Uncertainty in moral theory: An epistemic defense of rule-utilitarian liberties

The purpose of this essay is to defend utilitarianism from the popular objection that it makes moral theory depend improperly upon uncertain factual information and calculations which may produce violations of individual rights or liberties. This objection is a more subtle variant of the general Kantian complaint that utilitarianism makes morality improperly contingent upon empirical facts about historical, socioeconomic circumstances, the consequences of actions, institutions, etc., thereby allowing individual liberties to be sacrificed in order to maximize the collective welfare. Three main arguments connected with the uncertainty-objection are delineated in Rawls' work, and are seen to be fallacious. It is concluded that a suitably sophisticated form of rule-utilitarianism need not base liberty on any impermissible kind of uncertainty in moral theory. This analysis is contrary not only to what Rawlsians and other Kantians nowadays typically argue or assume in criticizing utilitarianism, but also to what some of the leading critics of Rawls have said about his anti-utilitarian stance.     

On the structuralist constraints in social scientific theorizing

Several case studies and theoretical reports indicate that the structuralist concept of a constraint has a central role in the reconstruction of physical theories. It is surprising that there is only little theoretical discussion on the relevance of constraints for the reconstruction of social scientific theories in the literature. Almost all structuralist reconstructions of social theorizing are vacuously constrained. Consequently, constraints are methodologically irrelevant.In this paper I reconstruct three cases selected from social scientific theorizing. The first case is a generalization of Gross, Mason and McEachern's (1958) role expectation conflict theory, which is a qualitative theory. The second case is Cohen and Lee's (1975) quantitative theory of social conformity, which essentially utilizes the theor of Markov chains. The third case is the explanation schema of folk psychology which is one of the most important methodological frameworks in the social sciences.In all the three cases important constraints emerge. From an epistemological point of view it seems that the related constraints work as higher-order laws. In any case, purely conceptual arguments are insufficient to justify them.The three cases,mutatis mutandis, cover nearly all types of social scientific theorizing, so that in my view constraints play a crucial methodological role in the social sciences precisely as they have in the natural sciences.     

Competing allocation principles: time for compromise?

A small set of allocation principles is said to be behind several theories of distributive justice. However, disagreement about the appropriate relationship between these notions remains, so that compromises between principles may generate more agreement. Truncated utilitarianism is a prominent candidate. It demands maximising total wealth subject to a floor level of individual wealth for all people. Based on some well-known distributive notions, we developed a questionnaire setting and confronted student respondents with corresponding allocation problems, where an exogenously given poverty line served as a floor. However, support for allocations resulting from this specific interpretation of truncated utilitarianism remained rather low. This is surprising because the respective solution was close to an equal split of resources, and aspects of efficiency and responsibility were explicitly introduced to promote more general acceptance. We argue that people may either wish to see higher floor levels or are more inequality averse than probably expected. Moreover, high support for an unconditional consideration of the poverty line can be witnessed, even though aspects of responsibility, but not efficiency arguments, display an influence. In general, attitudes with respect to the equality?Cefficiency trade-off are found to remain heterogeneous, although different equality concerns are prominent. Furthermore, trade-offs are moderated by the responsibility principle.     

The indefinitely iterated prisoner's dilemma: Reply to Becker and Cudd

It is argued that, without a controversial and arguably mistaken assumption, Becker and Cudd's (1990) objections do not undermine the challenge raised by my (1987) model of iterated prisoner's dilemmas for the arguments of Taylor (1976, 1987) and others. Furthermore, it is argued that, even granting this assumption, there is an alternative model that avoids their objections.Thanks to Jonathan Adler and especially Roy Sorensen for their comments on an earlier version of this rejoinder.     

II. Patients of the department of psychological medicine,guy's hospital,london 1

Abstract

Harvey Dean (1998) rejects my (Wakefield, 1988a; 1988b) argument that minimal distributive justice is the essential mission of social work and that treatment of mental disorder is not part of the profession's essential mission but rather a derived task. He argues that social work has broader ethical aims that encompass both pursuit of justice and treatment of mental disorder. In this article, 1 review my earlier position and respond to Dean's objections. I argue that Dean's narrativist account of the profession's ethical aims is overly broad and that he confuses non‐disordered psychological problems with mental disorders. I conclude that neither my “minimal distributive justice” view of social work's mission nor my exclusion of treatment of mental disorder from the profession's essential mission are disconfirmed by Dean's arguments.     

