We revisit the question of price elasticity of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) take-up by directly examining changes in the take-up of ESI at a large firm in response to exogenous changes in employee premium contributions. We find that, on average, a 10% increase in the employee's out-of-pocket premium increases the probability of dropping coverage by approximately 1%. More importantly, we find heterogeneous impacts: married workers are much more price-sensitive than single employees, and lower-paid workers are disproportionately more likely to drop coverage (...) than higher-paid workers. Elasticity estimates for employees below the 25th percentile of salary distribution in our sample are nearly twice the average. (shrink)

"The ancient and modern question of what is the nature of man and his activity and what ought to be the directions pursued in this activity is once again being ...

From the Introduction: This inquiry is concerned with the themes of praxis and action in four philosophic movements: Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy. It is rare that these four movements are considered in a single inquiry, for there are profound differences of emphasis, focus, terminology, and approach represented by these styles of thought. Many philosophers believe that similarities among these movements are superficial and that a close examination of them will reveal only hopelessly unbridgeable cleavages. While respecting the genuine (...) fundamental differences of these movements, this inquiry is undertaken in the spirit of showing that there are important common themes and motifs in what first appears to be a chaotic babble of voices. I intend to show that the concern with man as an agent has been a primary focal point of each of these movements and further that each contributes something permanent and important to our understanding of the nature and context of human activity. (shrink)

Recent work has shown that the input-output behavior of some common machine learning classifiers can be captured in symbolic form, allowing one to reason about the behavior of these classifiers using symbolic techniques. This includes explaining decisions, measuring robustness, and proving formal properties of machine learning classifiers by reasoning about the corresponding symbolic classifiers. In this work, we present a theory for unveiling the _reasons_ behind the decisions made by Boolean classifiers and study some of its theoretical and practical implications. (...) At the core of our theory is the notion of a _complete reason,_ which can be viewed as a necessary and sufficient condition for why a decision was made. We show how the complete reason can be used for computing notions such as sufficient reasons (also known as PI-explanations and abductive explanations), how it can be used for determining decision and classifier bias and how it can be used for evaluating counterfactual statements such as “a decision will stick even if...because....” We present a linear-time algorithm for computing the complete reasoning behind a decision, assuming the classifier is represented by a Boolean circuit of appropriate form. We then show how the computed complete reason can be used to answer many queries about a decision in linear or polynomial time. We finally conclude with a case study that illustrates the various notions and techniques we introduced. (shrink)

"A fascinating and timely treatment of the objectivism versus relativism debates occurring in philosophy of science, literary theory, the social sciences, ...

This book offers students a philosophical introduction to the ethical foundations of business management. It combines lessons from Kant with virtue ethics and also touches upon additional approaches such as utilitarianism. At the core of the book lies the concept of the nexus of imperfect managerial duty: building and reinforcing the virtuous managerial team, engaging in reasoned discourse among all stakeholders, and diligently pursuing business responsibilities, including the creative efforts necessary for modern organizations. Case illustrations of these applications are presented (...) throughout the book, including chapter appendices. Ancillary videos, test and answer banks and sample syllabi are available online via the author’s website. (shrink)

Drawing freely and expertly from Continental and analytic traditions, Richard Bernstein examines a number of debates and controversies exemplified in the works of Gadamer, Habermas, Rorty, and Arendt. He argues that a "new conversation" is emerging about human rationality—a new understanding that emphasizes its practical character and has important ramifications both for thought and action.

