Minding the Gap: Bernard Williams and David Hume on Living an Ethical Life

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 615-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sagar
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Ethical Practices ◽  
Internal Reasons ◽  
External Reasons

Bernard Williams is frequently supposed to be an ethical Humean, due especially to his work on ‘internal’ reasons. In fact Williams’s work after his famous article ‘Internal and External Reasons’ constitutes a profound shift away from Hume’s ethical outlook. Whereas Hume offered a reconciling project whereby our ethical practices could be self-validating without reference to external justificatory foundations, Williams’s later work was increasingly skeptical of any such possibility. I conclude by suggesting reasons for thinking Williams was correct, a finding which should be of concern for anybody engaged in the study of ethics.

Halal food standard implementation: are Malaysian firms proactive or reactive?

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (6) ◽  
pp. 1330-1343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Syazwan Ab Talib ◽  
Thoo Ai Chin
Keyword(s):  
Structural Equation ◽  
Manufacturing Industry ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Internal Reasons ◽  
Food Standard ◽  
Operational Improvement ◽  
Halal Food ◽  
External Reasons

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons behind halal food standard (HFS) implementation among food manufacturers in Malaysia. Additionally, it examines whether firms in the Malaysian food manufacturing industry are proactive or reactive in implementing HFS. Design/methodology/approach A field survey was conducted in 210 halal-certified food manufacturers. A partial least squares structural equation modeling technique was used to examine the relationships between the reasons and implementation of HFS. Findings The empirical assessments revealed that organization’s commitment, operational improvement and marketing functions are the internal reasons. Meanwhile, government intervention and consumer pressure are the external reasons to implement HFS. Findings also indicated that Malaysian food manufacturers are proactive in implementing HFS. Practical implications The knowledge from this research could encourage non-certified firms to implement HFS and entices halal-certified firms to remain certified. It guides managers toward adopting a better strategy, particularly in prioritizing the internal factors and resources for a more sustainable and positive implication. Originality/value This research is among the few studies that scrutinized the rationale behind the rapid growth of halal food industry. It argues that the pursuit of HFS is not solely a religious obligation, but it is also driven by safety, quality and marketing motives.

scholarly journals What drives Web 2.0 adoption in South African civil society organisations

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiru Pillay ◽  
Manoj S. Maharaj
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
South African ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Internal Reasons ◽  
Media Services ◽  
American Elections ◽  
The Impact ◽  
External Reasons

Background: The impact and consequences of social media adoption on society are only just being realised and studied in detail; consequently, there is no universal agreement as to the reasons for the adoption of these services. Even understanding why some social media services are popular remains to some extent elusive. The practical use of Web 2.0 does not provide any answers either with, for example, a noticeable difference in the way social media was strategically used by Barack Obama and Mitch Romney in the lead-up to the 2009 American elections. However, recent studies that have focused on social media adoption within specific sectors have begun to shed some light on these emerging adoption patterns; two studies in particular are illustrative: a 2012 study on the newspaper sector and a study on social media adoption and e-government.Objectives: This study investigates why South African civil society organisations (CSOs) adopt Web 2.0 services and the perceived and actual benefits of such adoption.Method: A survey questionnaire was sent to 1712 South African CSOs listed in the Prodder database to explore why certain social media services were adopted and the perceived benefits thereof.Results: Internal reasons for the adoption of social media services by South African CSOs coalesce around organisational visibility and access to information. External reasons focus on organisations needing to become more relevant and more connected to like-minded organisations and initiatives.Conclusion: The pervasiveness of Web 2.0 technologies makes it inevitable that CSOs will have to restructure themselves to remain relevant.

