Subject Ought Research Articles

The Subjective Ought and the Accessibility of Moral Truths

Abstract Many philosophers think that descriptive uncertainty is relevant to what we subjectively ought to do. This leads to a further question: is what we subjectively ought to do sensitive to our moral uncertainty as well? Includers say yes—what we subjectively ought to do is sensitive to both descriptive uncertainty and moral uncertainty. Excluders say no—only descriptive uncertainty matters to what we subjectively ought to do (i.e., moral uncertainty is irrelevant). Excluders argue that common motivations for the subjective ought only give us reason to think that descriptive uncertainty matters. This paper focuses on one motivation: accessibility. Excluders argue that accessibility does not motivate the Includers’ view because moral truths are always accessible – unlike descriptive facts which are not always accessible. My goal is to defend the Includers’ view by arguing that moral truths are not always accessible in the relevant sense.

“I’m just British—normal British”: Exploring Teachers’ and Pupils’ Conceptualisations of Religion(s) and Religious Belonging

ABSTRACT This article seeks to foreground the voices of primary school teachers and children—often silenced in research—and explore how they understand religion(s) and religious belonging. The findings draw on qualitative data investigating the narratives of teachers and pupils from five primary community schools in the West Midlands (England). The research shows that religious traditions in contemporary Religious Education classes still tend to be constructed as un-diverse, impermeable, monolithic wholes as teachers rely on the dominant World Religions Paradigm. As religions as lived tend to be ignored, children find it difficult to situate themselves within debates and conversations pertaining to religion(s) and religious diversity and consequently tend to speak about ‘others’ and imagined ‘them’. As a result, most children believe that RE is learning about the ‘Other’ and tend to construct ‘world religions’ as un-British. The article concludes that, overall, RE fails to challenge static representations of religion(s) and rigid categorisations and that the subject ought to offer alternative representations of religious beliefs and practices by foregrounding the lived realities of children and religious communities.

Doxastic divergence and the problem of comparability. Pragmatism defended further

AbstractSituations where it is not obvious which of two incompatible actions we ought to perform are commonplace. As has frequently been noted in the contemporary literature, a similar issue seems to arise in the field of beliefs. Cases of doxastic divergence are cases in which the subject seems subject to two divergent oughts to believe: an epistemic and a practical ought to believe. This article supports the moderate pragmatist view according to which subjects ought, all things considered, to hold the practically right belief in, at least, some cases of doxastic divergence. Unlike many defences of pragmatism, this paper does not aim to overcome exclusivism (briefly, the view that only epistemic, but not practical, considerations have an influence on what a subject ought to believe). Another major challenge that pragmatism faces is to show that the epistemic and the practical ought to believe are comparable. This article makes a case for their comparability.

Just do it? When to do what you judge you ought to do

While it is generally believed that justification is a fallible guide to the truth, there might be interesting exceptions to this general rule. In recent work on bridge-principles, an increasing number of authors have argued that truths about what a subject ought to do are truths we stand in some privileged epistemic relation to and that our justified normative beliefs are beliefs that will not lead us astray. If these bridge-principles hold, it suggests that justification might play an interesting role in our normative theories. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, a value that’s notoriously difficult to understand if we think of justification as but a fallible means to a desired end. We will argue that these bridge-principles will be incredibly difficult to defend. While we do not think that normative facts necessarily stand in any interesting relationship to our justified beliefs about them, there might well be a way of defending the idea that our justified beliefs about what to do won’t lead us astray. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, but this way of thinking about justification and its value comes with costs few would be willing to pay.

The role of African universities in the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples: A development agenda

ABSTRACTBefore the emergence of the United Nations at the end of the Second World War, human rights were generally scantily recognised in international law and, even under the UN Charter of 1945, indigenous peoples received merely tacit reference. Since the 1970s, however, several normative instruments have been adopted to give recognition to the rights of indigenous peoples as a distinct component of international human rights law. With the further adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the UN General Assembly in 2007, the subject has assumed new dimensions with the possibilities of new vistas. What, for instance, is the role of African universities in the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples as critical agents in the global human rights and development agenda? The purpose of this article, among others, is to synthesise the strategic approaches to the rights of indigenous peoples and to accentuate a more informed conceptualisation of what the role of African universities on this subject ought to be, and must be, in the light of the dynamic opportunities of the post-2007 era.

