<p>A classic question in moral philosophy asks "Why be moral?" In other words, what reason or motive do people have to act in accordance with the requirements of morality? In the tradition of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume, this project defends the thesis that nearly all people have reason to be moral nearly all of the time, because moral conduct generally serves individuals' desires and needs. It's argued, first, that a reason for action must be capable of motivating an agent to act, and second, that reasons for action motivate through the desires of the agent. This view is defended against the objection that reasons for action are not contingent on any particular agent's desires. Turning to morality, the case is made that the desires of an individual can be consonant with the demands of morality in any of three possible ways: (1) moral action serves one's other-regarding desires to help others; (2) moral action serves one's moral desires, which are formed when one internalizes the moral norms of his or her community; and (3) moral action serves one's self-regarding desires to avoid punishments that one incurs by violating moral norms. In the final chapter, it is acknowledged that the moral norms which happen to prevail in a society sometimes conflict with the moral convictions of individuals. Under certain conditions, however, it can be rational for nearly all members of a society to collectively change existing moral norms. Furthermore, it is within the power of individuals to foment the conditions for collective transitions to alternative moral norms.</p> / Dissertation

In recent years the normativity of thought and meaning has been the subject of an extensive debate. What is at issue is whether intentionality has normative features, and if so, whether that constitutes a problem for naturalistic attempts to account for intentional phenomena. The origin of the debate is Saul Kripke’s interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, published in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke claimed, on behalf of Wittgenstein, that dispositional accounts of linguistic meaning - accounts, i.e., which attempt to reduce semantic phenomena to facts about how speakers are disposed to employ words - fail to ground the factuality of semantic statements. From this, and other arguments, the far reaching conclusion was drawn by Kripke’s Wittgenstein that there are no semantic facts, that every application of a word is “a leap in the dark”. This position has become known as meaning scepticism. In the present essay, it will be argued that meaning scepticism is incoherent, but that the normativity argument is interesting in its own right. The development of the debate will be traced, primarily through detailed consideration of the writings of Paul Boghossian, who has shifted the focus from the normativity of linguistic meaning to that of belief. It will be contended that even though Boghossian’s attempt to locate a normativity of belief fails, there is a related form of normativity that has to do with the intrinsic badness of false beliefs. Also, suggestions made by Kripke regarding the normativity of intentions will be investigated, and related to contemporary arguments in the philosophy of rationality. The tentative conclusion is that there are some interesting kinds of normativity associated with the intentional, but of a somewhat different variety than those usually discussed.

This thesis investigates the topic of natural law in the Therav āda and Thomistic traditions by utilizing the methodology of comparative religious ethics. Approaches to the method such as ethical formalism, ethical naturalism, and narrative ethics are assessed with the author opting for a multidimensional approach that is religious and ethical. This multidimensional approach, as defined by William Schweiker, conducts natural law inquiry from a hermeneutical standpoint of moral diversity and democratic pluralism. The hermeneutical standpoint warrants a historicizing of natural law ethics that is compatible with modern secularity instead of a classicist metaphysical worldview. To achieve this task, the thought of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and Jewish theologian David Novak is used to formulate a concept of a natural law tradition. Three normative features define the natural law traditions in question: rationality as tradition- constituted, revelation as a historical phenomenon, and natural law as a cultural construct that is both comparative and ontological. The central claim of this thesis is that the Theravāda and Thomistic traditions provide a similar conceptual apparatus for rational discourse that can locate ethical commonalities and respect differences across traditions. The commonality between traditions is secured in natural law ethics because these traditions adhere to a constitutive truth that is the objective ground of all truths and of nature which designates a shared humanity. On the other hand, these natural law traditions are able to at least respect difference because they recognize the autonomy of other traditions outside of and pre- existing their own. Natural law ethics in these religious traditions therefore avoids the ethical challenges of relativism and authoritarianism. Both traditions define a concept of "nature" with a proper teleological orientation for the moral life. "Nature" is an open category in these traditions that can never be fully defined. This demonstrates how these natural law traditions avoid ontological violence. The overall claim is that natural law ethics, which are evident in the Therav āda and Thomistic traditions, offer something essential to a pluralistic secular democracy: an unconditioned view of human dignity that protects inalienable rights because it is secured by a higher law than civil laws.