A Truthful Way to Live? Objectivity, Ethics and Psychoanalysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 175-193
Author(s):  
Michael Lacewing
Keyword(s):  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Psychological Conditions ◽  
The Way ◽  
Material Constraints

AbstractIs there a best way to live? If so, is this a form of ethical life? The answer, I believe, turns on what we can say about the nature and place of the passions – emotions and desires – in our lives, including in particular, our ability to be truthful about our passions and our relations with other people. I approach the question through the work of Bernard Williams. I consider first what it might be for a way of life to be ‘objectively’ best, before looking more closely at the psychological conditions of such a life, using ideas from psychoanalysis on the way we hide our true passions from ourselves and the effect this can have on our understanding of both ourselves and others. I end by considering whether we can say that a truthful life is the best life, and whether it places universal and material constraints on how best to live.

Reasons, Perceptual Grounds, and Normative Explanation

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-86
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Propositional Justification ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Internal Reasons ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
External Reasons

Reasons come in many forms. There are reasons to believe, for believing, for which one believes, and why one believes; and some are internal reasons we have, others external reasons we lack. This chapter clarifies how we have normative reasons for beliefs in virtue of certain experiential states that ground those reasons: these states, including sense-experiences and hedonic experiences, are the kinds that ground the rationality of beliefs or the desirability of acts. Normative reasons, practical as well as theoretical, are themselves grounded in certain experiential elements, including perceptions as a central kind. Normative reasons for belief are unified by their explanatory scope: they can explain propositional justification—roughly, justification that at least permits our properly believing propositions adequately supported by our experience. These normative explanations parallel causal explanations that hold between the experiential elements, such as perceptions, that ground the reasons and the doxastically justified beliefs that reflect those experiences.

scholarly journals Clusterization of reasons for bankruptcy of enterprises

2013 ◽  
pp. 72-82
Author(s):  
Lukas Giriūnas ◽  
Jonas Mackevičius ◽  
Romualdas Valkauskas
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
External Environment ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The State ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Internal Reasons ◽  
State And Society ◽  
External Causes ◽  
The Right ◽  
External Reasons

Bankruptcies of enterprises are among the most common events in the market economy. They cause a lot of negative effects not only for the company and its employees, but also for other companies and institutions, the state and society. Although the researchers have examined the reasons for bankruptcy, there is no list of the signs clearly indicating the likelihood of bankruptcy. Or such list is impossible due to the fact that causes of bankruptcy are related to the complex and constantly changing external environment of the company. That is why various features are only the symptoms pointing to the fact that the company is in danger of going bankrupt. It should be mentioned that some signs indicate that the company may face a number of difficulties, including bankruptcy, if the company’s management will not take appropriate action to eliminate causes of bankruptcy or to adjust to them. Reasons for bankruptcy can be divided into: 1) internal, 2) external. External reasons are such reasons that cannot be affected by company’s executives because they do not depend on the executives’ will. Internal reasons are such reasons that depend on the company’s executives and their level of professionalism, initiative, and ability to lead and to make the right decisions. In order to take the lowest risk, company’s analysts should monitor and investigate all internal and external causes. As it has been already mentioned, there are many internal and external reasons for companies’ bankruptcy but it is not clear which are the most important ones. To answer this question the authors of this article, on the basis of Lithuanian and foreign scientific research, have compiled a theoretical list and the tree of the internal and external causes of bankruptcy. The tree and its components are improved with clusters of reasons for bankruptcy of enterprises.

Critical Ethos

2018 ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Cheri Lynne Carr
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Ethical Practices ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Subject

Fascism is inseparable from the oppression of others because it is an expression of the desire for repression of one’s own multiple, imbricated, and fluid selves. An ethical life that chooses freedom must therefore nurture those connections that will reinforce habits that foster qualities such as thinking, creativity, and questioning – especially self-questioning that leads to deindividuation. The theory of the subject Deleuze develops in his early work on habit and critique of the faculties is thus the ground of a set of ethical practices that cultivate moral judgment through habits of self-criticism. Because these habits of self-criticism must be lived, practiced, and re-evaluated, Deleuze’s critique is best understood in terms of the Greek notion of an ethos, a way of living the ideas implicit in one’s ontology as ideals. This ethos defined by critique necessitates a permanent creation of our selves as the form of responsibility the analysis of our selves as historical artifacts takes. Thus the critique would not be merely descriptive; it would be practical and it would take its goal to be resisting the forms of experience that constrain thinking – thereby freeing life itself to new potential.

