This paper argues that instrumental rationality is more permissive than expected utility theory. The most compelling instrumentalist argument in favour of separability, its core requirement, is that agents with non-separable preferences end up badly off by their own lights in some dynamic choice problems. I argue that once we focus on the question of whether agents’ attitudes to uncertain prospects help define their ends in their own right, or instead only assign instrumental value in virtue of the outcomes (...) they may lead to, we see that the argument must fail. Either attitudes to prospects assign non-instrumental value in their own right, in which case we cannot establish the irrationality of the dynamic choice behaviour of agents with non-separable preferences. Or they don’t, in which case agents with non-separable preferences can avoid the problematic choice behaviour without adopting separable preferences. (shrink)

The issue whether psychopathic offenders are practically rational has attracted philosophical attention. The problem is relevant in theoretical discussions on moral psychology and in those concerning the appropriate social response to the crimes of these individuals. We argue that classical and current experiments concerning the instrumental learning in psychopaths cannot directly support the conclusion that they have impaired instrumental rationality, construed as the ability for transferring the motivation by means-ends reasoning. In fact, we defend the different claim that (...) these experiments appear to show that psychopaths in certain circumstances are not aware of the relevant means for their ends. Moreover, we suggest how further empirical research could help to settle the issue. (shrink)

Jane Friedman claims that when we inquire, there is a tension between the instrumental normativity of our inquiries and some basic epistemic norms: The former forbids what the latter permit. Moreover, she argues that since the instrumental normativity of inquiry is epistemic, the previous tension shows that our current conception of epistemic normativity is incoherent and needs to be revised. To solve the problem, she suggests that all our epistemic norms should be considered “zetetic”, namely, norms of inquiry. (...) In this paper, I will argue that the instrumental normativity of inquiry Friedman depicts is inaccurate. I will propose the following alternative picture: All our reasons to inquire and take means to answer our questions are instrumental and can be derivative from the epistemic, the practical, or both. However, developing this alternative view, I will argue that our duties to inquire and take means to answer our questions are just practical in nature. Based on this, I will show that the tension between the epistemic and the zetetic Friedman depicts is just a conflict between the practical and the epistemic: A conflict that does not show per se that the current conception of epistemic normativity is incoherent and needs to be revised. (shrink)

Epistemic instrumentalists think that epistemic normativity is just a special kind of instrumental normativity. According to them, you have epistemic reason to believe a proposition insofar as doing so is conducive to certain epistemic goals or aims—say, to believe what is true and avoid believing what is false. Perhaps the most prominent challenge for instrumentalists in recent years has been to explain, or explain away, why one’s epistemic reasons often do not seem to depend on one’s aims. This challenge (...) can arguably be met. But a different challenge looms: instrumental reasons in the practical domain have various properties that epistemic reasons do not seem to share. In this chapter, we offer a way for epistemic instrumentalists to overcome this challenge. Our main thesis takes the form of a conditional: if we accept an independently plausible transmission principle of instrumental normativity, we can maintain that epistemic reasons in fact do share the relevant properties of practical instrumental reasons. In addition, we can explain why epistemic reasons seem to lack these properties in the first place: some properties of epistemic reasons are elusive, or easy to overlook, because we tend to think and talk about epistemic reasons in an ‘elliptical’ manner. (shrink)

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, (...) I examine the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination. (shrink)

The thesis of instrumental convergence holds that a wide range of ends have common means: for instance, self preservation, desire preservation, self improvement, and resource acquisition. Bostrom contends that instrumental convergence gives us reason to think that "the default outcome of the creation of machine superintelligence is existential catastrophe". I use the tools of decision theory to investigate whether this thesis is true. I find that, even if intrinsic desires are randomly selected, instrumental rationality induces biases towards (...) certain kinds of choices. Firstly, a bias towards choices which leave less up to chance. Secondly, a bias towards desire preservation, in line with Bostrom's conjecture. And thirdly, a bias towards choices which afford more choices later on. I do not find biases towards any other of the convergent instrumental means on Bostrom's list. I conclude that the biases induced by instrumental rationality at best weakly support Bostrom's conclusion that machine superintelligence is likely to lead to existential catastrophe. (shrink)

