This paper explores the sense in which rational requirements govern our attitudes like belief and intention. I argue that there is a tension between the idea that rational requirements govern attitudes understood as standing states and the attractive idea that we can directly satisfy the requirements by performing reasoning. I identify the tension by (a) illustrating how a dispositional conception of belief can cause trouble for the idea that we can directly revise our attitudes through reasoning by (...) considering John Broome's view, and (b) advancing a general argument that a standing state cannot be directly affected by reasoning. I then propose a solution: by recognizing the proper targets of rational requirements as occurrent, rather than dispositional attitudes, we can preserve the idea that we can directly satisfy rational requirements through reasoning. (shrink)

The literature on public perceptions of, and attitudes towards, nanotechnology used in the agrifood sector is reviewed. Research into consumer perceptions and attitudes has focused on general applications of nanotechnology, rather than within the agrifood sector. Perceptions of risk and benefit associated with different applications of nanotechnology, including agrifood applications, shape consumer attitudes, and acceptance, together with ethical concerns related to environmental impact or animal welfare. Attitudes are currently moderately positive across all areas of application. The (...) occurrence of a negative or positive incident in the agri-food sector may crystallise consumer views regarding acceptance or rejection of nanotechnology products. •Acceptance of agrifood nanotechnology based on perceptions of risk, benefit and ethics.•Attitudes towards nanotechnology in general are currently moderately positive.•Occurrence of a major nanotechnology-related "event" may crystallise consumer attitude. (shrink)

A growing body of evidence suggests that the informed consent process, in which patients are warned about potential side effects of a treatment, can trigger a nocebo effect where expectations about side effects increase side effect occurrence. This has sparked an ethical debate about how much information patients ought to receive before a treatment while trying to balance the moral principles of patient autonomy and nonmaleficence. In keeping with the principle of patient autonomy, the opinion of patients themselves in relation (...) to how much information they want about side effects is of utmost relevance in this debate. The literature was searched to identify surveys assessing patient attitudes towards side effect information. Across a broad variety of patient populations, treatment types, and countries, the majority of patients wished to be fully informed of potential side effects, particularly in relation to frequent and severe side effects, while only a small minority wanted minimal or no information at all. Results from this review suggest that nocebo research should focus on methods of avoiding nocebo effects of informed consent while ensuring that patients are well-informed about potential side effects. (shrink)

What is involved in the consciousness of a conscious, "occurrent" propositional attitude, such as a thought, a sudden conjecture or a conscious decision? And what is the relation of such consciousness to attention? I hope the intrinsic interest of these questions provides sufficient motivation to allow me to start by addressing them. We will not have a full understanding either of consciousness in general, nor of attention in general, until we have answers to these questions. I think there are (...) constitutive features of these states which can be identified by broadly philosophical investigation, and in the early part of this paper I will try to do some of that identification. -/- Beyond the intrinsic interest of the topic, the nature of such conscious attitudes is highly pertinent to a philosophical account of psychological self-knowledge. So I will also say something about the significance of the constitutive features of these conscious attitudes for a philosophical account of how it can be that a thinker has a distinctive kind of knowledge of some of his mental states. The general challenge in this area is to find anything intermediate between the unexceptionable but uninformative, on the one hand, and the absolutely unbelievable on the other. (shrink)

Organizations have long struggled to find ways to reduce the occurrence of unethical behaviors by employees. Unfortunately, time theft, a common and costly form of ethical misconduct at work, has been understudied by ethics researchers. In order to remedy this gap in the literature, we used the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to investigate the antecedents of time theft, which includes behaviors such as arriving later to or leaving earlier from work than scheduled, taking additional or longer breaks than is (...) acceptable, and on-the-job daydreaming. We surveyed 135 employed undergraduate business students regarding the TPB variables at Time 1. Two months later, participants reported the frequency they engaged in time theft since Time 1. Results indicate that behavioral, normative, and control beliefs significantly predicted attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, respectively. Attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, in turn, were significantly related to time theft intentions, which predicted later enactment of time theft. Thus, employers can decrease time theft by primarily focusing on altering employees’ attitudes toward time theft, followed by reducing social pressures to engage in it, and lastly, by implementing organizational practices that make it difficult to commit time theft. (shrink)

Abstract In order to avoid the occurrence of boar taint, castration of piglets without pain relief is a common practice in pork production. Due to increasing animal welfare concerns, the practice will be banned in organic agriculture from 2012 and alternative methods will have to be implemented. An important factor for the successful implementation of such alternatives is consumers’ acceptance of the methods, as consumers’ daily buying decisions are crucial to the further development of the organic pork sector. Thus, this (...) paper explores organic consumers’ attitudes towards piglet castration without pain relief and three alternative methods and examines which aspects of these alternatives are important to consumers of organic products. The analysis of nine focus group discussions in Germany conducted in fall 2009 and involving a total of 89 participants, shows that castration without pain relief in organic farming was unacceptable for participants. Animal welfare, food safety, taste, and costs were principal aspects that participants used to assess the three alternatives. Participants had mainly favorable attitudes towards castration with anesthesia and analgesia. Although participants had some concerns regarding the fattening of boars (taste), there was openness towards this alternative due to its perceived naturalness. Immunocastration was seen quite critically because participants feared that this alternative might lead to (hormone) residues in meat. Overall, the results suggest that fattening of boars and castration with anesthesia and analgesia could be acceptable alternatives to consumers of organic pork. Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9350-2 Authors Astrid Heid, Department of Agricultural and Food Marketing, University of Kassel, Steinstraße 19, 37213 Witzenhausen, Germany Ulrich Hamm, Department of Agricultural and Food Marketing, University of Kassel, Steinstraße 19, 37213 Witzenhausen, Germany Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)

Evidentialism as an account of epistemic justification is the position that a doxastic attitude, D, towards a proposition, p, is justified for an intentional agent, S, at a time, t, iff having D towards p fits S’s evidence at t, where the fittingness of an attitude on one’s evidence is typically analyzed in terms of evidential support for the propositional contents of the attitude. Evidentialism is a popular and well-defended account of justification. In this paper, I raise a problem for (...) evidentialism on the grounds that there can be epistemic circumstances in which a proposition is manifestly and nonmisleadingly supported by an agent’s total evidence, and yet believing the proposition is not justified for the agent. As I argue, in order for an agent to have justification to believe a proposition, it needs to be the case that the belief as possessed by the agent could exhibit certain epistemic good making features, e.g., the propositional content of the belief as possessed by the agent would be supported by the agent’s evidence. As I demonstrate, the fact that a proposition, p, is supported by an agent’s total evidence at a time, t, doesn’t guarantee that a belief in p as possessed by the agent at t could exhibit any epistemic good making features, including having propositional contents (i.e., p) that would be supported by the agent’s evidence. Thus, the fact that a proposition is supported by an agent’s evidence doesn’t guarantee that the agent has justification to believe the proposition. (shrink)

