following attitudes but pay considerably less attention to social identity and group identification processes. Social identity theory in contrast studies group identity but works with a relatively thin and instrumental notion of social norms. We argue that to best understand both sets of phenomena, it is important to integrate the insights (...) of both approaches. Social status, social identity, and social norms are considered separate phenomena in evolutionary accounts. We discuss assumptions and views that support this separation, and suggest an integrated view of our own. We argue that we should be open to the early origins of human social complexity, and conjecture that the longer that the human social world involved multi-level societies the more probable it is that norm psychology and social identity interacted in rich ways. (shrink)

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the privacy rights dilemma surrounding radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. As one example of ubiquitous information system, RFID has multitudinous applications in various industries and businesses across society. The use of this technology will have to lead to a policy setting dilemma in that a balance between individuals’ privacy concerns and the benefits that they derive from it must be drawn. After describing the basic RFID technology some of its most prevalent uses, (...) a definition of privacy is derived in the context of information systems. To illustrate current attempts at controlling the undesirable side effects of RFID, Lessig’s cyberspace framework is presented. It is found that each of Lessig’s components is inadequate at preventing individual privacy violations in RFID. The main focus within this framework is on the norms of society. The social norm mechanism that addresses privacy issues in cyberspace is the Fair Information Practices Principles (FIPP). After an analysis of these principles, it is posited that the FIPP only deal with procedural justice issues related to data collection and omit distributive and interactional justice reasoning related to the actual beneficial and detrimental outcomes to the individuals whose data is being obtained. Thus, RFID is presented in the context of the tension between the many benefits that are provided by the technology in social exchanges, and the risk it carries of the loss of privacy. The new, expanded framework recognizes both sides of the issue with the ultimate goal of providing a greater understanding of how privacy issues can be addressed with RFID technology. (shrink)

This article interprets Michael Kang's independent feature The Motel as a critique of the Asian American fantasy of post- 1965 incorporation into the multicultural US polity. The film discloses that this Asian American Dream is normatively constituted by heteronormative, middle-class, intra-racial kinship. The protagonist Ernest Chin's longing for this kind of normative Asian American family is symptomatic of his identification with the exclusionary norms of the incorporative fantasy. In a moment of disidentification, though, Ernest is able to release his (...) grip on the dream and its reciprocal grip on him. Disidentification, in my usage, is a kind of political action that both disrupts and reworks processes of social formation from within. As a contribution to the critical philosophy of race, my rendition of disidentification draws on recent developments in cultural studies and political theory to address the critical theoretical question of the psychic life of domination. (shrink)

An important merit of this book consists in its skillful marshaling and evaluation of divergent insights on a selection of controverted issues in ethical philosophy. The selection includes the identification of the good, especially intrinsic good, and what it is to be a good person; the nature of the right and the bearing of intentions and consequences on the rightness of actions; the essence of justice and the interrelations that obtain between and among the concepts of justice, law, and (...) life in society; and the question of whether one should view punishment as a means of retaliation, correction, deterrence, or restitution, or an appropriate combination of these factors. (shrink)

This paper investigates how entrepreneurs' social media usage affects corporate philanthropy. Departing from the extant literature, which focuses on the instrumental role of social media, we draw upon the normative perspective of stewardship theory and propose that entrepreneurs' social media usage promotes their ethical and prosocial motivation for corporate philanthropy. In particular, we theorize that entrepreneurs' social media usage enhances their self-perceived status and philanthropic identification, thus affecting corporate philanthropy. Our analysis of a sample of Chinese ventures provides empirical (...) support for the mediating effects of self-perceived status and philanthropic identification on the relationship between entrepreneurs' social media usage and the philanthropic propensity and intensity of their ventures. Our study has implications for the role of social media in promoting corporate philanthropy and contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship and corporate philanthropy. (shrink)

