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Purpose: The study explores measures designed explicitly to manage people with disabilities in a context where diversity interventions are incorporated voluntarily. Furthermore, it examines global organizations' approaches to marginalized groups, such as people with disabilities, in a context where there is an explicit lack of state regulation on diversity measures. Design/methodology/approach: An abductive approach was adopted for the exploratory nature, which sought to understand how global organizations in a developing country utilize diversity management mechanisms to manage people with disabilities. Findings: The findings reveal that human resources departments of international organizations operating in a neoliberal environment demonstrate two distinct perspectives for individuals with disabilities: (i) inclusiveness due to legal pressures and (ii) social exclusion. Originality/value: We explored global organizations' approaches to marginalized groups, such as people with disabilities, in the context of an explicit lack of state regulation on diversity measures and showed that the absence of coercive regulation leads to voluntary actions with adverse consequences. The paper expands theories that critique the inclusion of individuals with disabilities in untamed neoliberal contexts and explains how the responsibilization of institutional actors could enhance what is practical and possible for the workplace inclusion of individuals with disabilities. Without such institutional responsibilization, our findings reveal that disability inclusion is left to the limited prospects of the market rationales to the extent of bottom-line utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy," by James Garrison, is presented. It examines Garrison's use of subjectality theory in a creative way, an approach to the Maoist dynamic of voluntarism, and the problem of subjective agency in Garrison's work.

The author presents a critical response to S. Pearl Brilmyer's essay "Queer Rigidity: Habit and the Limits of the Performativity Thesis" published in the Summer 2024 issue. Topics include the author's agreement with the conclusion reached by Brilmyer in her essay, his discussion of crystal habit as an alternative framework for understanding the persistence of people's attachments proposed by Brilmyer, and thoughts on Brilmyer's critique of queer studies and its characterization of voluntarism.

Copyright of Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

In this essay, I argue that 'poetics'—defined as 'poet‐criticism', a practitioner's firsthand reflection on poetic composition (poiēsis) and verse technique (technē)—makes possible for philosophical theology something that has heretofore been overlooked. I contend that Martin Heidegger's rendition of the poetic 'afflatus', which travesties technē variously as an eidetic, violent, and inauthentic aspect of poiēsis, has exerted an outsized influence on contemporary theology's engagements with poetry. The upshot is a tendentious dualism between poiēsis and creatio, through which the interdisciplinary movement known as 'theopoetics' currently deconstructs the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. I show that the quietism of theopoetics is merely the reverse face of Heidegger's residual voluntarism. The neglected late essays of the poet‐critic Geoffrey Hill demonstrate that mastery in verse technique, far from conforming to Heidegger's caricature, entails an erotically motivated co‐operation between the poet and their medium. Hill's poetics is shown to be consonant with the metaphysics of creation and theological anthropology expressed in the writings of Nicholas of Cusa. I ultimately defend the continued relevance of the analogy between human poiēsis and creatio ex nihilo by appealing to Cusanus's exposition of technē as partaking in the triune co‐inherence of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reads Ye Yonglie's two stories about China's encounter with future pandemics--"Performance is Not Postponed" (1979) and "Disease of Love" (1986)--as critical comments on post-Mao China's reform and a vital sign of Chinese science fiction's transformation in its understanding of the future. The paper first analyzes the representation of index patients and logistical infrastructures to reveal the tension between contagion and communication in Ye's pandemic stories. While contagion triggers speculation about the nation's biological and ideological immunity, it nonetheless foregrounds communication as necessary for China's desired modernization. The paper then examines communication as the central theme of China's reform by reading Ye's two stories as narratives of information flow and control. Comparing them with Ye's Little Smarty Travels to the Future (1978), the paper discusses how Ye's pandemic stories disrupt and interrogate a utopian vision of communication that underlies post-Mao China's political and technological reorientation. The paper finally associates the critical awareness of modernization in Ye's outbreak narratives with a shifting understanding of the ontological condition of the future. Despite not being entirely freed from the Maoist-styled future as a destination of voluntarist and triumphalist progress, Ye's outbreak narratives begin to conceive of the future as an uncertain and imposing horizon where crises generated by past development break out and demand our response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managers face a critical issue in deciding when to employ a predictive planning approach versus a more adaptive and flexible strategic approach. We suggest that determining which approach is ideal for a given context hangs on the extent to which uncertainty is, or might be, mitigable within that context. To date, however, the mitigability of uncertainty has not been adequately distilled. Here, we take on this issue, distinguishing mitigable ignorance of pertinent but knowable information (i.e., "epistemic uncertainty") from immitigable indeterminacy (i.e., "aleatory uncertainty"). We review the current state of the