Reason-Giving In Deliberative Forums

Delusional Beliefs and Reason Giving

Delusions are often regarded as irrational beliefs, but their irrationality is not sufficient to explain what is pathological about them. In this paper we ask whether deluded subjects have the capacity to support the content of their delusions with reasons, that is, whether they can author their delusional states. The hypothesis that delusions are characterised by a failure of authorship, which...

Reasons for Reason-giving in a Public-Opinion Survey

This paper explores why respondents to a telephone public-opinion survey often give reasons for answering as they do, even though reason-giving is neither required nor encouraged and it is difficult to see the reasons as attempts to deal with disagreement. We find that respondents give reasons for the policy claims they make in their answers three times as frequently as they give reasons for va...

e-Working Papers 2004/01 Online Forums and Deliberative Democracy: Hypotheses, Variables and Methodologies

Exploring the prospects of online deliberative forums extending the public sphere

A b s t r a c t Three prominent ‘camps’ have emerged within Internet democracy rhetoric and practice, each drawing upon different models of democracy: communitarian, liberal individualist and deliberative. Much interest has been shown in the former two camps by researchers and policy makers. This paper turns to an examination of the possible realization of the third camp’s vision – that the pub...

Giving Versus Giving In

Altruism is central to organizational and social life, but its motivations are not well understood. We propose a new theoretical distinction that sorts these motivations into two basic types: “giving” indicates prosocial behaviors in which one willingly engages, while “giving in” indicates prosocial behavior in which one reluctantly engages, often in response to social pressure or obligation. U...