Doing good,feeling good: Values and the self 's moral center

Rarely do social psychological treatments of the self highlight its moral dimension. We expect people with prosocial values to feel better about themselves when enacting such values. Social identities situate individuals within social groups and wider social structures; successfully enacting important identities increases feelings of self-esteem. This paper looks at individual differences and demonstrates that enacting a social identity (volunteering) contributes more to feelings of self-esteem for those individuals whose values align with that identity. Volunteering may increase self-esteem in general; but for those who claim the identity and hold especially prosocial values, volunteering becomes an important route toward positive self-evaluation.     

What good is moral imagination?

Johnson, Mark. (1993). Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (287 pp.). ISBN 0–226–40168–5.     

Are philosophers good intuition predictors?

Some philosophers have criticized experimental philosophy for being superfluous. Jackson (1998) implies that experimental philosophy studies are unnecessary. More recently, Dunaway, Edmunds, and Manley (2013) empirically demonstrate that experimental studies do not deliver surprising results, which is a pro tanto reason for foregoing conducting such studies. This paper gives theoretical and empirical considerations against the superfluity criticism. The questions concerning the surprisingness of experimental philosophy studies have not been properly disambiguated, and their metaphilosophical significance have not been properly assessed. Once the most relevant question is identified, a re-analysis of Dunaway and colleagues’ data actually undermines the superfluity criticism.     

Might anything be plain good?

Philosophical Studies - G.E. Moore said that rightness was obviously a matter of maximising plain goodness. Peter Geach and Judith Thomson disagree. They have both argued that ‘good’ is...     

Why are good theories good? reflections on epistemic values, confirmation, and formal epistemology

Franz Huber’s (2008a) attempt to unify inductivist and hypothetico-deductivist intuitions on confirmation by means of a single measure are examined and compared with previous work on the theory of verisimilitude or truthlikeness. The idea of connecting ‘the logic of confirmation’ with ‘the logic of acceptability’ is also critically discussed, and it is argued that ‘acceptability’ takes necessarily into account some pragmatic criteria, and that at least two normative senses of ‘acceptability’ must be distinguished: ‘acceptable’ in the sense of ‘being allowed to accept’, and ‘acceptable’ in the sense of ‘being obliged to accept’. Lastly, some connections of confirmation theory with naturalism, intertheoretic reduction, and explanation vs. understanding are explored.     

A good thing isn’t always a good thing: Dispositional attitudes predict non-normative judgments

A common belief in social sciences is that people like or dislike stimuli based on the properties possessed by those stimuli. Therefore, stimuli with many (few) positives should be universally liked (disliked). However, differences in opinion are common, and one source of disagreement may be personality. This research demonstrates that dispositional attitudes (an individual difference in the tendency to like/dislike stimuli), are associated with qualitative attitude differences (i.e., liking rather than disliking) for stimuli across important domains such as health, business, entertainment, and politics. Qualitative attitude differences frequently predict interpersonal conflict and diametrically opposed behavioral outcomes (e.g., voting for or against a candidate). Thus, these results have implications for understanding seemingly intractable differences found in nearly all social science fields.     

Do careers officers give good advice?

The National Survey of Health and Development is a longitudinal study of 5,362 young people born in the first week of March 1946 and living throughout Britain. 90% of the 15-year-old school-leavers in the sample were recommended by the Youth Employment Service to take up a particular sort of work. Survey members who followed this advice stayed longer in their first job than young people who took up some other work. Evidence is presented which suggests that this better performance results not from the personality of the young people who accepted advice nor from the superior types of first job they entered, but from the accurate assessment by the careers officer of their abilities and interests.     

Looking good versus doing good: which factors take precedence when children learn about new tools?

We present two experiments exploring whether individuals would be persuaded to imitate the intentional action of an adult model whose actions suggest that the correct way to complete a task is with an inefficient tool. In Experiment 1, children ages 5–10 years and a group of adults watched an adult model reject an efficient tool in favor of one that was inefficient, but claim it was “made for” the task. Results indicated low rates of imitation of the model’s intentional choice until 9 and 10 years of age. In Experiment 2, children ages 3–11 years again watched a model reject a functional tool in favor of a nonfunctional one. This time, the demonstration took place on video. For half of the participants, the model from the video was present to offer a choice between the two tools (high-pressure condition), and for the other half, she was absent (low-pressure condition). Children also completed a social desirability questionnaire to explore relationships between imitation choices and personality. Results indicated that rates of imitation were associated with higher scores on the social desirability scale among children ages 3–7 years. Among 8- to 11-year-olds – and especially among 9- and 10-year-olds – the decision to copy the model’s intentional choice was more likely when the model was present than when she was absent. The findings reveal the contributions of age, personality, and social pressure to differences in imitation.     