On the characterization of weighted simple games

This paper has a twofold scope. The first one is to clarify and put in evidence the isomorphic character of two theories developed in quite different fields: on one side, threshold logic, on the other side, simple games. One of the main purposes in both theories is to determine when a simple game is representable as a weighted game, which allows a very compact and easily comprehensible representation. Deep results were found in threshold logic in the sixties and seventies for this problem. However, game theory has taken the lead and some new results have been obtained for the problem in the past two decades. The second and main goal of this paper is to provide some new results on this problem and propose several open questions and conjectures for future research. The results we obtain depend on two significant parameters of the game: the number of types of equivalent players and the number of types of shift-minimal winning coalitions.     

Broadening gender self-categorization development to include transgender identities

Research on gender in psychology has increasingly affirmed diversity in gender, with recognition of binary and nonbinary transgender experiences. However, gender has been presumed to be cisgender (congruent with sex) and binary (either male or female) in classical developmental theories. In response, this review engages in a critical analysis of classical gender development theory informed by findings about gender from research on transgender identities. Under analysis was the concept of gender self-categorization in classical theories of gender development including cognitive developmental theory, developmental gender schema theory, and social cognitive theory. Novel theoretical approaches are then outlined to situate recent advancements alongside classical theory. Conclusions are then drawn with brief recommendations for research methods that aim to include binary and nonbinary transgender participants. Drawing on the findings of this review it has been shown that gender self-categorization is often implicitly presumed to be cisgender identification. To overcome this bias, it is suggested that greater attention to specific gender self-categorization mechanisms are needed to open opportunities to include transgender experiences.     

Justice,utility, and interpersonal comparisons

One of the most common objections against utilitarianism is that it cannot account for the claims of distributive justice. This objection can be answered by appeal to the principle of Diminishing Marginal Utility (DMU), which says that the value of a given portion of a commodity tends to increase as a person's supply of the commodity decreases. DMU implies that, other things equal, the way to maximize the value of a commodity is to distribute it equally. Some economists have objected to DMU on the ground that it presupposes interpersonal comparisons of utility, but the arguments which they have advanced against the objectivity of such comparisons are unsound. Moreover, the interpersonal comparisons presupposed by DMU are ordinal, rather than cardinal, and there are reasons for believing that ordinal comparisons, at least, do have an objective basis.     

Rule utilitarianism,rights, obligations and the theory of rational behavior

The paper first summarizes the author's decision-theoretical model of moral behavior, in order to compare the moral implications of the act-utilitarian and of the rule-utilitarian versions of utilitarian theory. This model is then applied to three voting examples. It is argued that the moral behavior of act-utilitarian individuals will have the nature of a noncooperative game, played in the extensive mode, and involving action-by-action maximization of social utility by each player. In contrast, the moral behavior of rule-utilitarian individuals will have the nature of a cooperative game, played in the normal mode, and involving a firm commitment by each player to a specific moral strategy (viz. to the strategy selected by the rule-utilitarian choice criterion) — even if some individual actions prescribed by this strategy, when considered in isolation, should fail to maximize social utility.The most important advantage that rule utilitarianism as an ethical theory has over act utilitarianism lies in its ability to give full recognition to the moral and social importance of individual rights and personal obligations. It is easy to verify that action-by-action maximization of social utility, as required by act utilitarianism, would destroy these rights and obligations. In contrast, rule utilitarianism can fully recognize the moral validity of these rights and obligations precisely because of its commitment to an overall moral strategy, independent of action-by-action social-utility maximization.The paper ends with a discussion of the voter's paradox problem. The conventional theory of rational behavior cannot avoid the paradoxical conclusion that, in any large electorate, voting is always an irrational activity because one's own individual vote is extremely unlikely to make any difference to the outcome of any election. But it can be shown that, by using the principles of rule-utilitarian theory, this paradox can easily be resolved and that, in actual fact, voting, even in large electorates, may be perfectly rational action. More generally, the example of rule utilitarianism shows what an important role the concept of a rational commitment can play in the analysis of rational behavior.     

