Instrumental Reasons Research Articles

Saving cosmopolitanism from colonialism

ABSTRACT Cosmopolitanism – the view that moral concern, and consequently moral duties, are not limited by borders – seems to justify colonialism with a ‘civilizing’ mission, because it supports the enforcement of moral norms universally, with no distinctions between territories, and settler colonialism, because it promotes ideas like common ownership of the Earth and open borders. I argue that existing attempts to defend cosmopolitanism from this worry fail, and that instead the cosmopolitan should embrace a cosmopolitan instrumentalist defence. According to cosmopolitan instrumentalism, colonialism is wrong (when it is wrong) for instrumental reasons: it has all sorts of terrible effects. There is nothing per se wrong with colonialism itself, so cosmopolitanism need not worry about licencing it in principle. There is much that is wrong with colonialism in practice, so cosmopolitanism can easily condemn colonialism as egregiously wrong, although it cannot condemn it as per se or necessarily wrong.

How Is Human Socioeconomic Position Linked With Dog Ownership Practices? A Study From Denmark

ABSTRACT Connections between dog ownership and socioeconomic position (SEP) are not well understood. This study examined associations between family and neighborhood levels of SEP and dog ownership, dog acquisition factors (purchase price and breed characteristics), and the purposes of owning a dog based on data from a survey carried out in Denmark in 2021. Participants (aged 18–89 years) were recruited using probability sampling (n = 2,112). Stepwise multivariable logistic or multinomial logistic regressions were conducted to identify significant associations with SEP. Approximately 20% of families in Denmark have a dog. Dog ownership was not found to be linked with income, education, or occupation when life course and lifestyle factors were taken into account. Neighborhood SEP was associated with dog ownership, but the association was not ordered. Payment of a high price for the dog was more prevalent both in high-SEP neighborhoods and in high-income families. Dog owners with low income and limited involvement in the labor market were more likely to have mixed-breed dogs. Those with a higher income and the self-employed were more likely to have a pedigree dog. Acquiring a dog to get physical exercise was more common among dog owners living in high-SEP neighborhoods. Owners with higher levels of education were more likely to have a dog because they liked the company of animals, and those with lower levels tended to keep a dog for instrumental reasons and for social support. The reason for keeping a dog for social support was mainly observed among those with lower levels of education who were also frequently (often/sometimes) involuntarily alone. As in many other areas of consumption, the results demonstrate that acquisition of, and reasons for keeping, a dog are linked to socioeconomic status. They also suggest that dogs play different roles in emotional and mental health at different educational levels.

Pediatric Assent in Clinical Practice: A Critical Scoping Review

Background This study assesses how pediatric assent is conceptualized and justified within the therapeutic context. Pediatric ethicists generally agree that children should participate in medical care decisions in developmentally appropriate ways. Much attention has been paid to pediatric assent for research participation, but ambiguities persist in how assent is conceptualized and operationalized in the therapeutic context where countervailing considerations such as the child’s best interest and parental permission must also be weighed. Methods Searches were conducted in 11 databases including PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science. Articles published between 2010 and 2020 were screened in COVIDENCE for meeting each of four criteria: (1) focusing on pediatric assent, (2) focusing on clinical care, (3) including normative claims, and (4) containing substantive statements about the meaning of pediatric assent. Full texts were abstracted for (1) operational definitions of assent, (2) discussion of the temporal nature of assent, (3) description of the concept of “understanding,” and (4) ethical justifications for soliciting assent. These excerpts were coded and code patterns formed themes presented in the results. Results The final analytic data set contained 29 articles. Analysis yielded three key themes. First, valid assent varies by treatment, population (e.g., younger versus older), and geographic/cultural context. Second, assent represents two distinct longitudinal processes: One involves eliciting preferences over a disease course or care episode; the other focuses on children’s developmental maturation. Third, ethical justifications for assent draw variously on instrumental and intrinsic reasons, but often remain ambiguous. Conclusions There is widespread agreement that assent is morally valuable, but there remain substantial ambiguities or disagreements about its meaning, process, and ethical justification.

Should We Vote in Non-Deterministic Elections?

This article investigates reasons to participate in non-deterministic elections, where the outcomes incorporate elements of chance beyond mere tie-breaking. The background context situates this inquiry within democratic theory, specifically non-deterministic voting systems, which promise to re-evaluate fairness and power distribution among voting blocs. This study aims to explore the normative implications of such electoral systems and their impact on our moral duty to vote. We analyze instrumental reasons for voting, including prudential and act-consequentialist arguments, alongside non-instrumental reasons, assessing their validity in the context of non-deterministic systems. The results indicate that non-deterministic elections could strengthen the case for voting based on prudential and act-consequentialist grounds due to their proportional nature and the increased influence of each vote. We conclude that, while non-deterministic elections strengthen our duty to vote overall, they do not strengthen it for all the arguments in the literature. This paper contributes to the discourse on electoral systems by critically evaluating the moral obligation to vote in non-deterministic elections.