La profondeur des dispositifs civilisateurs : la dialectique négative entre la politesse et la moralité chez l’Anthropologie de Kant

Cet article analyse la contribution que la belle apparence de la vertu, dont la multiplicité de formes peut se réunir autour le nom générique de decorum, offre au procès de civilisation et aussi à la progressive moralisation de l’espèce humaine selon l’anthropologie morale de Kant.

Disagreement and Evidential Attenuation

AbstractWhat sort of doxastic response is rational to learning that one disagrees with an epistemic peer who has evaluated the same evidence? I argue that even weak general recommendations run the risk of being incompatible with a pair of real epistemic phenomena, what I call evidential attenuation and evidential amplification. I focus on a popular and intuitive view of disagreement, the equal weight view. I take it to state that in cases of peer disagreement, a subject ought to end up equally confident that her own opinion is correct as that the opinion of her peer is. I say why we should regard the equal weight view as a synchronic constraint on (prior) credence functions. I then spell out a trilemma for the view: it violates what are intuitively correct updates (also leading to violations of conditionalisation), it poses implausible restrictions on prior credence functions, or it is non‐substantive. The sorts of reasons why the equal weight view fails apply to other views as well: there is no blanket answer to the question of how a subject should adjust her opinions in cases of peer disagreement.

Applicability of fetal renal artery Doppler values in determining pregnancy outcome and type of delivery in idiopathic oligohydramnios and polyhydramnios pregnancies

To investigate the relationship between fetal renal artery Doppler results and pregnancy outcomes in patients with idiopathic abnormal amniotic fluid indices. A total of 110 patients without signs of fetal distress were included in the study: 31 idiopathic oligohydramnios and 29 idiopathic polyhydramnios pregnancies (study group) and 50 normal pregnancies (controls). Doppler investigation of the umbilical artery (UA), middle cerebral artery (MCA), fetal descendant thoracic aorta (DTA) and fetal renal artery (RA) was performed in all patients. Fetal RA resistive index (RI) and pulsatile index (PI) values were measured. Values pertaining to type of birth, newborn weight and APGAR scores were compared. Average patient age, gravidity and week of pregnancy were 25 +/- 4, 1.6, and 37.4 +/- 1, respectively There were no statistically significant differences between the groups as far as UA S/D, MCA S/D, DTA S/D, DTA RI, DTA PI, and RA S/D measurements were concerned. However in the oligohydramnios group RA RI and RA PI values were significantly higher than the other two groups. Birth weight in the polyhydramnios group and cesarean section rate due to fetal distress in the oligohydramnios group were significantly higher In the oligohydramnios group, without affecting fetal distress parameters, Doppler USG evaluation identified an increase in the RA resistance. Also in that group, cesarean rate due to fetal distress during labor was significantly higher than in the remaining two groups. Due to the predictive potential of values of fetal renal artery Doppler of fetal outcome further large sample-sized studies on the subject ought to be carried out.

Dickens and the National Interest: On the Representation of Parties in Bleak House

Property stands so squarely at the intersection between the individual and community because systems of property are always the creation of some community. As property theorists of all stripes have long recognised ['i]n the world of Robinson Crusoe, property rights play no role'. Moreover, systems of property have as their subject matter the allocation among community members of rights and duties with respect to resources that human beings need in order to survive and to flourish ... In other words, whenever we discuss property, we are unavoidably discussing the architecture of community. It is the constant aim of a court of equity to do complete justice by deciding upon and settling the rights of all persons interested in the subject of the suit ... For this purpose all persons materially interested in the subject ought generally to be parties to the suit, plaintiffs or defendants, however numerous they may be, so ... that the orders of the court may be safely executed by those who are compelled to obey them, and future litigation may be prevented.

Options and the subjective ought

Determing what you ought to do can be broken down into two stages. The first stage is determining what your options are, and the second stage is ranking those options. While the second stage has been widely explored by philosophers of all stripes, from ethicists to decision theorists to epistemologists to action theorists, the first stage has gone largely unaddressed. And yet, without a theory of how to conceive of your options, the theory of practical rationality of how you ought to act will be incomplete. I will argue that the fact that what you ought to do depends on your uncertainty about the world ultimately forces us to conceive of your options as consisting of all and only the decisions you are presently able to make. In this way, oughts apply only to decisions, and not to the non-mental acts that we ordinarily evaluate for moral and rational permissibility. This change in our conception of your options is not of mere bookkeeping interest; it has substantive implications for first-order normative theorizing. First, it directly takes into account the potential costs and benefits of the decision itself in determining what you ought to do. Second, it provides a principled solution to Chisholm’s Paradox, in which your doubts about your own self-control seem to give rise to conflicting claims

