Books on the topic 'Rational motivation'
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1
Koutounkos, Arēs. Between the moral and the rational: Essays on meta-ethics, moral beliefs, values and desires, moral motivation, rationality and moral coherences. [Greece]: Papazissis Publishers, 2008.
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Understanding action: An essay on reasons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
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Nichols, Shaun. Rational Rules. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198869153.001.0001.
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Moral systems, like normative systems more broadly, involve complex mental representations. Rational Rules offers an account of the acquisition of key aspects of normative systems in terms of general-purpose rational learning procedures. In particular, it offers statistical learning accounts of: (1) how people come to think that a rule is act-based, that is, the rule prohibits producing certain consequences but not allowing such consequences to occur or persist; (2) how people come to expect that a new rule will also be act-based; (3) how people come to believe a principle of liberty, according to which whatever is not expressly prohibited is permitted; and (4) how people come to think that some normative claims hold universally while others hold only relative to some group. This provides an empiricist theory of a key part of moral acquisition, since the learning procedures are domain general. It also entails that crucial parts of our moral system enjoy rational credentials since the learning procedures are forms of rational inference. There is another sense in which rules can be rational—they can be effective for achieving our ends, given our ecological settings. Rational Rules argues that at least some central components of our moral systems are indeed ecologically rational: they are good at helping us attain common goals. In addition, the book argues that a basic form of rule representation brings motivation along automatically. Thus, part of the explanation for why we follow moral rules is that we are built to follow rules quite generally.
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Lerner, Adam. The Puzzle of Pure Moral Motivation. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198823841.003.0006.
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People engage in pure moral inquiry whenever they inquire into the moral features of some act, agent, or state of affairs without inquiring into the non-moral features of that act, agent, or state of affairs. The first section of this chapter argues that ordinary people act rationally when they engage in pure moral inquiry, and so any adequate view in metaethics ought to be able to explain this fact. The Puzzle of Pure Moral Motivation is to provide such an explanation. The remaining sections of the chapter argue that each of the standard views in metaethics has trouble providing such an explanation. A metaethical view can provide such an explanation only if it meets two constraints: it allows ordinary moral inquirers to know the essences of moral properties, and the essence of each moral property makes it rational to care for its own sake whether that property is instantiated.
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Russell, Paul. Practical Reason and Motivational Skepticism. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190627607.003.0007.
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This chapter takes up a crucial debate between Christine Korsgaard and Bernard Williams on the subject of practical reason. Korsgaard argues that if reason can itself identify substantive ends for our actions, independent of our existing desires, then there is no genuine or distinct motivational problem about how reasons can move (rational) agents to action. In criticism of this, it is argued that when we sever the link between reasons and desires we encounter a problem about whether the internalism requirement holds for pure practical reasons. If Kantian ethical theory is to find some way to explain motivation, as it concerns pure practical reason, it needs to say more about this problem. Certainly it cannot evade it on the basis of the internalist assumption that pure practical reasons must be capable of motivating rational persons. Any assumption of this kind simply begs the question against the motivational skeptic.
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Olfert, C. M. M. Rational Action and Fitting Oneself to the World. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190281007.003.0004.
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In Chapter 4, I argue that a proper understanding of practical truth improves our understanding of the goal of practical reasoning: acting well. It does so, first, by improving our understanding of what it means for rational motives, including wishes (boulêseis) and decisions (prohaireseis), to be “rational.” I argue that these are “rational” motives in that they express a concern for practical truth. Second, my account of practical truth transforms our understanding of rational action itself. I argue that when we act on our rational motives, these actions have a striking and under-appreciated feature: they are attempts to fit ourselves to the world. Just as a concern for truth expressed in thought involves trying to fit our thoughts to the way the world is, a concern for truth expressed in motivation and action involves trying to fit ourselves and our actions to what is good in the world.
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Erich, Ammereller, and Vossenkuhl Wilhelm 1945-, eds. Rationale Motivation. Paderborn: Mentis, 2005.
