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Many of our attitudes are non-culpable: there was nothing that we should have done to avoid holding them. I argue that we can still be blameworthy for non-culpable attitudes: they can impair our relationships in ways that make our full practice of apology and forgiveness intelligible. My argument poses a new challenge to indirect voluntarists, who attempt to reduce all responsibility for attitudes to responsibility for prior actions and omissions. Rationalists, who instead explain attitudinal responsibility by appeal to reasons-responsiveness, can make sense of blameworthiness for non-culpable attitudes. In response, voluntarists could propose a revision of our actual practices. This would lead us into a quite different debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature on North Korea has been divided over whether the country's state ideology of Juche should be regarded as a variant of Soviet Marxism-Leninism or whether the explicit voluntarism of Juche means that it should be viewed as a distinctive indigenous ideology. Drawing on Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development and Gramsci's theory of ideology, the paper argues that North Korea's status as a geopolitically insecure postcolonial country engaged in a forced march from "backwardness" to a modern industrialized economy has had a decisive impact on both the form and content of North Korean state ideology. Understood as a form of developmental nationalism that seeks not only to legitimize authoritarian rule but also to create a collective subjectivity suited the task of rapid catch-up national development, Juche constitutes a combined ideological form that rests on Marxist-Leninist origins but has deliberately drawn on existing forms of "common sense" conducive towards the mass mobilization of society. In doing so, this paper critically engages with the argument that the voluntarism of Juche represents a decisive break from the supposedly objective laws of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, thereby "turning Marx on his head." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Descartes appears to hold that everything we believe is the product of a voluntary choice. Scholars have been reluctant to take this particularly radical version of doxastic voluntarism as Descartes' considered position. I argue that once Descartes' compatibilist conception of free will as well as his position on the 'freedom of indifference' are taken into account, the primary motivations for the rejection of the aforementioned radical version of doxastic voluntarism lose their force. Consequently, we may take Descartes at his word when he maintains that everything we believe, we believe freely – even if we cannot believe anything we wish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normalization of foodbanks in Britain has sharply polarized public debates around issues of hunger. Government supporters laud their presence as a timely revival of an earlier tradition of voluntarism able to offset an unaffordable welfare state or stigmatize foodbanks as new spaces of 'dependency'. Government critics view foodbanks as a consequence of ministerial indifference to growing hunger and a betrayal of the core values envisaged by the founders of the welfare state. The very presence of foodbanks in one of the richest countries in the world is denounced as a national scandal that violates an intrinsic quality of Britishness and signifies a regression to an earlier, more heartless era. In mooting this argument, critics have deployed a Victorian trope that evokes familiar figures and narratives from popular culture in a circular social imaginary of 'what we were' in the Victorian era as distinct from 'what we have been' in the post-war welfare state to 'what we are reverting to' now. The paper critically deconstructs the trope as a device to hold the government to account while also critiquing its nostalgia rooted in a mythic notion of the welfare state which was never as inclusive as popular imagining would believe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I examine Edward Stillingfleet's last published work and the critique of Rene Descartes's natural philosophy therein which appeared in 1702 as an incomplete appendix to the revised edition of his well-known Origines Sacrae to explore the depiction of God's power that underwrote his assessment of Cartesianism mechanical philosophy and its inclination to atheism. I consider both Stillingfleet's characterization of God's relationship with the creation and the contextual sources he used to support it, to show that his refutation of Descartes's work was wrapped in the language of voluntarist theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing her ethics of care, Eva Kittay discusses the vulnerability and voluntarism models of obligation. Kittay uses the vulnerability model to demonstrate that we have some obligations to care, even for those to whom we've made no promise or with whom we have no agreement. Kittay's primary interest is in our moral obligations. I use this distinction to propose a new way to understand our epistemic obligations to one another. After explaining Kittay's models and their epistemic analogs, I use epistemic vulnerability to explain two cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I raise and analyze two rarely discussed stories about the development of idealism in early modernity. I seek to show that Arthur Collier reaches the conclusion that the mind-independent world is strictly impossible following through the implications of Malebranche's intellectualist considerations. One important component of divine rationality accepted by both is that God has to act in the simplest way possible, which, for Collier, shows that the existence of an imperceptible matter is extrinsically or metaphysically impossible. By contrast, I will argue, George Berkeley resisted the temptation to construe the simplicity principle in an intellectualistic manner, even though it would have offered him an easy route to prove the impossibility of matter. Rather, when he argues that it is indeed God who is creating our perceptions directly on the basis that any belief in mind-independent substances is totally unjustifiable and we cannot form a coherent notion of it, he can be seen as radicalizing Locke's voluntarism, according to which we have to appeal to the omnipotent God's arbitrary decisions with regard to various difficulties in