The Tragedy of the Commons is often associated with an n-person Prisoner’s Dilemma. But it can also have the structure of an n-person Game of Chicken, an Assurance Game, or of a Voting Games (or a Three-in-a-Boat Game). I present three historical stories that document tragedies of the commons, as presented in Aristotle, Mahanarayan and Hume and argue that the descriptions of these historical cases align better with Voting Games than with any other games.

Alfred Müller-Armack was one of the very important policy-makers who initiated the West-German economic recovery after WWII. He devised the underlying economic program of the so-called “German Miracle”, which was not a miracle at all. It was the outcome of a rigorous rule transformation from the bankrupt central planning of the Nazi- regime to a market economic order based on the principles of classical liberalism combined with a social safety net for all who suffered from the terrible consequences of war (...) destruction. He called his program “Social Market Economy”, thereby expressing that the risky game of the market needs a social safety net to make his program acceptable for the majority of the German citizens.Müller-Armack was not only the Head of the Central Policy Unit at the Federal Economic Ministry under Ludwig Erhard for twelve years but also a well-known university teacher of economics. In the tradition of Max Weber he combined this subject with the theory of economic sociology, and especially, the sociology of religion. In this respect he was an early author in the field which nowadays is named “cultural economics”. His publications on the impact of religious beliefs of greek-orthodox societies on the economic performance of South-East European countries are still of great interest for the present debates about the economic consequences of Islam.Alfred Müller-Armack fut l’un des très importants politiciens qui initièrent l’économie de l’ Allemagne de l’Ouest après la 2ème Guerre Mondiale. Il conçut dans ses grandes lignes le programme économique du soi disant « Miracle Allemand ». Ce fut le résultat d’une règle rigoureuse de transformation à partir de la faillite de la planification centrale du régime Nazi vers un ordre marchand fondé sur les principes du libéralisme classique combiné à un filet de sécurité sociale pour tous ceux qui avaient souffert des conséquences terribles des destructions de la guerre. Il appela son programme « Economie sociale de marché », exprimant ainsi que le jeu risqué du marché nécessite un filet de sécurité sociale pour rendre son programme acceptable par la majorité des citoyens allemands. Müller-Armack n’était pas seulement le chef de l’unité politique centrale au ministère fédéral de l’économie sous la direction de Ludwig Erhard pendant 12 ans, mais également un professeur très réputé d’économie à l’université. Dans la tradition de Max Weber, il associe ses sujets avec la théorie économique de la sociologie et plus particulièrement, la sociologie de la religion. Dans cette mesure, il fut un pionnier dans le champ de ce que l’on appelle aujourd’hui « l’économie de la culture ». Ses publications sur l’impact des croyances religieuses des sociétés grecques orthodoxes sur la performance économique des pays du Sud-Est Européen restent d’un grand intérêt pour les débats actuels au sujet des conséquences économiques de l’Islam. (shrink)

Besides “personalism“, and “solidarity“, the “principle of subsidiarity” is the third layer of Christian Social Philosophy. It requires that in a good society political competences should be allocated at the lowest possible level if possible. What the single citizens can achieve should not be taken away from them by higher ranking political authorities. The same rule has to be applied inside a political community among the various levels of the government. In other words, the principle favors Federalism as the organizing (...) structure of the social order.The most important political document in which the principle of subsidiarity plays an important role is the EU-Treaty of Maastricht. Here, however, the principle is misunderstood as a pure procedural process to settle conflicts between the European Commission and the Member States in areas of shared competences. Instead it should be a means to revise the whole existing legal structure of the European Union.Subsidiarity is a constitutional norm. Here, every person in a free society must be respected by the political authorities. This implies that in a civil society political power must be limited, decentralised, and controlled by the citizens.À côté du “personalisme” et de la “solidarité”, le “principe de subsidiarité” est le troisième volet de la philosophie sociale chrétienne. Il requiert que dans une bonne société les compétences politiques soient allouées au niveau le plus inférieur possible. Ce que les simples citoyens peuvent accomplir ne doit pas être réalisé par les autorités politiques d’un rang supérieur. La même règle doit être appliquée à l’intérieur d’une communauté politique aux différents niveaux du gouvernement. En d’autres termes, le principe favorise le fédéralisme en tant que structure d’organisation de l’ordre social.Le document politique le plus important dans lequel le principe de subsidiarité joue un rôle important est le traité Européen de Maastricht. Dans ce cas précis, cependant, le principe est mal compris, car réduit à un simple processus purement procédural pour régler les conflits entre la Commission Européenne et les Etats Membres dans le domaine des compétences partagées. Au contraire il devrait être un moyen de réviser l’ensemble de la structure juridique de l’Union Européenne.La subsidiarité est une norme constitutionnelle. Ici, chaque personne dans une société libre doit être respectée par les autorités politiques. Cela implique que dans une société civile le pouvoir politique doit être limité, décentralisé, et contrôlé par les citoyens. (shrink)