In this paper I argue that resource allocation in publicly funded medical systems cannot be done using a purely substantive theory of justice, but must also involve procedural justice. I argue further that procedural justice requires institutions and that these must be “local” in a specific sense which I define. The argument rests on the informational constraints on any non-market method for allocating scarce resources among competing claims of need. However, I resist the identification of this normative account of local (...) justice with the actual approach to local decision-making taken within the UK National Health Service. I illustrate my argument with reference to the case of provision of In Vitro Fertilisation within the UK NHS. (shrink)

To Serve With Honor should be required reading for all members of the officer corps of the United States military. Beyond that, it should be made required reading for all United States military academies, ROTC and officer candidate programs. This treatise on military ethics goes a long way in bridging the gap between the military and society's understanding of the military's ethical dilemma. It is a must for the student of military affairs. International Social Science Review To Serve With Honor (...) is the first book by an American to focus on the validity of current standards of military ethics in more than a century. This thoughtful study begins with the premise that the military profession is qualitatively different from any other profession. Author Richard Gabriel uses this assumption to address such vital questions as What are the limits of military obedience? and When does a soldier have an obligation to resist the orders of his superiors? (shrink)

A selection of speeches and essays from the author's second decade as president of Yale University.

Few philosophers have been as widely misunderstood as Nietzsche. His detractors and followers alike have often fundamentally misinterpreted him, distorting his views and intentions and criticizing or celebrating him for reasons removed from the views he actually held. Now available in paper, Nietzsche assesses his place in European thought, concentrating upon his writings in the last decade of his productive life. Nietzsche emerges in this comprehensive study as a philosopher of considerable sophistication who diverged sharply from traditional and ordinary ways (...) of thinking, but whose criticism, departures, and alternative views and strategies deserve to be given the most serious attention by philosophers. (shrink)

This article outlines how the international push for inclusive education cannot be aligned with current education systems centred on neoliberal ideals of individualism, measurement, and competition. The way that these systems are organised means that a proportion of (usually marginalised) students are necessarily excluded. In order to meaningfully address the global education crisis, that sees millions of children and young people either out of school or unengaged with learning, this ontological misalignment must be acknowledged, and discourse and engagement around it (...) must be promoted. Drawing from the work of Donella Meadows, I argue that ‘high leverage points’ (information flows, rules, system goals, mindsets) are crucial places to intervene in education systems. Intervention at such points, while challenging, has the potential to lead to transformational and sustainable change; change that current ‘low leverage point’ initiatives fail to produce. I conclude with a call for further discourse and research into an examination of ‘high leverage points’ within education systems, how they interact, and how the development of an associated framework would be beneficial for researchers and development partners. (shrink)

What we value, like, endorse, want, and prefer changes over the course of our lives. Richard Pettigrew presents a theory of rational decision making for agents who recognise that their values will change over time and whose decisions will affect those future times.

Orientalism and Religion offers us a timely discussion of the implications of contemporary post-colonial theory for the study of religion. Drawing on a variety of post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers, including Foucault, Gadamer, Said, and Spivak, Richard King examines the way in which notions such as mysticism, religion, Hinduism and Buddhism are taken for granted, and shows us how religion needs to be redescribed along the lines of cultural studies.

The discussion of good and evil must not be confined to the sterile lecture halls of academics but related instead to ordinary human feelings, needs, and desires, says noted philosopher Richard Taylor. Efforts to understand morality by exploring human reason will always fail because we are creatures of desire as well. All morality arises from our intense and inescapable longing. The distinction between good and evil is always clouded by rationalists who convert the real problems of ethics into complex (...) philosophical puzzles. In the first part of Good and Evil, Taylor looks for a more meaningful conception by reexamining and rejecting the whole rationalistic tradition that dominates philosophical ethics. The second part provides an empirical explanation of good and evil, noting that one does not have to look too far to find prime examples of the failure of fixed moral rules. Including important commentary on Joseph Fletcher's groundbreaking situation ethics, and Aristotle's virtues (e.g., magnanimity and pride), Taylor rounds out the book by developing a philosophy of aspiration--personal worth as an ethical ideal--to replace the morality of duty. He offers a modified form of situation ethics to fit the contemporary problems we face. (shrink)

Throughout, this book questions our accepted definitions and biases, showing the self-reflective nature of scientific activity within society.