Towards the implementation of Computer-Aided Semiosis

Computer-Aided Semiosis (CAS) is a concept coined by a team of researchers a couple of years ago. Since it is a promising domain due to the fact that responds to actual trans-cultural communication needed in the broad-band society - where often the message behind the words does not come clear - the subject ought being inquired more detailed as promised in other papers of the same authors. This interesting idea was inspired from Eco’s theory of communication which states that the receiver "fills the message with significance"; hence it is vital for any communication and is strongly dependent on the cultures involved. In line with Eco’s theory, the research in this area must be trans-disciplinary and anthropocentric. In the intention of narrowing the existing gap between the technological offers and user expectations the macro-architectural feature is that translation will progress from textual, semantically correct, to multimodal, culturally adequate, based on common concepts and "grammar" (rules to combine them into meaningful sentences); thus, this paper will present possible approaches towards the implementation of CAS. Given the fact the ontologies are considered to be the pillars of Semantic Web but also a key tool in implementing CAS, both will be a subject of this paper in the light of finding an implementation solution. The paper is structured on five sections: the first will present the defining aspects of the concept relating it with previous research; the second section will deal with CAS approach and architecture, following with the state of the art regarding ontologies and their relation with Semantic Web. Among the conclusions, one is already noticeable: CAS could not be possible without a trans-cultural ontology.

Plant structure. A colour guide, 2nd edn

I regularly – and (I hope) rightly – bemoan the lack of plant anatomical knowledge of modern-day biology graduates, so it's always good to see books that try to remedy that deficiency! Expectations were accordingly high when I received Plant structure by Bowes and Mauseth (hereafter referred to as B&M2e) to review. Although BM there is a standard set of topics that are fundamental to plant anatomy that all books that aspire to deliver on the subject ought to contain. Each chapter begins with a short introductory text that summarizes the main features of the chapter's subject. And this is done with admirable succinctness. Briefly, the contents are: Chapter 1, Introduction, which sets the theme for the atlas and covers such topics as the variety of land plants, transpiration and translocation in vascular plants, general morphology of angiosperms (the book is largely concerned with flowering plant anatomy), floral and reproductive features. Chapter 2, The Plant Cell, is an introduction to plant cell ultrastructure. Chapter 3, Plant Histology, considers cells and tissues of the primary and secondary plant body (this and all subsequent chapters contain images almost solely at the light-microscope, LM, level, the primary level of inquiry of the book). After Chapter 4, Apical Meristems, there follow chapters dedicated to the major organs of the vegetative plant body: 5, The Green Leaf; 6, The Stem; and 7, The Root. The anatomical survey is concluded with Chapter 8 on Plant Reproduction. A selected bibliography, glossary and index complete the book. Perhaps the most telling comparison of BM Chapter 8 is termed Plant Reproduction in B&M2e – rather than Sexual Reproduction – because it has been expanded to include asexual propagation methods. Whilst the text in both editions is largely the same, it has been considerably supplemented in many places in B&M2e, e.g. approx. 2·5 pages on leaf modifications in Chapter 6 (although this may not sound much, since the text of a chapter in B&M2e is only approx. 6·25 pages this represents a substantial increase). And there are also new sections dealing with mangroves, succulent roots, parasitic plants and ant-plants in Chapter 7. As one might expect from Mauseth's involvement, there are a lot of cactus images in B&M2e (and yes! anatomy of cactus spines is one of the new items on leaf modification in Chapter 5). The bibliography, glossary and index are also all larger in B&M2e. Inevitably in such a volume, attention focuses on the images. And here is where I have a big problem with B&M2e. Notwithstanding how stunning and beautiful the images are (which they are and for which full credit is rightly and richly deserved), they suffer from a massive fundamental flaw: nowhere are scale bars provided for any image, nor even an indication of the magnification (which latter basic information was provided in 1e). Why is this essential information not provided? Not only is its omission baffling and bizarre, it seriously undermines any value the text has as an aid to teaching plant anatomy! BM although both of these have accompanying CDs with digital versions of the book's images – which addition would have made BM although their images may not be as impressive as B&M2e's, they do at least give details of the magnification. Without doubt Bowes & Mauseth's Plant structure is a stunning collection of anatomical images at the light-microscope level with informative accompanying text. And at approx. £0·05 per image it represents excellent value. It is therefore such a shame that its educational worth is considerably devalued by images devoid of any indication of magnification or scale.

