Global warming, like many other environmental controversies, mixes pervasive uncertainty with the certainties of expert (but contradictory) opinion. How can we know who is right about global warming, if the only things we have to work with are the scientists’ competing scenarios, the truth‐value of which has yet to be established? One approach is to rely on narrative policy analysis to identify the non‐scientific, but policy‐relevant role played by the global warming controversy. This approach shows that the controversy signals a (...) wider “analytic tip” taking place in the examination of major public policy problems, a tip toward the notion that issues which can still be effectively dealt with locally, regionally or nationally must now first be addressed globally. The policy implications of analytic tip and the narrative features of the global warming scenario are profound for both environmentalists and their ideological opponents. (shrink)

A plateau has been reached in how to analyze people's use of their common property resources. We require fresh ways of thinking about the issue. Four new and very different approaches are sketched in the article.

Animal rights and experimentation have become the focus of a major controversy in the United States, with acute implications for animal-related research in the laboratories and veterinary schools of many American universities. To date, efforts to reduce fundamental disagreements between animal researchers and animal welfare groups or to redefine their differences in ways that satisfy all concerned have by and large not been successful. In such situations where it is not possible to identify a middle ground between conflicting positions, the (...) best a policy analyst may be able to do is to accentuate the issue's manifest topsy-turviness and uncertainties. No one can afford or risk having an issue of such high uncertainty, inconsistency, and stakes defined in terms so stark that they feel compelled to choose between those who say they know that the future shall hold us accountable for our wholesale slaughter of animals and those who would blame us for the human deaths they say will surely follow when we do not allow that slaughter. (shrink)

Jon Elster's notion of 'local justice systems' helps recon ceive sustainable development in several fresh ways. Keeping options open for the future use of resources turns out to be a justice/injustice cycle: the more sustainable development becomes a global phenom enon, the more locally unjust its uniform application would necess arily be. The more uniform the application, the greater the local pressure for suitably varied alternatives. But the more varied the applications, the greater the chance of global injustice arising from (...) the decentralization and lack of coordination on the ground. In this way, sustainable development must be seen as not ending when unjust global systems become more just, but rather as continuing through a set of iterations whose moments include a rejection of an overly globalized sustainable development. Key Words: Jon Elster • local justice systems • sustainable development. (shrink)

Coastal ecosystems are increasingly dominated by humans. Consequently, the human dimensions of sustainability science have become an integral part of emerging coastal governance and management practices. But if we are to avoid the harsh lessons of land management, coastal decision makers must recognize that humans are one of the more coastally dependent species in the biosphere. Management responses must therefore confront both the temporal urgency and the very real compromises and sacrifices that will be necessary to achieve a sustainable coastal (...) ecosystem, one that is economically feasible, socially just, and ecologically sound. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore Martha Nussbaum’s version of cosmopolitanism and evaluate its potential to reduce the growing global discord we currently confront. We begin the paper by elucidating the concept of cosmopolitanism in historical and contemporary terms, and then review some of the major criticisms of Nussbaum’s position. Finally, we suggest that Nussbaum’s vision of cosmopolitanism, in spite of its morally noble intentions, faces overwhelming philosophical and practical difficulties that undermine its ultimate tenability as an approach to resolving international (...) conflict. (shrink)

Mechanistic accounts of explanation have recently found popularity within philosophy of science. Presently, we introduce the idea of an extended mechanistic explanation, which makes explicit room for the role of environment in explanation. After delineating Craver and Bechtel’s account, we argue this suggestion is not sufficiently robust when we take seriously the mechanistic environment and modeling practices involved in studying contemporary complex biological systems. Our goal is to extend the already profitable mechanistic picture by pointing out the importance of the (...) mechanistic environment. It is our belief that extended mechanistic explanations, or mechanisms that take into consideration the temporal sequencing of the interplay between the mechanism and the environment, allow for mechanistic explanations regarding a broader group of scientific phenomena. (shrink)

This study modelled associations between gender, ruminative cognitive style, alcohol use, and the time course of negative affect over the course of 43,111 random assessments in the natural environment. Participants completed 49 days of experience sampling over 1.3 years. The data indicated that rumination at baseline was positively associated with alcohol dependence symptoms at baseline as well as higher negative affect over the course of the study. Consistent with negative reinforcement models, drinking served to decrease the persistence of negative affect (...) from moment to moment. However, this ameliorative effect of drinking was evident only among women, suggesting an increased risk for negative reinforcement driven drinking behaviour. In addition, rumination appeared to counteract the desired effects of alcohol on mood among women. This suggests that women who ruminate more may be motivated to consume larger amounts of alcohol to achieve the desired effects. Overall, the results indicate that ruminative cognitive style and the persistence of negative affect from moment to moment may reflect an individual vulnerability for the development of alcohol use disorder especially among women. (shrink)

The slogan ‘anything goes’ first appears in Paul Feyerabend’s book Against Method at the end of the first chapter. Since that time, philosophical literature has been peppered with criticism and cries of outrage towards Feyerabend’s call for anarchy. Many have speculated on what exactly was meant by the slogan and even more philosophers and scientists have quickly discarded Feyerabend’s antidote as the obvious ramblings of a madman.In this essay, I will argue that Paul Feyerabend does not promote complete anarchy, contrary (...) to his critics. Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that Feyerabend promotes methodological and theoretical pluralism, and does not call for total chaos. First, I will briefly outline the overwhelmingly cynical yet popular reading of Feyerabend’s anarchical ideas. Unlike other contemporary perspectives, I willthen argue for what I believe to be a much more fair reading of his anarchy as a prescription for the scientific discipline. I will conclude with postulating an overarching and interesting possibility, namely that Feyerabend’s call for anarchy is an attempt to distance philosophy from the scientific domain. (shrink)