The responsibility of sports federations to facilitate and fund concussion research and the role of active participant involvement and engagement

ABSTRACT It is generally accepted that we need more research into concussions and other injuries with potential long-term effects in sport because such research underpins effective, evidence-based prevention, management, support, and treatment. This paper provides an analysis of the obligations of sports federations to support and facilitate such research, as well as an analysis of the role active participants in the sport should have in the research process. The paper focuses on concussion and concussion research, though very similar arguments apply to other common sports injuries with potential long-term effects. The paper argues that sports federations have a moral obligation and a prudential interest in initiating, facilitating, and funding concussion research. This follows from their duty of care towards active participants and from considerations of reciprocity. The ability to discharge these research obligations depends on the resources available to a particular federation, but those who can discharge them should do so. The paper further argues that athletes and other active participants in sport should be involved in all aspects of the concussion research process from conception to design, i.e. that Active Participant Involvement and Engagement (APIE) should be a non-negotiable element of concussion research projects. This is supported by instrumental reasons, but also by philosophical argument based on standpoint epistemology and on ethical arguments related to the interests of active participants. Standpoint epistemology is the epistemological position that the knowledge a person has and can have depends on that person’s standpoint in the world. Keywords: Concussion, funding, participant involvement, sport, sport association, sport federation

Birds of a feather flock together: influence of ideology in the implementation of participation

ABSTRACT The global spread of participatory budgeting (PB) has facilitated its adoption by ideologically diverse political parties. Nowadays, we can easily find conservative, social democratic and leftist parties as promoters of PB. Hence the question arises: how does party ideology influence the implementation of citizen participation mechanisms? In this article, we study PB processes in nine different Spanish municipalities. Our aim is to analyse three dimensions that can be influenced by ideology: PB’s participatory design, the reasons different parties have to launch and maintain PB, and the possible instrumental reasons politicians refer to when speaking in favour of or against PB. According to our findings PB initiatives implemented by conservative, social democratic and radical left parties are quite different from one another: from a managerial way of understanding participation (conservative), which views participants as consumers to understanding PB as an educational process aimed to empower citizens (radical left). Nevertheless, arguments vary depending on whether politicians are in office or in the opposition, the former being more inclined to support citizen participation.

Ethics and compliance programs for a new business narrative: A Kohlberg‐based moral valuing model for diagnosing commitment at the top

AbstractA genuine commitment to ethics and compliance (E&C) programs means that top management adopt them for what they represent and not for other purposes. Only then can they truly build socially responsible behavior and a successful and sustainable business, as stated in the latest international standard for compliance management practice (ISO 37301:2021), which we found to be consistent with a new business narrative as conceptualized in Freeman's work. However, it also requires that top managers place a moral value on these practices, rather than simply using them for instrumental reasons. Building on Kohlberg's six stages of moral development as applied to managers' moral thinking, this manuscript offers a model to explain how top managers' moral valuing of these practices varies along a moral reasoning continuum, resulting in four distinct modes. It also theorizes that each mode of moral valuing yields an archetype of E&C programs. It thus offers a new approach that contributes to the business ethics and management literature by incorporating a morally grounded perspective on the adoption and implementation of E&C practices and how it might shape their features and characteristics. It also aims to improve professional practice and business contributions to Freeman's ideas through genuine ethics‐based E&C programs.

Adaptive coping strategies among credit transfer students: a qualitative study of UPGRIS and DMMMSU partnership program

International Credit Transfer was held between Universitas PGRI Semarang and Don Mariano Marcos Memorial University (DMMMSU) Philippines. The students of UPGRIS would learn at DMMMSU for a semester. The language and cultural differences became challenges for the students to adapt to the learning situation. This matter brings psychological challenges for the students. Therefore, they had to promote coping strategies to manage their difficulties. This research determined the adaptive coping strategy of credit transfer students. This qualitative approach research provided the real experience and portrayal of a real research site by directly interacting with the research subjects. The researchers involved four students of the Guidance and Counseling program with credit transfer program status for a semester. The researchers collected the data with a structured interview and documentation. The applied analyses included three matters: data reduction, data presentation, and data verification. The results showed that every participant applied problem-focused coping, plain-problem solving, confrontative strategy, and social support search for instrumental reasons. Universities should provide psychological services to increasing international student’s stress managing skill.

