Principles and Values as Essential Elements that Shape Social Policy

Aristotle on Principles as Elements

In his discussion of the four causes, Aristotle claims that ‘the hypotheses are material causes of the conclusion’ (Physics 2. 3, Metaphysics Δ 2). This claim has puzzled commentators since antiquity. It is usually taken to mean that the premisses of any deduction are material causes of the conclusion. By contrast, I argue that the claim does not apply to deductions in general but only to scien...

Leadership for health. How can we ensure that the values and principles of public health become central to health and social policy?

After three years of the present British government, it is becoming clear that it is committed to raising clinical standards and modernising the National Health Service. In addition, the NHS white paper seeks to refocus health services to take on board a public health agenda that aims to reduce ill health and health inequalities for the whole population. Acknowledging that the NHS alone cannot ...

Values and social capital as predictors

This study examines the relationship of values and social capital with attitudes towards innovations. The respondents (N = 1238) were asked to fill in a questionnaire, which included the Schwartz value survey SVS-57, a selfassessment scale of innovative personality traits [Lebedeva, Tatarko, 2009], and a method of assessing social capital [Tatarko, 2011]. The results of the correlation analysis...

Demography as social science and policy science

Social values as arguments: similar is convincing

Politicians, philosophers, and rhetors engage in co-value argumentation: appealing to one value in order to support another value (e.g., "equality leads to freedom"). Across four experiments in the United Kingdom and India, we found that the psychological relatedness of values affects the persuasiveness of the arguments that bind them. Experiment 1 found that participants were more persuaded by...