A Decidable Multi-agent Logic for Reasoning About Actions, Instruments, and Norms

We formally introduce a novel, yet ubiquitous, category of norms: norms of instrumentality. Norms of this category describe which actions are obligatory, or prohibited, as instruments for certain purposes. We propose the Logic of Agency and Norms (LAN) that enables reasoning about actions, instrumentality, and normative principles in a multi-agent setting. Leveraging LAN , we formalize norms of instrumentality and compare them to two prevalent norm categories: norms to be and norms to do. Last, we pose principles relating the three categories and evaluate their validity vis-à-vis notions of deliberative acting. On a technical note, the logic will be shown decidable via the finite model property

Cut-free Calculi and Relational Semantics for Temporal STIT Logics

We present cut-free labelled sequent calculi for a central formalism in logics of agency: STIT logics with temporal operators. These include sequent systems for Ldm , Tstit and Xstit. All calculi presented possess essential structural properties such as contraction- and cut-admissibility. The labelled calculi G3Ldm and G3Tstit are shown sound and complete relative to irreflexive temporal frames. Additionally, we extend current results by showing that also Xstit can be characterized through relational frames, omitting the use of BT+AC frames

Respectable Drinkers, Sensible Drinking, Serious Leisure: Single-Malt Whisky Enthusiasts and the Moral Panic of Irresponsible Others

In the public discourse of policy-makers and journalists, drinkers of (excessive) alcohol are portrayed either as irresponsible, immoral deviants or as gullible victims. In other words, the public discourse engenders a moral panic about alcohol-crazed individuals, who become what Cohen [1972. Folk devil and moral panics. London: Routledge] identifies as folk devils: the Other, abusing alcohol to create anti-social disorder. However, alcohol-drinking was, is and continues to be an everyday practice in the leisure lives of the majority of people in the UK. In this research article, I want to explore the serious leisure of whisky-tasting to provide a counter to the myth of the alcohol-drinker as folk devil, to try to construct a new public discourse of sensible drinking. I will draw on ethnographic work at whisky-tastings alongside interviews and analysis of on-line discourses. I show that participation in whisky-tasting events creates a safe space in which excessive amounts of alcohol are consumed, yet the norms of the particular habitus ensure that such drinking never leads to misbehaviour. In doing so, however, I will note that the respectability of whisky-drinking is associated with its masculine, white, privileged habitus – the folk devil becomes someone else, someone Other

Decolonizing Climate Discourse and Legitimating Indigenous Wisdom: Toward an Ecosystemic Episteme

Devoted to redefining western capitalist epistemologies through recognition and acceptance of Indigenous wisdom in modern sociopolitical structures, I use this paper to expose theoretical and material flaws in western neoliberal capitalism as an implicitly colonial knowledge system incapable of sufficiently addressing the climate crisis. Here, colonialism is broadly understood as ideological and/or material practices of exploitation and domination within social, cultural, economic, and ecological frameworks. Colonialism, in this paper, is further characterized by having particular philosophical commitments to notions of binarism, individualism, and consumerism which reveal capitalism’s structure and function as neocolonial by nature. Most evidently, today’s global climate crisis reveals such implicitly colonial assumptions and material consequences of western capitalist knowledge which continue to harm human and non-human cultures globally. For this reason, research on- and subsequent collaboration with- nonwestern, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist approaches to climate mitigation is vital to critiquing and transforming systems of social and ecological domination. Holistically, Indigenous resistance offers a theoretical and physical space to actualize such transformations