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Ammereller, Erich, and Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, eds. Rationale Motivation. mentis Verlag, 2005. http://dx.doi.org/10.30965/9783969757079.
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Rutherford, Albert. 10-Minute Social Psychology: The Critical Thinker's Guide to Social Behavior, Motivation, and Influence To Make Rational and Effective Decisions. VDZ, 2020.
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LeBuffe, Michael. Conclusion. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190845803.003.0006.
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Spinoza’s uses of reason are systematically connected. In metaphysics, reason is an explanation, and each thing is, like God, its own explanation. In human minds, ideas of reason are, in the first instance, ideas of what is common to all singular things. They are powerful ideas and a kind of knowledge. In morality, the commands of reason draw upon both these senses of reason. They derive their authority from the self-explanatory nature of God, and their strong motivational power is that of ideas of reason. Finally, in political philosophy, the peculiar motivating power of ideas of reason is a source of cooperation in society. A psychologically similar kind of idea—the idea of a miracle—is highly irrational. Because we all possess ideas of reason, however, Spinoza can envision a society that remains stable even as many citizens progress from irrational to more fully rational sources of motivation.
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Puranam, Phanish. Integration of Effort. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199672363.003.0004.
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For a given division of labor, (potential) breakdowns of integration can be traced to either motivational or knowledge-related sources (or both). Integration failures arising from coordination problems require managing the need for and/or the extent of predictive knowledge; those arising from cooperation problems require managing the valence of interdependence. A fruitful area for further enquiry awaits the student of organization design at the intersection of these sources of integration failure. I outlined two possible approaches: a closer look at the interactions between knowledge and motivation-related issues, or a coarser bundling of both into the construct of integration. In particular, given the behavioral assumptions of adaptive rationality, thinking of integration of effort as a search problem may be an area of high research potential. It can help understand organizations as “marvels but not miracles”—how boundedly rational designers can nevertheless organize boundedly rational agents towards accomplishing goals.
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Hicks, Amelia. Moral Uncertainty and Value Comparison. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198823841.003.0008.
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Several philosophers have recently argued that decision-theoretic frameworks for rational choice under risk fail to provide prescriptions for choice in cases of moral uncertainty. They conclude that there are no rational norms that are “sensitive” to a decision maker’s moral uncertainty. But this chapter argues that one sometimes has a rational obligation to take one’s moral uncertainty into account in the course of moral deliberation. It first provides positive motivation for the view that one’s moral beliefs can affect what it is rational for one to choose. It then addresses the problem of value comparison, according to which one cannot determine the expected moral value of one’s actions. The chapter argues that we should not infer from the problem of value comparison that there are no rational norms governing choice under moral uncertainty.
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Goldman, Alan H. Life's Values. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198829737.001.0001.
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This book seeks to explain what is of ultimate value in individual lives. Proposed candidates include pleasure, happiness, meaning, and well-being. Only the last is the all-inclusive category of personal value, and it consists in the satisfaction of deep rational desires. Since individuals’ rational desires differ, the book cannot tell you what will maximize your own well-being, what in particular you ought to pursue, although it can tell you to make your desires rational, that is, informed and coherent. It can also explain the nature of the states that typically enter into well-being: pleasure, happiness, and meaning being typically partial causes as well as effects of well-being. All are byproducts of satisfying rational desires and rarely successfully aimed at directly. Pleasure comes in sensory, intentional, and pure feeling forms, each with an opposite in pain or distress. Happiness in its primary sense is an emotion, not a constant state as some philosophers assume, and in secondary senses a mood (disposition to have an emotion) or temperament (disposition to be in a mood). Meaning in life is a matter of events in one’s life fitting into intelligible narratives. Events in narratives are understood teleologically as well as causally, in terms of outcomes aimed at as well as antecedent events. In briefest terms, this book distinguishes and relates pleasure, happiness, well-being, and meaning, and relates each to motivation and value.
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Beller, Steven. 7. Consequences. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198724834.003.0007.