Since Aristotle it has been common among philosophers to distinguish between two fundamental types of reasoning, theoretical and practical. We do not only want to work out what is the case but also what we ought to do. This article offers a logical analysis of instrumental reasoning, which is the paradigm of practical reasoning. In the first section I discuss the major types of instrumental reasoning and show why the accounts of most authors are defective. On the basis (...) of this discussion, I demonstrate in the second section that different types of normative conclusions are derivable from instrumental arguments and I show that it is an argument’s logical structure that determines what type of conclusion this is. (shrink)

Is prostitution immoral? Various philosophers have put forward arguments for thinking so, one of the most notable being that, by engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment, the prostitute instrumentalizes himself or herself. In this paper, I identify two meanings of "instrumentalize" and, with them, two versions of the instrumentalization argument for the immorality of prostitution. I then critique each version of the argument.

This article outlines the gradually changing attitude towards instruments and materials in the philosophy and historiography of science and confronts contemporary revaluations of the material culture of science with Hans-Jörg Rhein- berger's concept of an experimental system and Don Ihde's notion of an epistemology engine.

ABSTRACT This article studies the theory of animal seeds as purely material entities in the early seventeenth-century medical writings of Antonio Ponce Santacruz, royal physician to the Spanish king Philipp IV. Santacruz adopts the theory of the eduction of substantial forms from the potentiality of matter, according to which new kinds of causal powers can arise out of material composites of a certain complexity. Santacruz stands out among the late Aristotelian defenders of eduction theory because he applies the concept of (...) an instrument of direction developed by the medieval Avicenna commentator Gentile da Foligno and gives a novel turn to this concept by interpreting animal seeds as separate instruments. The article situates Santacruz's theory in the context of early modern debates about the concept of the eduction of forms, as well as in the context of early modern debates about the concept of separate instruments. Particular attention is paid to Santacruz's responses to the biological views of Julius Caesar Scaliger and Thomas Feyens. Santacruz's response to Scaliger turns out to be central for his explication of the eduction relation, and Santacruz's response to Feyens turns out to be central for his explication of the nature of instrumental causation. (shrink)

This is a short introductory article. I focus on three questions: What is instrumental rationality? What are the principles of instrumental rationality? Could instrumental rationality be all of practical rationality?

If you ought to perform a certain act, and some other action is a necessary means for you to perform that act, then you ought to perform that other action as well – or so it seems plausible to say. This transmission principle is of both practical and theoretical significance. The aim of this paper is to defend this principle against a number of recent objections, which (as I show) are all based on core assumptions of the view called actualism. (...) I reject actualism, provide an alternative explanation of its plausible features, and present an independent argument for the transmission principle. (shrink)

This paper draws some bold conclusions from modest premises. My topic is an old one, the Neohumean view of practical rationality. First, I show that this view consists of two independent claims, instrumentalism and subjectivism. Most critics run these together. Instrumentalism is entailed by many theories beyond Neohumeanism, viz. by any theory that says rational actions maximize something. Second, I give a new argument against instrumentalism, using simple counterexamples. This argument systematically undermines consequentialism and rational choice theory, I show, using (...) detailed examples of their many social science applications. There is no obvious fix. (shrink)

Like all reasoning, practical reasoning is a process that takes a person from some of her existing mental states to a new mental state. Theoretical reasoning concludes in a belief; practical reasoning in an intention. This paper concentrates on instrumental reasoning, a species of practical reasoning in general. It argues that instrumental reasoning is correct if the content of the reasoning is a valid derivation, just as theoretical reasoning is correct if its content is a valid derivation. It (...) also argues that neither theoretical nor practical reasoning gives a reason for its conclusion. If a piece of reasoning is correct, it concludes in a state - a belief or an intention - that is rationally required by the states it is derived from, but rationally requiring a conclusion is not the same as giving a reason for it. (shrink)

This paper argues against the almost universally held view that truth is an instrumentally valuable property of beliefs. For truth to be instrumentally valuable in the way usually supposed, it must play a causal role in the satisfaction of our desires. As it happens, truth can play no such role, because it is screened off from causal relevance by some of the truth-like properties first discussed by Stephen Stich. Because it is not causally relevant to the success of our actions, (...) truth is not instrumentally valuable in the way usually supposed. (shrink)