\u3ci\u3eLaw as Instrumentality\u3c/i\u3e

Our conceptions of law affect how we objectify the law and ultimately how we study it. Despite a century’s worth of theoretical progress in American law—from legal realism to critical legal studies movements and postmodernism—the formalist conception of“law as science,” as promulgated by Christopher Langdell at Harvard Law School in the late-nineteenth century, continues to influence the inductive methodologies used today to impart knowledge in American legal education. This lasting influence of the Langdellian scientific conception of law has persisted even as the present crisis in legal education has engendered other reforms. However, subsequent movements of legal thought have revealed that the law is neither scientific nor “objective” in the way the Langdellian formalists once envisioned. After all, the Langdellian scientific objectivity of law itself reflected the dominant class, gender, power, and race of its nineteenth-century progenitors. Thus, by sustaining the illusion of scientific objectivity, the continued application of Langdellian pedagogy distorts our understandings of law and abridges individual explorations of pluralism, subjectivity, justice, and empowerment. Such prevailing false notions of neutrality in law leads to both disenchantment and hierarchy in legal practice, but worse it also distracts from meanings of law that would otherwise have led to empowerment and critique. In this way, legal scholars have clamored for a post-Langdellian legal conception to enable us to reach more relevant and emboldened meanings in law. Prompted by such calls amidst the post-Recession crisis in the American legal academy, this Article offers such a new conception for theorizing meanings in law by locating law within its instrumentalities. “Law as instrumentality” obtains meaning by accepting law’s fragmentation and then observing, from fragmentation, the characteristics of its agency. The law is not a science; but it does embody human-made qualities of agency. This new instrumentality conception studies law’s deliberate aesthetics as a way to explore law ontologically and critique its goals, its devices, its intentions, its significances, and its teleologies. From this conception, a broader methodology can arise to bring about a more relevant and empowering understanding of law to those who render it to life

Steps towards transformative consumer research practice: a taxonomy of possible reflexivities

NoThe aim of ACR 2005 has been articulated by the organisers as the promotion and dissemination of consumer research `for¿ consumers. This call asks for transformative consumer research raising the issue that `Historically, the organization¿s research has been impelled by the theoretical and substantive interests of academics¿. It is on this point that this paper acts to transform arguing that a transformative ethic should be enacted though consumer research praxis. To achieve this it presents worked examples of the practice of reflexivity in consumer research developing a taxonomy of `possible reflexivities¿, and discusses their possibilities for transformation of the consumer research process

Bottling Scotland, drinking Scotland: Scotland's future, the whisky industry and leisure, tourism and public-health policy

Single-malt whisky is the product of over one hundred distilleries across Scotland, and is the subject of a number of claims about its status as an ‘authentic’ Scottish drink. The whisky industry in Scotland argues that it creates significant amounts of revenue for Scotland and the United Kingdom – not just in sales of single-malt whiskies and blended whiskies, but also from the contribution of whisky tourism. As such, Scottish policy-makers in tourism and local regeneration have used whisky both as an attraction to market to visitors to the country, and a vehicle for creating jobs. In this paper, the whisky industry and related whisky tourism industry in Scotland is explored alongside an analysis of tourist and local regeneration policies and strategies that explicitly nurture the notion that whisky is a necessary part of Scottish identity. I will then contrast this with policies on leisure that identify alcohol drinking as problematic, and argue that the whisky industry has worked to convince its public sector supporters that drinking single-malt whiskies in distillery visitor centres is harmless, while signing up to campaigns to moderate drinking in the wider Scottish public

The agony of truth: martyrdom, violence, and Christian ways of knowing

Paper presented at the conf Faith, freedom and the academy: the idea of the university in the 21st century, Univ of Prince Edward Island, O 1-3 2004

What is Moral Application? Towards a Philosophical Theory of Applied Ethics

The aim of this paper is to offer some philosophical remarks concerning the concept of moral application in applied ethics. In doing so, I argue in favour of a philosophical approach towards applied ethics as a unitary form of moral experience. In fact every form of applied ethics, no matter how specific, moves from a problem of application and tries to fill a gap between moral theory and practice. This essential unity of applied ethics as a moral phenomenon is of great philosophical interest, since it belongs to the core problem from which moral thinking itself originates. For this reason, what applied ethics may reveal to a philosophical inquiry could provide valuable insight into the nature of moral experience itself. This is why it is important to reflect on what applied ethics is and whether the way in which application is usually framed be ts the properties of moral experience or not. In the first section I submit some preliminary remarks concerning the theoretical requirements to any philosophical approach to applied ethics. In the second section I present how application is commonly understood in the applied ethics debate by discussing the deductive and the procedural models of application. Both models, however, draw upon a technological conception of application which fails to t the structure of moral experience. Finally, I brie y sketch out the main features and the future tasks of what seems to me to be the most promising approach to the issue, i.e., the hermeneutic concept of application