Standard economic models predict large economic gains from liberalized immigration. However, those models assume that immigrants would have no effect on the causes of economic prosperity in destination countries. Immigrants could reduce the quality of economic institutions in destination countries, thus undermining the economic gains from liberalized immigration. This paper uses an epidemiological model to investigate how heterogeneously distributed immigrants affected the economic institutions of American states over the 1980–2010 period under the assumption that institutions are highly responsive to changes (...) in the immigrant population. We find that state economic institutions do not change much in response to immigrants. (shrink)

In the multidisciplinary field of developmental cognitive neuroscience, statistical associations between levels of description play an increasingly important role. One example of such associations is the observation of correlations between relatively common gene variants and individual differences in behavior. It is perhaps surprising that such associations can be detected despite the remoteness of these levels of description, and the fact that behavior is the outcome of an extended developmental process involving interaction of the whole organism with a variable environment. Given (...) that they have been detected, how do such associations inform cognitive-level theories? To investigate this question, we employed a multiscale computational model of development, using a sample domain drawn from the field of language acquisition. The model comprised an artificial neural network model of past-tense acquisition trained using the backpropagation learning algorithm, extended to incorporate population modeling and genetic algorithms. It included five levels of description—four internal: genetic, network, neurocomputation, behavior; and one external: environment. Since the mechanistic assumptions of the model were known and its operation was relatively transparent, we could evaluate whether cross-level associations gave an accurate picture of causal processes. We established that associations could be detected between artificial genes and behavioral variation, even under polygenic assumptions of a many-to-one relationship between genes and neurocomputational parameters, and when an experience-dependent developmental process interceded between the action of genes and the emergence of behavior. We evaluated these associations with respect to their specificity, to their developmental stability, and to their replicability, as well as considering issues of missing heritability and gene–environment interactions. We argue that gene–behavior associations can inform cognitive theory with respect to effect size, specificity, and timing. The model demonstrates a means by which researchers can undertake multiscale modeling with respect to cognition and develop highly specific and complex hypotheses across multiple levels of description. (shrink)

This study provides an evaluation of ethical business perception of busIness students from three countries: Australia, Taiwan and the United States. Although statistically significant differences do exist there is significant agreement with the way students perceive ethical/unethical practices in business. The findings of this paper indicate a universality of business ethical perceptions.

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

I critically discuss a new proposal for a metaphysics of sense-data. This proposal is due to Peter Forrest. Forrest argues that, if we accept Platonism about universals, sense-data are best understood as structured universals–in particular, as structured universals with temporal and spatial properties as components. Against this proposal, I argue sense-data as structured universals are not universals at all.

The twentieth century saw the rise of hermeneutics, the philosophical interpretation of texts, and eventually the application of its insights to metaphorical “texts” such as individual and group identities. It also saw the rise of modern environmentalism, which evolved through various stages in which it came to realize that many of its key concerns—“wilderness” and “nature” among them—are contested territory that are viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology to be sure, but it also requires a (...) sensitivity to history, culture, and narrative. Thus, understanding nature is a fundamentally hermeneutic task. Interpreting Nature brings together leading voices at the intersection of these two increasingly important philosophical discussions: philosophical hermeneutics and environmental philosophy. The resulting field, environmental hermeneutics, provides the center of gravity for a collection of essays that grapple with one of the most compelling issues of our time: how do humans relate to nature? Adopting a broad and inclusive view of “the environment, Interpreting Nature takes up restoration and preservation, natural and built environments, the social construction of nature and nature as it imposes itself beyond our categories, and much more. The rich diversity of contributions illustrates the remarkable fecundity of hermeneutic resources applied to environmental issues. Taken together, the various contributions to this collection mark the arrival of environmental hermeneutics as a distinct field of study. (shrink)

De Interpretatione is among Aristotle's most influential and widely read writings; C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system. He shows that De Interpretatione is not a disjointed essay on ill-connected subjects, as traditionally thought, but a highly organized and systematic treatise on logic, argument, and dialectic.

The article develops and extends the theory of Glenn Kessler (Frege, Mill and the foundations of arithmetic, Journal of Philosophy 77, 1980) that a (cardinal) number is a relation between a heap and a unit-making property that structures the heap. For example, the relation between some swan body mass and "being a swan on the lake" could be 4.

Part One of this paper is a case against classical mereology and for Heyting mereology. This case proceeds by first undermining the appeal of classical mereology and then showing how it fails to cohere with our intuitions about a measure of quantity. Part Two shows how Heyting mereology provides an account of sets and classes without resort to any nonmereological primitive.