For this research project I used grounded theory methodology and qualitative research methods to examine how and why citizens participated in local community-based planning and land development entitlement processes, and learn about their experiences participating in those processes. I conceptualized the citizens' main concern as preserving the character of the place they consider their community. This research demonstrates that citizens participate in community-based planning and land development entitlement processes out of a concern for preserving the character of their communities. They define the character of their communities in terms of their geographic boundaries, history, traditions, people, lifestyle, and qualitative features including land uses, architecture, terrain, and environmental attributes. "Preserving Place" refers to citizens' efforts to maintain the character of their communities as they know and embrace them. Citizens participate in collaborative community-based planning because they believe the process affords them an opportunity to set public policy that directly impacts their lives and their communities. Likewise, citizens participate in land development decision-making and entitlement processes in an effort to ensure that land use decisions are consistent with their community plan and preserve their community's character. Citizens form networks, such as voluntary community organizations, through which they organize their efforts and mentor each other to learn about complex local government land use processes and how to participate in them effectively. Through their network organizations citizens also marshal resources when necessary to mount formal legal actions in response to land development decisions they perceive as inconsistent with their community plan and their community's character. Citizens who participate in local government land use processes are often pejoratively called "activists" and accused of being "anti-growth" or "NIMBY" (Not-In-My-Back-Yard). However, this research shows the main concern of citizens who participate in the community-based planning and other land use processes is not to oppose growth and development in their communities; but rather to plan for growth and development and ensure they occur in a way that respects and preserves what the citizens know as the character of the places they consider their communities. I collected data from public records of community-based planning workshops and other land use decision-making processes that affected three communities in Hillsborough County, Florida between 1998 and 2011. I analyzed public record archives and interviewed 22 citizens, all of whom had participated in community-based planning or plan review processes and land development entitlement processes. The model that emerged from the data in this research demonstrates how significant the character of a community is to the people who embrace the community and consider it their home, and how their concern for preserving the character of their community motivates people to get involved in land use policies that affect them. The model further demonstrates the capacity of citizens to organize their efforts to defend and preserve their community's character. This research contributes to the literature on citizen participation by providing an explanatory model that demonstrates how and why citizens participate in local government land use processes. This research can also be applied to practice to improve collaborative processes and help local government land use policy makers and land developers understand the motivations behind citizen participation in land use processes, and thus how to approach the resolution of conflicts among citizens, planners, local governments, private landowners and land development interests.

In Bayesian decision analysis, uncertainty and risk are accounted for with probabilities for the possible states, or states of nature, that affect the outcome of a decision. Application of Bayes’ theorem requires non-informative prior probabilities, which represent the probabilities of states of nature for a decision maker under complete ignorance. These prior probabilities are then subsequently updated with any and all available information in assessing probabilities for making decisions. The conventional approach for the non-informative probability distribution is based on Bernoulli’s principle of insufficient reason. This principle assigns a uniform distribution to uncertain states when a decision maker has no information about the states of nature. The principle of insufficient reason has three difficulties: it may inadvertently provide a biased starting point for decision making, it does not provide a consistent set of probabilities, and it violates reasonable axioms of decision theory. The first objective of this study is to propose and describe a new method to establish non-informative prior probabilities for decision making under uncertainty. The proposed decision-based method is focuses on decision outcomes that include preference in decision alternatives and decision consequences. The second objective is to evaluate the logic and rationality basis of the proposed decision-based method. The decision-based method overcomes the three weaknesses associated with the principle of insufficient reason, and provides an unbiased starting point for decision making. It also produces consistent non-informative probabilities. Finally, the decision-based method satisfies axioms of decision theory that characterize the case of no information (or complete ignorance). The third and final objective is to demonstrate the application of the decision-based method to practical decision making problems in engineering. Four major practical implications are illustrated and discussed with these examples. First, the method is practical because it is feasible in decisions with a large number of decision alternatives and states of nature and it is applicable to both continuous and discrete random variables of finite and infinite ranges. Second, the method provides an objective way to establish non-informative prior probabilities that capture a highly nonlinear relationship between states of nature. Third, we can include any available information through Bayes’ theorem by updating the non-informative probabilities without the need to assume more than is actually contained in the information. Lastly, two different decision making problems with the same states of nature may have different non-informative probabilities. / text

The incorporation of social and environmental objectives in water resources planning and management has been, and will continue to be, the result of several evolutionary processes. The most general of these processes is the evolution of rational-analytic thinking as a form of problem solving behavior. A second evolutionary process is the development of institutional and analytical procedures for making public decisions. The most specific process is the evolution of federal water resources planning procedures in the United States. These processes are examined, the changing institutional environment within which water resources planning and management occurs is characterized, and implications are drawn for future incorporation of social and environmental objectives.