Contempt is typically studied as a uniquely human moral emotion. However, this approach has yielded inconclusive results. We argue this is because the folk affect concept “contempt” has been inaccurately mapped onto basic affect systems. “Contempt” has features that are inconsistent with a basic emotion, especially its protracted duration and frequently cold phenomenology. Yet other features are inconsistent with a basic attitude. Nonetheless, the features of “contempt” functionally cohere. To account for this, we revive and reconfigure thesentimentconstruct using the notion (...) of evolved functional specialization. We develop the Attitude–Scenario–Emotion (ASE) model of sentiments, in which enduring attitudes represent others' social-relational value and moderate discrete emotions across scenarios. Sentiments are functional networks of attitudes and emotions. Distinct sentiments, includinglove,respect,like,hate, andfear, track distinct relational affordances, and each is emotionally pluripotent, thereby serving both bookkeeping and commitment functions within relationships. The sentimentcontemptis an absence ofrespect; from cues to others' low efficacy, it represents them as worthless and small, mutingcompassion,guilt, andshameand potentiatinganger,disgust, andmirth. This sentiment is ancient yet implicated in the ratcheting evolution of human ultrasocialty. The manifolds of thecontemptnetwork, differentially engaged across individuals and populations, explain the features of “contempt,” its translatability, and its variable experience as “hot” or “cold,” occurrent or enduring, and anger-like or disgust-like. This rapprochement between psychological anthropology and evolutionary psychology contributes both methodological and empirical insights, with broad implications for understanding the functional and cultural organization of social affect. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study is to validate a scale to measure attitudes toward plagiarism. The survey questionnaire was administered to a purposive sample of 300 graduate Ph.D. students from private, state, and central universities. A confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate attitudes and subjective norms toward plagiarism. The scale demonstrated good internal consistency, composite reliability, and construct validity. Positive attitudes toward plagiarism, negative attitudes toward plagiarism, and subjective norms demonstrated a high level of (...) convergence among the items thereby supporting the convergent validity of these constructs. The study extends the theory of planned behavior to predict intentions to plagiarize. Positive attitudes, negative attitudes, and subjective norms were related to plagiarism. Positive attitudes toward plagiarism indicate an individual’s tolerance, acceptability, and positive perception toward an unethical task. Negative attitudes condemn plagiarism and the third dimension, subjective norms toward plagiarism, reflect the thinking and the occurrence of plagiarism and the acceptance of such behavior in academic and research settings. (shrink)

BackgroundContemporary medical practice is complicated by many dilemmas requiring ethical sensitivity and moral reasoning.ObjectiveTo investigate physicians’ experience in ethical decision-making and their attitude towards ethics consultation.MethodsIn a cross-sectional survey 126 physicians representing the main clinics of Pleven University hospital were investigated by a self-administered questionnaire. The following variables were measured: occurrence, nature and ways of resolving ethical problems; physicians’ attitudes towards ethics consultation; physicians’ opinions on qualities and skills of an ethics consultant, and socio-demographic characteristics. Data analysis included descriptive (...) statistics, χ2 and t-test.ResultsResponse rate was 88.9% (n = 112). Men and women were equally represented (48.2%–51.8%). The sample consisted of experienced physicians: 42.9% had 11–20 years experience, and 33% had 21–30 years. According to 84.8% of respondents, ethical problems have been discussed in their specialty. Predominant dilemmas included relationships with patients and relatives (76.8%) and team work (67.6%). Over ¾ of physicians needed an advice in solving ethical problems. Ninety six percent responded positively to ethics consultation. They would mainly request it for resolving conflicts (72.5%), and in case of concern for the rightness of their decisions (52.7%). The image of an ethics consultant was built of clinical competence (70.9%), ability to deal with conflicts (59.1%), communication skills (58.2%), tolerance for different views (55.4%), and a special qualification in ethics (52.7%).ConclusionsThe study underlined that Pleven University hospital physicians face similar ethical dilemmas as their colleagues in other countries do. The expressed positive attitudes to ethics consultation should serve as a basis for further research and development of ethics consultation services. (shrink)

This paper offers a reconstruction of Külpe’s theory of cognitive attitudes from the perspective of contemporary debates about cognitive phenomenology. I argue that Külpe’s view contrasts with analytic mainstream approaches to the same phenomena in at least two respects. First, Külpe claims, cognitive experiences are best described in terms of occurrent cognitive acts or attitudes toward sensory, imagistic or intellectual contents. Second, occurrent cognitive attitudes are intransitively conscious in the sense that they are experienced by, (...) or phenomenally manifest to, the subject. I call the combination of those two claims the conscious cognitive attitudes theory. I suggest that, despite some difficulties, this theory offers a worth-considering alternative to contentual and/or nonphenomenological theories of cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

Considering the organization’s ethical context as a framework to investigate workplace phenomena, this field study of military reserve personnel examines the relationships among perceptions of psychosocial group variables, such as cohesiveness, helping behavior and peer leadership, employee job attitudes, and the likelihood of individuals’ withholding on-the-job effort, a form of organizational misbehavior. Hypotheses were tested with a sample of 290 individuals using structural equation modeling, and support for negative relationships between perceptions of positive group context and withholding effort by (...) individual employees was found. In addition, individual effort-performance expectancy and individual job satisfaction were negatively related to withholding effort. The findings provide evidence that individual perceptions of positive group context play a key role in the presence of misbehavior at work. The results indicate that positive group context might be an important element of ethical climate that should be managed to temper occurrence of such adverse work behavior. (shrink)

People often sincerely assert or judge one thing (for example, that all the races are intellectually equal) while at the same time being disposed to act in a way evidently quite contrary to the espoused attitude (for example, in a way that seems to suggest an implicit assumption of the intellectual superiority of their own race). Such cases should be regarded as ‘in-between’ cases of believing, in which it's neither quite right to ascribe the belief in question nor quite right (...) to say that the person lacks the belief. (shrink)

Consider our attitude toward painful and pleasant experiences depending on when they occur. A striking but rarely discussed feature of our attitude which Derek Parfit has emphasized is that we strongly wish painful experiences to lie in our past and pleasant experiences to lie in our future. Our asymmetrical attitudes toward future and past pains and pleasures can be forcefully illustrated by means of a thought-experiment described by Parfit (1984, 165) which I will paraphrase as follows: You are in (...) the hospital to have an extremely painful but completely safe operation for which you can be given no anaesthetic. In order to ease recovery, you know that the hospital will give you drugs that cause you to forget your operation as soon as it is completed. You wake up, not remembering having gone to sleep, and ask the nurse if your operation has been completed. She tells you that there were two patients for this operation and she cannot remember which you are: either you already had your operation and it was the longest such operation ever performed, lasting ten hours, or else you are the other patient in which case your operation is imminent, but will last only one hour. 1. I wish to thank Sarah Broadie for comments on a version of this paper and Derek Parfit for conversations on this subject. (shrink)

