Cultivating Honesty

2021 ◽  
pp. 213-235
Author(s):  
Christian B. Miller

The virtue of honesty has been seriously neglected in contemporary philosophy. Hardly any papers on the nature of the virtue have appeared in a leading philosophy journal in decades. Similarly, almost nothing has been said about how to cultivate the virtue of honesty. In recent work, Miller has offered a preliminary account of the nature of the virtue of honesty. In this chapter he aims to do the same with honesty cultivation. Specifically, he first looks to the psychological literature on cheating to see what dispositions most people actually possess in this moral domain. Central among them will be beliefs about the wrongness of cheating, as well as desires to cheat while also appearing honest both to others and to ourselves. With this baseline in place, Miller considers what strategies can be recommended to enhance the importance and salience of the wrongness of cheating, while weakening our desires to cheat.

2017 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 87-100
Author(s):  
John Cottingham

AbstractSome truths cannot be accessed ‘cold’, from a detached and impersonal standpoint, but require personal commitment and even moral change in order for the relevant evidence to come to light. The truths of religion may be of this kind. Moreover, recent work in psychology and neurophysiology suggests that our knowledge of the world comes in different forms, the detached critical scrutiny associated with ‘the left-brain’ and the more intuitive and holistic awareness mediated by the ‘right brain’. Much contemporary philosophy privileges the former kind of knowledge, but in areas such as religion this may be a mistake.1


Author(s):  
Jesse Prinz

Jesse Prinz begins this chapter by noting that existentialism is often regarded as a philosophy of radical freedom—leading existentialists emphasized the human capacity for choice and self-creation. At the same time, a countercurrent in existentialist thought calls freedom into question. This countercurrent draws attention to the ways in which behavior is determined by forces outside of our control. This is especially vivid in the moral domain. Borrowing a term from phenomenology, Prinz calls this phenomenon “sedimentation.” After tracing the idea of sedimentation and related concepts in existentialist thought, with special emphasis on the moral domain, Prinz argues that recent work in neuroscience, psychology, and other social sciences add support to the thesis that we are vulnerable to sedimentation. He concludes by considering various tactics against sedimentation that have been proposed, arguing that some of the more prominent historical tactics are problematic, while also pointing to some alternatives.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nadelhoffer ◽  
Jennifer Cole Wright ◽  
Matthew Echols ◽  
Tyler Perini ◽  
Kelly Venezia

In this paper we first set the stage with a brief overview of the tangled history of humility in theology and philosophy—beginning with its treatment in the Bible and ending with the more recent work that has been done in contemporary philosophy (§§1–2). Our two-fold goal at this early stage of the paper is to explore some of the different accounts of humility that have traditionally been developed and highlight some of the key debates in the current literature. Next, we present the findings from several studies we recently conducted in an effort to explore people’s intuitions and beliefs about humility as well as their experiences with being humble (or failing to be humble) (§3). Finally, we discuss the relevance of our findings to the ongoing philosophical debates about humility—suggesting that while some varieties of humility are problematic, other varieties of humility are certainly worth wanting (§4).


Author(s):  
Ingrid Vendrell Ferran

AbstractA vast range of our everyday experiences seem to involve an immediate consciousness of value. We hear the rudeness of someone making offensive comments. In seeing someone risking her life to save another, we recognize her bravery. When we witness a person shouting at an innocent child, we feel the unfairness of this action. If, in learning of a close friend’s success, envy arises in us, we experience our own emotional response as wrong. How are these values apprehended? The three most common answers provided by contemporary philosophy explain the consciousness of value in terms of judgment, emotion, or perception. An alternative view endorsed mainly by authors inspired by the phenomenological tradition argues that values are apprehended by an intentional feeling. In this model, it is by virtue of a feeling that objects are presented as being in different degrees and nuances fair or unfair, boring or funny, good or bad. This paper offers an account of this model of feeling and its basic features, and defends it over alternative models. To this end, the paper discusses different versions of the model circulating in current research which until now have developed in parallel rather than in mutual exchange. The paper also applies the proposed account to the moral domain and examines how a feeling of values is presupposed by several moral experiences.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Kurth

Abstract Recent work by emotion researchers indicates that emotions have a multilevel structure. Sophisticated sentimentalists should take note of this work – for it better enables them to defend a substantive role for emotion in moral cognition. Contra May's rationalist criticisms, emotions are not only able to carry morally relevant information, but can also substantially influence moral judgment and reasoning.