Denna uppsats är, precis som titeln anger, en analys av sambandet mellan motsägelser och ångest. De nutida vardagsuttrycken för begreppen utreds och granskas med hjälp av känslo- och rationalitetsfilosofiska teorier och distinktioner ifrån Arne Næss och Jean-Paul Sartre. Författaren föreslår en egen definition av ångest och jämför denna med andra filosofers och tankeskolors definitioner av begreppet. Författarens syn på ångest skiljer sig från Sartres, då han menar att ångest kan lösas upp och att den ofta är väldigt specifik och konkret till sin karaktär, medan Sartre menar att ångesten är omöjlig att lösgöra sig ifrån och att den är av ett mycket mer generellt slag. Detta konkreta och specifika element i den ångestdefinition, som författaren vill lägga fram, består i att ångesten uppstår i vissa valsituationer där valalternativen, i någon form, är sinsemellan motsägande och där ett val är tvunget att göras. / This paper is, as the title states, an analysis of the connection between contradictionsand anxiety. The present everyday expressions of these concepts are investigated with the help of philosophical theories from Arne Næss and Jean-Paul Sartre concerning emotions and rationality. The author presents his own definition of anxiety and compares it to other philosophers and thinkers’ definitions of the same concepts, and this way he reaches a conclusion. For example this conclusion diverge with Sartre’s view of anxiety, because the author states that it is possible to get free from anxiety and that it is often something very particular and precice, while Sartre says it is impossible to free yourself from it and that it is very general by nature. This specific element in the author’s definition of anxiety lies in the fact that he thinks of it as something that often occurs in situations with two or more options, and where these options are, amongst themself, contradictory in one form or an other, and where a choice has to be made.

In this dissertation I direct critique at a conception of self-deception prevalent in analytical philosophy, where self-deception is seen as a rational form of irrationality in which the self-deceiver strategically deceives himself on the basis of having judged that this is the best thing to do or, in order to achieve something advantageous. In Chapter One, I criticize the conception of self-deception as analogous to deceiving someone else, the so-called “standard approach to self-deception”. The account under investigation is Donald Davidson’s. I criticize Davidson’s outline of self-deception as involving contradictory beliefs, and his portrayal of self-deception as a rational and strategic action. I trace the assumptions involved in Davidson’s account back to his account of radical interpretation and argue that the problems and paradoxes that Davidson discusses are not inherent in self-deception as such but are problems arising in and out of his account. In Chapter Two, I present Sebastian Gardner’s account of self-deception. Gardner is concerned with distinguishing self-deception as a form of “ordinary” irrationality that shares the structure of normal, rational thinking and action in being manipulation of beliefs from forms of irrationality treated by psychoanalysis. I object to the way in which Gardner makes this distinction and further argue that Gardner is mistaken in finding support in Freud for his claim that self-deception involves preference. In Chapter Three, I present a different understanding of self-deception. I discuss self-deception in the context of Sigmund Freud’s writings on illusion, delusion, different kinds of knowledge, etc., and propose a view of self-deception where it is not seen as a lie to oneself but rather as motivated lack of self-knowledge and as a flight from anxiety. In Chapter Four, I discuss some problems inherent in the three accounts under investigation, for example, problems arising because first-person awareness is conflated with knowledge of objects.

The topic of the present dissertation is teachers’ everyday dilemmas and the use of language to deal with these dilemmas. The concept of dilemma is compared to the concept of risk and the concept of paradox. The theoretical background consists of sociological systems theory and linguistic pragmatic theory. The empirical data consist of observations of teachers in everyday situations. The theoretical and empirical approaches are used to illuminate each other. Teachers’ ways of dealing with dilemmas are described as use of linguistic resources. Results show that dilemmas are complex social phenomenon that include global system media, trust and language use. Teachers face dilemmas as unpredicted clashes of conflicting expectations. The conflicting expectations come into view as global system media and local trust. The resources required in the constructing of trust and rationality shows how teachers are dealing with dilemmas. Teachers’ ways of dealing with dilemmas come into view as use of linguistic resources for logic and modality.

When facing a dilemma about what to do, rational agents will often encounter a conflict between what they ought to do, morally speaking, and what they most want to do. Traditionally we think that when there is a moral imperative for an agent to do something, even if she does not want to do it, she nevertheless ought to do it. But this approach inevitably fails to be able to explain why agents often choose to do what they most want, in many cases flouting such moral imperatives. The purpose of this thesis is to offer a plausible alternative to this way of understanding these deliberative dilemmas. I argue that communitarian moralism, the account according to which genuine moral imperatives are only imperatives on communities, rather than agents, and according to which agents’ moral conduct is necessarily bound up with her particular preferences, projects and commitments, is the most plausible way to understand dilemmas in which agents must choose between doing moral and self-interested actions.