This paper investigates the attitudes of two Islamic and Christian thinkers, Saint Aquinas and Mulla Sadra Shirazi, about occurrence and eternity hypothesis issue. Aquinas faces two ideas. The first approach is eternity of the world based on Aristotle's theory and his followers another approach is the world temporal occurrence derived from Christian scriptures. Aquinas believes that the reasons presented for proving the world's occurrence are not convincing and therefore criticizes them. Although he accepts the universe occurrence he has a (...) worshiping view to it and finally regards the world's eternity and occurrence as an antinomical problem. In contrast, Mulla Sadra who has accepted the occurrence does not consider a starting point for the issue and in turn tries to prove it by Substantial Motion approach and therefore regardless of worship aspect of the issue and by employing a rational approach he gains a higher status than Aquinas. (shrink)

This research updates and significantly extends Akaah and Riordon’s (J Market Res 26:112–120, 1989 ) evaluation of ethical perceptions of marketing research misconduct among marketing research professionals. In addition to examining changes in perceptions toward key marketing research practices over time, we assess professionals’ judgments on the ethicality, importance, and occurrence of a variety of new marketing research ethics situations in both online and offline contexts. In a second study, we assess ethical judgments of the public at large using a (...) representative sample of US consumers—key stakeholders ignored in prior research on unethical marketing research practices. Generally speaking, disapproval of unethical research conduct has grown across the board in the last 20 years for both managers and marketing researchers. The same misconduct elicits a stronger disapproval in the online environment compared to the offline environment. Compared to marketing researchers, managers tend to think that unethical research conduct occurs more frequently. Those who conduct marketing research or use its findings (i.e., marketing researchers and managers) are less tolerant of unethical research conduct than the general public. (shrink)

This manuscript focuses on a problem for Millian Russellianism raised by Fine : “[Assuming] that we are in possession of the information that a Fs and the information that a Gs, it appears that we are sometimes justified in putting this information ‘together’ and inferring that a both Fs and Gs. But how?” It will be my goal to determine a Millian-Russellian solution to this problem. I will first examine Nathan Salmon’s Millian-Russellian solution, which appeals to a non-semantic and subjective (...) notion of coordination defined in terms of guises. I will object that in order to convincingly solve a specific version of Fine’s problem, identity conditions for guises must be provided. On the other hand, the most plausible way to individuate guises is by means of the equivalence classes of coordination itself. But, if so, the guise-based strategy to solve Fine’s problem risks being circular; in addition, there are serious doubts that coordination is transitive. An alternative Millian-Russellian solution to Fine’s problem will then be explored, which gives up guises and employs, instead, a non-semantic and subjective relation of coordination not defined in terms of guises, along with occurrences of Russellian propositions of a special sort, for which identity conditions will be provided and via which token attitude states intuitively more fine-grained than guises will be individuated. (shrink)

It has recently become popular to apply expressivism outside the moral domain, e.g., to truth and epistemic justification. This paper examines the prospects of generalizing expressivism to taste. This application has much initial plausibility. Many of the standard arguments used in favor of moral expressivism seem to apply to taste. For example, it seems conceivable that you and I disagree about whether chocolate is delicious although we don’t disagree about the facts, which suggests that taste judgments are noncognitive attitudes (...) rather than beliefs. However, there is also a striking difference between moral disagreements and disagreements about taste. Faced with a moral disagreement, we intuit that either party is at fault. Disagreements about taste, by contrast, are occurrences where neither party intuitively is at fault. This leads to a dilemma. On the one hand, if a disagreement in attitude is not intuited as faultless, then it seems implausible if applied to taste. If, on the other hand, a disagreement in attitude is a disagreement that we intuit as faultless, then it seems implausible if applied to the moral domain. The aim of this paper is to examine how an expressivist can avoid this dilemma. (shrink)

Marc Hooghe – Free University of Brussels, BelgiumWhen the television set first made its appearance in American households during the 1950s, some expected that the new medium would provide a major boost to civic engagement and political awareness. After all, for the first time in history all citizens would get the opportunity to witness important public events and to follow the debates in parliament.Half a century later, the tide has clearly turned for television. Several authors now argue that the spread (...) of television is one of the major causes for the decline of public life and social cohesion. Putnam considers television to be a key culprit for the gradual erosion of social capital within American society. In other research, it is stated that watching television cultivates feelings of insecurity and leads to the spread of distrust, while television is also accused of strengthening a more cynical outlook toward politics and society, in what has been labeled a “video malaise” diagnosis.Proponents of the video malaise argument, however, differ with regard to the causal mechanism they invoke to explain the negative effects of television. In his study on the decline of civic engagement in the United States, Robert Putnam relies on a time replacement effect by suggesting that the spread of television, by itself, could be responsible for as much as a quarter of the observed decline: the time spent on television is no longer available for other, more civic activities and for political participation.Other authors invoke attitudinal effects: maybe television does not affect behaviour, but it could lead to the development of specific value patterns among its audience. Opinions differ on the question whether a more negative and cynical style of covering political news is to be blamed for this effect or rather the increasing amount of entertainment programmes on commercial television.Other authors have argued against this pessimistic assessment of the influence of television. Several arguments are put forward to counter the video malaise claim. First of all, empirical evidence about the alleged negative effects of watching television is not unequivocal: most studies do not reveal significant or strong effects.Although bivariate analysis often shows a clear relation between television viewing behaviour and civic attitudes, after introducing control variables, these effects are usually quite moderate, suggesting the occurrence of self-selection effects, rather than socialization effects.Other studies show that television can also have positive effects: watching the television news is positively associated with political interest and with a more positive outlook toward the political system. Recent experiments demonstrate quite convincingly that exposure to political information on television can boost political knowledge and engagement levels.The basic argument here is that we should not only look at how many hours people spend in front of their television set, but that we should also pay attention to the kind of programmes they are watching: while amusement programmes may have negative effects, we expect a more positive outcome from news and current affairs programmes. Still other authors have argued that not only the content of the programmes is important, but also the channel people prefer.While public broadcasting could or should stimulate civic attitudes, commercial stations will show a tendency to broadcast a totally different kind of programmes, resulting in less civic-minded value patterns among its audience. Swedish and Belgian studies, at least, show marked differences in the value patterns of people preferring public broadcasting versus those who prefer commercial stations.These different arguments have resulted in an animated debate between authors like Robert Putnam, stressing the negative effects of prolonged television viewing, and others like Pippa Norris or Kenneth Newton, claiming that watching the television news is positively associated with political interest and political participation.Bringing empirical evidence into this debate is notoriously difficult. The first, and major problem is that it is almost impossible to rely on longitudinal research in order to detect television effects. Communication research therefore routinely relies on laboratory experiments, raising the question whether the results of this kind of experiment can be generalized into real world circumstances.A second problem is that thus far, we do not have access to survey data in which all three possible factors were questioned simultaneously. In fact, only in a few Western societies is the audience reached by public broadcasting large enough to be represented in a satisfactory manner in a general population survey.In this article we will rely on a 1998 Flemish population survey, which included questions about the time people spend in front of their television set, and the kind of programmes they prefer, but also the station they tune in to regularly. This survey also included various questions on participation in voluntary associations, which allows us to test Putnam’s claim that the medium exerts a negative influence on social capital by reducing civic participation, thus diminishing the time people are exposed to the experience of these ‘learning schools of democracy’.Furthermore, Belgian society offers an ideal setting to test the thesis on the importance of commercial vs. public broadcasting: the television market in the country is divided almost evenly between the public broadcasting service and various commercial stations.The survey therefore offers all the necessary material for trying to disentangle the causal mechanisms between watching television and civic attitudes and behaviour.The survey was based on official population records, resulting in 1341 face-to-face interviews, and it proved to be representative for the Dutch-speaking population of Belgium.With the results of this survey, we try to test the alleged causal mechanisms between television and civic attitudes, focusing first on Putnam’s claim that prolonged television watching reduces civic participation. Secondly, we address the claim that television has a direct impact on civic attitudes. Then we go on to analyze the impact of the programmes our respondents preferred, and the relation with the kind of station they prefer. (shrink)

