Why Kant Could not Have Been a Utilitarian

Utilitas ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENS TIMMERMANN
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgement ◽  
Correct Description ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
First Order ◽  
Consequentialist Theory ◽  
The Common ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Practical Recommendations

In 1993, Richard Hare argued that, contrary to received opinion, Kant could have been a utilitarian. In this article, I argue that Hare was wrong. Kant's theory would not have been utilitarian or consequentialist even if his practical recommendations coincided with utilitarian commands: Kant's theory of value is essentially anti-utilitarian; there is no place for rational contradiction as the source of moral imperatives in utilitarianism; Kant would reject the move to separate levels of moral thinking: first-order moral judgement makes use of the principle of morality; and, relatedly, he would resist the common utilitarian distinction between actions and their motives because any correct description of an action must refer to motivation. The article concludes with the thought that any consequentialist theory based on pre-given ends (teleology) lacks the philosophical resources to distinguish between willing something as a means and as an end, leaving means only, and destroying transparency.

Underlying Common Factors of Adolescent Problem Behaviors

2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lening Zhang ◽  
John W. Welte ◽  
William F. Wieczorek
Keyword(s):  
Problem Behaviors ◽  
Latent Variable ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Measurement Model ◽  
First Order ◽  
Adolescent Problem Behaviors ◽  
The Common ◽  
Order Factor ◽  
Second Order Factor Analysis

The Buffalo Longitudinal Study of Young Men was used to address the possibility of a common factor underlying adolescent problem behaviors. First, a measurement model with a single first-order factor was compared to a model with three separate correlated first-order factors. The three-factor model was better supported, making it logical to conduct a second-order factor analysis, which confirmed the logic. Second, a substantive model was estimated in each of two waves with psychopathic state as the common factor predicting drinking, drug use, and delinquency. Psychopathic state was stable across waves. The theory that a single latent variable accounts for large covariance among adolescent problem behaviors was supported.

SUBSTANTIVE MORAL THEORY

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Pettit
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Scientific Thought ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Common

Philosophy can serve two roles in relation to moral thinking: first, to provide a meta-ethical commentary on the nature of moral thought, as the methodology or the philosophy of science provides a commentary on the nature of scientific thought; and second, to build on the common presumptions deployed in people's moral thinking about moral issues, looking for a substantive moral theory that they might support. The present essay addresses the nature of this second role; illustrates it with substantive theories that equate moral obligations respectively with requirements of nature, self-interest, benevolence, reason and justifiability; and outlines a novel competitor in which the focus is shifted to requirements of co-reasoning and respect.

A Simple Practical Criterion to Guarantee Second Order Smoothness of Blend Surfaces

1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Pegna ◽  
F.-E. Wolter
Keyword(s):  
Second Order ◽  
Geometric Design ◽  
Computer Aided Geometric Design ◽  
Common Boundary ◽  
First Order ◽  
Computer Aided ◽  
The Common ◽  
Blend Surfaces ◽  
Continuous Curves ◽  
Order Smoothness

Abstract Computer Aided Geometric Design of surfaces sometimes presents problems that were not envisioned by mathematicians in differential geometry. This paper presents mathematical results that pertain to the design of second order smooth blending surfaces. Second order smoothness normally requires that normal curvatures agree along all tangent directions at all points of the common boundary of two patches, called the linkage curve. The Linkage Curve Theorem proved here shows that, for the blend to be second order smooth when it is already first order smooth, it is sufficient that normal curvatures agree in one direction other than the tangent to a first order continuous linkage curve. This result is significant for it substantiates earlier works in computer aided geometric design. It also offers simple practical means of generating second order blends for it reduces the dimensionality of the problem to that of curve fairing, and is well adapted to a formulation of the blend surface using sweeps. From a theoretical viewpoint, it is remarkable that one can generate second order smooth blends with the assumption that the linkage curve is only first order smooth. This property may be helpful to the designer since linkage curves can be constructed from low order piecewise continuous curves.

Principals and Agents: From the Convention’s Proposal to the Constitutional Treaty

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas König ◽  
Daniel Finke
Keyword(s):  
Final Outcome ◽  
The Political ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
Constitutional Treaty ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Voting Rules ◽  
Common View ◽  
Treaty Of Lisbon ◽  
First Order ◽  
The Common

This chapter examines the transformation of the Convention's proposal on the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe to the Lisbon Treaty in the aftermath of the two negative referendums from a principal-agent perspective. It shows that the common view of unitary member states, in which principals and agents share interests in the revision of treaties, can only partially—if not wrongly—explain the Treaty of Lisbon. The principal-agent analysis reveals that the political leaders delegated power to negotiating agents who worked out compromise solutions by partially revising the initial interests of their first order principals, the political leaders. Governmental agents from smaller countries were able to focus the negotiations on a few central reform issues, such as the number of Commissioners and the voting rules of the Council, and they also successfully influenced the final outcome of these issues. A major reason for their success was their credibility, which they could increase by pointing to integration-skeptic voters—particularly in countries that had announced a referendum. Hence, governmental agents increased their bargaining efficiency by referring to voters as their second-order principals.

scholarly journals Learned Video Compression via Joint Spatial-Temporal Correlation Exploration

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (07) ◽  
pp. 11580-11587
Author(s):  
Haojie Liu ◽  
Han Shen ◽  
Lichao Huang ◽  
Ming Lu ◽  
Tong Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Coding ◽  
Video Compression ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Temporal Correlation ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Compression Method ◽  
High Efficiency Video Coding ◽  
First Order ◽  
Coding Efficiency ◽  
The Common

Traditional video compression technologies have been developed over decades in pursuit of higher coding efficiency. Efficient temporal information representation plays a key role in video coding. Thus, in this paper, we propose to exploit the temporal correlation using both first-order optical flow and second-order flow prediction. We suggest an one-stage learning approach to encapsulate flow as quantized features from consecutive frames which is then entropy coded with adaptive contexts conditioned on joint spatial-temporal priors to exploit second-order correlations. Joint priors are embedded in autoregressive spatial neighbors, co-located hyper elements and temporal neighbors using ConvLSTM recurrently. We evaluate our approach for the low-delay scenario with High-Efficiency Video Coding (H.265/HEVC), H.264/AVC and another learned video compression method, following the common test settings. Our work offers the state-of-the-art performance, with consistent gains across all popular test sequences.