Ducklings were placed either singly or in pairs on a platform at two different heights. Both height and pairing influenced performance: More ducklings descended from the platform at low heights, and more single ducklings descended than paired ducklings. The social factor, pairing, made behavior more cautious and decreased the number of distress calls. A similar trend for pairing to influence performance was shown on the visual cliff. Without its peers, the duckling is a distressed animal. Previous careless behavior by ducklings (...) on the visual cliff may be ascribed to testing the ducklings outside their normal social environment. (shrink)

This is the third edition of a classic book first published in 1960, which has sold thousands of copies in two paperback edition and has been translated into several foreign languages. Popkin's work ha generated innumerable citations, and remains a valuable stimulus to current historical research. In this updated version, he has revised and expanded throughout, and has added three new chapters, one on Savonarola, one on Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, and one on Pascal. This authoritative treatment of the (...) theme of scepticism and its historical impact will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history now as much as ever. (shrink)

Despite scholars’ early emphasis on the role people play in fostering firms’ absorptive capacity, research has not deeply explored the individual-level antecedents of this important capability. We draw on adaptive-innovative theory to explain how top decision makers’ cognitive styles can influence the degree to which their firms develop AC. Top decision makers who have high adaptive cognitive style prefer to adhere to existing norms, follow established procedures, and rely on current knowledge, and we argue that these attributes will strengthen those (...) dimensions of AC based on firms’ existing knowledge and knowledge-assimilation abilities. Top decision makers who have high innovative cognitive style are more likely to reframe information, experiment with new problem-solving approaches, and take risks by violating norms, and we argue that these attributes may strengthen those dimensions of AC based on firms’ acquisition of new knowledge and the assimilation of knowledge throughout the firm. We also argue that gender differences may moderate these effects. Empirical results support our hypotheses. (shrink)

Thinking through the body: educating for the humanities -- The body as background -- Self-knowledge and its discontents: from Socrates to somaesthetics -- Muscle memory and the somaesthetic pathologies of everyday life -- Somaesthetics in the philosophy classroom: a practical approach -- Somaesthetics and the limits of aesthetics -- Somaesthetics and Burke's sublime -- Pragmatism and cultural politics: from textualism to somaesthetics -- Body consciousness and performance -- Somaesthetics and architecture: a critical option -- Photography as performative process -- Asian (...) ars erotica and the question of sexual aesthetics -- Philosophy as awakened life : everyday aesthetics of embodiment in American transcendentalism and Japanese Zen practice -- Somatic style. (shrink)

Conditionalization is one of the central norms of Bayesian epistemology. But there are a number of competing formulations, and a number of arguments that purport to establish it. In this paper, I explore which formulations of the norm are supported by which arguments. In their standard formulations, each of the arguments I consider here depends on the same assumption, which I call Deterministic Updating. I will investigate whether it is possible to amend these arguments so that they no longer depend (...) on it. As I show, whether this is possible depends on the formulation of the norm under consideration. (shrink)

According to certain normative theories in epistemology, rationality requires us to be logically omniscient. Yet this prescription clashes with our ordinary judgments of rationality. How should we resolve this tension? In this paper, I focus particularly on the logical omniscience requirement in Bayesian epistemology. Building on a key insight by Hacking :311–325, 1967), I develop a version of Bayesianism that permits logical ignorance. This includes: an account of the synchronic norms that govern a logically ignorant individual at any given time; (...) an account of how we reduce our logical ignorance by learning logical facts and how we should update our credences in response to such evidence; and an account of when logical ignorance is irrational and when it isn’t. At the end, I explain why the requirement of logical omniscience remains true of ideal agents with no computational, processing, or storage limitations. (shrink)

The book begins with an overview that introduces the Theorem and the issues surrounding it, and explores how the essays that follow contribute to our understanding of those issues.