A well-known challenge for contextualists is to account for disagreement. Focusing on moral contextualism, this paper examines recent attempts to address this challenge by using the standard expressivist explanation, i.e., explaining disagreement in terms of disagreement in attitude rather than disagreement in belief. Assuming that the moral disagreements can be explained in terms of disagreement in attitude, this may seem as a simple solution for contextualists. However, it turns out to be easier said than done. This paper examines a number (...) of different ways in which disagreement in attitude can be incorporated into a contextualist framework and argues that each suggestion is problematic. In particular, the purported explanations of disagreement fail to adequately explain intuitive occurrences of disagreement, the robustness of disagreement intuitions and/or locate the disagreement in the intuitively right place. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Act-based theories of content hold that propositions are identical to acts of predication that we perform in thought and talk. To undergo an occurrent thought with a particular content is just to perform the act of predication that individuates that content. But identifying the content of a thought with the performance of an act of predication makes it difficult to explain the intentionality of bouletic mental activity, like wanting and desiring. In this paper, I argue that this difficulty (...) is insurmountable: the contents of occurrent desires cannot be determined by acts of predication. (shrink)

There is good evidence that the cerebral cortex is the seat of the human mind, so an understanding of representation in the cortex could help us understand the nature of mental representation. I argue that the cortex represents in the way that models do; it is an evolutionarily designed model-building machine. The cortex belongs to a general class of model-building machines that produce isomorphisms to structures in the environment by interacting with them. The representational content of a particular model produced (...) by such a machine is determined by the operational principles according to which the machine was designed, and the history of machine-environment interaction that resulted in the production of that model. ;I explore the possibility that the operational principles according to which the cerebral cortex was designed, i.e. aspects of its causal profile that were selected for, are those described by the SINBAD theory. The SINBAD theory implies that it is the biological function of the cortex to make its constituent neurons come to interact in a way that is isomorphic to regularities structured around "sources of correlation". In the context of this isomorphism, it is the function of a particular SINBAD cell to correspond to a particular source of correlation, the one that is responsible for that cell's tuning. In other words, the cortex builds models of environmental regularities structured around sources of correlation. ;Understanding mental representation as cortical representation of this kind allows us to explain a number of important and/or puzzling features of mental intentionality as we know it: the possibility of equivocation, misrepresentation, empty representation, and twin cases, the relation between concepts and inferential roles, how it is possible for us to acquire objective concepts and beliefs via our subjective and idiosyncratic senses, and the distinction between usefulness and truth. I conclude by outlining an account of the occurrent propositional attitudes as non-representational uses of a SINBAD model that has been built up through experience. Non-representational use is cashed out in terms of causal role. Together with an account of the non-occurrent attitudes, this yields an understanding of the nature of psychological explanation. (shrink)

Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen | : This paper explores a novel metaethical theory according to which value judgments express conditional beliefs held by those who make them. Each value judgment expresses the belief that something is the case on condition that something else is the case. The paper aims to reach a better understanding of this view and to highlight some of the challenges that lie ahead. The most pressing of these revolves around the correct understanding of the nature of the relevant (...) cognitive attitudes. It is suggested that the distinction between “dormant attitudes” and “occurrent attitudes” helps us to understand these conditional beliefs. | : Cet article explore une nouvelle théorie méta-éthique selon laquelle les jugements de valeur expriment les croyances conditionnelles des sujets qui les font. Chaque jugement de valeur exprimerait la croyance selon laquelle quelque chose est le cas à la condition que quelque chose d’autre le soit. L’objectif de cet article est de parvenir à une meilleure compréhension de ce point de vue et de souligner certaines de ses difficultés. La plus urgente d’entre elles concerne la compréhension adéquate de la nature des attitudes cognitives pertinentes. Nous suggérons que la distinction entre « attitudes dormantes » et « attitudes occurrentes » permettrait de mieux comprendre les croyances conditionnelles. (shrink)

The Substitution Anomaly is the failure of intuitively coreferential expressions of the corresponding forms “that S” and “the proposition that S” to be intersubstitutable salva veritate under certain ‘selective’ attitudinal verbs that grammatically accept both sorts of terms as complements. The Substitution Anomaly poses a direct threat to the basic assumptions of Millianism, which predict the interchangeability of “that S” and “the proposition that S”. Jeffrey King has argued persuasively that the most plausible Millian solution is to treat the selective (...) attitudinal verbs as lexically ambiguous , having distinct meanings associated with the different sorts of complement terms. In opposition this approach, I argue that there are independent reasons for maintaining the univocality of these verbs and that this can be done while accommodating the Substitution Anomaly and without sacrificing the transparency of the relevant attitude ascriptions. In particular, I show how, by employing an extended version of Edward Zalta’s system of intensional logic for abstract objects, one can construct for a regimented fragment ℜ of English containing the relevant vocabulary a semantical theory ℑ which (a) treats ℜ’s selective attitudinal verbs as univocal, (b) regards genuine terms as occurring transparently under such verbs in sentences of ℜ, and yet (c) predicts the occurrence of the Substitution Anomaly in ℜ. (shrink)