Probabilistic models have much to offer to philosophy. We continually receive information from a variety of sources: from our senses, from witnesses, from scientific instruments. When considering whether we should believe this information, we assess whether the sources are independent, how reliable they are, and how plausible and coherent the information is. Bovens and Hartmann provide a systematic Bayesian account of these features of reasoning. Simple Bayesian Networks allow us to model alternative assumptions about the nature of the information sources. (...) Measurement of the coherence of information is a controversial matter: arguably, the more coherent a set of information is, the more confident we may be that its content is true, other things being equal. The authors offer a new treatment of coherence which respects this claim and shows its relevance to scientific theory choice. Bovens and Hartmann apply this methodology to a wide range of much discussed issues regarding evidence, testimony, scientific theories, and voting. Bayesian Epistemology is an essential tool for anyone working on probabilistic methods in philosophy, and has broad implications for many other disciplines. (shrink)

Addresses ‘too-odd-not-to-be-true’ reasoning in the assessment of testimony. This is the curious phenomenon that an initially less plausible report from multiple independent witnesses may elicit more confidence than an initially more plausible report.

_The VaKE Handbook: Theory and Practice of Values and Knowledge Education_ presents a theoretical model and many examples in various fields of education and training for the realization of the principle "Values without knowledge are blind, while knowledge without values is irresponsible".

As soon as we stop talking aloud, we seem to experience a kind of 'inner voice', a steady stream of verbal fragments expressing ongoing thoughts. What kind of information processing structures are required to explain such a phenomenon? Why would an 'inner voice' be useful? How could it have arisen? This paper explores these questions and reports briefly some computational experiments to help elucidate them.

This volume is the direct result of a conference in which a number of leading researchers from the fields of artificial intelligence and biology gathered to ...

We develop a probabilistic criterion for belief expansion that is sensitive to the degree of contextual fit of the new information to our belief set as well as to the reliability of our information source. We contrast our approach with the success postulate in AGM-style belief revision and show how the idealizations in our approach can be relaxed by invoking Bayesian-Network models.

Thomas More’s 1516 Utopia describes a ‘fictitious’ republic on an imaginary island, and draws heavily on ancient political ideas. This paper explores the difficulties of applying the term ‘utopia’ to Plato’s political thinking, given that More’s term is anachronistically applied to ancient texts. The projects of the Republic and Laws should not be interpreted as ‘utopian’, but as blueprints for a foundation such as a new city, rather than as imagined ideal cities after More’s model. Support for Plato’s practical involvement (...) in matters of political foundation is drawn from the Seventh Letter. The Republic and the Laws are discussed not as utopias, but political manifestos. The political context in which Plato lived, and his objectives, gives his political writings a wholly different dimension. The goal of the Republic and the Laws is not to describe unrealizable constitutions, but to exchange the Athenian constitution of Plato’s time for another. (shrink)