Can we decide to trust? Sometimes, yes. And when we do, we need not believe that our trust will be vindicated. This paper is motivated by the need to incorporate these facts into an account of trust. Trust involves reliance; and in addition it requires the taking of a reactive attitude to that reliance. I explain how the states involved here differ from belief. And I explore the limits of our ability to trust. I then turn to the idea of (...) trusting what others say. I suggest that we sometimes decide to trust people to be sincere and knowledgeable; and that having taken this attitude towards them, we come to believe what they say. I spell out some consequences that this has for an account of testimony, and for van Fraassen's decision theoretic principle of Reflection. (shrink)

2010 Reprint of 1905 edition.This work is the magnum opus of Bucke's career, a project that he researched and wrote over many years. In it, Bucke described his own experience, that of contemporaries, and the experiences and outlook of historical figures including Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Plotinus, Muhammad, Dante, Francis Bacon, and William Blake. Bucke developed a theory involving three stages in the development of consciousness: the simple consciousness of animals; the self-consciousness of the mass of humanity ; and cosmic consciousness (...) - an emerging faculty and the next stage of human development. Among the effects of this progression, he believed he detected a lengthy historical trend in which religious conceptions and theologies had become less and less fearful. A classic work. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's collected papers, written during the 1980s and now published in two volumes, take up some of the issues which divide Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers and contemporary French and German philosophers and offer something of a compromise - agreeing with the latter in their criticisms of traditional notions of truth and objectivity, but disagreeing with them over the political implications they draw from dropping traditional philosophical doctrines. The second volume pursues the themes of the first volume in the context (...) of discussions of recent European philosophy focusing on the work of Heidegger and Derrida. (shrink)

The Desire-as-Belief thesis (DAB) states that any rational person desires a proposition exactly to the degree that she believes or expects the proposition to be good. Many people take David Lewis to have shown the thesis to be inconsistent with Bayesian decision theory. However, as we show, Lewis's argument was based on an Invariance condition that itself is inconsistent with the (standard formulation of the) version of Bayesian decision theory that he assumed in his arguments against DAB. The aim of (...) this paper is to explore what impact the rejection of Invariance has on the DAB thesis. Without assuming Invariance, we first refute all versions of DAB that entail that there are only two levels of goodness. We next consider two theses according to which rational desires are intimately connected to expectations of (multi-levelled) goodness, and show that these are consistent with Bayesian decision theory as long as we assume that the contents of 'value propositions' are not fixed. We explain why this conclusion is independently plausible, and show how to construct such propositions. (shrink)

Human biological memory systems have adapted to use technological artifacts to overcome some of the limitations of these systems. For example, when performing a difficult calculation, we use pen and paper to create and store external number symbols; when remembering our appointments, we use a calendar; when remembering what to buy, we use a shopping list. This chapter looks at the history of memory artifacts, describing the evolution from cave paintings to virtual reality. It first characterizes memory artifacts, memory systems, (...) and the two main functions such artifacts have, which are to aid individual users in completing memory tasks and as a cultural inheritance channel (section 2). It then outlines some of our first symbolic practices such as making cave paintings and figurines, and then moves on to outline several key developments in external representational systems and the artifacts that support these such as written language, numeral systems and counting devices, diagrams and maps, measuring devices, libraries and archives, photographs, analogue and digital computational artifacts, the World Wide Web, virtual reality, and smartphones (section 3). After that, it makes some brief points about the cumulative nature of the cultural evolution of memory artifacts and speculates about the possible future of memory artifacts, arguing that it is very difficult to look beyond an epistemological horizon of more than five years (section 4). (shrink)

Strangers, Gods and Monster is a fascinating look at how human identity is shaped by three powerful but enigmatic forces. Often overlooked in accounts of how we think about ourselves and others, Richard Kearney skillfully shows, with the help of vivid examples and illustrations, how the human outlook on the world is formed by the mysterious triumvirate of strangers, gods and monsters. Throughout, Richard Kearney shows how strangers, gods and monsters do not merely reside in myths or fantasies (...) but constitute a central part of our cultural unconscious. Above all, he argues that until we understand better that the Other resides deep within ourselves, we can have little hope of understanding how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the external world and how we can learn to live with them. (shrink)

Collected essays and lectures reflect the philosopher's belief in the relationship between art and the mind.