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The shift from persecution and expulsion of Jews to industrially organized genocide marked a dramatic escalation of Nazi policy. ‘Consequences’ shows that central to any explanation for the Holocaust was the intentionalist and ideological motivation of the extreme racial antisemitism of Hitler and the Nazi leadership; but another vital enabling factor was the more functionalist role of self-interested instrumental rationality, or opportunism, and lack of resistance of the German populace. Nazi antisemitic policies proceeded by default. The Holocaust was enabled by many modern elements: bureaucratic efficiency, rational organization, anonymity, economic incentivization, and the employment of various technological innovations.
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Muñoz, Gerardo Sanchis. Public Service, Public Goods, and the Common Good. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190670054.003.0007.
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The proper provision of public goods by a well-functioning, impartial government is not the only thing necessary for attaining the common good, but it is essential. The economic view of the human person as a rational, self-interested maximizer has become pervasive in analyzing government dysfunction and is employed by international agencies to generate proposals to realign the economic incentives of government officials. But this mindset assumes and encourages self-interest and undermines idoneidad (suitability)—which includes integrity, motivation, and competence—as the most fundamental characteristic that must be demanded of both elected and appointed officials at all levels of government. The failure of public institutions in Argentina is employed as a telling example of such problems.
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Broome, John. Normativity, Rationality and Reasoning. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198824848.001.0001.
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This book is a selection of my recent papers on normativity, rationality and reasoning. It covers a variety of topics that fall under these three subjects: the meanings of ‘ought’, ‘reason’ and ‘reasons’; the fundamental structure of normativity and the metaphysical priority of ought over reasons; the ownership—or agent-relativity—of oughts and reasons; the distinction between rationality and normativity; the notion of rational motivation; what characterizes the human activity of reasoning, and what is the role of normativity within it; the nature of preferences and of reasoning with preferences; and others. In recent decades, many philosophers have given a high priority to reasons in their accounts of normativity, rationality and reasoning. One purpose of this book is to counter this ‘reasons first’ movement in philosophy.
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Matt, Susan J., and Peter N. Stearns. Introduction. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252038051.003.0001.
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This introductory chapter is an overview of emotions history—its origins, how the field has gained prominence, its core issues, and the debates and discoveries surrounding the field. By studying feelings, historians are uncovering the worldviews and the most fundamental assumptions about life, culture, and personality that people in the past carried in their heads. These investigations have shifted the discourse of history—away from the construct of the rational actor, whose behavior supposedly reflected only calculating self-interest. In questioning such concepts, and bringing emotions back into the story, historians have enriched what were fairly impoverished explanations of human motivation and offered more nuanced discussions of why men and women in other eras did what they did. As a result of such labors, they have demonstrated not only that emotions shaped history but that emotions themselves have a history.
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Henning, Tim. From a Rational Point of View. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198797036.001.0001.
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When we discuss normative reasons, oughts, requirements of rationality, hypothetical imperatives (or “anankastic conditionals”), motivating reasons, or weakness and strength of will, we often use verbs like “believe” and “want” to capture a relevant subject’s perspective. According to the received view, what these verbs do is describe the subject’s mental states. Many puzzles concerning normative discourse have to do with the role that mental states consequently appear to play in this discourse. This book uses tools from formal semantics and the philosophy of language to develop an alternative account of sentences involving these verbs. According to this view, called parentheticalism in honour of J. O. Urmson, we very commonly use these verbs in a parenthetical sense. Clauses with these verbs thereby express backgrounded side-remarks on the contents they embed, and these latter, embedded contents constitute the at-issue contents of our utterances. Thus, instead of speaking about the subject’s mental states, we often use sentences involving “believe” and “want” to speak about the world in a way that, in the conversational background, relates our utterances to her point of view. This idea is made precise and used to solve various puzzles concerning normative discourse. The result is a new, unified understanding of normative discourse, which does not postulate conceptual breaks between objective and subjective normative reasons, or normative reasons and rationality, or indeed between the reasons we ascribe to an agent and the reasons she herself can be expected to cite.