Participation, Collective Impact, and Your Instrumental Significance

There are many sorts of day-to-day choices that are such that, if enough people were to choose one way rather than another, serious harm could be avoided or reduced, and yet it does not seem that any one such choice will itself make a difference. Consider, for example, how our collective consumer choices have various serious environmental and social consequences, and yet for many products, it is doubtful that one purchase more or less will itself make a difference to these outcomes. How are we to understand what each of us ought to do in these sorts of contexts? This paper further advances and illuminates a thesis that I have argued for elsewhere: that a purely ‘non-instrumental’ approach to this question is not satisfactory. A necessary and central part of understanding how to think about an individual choice in these contexts is showing that it does matter for instrumental reasons - for reasons having to do with its ability to have an influence on the outcome. Once a core instrumental solution is found, other moral considerations can build on top. I argue for this by way of an examination of a new non-instrumental approach advanced by Wieland and van Oeveren: a participation-based approach. I also identify what I think is the main source of resistance to my thesis: a mistaken conflation of two different problems.

Lottocracy or psephocracy? Democracy, elections, and random selection

Would randomly selecting legislators be more democratic than electing them? Lottocrats argue (reasonably) that contemporary regimes are not very democratic and (more questionably) that replacing elections with sortition would mitigate elite capture and improve political decisions. I argue that a lottocracy would, in fact, be likely to perform worse on these metrics than a system of representation that appoints at least some legislators using election – a psephocracy (from psēphizein, to vote). Even today's actually existing psephocracies, which are far from ideally democratic, are better suited than a lottocracy would be to meet the demands of democratic citizenship (politics must be legible to ordinary people, who must have low-cost opportunities to participate) and the demands of democratic leadership (powerful representatives should be specialized and constrained by competitions for popular support). Democrats therefore have weighty instrumental reasons to reject lottocracy and work to democratize psephocracy, instead.

Rethinking the Environmental Virtue of Ecological Justice from the Interdependencies of Non-Human Capabilities and Synergetic Flourishing

The capabilities approach has largely addressed individual capabilities via a liberal framework common in its literature. However, a growing number of scholars concerned with sustainable human development are analyzing theories and methodologies that are both suitable for human flourishing and display a respect for nature. This paper explores several forms of considering the value of non-animal and non-individual natural entities, such as ecosystems. I first expose some instrumental reasons why we may care about the flourishing of ecosystems and then other reasons based on the assumption that they have integrity and their own capabilities and, therefore, deserve moral consideration. I argue that despite the possible moral conflicts that may emerge between human and ecosystemic autonomy, they could be avoided by adopting an ecological justice virtue. I present this ecological justice characterized by some contributions of decolonial thought and environmental virtue ethics. I propose that if the capabilities approach was not anchored only in an individualistic ontology, it could better assume a multi-level axiology from which the inherent and instrumental value of ecosystems would be interconnected. And, to this end, I find the concept of synergetic flourishing helpful to accept an interdependent and non-human-centered recognition of the capabilities.

Beyond the dichotomy of students-as-consumers and personal transformation: what students want from their degrees and their engagement with knowledge

ABSTRACT There is widespread concern that students are increasingly becoming passive consumers of education who primarily attend university to obtain the credentials they need for the labour market. To interrogate this view, a longitudinal qualitative study examined what 47 students in three countries wanted to get out of studying for their degree (their personal projects) and how these developed over the course of their undergraduate studies. Our analysis showed that whilst most students had instrumental reasons for studying, they tended to be personally committed to the knowledge they were studying and had a clear sense of the role it would play in their future lives. Where students did not see knowledge as having a key role in helping them to realise their personal projects, they were less likely to value their studies. Also, students who were committed to the knowledge they were studying but did not have a sense of what they were trying to achieve personally with it, appeared to be uncertain about where they were going by the end of their degree. Based on this analysis, we argue that the dichotomy between students-as-consumers and personal transformation is false. Rather what is important is students being clear about how academic knowledge connects them to the world and helps them to shape their plans for the future.

