Why We Believe in Democracy: Testing Theories of Attitude Functions and Democracy1

This study tested different attitude function theories, as well as hypotheses democratic theorists have developed regarding the bases of pro-democratic attitudes. Two hundred and sixty-six undergraduates explained why they believed in democracy, rating the aptness of 40 sentences operationalizing attitude functions, as well as the persuasiveness of six arguments framed in terms of these functions. Factor analysis suggested the existence of either four or six distinct attitude functions. Functional saliences were weakly predictive of persuasiveness ratings, and regression analyses revealed semipartial correlations between functions and age, estimated parents' income, and attitude strength. Implications were drawn for both functional theory and democratic theory and practice.     

The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (Book)

The growth of religious psychology with specific reference to the Malay people as the majority culture is discussed. This article describes attitudes of the Malays toward religion, and reviews related programs and developments in Malaysian universities and institutes. It covers contents of major seminars and conferences held in recent years; the application of religious psychology in the general Malay population and an analysis of some problems and prospects relevant to the general psychology of religion area. The article concludes that, although psychology of religion does not exist here in the Western sense, immense opportunities exist for psychological research on religion. Suggestions for improving the psychology-religion interface are given.     

Knowing our Reasons: Distinctive Self-Knowledge of Why We Hold Our Attitudes and Perform Actions

This paper argues that subjects at least sometimes learn why they hold an attitude or perform an action in a distinctive first-personal way, i.e., they learn of those facts in a manner that mere observers cannot. Subjects have this first-personal self-knowledge in virtue of first-personal self-knowledge of the reasons for which they hold an attitude or perform an action—their motivating reasons. This paper focusses on one’s reasons for holding an attitude. So, it is not just that subjects have distinctive access to the fact that they, say, believe that q; they also have distinctive access to the fact that they believe that p for the reason that p. I argue for this position contra the prevailing orthodoxy. Philosophers and psychologists often deny that subjects have distinctive access to why they hold their attitudes. Indeed, even many of those who claim that subjects can use a special method to learn that they have a given attitude deny that this method provides knowledge of why one holds that attitude.     

为何信赖科学(论纲)

本文是英国布里斯托尔大学退休物理学教授齐曼提交给清华大学、北京师范大学和中国自然辩证法研究会于 2 0 0 2年 11月共同举办的“科学技术”中的哲学问题学术研讨会”的报告 ,原文“BelivinginScience”。该报告以纲要的形式论述了其科学哲学的框架 ,涉及科学哲学的诸多理论问题该报告在大会宣读颇受好评 ,现征得作者同意 ,翻译发表 ,以飨读者。     

Why People With an Eye Toward the Future Are More Moral: The Role of Abstract Thinking

After briefly discussing the prominence, basic substance, and history of Fiedler's contingency model of leadership effectiveness, four issues crucial to the current status and future development of the model were considered: (a) the form of the contingent relationship actually constituting the model; (b) the need for direct measurement of situational favorableness; (c) the problem of classifying results from evidential validation studies; and (d) the need for process measurement in studies evaluating organizational applications of the model. Conclusions were offered concerning the contribution already made by the contingency model to leadership research and key directions for future research involving the model.     

Prediction of Future Events Scale: Assessment of Beliefs about Predicting the Future

Abstract

Three hundred forty-nine American college students rated 60 beliefs about predicting future events. The items were factor analyzed revealing seven dimensions: Paranormal Divinatory Procedures, Psychically Gifted Persons, Scientifically Validated Forecasting Procedures, Animal Behavioral Prediction, Everyone Can Predict the Future, Religious Determinism, and Determinism Versus Freedom. A 21-item Prediction of Future Events (PFE) Scale was constructed by selecting marker items for each of the seven dimensions. The PFE Scale showed satisfactory reliability and hypothesized correlations with measures of intuition, locus of control, and enjoyment of/participation in games of chance.     

Why We Should Create Artificial Offspring: Meaning and the Collective Afterlife

This article argues that the creation of artificial offspring could make our lives more meaningful (i.e. satisfy more meaning-relevant conditions of value). By ‘artificial offspring’ I mean beings that we construct, with a mix of human and non-human-like qualities. Robotic artificial intelligences are paradigmatic examples of the form. There are two reasons for thinking that the creation of such beings could make our lives more meaningful and valuable. The first is that the existence of a collective afterlife—i.e. a set of human-like lives that continue after we die—is likely to be an important source and sustainer of meaning in our present lives (Scheffler in Death and the afterlife, OUP, Oxford, 2013). The second is that the creation of artificial offspring provides a plausible and potentially better pathway to a collective afterlife than the traditional biological pathway (i.e. there are reasons to favour this pathway and there are no good defeaters to trying it out). Both of these arguments are defended from a variety of objections and misunderstandings.     

Privacy and the Computer: Why We Need Privacy in the Information Society

For more than thirty years an extensive and significant philosophical debate about the notion of privacy has been going on. Therefore it seems puzzling that most current authors on information technology and privacy assume that all individuals intuitively know why privacy is important. This assumption allows privacy to be seen as a liberal "nice to have" value: something that can easily be discarded in the face of other really important matters like national security, the doing of justice and the effective administration of the state and the corporation. In this paper I want to argue that there is something fundamental in the notion of privacy and that due to the profoundness of the notion it merits extraordinary measures of protection and overt support. I will also argue that the notion of transparency (as advocated by Wasserstrom) is a useless concept without privacy and that accountability and transparency can only be meaningful if encapsulated in the context of privacy. From philosophical and legal literature I will discuss and argue the value of privacy as the essential context and foundation of human autonomy in social relationships. In the conclusion of the paper I will discuss implications of this notion of privacy for the information society in general, and for the discipline of information systems in particular.     

Why We Did It: An Anscombian Account of Collective Action

Abstract

In this paper, I am concerned with persons’ capacity for joint action. I start by suggesting that approaches which seek to account for that capacity in terms of collective intentionality face a problem: there are actions that clearly seem to qualify as collective even though the involved persons cannot be said to entertain an overarching ‘We’‐intention (however one characterizes this notion). I then go on to develop an alternative account of action that loosely draws on Elizabeth Anscombe’s action theory and show how this alternative account can be applied to joint action. In so doing, I stress the importance of the phenomenal dimension of agency.