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Hettema, Jennifer, Christopher C. Wagner, Karen S. Ingersoll, and Jennifer M. Russo. Brief Interventions and Motivational Interviewing. Edited by Kenneth J. Sher. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199381708.013.007.
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This chapter focuses on the use of brief interventions for the treatment of alcohol and other substance use disorders and risky use. The authors provide definitions of brief interventions and a rationale for their use. They review the evidence base for brief interventions across primary care, emergency medical, college, and correctional settings, and include analysis of the impact of brief intervention on drinking and drug use and the relative costs of such services. They also describe several widely used frameworks or organizing structures for brief interventions including FRAMES (provide feedback, emphasize responsibility, give advice, menu of options, express empathy, support self-efficacy), SBIRT (screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment), and the five As (ask, assess, advise, assist, arrange). Finally, the authors discuss the therapeutic approach of motivational interviewing as an interaction style that can be used within the context of many brief intervention structures.
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Meyer, Susan Sauvé. Self-Mastery and Self-Rule in Plato’s Laws. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198817277.003.0006.
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Plato’s famous image of the divine puppets in Book 1 of the Laws illustrates the notion of self-mastery. The puppet achieves self-mastery when its golden cord (logismos) wins a struggle against the iron cords (pleasure, pain, fear, and desire). Self-mastery, so conceived, involves internal conflict. This raises a considerable puzzle, since the Athenian endorses a conception of virtue that involves harmony between rational and non-rational motivations, and he has criticized the conception of self-mastery praised by his interlocutors. Yet he presents the puppet image as an illumination of a conception of virtue on which he and his interlocutors are agreed.
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Neta, Ram. The Motivating Power of the A Priori Obvious. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198797074.003.0010.
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How does moral reasoning motivate? Michael Smith argues that it does so by rationally constraining us to have desires that motivate, but the plausibility of his argument rests on a false assumption about the relation between wide-scope and narrow-scope constraints of rationality. Michael Huemer argues that it does so by generating motivating appearances, but the plausibility of his argument rests on a false assumption about the skeptical costs of a thoroughgoing empiricism. The chapter defends an alternative view, according to which moral facts can be a priori obvious, and our a priori knowledge of them can motivate us to act.
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Coclanis, Peter. The Economics of Slavery. Edited by Mark M. Smith and Robert L. Paquette. Oxford University Press, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199227990.013.0023.
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This article examines issues of traditional concern to economic historians of slavery: the origins of and motivations/rationales for slavery; pattern and variation in the institution both across space and over time; questions relating to slavery's profitability; the developmental effects of slavery; and the reasons for its demise. The focus is on slavery in the Western hemisphere, and, only then, on slavery in societies established therein by European colonizers beginning in the late fifteenth century.
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Prah Ruger, Jennifer. Divergent Perspectives in Global Health Governance. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199694631.003.0005.
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The global health governance (GHG) literature frames health variously as a matter of security and foreign policy, human rights, or global public good. Divergence among these perspectives has forestalled the development of a consensus vision for global health. Global health policy will differ according to the frame applied. Fundamentally, GHG today operates on a rational actor model, encompassing a continuum from the purely self-interest-maximizing position at one extreme to a more nuanced approach that takes others’ interests into account when making one’s own calculations. Even where humanitarian concerns are clearly and admirably at play, however, the problem of motivations remains. Often narrow self-interest is also at work, and actors obfuscate this behind altruistic motives.
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Duncan, Dustin T., and Ichiro Kawachi. Neighborhoods and Health. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190843496.003.0001.
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A large body of research in epidemiology and population health has investigated relationships between neighborhood characteristics (e.g., crime rate, density of fast food restaurants, distance to parks) and a myriad of health outcomes (e.g., obesity, mental health, substance use), with an explosion of research within the last decade, which spans a variety of disciplines, for example, anthropology, sociology, criminology, geography, demography, urban planning, medicine and epidemiology. This chapter provides a historical perspective to neighborhood health research. In addition, this chapter provides a systematic survey of new and notable developments in the field of neighborhoods and health as well as provides directions for future research. It also describes the motivation and rationale for this book and guides the reader through the structure of the rest of the book.