Against moralism in anti-discrimination law

This article argues against a moralist interpretation of the purpose of statutory anti-­discrimination law. On this interpretation, there are instrumental reasons to legally prohibit discriminatory acts to achieve a collective goal that the state ought to pursue as a matter of political morality. But the fact that a discriminatory act is morally wrong according to interpersonal morality additionally gives a separate non-instrumental or moralist reason to legally prohibit it. According to moralism, the best interpretation of anti-­discrimination law’s purpose ascribes both moralist and instrumental justifying reasons for the law’s main features. Most writing in the philosophical literature on anti-­discrimination law proceeds under a dominant, yet inarticulate, assumption that moralism is true. Indeed, I explain that we might be persuaded to invoke moralist reasons to confer intelligibility on why the law prohibits directly discriminatory acts, why certain traits are included in the prohibited grounds of discrimination, why legal regulation is limited to certain spheres of private life such as employment and housing, and why the law is enforced through a mechanism of private recourse. I argue, however, that the attractions of moralism are illusory. We ought to invoke only instrumental reasons to explain these features of the law. A thoroughgoing instrumentalist account of anti-discrimination law as a tool for achieving an egalitarian political goal offers a unifying account of legal prohibitions of direct and indirect discrimination that coheres with a justification for the law’s protection of certain prohibited grounds and its application to the typical regulated spheres. I show how this conclusion has the important implication that, to the extent that anti-discrimination law’s private recourse enforcement method is inconsistent with the law’s overall instrumental purpose of reducing inequality, it ought to be reformed to place the onus of enforcement more squarely on administrative officials. In the final analysis, anti-discrimination law’s point is not to embody the morality of anti-discrimination as between private persons. It is to function as a means for realizing public justice.

Recognising plural valuation of nature when shaping conservation policies: A New Zealand perspective

Plural valuation of nature seeks to overcome a lack of attention by conservationists to the multiple values people assign to nature. Proponents claim plural valuation makes conservation socially and ecologically more effective. This study analyses conservation laws and uses a survey of New Zealand conservation professionals to investigate the potential of plural valuation for conservation. Document analysis revealed a plurality of values and multiple co-existing framings of nature in New Zealand’s conservation laws. Also, relational values of nature, embedded in the uniqueness of New Zealand’s native fauna and flora, are important to most surveyed conservation professionals and complement instrumental reasons to value nature. However, answers showed various positions on human-nature relationships that correspond to divergent perceptions of the place of introduced species and humans in nature. The New Zealand experience illustrates how multiple values of nature could influence conservation decision-making and management in different ways. Therefore, investigators of plural valuation of nature will need to elicit the divergent underlying understandings of what nature means for individual actors. Failing to do so may lead to an underestimation of the variety of visions of conservation values assigned to nature can sustain, hamper cooperation between conservation stakeholders, frustrate the potential of plural valuation of nature and hence, lead to less effective conservation.

Investigation of English Oral Skills and Learning Motivation in Rwanda Polytechnic Colleges: The Case of IPRC Ngoma

English language has become a language of instruction in Rwanda over the last few decades, and students and graduates are supposed to be fluent in it at the moment. However, the literature indicate that employers are not satisfied with the level of English oral skills of graduates from IPRCs in the job. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the students’ level in English oral skills and what motivates them to learn English language. Using an explanatory mixed methods design, quantitative and qualitative data were collected data by means of questionnaires. Questionnaires were administered to three (3) English lecturers of English language and sixty (60) students from different departments in IPRC Ngoma.
 The findings indicate that the students’ level in English oral skills is good. It was also found that students are extrinsically motivated to learn English language and the reasons for their motivation are associated with instrumental reasons where English would help them in their future career of learning and integrative benefits where English will help them exchange information with people from different parts of the world.

Instrumental goals shape EU citizens' attitudes to the Russia-Ukraine war over time.

The European Union (EU) legislation suggests that EU member states progressively adopt and implement policies that are primarily in line with the broader European interests, and secondarily with specific national interests. Yet, citizens from various EU member-states often oppose these EU directives and adopt attitudes that favour national interests. The current study investigates whether EU citizens progressively comply with-or digress from-the directives of the superordinate EU group during the Russia-Ukraine war. In a two-wave study we investigated the role of instrumental reasons (i.e., maximisation of material gain) to cooperate with an EU outgroup, namely Russia, in Greeks' (an EU member state) compliance with the EU directives over time during the Russia-Ukraine war. We hypothesised and found that instrumental reasons to cooperate with Russia: (a) encourage EU citizens to support digressing from EU directives and (b) predict decreased identification with the superordinate identity of EU over time. Moreover, since NATO's approach to the Russian invasion closely mirrors that of the EU, we further investigated the effects of instrumental reasons to cooperate with Russia on Greeks' identification with a different superordinate group, namely NATO. Results were largely similar to those we obtained when focusing on EU as a superordinate group.