Should people pursue feelings that feel good or feelings that do good? Emotional preferences and well-being

Is it adaptive to seek pleasant emotions and avoid unpleasant emotions all the time or seek pleasant and unpleasant emotions at the right time? Participants reported on their preferences for anger and happiness in general and in contexts in which they might be useful or not (i.e., confrontations and collaborations, respectively). People who generally wanted to feel more happiness and less anger experienced greater well-being. However, when emotional preferences were examined in context, people who wanted to feel more anger or more happiness when they were useful, and people who wanted to feel less of those emotions when they were not useful, experienced greater well-being. Such patterns could not be explained by differences in the perceived usefulness of emotions, intelligence, perceived regulatory skills, emotional acceptance, social desirability, or general emotional preferences. These findings demonstrate that people who want to feel unpleasant emotions when they are useful may be happier overall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Believing one’s reasons are good

Is it coherent to suppose that in order to hold a belief responsibly, one must recognize something else as a reason for it? This paper addresses this question by focusing on so-called “Inferential Internalist” principles, that is principles of the following form: in order for one to have positive epistemic status Ø in virtue of believing P on the basis of R, one must believe that R evidentially supports P, and one must have positive epistemic status Ø in relation to that latter belief as well. While such principles and their close relatives figure centrally in a wide variety of recent epistemological discussions, there is confusion in the literature about what, precisely, Inferential Internalism commits one to and whether it is so much as coherent. This paper (1) articulates a broader framework for understanding the notion of epistemic responsibility, (2) motivates Inferential Internalism on the basis of considerations about the basing relation, epistemic responsibility, and parallels with practical deliberation, (3) defends Inferential Internalism against charges of incoherence leveled by James Van Cleve and Paul Boghossian, and (4) shows that contrary to a currently widespread view, Inferential Internalism is coherent even if foundationalism and the a priori are rejected. The paper closes with a preliminary argument for an affirmative answer to the initiating question about the requirements of epistemic responsibility.     

Can good science be logically inconsistent?

Some philosophers have recently argued that contrary to the traditional view, good scientific theories can in fact be logically inconsistent. The literature is now full of case-studies that are taken to support this claim. I will argue however that as of yet no-one has managed to articulate a philosophically interesting view about the role of logically inconsistent theories in science that genuinely goes against tradition, is plausibly true, and is supported by any of the case studies usually given.     

What good is a diachronic will?

There are two standard conceptions of the functioning of and rationale for the diachronic will, i.e., for an agent’s capacity to settle on her future conduct in advance. According to the pragmatic-instrumentalist view, the diachronic will benefits us by increasing the long-term satisfaction of our rational preferences. According to the cognitive view, it benefits us by satisfying our standing desire for self-knowledge and self-understanding. Contrary to these views, I argue for a constitutive view of the diachronic will: the rationale for it is that it makes possible to engage in activities with a radically novel temporal structure, activities that are not merely continuous over time, but temporally integrated and unified. These activities are essential to our form of life and to our existence as temporally unified agents. The instrumental and cognitive benefits, if any, are merely secondary to the ontological ones.

Is a good god logically possible?

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

It’s good to do good and receive good: The impact of a ‘pay it forward’ style kindness intervention on giver and receiver well-being

Despite the popularity of the ‘pay it forward’ (PIF) concept in textbooks and popular culture, to date, no study has tested the effectiveness of a brief, one-time PIF activity on the well-being of those who do good and those who receive good. To test this, 83 undergraduates (‘givers’) performed random kind acts for 1.5 h. PIF resulted in a wide range of well-being benefits for givers (e.g. greater positive and lower negative affect), with females showing greater positive affect benefits. Receivers of kindness (N = 1014) also benefited as evidenced by greater smiling behavior and more sincere smiles vs. controls (N = 251). Of the 48 receivers who completed a follow-up online questionnaire, the majority indicated that they would also PIF, with almost 40% indicating that they already had. Results indicate that a one-time brief PIF intervention can have broad benefits for those involved.     