debate on the existence of free will, because the acceptance or rejection of conscious agents as a true first cause has fundamental implications. A critical examination of the arguments for and against the free will hypothesis land us on the side of voluntarism, which implies immitigable indeterminacy (but not complete unpredictability) wherever conscious actors are involved. Accepting the existence of immitigable or aleatory uncertainty, then, we revisit the determination of strategic logics and produce important theoretical nuance and key boundary conditions in the normative choice between predictive and nonpredictive strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the 'voluntarism' challenge for achieving testimonial justice and advocates the virtue of just acceptance of testimony as the right target for efforts to alleviate testimonial injustice. First, we review the credibility deficit case of interpersonal testimonial injustice and explain how the doxastic voluntarism problem poses a challenge to redressing such testimonial injustice. Specifically, the voluntarism problem seems to rule out straightforward control over what and whom people believe; thus, the solution to the problem of testimonial injustice cannot lie in voluntarily self-correcting unjust credibility judgements and replacing them with just testimonial beliefs. Second, we identify three distinctive characteristics of acceptance of testimony, as distinct from belief, and argue that, while it might be difficult to form credibility judgements completely voluntarily, it is easier to control one's attitude of acceptance towards a speaker's testimony. We hold that shifting focus from testimonial belief to acceptance can overcome the problem of (synchronic) involuntarism about testimonial belief. Third, we articulate a vision of a virtue of just acceptance of testimony that can move a hearer to collect the right evidence to reliably find the answer to whether a speaker's testimony is true. Finally, we demonstrate that encouraging people to take a virtuous attitude of just acceptance towards a speaker's testimony forms the basis of a remedial vision of education that can play a distinctive role in fostering the virtue of just acceptance aimed at testimonial justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior scholarly approaches to meaningful work have largely fallen into two camps. One focuses on identifying how work can contribute to a meaningful life. The other studies the antecedents and outcomes of workers experiencing their work as meaningful. Neither of these approaches, however, captures what people look for when they seek meaningful work—or so I argue. In this paper, I give a new, commitment-based account of meaningful work by focusing on the reasons people have to choose meaningful work over other options. I draw on philosopher Ruth Chang's account of voluntarist reasons (reasons that arise from an act of the will) to argue that commitments can create distinctive reasons to pursue certain work. It is the presence of these distinctive reasons that makes work meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principle of fairness suggests that it is wrong for free riders to enjoy cooperative benefits without also helping to produce them. Considerations of fairness are a familiar part of moral experience, yet there is a great deal of controversy as to the conditions of their application. The primary debate concerns whether cooperative benefits need to be voluntarily accepted. Many argue that acceptance is unnecessary because such theories are too permissive and acceptance appears to be absent in a variety of cases where considerations of fairness nevertheless seem applicable. In this paper, I defend the claim that acceptance is necessary by suggesting that these worries can be disarmed, and that theories that deny the necessity of acceptance face deep challenges in articulating an understanding of cooperative benefits that does not also appeal to a person's acceptance of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article expands scholarly definitions of female religious authority—conversations that typically focus on women—by situating girlhood as an equally important site of receiving, developing, and performing religious agency. Using a biographical case study approach, the article examines the life of Mary Chrystie, a deeply pious American girl who lived from 1825–1841 in the mid-Atlantic region and left one of the most substantial extant primary source collections produced by a child from this period. Her life represents the religious potency of girlhood's "in-between status" to building female-centric sacred repositories. To demonstrate this dynamic, the article analyzes Mary's stewardship over her spiritual interiority, participation in religious communities, and her engagement with voluntarism. Ultimately, this article demonstrates the necessity of incorporating age as a category of analysis into gendered reformulations of religious authority, allowing girls to be integrated into scholarly narratives of women's religious history as actors in their own right. [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]

Theological voluntarism is the view according to which certain moral properties or statuses have to be explained in terms of God's commands, will, or other voluntary states of God. In his God and Moral Law, Mark Murphy criticizes theological voluntarism in general and Adams' divine command theory of the nature of moral obligations in particular. Furthermore, he puts forward the first sketches for a theory of moral obligation that is not voluntaristic. In this paper, I will first introduce Murphy's proposed theory and will show that it is implausible. Then, drawing on Adams' views of the nature of goodness and virtue, articulated in Finite and Infinite Goods and A theory of Virtue, I will try to put forward the first sketches of a viable theory of moral obligations that do not appeal to divine commands in explaining moral obligations and explains them in terms of goodness/badness. An important feature of morality that voluntarists appeal to for motivating