How Many Kinds of Reasons?

Reasons can play a variety of roles in a variety of contexts. For instance, reasons can motivate and guide us in our actions (and omissions), in the sense that we often act in the light of reasons. And reasons can be grounds for beliefs, desires and emotions and can be used to evaluate, and sometimes to justify, all these. In addition, reasons are used in explanations: both in explanations of human actions, beliefs, desires, emotions, etc., and in explanations of a wide range of phenomena involving all sorts of animate and inanimate substances.This diversity has encouraged the thought that the term ‘reason’ is ambiguous or has different senses in different contexts. Moreover, this view often goes hand in hand with the claim that reasons of these different kinds belong to different ontological categories:to facts (or something similar) in the case of normative/justifying reasons, and to mental states in the case of motivating/explanatory reasons.In this paper I shall explore some of the main roles that reasons play and, on that basis, I shall offer a classification of kinds of reasons. As will become clear, my classification of reasons is at odds with much of the literature in several respects: first, because of my views about how we should understand the claim that reasons are classified into different kinds; second, because of the kinds into which I think reasonsshould be classified; and, finally, because of the consequences I think this view has for the ontology of reasons

The Concept of Moral Obligation: Anscombe contra Korsgaard: Maria Alvarez and Aaron Ridley

A number of recent writers have expressed scepticism about the viability of a specifically moral concept of obligation, and some of the considerations offered have been interesting and persuasive. This is a scepticism that has its roots in Nietzsche, even if he is mentioned only rather rarely in the debate. More proximately, the scepticism in question receives seminal expression in Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 essay, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, a piece that is often paid lip-service to, but—like Nietzsche's work—has only rarely been taken seriously by those wishing to defend the conception of obligation under attack. This is regrettable. Anscombe's essay is powerful and direct, and it makes a forthright case for the claim that, in the absence of a divine law conception of ethics, any specifically moral concept of obligation must be redundant, and that the best that can be hoped for in a secular age is some sort of neo-Aristotelianism. Anscombe is right about this, we think. And, among those who disagree, one of the very few to have taken her on at all explicitly is Christine Korsgaard, whose Kantianism of course commits her to the view that the concept of moral obligation is central, with or without God. Here, we try to show that Korsgaard loses the argument

Anthropology of the Crowd, Blog 11

Student blog posts from the Great VCU Bike Race Book

Anthropology of the Crowd, Blog 11

Student blog posts from the Great VCU Bike Race Book

Productive Capital and Technical Efficiency in the UE-15

In this research we examine the capitalization process in the UE-15 with the aim to establish if the evolution manteined in the last two decades for the public capital and its distribution related private capital have conditioned the technical efficiency of the European economies. In this analysis we use the frontier function approach that allows to consider an inefficiency use of the productive factors. Specifically, we employ the parametric stochastic frontier model from Battese and Coelli (1995) to explore the determinants of the technical efficiency. The results show that larger endowments of public capital may facilitate the access of the productive activity to the levels of the more efficient members. We also find a limit to the capacity of introducing improvements in the use of productive factors, and it is related to private capital, then if the increase of public capital does not lead to an optimal distribution of this factor, the effect on efficiency will be negative.

A Gravity Approach to Assess the Effects of Association Agreements on Euromediterranean Trade of Fruits and Vegetables

The paper is intended to draw on a gravity methodology to assess the impact of EuroMediterranean Association Agreement on Fruit and Vegetable trade from Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPC) to the EU. The Association Agreements appear to be significant as an explanatory of both fruit and vegetables’ trade flows to the EU. However, while the impact of such arrangements has contributed to boost MPC’s horticultural exports, it has not been sufficient to compensate the export loss related to the nature of MPCs as third countries. MPCs may have obtained gains from the EuroMed Agrements but the Barcelona process is still far to achieve its initial goals, at least concerning crucial products for the MPCs’ export strategy. The presented approach supplies a method to monitor future developments in the EuroMediterranean process.agricultural trade; Euro-Mediterranean agreements; fruit and vegetables

Meiosis in Phycomyces

A four-factor cross between two strains of Phycomyces involving two auxotrophic, one color, and the mating type marker is described. Samples of 40 germspores from 84 individual fertile germsporangia were characterized. The results show: (i) The germspores of a germsporangium are derived from one meiosis in approximately 78% of the cases. (ii) The four markers are on separate chromosomes. They are nonselective. (iii) Analysis of a large sample of germspores from 106 pooled germsporangia confirms that the four markers are unlinked. (iv) From the ditype/tetratype ratios it is inferred that each marker is located about 15 map units from its centromere

Autocuidado en mujeres embarazadas en una comunidad del estado de México

El embarazo es un estado de la mujer que requiere mayores cuidados de sí misma. El objetivo es identificar el autocuidado que realizan las mujeres embarazadas en una comunidad del municipio de Jiquipilco. Es un estudio cualitativo, descriptivo transversal con enfoque cualitativo. La muestra se compuso por siente mujeres de 15 a 35 años de edad y embarazo sin complicaciones, los núcleos temáticos analizados fueron de acuerdo con los requisitos universales descritos por Orem. Tras la revisión de los resultados en cuanto a la alimentación mencionan que la calidad y no la cantidad de los alimentos traen beneficios para su salud, además de ser modificada ligeramente en función de algunas recomendaciones, la provisión de cuidado en la higiene personal varía según su decisión