The production of scientific instruments in America was neither a postwar phenomenon nor dramatically different from that of several other developed countries. It did, however, undergo a step-change in direction, size and style during and after the war. The American scientific instrument industry after 1945 was intimately dependent on, and shaped by, prior American and European experience. This was true of the specific genres of instrument produced commercially; to links between industry and science; and, just as importantly, to manufacturing practices (...) and cultures. I will argue that, despite the new types of instrument commercialized after the war, this historical continuity of links with science and scientists guided and constrained the design and manufacture of these products. Nevertheless, new designers, manufacturers and customers gradually transformed the culture of scientific instruments in the second half of the century. -/- This chapter deals with a subset of the American instrument industry, namely the measuring and monitoring instruments manufactured for scientific use. Even with the specification of ‘scientific’ instruments, however, these borders are rather artificial and unclear: instrument making from the seventeenth through the twentieth century has generally involved the fabrication of both standard products and custom-made devices for scientific use.2 In this context of sales quantities, ‘scientific’ instruments have often been defined as low-volume, special-order or custom devices. In a similar vein, ‘scientific’ instruments were commonly distinguished from ‘production’ instruments by context of usage, namely their very absence from – and indeed irrelevance to – production environments. This demarcation according to customer and environment was mirrored in at least one furth er respect: the training of their users. The classification into ‘scientific’ and ‘engineering’ applications was as fluid as the relationship between American universities and technical industries themselves.Despite these complementary definitions, the notion of the ‘scientific instrument’ was beginning to prove inadequate even at the turn of the twentieth century, and dramatically so when discussing the post-Second World War period. Definitions altered qualitatively after the Second World War in at least three further ways: (a) new genres of device altered the scope of the scientific instrument; (b) the contribution of State and military sponsorship of new forms of instrument became significant; and, (c) the postwar demand for specialist instruments increased rapidly, owing to wartime innovation, new applications and new customers. I will explore the evolution of instrument manufacturing in this changing context of new technology, funding, development and markets. (shrink)

—Cultural studies remains one of the fields of research in the humanities that contributes to the development of the society by aiding the formulation of cultural policies towards the re-engineering of a nation’s social behavior. A functioning state benefits a lot from cultural products of cultural studies. Thus for any state, like Nigeria, to reap from cultural studies and policies, its basic democratic institutions should be strong and effective. The theoretical framework for this research is symbolic interactionism proposed by Stryker (...) and Denzin. This is because it enables the understanding of how cultural products are translated into policies that shape the society. In this paper, we demonstrated that Cultural Studies is instrumental to the development cultural policies that take seriously national identity and social integration of the Nigeria society. (shrink)

Law and Morality at War offers a broadly instrumentalist defense of the authority of the laws of war: these laws serve combatants by helping them come closer to doing what they have independent moral reason to do. We argue that this form of justification sets too low a bar. An authority’s directives are not binding, on instrumental grounds, if the subject could, within certain limits, adopt an alternative, and superior, means of conforming to morality’s demands. It emerges that Haque’s (...) argument fails to vindicate the law’s authority over all combatants. (shrink)

This article proposes that thinking of scientific instruments as playthings or philosophical toys offers a method for looking at the ways in which we learn from made things and from the act of making in investigating the world. Rather than approaching artefacts as stable ob- jects, definable and categorisable in terms of their function, this method puts forward the instability and mobility of artefacts on several levels: in terms of their movements between hands, social contexts and systems of knowledge, in (...) terms of their physical articulations and of their changing functions, and in terms of the flows and processes of materials at work within and through them. (shrink)

Activities of daily living are usually defined as skills needed in typical daily self-care. Instrumental activities of daily living are more complex skills beyond basic self-care, and their measurement evaluates how individuals function in their homes, workplaces, and outdoor environments. The skills that pertain to IADLs are exposed to dysfunctions resulting from aging or illness. Reductions in those skills may begin to cause problems with independence but these problems can be solved with the help of others - for example, (...) family members, social workers, and nurses. (shrink)

