The Structure of Max Weber's Ethic of Responsibility

Max Weber's distinction in Politics as a Vocation between the ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility is best understood as a distinction between mutually exclusive ethical worldviews. Interpretations that correlate the two ethics with Weber's distinction between value-rational social action and instrumental-rational social action are misleading since Weber assumes that both types of rational social action are present in both ethics. The ethic of conviction recognizes a given hierarchy of values as the context for moral endeavor. The ethic of responsibility acknowledges value obligations, but assumes the absence of any given hierarchy of values and the inevitability of value conflict as the context for moral endeavor. When interpreted in the context of his multilayered understanding of value conflict, Weber's ethic of responsibility emerges as a coherent ethical perspective.     

The Curriculum as a Standard of Public Education

This contribution first searches for historical and empirical evidence for whether and how curricula act or acted as a measure of public education. The problem is explicated on account of a short history of curriculum work and distinguished in a analytical, a political, programmatical and practical discourse of curriculum work. Curriculum work always underlies premises of planning, learning and effects. Three models are finally developed and brought in touch with the different discourses. Curriculum work proves to be an attempt to make publicly acceptable the empirically impossible accountability of schools.     

Morality and the View from Here

According to one influential conception of morality, being moral is a matter of acting from or in accordance with a moral point of view, a point of view which is arrived at by abstracting from a more natural, pre-ethical, personal point of view, and recognizing that each person's personal point of view has equal standing. The idea that, were it not for morality, rational persons would act from their respectively personal points of view is, however, simplistic and misleading. Because our nonmoral reasons cannot all be adequately captured as falling within any single, unified and coherent point of view, morality cannot be adequately understood as a matter of abstracting from such points of view and taking them all equally into account. After considering several ways of modifying the initial conception of morality in a way that accommodates the variety of nonmoral reasons that do not have their source in a personal point of view, the paper concludes with the suggestion that we free ourselves more thoroughly from the grip of the metaphor that takes morality as a whole to be a matter of acting in accordance with the judgments of a single unified and coherent point of view.     

Why are there no objective values?

Using the mathematical frameworks of economic preference ranking, subjective probability, and rational learning through empirical evidence, the epistemological implications of teleological ethical intuitionism are pointed out to the extent to which the latter is based on cognitivist and objectivist concepts of value. The notions of objective value and objective norm are critically analysed with reference to epistemological criteria of intersubjectively shared valuative experience. It is concluded that one cannot meaningfully postulate general material theories of morality that could be tested, confirmed or refuted by intersubjective empirical evidence of preferences and values, however loosely the empirical evidence of values may be interpreted. This situation is explained with reference to the ways in which preceived values become systematically influenced by the concomitants of individual valuative experience, but which have nothing to do with contingent subjective interests.     

Identification and Responsibility

Real-self accounts of moral responsibility distinguish between various types of motivational elements. They claim that an agent is responsible for acts suitably related to elements that constitute the agent's real self. While such accounts have certain advantages from a compatibilist perspective, they are problematic in various ways. First, in it, authority and authenticity conceptions of the real self are often inadequately distinguished. Both of these conceptions inform discourse on identification, but only the former is relevant to moral responsibility. Second, authority and authenticity real-self theories are unable to accommodate cases in which the agent neither identifies nor disidentifies with his action and yet seems morally responsible for what he does. Third, authority and authenticity real-self theories are vulnerable to counterexamples in which the provenance of the agent's real self undermines responsibility.     

