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Sport categorization is often justified by benefits such as increased fairness or inclusion. Taking inspiration from John Rawls, Sigmund Loland's fair equality of opportunity principle in sport (FEOPs) is a tool for determining whether the existence of an inequality ethically justifies the institution of a new category in any given sport. It is an elegant ethical normative framework, but since FEOPs does not account explicitly for athlete safety (i.e. athlete physical and mental wellbeing), we are left in an ethically dubious situation where the risk of harm associated with a categorization regime might in fact prove to be greater than the risk of harm present within the sport before its introduction. To address this critical gap, I propose the 'scales of ignorance' ethical normative framework to weigh the relative risk of harm within a sport, crucially inserting athlete safety into the discourse surrounding ethical justification for categorization in sport. The current paper is the first explicit formulation of assessment and ethical justification of risk of harm in the familiar logic of FEOPs. The scales of ignorance framework can also be used independently of Loland's approach. Two new concepts are also proposed: 'insidious risk of harm' and 'pernicious risk of harm'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I present a sociological approach to the problem of meaningful work that dwells on its broad social and cultural sources, as opposed to the focus on subjective and organizational factors currently prevailing in the field. Specifically, I consider two sociological perspectives, those of community and autonomy, as important conceptual tools for understanding the ambivalent character of modern culture in providing individuals with a sense of meaningfulness of their activities. I also review some of the existing research on meaningful work and interpret it through this conceptual distinction, both to show the latter's relevance for the field and to identify the gaps it might help fill. As a result, based on the sociological perspectives, I propose a general conceptual model and discuss five directions to further advance the theoretical comprehension of meaningful work, and I suggest some implications of these perspectives for normative business ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By adopting Habermas' communicative theory, this paper categorizes players' actions into four elements. The strategic action involves players manipulating each other within the framework of a game1; normative action is manifested in following the rules and the underlying ethos; dramaturgical action emerges through the players' deliberate presentation of themselves to both participants and spectators; and communicative action reveals the purpose of a game as a way of being. The conceptualization of game actions leads to a qualitative redefinition of the perfect game, which enables a greater understanding of the game, its participants, and human excellence. As such, this paper's significance lies in the proposal that the Habermasian perfect game is a potential solution to Suits' puzzle about what type of games can be played in his Utopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Business ETHICS/BUSINESS Ethics: One Field or Two?" N. Craig Smith, INSEAD, France Thomas Donaldson, University of Pennsylvania, USA Sareh Pouryousefi, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada Markus Scholz, TU Dresden, Germany Laura J. Spence, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK Overview The purpose of this special issue is to address fundamental questions about a possible deficit of normativity in management research, practice, and education - especially as it relates to the field of business ethics and its neighboring disciplines, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. "On the Harmony of Feminist Ethics and Business Ethics.". [Extracted from the article]

Moral repair is an important way for firms to heal moral relationships with stakeholders following a transgression. The concept is rooted in recognition theory, which is often used to develop normative perspectives and prescriptions, but the same theory has also propelled a view of moral repair as premised on negotiation between offender and victim(s), which involves the complex social construction of the transgression and the appropriate amends. The tension between normative principles and socioconstructivist implementation begs the question how offending firms should approach moral repair. Addressing this question, we develop a two-level conceptualization of moral repair, distinguishing between procedural and substantive levels of practice, which accommodate normativity and socioconstructivism, respectively. In so doing, we enrich the literature by 1) promoting conceptual clarity, 2) refining understanding of the moral repair process, and 3) suggesting the use of a unified, configurational approach to studying (nonlinear) relations between amends and moral outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on understanding economics as a humanistic science, emphasizing that human beings must use reasoning to choose means and ends to achieve their goals. Topics include the role of human purpose and reasoning in economic decisions, the idea that humans must learn what ends and means to adopt, and how humanomics seeks to frame economics within the broader context of human nature and experience.