Understanding quantitative research instrumentation is critical for advancing educational research, both theory and practice since it contributes to the accuracy and credibility of research findings (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2017; DeVellis, 2017; Streiner et al., 2014). Using inappropriate or poorly designed instruments can result in inaccurate or unreliable data, compromising the quality of the research findings and limiting the research's usefulness. Understanding the appropriate use of quantitative research instruments is critical from a theoretical standpoint for ensuring that research questions are (...) answered accurately. Researchers (pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, teacher educators, and educational leaders) can get high-quality data that can be used to create and test theories in a particular field by selecting and designing the relevant instrument. Furthermore, using reliable and valid quantitative research instruments can boost the credibility of research findings and aid in developing new research questions and hypotheses. From a practical perspective, understanding quantitative research instrumentation can improve the quality of research practice. Researchers can ensure that the data acquired is accurate and reliable by selecting and creating appropriate instruments, which can help to guide decision-making in a particular subject. Furthermore, reliable and valid instruments can guide policy decisions, program development, and evaluation, resulting in more effective interventions and better outcomes. Where and How to Begin? The choice of research instrument depends on the research question, the nature of the phenomenon being studied, and the available resources (Bryman, 2016; Creswell, 2014; Dörnyei, 2007; Hair et al., 2014). Researchers can acquire accurate and valid data to answer their research questions and contribute to the knowledge base in their field by carefully selecting and building instruments. In education and the social sciences, quantitative research frequently involves using various instruments or tools to collect and analyze data. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relevance of empirical evidence to real causes. I argue for the claim that instrumentally mediated empirical results are causally dependent on unobservable entities. I develop this idea in the context of discussions on entity realism. As a consequence of my argument, an antirealist version of empiricism, which underlines the significance of empirical evidence but which abstains from real causation, is incoherent.

Consumer boycotts have become a frequent form of social protest in the digital age. The corporate malpractices motivating them are varied, including environmental pollution, lack of minimum labour standards, severe mistreatment of animals, lobbying and misinformation campaigns, collaboration or complicity with illegitimate political regimes, and systematic tax evasion and tax fraud. In this article, I argue that organised consumer boycotts should be regarded as a legitimate and purposeful instrument for structural change, provided they conform to a number of normative criteria. (...) In order to show this, the practice and empirical context of consumer boycotts are first outlined. I then lay out and refute three general objections to this practice. Although each of these objections fails, their discussion generates insights concerning the normative standards with which boycotters must comply if they want their campaigns to be both legitimate and successful. These normative criteria are detailed along the lines of two guiding principles, proportionality and transparency. In the final step, I elaborate on structural change as the deeper purpose of consumer boycotts. (shrink)

Neo-Humean instrumentalist theories of reasons for acting have been presented with a dilemma: either they are normatively trivial and, hence, inadequate as a normative theory or they covertly commit themselves to a noninstrumentalist normative principle. The claimed result is that no purely instrumentalist theory of reasons for acting can be normatively adequate. This dilemma dissolves when we understand what question neo-Humean instrumentalists are addressing. The dilemma presupposes that neo-Humeans are attempting to address the question of how to act, 'simpliciter'. Instead, (...) they are evaluating actions from the agent's normative perspective. (shrink)

The central aim of this quasi-experimental study was to investigate the efficacy of lyrical and instrumental music in developing the reading comprehension of grade 10 students of Davao City, Philippines using the descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, specifically t-Test significant differences were assessed among groups and scores. The findings revealed that all groups had similar level of reading comprehension at the outset of the experiment. The post experiment revealed that a significant increase of score was evident in the control (...) and experimental group, which utilized instrumental music. On the other hand, the experimental group using lyrical music, had no significant improvement in the reading comprehension scores. Implications for the educational practices and limitations of the study were provided. (shrink)