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Nassauer, Anne. Situational Breakdowns. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190922061.001.0001.
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This book provides an account of how and why routine interactions break down and how such situational breakdowns lead to protest violence and other types of surprising social outcomes. It takes a close-up look at the dynamic processes of how situations unfold and compares their role to that of motivations, strategies, and other contextual factors. The book discusses factors that can draw us into violent situations and describes how and why we make uncommon individual and collective decisions. Covering different types of surprise outcomes from protest marches and uprisings turning violent to robbers failing to rob a store at gunpoint, it shows how unfolding situations can override our motivations and strategies and how emotions and culture, as well as rational thinking, still play a part in these events. The first chapters study protest violence in Germany and the United States from 1960 until 2010, taking a detailed look at what happens between the start of a protest and the eruption of violence or its peaceful conclusion. They compare the impact of such dynamics to the role of police strategies and culture, protesters’ claims and violent motivations, the black bloc and agents provocateurs. The analysis shows how violence is triggered, what determines its intensity, and which measures can avoid its outbreak. The book explores whether we find similar situational patterns leading to surprising outcomes in other types of small- and large-scale events: uprisings turning violent, such as Ferguson in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015, and failed armed store robberies.
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Jost, John T., Christopher M. Federico, and Jamie L. Napier. Political Ideologies and their Social Psychological Functions. Edited by Michael Freeden and Marc Stears. Oxford University Press, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0024.
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Ideology has re-emerged as a vital topic of investigation in social psychology. This chapter proposes that political ideologies possess both a discursive (socially constructed) superstructure and a functional (or motivational) substructure and that ideologies serve social psychological functions that may not be entirely rational but help to explain why individuals are drawn to them. System justification, it argues, is the ‘glue’ that holds the two dimensions of left–right ideology (advocacy vs. resistance to change and rejection vs. acceptance of inequality) together. To vindicate and uphold traditional institutions and arrangements, the right defends existing inequalities as just and necessary. To bring about a more equal state of affairs, the left is motivated to challenge existing institutions and practices (the status quo).
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Weisband, Edward. Perversity in the Performative. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190677886.003.0007.
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To study the staged performative transgressions of victims, sadistic cruelty borne by the desire on the part of perpetrators to witness the collective dying of victims, requires analytical orientations beyond those focused exclusively on motivations cast in rational or rationalizing, cognitive or purposive strategic terms. Performativity as a theoretical perspective establishes the explanatory relevance of the unconscious in appraising the dynamics of desire, shame, and sadistic cruelty among perpetrators. Various psychosocial perspectives may be adopted in this regard. Sadistic behaviors are not only cruel; they demand that the cruelty be displayed in the name of the laws of prohibition. Perpetrator behaviors in mass atrocity demonstrate the psychic elements of emotionality and fantasy, paranoia and obsession. Group dynamics in the macabresque ebb and flow in the subterranean tides of anxiety and psychic desire made manifest by reifications and sadistic hate, a central focus of study in the analysis of perpetrator performativity.
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Gensheimer, Maryl B. The Role of Iconographical Programs at the Baths of Caracalla. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190614782.003.0003.
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To query the sociopolitical rationale that may have prompted the emperor Caracalla to endow such a monumental bathing facility, Chapter 3 addresses the iconographical trends that mark distinctive emphases within the larger body of the Baths’ decorative program. Particular attention is paid to representations of Hercules, Bacchus, and other divinities and personifications associated with the emperor, as well as Homeric and other mythological exempla that are likewise an allusion to imperial largess. Similarly, the historical reliefs from the palaestrae and the honorific portrait statues of the imperial family displayed within the Baths are also scrutinized for their insights into the self-aggrandizing strategies of their eponymous benefactor. Together, the chapter’s discussion reveals both the obvious and subtler meanings underlying certain iconographical choices and uses those observations to recover the original motivations of the imperial patron.
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Mantie, Roger, and Gareth Dylan Smith. Grasping the Jellyfish of Music Making and Leisure. Edited by Roger Mantie and Gareth Dylan Smith. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190244705.013.33.