The idea that we ought to help young people with underlying issues, rather than simply pressure them back to school has gained traction in the literature on absence from school. However, this discussion has not considered how help and control are intertwined. The following is a Foucault inspired qualitative study of absence interventions in a school in Denmark aiming to critically explore this. Using positioning theory conjoined with Butler's notions of recognisability and support networks, I show that these interventions form a normative context: regular attendance is the proper path towards a good life. Within this context, young people were seen as having a choice, despite school being compulsory. When the young people and parents attempt to negotiate this choice, they end up escalating the pressure instead. In order for help not to escalate into increased pressure, I argue that we need more flexibility regarding the politics of compulsory school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this forum, six scholars discuss Heikki Patomäki's book World Statehood: The Future of World Politics, published in 2023. The editor's introduction situates it in the discursive contexts of cosmopolitanism, deep history and functional differentiation. Ian Crawford looks at the concept of world statehood from an astrobiologist's point of view, putting the debate in the context of research on the possibility of life existing beyond Earth. Eva Erman notes that there are methodological issues that primarily derive from a missing distinction between theoretical and practical normativity in Patomäki's thought. Oliver Kessler offers a critical perspective on underlying, and possibly unrealistic, assumptions about a universal translatability of specialized knowledges and vocabularies that he argues underlines Patomäki's project. Jens Bartelson argues that the concept of world community has probably accumulated too much conceptual baggage to be useful in building world statehood. Mitja Sienknecht observes that the evolution of artificial intelligence is insufficiently addressed in World Statehood and probes possible implications in this respect. Heikki Patomäki then replies to these contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticorruption has become the fulcrum of conditionalities for unstable democracies. In the EU, antigraft packages formed the common denominator of stabilization policies for Romania, Bulgaria, the Western Balkans, Moldova, and Ukraine. Union conditionalities trailed broader international trends and campaigns. The shift led to a crescendo of institutional innovations. Discursively, it generated a degree of conceptual overlap: anticorruption, for peripheral stabilization purposes, equates with the rule of law. I argue that the exclusive stress on anticorruption as a panacea for the (semi)periphery is fraught with perplexities. Paradoxically, in systems that can be reliably described as corrupt, the policy has a propensity to be derailed from its ostensible purposes. This danger results partly from categorial tensions between RoL normativity, on the one hand, and, on the other, the ethical purism and policy quantification inextricably linked with anticorruption. In the context of peripheral crusades, tendencies towards legal instrumentalism and populist emotionalism are exponentially higher than in stable jurisdictions. Consequently, unidirectional attempts to stabilize such systems by way of repressive anticorruption backfire. Likelier results are instability or forms of stability that might not correspond to central, received understandings of how a rule of law liberal-democratic system should operate. By the same token, in the integrated transnational constitutional system located at the intersection of EU and Council of Europe guarantees, "reverse conformities" tend to upset core tenets and representations of the rule of law. The paper argues that anticorruption policies, albeit eminently useful, should be fettered by rule of law constraints, not equated with the notion of the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has an analytical and a constructive aim. The former consists in providing a taxonomy of the different ways progress can be defined, according to two variables: whether progress is conceived of in either a teleological or a processual way, and whether it relies on either a realist or a moralist approach to political normativity. After laying out the four resulting combinations, I proceed with the critical aim. This consists in proposing an argument for how political progress should be conceived of. To do so, I first show that some teleological accounts of progress paradoxically risk being conservative, while processual ones are politically progressive and should therefore be privileged over the former. Second, and relatedly, I shed light on which are the standards for a genuinely progressive notion of political progress. Finally, I argue that a processual realist notion of political progress is more able than the rival conceptions to comply with these standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using two recent controversies involving campus social justice protests and student news organizations, this study uses an interdisciplinary lens to examine free expression and normative journalism ethics discourse. It explores themes related to First Amendment rights and values, journalism ethics, and racial justice, asking which are evident and absent in opinion journalism focused on the cases. It examines universities' dual missions of supporting free expression and advancing the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal positivists typically describe law as ‘thinly’ normative to distinguish it from the ‘thick’ normative force of moral norms have; which legal norms may lack. One popular account of thin normativity is social normativity. But a number of scholars have offered accounts of what it is to be a thin norm that are distinct from social normativity. This paper addresses these alternative accounts of what it is to be a thin norm. It also explores whether law counts as necessarily ‘thinly normative’ on these accounts. I argue that some accounts of thin normativity are so generic (‘super-thin’) that they are unable to distinguish between (thin) norms and nonnormative facts and thus collapse into triviality. I also consider more metaphysically demanding accounts of thin normativity, such as the view that everything is a norm that is essentially represented by deontic modals. However, law might fail to meet the demands of these slightly thicker accounts. I thus propose a view of law