Explaining Façades of Choice: Timing, Justice Effects, and Behavioral Outcomes

Organizations sometimes present their members with facades of choice: situations that appear to promise a choice but that, in fact, do not do so. Our study examines how facades of choice, relative to genuine choice, influence justice perceptions and negative and compensatory behavioral reactions. We then consider how the adequacy and timing of explanations for façades of choice affect justice perceptions and negative and compensatory reactions following façades of choice. Results indicate that the impact of explanations is influenced by their adequacy and timing (before or after one actually suffers the broken promise inherent in a façade of choice), suggesting that the experience of an injustice may frame a person's understanding of the explanation given for that injustice.     

XIII—Questions of Unity

In The Principles of Mathematics , Bertrand Russell famously puzzled over something he called the unity of the proposition. Echoing Russell, many philosophers have talked over the years about the question or problem of the unity of the proposition. In fact, I believe that there are a number of quite distinct though related questions all of which can plausibly be taken to be questions regarding the unity of propositions. I state three such questions and show how the theory of propositions defended in my recent book The Nature and Structure of Content (2007) answers them.     

V—Moral Error Theory

The paper explores the consequences of adopting a moral error theory targeted at the notion of reasonable convergence. I examine the prospects of two ways of combining acceptance of such a theory with continued acceptance of moral judgements in some form. On the first model, moral judgements are accepted as a pragmatically intelligible fiction. On the second model, moral judgements are made relative to a framework of assumptions with no claim to reasonable convergence on their behalf. I argue that the latter model shows greater promise for an error theorist whose commitment to moral thought is initially serious.     

Social Identity Theory and Self‐categorization Theory: A Historical Review

The social identity approach (comprising social identity theory and self‐categorization theory) is a highly influential theory of group processes and intergroup relations, having redefined how we think about numerous group‐mediated phenomena. Since its emergence in the early 1970s, the social identity approach has been elaborated, re‐interpreted, and occasionally misinterpreted. The goal of this paper is to provide a critical, historical review of how thinking and research within the social identity approach has evolved. The core principles of the theories are reviewed and discussed, and their effect on the field assessed. Strengths and limitations of the approach are discussed, with an eye to future developments.     

Ethical Theory,Completeness &; Consistency

This paper argues that many leading ethical theories are incomplete, in that they fail to account for both right and wrong. It also argues that some leading ethical theories are inconsistent, in that they allow that an act can be both right and wrong. The paper also considers responses on behalf of the target theories.     

A Reason‐Based Theory of Rational Choice *

There is a surprising disconnect between formal rational choice theory and philosophical work on reasons. The one is silent on the role of reasons in rational choices, the other rarely engages with the formal models of decision problems used by social scientists. To bridge this gap, we propose a new, reason‐based theory of rational choice. At its core is an account of preference formation, according to which an agent’s preferences are determined by his or her motivating reasons, together with a ‘weighing relation’ between different combinations of reasons. By explaining how someone’s preferences may vary with changes in his or her motivating reasons, our theory illuminates the relationship between deliberation about reasons and rational choices. Although primarily positive, the theory can also help us think about how those preferences and choices ought to respond to normative reasons.     

Theory & Practice of Analytic Hyperplane Optimization

There are many procedural alternatives by which subjective rotation to oblique simple structure can be emulated analytically, some rather more effective than others. This article develops a theoretical framework for comprehending these, and reports performance tests for some major variants thereof when implemented within the HYBALL rotation program described elsewhere.     

Computational Evidence That Frequency Trajectory Theory Does Not Oppose But Emerges From Age‐of‐Acquisition Theory

According to the age‐of‐acquisition hypothesis, words acquired early in life are processed faster and more accurately than words acquired later. Connectionist models have begun to explore the influence of the age/order of acquisition of items (and also their frequency of encounter). This study attempts to reconcile two different methodological and theoretical approaches (proposed by Lambon Ralph & Ehsan, 2006 and Zevin & Seidenberg, 2002 ) to age‐limited learning effects. The current simulations extend the findings reported by Zevin and Seidenberg (2002) that have shown that frequency trajectories (FTs) have limited and specific effects on word‐reading tasks. Using the methodological framework proposed by Lambon Ralph and Ehsan (2006) , which makes it possible to compare word‐reading and picture‐naming tasks in connectionist networks, we were able to show that FT has a considerable influence on age‐limited learning effects in a picture naming task. The findings show that when the input–output mappings are arbitrary (simulating picture naming tasks), the links formed by the network become entrenched as a result of early experience and that subsequent variations in frequency of exposure of the items have only a minor impact. In contrast, when the mappings between input‐output are quasi‐systematic or systematic (simulating word‐reading tasks), the training of new items was generalized and resulted in the suppression of age‐limited learning effects. At a theoretical level, we suggest that FT, which simultaneously takes account of time and the level of exposure across time, represents a more precise and modulated measure compared with the order of introduction of the items and may lead to innovative hypotheses in the field of age‐limited learning effects.     

Philosophical Arguments Against the A‐Theory

According to the A‐theory of time some instant of time is absolutely present. Many reject the A‐theory on the grounds that it is inconsistent with current spacetime physics, which appears to leave no room for absolute presentness. However, some reject the A‐theory on purely philosophical grounds. In this article I describe three purely philosophical arguments against the A‐theory and show that there are plausible A‐theoretic responses to each of them. I conclude that, whatever else is wrong with the A‐theory, it is not obviously a philosophically suspect theory.     

Brentano's Dual‐Framing Theory of Consciousness

Brentano's theory of consciousness has garnered a surprising amount of attention in recent philosophy of mind (Thomasson 2000 , Caston 2002, Hossack 2002, 2006, Kriegel 2003a, 2003b, 2009, Thomas 2003 , Smith 2004 , Zahavi 2004, Drummond 2006, Textor 2006, 2013 ). Here I argue for a novel interpretation of Brentano's theory that casts it as more original than previously appreciated and yet quite plausible upon inspection. According to Brentano's theory, as interpreted here, a conscious experience of a tree is a mental state that can be simultaneously thought of, or framed, equally accurately as (i) an awareness of a tree or (ii) an awareness of an awareness of a tree.     

Towards a ‘Non‐Ideal’ Non‐Ideal Theory

This article explores the role that considerations about the feasibility of a political proposal should play at the levels of both ideal and non‐ideal theory. Drawing on recent work in the literature on political feasibility, I begin by describing a ‘constraint‐based’ view of ideal and non‐ideal theory, with feasibility considerations serving different functions depending on whether they are operating at the ideal or non‐ideal level. Taking feasibility seriously at either level presents us with at least two important challenges. Firstly, we need principles which enable us to weigh the value of a proposal's feasibility against its other normatively significant properties, and against those of alternative proposals. Secondly, we need the capacity to gauge the nature of the epistemic constraints which apply to our feasibility assessments themselves. In response to these problems, I propose a ‘narrowing‐down’ approach, focused on developing our capacities to make accurate and reliable judgements about the feasibility of political proposals.