their view and criticizing views that explain obligations in terms of goodness is the existence of supererogatory actions, that is, actions that are good but not required. I will focus on this feature of morality and try to show how a theory of moral obligation that explains obligations in terms of goodness can accommodate this feature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay draws on Zunz's major works to show how the reformulation of the American Promise between, roughly, 1870 and 1960 established a new relationship between inequality and solidarity. I argue that Zunz's analysis demonstrates that the emerging white-collar middle class responded to the crises of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries with three cultural innovations— recodifying status, engineering social harmony, and formalizing voluntarism—intended to reconcile the country to the inequalities of urban-industrial life. Through the construction of corporate bureaucracies, the development of "human engineering," and the creation of the nonprofit sector, members of the new middle class attempted, with considerable success, to get inequality "right" by adapting their traditional expectations about inequality to new institutional circumstances. By linking large-scale changes to the agency of a specific social group, Zunz's contributions to historical research illuminate how the American Century emerged from historical circumstances and why it has fallen apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often argued that there are no practical reasons for belief because we could not believe for such reasons. A recent reply by pragmatists is that we can often believe for practical reasons because we can often cause our beliefs for practical reasons. This paper reveals the limits of this recently popular strategy for defending pragmatism, and thereby reshapes the dialectical options for pragmatism. I argue that the strategy presupposes that reasons for being in non-intentional states are not reducible to reasons to act. Pragmatists who want to preserve a motivational constraint on reasons therefore have exactly two options: either arguing that there are irreducible reasons for being in non-intentional states (new pragmatism); or arguing that we can believe directly for practical reasons (traditional pragmatism). I argue that the prospects for the former option are dim because irreducible reasons to be in states are hard to square with the motivational constraint on reasons. Returning to the more traditional route of arguing for pragmatism by defending a version of doxastic voluntarism therefore seems to be the more promising way for pragmatists to go. [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]

Doxastic involuntarists, as I categorize them, say that it's impossible to form a belief as an intentional action. But what exactly is it to form a belief, as opposed to simply getting yourself to have one? (Everyone agrees you could do that intentionally.) This question has been insufficiently addressed, and the lacuna threatens the involuntarists' position: if the question isn't answered, their view will lack any clear content; but, after considering some straightforward ways of answering it, I argue that they would make involuntarism either false or insignificant. I also examine several involuntarist arguments, and find them faltering at just this point: inadequate attention to belief-formation results in unsound arguments or insignificant conclusions. The viability of involuntarism as a meaningful position, I conclude, turns on whether the notion of belief-formation can be further developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationalist natural law brought a new philosophy to the ethical, political and legal thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this paper I examine the incidence of iusrationalism in coding. The principles and methods of natural law, taken from the natural sciences, will mark the new science of legislation. Attention shifts from medieval political voluntarism to enlightened legal individualism. I review the contributions of the main representatives of the school of natural law to the elaboration of the codes. The meeting between natural law, based on faith in human reason to know, and the political program of the Enlightenment bequeathed a way of doing and thinking about the law of which we are still heirs today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I introduce the symposium on Anjan Chakravartty's Scientific Ontology by summarizing the book's main claims. In my commentary, I first challenge Chakravartty's claim that naturalized metaphysics cannot be indexed to science simpliciter. Second, I argue that there are objective truths regarding what conduces to particular epistemic aims, and that Chakravartty is therefore too permissive regarding epistemic stances and their resultant ontologies. Third, I argue that it is unclear what stops epistemic stances from having unlimited influence. Finally, I argue that Chakravartty's epistemic stance voluntarism is inadequately motivated and lacks empirical support for its psychological content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I raise questions about Chakravartty's voluntarism about stances: supposing that we recognize a hierarchy of stances, voluntarism might be at once true (in an ultimate sense) but misleading when it comes to the practical tenability of pursuing certain debates in the philosophy of science, such as the debate about scientific realism or how to 'naturalize' metaphysics. [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]

