Personality and Human Conduct

Author(s):  
Emiliana Mangone
Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-54
Author(s):  
Richard Boyd

AbstractFor all the recent discoveries of behavioral psychology and experimental economics, the spirit of homo economicus still dominates the contemporary disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology. Turning back to the earliest chapters of political economy, however, reveals that pioneering figures such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and Adam Smith were hardly apostles of economic rationality as they are often portrayed in influential narratives of the development of the social sciences. As we will see, while all three of these thinkers can plausibly be read as endorsing “rationality,” they were also well aware of the systematic irrationality of human conduct, including a remarkable number of the cognitive biases later “discovered” by contemporary behavioral economists. Building on these insights I offer modest suggestions for how these thinkers, properly understood, might carry the behavioral revolution in different directions than those heretofore suggested.


2019 ◽  
Vol 83 (6) ◽  
pp. 450-472
Author(s):  
Susan SM Edwards

Anger, its part in human conduct and in crime commission has been much discussed and accorded a privileged status within the law, while the role of fear has been less considered. Notwithstanding, fear and related emotional states have received some recognition as intrinsic elements of the perpetrator’s object integral to the actus reus of certain offences and relevant to the defendant’s mens rea of some defences. The harm caused by deliberately or negligently instilling fear in another is inconsistently considered in law as is its impact on criminal responsibility and mens rea. Fear has been recently acknowledged as a permissible cause of loss of self-control in a partial defence to murder (Coroners and Justice Act 2009 s 55(3)). It remains a contested emotion and as with anger the male experience of what circumstances trigger fear predominates.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pietro Montani

AbstractThe tradition of Kant’s critical philosophy developed the concept of imagination rigorously and productively. In this article, I shall defend the suitability of placing this concept in a paleoanthropological frame and linking it to the cognitive practices – predominantly sensorimotor, interactive and those directed at the emergence of technologies – which preceded and prepared for the advent of articulated speech. Special attention will be paid to the internalization processes of these practices and their effects on human conduct. On the basis of this discussion, I shall defend the theory by which the advent of denotative articulated speech entailed a profound reorganization of the technical performances attributable to the imagination and the relative internalization processes. Moreover, the origin of articulated speech inaugurated a singular story, that of the relationship between word and image. In my conclusions, I shall describe a major outcome of this within the framework of the new electronic technologies.


PMLA ◽  
1916 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Gerard E. Jensen

In using satire to ridicule the vices and follies of his contemporaries, Fielding is the direct successor of the last member of that “Triumvirate of Wit,” Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift, to which he so often refers in his works. In his novels and in his periodical essays Fielding often refers to the luxury of the times and the consequent general moral corruption among all classes of society. He ridicules especially the affectation of his contemporaries—their vanity and hypocrisy, the twin roots of affectation—and assails with direct invective their spiritual and moral degeneration. Believing that example is stronger than precept in reforming human conduct, he likes to place before them examples, ridiculous or odious, of what they are to avoid; but his satire is more kindly than Swift's.


2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Cane

AbstractIn The Concept of Law, H.L.A. Hart suggested that four formal features of morality distinguish it from law: importance, immunity from deliberate change, the nature of moral offences and the form of moral pressure. On closer examination, none of these supposed features clearly distinguishes morality from law, at least in the broad sense of ‘morality’ that Hart adopted. However, a fifth feature of morality mentioned by Hart – namely the role that morality plays in practical reasoning as a source of ultimate standards for assessing human conduct – does illuminate the relationship between law as conceptualised by Hart and morality variously understood. Because morality has this feature, law is always subject to moral assessment, and moral reasons trump legal reasons. It does not follow, however, that law is irrelevant to moral reasoning.


2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuval Sinai

Unlike modern Western law, which is generally assumed to be the product of human deliberation about the common good, at least in democratic countries, Jewish law is a normative system in which adjudication is subject to religious commandments. The judge bears responsibility not only to the litigants standing before him but also to God, an allegiance which most modern Western judges do not, at least explicitly, recognize.Because of the systems' assumptions that law is made by humans and thus can be understood by human judges given the appropriate information, modern Western legal systems infer that judges are under obligation to render a decision on any legal question brought before them, even in doubtful cases. Secular-civil law views the resolution of a dispute as preferable to its non-resolution, even if the judge has reservations about his decision. The judge who is hesitant to decide a case is considered to have failed to properly discharge his judicial role, the very essence of which is the regulation of human conduct in one form or other. The obligation of the judge to render a decision on every legal question both implies and requires that a judge exercise creative discretion in at least some cases where the law or its intended application are not clear to ensure the rendering of a clear and unequivocal decision on any legal question brought before him. As a consequence of this unequivocal demand that the judge decide, most judges must make peace with the possibility that their rulings may later be discovered or determined to have been mistaken.


1926 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 498
Author(s):  
John Dewey ◽  
Mary C. Love
Keyword(s):  

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