The occurrence of earthquakes is usually ignored or discounted as an environmental issue, but the environmental relevance of the science of earthquake prediction is demonstrable. The social consequences of such predictions, when they are accurate, and even (once a general pattern of accuracy has been achieved) when they fail, have implications of such varied environmental issues as land-use control, building codes, social and economic costs (for predictions made when no earthquake occurs or for failures to predict earthquakes which do occur). (...) Lay members of the public are more directly involved in programs of earthquake prediction than in almost all other instances of scientific prediction, if only because the scientific findings require public participation in order to have any effect at all. Attention must be paid, accordingly, to the effect of specific public and social values on the practice of earthquake prediction-ranging from such broadly based ones as conceptions of the general relation between man and nature to narrower ones like the cost-benefit analysis of a program of earthquake prediction itself. Because of the close connection between the efficacy of earthquake prediction and public attitudes, moreover, certain questions concerning the social character of “normal” science and the deprofessionalization of scientific institutions are highlighted in this context. (shrink)

The type of cognitive theory of emotion traditionally espoused by philosophers of mind makes two central claims. First, that the occurrence of propositional attitudes is essential to the occurrence of emotions. Second, that the identity of a particular emotional state depends upon the propositional attitudes that it involves. In this paper I try to show that there is little hope of developing a theory of emotion which makes these claims true. I examine the underlying defects of the programme, (...) and show that several recent variants fail to repair these defects. Furthermore, even if such a theory could be developed, it would not achieve many of the things that we look to a theory of emotion for. I argue that philosophers should turn their attention to new and more promising approaches. These have been developed by various of the special sciences, while philosophy has remained enthralled by traditional, propositional attitude psychology. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the processing of informal arguments, that is, arguments involving “probable truth.” A model of informal argument processing is presented that is based upon Hample's (1977) expansion of Toulmin's (1958) model of argument structure. The model postulates that a claim activates an attitude, the two components forming a complex that in turn activates reasons. Furthermore, the model holds occurrence of the reason, or possibly the claim and the reason, activates values. Three experiments are described that provide (...) support for the model. (shrink)

I argue for the existence of imaginative beliefs: mental states that are imaginative in format and doxastic in attitude. I advance two arguments for this thesis. First, there are imaginings that play the functional roles of belief. Second, there are imaginings that play the epistemic roles of belief. These arguments supply both descriptive and normative grounds for positing imaginative beliefs. I also argue that this view fares better than alternatives that posit distinct imaginative and doxastic states to account for the (...) same phenomena. Along the way, I demonstrate the theoretical significance of imaginative beliefs by showing how they pose a challenge for standard taxonomies of the mind, clarify the sense in which imagination is occurrent and voluntary, explain the justificatory role of the imagination, and point to a deep but underappreciated symmetry between imagistic and non-imagistic thought. (shrink)

In a 2005 paper Ólafur Páll Jónsson presents a puzzle that turns on intentional identity and definite descriptions. He considers eight solutions and rejects them all, thus leaving the puzzle unsolved. In this paper I put forward a solution. The puzzle is this. Little Lotta wants most of all a bicycle for her birthday, but she gets none. Distracted by the gifts she does receive, she at first does not think about the bike. But when seeing her tricycle, she is (...) reminded of the bike. The question is how we are to analyse these two occurrences of ‘the bike’ in the absence of a unique bike that Lotta wants. So the semantics of ‘the bike’ needs to be spelt out, and it must be made explicit what the complements of Lotta’s attitudes are. My analysis shows that the attributer’s usage of ‘the bike’ blurs the distinction between a second-order and a first-order intension (a property concept and a property, respectively). My solution can be summed up in this two-premise argument. (a) In the state-of-affairs S, the property of being a bike is the extension of the property concept the property such that Lotta wants an instance of it more than any other; (b) in S, Lotta does not think about/is reminded of the property that she wants an instance of more than any other; (c) therefore, in S Lotta does not think about/is reminded of the property of being a bike. This solution requires looking beyond the confines of denotational semantics, which all of Jónsson’s eight solution candidates belong to. (shrink)

I discuss the attitude of Jewish law sources from the 2nd–:5th centuries to the imprecision of measurement. I review a problem that the Talmud refers to, somewhat obscurely, as impossible reduction. This problem arises when a legal rule specifies an object by referring to a maximized measurement function, e.g., when a rule applies to the largest part of a divided whole, or to the first incidence that occurs, etc. A problem that is often mentioned is whether there might be hypothetical (...) situations involving more than one maximal value of the relevant measurement and, given such situations, what is the pertinent legal rule. Presumption of simultaneous occurrences or equally measured values are also a source of embarrassment to modern legal systems, in situations exemplified in the paper, where law determines a preference based on measured values. I contend that the Talmudic sources discussing the problem of impossible reduction were guided by primitive insights compatible with fuzzy logic presentation of the inevitable uncertainty involved in measurement. I maintain that fuzzy models of data are compatible with a positivistic epistemology, which refuses to assume any precision in the extra-conscious world that may not be captured by observation and measurement. I therefore propose this view as the preferred interpretation of the Talmudic notion of impossible reduction. Attributing a fuzzy world view to the Talmudic authorities is meant not only to increase our understanding of the Talmud but, in so doing, also to demonstrate that fuzzy notions are entrenched in our practical reasoning. If Talmudic sages did indeed conceive the results of measurements in terms of fuzzy numbers, then equality between the results of measurements had to be more complicated than crisp equations. The problem of impossible reduction could lie in fuzzy sets with an empty core or whose membership functions were only partly congruent. Reduction is impossible may thus be reconstructed as there is no core to the intersection of two measures. I describe Dirichlet maps for fuzzy measurements of distance as a rough partition of the universe, where for any region A there may be a non-empty set of - _A, where the problem of impossible reduction applies. This model may easily be combined with probabilistic extention. The possibility of adopting practical decision standards based on -cuts is discussed in this context. I propose to characterize the uncertainty that was presumably capped by the old sages as U- uncertainty, defined, for a non-empty fuzzy set A on the set of real numbers, whose -cuts are intervals of real numbers, as U = 1/h 0 h log [1+]d, where h is the largest membership value obtained by any element of A and is the measure of the -cut of A defined by the Lebesge integral of its characteristic function. (shrink)

A conscious occurrent propositional attitude contributes to the content of consciousness by occupying attention, rather than by being its object. Externally individuated concepts contribute to the nature of this conscious occupation of attention. Those same externally individuated concepts are redeployed when the occurrence of these conscious states gives a subject a reason for self‐ascribing a propositional attitude. This account, involving both conscious states and conceptual redeployment, steers a middle course between accounts of self‐ascription that involve introspection and those accounts (...) under which a subject does not have reasons when she makes such a self‐ascription. (shrink)

This paper investigates the truth conditions of sentences containing indefinite noun phrases, focusing on occurrences in attitude reports, and, in particular, a puzzle case due to Walter Edelberg. It is argued that indefinites semantically contribute the (thought-)object they denote, in a manner analogous to attributive definite descriptions. While there is an existential reading of attitude reports containing indefinites, it is argued that the existential quantifier is contributed by the de re interpretation of the indefinite (as the de re reading adds (...) existential quantification to the interpretation of definites on Kaplan’s analysis). (shrink)