as consisting in nonnormative facts (diagnostic categories) and suggest sketching accounts of thin normativity as contingent, rather than necessary, features of laws and legal systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public support is crucial for mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) play a significant role in normative governance aimed at influencing attitudes and mobilizing citizens to take action. Civil society organizations (CSOs) use digital media to this purpose. The framing of information presented by CSOs has been shown to shape how people perceive and respond to it. This paper aims to examine how cognitive or topical framing and moral foundational framing interact in predicting public engagement with CSOs’ communication about climate change on Facebook. To this end, several computational methods – including topic modeling, semantic network analysis, and automatic text processing based on a Moral Foundations dictionary – are combined, using data gathered on Facebook. The results of the empirical analysis reveal that CSOs use different topical frames and moral foundations in order to influence policymakers and mobilize citizens. CSOs elicit most engagement on Facebook when they combine a “Climate mobilization” topical frame with the moral foundations of care and fairness pertaining to the ethics of autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institution of the family and its importance have recently received considerable attention from political theorists. Leading views maintain that the institution's justification is grounded, at least in part, in the non‐instrumental value of the parent–child relationship itself. Such views face the challenge of identifying a specific good in the parent–child relationship that can account for how adults acquire parental rights over a particular child – as opposed to general parental rights, which need not warrant a claim to parent one's biological progeny. I develop a view that meets this challenge. This Project View identifies the pursuit of a parental project as a distinctive non‐instrumentally valuable good that provides a justification for the family and whose pursuit is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of parental rights. This view grounds moral parenthood in a normative relation as opposed to a biological one, supports polyadic forms of parenting, and provides plausible guidance in cases of assisted reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normativity of meaning matters because if meaning is normative, then theories of meaning will have to explain normativity, and not all theories of meaning are equipped to do that. Throughout the debate about the normativity of meaning, there has been considerable discussion of what putative features of meaning count as 'normativity.' The suggestion of this paper is that the issue of normativity can be bypassed. We can, instead, focus directly on the ways in which various features of meaning constitute constraints on theories of meaning. Since meaning facts directly entail correctness conditions, which in turn rule out certain reductive theories of meaning, correctness conditions—often thought to be peripheral to the debate about the normativity of meaning—matter in exactly the way that the normativity of meaning was thought to matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is democracy a realistic political ideal? This article historically recovers and normatively assesses Machiavelli's intuition that democratic institutions are realistically desirable in virtue of their resilience. The article takes inspiration from Machiavelli's work in two ways. Methodologically, it argues that there is a distinctive realist normativity based on political virtues, that is, those skills that are instrumentally required to thrive in politics. Substantively, it probes Machiavelli's idea that the most important political virtue, for both individuals and institutions, is resilience: the ability to continuously adapt to new circumstances. Machiavelli observes that democratic regimes are very resilient because, while individuals cannot change their character to adapt to new circumstances, democracies can just change the individual in charge. The article then refines Machiavelli's intuition by building on the contemporary distinction between stability and resilience. It claims that authoritarian regimes are more stable, and yet less resilient. Democracies are instead characterised by a continuous flux of political outputs, which makes them seemingly wavering, and yet better equipped to experiment with unconventional adaptations. The two different literatures thus complement each other. The debate on resilience usefully clarifies and systematises Machiavelli's intuition. Conversely, Machiavelli's work reveals the salience of resilience in politics, and shows why it counts as a realist political value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Clinical ethics consultants support mental health professionals in identifying and analyzing moral problems in clinical practice. Objective: Presentation of key ethical concepts and normative theories that are relevant for clinical ethics consultation in mental healthcare. Material and methods: Conceptual and ethical analyses. Results: After distinguishing between morality, ethics and law, moral problems are differentiated from other types of problems encountered in clinical practice. Subsequently, key ethical concepts and the concept of moral distress are clarified. In relation to the normative framework a distinction is made between philosophical ethical theories and medical ethical theories, such as principlism and the ethics of care. Finally, justification tests for ethical decision-making in situations of danger to self or others based on the harm principle and soft paternalism are proposed. Conclusion: Knowledge of key ethical concepts and normative theories is important for the identification and analysis of moral problems in mental healthcare and should be given greater weight in the training of clinical ethics consultants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One major challenge of the 21st century is the increasingly rapid development of new technologies and their evaluation. In this article we argue for an interdisciplinary approach to meet this demand for evaluating new and specifically bioinspired technologies. We combine the consideration of normative principles in the field of ethics with psychological-empirical research on attitudes. In doing so, the paper has a twofold concern: first, we discuss how such an interdisciplinary