Is finding something good in the bad always good? Benefit finding among women with breast cancer.

The correlates and consequences of benefit finding on quality of life were examined for 364 women (93% Caucasian, 6% African American, and 1% Hispanic) diagnosed with Stage I, II, and III breast cancer. Benefit finding and quality of life were measured 4 months postdiagnosis (Tl), 3 months after Tl (T2), and 6 months after T2 (T3). Women with lower socioeconomic status, minorities, and those with more severe disease perceived more benefits at baseline. Benefit finding was associated with more negative affect at baseline and also interacted with stage of disease, such that negative relations to quality of life across time were limited to those with more severe disease. Findings suggest there are qualifiers as to whether "finding something good in the bad" is good or bad.     

How good is good luck? The role of counterfactual thinking in the perception of lucky and unlucky events

Spontaneous references to ‘luck’ (e.g. in the mass media) frequently occur in connection with narrow escapes from accidents. The hypothesis that lucky events are not always positive, to the same degree as unlucky events are negative, was tested by asking Norwegian and Polish students to describe incidents of good and bad luck from their own lives, These stories were subsequently evaluated by the narrators and by a group of judges. Ratings showed unlucky events to be uniformly negative whereas lucky events varied widely in attractiveness. Both were characterized by the idea that the outcome could easily have been a dramatically different one. In a parallel set of studies, pleasant and unpleasant experiences from students' everyday life were collected (without specific reference to luck) and evaluated along the same dimensions. The results confirm that unlucky and unpleasant events have more in common than lucky and pleasant ones. Pleasant and unpleasant events can be imagined to have opposite alternative outcomes, but these are felt with less immediacy than in the case of luck. It is concluded that luck attributions typically occur in situations that could easily have taken a worse turn. How lucky depends upon how easily and how much worse.     

Control is good; prediction is better?

Franz Mechsner (2004) suggests that movements are exclusively controlled with respect to the effects that they cause in the external world and that motor control can be reduced to prediction of movement effects. Although predictive mechanisms certainly deserve a lot more attention than they have received in the past, the author argues here that prediction and control must necessarily work together to build a flexible and effective motor system.     

What are randomised controlled trials good for?

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are widely taken as the gold standard for establishing causal conclusions. Ideally conducted they ensure that the treatment ‘causes’ the outcome—in the experiment. But where else? This is the venerable question of external validity. I point out that the question comes in two importantly different forms: Is the specific causal conclusion warranted by the experiment true in a target situation? What will be the result of implementing the treatment there? This paper explains how the probabilistic theory of causality implies that RCTs can establish causal conclusions and thereby provides an account of what exactly that causal conclusion is. Clarifying the exact form of the conclusion shows just what is necessary for it to hold in a new setting and also how much more is needed to see what the actual outcome would be there were the treatment implemented.     

What makes a good counsellor? An analysis of ways in which counsellor trainers construe good and bad counselling trainees

As part of an investigation into criteria used by counsellor trainers to distinguish between good and bad students of counselling, experienced counsellor trainers were asked to complete a repertory grid. Each trainer was asked to list five good counsellor trainees and five not so good or bad counselling trainees they had worked with, as elements for the grid. Repertory grid forms were provided by the researcher with spaces for ten constructs which were elicited from the trainers in the standard triadic manner. For each elicited construct subjects were asked to rate each trainee on a five point scale. Twenty-seven correctly completed grids were collected. The 262 constructs elicited were conflated into 22 semantically similar categories by the researcher and independent raters. The data was subjected to statistical analysis using the Statistical Package for the Social Services (SPSS). Overall the constructs that were most frequently used in describing trainees were open-closed, personable/aloof, secure-insecure, professionally skilled-unskilled. The mean differences for scores of good and bad trainees for each of the 22 conflated constructs were calculated. The greatest mean difference related to professional competence. The 22 conflated constructs were subsumed into three categories, and the mean of the difference between ratings for good and bad trainees within each category was calculated. Counselling related competence showed the greatest mean difference. Implications for counselling course curricula and the selection and assessment of counsellor trainees are discussed.