The standard paradigm for mental causation is a person’s acting for a reason. Something happens - she intentionally φ’s - the occurrence of which we explain by citing a relevant belief or desire. In the present context, I simply take for granted the following two conditions on the appropriateness of this explanation. First, the agent φ’s _because_ she believes/desires what we say she does, where this is expressive of a _causal_ dependence.1 Second, her believing/desiring this gives her a _reason_ for (...) φ-ing: recognizing that she has this belief/desire makes her φ-ing intelligible as rational in the light of her other attitudes and circumstances. A further condition must be met, though, if this is to be a genuine psychological explanation, a case of her acting _for_ the reason in question. Consider the following example of Davidson’s (1973, p. 79). An exhausted climber is desperate to rid herself of the weight and danger of holding her partner on a rope; and her sudden realization that simply letting go would achieve this so unnerves her that her grip loosens slightly and he falls. Her releasing him causally depends upon her having this belief and desire, which provide _a_ reason for doing what she does. But this is not _why_ she does it: it would be at best misleading to say that she dropped him, intentionally, because she was fed up with holding his weight, or because she thought that she might otherwise fall. Her letting go does not depend upon her having these reasons in the right way. The reason-giving relation is causally irrelevant. If we are to explain a person’s acting _for_ a reason, then her doing. (shrink)

This radical reading of Wittgenstein's third and last masterpiece, On Certainty, has major implications for philosophy. It elucidates Wittgenstein's ultimate thoughts on the nature of our basic beliefs and his demystification of scepticism. Our basic certainties are shown to be nonepistemic, nonpropositional attitudes that, as such, have no verbal occurrence but manifest themselves exclusively in our actions. This fundamental certainty is a belief-in, a primitive confidence or ur-trust whose practical nature bridges the hitherto unresolved categorial gap between belief and (...) action. (shrink)

A familiar claim is that knowledge of our own thoughts, beliefs and other attitudes is normally immediate, that is, not normally based on observation, inference or evidence. One explanation of the possibility of immediate self‐knowledge turns on the transparency of the question ‘Do I believe that P?’ to the question ‘Is it the case that P?’ This paper explains why occurrent mental states such as passing thoughts do not fall within the purview of the transparency account and proposes (...) a different account of how we know our own passing thoughts. It is also argued that the transparency account fails to explain how knowledge of our own beliefs can be psychologically or epistemically immediate. Finally, questions are raised about the presumption that knowledge of our own beliefs is epistemically immediate. (shrink)

Proponents of zetetic encroachment claim that certain zetetic or inquiry-related considerations can have a bearing on the epistemic rationality of one’s belief formation. Since facts about the interestingness or importance of a topic can be the right kind of reasons for inquisitive attitudes, such as curiosity, and inquisitive attitudes are ways to suspend judgement, these facts also amount to reasons against believing. This mechanism is said to explain several contentious phenomena in epistemology, such as the occurrence of pragmatic (...) encroachment. In this paper, I provide two lines of reasoning against zetetic encroachment. First, on any contrastivist understanding of epistemic reasons, the case in favour of zetetic encroachment loses all its motivational force. Second, the thesis of zetetic encroachment is incompatible with the most promising way to understand degrees of inquisitive attitudes. (shrink)

This paper elucidates the sense in which belief is a question-settling attitude. In her recent work, Jane Friedman suggests that we understand the settledness of belief in terms of a normative principle about belief and inquiry: one ought not inquire into a question and believe the answer to the question at the same time. On the basis of the distinction between dispositional and occurrent belief, I argue against Friedman that there is no principle linking belief and inquiry that is (...) both plausible and normative: on the dispositional reading of ‘belief’, such a principle is implausible; on the occurrent reading of ‘belief’, such a principle is not normative. I argue instead that the settledness should be understood as a descriptive relation between occurrent belief and inquiry: one cannot inquire into whether p while at the same time occurrently believing that p. (shrink)

The unsafe behavior of construction workers is one of the most important and direct causes of safety accidents. Managers usually develop effective incentives aimed at regulating worker safety behavior. Due to the large number of workers in construction projects, there are multiple differences in fairness preference, risk preference and ability level, which will lead to the complex effect of the traditional mechanism to regulate workers’ safety behavior. In order to improve the effectiveness of incentive measures for worker safety behavior, this (...) paper takes into account the multiple differences of individual workers’ fairness preference, risk preference and ability level, based on the tournament mechanism to construct a competition incentive model. By designing a tournament reward and salary distribution for heterogeneous workers, the occurrence of unsafe behaviors can be reduced. The study found that in terms of the optimal level of safety investment, workers with risk aversion attitude generally invest higher than that of workers with risk preference, no matter whether they have a strong fairness preference or not; In terms of the distribution of tournament rewards, workers with a risk aversion attitude and a higher level of fairness preference need to be given higher incentives. (shrink)

In light of the growing interest in "ethically questionable" consumer behavior, this study explores possible explanations of the occurrence of such behaviour, and subsequently develops a theoretical framework. The study is based upon data collected from 72 U.K. consumers, acquired from a projective approach with scenarios. Taking the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as an initial analytical framework, attitude, social influence, opportunity(as perceived behavioral control in TPB) and perceived unfairnessare identified as the antecedents of ethically questionable behavior (EQB). Social influenceis (...) extended to include a broader range of external influences from subjective norm in TPB. Opportunityis considered to represent an aspect of perceived behavioral control as available resource to engage in EQB. Perceived unfairnessis presented as an additional component and refers to the extent to which an actor is motivated to redress an imbalance that is perceived as unfair. Binary logistic models suggest that attitudeand social influenceconsistently impact on EQB, as TPB would predict. Analysis of variance suggests that perceived unfairnessand opportunity, though context specific, also show signs of significant influence on the acceptance and practice of this behavior. Additional to the construct of TPB, this study develops the dimension of perceived unfairnessin the context of EQB decision-making. In the context of TPB, it provides further insight into our understanding of EQB, helping to provide a theoretical framework. (shrink)

This study examines the topical frames reflected in articles published about Syrian refugees by German, British and American news websites in 2016. We analyze these for terms associated with Syrian refugees and the themes they address then relate them to those we identified for 2015 and to those indicated by German students in expressing their attitudes towards them. The results show that, despite discrepancies in the occurrence of Syrian refugees’ collocates in our 2016 news corpora, they still reflect, at (...) a lower rate, the themes identified for 2015: humanitarianism, conflict, dehumanization, security, economic burden, political responsibility, and integration. The survey results confirm humanitarianism and integration as particularly prominent themes for our participants, too. While our findings provide further discursive evidence for the variation in refugees’ representations in news discourse and for the influence of media on public opinion, they suggest that this impact may be balanced out by other factors including an audience’s critical reading and thinking skills. (shrink)