Internal Reasons and the Problem of Climate Change

Theoria ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (160) ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
David Hall
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Philosophical Psychology ◽  
Internal Reasons ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
External Reasons ◽  
Additional Reason

Climate action is conventionally framed in terms of overcoming epistemic and practical disagreement. An alternative view is to treat people’s understandings of climate change as fundamentally pluralistic and to conceive of climate action accordingly. This paper explores this latter perspective through a framework of philosophical psychology, in particular Bernard Williams’s distinction between internal and external reasons. This illuminates why the IPCC’s framework of ‘Reasons for Concern’ has an inefficacious relationship to people’s concerns and, hence, why additional reason giving is required. Accordingly, this paper recommends a model of truthful persuasion, which acknowledges the plurality of people’s motivations and sincerely strives to connect the facts of climate change to people’s subjective motivational sets.

La pensée sans sujet pensant

Dialogue ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bernier
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Il Y A

RÉSUMÉIl existe une tradition, remontant à David Hume, qui nie que la pensée consciente requiert l’existence d’un sujet. Cette thèse, que nous appelons la thèse de la pensée sans sujet, est bien illustrée par la remarque de Lichtenberg selon laquelle Descartes ne pouvait prétendre avoir établi la certitude de «Je pense» mais uniquement celle de «Il y a de la pensée» (Es denkt). Le philosophe américain Bernard Williams a proposé un argument qui montrerait l’incohérence de la thèse de la pensée sans sujet. Mon but principal est de défendre la thèse de la pensée sans sujet en proposant une interprétation qui surmonte le problème posé par Williams.

Prediction and Control as Mediators of Causal Attribution

1976 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Causal Attributions ◽  
Causal Attribution ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Motivational Factors ◽  
Perception Of Causality ◽  
Internal Reasons ◽  
Prediction And Control ◽  
And Control ◽  
External Reasons

In this paper is reviewed the literature on the naive perception of causality. Studies support Heider's suggestion that actors give external reasons for their behavior, whereas observers attribute the same behavior to the actor's personal dispositions. However, studies also show that actors are sometimes internal and observers are sometimes external in their causal attributions, e.g., actors give external reasons for their failure but they give internal reasons for success, and observers give internal reasons for the other's failure but they give external reasons for success. It was concluded that such results can be explained in terms of both cognitive and motivational factors. It was proposed that the perceiver's concern with prediction and control is one factor responsible for the typical attributions of actors as well as observers, and, furthermore, that there are individual, cultural, and contextual factors which may reverse the typical perspectives of actors and observers.

scholarly journals An Analysis of English Language Education (ELE) Students' Motivation in Learning Pedagogical Courses

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Putu Yoga Sathya Pratama ◽  
I Gusti Ayu Lokita Purnamika Utami ◽  
Luh Diah Surya Adnyani
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
English Language ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Language Education ◽  
English Language Education ◽  
Internal Reasons ◽  
Interactive Data Analysis ◽  
Interactive Data ◽  
External Reasons

Previous studies on motivation had been broadly researched, but little attention was given to learning pedagogical courses motivation. Thus, this qualitative research with case-study research design was conducted. This research aimed to describe ELE students’ motivation in learning pedagogical courses. The collecting data used were questionnaire, interview guidance, and human instrument. The obtained data were analyzed qualitatively through interactive data analysis. The result portrays there are more ELE students tend to be intrinsically motivated in learning pedagogical courses; the rest are identified to be extrinsically motivated, amotivated, and undefined motivation students. The reasons underlying their motivation in learning pedagogical courses can be categorized into: 1) internal reasons (mood, goals, passion, perspective, & personality) and 2) external reasons (parental, score, and lecturer).

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