Objective or Subjective ‘Ought’?

The prescriptive ‘ought’ has both an objective and a subjective interpretation. In the objective sense, what one ought to do depends on what is actually true. In the subjective sense it depends on what one believes to be true. Ordinary usage seems to vacillate between these two interpretations. An example (the indecisive terrorist) is used to show that a subjective ought statement can have a determinate truth-value in situations where the corresponding objective ought statement has no truth-value, not even an unknowable one. Therefore the subjective ought is not definable in terms of the objective ought. However, definability in the other direction is not excluded by this argument.

Artistic Truth and the True Self in Edith Stein

This paper explores Stein's treatment of truth and art as a way of approaching her philosophy of the self. Stein argues that one can distinguish between the truth of what something is and the truth of what something ought to be. She maintains that the work of art helps us to understand this distinction because it can serve as a revelation of the truth of what something is, but the work of art only succeeds when it also reflects what its subject ought to be. Stein makes an analogous distinction regarding the self as it is and as it ought to be. In her anthropology she argues that human beings are individuated not only by matter but also by form and that understanding our individuating form is the key to becoming the person we ought to be. Stein develops the theory that persons are called to be their true selves through their relationship to the divine. the paper argues that for Stein art and life are related in such a way that striving to be one's true self transforms ones life into a work of art.

What is embedded systems and how should it be taught?---results from a didactic analysis

This paper provides an analysis of embedded systems education using a didactic approach. Didactics is a field of educational studies mostly referring to research aimed at investigating what's unique with a particular subject and how this subject ought to be taught. From the analysis we conclude that embedded systems has a thematic identity and a functional legitimacy. This implies that the subject would benefit from being taught with an exemplifying selection and using an interactive communication, meaning that the education should move from teaching “something of everything” toward “everything of something.” The interactive communication aims at adapting the education toward the individual student, which is feasible if using educational methods inspired by project-organized and problem-based learning. This educational setting is also advantageous as it prepares the students for a future career as embedded system engineers. The conclusions drawn from the analysis correlate with our own experiences from education in mechatronics as well as with a recently published study of 21 companies in Sweden dealing with industrial software engineering.

The Dilemma of Using Humans as Research Subjects: An Assessment of Risks and Benefits

According to The Belmont Report, the prior assessment of potential risks and benefits is essential in determining whether a subject ought to participate in research. This article will present a review of the risks and benefits to which research subjects are exposed, followed by a short summary of the philosophical and ethical thinking underlying these issues. The application of the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence to the issues of minimizing risk and maximizing benefit might be achieved more effectively by changes in how the consent information letter is usually organized.

Self‐Deception, Interpretation and Consciousness

I argue that the extant theories of self‐deception face a counterexample which shows the essential role of instability in the face of attentive consciousness in characterising self‐deception. I argue further that this poses a challenge to the interpretist approach to the mental. I consider two revisions of the interpretist approach which might be thought to deal with this challenge and outline why they are unsuccessful. The discussion reveals a more general difficulty for Interpretism. Principles of reasoning—in particular, the requirement of total evidence—are given a weight in attentive consciousness which does not correspond to our reflective judgement of their weight. Successful interpretation does not involve ascribing beliefs and desires by reference to what a subject ought to believe and desire, contrary to what Interpretists suggest.

Ethical and Fair Work Behaviour: A Normative-Empirical Dialogue Concerning Ethics and Justice

Towards the general goal of generating a normative-empirical dialogue about ethics and justice, the present study explored three issues: (1) the extent to which the normative criteria of ethics and justice prescribed by moral philosophers are indeed reflected in managerial professionals' subjective beliefs of what ethical and just work behaviour ought to be, (2) the relationship between people's ought beliefs and their perceptions of actual ethical and just work behaviour, and (3) the relationship between the notions of ethics and justice. To do so, a review of the normative and positive theories of ethics was carried out which revealed the key normative criteria of ethics (i.e., utility, rights, justice, principle and care) and justice (i.e., due procedure and due outcome). Using both the interview and the repertory grid procedures, key determinants of ethical and just work behaviour as perceived by the managerial professionals were generated. These determinants were used to construct the questionnaires for the assessment of people's subjective ought beliefs, and their is judgements, of ethical and just work behaviour. There were three respondent samples: managerial professionals, general public and university students. Results showed that (1) people's subjective ought beliefs closely reflected the normative standards of ethics and justice, (2) there were significant discrepancies between people's subjective ought beliefs and their perceptions of actual ethical and just work behaviour, (3) individual differences in ought beliefs had some influence on is judgements, (4) both the ought beliefs and is judgements pertaining to the notion of justice could be accounted for by measures of the other four criteria of ethics and in particular, the notion of rights. The implications of the findings for normative theories of ethics and for ethics education are discussed.