This text aims at presenting a general characterization of the act of perceiving a particular object, in a framework in which perception is conceived of as a mental and cognitive faculty having specific functions that other faculties such as imagination and memory do not possess. I introduce the problem of determining the occurrence of singular perception of a physical object, as opposed to the occurrence of other mental states or attitudes. I propose that clarifying this occurrence problem requires making (...) explicit the conditions of perceptual competence/faculty so as to explain the occurrence of each perceptual performance on the basis of the use of this competence. I argue then for a direct relational model according to which the singular perception of an object depends on a competence of connecting the perceiver directly with each target object. This model is compatible with a disjunctive approach to perception according to which each particular experience of an object corresponds either to a direct perceptual relation with this object or to the illusion of having the experience of this object. The arguments in favour of this relational model rest on the idea that the faculty of perception grounds the capacity to demonstratively identify physical objects. (shrink)

Conférence de Jérôme Ducros au Collège de France le 20 décembre 2012. L'attitude moderne, est un invariant de l'histoire de l'art, compagne de toutes les révolutions, moteur de tous les changements. L'esthétique moderne, en revanche, n'est que l'esthétique d'une époque : en l'occurrence aujourd'hui celle du XXe siècle. Pour la musique, elle présuppose entre autres l'atonalisme, selon une décision multilatérale vieille d'une centaine d'années environ. [...] Aux grandes heures de la - Musique et Musicologie – GALERIE – Nouvel article.

Human beings frequently attribute anthropomorphic features, motivations and behaviors to animals, artifacts, and natural phenomena. Historically, many interpretations of this attitude have been provided within different disciplines. What most interpretations have in common is distinguishing children’s manifestations of this attitude, which are considered “natural,” from adults’ occurrences, which must be explained by resorting to particular circumstances. In this article, I argue that anthropomorphism is not grounded in specific belief systems but rather in interaction. In interaction, a non-human entity assumes a (...) place that generally is attributed to a human interlocutor, which means that it is independent of the beliefs that people may have about the nature and features of the entities that are anthropomorphized. This perspective allows us to explain the problems that emerge if we consider anthropomorphism as a belief: (i) adults under certain circumstances may anthropomorphize entities even if they perfectly know that these entities have no mental life; (ii) according to the situation, the same entity may be anthropomorphized or treated as an object; (iii) there is no consistency among the entities that are anthropomorphized; (iv) there is individual variability in anthropomorphization, and this variability derives from affective states rather than from different degrees of knowledge about the entity that is anthropomorphized or greater or lesser naivety of the person who anthropomorphizes. From this perspective, anthropomorphism is a basic human attitude that begins in infants and persists throughout life. The difference between adults and children is not qualitative but rather a matter of complexity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Leibniz on Innate Ideas and the Early Reactions to the Publication of the Nouveaux Essais (1765)* GIORGIO TONELLI LIzmNIz' Nouve~ Essais,written in 1703-1705 (citedhereafter as NE), were posthumously published by Raspe x in 1765, at the beginning of a Leibniz revivalwhich was alsomarked by thelargeDutens editionof 1768. As the greatupheaval in Kant's thought took place in 1769, and as thisupheaval had as one of itsmain characteristicsthe rejection of sensibility (...) as the sole source of knowledge,2 it is easy to infer that Kant's reading of the NE may have been one of the elements prompting him to adopt his new solution. It is not the ambition of this paper to answer that difficult question: rather it is an attempt towards clearing the ground for an answer to it, by inquiring into the early reactions of philosophical circles, especially German, to the appearance of the NE. To what extent was the significance of the particular doctrines expounded in the NE noticed? To what extent did contemporary philosophers realize that these were to profoundly modify the picture of Leibniz' psychological tenets? And, therefore, to what extent could Kant have been stimulated by a widespread reaction to pay special attention to the peeu!ia~lies of that work7 In conformity with this purpose, I shall focus my research on the question o/the origin of knowledge. As it is my task to reconstruct a general philosophical atmosphere, I will not confine my research to philosophic reactions prior to 1769, but will also take into consideration some attitudes of the following decade. As frequently happens in the history of ideas, the impact of a certain event may be noticed almost immediately after its occurrence, but the documentation of its effects may be available only after a certain delay. But they are nevertheless indicative of that prior impact. Before starting this enquiry, I shall: (1) point out the difference between the doctrine in question as it is expounded in the NE and as it appeared in the previously published works of Leibniz; (2) examine the interpretations of Leibniz' psychology prior to 1765, especially as represented in the version which was accepted by Wolff and incorporated into his system. * I want to expressmy gratitude to my friend Dr. Heinrieh Schepers,Director of the LeibnizStelle of Miinster University, for severalreferences and suggestions,and for his sympathy with the subjectof this paper. 1 Oeuvres philosophique$ latines et franfaises du feu Mr. de Leibniz tir~es de ses Manuscrits qui #e conservent dans la Biblioth~que royale ~ Hanovre et publi~es par M. Rud. Eric Raspe. Avec une preface de Mr. Kaestner, Professeur en math$matique d GOttingue (Amsterdam et Leipzig, 1765). Cf. (3. Tondli, "Die Umwiilzung yon 1769 bed Kant," Kant-Studien,LIV (1963), 369 ft. [437] 438 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY I. It is an obvious principle in Leibniz' metaphysics that all knowledge stems from the interior of the soul, or monad: from this point of view, it may correctly be stated that for Leibniz all knowledge is innate. It is equally obvious in our day that Leibniz held that there is a basic distinction between the way we know necesstwy and universal truths, emerging from the soul's intellect, and the way we know contingent and particular truths, emerging from the soul's sensibility. Therefore, from a psychological and exoteric point of view (as in the NE) the first kind of truths may be called innate (par excellence), while the second may be called acquired. As it happened, the works of Leibniz published prior to 1765 almost exclusively represented the general metaphysical point of view, and this led to a fatal distortion of his thought by his followers. The interpretations of Leibniz were from the very beginningm and still are in our day---profoundly influenced by the fact that many of Leibniz' works were not published in his lifetime, but appeared (and still shall appear) posthumously during more than two centuries. Consequently the distinction between the origin of necessary and the origin of contingent truths was generally overlooked. This is clearly explained by an examination of Leibniz' worksa which were published before his death (1716) and shortly thereafter. One of the most influential... (shrink)