1976 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 457-463
Author(s):  
John M. Wilcox ◽  
Leif Svalgaard

SummaryThe sun as a magnetic star is described on the basis of recent work on solar magnetism. Observations at an arbitrary angle to the rotation axis would show a 22-year polar field variation and a 25-day equatorial sector variation. The sector variation would be similar to an oblique rotator with an angle of 90° between the magnetic and rotational axis.


Author(s):  
Shulin Wen ◽  
Jingwei Feng ◽  
A. Krajewski ◽  
A. Ravaglioli

Hydroxyapatite bioceramics has attracted many material scientists as it is the main constituent of the bone and the teeth in human body. The synthesis of the bioceramics has been performed for years. Nowadays, the synthetic work is not only focused on the hydroapatite but also on the fluorapatite and chlorapatite bioceramics since later materials have also biological compatibility with human tissues; and they may also be very promising for clinic purpose. However, in comparison of the synthetic bioceramics with natural one on microstructure, a great differences were observed according to our previous results. We have investigated these differences further in this work since they are very important to appraise the synthetic bioceramics for their clinic application.The synthetic hydroxyapatite and chlorapatite were prepared according to A. Krajewski and A. Ravaglioli and their recent work. The briquettes from different hydroxyapatite or chlorapatite powders were fired in a laboratory furnace at the temperature of 900-1300°C. The samples of human enamel selected for the comparison with synthetic bioceramics were from Chinese adult teeth.


2003 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy A. Black ◽  
John R. Doedens ◽  
Rajeev Mahimkar ◽  
Richard Johnson ◽  
Lin Guo ◽  
...  

Tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα)-converting enzyme (TACE/ADAM-17, where ADAM stands for a disintegrin and metalloproteinase) releases from the cell surface the extracellular domains of TNF and several other proteins. Previous studies have found that, while purified TACE preferentially cleaves peptides representing the processing sites in TNF and transforming growth factor α, the cellular enzyme nonetheless also sheds proteins with divergent cleavage sites very efficiently. More recent work, identifying the cleavage site in the p75 TNF receptor, quantifying the susceptibility of additional peptides to cleavage by TACE and identifying additional protein substrates, underlines the complexity of TACE-substrate interactions. In addition to substrate specificity, the mechanism underlying the increased rate of shedding caused by agents that activate cells remains poorly understood. Recent work in this area, utilizing a peptide substrate as a probe for cellular TACE activity, indicates that the intrinsic activity of the enzyme is somehow increased.


Physica ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 3 (7-12) ◽  
pp. 1065-1067
Author(s):  
H HROSTOWSKI ◽  
M TANENBAUM
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 498-516
Author(s):  
Neil O'Sullivan

Of the hundreds of Greek common nouns and adjectives preserved in our MSS of Cicero, about three dozen are found written in the Latin alphabet as well as in the Greek. So we find, alongside συμπάθεια, also sympathia, and ἱστορικός as well as historicus. This sort of variation has been termed alphabet-switching; it has received little attention in connection with Cicero, even though it is relevant to subjects of current interest such as his bilingualism and the role of code-switching and loanwords in his works. Rather than addressing these issues directly, this discussion sets out information about the way in which the words are written in our surviving MSS of Cicero and takes further some recent work on the presentation of Greek words in Latin texts. It argues that, for the most part, coherent patterns and explanations can be found in the alphabetic choices exhibited by them, or at least by the earliest of them when there is conflict in the paradosis, and that this coherence is evidence for a generally reliable transmission of Cicero's original choices. While a lack of coherence might indicate unreliable transmission, or even an indifference on Cicero's part, a consistent pattern can only really be explained as an accurate record of coherent alphabet choice made by Cicero when writing Greek words.


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