I show that there are good arguments and evidence to boot that support the language as an instrument of thought hypothesis. The underlying mechanisms of language, comprising of expressions structured hierarchically and recursively, provide a perspective (in the form of a conceptual structure) on the world, for it is only via language that certain perspectives are avail- able to us and to our thought processes. These mechanisms provide us with a uniquely human way of thinking and talking about the world (...) that is different to the sort of thinking we share with other animals. If the primary function of language were communication then one would expect that the underlying mechanisms of language will be structured in a way that favours successful communication. I show that not only is this not the case, but that the underlying mechanisms of language are in fact structured in a way to maximise computational efficiency, even if it means causing communicative problems. Moreover, I discuss evidence from comparative, neuropatho- logical, developmental, and neuroscientific evidence that supports the claim that language is an instrument of thought. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to show that instrumental rationality and utility that have been used in economics for many years does not work well. What is presented in the article is how significant the influence of utilitarianism has been on economics and why the economists get rid of humans’ goals and motivations. It is shown in the article that the human who decides in present is absolutely different from the human who decides over time. Many economists neglected (...) this problem because they wanted to have an effective and simple model. Becker’s economic method is presented as a dead end to which economics has been brought to. It is impossible to connect different selves of one human being by using the utility measure. The works of Schelling and J.S. Mill are used to explain this impossibility. The conclusion of this article is that instrumental rationality and utility have affected economics significantly. But, this simplified view on human nature is no longer valid. Hence, economics needs to think not only about the means but also about the human goals. Economics needs to rebuff relativism and show people how to achieve well-being. If we want to help people with their self-governance, we will have to choose reason over emotions. (shrink)

Berawal dari ketertarikan Ihde dalam melihat dunia-kehidupan yang telah berubah secara persepsional. Instrumen teknologis telah mentransformasi cara pandang manusia tentang dunianya. Memahami persepsional manusia, Ihde menggunakan fenomenologi instrumental untuk menjelaskan bagaimana pengalaman indrawi manusia secara intensional dan perseptual berekstensi lewat artefak teknologi.

I make the observation that English sentences such as “You have reason to take the bus or to take the train” do not have the logical form that they superficially appear to have. I find in these sentences a conjunctive use of “or,” as found in sentences like “You can have milk or lemon in your tea,” which gives you a permission to have milk, and a permission to have lemon, though no permission to have both. I argue that a (...) confusion of genuine disjunctions with sentences of the above form has motivated the mistaken acceptance by some philosophers of principles like the one I call “Liberal Transmission.” This is the principle that if you have a reason to do something, then you have a reason to do it in each of the possible ways in which it can be done (though not more than one of them). I argue that Liberal Transmission and its close relatives are false. Wide-scope reasons are defined as reasons that have a conditional or other logical connective within the scope of the reason operator. For example, a wide-scope instrumental reason might be: reason(if you have an end, take the means). By refuting Liberal Transmission, I show that you could have wide-scope instrumental reasons like this while nevertheless lacking any narrow-scope reason to take the means, or narrow-scope reason to not have the end. This enables me to respond to two major objections to the wide-scope approach to the instrumental principle that have been developed by Joseph Raz and by Niko Kolodny. (shrink)

Standard decision theory, or rational choice theory, is often interpreted to be a theory of instrumental rationality. This dissertation argues, however, that the core requirements of orthodox decision theory cannot be defended as general requirements of instrumental rationality. Instead, I argue that these requirements can only be instrumentally justified to agents who have a desire to have choice dispositions that are stable over time and across different choice contexts. Past attempts at making instrumentalist arguments for the core requirements (...) of decision theory fail due to a pervasive assumption in decision theory, namely the assumption that the agent’s preferences over the objects of choice – be it outcomes or uncertain prospects – form the standard of instrumental rationality against which the agent’s actions are evaluated. I argue that we should instead take more basic desires to be the standard of instrumental rationality. But unless agents have a desire to have stable choice dispositions, according to this standard, instrumental rationality turns out to be more permissive than orthodox decision theory. (shrink)

The transgressive ontological character of hybrids—entities crossing the ontological binarism of naturalness and artificiality, e.g., biomimetic projects—calls for pondering the question of their ethical status, since metaphysical and moral ideas are often inextricably linked. The example of it is the concept of “moral considerability” and related to it the idea of “intrinsic value” understood as a non-instrumentality of a being. Such an approach excludes hybrids from moral considerations due to their instrumental character. In the paper, we revisit the boundaries (...) of moral considerability by reexamining the legitimacy of identifying intrinsic value with a non-instrumental one. We offer the concept of “functional value,” which we define as a simultaneous contribution to the common good of the ecosystem and the possibility to disclose the full variety of aspects of a being’s identity. We argue that such a value of hybrids allows us to include them into the scope of moral considerability. (shrink)