In thinking of Derrida's notion of deconstruction as an attitude in understanding logocentrism, one might find it necessary to pre-empt this discourse by taking into serious consideration three words: center, consciousness, and difference. These words offer the key towards the problem of logocentrism within Derrida's deconstruction and, as far as these words seem to contextualize themselves within Derrida's texts, they also offer an explanation of how meaning becomes possible. Derrida's deconstruction is a form of writing in which the "I-ness" of (...) the self is given emphasis as both the limitation and possibility of appropriation in so far as context is concerned. Reading for him is already considered as an act of writing, the text, being polysemic in its inscription, already implies that the repetition of the syntax of words will always be rendered by the consciousness with a relative amount of impurity. Every instance of reading then is a form of writing, each time an Other tries to read the singularity of the construction of the text, it is already altered as another occurrence within another consciousness. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) first appeared in China in late 2019 and since then it has become a pandemic. Various countries, in accordance with their cultures, have adopted different approaches to deal with the spread of this disease. The dimensions of this disease and its global spread are such that it will certainly have enormous effects on various aspects of human life for many years. One of these issues is examining the approach of religious countries in dealing with this crisis. (...) The issue of science and religion is one of the main issues in the philosophy of religion. A historical event that human society is struggling with today is the COVID-19 crisis. The issues of religion and science were intertwined during the COVID-19 outbreak, contrary to what some thought. This shows that the opposition between religion and science is not real but aims to attack religion without a valid reason. Given the importance of the subject, this article addresses two aspects of people’s exposure to religion during the COVID-19 period. On the one hand, the researchers’ field observations indicate that group of citizens has turned towards religious teachings since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. On the other hand, another group of citizens have distanced themselves from religiosity, raising the duality of science and religion.Contribution: This article describes the dual attitude of citizens towards religiosity due to the occurrence of COVID-19, which has not been previously considered in research. (shrink)

The frequent occurrence of safety accidents is a global problem, and unsafe behavior is the main cause of accidents, which has been unanimously recognized by academia and industry. However, the previous research on unsafe behavior focused on analyzing the linear effects of variables on the results, and it was difficult to systematically analyze the complex mechanism of the results generated by the coupling of each variable. The problem of how to avoid unsafe behavior of construction workers has not been effectively (...) solved. Based on the configuration perspective, on-site observation is organized, 164 construction workers are taken as case samples, the traditional regression analysis method is abandoned, and the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method is used to integrate the theoretical framework of social cognition. From the perspective of psychological cognition and institutional environment, this paper discusses the differential matching of construction workers’ safety attitude, safety motivation, institutional control, safety training, and safety climate, and exploring the causal complex mechanisms that improve unsafe behavior among construction workers. The results show that: The unsafe behavior of construction workers is the result of multiple factors. A single influencing factor does not constitute a necessary condition for the unsafe behavior of construction workers; the path leading to the unsafe behavior phenomenon is not unique. Therefore, the high and unsafe behavior configuration of construction workers is summarized as “psychological cognition scarcity type,” “institutional environment scarcity type,” and “attitude-climate scarcity type”; compared with “psychological cognitive scarcity type” and “institutional environment scarcity type,” “attitude-climate scarcity type” is more likely to cause unsafe behavior of construction workers; a lower level of safety attitude or safety climate is more likely to cause high and unsafe behavior of construction workers; and the non-high and unsafe behavior driving mechanism for construction workers is “comprehensive,” and there is an asymmetric relationship with the driving mechanism of the unsafe behavior of high construction workers. The research conclusions of this paper can help to broaden the theoretical framework of social cognition and provide new ideas and methods for how to improve unsafe behavior. (shrink)

People frequently report that their thought has, at times, a vocal character. Thinking commonly appears to be accompanied or constituted by silently ‘talking’ to oneself in inner speech. In this paper, I argue that inner speech ‘utterances’ can constitute occurrent propositional attitudes, e.g., occurrent judgments, suppositions, etc., and, thereby, we can consciously reason through tokening a series of inner speech utterances in working memory. As I demonstrate, the functional role a mental state plays in working memory is (...) determined in a flexible and context sensitive manner by metacognitive monitoring and control procedures. An inner speech utterance functions as an occurrent judgment (and, thus, as a premise, lemma, or conclusion in a line of conscious reasoning) when it is experienced with a level of certainty that exceeds one’s threshold of confidence for acceptance. In virtue of an agent experiencing an inner speech utterance with a sufficient level of certainty, the utterance plays the functional role of an occurrent judgment through, e.g., terminating inquiry and causing overt actions (like overtly asserting the words rehearsed in inner speech). (shrink)

In the work of Lorenz we find an initial phase of great concordance with Uexkülls theory of animals’ surrounding-world, followed by a progressive distance and by the occurrence of more and more critical statements. The moment of greater cohesion between Lorenz and Uexküll is represented by the work Der Kumpan, which is focused on the concept of companion, functional circles, social Umwelt. The great change in Lorenz’ evaluation of Uexküll is marked by the conference of 1948 Referat über Jakob von (...) Uexküll, where Lorenz highlights the vitalist position of Uexküll. In the works of the years after World War II, the influence of the Estonian Biologist greatly diminishes, even though Lorenz continues to express his admiration for particular studies and concepts of Uexküll. References to Uexküll’s work are less and far in between, while the difference is highlighted between the uexküllian theoretical frame and Lorenz’s one. The two main critical lines of argument developed by Lorenz in this process are the biological and the epistemological one: on the biological side Lorenz heavily criticizes Uexküll’s vitalism and his faith in harmonizing forces and supernatural factors. On the epistemological side, Lorenz, arguing from the point of view of the critical realism, accuses Uexküll of postulating the separateness of all living beings, a separateness which is due to the Kantian idea that every subject of knowledge and action is imprisoned in the transcendental circle of its representations and attitudes. (shrink)

The most distinctive feature of Murdoch's philosophical project is her attempt to reclaim the exploration of moral life as a legitimate topic of philosophical investigation. In contrast to the predominant focus on action and decision, she argues that “what we require is a renewed sense of the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons. We need more concepts in terms of which to picture the substance of our being” (AD 293).1 I shall argue that to (...) fully appreciate the novelty of this proposal we need to recognize some elements of continuity with analytic methods of philosophical inquiry and themes that belong to continental traditions. On Murdoch's view, the most important question facing moral philosophy is that of whether and how we can become better. In order to describe moral progress and failure, struggle and ascent, we need ethical concepts capable of capturing mental events such as change in mind, self-examination, and redescription. These concepts are presently unavailable, and this lack seriously undermines our attempts to understand the phenomena of morality. Because of this conceptual loss, we succumb to the mistaken idea that moral life coincides with its scattered outer manifestations, i.e. public acts. Instead, Murdoch urges us “the moral life […] is something that goes on continually, not something that is switched off in between the occurrence of explicit moral choices” (SG 37).2 Murdoch's point is that we need to conceive the locus of agency more broadly if we want to understand the complicated machinery of action. But perhaps more importantly, she points out that we may be morally active while entertaining a contemplative attitude, which does not issue in action. The grain of moral life, she argues, is constituted by the.. (shrink)