Normative theorists of migration are beginning to shift their focus away from an earlier obsession with whether the ‘liberal' or ‘legitimate’ state should have a right to exclude, and toward evaluation of how states engage in immigration control. However, with some notable exceptions – such as work of Rebecca Buxton, David Owen, Serena Parekh, and Alex Sager – this work tends not to focus on the global coordination of such control, and is still largely concerned with issues of membership. In (...) this paper I aim to show the value of shifting normative attention to the fundamentally interdependent nature of state control of migration, and the management of all forms of movement – not just settlement. This global management is greatly facilitated by the rapid digitisation of border controls. As such, I outline three aspects of the way digital border controls work – profiling, biometric identification, and the data sharing practices upon which they rest – and highlight ethical challenges of accountability, consent and the reach of the state, and entrenching global inequalities in access to movement. Ultimately, I hope to show that the globally interconnected nature of migration management is a combination of practices that normative theorists of migration should turn their attention to. (shrink)

Large-scale linkage of international clinical datasets could lead to unique insights into disease aetiology and facilitate treatment evaluation and drug development. Hereto, multi-stakeholder consortia are currently designing several disease-specific translational research platforms to enable international health data sharing. Despite the recent adoption of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the procedures for how to govern responsible data sharing in such projects are not at all spelled out yet. In search of a first, basic outline of an ethical governance framework, we (...) set out to explore relevant ethical principles and norms. We performed a systematic review of literature and ethical guidelines for principles and norms pertaining to data sharing for international health research. We observed an abundance of principles and norms with considerable convergence at the aggregate level of four overarching themes: societal benefits and value; distribution of risks, benefits and burdens; respect for individuals and groups; and public trust and engagement. However, at the level of principles and norms we identified substantial variation in the phrasing and level of detail, the number and content of norms considered necessary to protect a principle, and the contextual approaches in which principles and norms are used. While providing some helpful leads for further work on a coherent governance framework for data sharing, the current collection of principles and norms prompts important questions about how to streamline terminology regarding de-identification and how to harmonise the identified principles and norms into a coherent governance framework that promotes data sharing while securing public trust. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to provide a relational explanation of the sources of moral normativity, within a Neo-Kantian framework. To this purpose, the key notions employed are those of we-society and stance-taking, developed by Neo-Kantian philosopher Heinrich Rickert. Specifically, by resorting to such notions, the paper attempts to overcome two limits ascribed to the theory of moral normativity of Ch. Korsgaard: namely W. Smith’s objection of solipsism and S. Crowell’s problem of non-deliberate action, whereby Ch. Korsgaard’s identification (...) of the source of normativity in reflection would lead her theory to a form of solipsism and to failing to explain actions based on so-called ‘mindless coping’. In tackling these objections, the paper outlines a Rickertian inspired theory, according to which the sources of moral normativity can be explained on the basis of the heterological I-You relationship, which is the foundation of the we-society intended as a set of values, patterns of expectations, tacit consents, and procedural knowledge. (shrink)

In Freedom's Right Axel Honneth seeks to provide a theory of justice by appropriating Hegel's account of ethical substance in the Philosophy of Right, but he wants to do so without endorsing Hegel's more robust idealist commitments. I argue that this project can only succeed if Honneth can offer an alternative, comparatively robust demonstration of the rationality and normative coherence of existing social institutions. I contend that the grounds Honneth provides for this claim are insufficient for his purposes. In particular, (...) I argue that Honneth's claim that “justice and individual self-determination are mutually referential,” even were it to be accepted, would be insufficient to underwrite his more robust identification between the normative foundations of justice, autonomy and reciprocal self-realization. In the final section of the paper, I turn to Honneth's analysis of the “social institution” of friendship, which he, following Hegel, holds up as a paradigmatic instantiation of social freedom understood as, in Hegel's words, “being with oneself in another” . I argue that an analysis of the normative import of friendship wholly in terms of mutual recognition misses an important aspect of the kind of self-realization that friendship makes possible. (shrink)

If reification is the projection of a false, thing-like appearance onto society, what is de-reifying critique supposed to reveal? After distinguishing between versions of reification based on a social ontology of will from those that think of the social as a normatively constituted domain, I argue that Lukács’ work on reification fudges this distinction through his account of class. I then turn to the debate between Schmitt and Kelsen, where the will-versus-norm issue is central. I argue that the consonance (...) between ideas about reification and will-based theories like Schmitt’s is superficial, as the latter relies on identification with authority for its account of normativity, making Kelsen’s ideas about normativity stemming from an orientation toward intersubjective process more convivial. I note, however, that norm-based accounts are less amenable to radical change than will-based ones, making the link between de- reification and radical politics less direct than is often thought. (shrink)