According to "voluntarists," voluntary control is a necessary precondition on being blameworthy. According to "non-voluntarists," it isn't. I argue here that we ought to take seriously a type of voluntary control that both camps have tended to overlook. In addition to "direct" control over our behavior, and "indirect" control over some of the consequences of our behavior, we also possess "constitutive" control: the capacity to govern some of our attitudes and character traits by making choices about what to do that constitute those attitudes and traits. Taking this sort of control seriously, I argue, ultimately tips the scale towards voluntarism. First, I address a non-voluntarist case in which an agent is putatively made blameworthy by the reasons for which she acts, even though the particular reasons for which she acts aren't up to her. I argue that this case looks compelling only if we overlook constitutive control, and thereby miss how the agent's motivating reasons are under her voluntary control even though non-voluntarists think they are not. I then use the notion of constitutive control to diffuse some of the best putative counterexamples to voluntarism: cases in which subjects are blameworthy either for caring inadequately about others or for wishing them ill. [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]

Is there an epistemic analogue of moral motivational internalism? The answer to this question has implications for our understanding of the nature of epistemic normativity. For example, some philosophers have argued from claims that epistemic judgement is not necessarily motivating to the view that epistemic judgement is not normative. This paper examines the options for spelling out an epistemic analogue of moral motivational internalism. It is argued that the most promising approach connects epistemic judgements to doxastic dispositions, which are related to motivation in a fairly tenuous sense. It is also argued that this approach currently lacks a plausible and informative account of the nature and workings of these doxastic dispositions, and, hence, an explanation of the range of phenomena internalist theses typically set out to explain. The most promising route for developing such an account, based on recent expressivist work, is investigated and found inadequate for the task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the varied meanings historically associated with concepts of voluntarism in relation to social relief as they were articulated by changing moral elites in Denmark from the late nineteenth century until the present. Concepts of voluntarism have historically constituted "normative counterconcepts" that link voluntary practices to desired futures in opposition to alternative modes of organizing. The "proximity" of voluntarism vis-à-vis the "distance" of the state has always been a core meaning, but the concept has drifted across the political spectrum from its first articulation by nineteenth-century conservative Christians to its rediscovery by leftist social researchers in the late twentieth century. Paradoxically, the welfare state helped "proximity" become a core meaning, in contrast to its original social-conservative meaning emphasizing proximity and distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Ibero-Americana de Estratégia (RIAE) is the property of Revista Ibero-Americana de Estrategia/UNINOVE and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is customary to think that Objective List ("OL), Desire-Satisfaction ("D-S") and Hedonistic ("HED") theories of prudential value pretty much cover the waterfront, and that those of the three that are "subjective" are naturalistic (in the sense attacked by Moore, Ross and Ewing), while those that are "objective" must be Platonic, Aristotelian or commit the naturalist fallacy. I here argue for a theory that is both naturalistic (because voluntaristic) and objective but neither Platonic, Aristotelian, nor (I hope) fallacious. In addition, this proposal, called "CHOICE," is an example of neither an OL, D-S, nor HED theory. It is a theory according to which uncoerced choosings create objective values that we (even everyone) may be wrong about, because valuations are conative rather than epistemic activities. On this view, intrinsic prudential goods necessarily involve likely (pursuant to lawlike regularities) net increases in successful free choosings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After selecting some key theses from Finnis's Natural Law and Natural Rights, the author's acceptance of «Hume's law» is critically analyzed, and also the resulting separation between practical reason and speculative reason and the lack of distinction between the speculative level proper to moral philosophy and the practical level proper to individual decision, the thesis of knowledge of human nature from the principles of practical reason, and the attempt to reduce human nature to rationality, as the foundation of natural law; the insufficient explanation of moral obligation by the demands of the common good, and of the existence of intrinsically evil acts, the denial of a single ultimate end for all men, the denial of the moral character of the first principle of practical reason, and the reduction of the thesis of the divine foundation of moral obligation to mere voluntarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article tries to show and to demonstrate the influence of the late-medieval voluntarism -both in its escotic version and mainly in the ockhamist- in the modern political and juridical philosophy. Part exposing in synthetic form the fundamental principles of Ockham's philosophy to later analyze some of its consequences, among which the contingentism of law and methodological individualism stand out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that stance voluntarism is a coherent and useful view for understanding debates about the ontological commitments warranted by science. To do so, I first engage in a defensive move: I rescue stance voluntarism from what I take to be the most pressing objection to have emerged in recent literature, which I call the 'irrationality objection'. According to this objection, an agent courts irrationality by simultaneously holding an epistemic stance and believing that stance voluntarism is true. I argue that this objection is based on a misunderstanding of stance voluntarism and the kinds of reasons that agents take themselves to have for their adopted stances. I then make the positive contention that we can expect the idea of stance voluntarism, thus saved, to not only be a defensible, but also a useful framework