philosophy. My proposal can also be read as an alternative to the well-known epistemological narrative about the emergence of idealism in the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two footnotes added to the version of Catharine Cockburn's Defence of the Essay Of Human Understanding (1702) reprinted in her Works (1751) have led to various accusations, including that she was confused and an inadequate interpreter of Locke's moral epistemology. In particular, it is claimed that she did not recognize the gulf that separated her own intellectualist and internalist views from Locke's more voluntarist and hedonistic position. This paper defends Cockburn's interpretation of Locke, arguing that the evidence for Locke being a voluntarist and hedonist is not compelling, and that Cockburn's interpretation of his moral epistemology is well grounded in the Essay Of Human Understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newton’s suggestion in Query 31 of the Opticks (1718) that infinite space is the sensorium of God and that God “is more able by his Will to move the Bodies within his boundless uniform Sensorium, and thereby to form and reform the Parts of the Universe, than we are by our Will to move the Parts of our own Bodies” has recently been shown to be both philosophically coherent and compatible with contemporary religious views. This paper explores the further meaning of this and what it tells us about Newton’s theology, and his attempts to maintain immanentism while avoiding pantheism. It is suggested that Newton’s evident equivocation in discussing these matters stems in large part from the fact that there was no designation in his day for his position, but it can now be understood as panentheism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Descartes’s commitment to modal voluntarism was one of his most notorious and controversial doctrines. The reaction of contemporaries was hostility and incredulity; the reaction of modern scholars has been little different. Yet, though the issue has fomented considerable discussion and disagreement in the literature, the overwhelming majority of scholarly output has focused on questions of whether Descartes actually upheld the doctrine, or what he was committed too if he indeed did. Surprisingly, the underlying question of why Descartes would have upheld such a doctrine in the first place has gone almost entirely unnoticed and unasked. This paper proposes several possible answers to this question, each of which provides at least a partial explanation for Descartes’s attraction to modal voluntarism. The ultimate motive, however, was likely not one of positive attraction, but driven by Descartes’s anxieties over the thorny and deeply heretical implications of his conception of matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Responsible Belief: A Theory in Ethics & Epistemology" by Rik Peels is presented. It outlines the concept of epistemic responsibility. It examines irony in the requirement of responsibility for beliefs and provide clarification to doxastic voluntarism. An overview of the story is also given.

A literary criticism of the book "Responsible Belief: A Theory in Ethics & Epistemology" by Rik Peels is presented. It outlines the responsibility for belief requires voluntaristic control. It examines control over our beliefs and justify theory of knowledge presented in the book. An overview of the story is also given.

The socio-economic reasoning of the schoolmen originated from heterogeneous roots and influences and developed over centuries. This is reflected in divergent interpretations of scholastic economic thought. Two conceptual coordinates are used to put those discussions into a common perspective: (1) the distinction between agency-sensitive vs. agency-neutral exchange; (2) the divide between intellectualism and voluntarism. While focussing important theological influences on key issues of economic thought, this allows for a critical account of continuity of problems, while at the same time taking seriously the profound transformation of knowledge systems since the scholastic era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents and empirically evaluates an analytical experiment in which we seek to translate individual-level explanations of differences in political participation to an organizational level. Utilizing the Civic Voluntarism Model, we analyse the consequences of voluntary associations’ politically valuable ‘resources’, ‘motivation’, and ‘recruitment networks’. Using data from a survey of ethnic associations in Stockholm, Sweden, results suggest that the overall logic of how associational-level political participation is encouraged resembles corresponding mechanisms on the individual level. We conclude that both our theoretical argument and empirical findings merit further analyses of civil society actors’ political participation with the approach taken in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social desirability, the likelihood of individuals to overreport behaviors they perceive to be approved by others, is often cited as a limitation in research but rarely controlled in a systematic manner. Social desirability can influence self-reported behaviors (e.g., voting behavior) and communication variables (e.g., argumentativeness). Information seeking may be susceptible to the effects of social desirability as knowledge and information are generally desired, and thus may be prone to overreporting. This article presents results from two online, information-seeking tracking studies investigating the influence of social desirability on self-reported information seeking. Participants indicated how much time they actually spent seeking information on a website. Unbeknownst to participants, their website use was being tracked using Google Analytics. This article compares actual time spent seeking information to reported information-seeking time. Results suggest that participants overreport information seeking in these two studies; social desirability may explain this result. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author discusses the history behind the transfer of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954. He argues that although the decision to transfer Crimea to Ukraine was not made by Khrushchev, his unbridled anti-Stalinism and voluntarism were the moving forces behind the whole enterprise. There were no objective reasons for this decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]