collaboration can be implemented by using the method of Cognitive-Affective Mapping. Cognitive-Affective Maps (CAMs) enable a graphical representation of attitudes, including cognitive and affective aspects. Second, we argue that CAMs can be helpful to remedy the deficits of traditional ethical approaches. We applied CAMs in the context of an ethics seminar in which students were instructed to create CAMs based on bioinspired technologies twice – prior to the seminar to assess their evaluation on bioinspired technologies per se (pre-assessment) and after the seminar to assess how their evaluation might have changed and especially which normative ethical principles might have been additionally considered (post-assessment). As could be shown, CAMs can visualize the students' attitudes, including the valence of ethical principles. Further, comparing pre- and post-CAMs indicated students' attitude change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The educational approach known as positive education emerged from positive psychology and frequently attributes its conception of flourishing to Aristotelian eudaimonia. This is a point of contention between scholars who see positive psychology's flourishing as an epithet of Aristotelian virtues and others who have identified critical divergences between the philosophical foundations of positive psychology and Aristotle's normative ethics. Few scholars have examined whether adolescent understandings of flourishing reflect Aristotelian eudaimonia, and whether this is different in positive education students. This paper explores notion of the good life through the writings of 226 adolescents, 93 of whom attend a school that has implemented positive education. These are analysed through an Aristotelian lens, finding more similarities than differences between the groups. Both groups discussed relationships, emotions, and accomplishments, but moral goodness and virtue were not prominent. Conclusions are drawn about the implications of this for 'positive' education and the role it plays in nurturing flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sports auxiliary evaluation system suitable for China's national conditions was established using big data and sports identification technology. First of all, this paper extends the data of normative behavior and constructs a normative library of scores and comparisons. The acquisition of 3D data is emphasized. The method based on Fourier descriptors is used to locate the motion accurately. In this way, better gait recognition results can be obtained. The Fourier characteristics before and after wavelet transform are compared with the actual object characteristics, and the results show that the proposed algorithm can extract the features with high precision. This scheme can obtain a more accurate identification effect. The system proposed in this paper provides a powerful means for judges to score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Disruptive behaviors produce harmful effects, which reduce students' well-being and learning opportunities. This paper presents a new strategy named Differential Reinforcement for All (DR-All), which has been inspired by DR and Social Learning Theory. Methods: We conducted one study in which we applied DR-All to three classes with first grade students (intervention 1), then in kindergarten (intervention 2), and fifth grade students (intervention 3). In all three interventions, the measurements of student-student relationships and disruptive behaviors were taken 1 week before implementation and after 2 weeks of implementation. In intervention 1, disruptive behaviors were measured again 1 year after, among the 10 students who remained with the same teacher the following year. Results: Concerning student-student relationships, we only observed one effect, which was a positive effect on the most rejected pupils in the first-grade intervention, who were significantly less rejected by their classmates after the implementation. However, the results of all three interventions showed a significant decrease in the frequency of disruptive behaviors after the strategy implementation. This was also true for the intervention 1 measurement 1 year later. Discussion: To conclude, the consistent application of DR-All can reduce disruptive behaviors in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Coloniality and Analytic Moral Epistemology in the Twentieth Century" by Alison M. Jaggar and Theresa W. Tobin examines the colonial biases present in analytic moral philosophy during the 20th century. The authors critique the universal approach to moral reasoning taken by prominent philosophers like Richard M. Hare and John Rawls, arguing for a more inclusive and diverse perspective in moral epistemology. The article emphasizes the importance of moral and epistemic humility, as well as an understanding of the historical and cultural context that influences philosophical traditions. The document includes a variety of philosophical works and articles by different authors, covering topics such as decolonizing Western political philosophy, queer perspectives on love and justice, yoga philosophy, and moral justification, offering researchers a range of perspectives to explore. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the concept of sacred values and fanaticism in relation to historical events and contemporary philosophical perspectives. It explores how individuals sacralize certain values, leading to devotion that can be inviolable, incontestable, and dialectically invulnerable. The text also delves into the risks of fanaticism associated with holding sacred values and suggests cultivating openness and flexibility in devotional attitudes to avoid fanaticism. The author raises critical questions about the worth and implications of adopting sacred values, prompting readers to reflect on the complexities of human devotional activity and its existential implications. [Extracted from the article]