The research reported in this article examined the influence of nurses’ attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control on maintaining patients’ privacy during hospitalization. The data were gathered from 109 nurses in six internal medicine wards at an Israeli hospital. The research was based on the theories of reasoned action and planned behavior. A positive and significant correlation was shown between nurses’ attitude to promoting and maintaining patient privacy and their planned behavior, while perceived behavioral control was the best variable (...) for predicting the nurses’ behavior. Better educated nurses believed that they had fewer resources and anticipated more obstacles in acting to promote and maintain patient privacy. This research adds a new dimension to what is already known about nurses’ attitudes to maintaining patients’ privacy, nurses’ planned behavior and their actual behavior. The practical implications of the findings are the identification of factors that influence the attitudes and behavior of nursing staff, which, in turn, will enable allocation of resources for solving difficulties and removing obstacles. The results will allow the formulation of educational programs to guide staff and also the application of policies based on both patient and nursing staff needs. (shrink)

Alongside social anthropology and discursive psychology, conversation analysis has highlighted ways in which cultural forms of perceiving and acting in the world are primarily rooted in socially shared normativity. However, when consideration turns to the origins and purposes of human affect and emotion, conversation analysis appears to face particular difficulties that arise from the over-arching focus on sense-making practices. This paper considers the proposal that psychoanalytic thinking might inform our understanding of how socially shared normativity emerges during infancy and early (...) childhood. First, a framework is sketched out that highlights the fact that from the beginning an infant’s earliest experience is bound up with those practices and social actions that make up what conversation analyst’s call members’ methods. Second, comparisons are drawn between conversation analysis and psychoanalytic accounts of early experience for infants during the first years of life. Discussion then moves to the Kleinian notion of object relations, and the concept of projective identification. Essentially, this is a theoretical account of how ‘what-was-once-one’ (the mother-infant unit) differentiates resulting in the gradual emergence of the ‘individuated being’. What is often glossed over in this account is the discursively embedded nature of projective identification; a process that is itself interdependent with the embodiment that makes up the infant’s lived engagement with the world. Whatever might constitute consciousness emerges from somatic, embodied, material-physical, tactile/affective experience – that is, a fundamentally social milieu. This raises the question of how transformation (i.e., from the social to the individual) occurs. One answer may be Winnicott’s idea of the transitional space, where the ‘good-enough’ parent is said to be somebody who can ‘contain’ both negative and positive identifications coming from the infant, transform and re-project such identifications, but in modified from. In this way the infant begins to recognise/experience what it is they are ‘feeling’. Such projective identifications are conveyed within and through the prevailing discourses that constitute all social practices. Concluding comments note that conversation analysis may find in psychoanalytic thinking a framework for understanding the interdependence between affect and action, as in psychoanalytic thought we find a thoroughly relational conception of human nature. (shrink)

In the twenty-first century, the focus of science and technology (S&T) on the human interests and the accessible interests of society, and so the rise of some questions concerning the impact of S&T on social norms, has led to embedding ethical debates in S&T policy-making. The ethics of S&T policy-making, as a representation of the relationship between ethics and S&T policy-making, is a relatively new area of applied and professional ethics that addresses the dilemmas and ethical challenges of the S&T (...) policy-making process. Understanding and recognizing the ethical components of S&T policy-making, one can develop a normative framework to assist policymakers in designing and analyzing ethical policies in the S&T field. The design and development of such a framework is the main purpose of the present study. In this study, the components of the proposed framework for ethical policy-making in S&T, their ethical and policy approaches, as well as their fundamental ethical and policy principles have been identified through studying sources and texts related to meta-ethics, normative ethics, and S&T ethics. Then, these components have been categorized in the form of steps for ethical policy-making using the thematic analysis method. Based on the results of this study, the ethical policy-making steps in S&T include problem identification, information gathering and feeding of the policy process, policy advice and policy formulation, policy implementation, and policy evaluation, which follow 9 ethical principles and 13 policy principles. (shrink)