In Rational Powers in Action, Sergio Tenenbaum sets out a new theory of instrumental rationality that departs from standard discussions of means-ends coherence in the literature on structural rationality in at least two interesting ways: it takes intentional action (as opposed to intention) to be what puts in place the relevant instrumental requirements, and it applies to both necessary and non-necessary means. I consider these two developments in more detail. On the first, I argue that Tenenbaum’s theory is (...) too narrow since there could be instrumental irrationality with respect to an intention to X even if one is not yet engaged in any relevant intentional action. On the second, I argue against Tenenbaum’s claim that “an agent is instrumentally irrational if she knowingly fails to pursue some sufficient means to an end she is pursuing.”. (shrink)

The paper explores broader socio-historical circumstances which led to the famous Plato’s argument in favor of gender equality in Republic V. The author will critically discuss some of the most relevant interpretations of the argument given by G. Vlastos, J. Annas, A. W. Saxonhouse, and other contemporary philosophers. While some influences of Pythagoreanism or even Spartan practices must be admitted, Plato’s argument appears to be quite original and “revolutionary” for the 4th century B.C. Athens. Of particular importance is to recognize (...) the instrumentalist character of Plato’s and ancient Greek feminism in general, through careful comparisons with the contemporary era. (shrink)

Allow me to rehearse a familiar scenario. We all know that which ends you have has something to do with what you ought to do. If Ronnie is keen on dancing but Bradley can’t stand it, then the fact that there will be dancing at the party tonight affects what Ronnie and Bradley ought to do in different ways. In short, (HI) you ought, if you have the end, to take the means. But now trouble looms: what if you have (...) dreadful, murderous ends? Ought you to take the means to them? Seemingly not. But fortunately, an assumption made by deontic logics1 comes to the rescue. Since ‘‘ought’’, according to this assumption, is a sentential operator, HI must really be ambiguous. It could be read either as (Narrow) You have the end ! O(you take the means) or as (Wide) O(you have the end ! you take the means). Now if Narrow is true, then you really ought to take the means to your murderous ends. But this doesn’t follow from Wide. All that follows from Wide is that you ought to either take the means to these ends or else give them up. Conclusions: (1) Since HI is on some reading true, but Narrow isn’t, Wide is true. (2) Wide accounts for the relationship between your ends and what you ought to do. This elegant scenario repeats itself in many other domains in which it seems like something can have a bearing on what some particular agent ought to do. Does what you know affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs about what you ought to do affect what you ought to do? Do your promises affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs affect what you ought to believe? On each of these counts, the intuitive answer is ‘‘yes’’. And so each of these questions leaves something for the moral philosopher or the epistemologist to investigate. On each count, it seems that what we all know, is that (Account) you ought, if p, to do A. But on each count, the Narrow-scope reading of the ‘‘ought’’ in this claim yields unintuitive consequences. So since Account is true, it must be true on the Wide-scope reading.. (shrink)

When we ask a decision maker to express her preferences, it is typically assumed that we are eliciting a pre-existing set of preferences. However, empirical research has suggested that our preferences are often constructed on the fly for the decision problem at hand. This paper explores the ramifications of this empirical research for our understanding of instrumental rationality. First, I argue that these results pose serious challenges for the traditional decision-theoretic view of instrumental rationality, which demands global coherence (...) amongst all of one's beliefs and desires. To address these challenges, I first develop a minimal notion of instrumental rationality that issues in localized, goal-relative demands of coherence. This minimal conception of instrumental rationality is then used to offer a more sophisticated account of the global aspects of instrumental rationality. The resulting view abandons all-or-nothing assessments of rationality and allows us to evaluate decision makers as being rational to varying degrees. My aim is to propose a theory that is both psychologically and normatively plausible. (shrink)

A summary of my book on Western metaphor theories in the work of a prominent Chinese intellectual Qian Zhongshu. Qian's scepticism of metaphysics is discussed against the background of a global "post-modern" metaphor discourse in which metaphor is increasingly divested of its once important metaphysical qualities.