Knowing the individual skills and competences of one's group members may be important for deciding from whom to learn (social learning), with whom to collaborate and whom to follow. We investigated whether 12 jackdaws could select conspecifics based on their helping skills, which had been exhibited in a previous context. The birds were tested in a blocked-exit-situation, where they could choose between two conspecifics, one of which could be recruited inside. One conspecific had previously displayed the ability to open the (...) exit door whilst the other individual lacked the skill. The subjects showed a significant preference for the skilled conspecific if they had previously directly benefited from this skill. If they had merely observed the skilled (and non-skilled) individual opening (or failing to open) the exit door, they did not preferably choose the skilled conspecific. Taken together, these results suggest that jackdaws are capable of assessing other individuals' competence under certain circumstances. (shrink)

Scientific communities as social groupings and the role that such communities play in scientific change and the production of scientific knowledge is currently under debate. I examine theory change as a complex social interaction among individual scientists and the scientific community, and argue that individuals will be motivated to adopt a more radical or innovative attitude when confronted with striking similarities between model systems and a more robust understanding of specialised vocabulary. Two case studies from the biological sciences, Barbara McClintock (...) and Stanley Prusiner, help motivate the idea that sharing of models and specialised vocabulary fill the gap between discovery and scientific change by promoting the dispersal of important information throughout the scientific community. (shrink)

The important question is how people process probabilistic information, not whether they process it in accordance with a normative model that we never should have expected them to be capable of following. Experience is not the cure, as widely thought, to problems with utilizing base rate information.

I. The Dominicans -- II. The Franciscans -- III. The Augustinians and the Carmelites-- IV. The Benedictines and the Cistercians -- V. The friars, philosophy and theology at papaland royal courts.

In 1954 Hempel wrote “Once the idea of a partial specification of meaning is granted, it appears unnecessarily restrictive, however, to limit the sentences effecting such partial interpretation to reduction sentences in Carnap's sense. … Generally, then, a set of one or more theoretical terms, t1, t2 ⃛, tn, might be introduced by any set M of sentences such that M contains no extralogical terms other than t1, t2 ⃛, tn, and observation terms, M is logically consistent, and M is (...) not equivalent to a truth of formal logic. The last two of these conditions serve merely to exclude trivial extreme cases. A set M of this kind will be referred to briefly as an interpretative system, its elements as interpretative sentences.” This is the last move in a process in which the idea of definition has been widened beyond the explicit or equivalence definition which was the basis of earlier thought on the subject of introducing new words into a language. It would seem that the scheme proposed by Hempel must represent the final move, for it would seem difficult to conceive any more liberal description of a purely direct and verbal scheme. Among the predecessors of Hempel in this liberalising movement I will mention Ramsey and Braithwaite whose views stem ultimately from Campbell, and are based on the idea that the “interpretative system” is essentially a scientific theory, and Carnap who introduced the particular notion of a “reduction sentence”, and who was more directly the source of Hempel's own ideas. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

Given the prevalence of debilitating anxiety associated with music performance, there is a need for rapid, pinpointed assessment of the extent to which an individual experiences music performance anxiety. A short, five item scale, the Mazzarolo Music Performance Anxiety Scale, was developed to capture retrospective self-reported estimates of the frequency, intensity and aversion tendency associated with performing music. 102 musicians completed the scale, as well as an established MPA inventory. The M-MPAS was found to be internally reliable with all items (...) being statistically relevant to the overall scale. Furthermore, the M-MPAS was correlated with the relevant factors of an established MPA measure, suggesting that the new scale exhibited good construct validity. M-MPAS is easy to score, with a scale range of 0–30. A score of 11 or above is suggested as the range in which a diagnosis of potential high MPA can be made, but more research into this and the psychometric robustness of the scale is called for. Nevertheless, the reliability and validity demonstrated in the present study, along with the brevity of the M-MPAS suggest that the newly proposed scale may offer considerable triaging benefits for pinpointed assessment of the extent to which an individual experiences MPA. (shrink)

The upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has the potential to eliminate or severely restrict access to legal abortion care in the United States. We a...

A comprehensive, in-depth study of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decisions which legalized abortion. The author closely analyzes the opinions, and contends that the Court made significant errors in its understanding of the many aspects surrounding abortion.

The topic of abortion was in the limelight again in Dobbs v Jackson, where the US Supreme Court overturned the decision of Roe v Wade, ‘which guaranteed women and pregnant people a constitutional right to abortion’. While not bound by the judgment, this gives us an opportunity to reflect on the current law in South Africa which regulates the termination of pregnancy. The primary piece of legislation which governs abortion is the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act. Section 2 of (...) the Act lists the grounds under which one may lawfully terminate a pregnancy. One of those grounds relates to the period of the 13th up until the 20th week of the gestation period, and states that if a medical practitioner, after consultation with the pregnant woman, is of the opinion that the continued pregnancy would significantly affect the social or economic circumstances of the woman, then the pregnancy may be lawfully terminated. The question is: What exactly is meant by ‘social grounds’? This article considers this aspect from a legal perspective and attempts to provide clarity on the issue, in the hope that this will be of assistance to medical practitioners who are concerned about the outcome of their actions, when assisting persons in this position. (shrink)