Theorising the Rainbow? The Puzzle of the Public-private Divide

Two influential approaches to conceptualising the relationship between public and private law have suggested that the distinction between them should be abandoned. The first, as exemplified by Oliver, suggests that the distinction should be abandoned in favour of fusion based on the notion of commonality. The second, as exemplified by Teubner, rejects fusion, arguing for the replacement of the distinction with a concept capturing the multi-dimensional complexity of law in multiple social contexts: `polycontexturality'. This article focuses primarily on exploring conceptual puzzles presented by Oliver's `commonality thesis', and argues for a reconceptualisation of the relationship between public and private law as multi-layered. Monolithic and rigidly binary concepts alike should be replaced by a complex set of relationships – a position broadly supportive of Teubner's. However, it is argued that the relationships between public and private law are to be seen as existing on a spectrum, or even on an overarching meta-spectrum, in which the existence of distinctive `archetypal conceptual paradigms' influence as `meta-spectrum extremities'. This presents a limited caveat to Teubner's thesis. I suggest that explicit theoretical attention to both the implications of polycontexturality and the existence of the archetypal conceptual paradigms as meta-spectrum extremities might avoid occluding important distinctions and nuances within a fusion that tends illegitimately to subsume private law within a public law paradigm. Such an analysis, I argue, could enhance the coherence of the law in complex, multi-dimensional cases at the troubled borderline between public and private law. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

中学生偶像崇拜与学业自我概念、学业成绩的关系研究

研究主要采用问卷法 ,选取北京市某普通中学 42 8名初一至高三的学生进行研究 ,结果表明 :(1 )有偶像的中学生人数显著高于无偶像的人数 ,“歌星影星”与“著名人士”是其崇拜的主流。 (2 )学业自我概念及其各维度在有无偶像之间不存在显著差异。 (3)主要偶像类型对学业自我概念具有显著主效应。 (4 )有无偶像和主要偶像类型对学业成绩均没有显著主效应。     

A measure of parental stress in mothers with small children: dimensionality, stability and validity

Self-reported parental stress was investigated in three samples of mothers with small children, using a Swedish version of the Parenting Stress Index (PSI). Dimensionality in experienced stress using items from six PSI Parent Domain subscales and eight new items was examined in factor analyses of data from a nationwide representative sample. Cross-validation proved the chosen factor pattern to be stable. Based on an oblique 5-factor solution new subscales were constructed. A second order factor analysis indicated influence from a higher order factor, seen as a general parental stress construct. High alpha coefficients revealed that homogeneous subscales had been formed. Test-retest correlations indicated good stability over a mean time period of 30 days. Influences from maternal background variables were found, but no relation to child age or gender. Global estimates of parental stress, reported child problems, mothers' scoring on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and two measures of social support all correlated significantly with overall parental stress, and with some subscales. The justification of the subscale approach to parental stress was discussed. It was concluded that the PSI in its present form could be used as a reliable and valid instrument for measuring experienced parental stress in mothers of young children.     

Brief report: Complex postformal thought in skilled research administrators

Expert research administrators responded to questions to determine to what degree they had postformal thinking skills. Postformal theory suggests that the interpersonal and institutional complexity of work roles would make them likely to exhibit postformal thought. The tests included a questionnaire about the use of postformal operations on the job, and thinking-aloud taped interviews of responses to job-related and standard postformal problems. The respondents demonstrated the use of postformal thinking operations on job-related tests and a more moderate degree of use on the standard problems. The results support prior research and our working hypothesis that a high degree of interaction with people and complex problems is associated with adults' postformal thought.     

SELF-RECORDING IN TRAINING GIRLS TO INCREASE WORK AND EVOKE STAFF PRAISE IN AN INSTITUTION FOR OFFENDERS1

Self-recording procedures were used by four adolescent girls to increase work and comments (cues) that evoked staff praise during vocational training sessions in a maximum-security institution for offenders. The girls were selected on the basis of their not responding to a staff-directed token program. The self-recording procedures were directed by a therapist who saw the girls outside the vocational training sessions. According to a multiple-baseline design, self-recording of work was introduced sequentially to each of the two or three settings the girls attended each day. A few days after work had increased, self-recording of cues was introduced. Tokens were delivered by the therapist for work and cues recorded by the girls. Work and cues increased following self-recording for three of the girls and increased cues evoked higher rates of staff praise. Girl and staff behaviors were maintained during short follow-up periods when tokens were not given for the girls' records. The procedures failed to effect desirable changes with a fourth girl's work, and self-recording of work was terminated without introducing cueing.