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This chapter sets out the editors’ rationale for the book, and walks readers through the structure of this rich, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary volume. Music making as leisure has in the past and in some contexts been construed as vital to the pursuit of the good life, yet today the notion has become marginalized, and music making is frequently regarded as a dyadic domain for only professionals and consumers. Chapters include perspectives from psychology, sociology, ethnomusicology, community music making, and leisure studies in physical, online, and hybrid environments. Contributors provide rich analyses of a broad range of topics, including guitar playing, gaming, hip-hop, happiness and fulfillment, motivation, death metal, DIY and DAW (digital audio workstations), illegal raves, and reconnecting with former musician identities. Music making and leisure is a dynamic and vital framework for understanding more about the ways in which music making plays a part in the day-to-day lives of people.
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van Hooft, Edwin. Self-Regulatory Perspectives in the Theory of Planned Job Search Behavior: Deliberate and Automatic Self-Regulation Strategies to Facilitate Job Seeking. Edited by Ute-Christine Klehe and Edwin van Hooft. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199764921.013.31.
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Because job search often is a lengthy process accompanied by complexities, disruptions, rejections, and other adversities, job seekers need self-regulation to initiate and maintain job search behaviors for obtaining employment goals. This chapter reviews goal/intention properties (e.g., specificity, proximity, conflicts, motivation type) and skills, beliefs, strategies, and capacities (e.g., self-monitoring skills and type, trait and momentary self-control capacity, nonlimited willpower beliefs, implementation intentions, goal-shielding and goal maintenance strategies) that facilitate self-regulation and as such may moderate the relationship between job search intentions and job search behavior. For each moderator, a theoretical rationale is developed based on self-regulation theory linked to the theory of planned job search behavior, available empirical support is reviewed, and future research recommendations are provided. The importance of irrationality and nonconscious processes is discussed; examples are given of hypoegoic self-regulation strategies that reduce the need for deliberate self-regulation and conscious control by automatizing job search behaviors.
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Hill, Mark J. Actors and Spectators: Rousseau’s Contribution to the Eighteenth-century Debate on Self-interest. Edinburgh University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474422857.003.0005.
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A debate between virtuous self-interest and social morality emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The historical narrative of these ideas has been touched on by others – such as Albert O. Hirschman, Pierre Force, and Eric MacGilvray – with nuance and detail, but broadly one can recognize two camps: those who saw public utility in self-interest through the positive externalities of commerce, and those who had serious concerns over the political outcomes of the entanglement of commerce and virtue. This chapter follows these studies and attempts to locate Rousseau (primarily) and Smith (secondarily) within this debate. By looking at how their particular moral philosophies interact with their political thought it is argued that Rousseau is distinct from Smith in an important, but often confused, way: while some have argued that Rousseau is a moralist and Smith a philosopher of the political and social value of self-interest, it will be argued here that the opposite may be true. That is, despite Rousseau's “general will” and Smith's “impartial spectator” having been identified as similar moral tools used to overcome the negative aspects of self-interest through externalized self-reflection, it is argued that Rousseau is a moral rationalist who is skeptical of reason as a moral motivator, and thus dismisses the general will as a tool which can encourage personal moral action, while Smith is a moral realist, but a particularly soft one in regard to the motivational force of morality, and instead turns to rationality – through the impartial spectator – as a source of moral action. The upshot of this distinction being, Rousseau does not deny the power of commerce and self-interest as motivational forces, simply their social utility; social institutions like English coffeehouses – centres of politeness and doux commerce – should exist, and self-interest should motivate, but both need to be cleansed of the vice of commerce. That is, this chapter argues that Smith is moral realist who relies on reason – specifically that one must be a spectator who can impartially and rationally reflect on situations in order to will moral ends – and Rousseau is a moral rationalist who relies on sentiment – one must have an interest in situations if they are to be a moral actor.
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Hardin, Russell. Normative Methodology. Edited by Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Henry E. Brady, and David Collier. Oxford University Press, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199286546.003.0002.