This article proposes a number of models to examine through which mechanisms a population of autonomous agents could arrive at a repertoire of perceptually grounded categories that is sufficiently shared to allow successful communication. The models are inspired by the main approaches to human categorisation being discussed in the literature: nativism, empiricism, and culturalism. Colour is taken as a case study. Although we take no stance on which position is to be accepted as final truth with respect to human categorisation (...) and naming, we do point to theoretical constraints that make each position more or less likely and we make clear suggestions on what the best engineering solution would be. Specifically, we argue that the collective choice of a shared repertoire must integrate multiple constraints, including constraints coming from communication. Key Words: autonomous agents; colour categorisation; colour naming; connectionism; cultural evolution; genetic evolution; memes; origins of language; self-organisation; semiotic dynamics; symbol grounding. (shrink)

We show that it is not possible to extend the ranking of one-stage lotteries based on their weak-expectation to a reflexive and transitive relation on the collection of one- and two-stage lotteries that satisfies two basic axioms, the minimal value axiom and the reduction axiom. We propose an extension that satisfies only the first axiom. This ranking takes payoffs, their probabilities, and the tree structure into account.

A core issue in the debate over what constitutes a fair response to climate change is the appropriate allocation of emission rights between the developed and the developing world. Various parties have defended equal emission rights per capita on grounds of equity. The atmosphere belongs to us all and everyone should be allocated an equal share. Others have defended higher emission rights per capita for developing countries on grounds of historical accountability. Developed countries are largely responsible for the threat of (...) climate change due to their past emissions and, since they currently continue to enjoy the benefits thereof, they should be willing to accept lower emission targets. However, in reality we see that developed countries currently have much higher emission rates per capita and will continue to have higher rates than developing countries for some time to come. There is talk of “grandfathering” – setting emission targets for developed countries in line with their present or past emission levels. What, if anything, can be said in defense of grandfathering? (shrink)

The existence of a transitive, complete, and weakly independent relation on the full set of gambles implies the existence of a non-Ramsey set. Therefore, each transitive and weakly independent relation on the set of gambles either is incomplete or does not have an explicit description. Whatever tools decision theory makes available, there will always be decision problems where these tools fail us. In this sense, decision theory remains incomplete.

Over the past 20 years business ethics in Europe witnessed a remarkable growth. Today business ethics is faced with two challenges. The first comes from the social sciences and consultants who have both reclaimed the topics of business ethics, regretfully often at the loss of the proper ethical perspective. The second comes from the remarkable rise of corporate social responsibility which has pushed aside the mainstream business ethics methodology with its emphasis on moral deliberation by the individual. These challenges can (...) be tackled by an institutional transformation in business ethics that links up to the long-standing European tradition of institutional analysis of the market. The second remedy is an enlargement of the research agenda in business ethics by coming closer to other parts of applied ethics where the business ethics view is at this moment grossly neglected. (shrink)

Considerations regarding predication in ordinary language as well as the ontology of relations suggest a refinement of the Ontological Square, a conceptual scheme used in many foundational ontologies and which consists of particular substrates as well as their types on the one hand and particular attributes as well as their types on the other hand. First, the distinction between particulars and universals turns out to be one of degree, since particulars are merely the least elements in the subsumption hierarchy. Second, (...) relations may be analysed in terms of roles as ways of participating in events. In consequence, the Logic of the Ontological Square proposed in (Schneider 2009) has to be revised accordingly. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that it can be fruitful for philosophers interested in the nature and moral significance of racism to pay more attention to psychology. We do this by showing that psychology provides new arguments against Garcia's views about the nature and moral significance of racism. We contend that some scientific studies of racial cognition undermine Garcia's moral and psychological monism about racism: Garcia disregards (1) the rich affective texture of racism and (2) the diversity of what makes (...) racial ills morally wrong. Key Words: racism • emotions • implicit bias • psychology • racial ills • pluralism. (shrink)

We study function fields over p-adically closed fields in the first-order language of fields. Using ideas of Duret [D], we show that the field of constants is definable, and that the genus is an elementary property.

I examine the relationship between belief and credences and distinguish between a dogmatic, a Lockean, an agentic, and an abductive notion of belief. I conclude with some thoughts on voluntarism and evidentialism.

