Particularism and Generalism refer to families of attitudes towards moral principles. This paper explores the suggestion that neural network models of cognition may aid in vindicating particularist views of moral reasoning. Neural network models of moral case classification are presented, and the contrast case method for testing and revising case classifications is considered. It is concluded t...

jonathan dancy advocates a radical particularist theory of ethics. arguing against a variety of generalist doctrines, he maintains that there are no moral principles and that our ethical decisions are highly context-dependent: they are made case by case, without the support of such principles. in this paper, drawing on a number of theoretical concepts used in science as well as the philosophy o...

On one view, an adequate account of causal understanding may focus exclusively on what is involved in mastering general causal concepts (concepts such as ‘x causes y’ or ‘p causally explains q’). An alternative view is that causal understanding is, partly but irreducibly, a matter of grasping what Anscombe called special causal concepts, concepts such as ‘push’, ‘flatten’, or ‘knock over’. We c...

A remarkable feature of the philosophical work on conspiracy theory has been that most philosophers agree there is nothing inherently problematic about theories (AKA thesis particularism). Recent work, however, challenged this consensus view, arguing really something epistemically wrong with theorising generalism). Are particularism and generalism incompatible? By looking at just how much parti...

In this article we examine the cosmopolitanization of national memory cultures as a matter of reflexive particularism, referring to negotiations over ‘the national’ driven by the endogenization of European norms and discourses. Reflexive particularism emerges from a historically specific memory imperative that issues two demands – first, that national polities reckon with the Other, and second,...

Moral particularism is commonly presented as an alternative to ‘principleor rule-based’ approaches to ethics, such as consequentialism or Kantianism. This paper argues that particularists’ aversions to consequentialism stem not from a structural feature of consequentialism per se, but from substantial and structural axiological views traditionally associated with consequentialism. Given a parti...

For the Intentionalist, utterance content is wholly determined by a speaker’s meaning-intentions; sentence uttered serves merely to facilitate audience’s recovering these intentions. We argue that Intentionalists ought be Particularists, holding only “principles” of meaning recovery needed are those governing inferences best explanation; both defeasible and, in sense elaborated, variable. discu...

This paper investigates the role played by the cultural norms of particularism and universalism for collusive bribery. In our theoretical framework, the act of proposing or demanding a bribe violates a commonly held social norm, thus producing a psychological cost. By lowering this psychological cost, particularism increases the probability of offering or asking for a bribe. We test the predict...

Abstract: What explains the variation in trade policy among democracies in developing countries? Why have some liberalized trade more than others? We analyze the impact of political particularism – defined as the degree of party discipline and the incentives for politicians to cultivate a personal vote – on trade protection. We present theoretical results from a model of particularism and its e...

This paper explores how features of the electoral and party system affects the composition and efficiency of government spending--specifically government spending on education. In doing so we contribute to the literature the connection between institutions spending on two fronts. First, we move beyond the simple institutional dichotomies that characterize many existing studies (e.g. presidentia...