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This article shows that one should start social science inquiry with individuals, their motivations, and the kinds of transactions they undertake with one another. It specifically discusses four basic schools of social theory: conflict, shared-values, exchange, and coordination theories. Conflict theories almost inherently lead into normative discussions of the justification of coercion in varied political contexts. Religious visions of social order are usually shared-value theories and interest is the chief means used by religions to guide people. Individualism is at the core of an exchange theory. Because the first three theories are generally in conflict in any moderately large society, coercion is a sine qua non for social order. Coordination interactions are especially important for politics and political theory and probably for sociology, although exchange relations might be most of economics, or at least of classical economics. Shared-value theory may possibly turn into the most commonly asserted alternative to rational choice in this time as contractarian reasoning recedes from center stage in the face of challenges to the story of contracting that lies behind it and the difficulty of believing people actually think they have consciously agreed to their political order.
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Murphy, Mark C. God's Own Ethics. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198796916.001.0001.
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Every version of the argument from evil requires a premise concerning God’s motivation—about the actions that God is motivated to perform or the states of affairs that God is motivated to bring about. The typical source of this premise is a conviction that God is, obviously, morally perfect, where God’s moral perfection consists in God’s being motivated to act in accordance with the norms of morality by which both we and God are governed. The aim of this book is to challenge this understanding by giving arguments against this view of God as morally perfect and by offering an alternative account of what God’s own ethics is like. According to this alternative account, God is in no way required to promote the well-being of sentient creatures, though God may rationally do so. Any norms of conduct that favor the promotion of creaturely well-being that govern God’s conduct are norms that are contingently self-imposed by God. This revised understanding of divine ethics should lead us to revise sharply downward our assessment of the force of the argument from evil while leaving intact our conception of God as an absolutely perfect being, supremely worthy of worship.
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Foa, Edna B., Kelly R. Chrestman, and Eva Gilboa-Schechtman. Prolonged Exposure Therapy for Adolescents with PTSD Therapist Guide. Oxford University Press, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780195331745.001.0001.
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Traumatic events, including sexual abuse, experiencing or witnessing violence, and natural disasters, are common among adolescents, and this online therapist guide presents a proven treatment for PTSD that has been adapted for the adolescent population. It applies the principles of Prolonged Exposure (PE) to help adolescents emotionally process their traumatic experiences and follows a four-phase treatment where the patients complete each module at their own rate of progress. It includes modules on motivational interviewing, case management, the rationale for treatment, information-gathering about the trauma, common reactions to trauma, and explains that by systematically confronting situations associated with the trauma, adolescents can overcome avoidance and fear. It covers how memory of the traumatic event can help distinguish the past from the present and promote feelings of mastery, and also includes modules on relapse prevention and treatment termination. It covers the importance of the adolescent's age and developmental level while in therapy, and includes developmentally appropriate materials and guidance on tailoring the treatment to each client's unique situation, including trauma type and family structure.
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Rasmussen, Jessica, Angelina F. Gómez, and Sabine Wilhelm. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Edited by Katharine A. Phillips. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190254131.003.0026.
Full textAbstract:
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) that is tailored to the unique clinical features of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is currently the psychosocial treatment of choice for BDD. Researchers have made great strides in understanding the cognitive-behavioral processes that contribute to the development and maintenance of BDD. CBT for BDD is based on this theoretical understanding and has been shown to be highly effective in reducing BDD symptom severity and associated symptoms. The key components of CBT include identifying and rationally disputing maladaptive appearance-related thoughts, and exposure with response prevention for feared and avoided situations. CBT for BDD also integrates educating the patient on the mental and behavioral processes involved in the BDD experience with mindfulness/perceptual retraining (e.g., techniques aimed at helping patients to view their appearance with a neutral, global, and aware perspective) to augment the therapeutic process. Advanced cognitive strategies are used to address negative core beliefs. Because BDD is typically characterized by poor or absent insight, motivational interviewing is often needed to overcome ambivalence towards treatment.