证伪：社会科学研究的可能与必然 兼与张杨商榷

本文针对张杨《证伪在社会科学中可能吗？》一文展开争鸣与论述,指出证伪是理论检验的必然结果之一,相对于证实而言,证伪更有效、更可靠。本文还就张杨文中对波普尔证伪理论的误解做了澄清,指出波普尔的证伪并非“单个反例证伪”,证伪、可证伪性、证伪主义三者之间也存在着明显的区别,不能加以混淆。文章就张文提出的证伪在社会科学中面临的四个挑战做出一一回应：（1）“迪昂奎因命题”不能成为证伪的诘问;（2）穆勒命题不能挑战证伪主义;（3）统计陈述不是概率陈述;（4）限界条件与证伪的结合使社会科学的理论更加科学。     

Toward a theory of myth

James Cresswell provides a thoughtful critique of my essay on a theory of myth (Mills) with a specific focus on the nature of theorizing that challenges the dogma of empirical frames of reference, concluding that scientific theories themselves are contemporary myths. Insofar as myth is an attempt to provide a narrative or discourse about phenomena, Cresswell's argument could apply to any theory. But he takes this point further: theory is synonymous with myth. In order to unpack this evocative claim, it may prove useful to revisit how theory and myth relate to the concepts of logos, truth, ontology and identity. In the end, I suggest theory is not myth because theory sets out to describe, interpret and explain phenomena and is scrutinized for its validity, generalizability and applied consequences, while the premises of myth are often historically and culturally presupposed or simply devolve into belief that may or may not be defensible.     

When and how to satisfice: an experimental investigation

This paper is about satisficing behaviour. Rather tautologically, this is when decision-makers are satisfied with achieving some objective, rather than in obtaining the best outcome. The term was coined by Simon (Q J Econ 69:99–118, 1955), and has stimulated many discussions and theories. Prominent amongst these theories are models of incomplete preferences, models of behaviour under ambiguity, theories of rational inattention, and search theories. Most of these, however, seem to lack an answer to at least one of two key questions: when should the decision-maker (DM) satisfice; and how should the DM satisfice. In a sense, search models answer the latter question (in that the theory tells the DM when to stop searching), but not the former; moreover, usually the question as to whether any search at all is justified is left to a footnote. A recent paper by Manski (Theory Decis. doi: 10.1007/s11238-017-9592-1, 2017) fills the gaps in the literature and answers the questions: when and how to satisfice? He achieves this by setting the decision problem in an ambiguous situation (so that probabilities do not exist, and many preference functionals can therefore not be applied) and by using the Minimax Regret criterion as the preference functional. The results are simple and intuitive. This paper reports on an experimental test of his theory. The results show that some of his propositions (those relating to the ‘how’) appear to be empirically valid while others (those relating to the ‘when’) are less so.     

Poverty, Social Work and Social Justice

Correspondence to: Gary Craig, Professor of Social Justice, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK. E-mail: G.Craig{at}hull.ac.uk Summary The concept of social justice has become a common part of thepolitical lexicon in recent years, with New Labour identifyingit as a key goal of its social strategy. In this article, Iset out my understanding of what the elements of a social justiceprogramme should look like and apply it to the performance ofthe New Labour government in the policy area which has traditionallypresented a major challenge to social workers, the issue ofpoverty. Finally, I raise some questions about what this analysismeans for the future role of social work shaped by values ofsocial justice.     

Representational Projects and Interacting Forms of Knowledge

This paper focuses on the concept of the reified and consensual universes in the theory of social representations, and the relationship between them. Having examined the different ways in which Moscovici discusses this concept, and the different ways in which these discussions have been interpreted, I will suggest that many of the criticisms levelled at this facet of social representations theory appear somewhat misplaced. However, it does seem that some aspects of the concept of the consensual and the reified universes are rather under-developed within the theory as a whole. It will be suggested that the recent addition of the notion of the representational project to the theory of social representations goes some way towards addressing some of these emergent issues, most notably with regards to the relationship between knowledges from different spheres. As an example, the area of representations of health and illness will be considered: drawing on work that takes the perspective of the sociology of scientific knowledge, it will be suggested that the theory of social representations needs to make the possibility of a bi-directional relationship between knowledge from the fields of scientific and common sense understanding more explicit.     