for understanding ontological disputes within science. I do this by presenting a case study from contemporary cosmology in which it is so. Combining these two claims, I argue that stance voluntarism is a coherent and useful view for understanding some ongoing disputes about ontology within scientific contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We care not only about how people treat us, but also what they believe of us. If I believe that you're a bad tipper given your race, I've wronged you. But, what if you are a bad tipper? It is commonly argued that the way racist beliefs wrong is that the racist believer either misrepresents reality, organizes facts in a misleading way that distorts the truth, or engages in fallacious reasoning. In this paper, I present a case that challenges this orthodoxy: the case of the supposedly rational racist. We live in a world that has been, and continues to be, structured by racist attitudes and institutions. As a result, the evidence might be stacked in favour of racist beliefs. But, if there are racist beliefs that reflect reality and are rationally justified, what could be wrong with them? Moreover, how do I wrong you by believing what I epistemically ought believe given the evidence? To address this challenge, we must recognize that there are not only epistemic norms governing belief, but moral ones as well. This view, however, is at odds with the assumption that moral obligation requires a kind of voluntary control that we lack with regard to our beliefs. This background assumption motivates many philosophers to try to explain away the appearance that beliefs can wrong by locating the wrong elsewhere, e.g., in an agent's actions. Further, even accounts that accept the thesis that racist beliefs can wrong restrict the class of beliefs that wrong to beliefs that are either false or the result of hot irrationality, e.g., the racist belief is a result of ill-will. In this paper I argue that although these accounts will capture many of the wrongs associated with racist beliefs, they will be only partial explanations because they cannot explain the wrong committed by the supposedly rational racist. The challenge posed by the supposedly rational racist concerns our epistemic practices in a non-ideal world. The world is an unjust place, and there may be many morally objectionable beliefs it justifies. To address this challenge, we must seriously consider the thesis that people wrong others in virtue of what they believe about them, and not just in virtue of what they do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that the relationship between belief and credence is a central question in epistemology. This is because the belief-credence relationship has significant implications for a number of current epistemological issues. I focus on five controversies: permissivism, disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, doxastic voluntarism, and the relationship between doxastic attitudes and prudential rationality. I argue that each debate is constrained in particular ways, depending on whether the relevant attitude is belief or credence. This means that (i) epistemologists should pay attention to whether they are framing questions in terms of belief or in terms of credence and (ii) the success or failure of a reductionist project in the belief-credence realm has significant implications for epistemology generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doxastic involuntarists have paid insufficient attention to two debates in contemporary epistemology: the permissivism debate and the debate over norms of assertion and belief. In combination, these debates highlight a conception of belief on which, if you find yourself in what I will call an 'equipollent case' with respect to some proposition p , there will be no reason why you can't believe p at will. While doxastic involuntarism is virtually epistemological orthodoxy, nothing in the entire stock of objections to belief at will blocks this route to doxastic voluntarism. Against the backdrop of the permissivism debate and the literature on norms of belief and assertion, doxastic involuntarism emerges as an article of faith, not the obvious truth it's usually purported to be. [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]

The article discusses the business ethical problems arising from noncompliance of competitors wherein the business that adhere to regulation does no feel the need to comply with market regulation. Topics include the pressure from economic competition encourages firms to act unethically, and types of noncompliance behavior. According to the author firms need to involve in meta-voluntarism wherein business bring others into compliance.

In defending so-called global expressivism I have often seen Carnap as an ally. Both Carnap's rejection of "externalist" metaphysics and his implicit pluralism about linguistic frameworks seem grist for the global expressivist's mill. André Carus argues for a third point of connection, via Carnap's voluntarism. I note two reasons for thinking that this connection is not as close as Carus contends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A standard view in contemporary philosophy is that belief is involuntary, either as a matter of conceptual necessity or as a contingent fact of human psychology. We present seven experiments on patterns in ordinary folk-psychological judgments about belief. The results provide strong evidence that voluntary belief is conceptually possible and, granted minimal charitable assumptions about folk-psychological competence, provide some evidence that voluntary belief is psychologically possible. We also consider two hypotheses in an attempt to understand why many philosophers have been tempted to view belief as involuntary: that belief is a prototype concept and that belief is a dual character concept. Altogether, our findings contribute to longstanding philosophical debates about the relationship between the will and the intellect, while also advancing scientific understanding of important social judgments. [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.

