Political liberalism began in the eighteenth century with the effort to establish a secular state in which religious differences would be tolerated. If religious views include universal principles to apply to all by force if necessary, diverse religions must conflict, perhaps fatally. In a sense, then, political liberalism was an invention to resolve a then current, awful problem. Its proponents were articulate and finally persuasive. There have been many comparable social inventions, many of which have failed, as Communism, egalitarianism, and (...) perhaps socialism have all failed to date. The extraordinary thing about political liberalism is that it seems to have succeeded in its authors' initial hope for it. It may have helped end the turmoil occasioned by religious differences. Political liberalism has since expanded in various ways under other influences, and, if it were not for Islamic fundamentalism with its seemingly coercive theocratic program, we might no longer today associate religious conflict with the core of liberalism in its actual practice. (shrink)

This expanded edition of C L Hardin's ground-breaking work on colour features a new chapter, 'Further Thoughts: 1993', in which the author revisits the dispute ...

What does it mean to "trust?" What makes us feel secure enough to place our confidence—even at times our welfare—in the hands of other people? Is it possible to "trust" an institution? What exactly do people mean when they claim to "distrust" their governments? As difficult as it may be to define, trust is essential to the formation and maintenance of a civil society. In Trust and Trustworthiness political scientist Russell Hardin addresses the standard theories of trust and articulates (...) his own new and compelling idea: that much of what we call trust can be best described as "encapsulated interest." Research into the roles of trust in our society has offered a broad range of often conflicting theories. Some theorists maintain that trust is a social virtue that cannot be reduced to strategic self-interest; others claim that trusting another person is ultimately a rational calculation based on information about that person and his or her incentives and motivations. Hardin argues that we place our trust in persons whom we believe to have strong reasons to act in our best interests. He claims that we are correct when we assume that the main incentive of those whom we trust is to maintain a relationship with us—whether it be for reasons of economic benefit or for love and friendship. Hardin articulates his theory using examples from a broad array of personal and social relationships, paying particular attention to explanations of the development of trusting relationships. He also examines trustworthiness and seeks to understand why people may behave in ways that violate their own self-interest in order to honor commitments they have made to others. The book also draws important distinctions between vernacular uses of "trust" and "trustworthiness," contrasting, for example, the type of trust (or distrust) we place in individuals with the trust we place in institutions Trust and Trustworthiness represents the culmination of important new research into the roles of trust in our society; it offers a challenging new voice in the current discourse about the origins of cooperative behavior and its consequences for social and civic life. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust. (shrink)

At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race are... confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.".

Background Ethical decision-making confidence develops from clinical expertise and is a core competency for nurse leaders. No tool exists to measure confidence levels in nurse leaders based upon an ethical decision-making framework. Aims The objective of this research was to compare ethical decision-making among nurse leaders in the U.S. and three German-speaking countries in Europe by developing and testing a newly constructed Ethical Decision-Making Confidence (EDMC) scale. Methods The cross-sectional survey included 18 theory-derived questions on ethical decision-making confidence which were (...) used to develop the scale. Participants A convenience sample of nurse leaders from the U.S. and three German-speaking countries in Europe who self-identified as holding a leadership position. Ethical Considerations Ethical approval was given by the IRB Board of a U.S. university. Participation in the survey implied voluntary consent. Results The scale’s item structure dimensionality and subscale’s reliability were analyzed and compared between nurse leaders from all four countries. A principal component analysis (PCA) produced a 15-item bi-dimensional EDMC scale yielding a skill-related (9-item) and a behavior-related (6-item) confidence dimension. EDMC subscales showed good-to-excellent internal consistency. In both subscales, U.S. nurse leaders rated their mean EDMC score higher than their German-speaking counterparts in Europe. Discussion This exploratory study is the first of its kind to focus on nurse leaders’ confidence regarding ethical decision-making in an international context. An overarching factor structure was identified, which is shared by the two samples of nurse leaders and to examine (sub)scales’ psychometric properties. Conclusion This newly developed scale is an effective tool for measuring ethical decision-making confidence in nurse leaders. The promising results of this study should be replicated to ensure validity and reliability of the EDMC scale measuring skill-related and behavior-related concepts and include nurse leaders from various cultural, social, and demographic groups. (shrink)

Hardin demonstrates that many of these structural issues can and should be distinguished from the thornier problems of utilitarian value theory, and he is able ...

In a book that challenges the most widely held ideas of why individuals engage in collective conflict, Russell Hardin offers a timely, crucial explanation of group action in its most destructive forms. Contrary to those observers who attribute group violence to irrationality, primordial instinct, or complex psychology, Hardin uncovers a systematic exploitation of self-interest in the underpinnings of group identification and collective violence. Using examples from Mafia vendettas to ethnic violence in places such as Bosnia and Rwanda, he (...) describes the social and economic circumstances that set this violence into motion. Hardin explains why hatred alone does not necessarily start wars but how leaders cultivate it to mobilize their people. He also reveals the thinking behind the preemptive strikes that contribute to much of the violence between groups, identifies the dangers of "particularist" communitarianism, and argues for government structures to prevent any ethnic or other group from having too much sway. Exploring conflict between groups such as Serbs and Croats, Hutu and Tutsi, Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants, Hardin vividly illustrates the danger that arises when individual and group interests merge. In these examples, groups of people have been governed by movements that managed to reflect their members' personal interests--mainly by striving for political and economic advances at the expense of other groups and by closing themselves off from society at large. The author concludes that we make a better and safer world if we design our social institutions to facilitate individual efforts to achieve personal goals than if we concentrate on the ethnic political makeup of our respective societies. (shrink)