AbstractThe practices surrounding pregnancy ends and pregnancy remains shift and change depending on the cultural and historical context. Based on ethnographic research in one group NHS Hospital organisation in England, the paper explores what practices around pregnancy remains reveal about the values afforded the material in different contexts by different actors and the moments when these intersect. It argues that framing miscarriage as bereavement helps to structure caregiving in clinical settings and that clinical practices produce foetal personhood in ways that may not be in keeping with women’s notions of their pregnancy material. It illustrates that hospital practices contain notions of value which become legitimated as the appropriate approach with consequences for normativity. This may lead to women feeling isolated and abnormal when their approach is at odds with that of the clinic. Through an exploration of how women encounter and negotiate disposal practices, the paper argues that current practice requires revision to flexibly respond to diversity but also shifting meaning and values attributed to these experiences and materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate crisis calls for radical action, but what drives people to engage in climate protest? We recruited respondents during protests of Extinction Rebellion in the Netherlands and examined how intentions to engage in normative action (e.g., protest march), moderate nonnormative action (e.g., roadblock), and openness to more extreme nonnormative action (e.g., property damage) related to perceived injustice and trust in authorities. Study 1 found that perceived injustice was linked to all action intentions, while trust was only negatively associated with nonnormative protest. Study 2 revealed that nonnormative protest was specifically related to lower trust in democracy, judges, and the police. Furthermore, moderate action intentions were related to various injustice perceptions, whereas extreme actions were exclusively linked to social injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What should we believe when epistemic and practical reasons pull in opposite directions? The traditional view states that there is something that we ought epistemically to believe and something that we ought practically to (cause ourselves to) believe, period. More recent accounts challenge this view, either by arguing that there is something that we ought simpliciter to believe, all epistemic and practical reasons considered (the weighing view), or by denying the normativity of epistemic reasons altogether (epistemic anti‐normativism). I argue against both accounts and defend the traditional view. An agent can be blameworthy in doxastic dilemmas for complying with their practical but not their epistemic reasons. This reveals how epistemic reasons are normative: the concept of epistemic blame helps us track epistemic normativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I aim to vindicate the claim that we can owe someone gratitude for believing in us and to show how this seemingly prosaic fact has important upshots for the normativity of gratitude. I start by sketching a novel account of what it is to believe in someone according to which it consists in holding an affective attitude of confident optimism toward their general ability in some domain(s). I then argue that people can deserve gratitude for holding this attitude. I close by showing how the possibility of being gratitudeworthy for believing in someone casts down on three commonplaces about when gratitude is owed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with a puzzle that arises from three initially plausible assumptions that form an inconsistent triad: (i) Epistemic reasons are normative reasons (normativism); (ii) reasons are normative only if conformity with them is good (the reasons/value‐link); (iii) conformity with epistemic reasons need not be good (the nihilist assumption). I start by defending the reasons/value‐link, arguing that normativists need to reject the nihilist assumption. I then argue that the most familiar view that denies the nihilist assumption—epistemic teleology—is untenable. Finally, I consider two alternative ways of accounting for the goodness of conformity with epistemic reasons: it may be good because it accords with the virtue of reasons‐responsiveness, and it may be good because it is good to conform with normative reasons as such. I argue that both of these conceptions avoid the problems of epistemic teleology and merit serious consideration as potential solutions to the puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why comply with epistemic norms? In this paper, I argue that complying with epistemic norms, engaging in epistemically responsible conduct, and being epistemically trustworthy are constitutive elements of maintaining good epistemic relations with oneself and others. Good epistemic relations are in turn both instrumentally and finally valuable: they enable the kind of coordination and knowledge acquisition underpinning much of what we tend to associate with a flourishing human life; and just as good interpersonal relations with others can be good for their own sake, standing in good epistemic relations is good for its own sake. On my account, we have reason to comply with epistemic norms because it is a way of respecting the final value of something that also tends to be an instrumentally valuable thing: good epistemic relations. Situating the account within the recent social turn in debates about epistemic instrumentalism, I argue that the dual‐value aspect of good epistemic relations can explain important anti‐instrumentalist intuitions, in a well‐motivated way, within a broadly instrumentalist framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate crisis has been dubbed a "super wicked problem"—one where there is a sense of urgency, complicity in the problem by those who wish to solve it, and difficulty in sacrificing the short term for the long term. To respond to the difficulty of long-term thinking in addressing super wicked problems as part of SDG 13 (Climate Action), there is a need to pay attention to the narratives, norms, and values at work, and how we employ these categories in climate action. This paper discusses how Catholic social thought and the concept of the normativity of the future can be an approach to understanding the SDGs and the alternative future they offer in order to energize communities toward responding to the climate crisis, especially in response to current dominant narratives that make climate action difficult, as well as a way to make sense of the tensions found within the SDGs themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new account of gender identity on which for A to have gender G as part of their gender identity is for A to not take G not to fit them (or to positively take G to fit them). It argues that this subjective fit account of gender identity fits well with trans people's testimony and both trans and cis people's experiences of their genders. The subjective fit account also avoids the problems that existing accounts of gender identity face. Existing accounts face broadly two types of problems. First, they seem to imply that