Zombies Incorporated

AbstractHow should we understand the relation between corporate agency, corporate moral agency and corporate moral patienthood? For some time, corporations have been treated as increasingly ontologically and morally sophisticated in the literature. To explore the limits of this treatment, I start off by redeveloping and defending a reductio that historically has been aimed at accounts of corporate agency which entail that corporations count as moral patients. More specifically, I argue that standard agents are due a certain type of moral concern, but corporate agents are not due that type of concern, so they are not agents of, at least, the standard type. Diagnosis: because corporations plausibly lack qualia, they are ‘zombie agents’ that mimic real agents. This explains why they are neither standard agents nor standard moral patients: they are not standard agents because they lack mental states, and because they lack experiences, they are, at best, morally notable rather than morally respectable. However, I then argue that we nevertheless have instrumental reasons to include them in our moral responsibility practices, both because that is what notability involves and bluffingly, and both when it comes to treating them as moral agents and as moral patients. Hence, we may treat corporations as part of our moral responsibility practices to a limited extent anyway.

Not all language tourists take language courses – the determinants of formal and informal language tourism

Language tourism is characterized by language learning being a primary or secondary motivation for the trip. Although language tourists typically take language courses in the destination, many also choose to develop their language skills autonomously through immersion. However, the mechanisms underlying this choice are ignored, particularly in a context where informal language tourists are still largely neglected in the literature. This study seeks to identify the main factors that predict language tourists’ decision to take language lessons in the destination, using a binary logistic regression model. A sample of 964 language tourists is used, which comprises both formal ( N = 409) and informal ( N = 555) language tourists. It is concluded that the decision to take language lessons in the destination is positively influenced by trip length, greater formality of pre-trip learning strategies, having a scholarship, traveling without relatives, being motivated to learn a language due to instrumental reasons, and purposeful choice of language travel destination for language-related reasons, among other variables. Informal language tourism is positively influenced by having acquaintances in the destination, traveling with relatives, investing more in self-directed language learning strategies, and having shorter stays, among other variables. This study sheds light on a group of travellers that has been neglected by both academia and the tourism industry.

Dependence motives and use contexts that predicted smoking cessation and vaping cessation: A two-year longitudinal study with 13 waves

IntroductionPrior studies examining the impact of e-cigarette use, dependence, cessation motivation/goals, and environmental restriction on smoking cessation were based on cross-sectional or shorter-term longitudinal data with binary outcomes. There is also a critical knowledge gap in corresponding impact on vaping cessation. This study aims to fill in these gaps by investigating these factors’ effects on speed of progression to smoking and vaping cessation. MethodsThis study conducted secondary analysis of data from 13 waves of assessment of adult cigarette users in Wisconsin from October 2015 through July 2019. Cox regression was employed to examine baseline predictors’ effects on speed of progression to smoking cessation (past-month abstinence) among 405 exclusive combustible cigarette users and dual users of combustible and electronic cigarettes, as well as progression to vaping cession among 178 dual users. ResultsDual use of e-cigarettes with cigarettes, lower primary dependence motives of smoking, higher secondary dependence motives of smoking, higher motivation to quit smoking, more ambitious future goals to quit smoking, and more restrictive environment for smoking all contributed to quicker progression to smoking cessation. Dual users with higher secondary dependence motives of smoking or with lower primary dependence motives of vaping progressed faster to vaping cessation. ConclusionsThe findings support that nicotine dependence is product-specific with two distinct constructs: the primary dependence motives are associated with more difficulty to quit, whereas the secondary dependence motives have the opposite effect. Dual users with strong instrumental reasons for smoking may not find e-cigarettes as an effective substitute for cigarettes.

Economic inequality and the long-term future

Why, if at all, should we object to economic inequality? Some central arguments – the argument from decreasing marginal utility for example – invoke instrumental reasons and object to inequality because of its effects. Such instrumental arguments, however, often concern only the static effects of inequality and neglect its intertemporal consequences. In this article, we address this striking gap and investigate income inequality's intertemporal consequences, including its potential effects on humanity's (very) long-term future. Following recent arguments around future generations and so-called longtermism, those effects might arguably matter more than inequality's short-term consequences. We assess whether we have instrumental reason to reduce economic inequality based on its intertemporal effects in the short, medium, and the very long term. We find a good short and medium-term instrumental case for lower economic inequality. We then argue, somewhat speculatively, that we have instrumental reasons for inequality reduction from a longtermist perspective too, primarily because greater inequality could increase existential risk. We thus have instrumental reasons to reduce inequality, regardless of which time-horizon we take. We then argue that from most consequentialist perspectives, this pro tanto reason also gives us all-things-considered reason. And even across most non-consequentialist views in philosophy, this argument gives us either an all-things-considered or at least weighty pro tanto reason against inequality.