Abstract.Reliable Darwinian theory shows that pure altruism cannot persist and expand over time. All higher organisms show inheritable patterns of caring and discrimination. The principal forms of discriminating altruisms among human beings are individualism (different from egoism), familialism, cronyism, tribalism, and patriotism. The promiscuous altruism called “universalism” cannot endure in the face of inescapable competition. Information can be promiscuously shared, but not so matter and energy without evoking the tragedy of the commons. Universalism is not recommendable even as an ideal. (...) Survival now requires the creation of an intellectual base for a new patriotism. (shrink)

Many realists have maintained that the success of scientific theories can be explained only if they may be regarded as approximately true. Laurens Laudan has in turn contended that a necessary condition for a theory's being approximately true is that its central terms refer, and since many successful theories of the past have employed central terms which we now understand to be non-referential, realism cannot explain their success. The present paper argues that a realist can adopt a view of reference (...) according to which a theory might plausibly be said to be approximately true even though its central terms do not refer, or alternatively, he may construe reference in such a way as to assign reference to a range of successful older theories which includes Laudan's purported counterexamples. (shrink)

Hume's place in history -- Moral psychology -- Strategic analysis -- Convention -- Political theory -- Justice as order -- Utilitarianism -- Value theory -- Retrospective.

Rational choice and other accounts of trust base it in objective assessments of the risks and benefits of trusting. But rational subjects must choose in the light of what knowledge they have, and that knowledge determines their capacities for trust. This is an epistemological issue, but not at the usual level of the philosophy of knowledge. Rather, it is an issue of pragmatic rationality for a given actor. It is commonly argued that trust is inherently embedded in iterated, thick relationships. (...) But such relationships are merely one source of relevant knowledge in a street-level epistemological account. Early experience may heavily influence later capacity for trust. For example, bad experience may lead to lower levels of trust and therefore fewer opportunities for mutual gain. (shrink)

What ecological advantages do animals gain by being able to detect, extract and exploit wavelength information? What are the advantages of representing that information as hue qualities? The benefits of adding chromatic to achromatic vision, marginal in object detection, become apparent in object recognition and receiving biological signals. It is argued that this improved performance is a direct consequence of the fact that many animals' visual systems reduce wavelength information to combinations of four basic hues. This engenders a simple categorical (...) scheme that permits a rich amount of sensory information to be rapidly and efficiently employed by cognitive machinery of limited capacity. (shrink)

If, as Saunders & van Brakel assert, hue, lightness, and saturation characterize artificial color spaces and not the colors of everyday life, one would expect those color spaces to have limited relevance to our understanding of color phenomena and to be of little practical application. This is not the case. Although people perceive these and equivalent color dimensions holistically rather than analytically, they are able to use such triples to categorize the colors of their environment.

In his account of power, Bertrand Russell combines a perverse psychological thesis about a will to power for its own sake with an acute perception of different forms power takes. The psychology is that of the most brutal leaders of the 1930s, when Russell wrote. His account focuses on the power of a political leader to compel a following as Hitler, Stalin, and others did. But the strength of his account is its analysis of three distinct forms of power: one (...) grounded in resources, such as weapons, and the others grounded in the coordination of large numbers of people, either by the force of ideas or by the force of institutional arrangements. In his sharpest arguments, Russell applies his coordination account to the difficulties individuals face in controlling democratic governments. (shrink)

There can be no relevant cardinal assessment of the welfares of individuals that would allow traditional comparisons of average and total welfare of whole societies to be made. Given that cardinally additive welfare measures are unavailable, I work out some of the implications of an ordinal utilitarian analysis of international distributional issues. I first address the general problem of utilitarian comparisons between aggregates, then the nature of ordinal transfers between groups or nations, and then the complications that population growth in (...) impoverished nations entails for such comparisons. I conclude with remarks on the difficulties and the benefits of thinking ordinally in general. (shrink)

This book tackles the problem of overpopulation with an honesty and fearlessness that is unrivalled. Hardin suggests radical approaches to overpopulation and considers the consequences. This book is an intellectual feast that will enrage, disturb, and challenge the reader at every page.

The central argument of this book is that liberalism, constitutionalism, and democracy, as well as, specifically, liberal constitutional democracy all work, when they do, because they serve the mutual advantage of the politically effective groups in the society through coordination of those groups on a political and, perhaps, economic order. These arguments are applied both to the early history of constitutional developments in the United States and to contemporary transitions from autocratic regimes to market democracies. A subsidiary claim is that (...) constitutional political institutions and democratic procedures generally require not so much active support as merely acquiescence in order to survive and work. These are explanatory theses, not normative claims, but they have relevance for normative claims if one takes seriously some relative of Kant's dictum that ought implies can. If we are to insist that some form of government is normatively right for a particular society, we must be able to say that it would or could work for that society. It is commonly argued that what makes democracy right is that it works by consent. If so, it is such a distressingly minimal form of consent—acquiescence—as to be normatively disqualified. If we rule out mere acquiescence as adequate for consent, it seems likely that no credible argument can be adduced to defend liberal constitutional democracy in any detail on grounds of consent or contractarianism. Hence, concern for workability, which should be central to any moral assessment of principles of social order, undercuts the entire consent school of political theory. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Participatory Democracy Social Capital and Participatory Democracy Ideal Theory Deliberative Democracy Audience Democracy Corporate Democracy Normative Claims for Democracy Concluding Remarks Notes References.

Criteria are given to characterize mature theories in contradistinction to developing theories. We lean heavily on the physical sciences. An established theory is defined as a mature one with known validity limits. The approximate truth of such theories is thereby given a quantitative character. Superseding theories do not falsify established theories because the latter are protected by their validity limits. This view of scientific realism leads to ontological levels and cumulativity of knowledge. It is applied to a defense of realism (...) against recent attacks by Laudan. (shrink)