The objective of this study is to establish how well the public distinguishes between different uniformed patrol officer patrolling shopping malls, and whether they have different effects on feelings of safety and worry about crime. It is based on interviews with a sample of 502 shoppers at five shopping malls in Southern England. Using photographs, most respondents correctly identified the police officer and the PCSO, whereas fewer recognised the ACSO and private security guard, and few the ACSO. Police officers instilled the greatest feelings of safety, well above PCSOs, who, in turn, were rated above security guards and ACSOs. Police officers also generated the most worries, especially among young women. Police officers emit 'control signals' that have stronger positive effects on reassurance, reflecting correct identification combined with established regard and confidence. Patrol officers who were not police officer provided weaker 'control signals'. Correct identification made less difference to reassurance they provided, especially for security guards. Police officers appear to be as costeffective as PCSOs, though far less so than private security officers. Successful 'reassurance policing' depends on who carries out the policing as well as what is policed.
In this paper I defend what I call the argument from epistemic reasons against the moral error theory. I argue that the moral error theory entails that there are no epistemic reasons for belief and that this is bad news for the moral error theory since, if there are no epistemic reasons for belief, no one knows anything. If no one knows anything, then no one knows that there is thought when they are thinking, and no one knows that they do not know everything. And it could not be the case that we do not know that there is thought when we believe that there is thought and that we do not know that we do not know everything. I address several objections to the claim that the moral error theory entails that there are no epistemic reasons for belief. It might seem that arguing against the error theory on the grounds that it entails that no one knows anything is just providing a Moorean argument against the moral error theory. I show that even if my argument against the error theory is indeed a Moorean one, it avoids Streumer's, McPherson's and Olson's objections to previous Moorean arguments against the error theory and is a more powerful argument against the error theory than Moore's argument against external world skepticism is against external world skepticism.
Christopher Cowie has recently argued that companions in guilt arguments against the moral error theory that appeal to epistemic reasons cannot work. I show that such companions in guilt arguments can work if, as we have good reason to believe, moral reasons and epistemic reasons are instances of fundamentally the same relation.
Many including Judith Jarvis Thomson, Philippa Foot, Peter Geach, Richard Kraut, and Paul Ziff have argued for good simpliciter skepticism. According to good simpliciter skepticism, we should hold that there is no concept of being good simpliciter or that there is no property of being good simpliciter. I first show that prima facie we should not accept either form of good simpliciter skepticism. I then show that all of the arguments that good simpliciter skeptics have proposed for their view fail to show that we have good reason to accept good simpliciter skepticism. So, I show that we do not have good reason to accept good simpliciter skepticism.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.