In this comment on Misak's Cambridge Pragmatism , I examine a case study—debate about the existence of free will—in order to explore residual tensions between Misak's 'truth-affirming,' Peircean pragmatism, and mainstream analytic philosophy. I suggest that Misak's Peirce makes a metaphysical commitment to the existence of rational self-control, and thereby to the existence of free will. I also suggest, however, that her 'analytic pragmatism' thus far offers few clues about how we should defend such a commitment from skeptical arguments emerging from contemporary analytic metaphysics. I conclude that analytic pragmatists have more work to do in explaining pragmatism's complex relationship with metaphysics, and defending its core commitments from skeptical threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an alternative perspective on the question of the relationship between German Idealism and American Pragmatism through attention to the philosophy of Josiah Royce. Despite being seen as a Hegelian, Royce declared himself a pragmatist. However, he also called his position Absolute Voluntarism. This paper suggests that the real issue between Idealism and Pragmatism is Intellectualism vs. Voluntarism. This distinction both parallels and cuts across the traditions of German Idealism and American Pragmatism, and promises to open up a view broader than the traditional accounts of the qualified appreciation of Hegel seen in Peirce and Dewey, or the outright antipathy of James. With Peirce, we see that his continual call for Royce to study logic includes, or complements, his criticisms that Royce neglects Secondness. Regarding James, we see his influence on Royce is mediated also in their mutual study of Wundt's voluntaristic psychology, which has its own roots in the pre-Kantian German Idealism of Leibniz. As for Dewey, he acknowledges Royce's voluntarism, but rejects Royce's claim that his Absolute Pragmatism/Voluntarism is pragmatism at all. Nonetheless, even if Royce failed to fuse his idealism and pragmatism, the very effort suggests he saw them as distinct enough to need fusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is to explain and analyze the debate between W. K. Clifford ("The Ethics of Belief", 1877) and William James ("The Will to Believe", 1896). Given that the main assumption shared by Clifford and James in this debate is doxastic voluntarism -i.e., the claim that we can, at least in some occasions, willingly decide what to believe-, I will explain the arguments offered by Bernard Williams in his "Deciding to Believe" (1973) against doxastic voluntarism. Finally, I will explain what happens with the debate between Clifford and James once we accept Bernard Williams's arguments and refuse to accept doxastic voluntarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: If the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, then it appears that miracles are metaphysically impossible. Yet Locke accepts both essentialism, which takes the laws to be metaphysically necessary, and the possibility of miracles. I argue that the apparent conflict here can be resolved if the laws are by themselves insufficient for guaranteeing the outcome of a particular event. This suggests that, on Locke's view, the laws of nature entail how an object would behave absent divine intervention. While other views of laws also make miracles counterfactually dependent on God's will, I show how this view is consistent with the essentialist commitment to the view that the laws are metaphysically necessary. Further, I argue that Locke's view is a relatively attractive version of essentialism, in part, because it allows for the possibility of miracles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dissatisfaction or the presence of problems in the current macro-conditions in countries and the impossibility to resolve the problems through existing mechanisms are the most important drivers for applying policy transfer concepts. Therefore, by utilizing a variety of strategies such as Copying, emulation, Hybridization/synthesis, and inspiration, policy-makers have attempted to transfer the policies. Specifically, this has been carried out by implementing lessons learned from other countries (benefitting from validated effective aftermaths) into the country in various ways, and improving the status quo underlying their own functional area. Given the multifaceted nature of ethics of science and the presence of different decision-making institutions, it has become very attractive to many interest groups to intervene in policy-making. Although policy transfer in ethics of science fails to achieve pre-designed benefits, it can at least provide a framework to promote scientific ethics, its relevant processes, and stakeholders with a clear endpoint protected from islanding. As such, the current study, through applying a qualitative research technique and conceptualization of Grounded Theory, aims to design a policy transfer model of ethics. To this end, eight experts in the field of scientific ethics familiar with the policies of ethics of science were employed. Following the three-stage coding process, all the causal, underlying, and intervening conditions as well as mechanisms and consequences of the policy transfer of ethics of science were identified. Additionally, the main phenomenon with two main concepts (the level of willingness and readiness to accept the destination side, and the level of control--monitoring--and supervision over the results of the transfer line) were approved. Beside the applications of the study findings for policy-makers, it can be highlighted that since each of the concepts identified in this study has been overlooked, this study can be an independent area of research for scholars in the field of ethics of science and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]