Modern environmentalism has come to realize that many of its key concerns "wilderness" and "nature" among them are contested territory, viewed differently by different people. Understanding nature requires science and ecology, to be sure, but it also requires a sensitivity tom, history, culture, and narrative. Thus, understanding nature is a fundamentally hermeneutic task.

Using a new model focused on four core capacities-intellectual complexity, social location, empathetic accountability, and motivated action--Teaching Civic Engagement explores the significance of religious studies in fostering a vibrant, just, and democratic civic order.In the first section of the book, contributors detail this theoretical model and offer an initial application to the sources and methods that already define much teaching in the disciplines of religious studies and theology. A second section offers chapters focused on specific strategies for teaching civic engagement (...) in religion classrooms, including traditional textual studies, reflective writing, community-based learning, field trips, media analysis, ethnographic methods, direct community engagement and a reflective practice of "ascetic withdrawal." The final section of the volume explores theoretical issues, including the delimitation of the "civic" as a category, connections between local and global in the civic project, the question of political advocacy in the classroom, and the role of normative commitments.Collectively these chapters illustrate the real possibility of connecting the scholarly study of religion with the societies in which we, our students, and our institutions exist. The contributing authors model new ways of engaging questions of civic belonging and social activism in the religion classroom, belying the stereotype of the ivory tower intellectual. (shrink)

This paper describes a project I have my students do that is based on parallels between the position Socrates describes himself as being in when addressing the charge that he corrupts the youth of Athens and the position critics of capitalism in the U.S. are in when they try to make the case that capitalism is a deeply flawed system that needs to be transformed into some­thing better. For the project, students are asked to give to three audiences of their (...) own choosing a presentation in which they argue against capitalism. The main aim of the project is to help students to appreciate that although the unexamined life may not be worth living, living an examined life can be difficult to do since it can feel a little like dying. (shrink)

Walter Bagehot , the notable Victorian journalist, economist, and historian, was a prolific author of both books and magazine articles. Along with Matthew Arnold he was one of the most lucid and discerning critics of that time. He contributed to many journal articles, notably to the Prospective and National Reviews and The Economist , with a lively and witty style. Widely considered to be a great authority on banking and finance, Bagehot was consulted by Chancellors of the Exchequer of both (...) parties. His outlook, although never hostile to the working classes or trade unions, was openly sympathetic to the capitalist employers - a group that had never before such a brilliant spokesman. His most enduring publications, The English Constitution and Lombard Street are both republished here, as are his Letters on the French Coup D'Etat, Literary Studies, and Physics and Politics. (shrink)

This paper argues that throughout the Cold War, the Colombian Left focused on building local power in the countryside, and abandoned the burgeoning urban working class, much of it informal, unwaged and unorganised, to the Right. Yet at every turn, landlords linked to local and regional political machines and military and police officials blocked or reversed reforms designed to modernise the countryside, as government-subsidised agro-industrial development replaced smallholding. Then, in successive conjunctures, landlords and their allies, including cocaine exporters from whom (...) they were increasingly inseparable after 1985, augmented their political power through dynamic counterinsurgent paramilitary movements based in provincial cities and towns. This made democracy impossible, led to a new feudalism characterised by parcellised sovereignties, and upheld, into the twenty-first century, the semi-authoritarian parliamentary system that has ruled Colombia since the 1880s. (shrink)

Anselm’s Proslogion argument is fascinating, important, and notoriously difficult. Many introductions to the argument are either as difficult as the original (such as those that use modal concepts to explain it) or are unfaithful to it. This paper presents an accessible introduction, faithful to the original, which breaks the argument down into four basic components: “That-Than-Which-a-Greater Cannot-be-Conceived,” “From Conceptual Existence to Real Existence,” “From Real Existence to Necessary Existence,” and “‘That-Than-Which-a-Greater Cannot-be-Conceived’ as God.”.

Because of the lack of a meaningful international response to global warming, geoengineering has emerged as a potential technological response to climate change. But, thus far, little attention has been given to how religion impacts our understanding of geoengineering. I defend the need to incorporate theological reflection in the conversation of geoengineering by investigating how geoengineering proposals contain an implicit anthropology. A significant framework for our assessment of geoengineering is the balance of human capability and fallibility—a balance that is at (...) the center of theological and religious interpretations of the meaning of the human condition. Similarly, geoengineering challenges our past understandings of theological anthropology. (shrink)