We study first-order properties of the quotient rings C(V)/P by a prime ideal P, where C(V) is the ring of p-adic valued continuous definable functions on some affine p-adic variety V. We show that they are integrally closed Henselian local rings, with a p-adically closed residue field and field of fractions, and they are not valuation rings in general but always satisfy ∀ x, y(x|y 2 ∨ y|x 2 ).

Distant Suffering examines the moral and political implications for a spectator of the distant suffering of others as presented through the media. What are the morally acceptable responses to the sight of suffering on television, for example, when the viewer cannot act directly to affect the circumstances in which the suffering takes place? Luc Boltanski argues that spectators can actively involve themselves and others by speaking about what they have seen and how they were affected by it. Developing ideas in (...) Adam Smith's moral theory, he examines three rhetorical 'topics' available for the expression of the spectator's response to suffering: the topics of denunciation and of sentiment and the aesthetic topic. The book concludes with a discussion of a 'crisis of pity' in relation to modern forms of humanitarianism. A possible way out of this crisis is suggested which involves an emphasis and focus on present suffering. (shrink)

In their recently published book Nudge (2008) Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (T&S) defend a position labelled as ‘libertarian paternalism’. Their thinking appeals to both the right and the left of the political spectrum, as evidenced by the bedfellows they keep on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, they have advised Barack Obama, while, in the UK, they were welcomed with open arms by the David Cameron's camp (Chakrabortty 2008). I will consider the following questions. What (...) is Nudge? How is it different from social advertisement? Does Nudge induce genuine preference change? Does Nudge build moral character? Is there a moral difference between the use of Nudge as opposed to subliminal images to reach policy objectives? And what are the moral constraints on Nudge? (shrink)

The article investigates the relations between Hausdorff and non-Hausdorff manifolds as objects of general relativity. We show that every non-Hausdorff manifold can be seen as a result of gluing together some Hausdorff manifolds. In the light of this result, we investigate a modal interpretation of a non-Hausdorff differential manifold, according to which it represents a bundle of alternative space-times, all of which are compatible with a given initial data set.

Nexuses such as exemplification are the fundamental ties that structure reality as a whole. They are “formal” in the sense of constituting the form, not the matter of reality and they are “transcendental” inasmuch as they transcend the categorial distinctions between the denizens of reality, including that between existents and non-existents. I shall advocate a moderately particularist view about (external) nexuses and argue that it provides not only the best solution to Bradley’s regress, but also an elegant account of symmetrical (...) relations (both formal and material), as well as of temporal and modal change. These advantages are illustrated by the reconstruction of an Aristotelian ontology of exemplification involving substances, kinds and material attributes. (shrink)

In response to Germain argument that evolution by natural selection has a limited explanatory power in cancer, Lean and Plutynski have recently argued that many adaptations in cancer only make sense at the tumor level, and that cancer progression mirrors the major evolutionary transitions. While we agree that selection could potentially act at various levels of organization in cancers, we argue that tumor-level selection is unlikely to actually play a relevant role in our understanding of the somatic evolution of human (...) cancers. (shrink)

In this introduction, we give a brief overview of the main concepts of modularity that have been offered in recent literature. After this, we turn to a summary of the papers collected in this volume. Our primary aim is to explain how the modularity of emotion question relates to traditional debates in emotion theory.

This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue, or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself. The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is (...) better as a truth-tracker, assuming that there exists a true answer to be reached. On the basis of the Condorcet jury theorem, we show that the pbp is universally superior if the objective is to reach truth for the right reasons. If one instead is after truth for whatever reasons, right or wrong, there will be cases in which the cbp is more reliable, even though, for the most part, the pbp still is to be preferred. (shrink)

We appeal to the theory of Bayesian Networks to model different strategies for obtaining confirmation for a hypothesis from experimental test results provided by less than fully reliable instruments. In particular, we consider (i) repeated measurements of a single test consequence of the hypothesis, (ii) measurements of multiple test consequences of the hypothesis, (iii) theoretical support for the reliability of the instrument, and (iv) calibration procedures. We evaluate these strategies on their relative merits under idealized conditions and show some surprising (...) repercussions on the variety-of-evidence thesis and the Duhem-Quine thesis. (shrink)