Normativity and emotional vulnerability

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Bagnoli
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Ethical Behaviour ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
Emotional Vulnerability ◽  
Theory Of Value

Are the emotions relevant for the theory of value and normativity? Is there a set of morally correct arrangements of emotions? Current debates are often structured as though there were only two theoretical options to approach these questions, a sentimentalist theory of some sort, which emphasizes the role of emotions in forming ethical behaviour and practical thought, and intellectualist rationalism, which denies that emotions can help at all in generating normativity and contributing to moral value, hence also denying that they may have any role to play in moral agency and moral thinking. In what follows, I will offer a Kantian account of ‘practical reason’ as the seat of moral agency, which recognizes a diversified and complex relation between reason and sensibility.

AUTOCORRELATION IN SHORT TIME SERIES WITH TRENDS: A SIMULATION STUDY OF ESTIMATION AND SIGNIFICANCE TESTING WITH APPLICATION TO AIR QUALITY DATA

2014 ◽  
Vol 06 (02n03) ◽  
pp. 1450007
Author(s):  
RAYMOND K. W. WONG
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
Significance Testing ◽  
Short Time Series ◽  
First Order ◽  
The Common ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Air Quality Data ◽  
Trend Removal

The estimation and significance testing of the first-order autoregressive (AR1) coefficient in short time series with trends are examined. The purpose is to identify the difficulties to which analysis procedures need to adjust for better results. The delta recursive AR1 estimator rδand the Sen–Theil trend estimator are viable for short sequence application. Significance testing for rδhas low power. But the existence of trend has negligible influence in estimation and testing. The common practice of trend removal before AR1 estimation gives poorer results. Application to air quality data showed this could greatly change conclusions. Implication to analysis is discussed.

Kinetic studies on carbohydrates in alkaline conditions III. Interconversion of D-glucose, D-fructose and D-mannose in feebly alkaline solution

1955 ◽  
Vol 228 (1172) ◽  
pp. 100-119 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sodium Bicarbonate ◽  
Alkaline Solution ◽  
Kinetic Studies ◽  
Alternative Mechanism ◽  
Bicarbonate Buffer ◽  
First Order ◽  
Alkaline Conditions ◽  
The Common ◽  
Singly Charged ◽  
Reducing Substances

The interconversion of glucose, fructose and mannose in sodium carbonate-sodium bicarbonate buffer at pH 10.14 has been studied kinetically at 35 and 50° C. Degradation and the formation of other reducing substances also occur at significant rates and consideration of these reactions was necessary. The ratios of the three sugar concentrations become constant after a sufficient interval of time, and in these conditions the ratio [mannose]/ [glucose + fructose + mannose] was found to be 0.18 approximately, which is higher than has been previously reported. The reactions are shown to be first order in the concentrations of the three sugars, and the results are consistent with a mechanism in which these sugars form a common intermediate. The alternative mechanism, in which fructose is an intermediate in the interconversion of glucose and mannose, is not supported. A comparison with the experiments at much higher alkaiinities reported in parts I and II identifies the common intermediate with the singly charged enolate ion XH 2 - previously described. The comparison has enabled all the relevant velocity constants to be calculated. From these constants the rates of autoxidation of the sugars under the present conditions may be estimated; the results are shown to be in satisfactory agreement with observation. This supplies an additional check on the validity of the proposed mechanism. The latter is also shown to be consistent with the results of recent investigations on deuterium exchange in interconversion.

scholarly journals Will the laser cutting machines save Russian libraries?

2019 ◽  
pp. 90-98
Author(s):  
E. Pleshkevich
Keyword(s):  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
National Library ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Leisure Services ◽  
Library Studies ◽  
The Common ◽  
Staff Number ◽  
Practical Recommendations ◽  
Library Collections

The author analyzes the new concept of “truly modern libraries” being developed by Vadim Stepanov who suggests to review the library functions and to re-orient the libraries toward providing socio-cultural and leisure services. The author analyzes these methodological and practical recommendations within the concept while demonstrating the practical “misery” of the concept itself and the recommendations which, to one degree or another, have been being developed in the national library studies. Thus, the open access to library collections is a common place since 1930s; every large library has got special room for public events, etc. The author discusses the experience of Helsinki city library (“Oodi”) that has switched to sociocultural and leisure services. Today, “Oodi” – is a cultural and entertaining center, comprising the library oriented toward leisure activities; in fact, it franchises the title of a library. The author demonstrates that accommodating libraries within cultural, leisure and entertaining complexes has been the common practice since the Soviet period. He emphasizes that changes in the national librarianship are of the multifactor character, while automation and computerization of library processes and online access lead to decreasing the library staff number and the volume of library collections. Thus, these changes may not be regarded as the manifestation of a crisis. The author suggests the projects must be being developed more responsibly.

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