trans people have gender identities different from those that they in fact have. For instance, they seem to imply that some trans women do not have a female gender identity or have not always had that gender identity, contrary to their testimony and experiences. I argue that the subjective fit account avoids this problem. Second, many existing accounts of gender identity seem to conflict with the idea that our gender identities merit respect. I argue that the subjective fit account avoids this problem because it understands gender identities to consist in normative experiences and judgments and normative experiences and judgments merit respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and, on the surface, they do so in harmony. Recently, however, Jane Friedman (2020, "The Epistemic and the Zetetic." The Philosophical Review 129: 501–536) has pointed out that they are in tension with each other. In this paper, I aim to resolve this tension by showing that reasons for acts of inquiry – zetetic reasons – and epistemic reasons for belief can both be understood as flowing from the same general normative principle: the transmission principle for instrumental reasons. The resulting account is a version of epistemic instrumentalism that offers an attractive unity between zetetic and epistemic normativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role do normative ideals play in politics? Since Rawls, many political philosophers have advocated what they take to be a Kantian answer to this question. Normative ideals organize and guide political decision-making and action, and a major task of political philosophy is to generate them. Recently, this position has come under renewed scrutiny among political thinkers identifying as realists and nonideal theorists. These critics argue that ideal theory is too remote from empirical politics. This article turns to Kant for an alternative conception of ideals that is both distinct from the Rawlsian account and better withstands the critiques of realists and nonideal theorists. It argues that, for Kant, ideals are aids to freedom; their aim is to guide us towards forms of autonomy we have yet to fully realize. This leaves us with a much stronger view of ideals than does ideal theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent artificial intelligence advances, especially those of large language models (LLMs), have increasingly shown glimpses of human-like intelligence. This has led to bold claims that these systems are no longer a mere "it" but now a "who," a kind of person deserving respect. In this paper, I argue that this view depends on a Cartesian account of personhood, on which identifying someone as a person is based on their cognitive sophistication and ability to address common-sense reasoning problems. I contrast this with a different account of personhood, one where an agent is a person if they are autonomous, responsive to norms, and culpable for their actions. On this latter account, I show that LLMs are not person-like, as evidenced by their propensity for dishonesty, inconsistency, and offensiveness. Moreover, I argue current LLMs, given the way they are designed and trained, cannot be persons—either social or Cartesian. The upshot is that contemporary LLMs are not, and never will be, persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a case study of teaching Cantonese to Hong Kong ethnic minority pre-schoolers using process drama. Based on Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of minor literature and language, becoming and de-/re-territorialisation, this paper aims to reconceptualise a playful adaptation of process drama developed by Joe Winston (2012) as a language-minoritising approach to the teaching and learning of a major language that is very foreign to children. The findings suggest that, to accomplish ethnic minority children's becoming Cantonese speakers, the theatre games and language play should involve minoritorisation and de-/re-territorialisation of the normative practices of process drama, the target language as well as learner identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article delves into the reasons-responsiveness theory of rationality, which suggests that rationality involves responding correctly to normative reasons. It uses a case study of akratic irrationality to illustrate how beliefs may not align with normative reasons, leading to irrationality. The text also explores the distinction between acting in accordance with normative reasons and responding to them, emphasizing the importance of competence in responding to reasons. Additionally, it discusses the rational criticizability of normative judgments and the concept of excusability in acting against normative reasons and rational judgments. [Extracted from the article]

Pragma-Dialectics (PD) is an approach to argumentation that can be described as disagreement-centric. On PD, disagreement is the condition which defines argument, it is the practical problem to be solved by it, and disagreement's management is the ultimate source of argument's normativity. On PD, arguing in the context of agreement is taken to be "incorrect" and arguments where agreement already reigns are "pointless." Even the PD account of fallacies is disagreement-centered: a fallacy is something that impedes resolution of a dispute. We argue here that the disagreement-focus of PD yields procedural errors of application in cases of arguments given explicitly for agreement-management, that there are explanations of fallacies better understood as agreement-focused (straw man and ad hominem in particular), and that there are unique meta-argumentative errors emergent in instances of agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within some religious collectivities, the use of digital media for rituals, gaining religious knowledge and community gatherings may be seen as a challenge to religious identity, thus provoking different attitudes. Drawing on practice theory of Schatzki, we analyse different attitudes to digital practices expressed by members of the Russian Orthodox Church as shaped by their perception of the affordances of digital media and practice normativity. Developing previous studies, we demonstrate that the normative assessment of digital practices becomes significant mainly for developing critical arguments. Approval of digital practices does not depend solely on religious norms, but also on users' experience of leveraging digital media affordances. We show that acceptance and critique are not mutually exclusive, as both types of argument are intertwined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists increasingly are using experiments to examine causal processes and mechanisms in their research. Yet, experiments work much better for some research aims than others. Some goals that are of great interest to family scholars, such as testing theoretical arguments, are well‐suited to experimental approaches; other goals, such as documenting real‐world experiences, may be best served by another research design. Our aim in this article is to discuss the power and limits of experimental methods for the study of family, with an emphasis on describing the types of topics and approaches that work best in an experimental framework. We begin by briefly reviewing the current state of the literature and the types of experiments that are commonly used to study families and intimate relationships. We discuss recent examples and "best practices" to illustrate the potential strengths of experiments for the study of family. After walking through an in‐depth example of an experimental research design, we describe some unresolved theoretical puzzles in the family literature from the previous mid‐decade review that seem ripe for experimental study. In doing so, we demonstrate that experiments, when used appropriately, can provide powerful evidence of causal mechanisms that resonate with scholarly audiences and the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, critical theorists such as Amy Allen and Robert Nichols have aimed to "decolonize critical theory," by which they mean to make the tradition of critical theory less hostile to, and more compatible with, the ideas and movements of Indigenous peoples. In this article, however, I argue these efforts have failed to consider the relationship of two key elements of critical theory with Indigenous thought: that all normativity is generated immanently to historically and socially located struggle, and that normativity is negatively defined. These two elements, I argue, are not fully endorsed in the work of many Indigenous thinkers. By drawing on the work of a diverse group of contemporary Indigenous scholars, I show, first, that nature is generally a relevant normative category in Indigenous thinking in a way that is irreducible to historical location. Second, I argue that for many Native scholars, right action is not simply a matter of resisting colonialism. While resistance features heavily, of course, I suggest that Indigenous thinking often includes a substantive positive vision of living well that has not—as of yet—been considered by critical theorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article defends the importance of the idea of historical progress for constructivist justifications of moral normativity inspired by Kant's analysis of practical reason. Focusing on some key methodological requirements that must be satisfied for the constructivist vindication of practical normativity to succeed, the article focuses on the concept of purposiveness as it develops within Kant's moral and political philosophy. It concludes that without a critical notion of 'purposiveness' and related philosophical analysis of history, the constructivist rejection of scepticism is at risk of circularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civic engagement, particularly political engagement, is an important aspect of youth development. In response to rising youth activism, this study examined what was related to youth's emerging intention to engage in both normative (legal) and non-normative (illegal) political actions through the lens of social mobility beliefs. Based on the reports of college students in Hong Kong (N = 1,033), the findings revealed that social mobility belief regarding average people (i.e., societal belief) rather than that regarding oneself (i.e., personal belief) was negatively related to youth's intention to engage in normative political action. Furthermore, parallel mediation analyses showed two indirect effects of social mobility beliefs after controlling for sociodemographic factors, post-materialistic values and political interest. Specifically, youth who endorsed a stronger societal social mobility belief tended to perceive lower social injustice, and they were then less willing to engage in normative and non-normative political actions. Additionally, those who endorsed a stronger societal social mobility belief tended to report higher external political efficacy, and they were then more willing to engage in normative political actions. The findings highlight the importance of considering youth's worldviews in the theorization of the development of political attitudes and behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes Peter Fitzpatrick's writings on the modern death penalty, published over roughly a decade from the late 1990s, as a point of departure for considering wider themes in his scholarship, and reflecting on its significance and particular qualities. In these texts we see Fitzpatrick, as a legal theorist, engaging with a pressing political issue of, literally, life, death and the law. I take this textual archive and show how it illustrates Fitzpatrick's mode of critique, his form of poststructural legal normativity, and the kinds of resistant and responsiveness-generating legal subjects he encourages us to be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christine Korsgaard sees normative generalizations as provisionally universal, in the sense that exceptions to them have reasons for being exceptions and that they could in principle be revised into more specific and precise absolutely universal rules. Do exceptions to normative generalizations have such explanations? Can such generalizations always be revised into or replaced by absolutely universal rules? The answer depends on the structure of practical space, and, specifically, the degree to which normative relations are definable. Distinguishing degrees of definability in practical space opens up paths for generalist and particularist conceptions of normativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinary collaboration is often seen as the approach to deal with wicked problems, which are problems that involve both scientific uncertainties and normative uncertainties, meaning that there is no consensus on the problem definition and the best course of action. One of the reasons for the difficulty in establishing effective interdisciplinary collaboration is that the normative assumptions of academic disciplines are usually left unarticulated. This paper presents four ideal-typical characterisations of the normative paradigms that are maintained by different