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE DESIGN OF COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

The design of composite structures is far from straightforward because of the anisotropy of the building materials. Many practical considerations on the subject ought to be addressed. First, common restrictions imposed on the layup of laminates, such as symmetry, balance, and population rules, are investigated. Rules for filtration of imposed multiple loadsets are also established. Next, the issues of design optimization itself are addressed. Netting analysis, although very tempting;, is proven to be wrong. Methods of local and global optimization are surveyed and confronted Major differences between statically determinate and indeterminate structures, illustrated by typical beam problems, are raised For the purpose of global structural optimization, superplies, sublaminates, and ply drops were introduced, along with new design and optimization criteria by Manne and Tsai [1-3]. Direct applications of the latter, such as easy manufacturing, stiffness-controlled and hybrid designs are provided for composite plates. Finally, the benefits and weaknesses of plydrops and sublaminates are evaluated critically.

Notes on Lyric Poetry; Or, at the Muse's Tomb

Translating language of things into that of humans entails not only translating silence into audibility; it means translating nameless into name. - Walter Benjamin One of my close friends, also a worker in mine fields of poetic, says to me the lyric is dead. I cannot but agree, if by lyric we mean that private self-regarding effusion of language, that romantic mea culpa by which a world is nostalgically recalled, privileged and measured against what is. Likewise, I would emphatically add, poetry is dead or at least dying out of a swoon of novelty if it subscribes too closely to those collocations of contemporary thought we call theory or cultural studies, studies which invoke other nostalgias for certainty, for rightness, for order. Another way of putting this might be: lyric is dead primarily as it reinforces a masked ideology, including about myth of personal. But, as well, typical critique that lyric is subjective ought to be juxtaposed against sub-rosa reality, more difficult to enunciate in face of avant-garde tribalism (do we know of anything more tribal, more nationalistic than poetic clique?), which reminds us that poetic bandwagons are never merely matters of aesthetics, indeed, may involve many more subjective dimensions than we'd care to explicate. What can be stated concerning theory- or philosophically driven work is that it is clearly a product of statism and would-be statism, what Deleuze and Guattari point out in Towards a Minor Literature as those styles or genres or literary movements, even very small ones, [which] have only one single dream: to assume a major function in language, to offer themselves as a sort of state language, [an] official language. On grounds Deleuze and Guattari are making, lyric as judged by a post-modem mentality, can never be sufficiently political; it is not doing a man's job, lifting weight off masses, creating utopias, etc. But a case can be made that, in this century, this is precisely lyric's strength, that strictly speaking, lyric is neither a product of thought nor of intention but rather comes as a recognition of a gap or rupture in one's thought and intention. (My use of impersonal singular pronoun is meant to suggest that lyric qua lyric has no hope of ever becoming a kind of group-think.) Casting lyric against other poetic forms, one finds something that is more than merely interesting. The narrative mode, rhetorical mode and gnomic mode, even purely private or expressive mode of lyric (with its hidden ideological baggage) as well, have a kind of self-sufficiency. The reader participates by wandering around entities created by such forms. Indeed, a form is erected that in some way does not depend on a reader - as in case of story, a form which, even as it wants hearers, is ultimately enclosed and folded in on itself. Not so much interactive as presentational. The self-containment of such forms, polished-egg quality of either story or poetico-logical structure may already seem anachronistic when set against polyvalent and even fuzzy operations of mind. And old romantic lyric, especially that poetic trace of delicate impressions caught on wing, now strikes reader as orotund and even unsympathetic to contemporary awareness and consciousness. So we must admit that if we are to talk positively of a lyric moment, of a moment for lyric, we must acknowledge that while presenting itself as something gathered out of flux of existence itself, it is no more free of contingent, historical or philosophical than any other form of life or thought. And yet, function of lyric, and by implication poetry's first principle, is that it exceeds or modifies very conditions it arises from. Even in minims of speech or figure, it is always unplanned, unaccountable supplement. …