Learning How to Learn

This article describes how every learner is a unique creative individual responsible for paving his/her own way of learning in a preclusion of external restraints. Learners apply a bunch of idiosyncratic means to segue the information into knowledge. The various implications of such manipulated formulation by the learners implies strategic responses to new information and indicates a rational commitment to learn in many different ways. Pertaining to this we have also different versions of learning styles and strategies and their categories. The growing innovative and multiple dynamic ways of learning here bring diffidence to the existence of those stipulated types of learning styles and strategic traditions. This article makes an attempt to synthesize the different types of ways of learning; the self- determined learning strategies along with the prevailing theories of learning styles hypothesis.

The Sage of Königsberg

Better than anyone, Kant recognized the power and authority of the moral law. On that foundation he constructed two variants of the moral argument. His argument from grace pertains to whether or not the moral life is possible. Morality requires us to achieve a stand too demanding to meet on our own. Divine assistance is needed to close the resulting gap. So rationality dictates that we postulate God’s existence. Kant’s argument from providence pertains to the aforementioned rational need for happiness and virtue to cohere. Full rational commitment to morality requires that morality is a rationally stable enterprise, which entails the ultimate correspondence between virtue and (both individual and corporate) fulfillment. Without God’s existence there’s no particularly good reason to think such correspondence obtains. So rationality dictates the postulation of God’s existence.

Left-Wing Wittgenstein

Writing in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the moral philosopher Bernard Williams considers the opposing claims of Rawlsian liberalism, with its emphasis on pluralism and procedural fairness, and communitarianism, which instead promotes more or less culturally homogeneous societies formed around shared values. Williams shares the communitarians’ critique of Rawls’s theory as excessively abstract, questioning whether a rational commitment to pluralism as the most just social arrangement can serve as a sufficiently binding social force. He simultaneously resists, however, the conservative tendencies of the communitarians, particularly their dismissal of ethically motivated social critique. Grounded in the late philosophy of Wittgenstein, communitarians reject foundationalism, the notion that beliefs can be philosophically justified, instead regarding ideologically driven social arrangements as the result of inherently particular historical and environmental conditions. This perspective precludes rational reevaluation of a society’s status quo; if a society’s adoption of values does not depend on philosophically grounded principles, neither can those values be altered through a process of collective moral reasoning. For Williams, however, because pluralism is a condition of modern life with which even culturally homogenous communities must contend, members of modern societies are aware of alternatives to their own social model, leaving a space for self-critical reassessment. Finally, Williams suggests that the desire of cultural minorities for separate states in the post-Soviet geopolitical landscape underscores the limits of both pluralism and communitarianism, limits that all of us will need to grapple with as we confront the immediate social and political realities of modernity.

War, Fiction, and Truth

This chapter examines the correlation between the Vietnam War and literary postmodernism in Tim O'Brien's “How to Tell a True War Story,” one of the short stories in the collection The Things They Carried. It considers the main structural weakness in O'Brien's narrative utopia as well as the paradoxes of war in the story. It shows how O'Brien's search for “truth” allows him to explore in a meandering though compelling way many of the rhetorical and moral dilemmas of the would-be anti-war writer. It argues that the story occupies an uncomfortable position between a postmodernist uneasiness with “truth,” on the one hand, and a rational commitment to rules for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, on the other. It suggests that O'Brien's imagination is a cognitive resource and, therefore, ultimately a political tool capable of unveiling the cowardice hidden behind what many call heroism, as well as the way even love can feed the monster of war.

Enoch’s Defense of Robust Meta-Ethical Realism

Taking Morality Seriously is David Enoch’s book-length defense of meta-ethical and meta-normative non-naturalist realism. After describing Enoch’s position and outlining the argumentative strategy of the book, we engage in a critical discussion of what we take to be particularly problematic central passages. We focus on Enoch’s two original positive arguments for non-naturalist realism, one argument building on first order moral implications of different meta-ethical positions, the other attending to the rational commitment to normative facts inherent in practical deliberation. We also pay special attention to Enoch’s handling of two types of objections to non-naturalist realism, objections having to do with the possibility of moral knowledge and with moral disagreement.

Personality characteristics and organizational commitment in Iranian employees

<p class="abstract"><strong>Background:</strong> Individual differences in personality can be a source of creativity and the root of many problems in organization. This study aimed to determine the relationship between organizational commitment and personality among staff in South Naft Company.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Methods:</strong> This research is descriptive and analytical study. The population study selected from nurses’ of Labbafi hospital according to the Morgan table. Finally 103 persons selected. In the present study data was collected by questionnaires. According the two variables used two standard questionnaires in this study. Questionnaire to measure personality traits “neo” which measures features of the character including mental ill, outward orientation, openness, consensus and commitment to taking knows. Organizational commitment questionnaire “Alain and Pierre” measure the three dimensions of emotional, rational and normative for analyzed using the software-SPSS version 19 software.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Results:</strong> There was a relationship between agreement personality and commitment to rational. Also, between externally personality with affective and normative commitment are positively related. Relationship does not exist between openness and commitment to the rational, emotional and normative. There is not relationship between neuroticism personality and affective normative and rational commitment.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Conclusion:</strong> There was a relationship between personality characteristics with the three dimensions of organizational commitment. </p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Organizational commitment, Personality characteristics, Staffs</p>

From mutualism to moral transcendence

Baumard et al. attribute morality to a naturally selected propensity to share costs and benefits of cooperation fairly. But how does mundane mutualism relate to transcendent notions of morality critical to creating cultures and civilizations? Humans often make their greatest exertions for an idea they form of their group. Primary social identity is bounded by sacred values, which drive individuals to promote their group through non-rational commitment to actions independently of likely risks and rewards.

The role of structural and relational governance in creating stable innovation networks: Insights from sustainability-oriented Dutch innovation networks

The aim of the present paper is to explore the role of structural and relational governance in conditions of innovation uncertainty and network heterogeneity in sustainability-oriented innovation networks. The explorative analysis of eighteen innovation networks leads to two important findings. It demonstrates the importance of internalization of stakeholders in the network to create stability in the newly established coalitions and to assure continuation of sustainability-oriented innovation. Also, it demonstrates that even in conditions of innovation, complementarity of structural and relational governance is important. Structural governance (formalization) increases clarity and understanding about partners' differences, reduces uncertainty and increases rational commitment in uncertain and heterogeneous conditions. Relational governance (trust) has a complementary role in this, because it requires time to develop trust in newly established innovation networks with limited previous cooperation. In addition to structural governance (rational commitment), relational governance (trust) is important to prevent attrition in the highly uncertain conditions.