disciplines. These paradigms can be sketched out as follows: the moral positions that are considered legitimate are ignored (‘moral denialism’); located at the level of the individual (‘aggregated subjectivism’); located at the level of the community (‘moral collectivism’); or found at a transcendental level (‘transcendental realism’). Each of these paradigms brings about its difficulties for dealing with wicked problems. The paper will also present a heuristic framework that guides interdisciplinary research in dealing with normative plurality by aligning the different scales of contextualisation that appear to underlie the four normative paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we, members of a dharmic* scholars collective, share the outcomes of our discussions over the last three years centered on the question: what shifts in research and practice are necessary to enable higher education to address the concerns of dharmic* (Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu) students in the US? Topics we have focused on in our discussions relate to (1) the pervasiveness of Christian hegemony, normativity, and privilege in US higher education that leads to a general misunderstanding of dharmic* traditions and the students from them; (2) systemic and institutionalized challenges to affecting change; and (3) racial, ethnic, and political tensions that shape the experiences and concerns of dharmic* students. In the end, we describe our hopes for the future and invite others – dharmic* scholar-practitioners and aspiring allies alike – to join us in working toward greater understanding, appreciation, and care for dharmic* and all religiously minoritized students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, sensitivity to situational norms is understood as deriving from internal cognitive states that represent the rules for appropriate conduct. On an alternative view, norms are 'out there', in the practices and situations themselves, without being duplicated in the head. However, what does normativity look like when it is performed by people engaging with a concrete situation? A 'behaviour setting' offers a window onto these dynamics. This article presents an observational case study of normative coordination within a behaviour setting. Immersed in a scientific laboratory setting, the observations show how the normative demands of the overall behaviour setting can give shape to various places of action, or 'synomorphs', which invite the participants' activities. Responding to the different needs of each synomorph, in turn, maintains the behaviour setting. What connects these two reciprocal timescales of activity are the situationally sensitive activities of the participants. We end with several examples that bring such sensitivity to the interdependence of the norms of a behaviour setting to the fore. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things, and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behaviour settings are sociocultural places defined by three main ecological aspects: the affordances of material structures, typical patterns of skilful action and socially situated norms. These aspects explain the observed regularities of human behaviour associated with the material characteristics of places. However, the focus of ecological theories on how individual agents attune their actions to the pre-established order of behaviour settings neglects the agents' active role in sustaining or motivating transformations in this order. We therefore propose an alternative enactive approach to behaviour settings that accounts for the role of agents as active supporters and transformers of behaviour settings. Based on the enactive concepts of agency, normativity and dialectics, we argue that agents, as participants of behaviour settings, simultaneously respond to multiple normative dimensions (e.g. biological, sensorimotor and interactive). To sustain the order of behaviour settings, agents sometimes need to inhibit other normative responses of their bodies, which sometimes is detrimental to one or many aspects of their lives. Nonetheless, agents can collectively trigger the transformation of behaviour settings. This transformation can occur dialectically as tensions between two or more norms to which human bodies respond are resolved, even if new tensions arise and the process of changing behaviour setting continues. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Might practical reason be a species of theoretical reason? Can we make sense of practical deliberation as a special kind of theoretical cogitation over what you will do? The prospects of such a reduction may appear dim: it seems like it is one thing to be weighing up what you should (intend to) do, in light of your various reasons for action, and quite another thing altogether to be figuring out what you should believe you will do, in light of your evidence. Here I aim to show how this reduction of our powers of practical reason to a branch of theoretical reason might be defensibly pulled off. On the view to be defended, your intentions to act are really beliefs about what you are will do, practical reasoning is nothing over and above the enterprise of predicting what you are going to do in light of evidence alone, and the constitutive aim of action turns out to be the same as the constitutive object of theoretical reason – namely, to believe the truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article performs a multimodal digital discourse analysis to examine how the 2020 social media political campaign called 'Settle for Biden' successfully encouraged young Progressives to vote for Joe Biden. In contrast to previous US presidential campaigns that highlight the extraordinary capabilities of their candidates, this campaign utilized the scalar and chronotopic production of normativity to highlight Biden's 'mediocre' capabilities. The campaign's focus on 'settling' for a mediocre candidate was feasible only in the sociopolitical context of 2020, at a time when Donald Trump's leadership had come to be perceived as chaotic and dangerous. While using humor to make salient the normal nature of Biden, the campaign used semiotic strategies appealing to interconnected unmarked normativities associated with class, age, race, and gender. To draw on Hall (2021), the campaign produces 'language in the middle', constructing Biden as neither extraordinary nor reprehensible yet preferable to the abnormality of his competitor. (Normativity, scales, chronotopes, multimodality, intertextuality, politics, social media) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]