This study used a structural equation modelling approach to assess the association between employee work- life policies, psychological empowerment, and academic staff job commitment in universities in Cross River State, Nigeria. Three null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study following a descriptive survey research design. Multistage sampling procedure was adopted in the selection of 315 academic staff from two universities in the study area. “Work-Life Policies, Psychological Empowerment and Job Commitment Questionnaire (WPPEJCQ)” was used as the instrument for data (...) collection. The construct validity of the instrument was ascertained through an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The Kaiser-Meyer-Ohlin of .894 and the Bartlett coefficient of 7795.820 were obtained. Several fit indices of Confirmatory Factor Analysis were used to accept the model such as RMSEA=.031, TLI=.969, CFI=.971 and many others. The null hypotheses were all tested using Path analysis. Findings revealed, among others, that there is a significant effect of work-life policies on the affective (β=.774,t=21.636,p<.05), continuance (β=.450,t=8.932,p<.05), and normative (β=490,t=9.967,p<.05) dimensions of academic staff commitment; furthermore, psychological empowerment has a significant effect on the affective (β=.795,t=23.199,p<.05), continuance (β=.501,t=10.261,p<.05) and normative (β = .520, t = 10.795, p< .05) dimensions of staff commitment; and there is a significant composite effect of work-life policies and psychological empowerment on the affective, continuance, and normative commitment levels of academic staff in universities. Based on these findings, conclusions and recommendations were made. (shrink)

Researchers in the biological and biomedical sciences, particularly those working in laboratories, use a variety of artifacts to help them perform their cognitive tasks. This paper analyses the relationship between researchers and cognitive artifacts in terms of integration. It first distinguishes different categories of cognitive artifacts used in biological practice on the basis of their informational properties. This results in a novel classification of scientific instruments, conducive to an analysis of the cognitive interactions between researchers and artifacts. It then uses (...) a multidimensional framework in line with complementarity-based extended and distributed cognition theory to conceptualize how deeply instruments in different informational categories are integrated into the cognitive systems of their users. The paper concludes that the degree of integration depends on various factors, including the amount of informational malleability, the intensity and kind of information flow between agent and artifact, the trustworthiness of the information, the procedural and informational transparency, and the degree of individualisation. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on normative cognition by providing a lineage explanation of human social norm psychology. This approach builds upon theories of goal-directed behavioral control in the reinforcement learning and control literature, arguing that this form of control defines an important class of intentional normative mental states that are instrumental in nature. I defend the view that great ape capacities for instrumental reasoning and our capacity (or family of capacities) for shared intentionality (...) coadapted to each other and argue that the evolution of this capacity has allowed the representation of social norms and the emergence of our capacity for normative guidance. (shrink)

The scholarship on Frantz Fanon’s theorization of violence is crowded with interpretations that follow the Arendtian paradigm of violence. These interpretations often discuss whether violence is instrumental or non-instrumental in Fanon’s work. This reading, I believe, is the result of approaching Fanon through Hannah Arendt’s framing of violence, i.e. through a binary paradigm of instrumental versus non-instrumental violence. Even some Fanon scholars who question Arendt’s reading of Fanon, do so by employing a similar binary logic, hence (...) repeating the same either/or paradigm of instrumental versus non-instrumental violence. I aim to challenge such interpretations of Fanon by demonstrating that in the context of anticolonial armed struggle in which Fanon writes, the either/or framework of the instrumental/non-instrumental binary of violence cannot fully capture his perspective. Violence can indeed be conceived as having both constructive and instrumental aspects. My argument is supported by Fanon’s corpus, including his 1960 Accra speech, “Why We Use Violence” in Alienation and Freedom. This piece, I suggest, together with Fanon’s other writings, poses a direct challenge to the Arendtian binary of violence. My analysis resists positioning the difference between Arendt and Fanon through the instrumental/non-instrumental binary. By using Judith Butler’s notion of “frame” I complicate their difference and argue Arendt’s framing of violence prevents her from apprehending Fanon and – more importantly – interpretations of Fanon based on this Arendtian frame of violence inevitably lead to misinterpretations. (shrink)