SOCIAL JUSTICE IMPLICATIONS OF FUNDING THE PROVISION OF ADULT ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

National economic salvation through improved productivity and quality is surely more likely when English language skills of Non-English Speaking Background settlers are maximised. This article argues however, that the recent federal user-pays scheme for funding adult ESL will impose considerable hardship on many prospective and newly-arrived settlers. The paper briefly surveys the directions and scope of existing and proposed funding schemes; identifies some of the sociological objections to the user-pays scheme; and then advances an alternative approach that more strictly upholds principles of social justice.     

The role of culture in theories of the intergenerational transmission of violence

The intergenerational transmission of violence has been one of the most rigorously researched hypotheses in violence research in recent decades. A number of previous studies have provided evidence supporting this hypothesis, and there has been a growing body of literature investigating its mechanism. However, the role of culture in the intergenerational transmission of violence has not received much research attention, and thus, it remains largely unknown. To suggest a better theoretical basis for understanding the role of culture in the transmission mechanism, the present paper examines three critical theories that address the intergenerational phenomenon: Dodge's social information processing theory, Nisbett's cultural cognitive theory and Turiel's social‐cognitive domain theory. The paper provides a review of the basic assumptions and core concepts of each theory and identifies the potential contributions and gaps of each theory. The three theories present different accounts of the ontogenetic origins of ideas about violence and convey different portraits of the intergenerational mechanism. However, these theories also show that they are highly likely to be related to one another and that they can help close one another's gaps. This paper suggests that a unified framework that can merge the personal and cultural factors of causation is necessary to better capture the dynamic interplay among culture, experiences with violence and the actual enactment of violent behaviours.     

Beyond Difference: A Biologist's Perspective

This piece addresses some of the challenges to social scientific thought originating from the field of evolutionary psychology and from social scientists committed to making biological arguments an important component of the sociological discussion of gender. I provide my own biological perspective on these contemporary discussions, noting especially the different kinds of explanatory value one can expect from particular kinds of argument. I also call for the application of stricter scientific standards to arguments about the evolution of sex differentiated human behaviors. I introduce some basic genetic concepts, such as the norm of reaction, which focus attention on the interaction between genes and environment during intra-generational development. Finally, I challenge the idea that there is a necessary correlation between hormone levels and reproductive behavior in vertebrates.     

时间与海德格尔的“时间性”

本文不是试图对海德格尔进行解释 ,而是试图从文本本身的角度质疑《存在与时间》中概念的矛盾性。《存在与时间》建立了一种新的 ,关于时间始源性问题的学说。时间的始源 ,被海德格尔称为“时间性”。时间性在此在分析中有中心地位 ,对时间作出了新的解释。然而时间性本身却是一个矛盾概念。时间性源于死的本真性 ;死所以是最本真的 ,因为死是必须此在自己去承担的存在可能性。如果以是否自己去承担为标准 ,那么此在能承担的存在可能性并不只有死。所以死不可能是最本真的。因而 ,时间性也不可能是始源性的时间学说。文章通过对时间性的分析指出 ,时间性学说是建立在对于时间的一般理解之上的。     

The Concept of Unit Coherence and Its Application to Psychology Theories

Philosophers and scientists agree that an important characteristic of theories is their internal coherence. I propose that there is a particular type of internal coherence, termed “unit coherence,” that has received insufficient attention from psychologists. When psychologists theorize about the mechanisms that bring about human behavior, the units in which the variables are expressed need to be consistent throughout the theory; this is unit coherence. The theory of reasoned action is an example of a unit incoherent theory. I explain why this is so and also show how the theory can be made to be unit coherent. I also include examples of unit coherent theories to demonstrate that they are possible to have in psychology. Although the concept of unit coherence is somewhat subtle, it has surprising and far‐reaching consequences.