This essay goes through Frederick 2015 (the critique) in some detail, responding to the various paraphrases and criticisms therein. It is argued that in each case the critique is mistaken about what Lester 2012 (Escape from Leviathan: EfL) says, or about what the critique presents as a sound criticism, or both. Introduction: the three problems with the critique and the philosophical problem that EfL is attempting to solve. “Abstract”: the critique’s confusion about EfL’s aprioristic theory of instrumental rationality. There (...) are then detailed replies (too many and too diverse to summarise) to quotations from the critique’s confused interpretations and criticisms under the following headings (quoted from the critique): “2. Instrumental Rationality”; 3. Weakness of Will”; “4. Desires and Values”; “5. Free Will”; “6. Self-Interest”; “7. Maximisation”; “8. Morals”. Finally, in “9. Conclusion”, the philosophical problem for economics is briefly restated. The philosophical interpretation of homo economicus in EfL (as with its overall philosophical theory of libertarianism) has yet to be given adequate critical consideration. (shrink)

Through Heidegger’s re-reading of Descartes, this article explores a fundamental issue in the contemporary conception of worldliness. In a restricted sense, the human being is the maker of the world in that he appropriates what composes it, i.e., the worldly beings or things. Greatly influenced by the Cartesian notion of extensio, this tendency no longer entails the world as a thing in itself, but as a set of measurable things, thus available and open to activity. This article articulates the threat (...) relative to the idea of the forming, by the human being, of the essence of the world. Every being, be it an object, an animal or even a human being, seems to be considered as a producer of energy and a structure that could be possessed. For example, such natural space is not campaign or land, but automatically field, that is to say, an agricultural deposit that is symbolically exploited and empirically exploitable. This ontological device prevents us from grasping the world in any other way than in terms of use and productivity. As a result, the ontology of the thing becomes an aesthetic issue in its own right. This issue does not involve here the capture of the object as a bearer of Beauty, but an aesthetic relation in the fundamentally etymological sense (αἰσθητικός) of what is felt, of what is sensible and perceptible. The need for an aesthetic rereading of the world and the things that stand in it presupposes, therefore, the evolution of the human gaze and a metaphysical approach to worldliness, detached from the instrumentalization of the beings and focused on their presence or their proximity. This article aims at demonstrating the necessity of a real human aesthetic responsibility, which can be concretized in the metaphysical thought of the thing that the human being unfolds, by considering it as the persistence in the world of an object whose ontological disposition could never be neutral. (shrink)

Pierre Duhem’s influential argument for holism relies on a view of the role that background theory plays in testing: according to this still common account of “auxiliary hypotheses,” elements of background theory serve as truth-apt premises in arguments for or against a hypothesis. I argue that this view is mistaken. Rather than serving as truth-apt premises in arguments, auxiliary hypotheses are employed as “epistemic tools”: instruments that perform specific tasks in connecting our theoretical questions with the world but that are (...) not premises in arguments. On the resulting picture, the acceptability of an auxiliary hypothesis depends not on its truth but on contextual factors such as the task or purpose it is put to and the other tools employed alongside it. (shrink)

According to one tradition, the virtues and vices should be understood in terms of their relation to value. But inside this tradition, there are three distinct proposals: virtues are intrinsically valuable; virtues are instrumentally valuable; or a hybrid proposal on which virtues are either intrinsically or instrumentally valuable. In this paper, I offer an alternative proposal inside this tradition. I propose that virtues and vices should be understood in terms of the degreed properties of being virtuous and being vicious, which (...) I analyze in terms of the value and disvalue of actions and attitudes. I defend my proposal as the best inside this tradition by showing how it is immune from standard problems the other three proposals face. (shrink)

Trust in the scientific enterprise — in science as an institution — is arguably important to individuals’ and societies’ well-being. Although some measures of public trust in science exist, the recipients of that trust are often ambiguous between trusting individual scientists and the scientific community at large. We argue that more precision would be beneficial — specifically, targeting public trust of the scientific community at large — and describe the development and validation of such an instrument: the Scientific Community Trust (...) Index (SCTI). We show the results of initial field testing to establish instrument reliability and validity. We then demonstrate certain advantages of the SCTI against other measures of trust and deference, and present correlations between the SCTI and participant scores in two trust-in-science scenarios. Our results suggest that the SCTI is a useful and compact tool for measuring public trust in the scientific community. (shrink)