Slurs have been standardly assumed to bear a very direct, very distinctive semantic relationship to what philosophers have called “neutral counterpart” terms. I argue that this is mistaken: the general relationship between paradigmatic slurs and their “neutral counterparts” should be assumed to be the same one that obtains between ‘chick flick’ and ‘romantic comedy’, as well a huge number of other more prosaic pairs of derogatory and “less derogatory” expressions. The most plausible general relationship between these latter expressions — and (...) thus, I argue, between paradigmatic slurs and “neutral counterpart” terms — is one of overlap in presumed extension, grounded in overlap in associated stereotypes. The resulting framework has the advantages of being simple, unified, and, unlike its orthodox rivals, neatly accommodating of a much wider range of data than has previously been considered. More importantly, it positions us to better understand, identify, and confront the insidious mechanisms of ordinary bigotry. (shrink)

The advent of formal definitions of the simplicity of a theory has important implications for model selection. But what is the best way to define simplicity? Forster and Sober ([1994]) advocate the use of Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC), a non-Bayesian formalisation of the notion of simplicity. This forms an important part of their wider attack on Bayesianism in the philosophy of science. We defend a Bayesian alternative: the simplicity of a theory is to be characterised in terms of Wallace's Minimum (...) Message Length (MML). We show that AIC is inadequate for many statistical problems where MML performs well. Whereas MML is always defined, AIC can be undefined. Whereas MML is not known ever to be statistically inconsistent, AIC can be. Even when defined and consistent, AIC performs worse than MML on small sample sizes. MML is statistically invariant under 1-to-1 re-parametrisation, thus avoiding a common criticism of Bayesian approaches. We also show that MML provides answers to many of Forster's objections to Bayesianism. Hence an important part of the attack on Bayesianism fails. (shrink)

In the 1990s, large insurance companies failed in virtually every major market, prompting a fierce and ongoing debate about how to better protect policyholders. Drawing lessons from the failures of four insurance companies, When Insurers Go Bust dramatically advances this debate by arguing that the current approach to insurance regulation should be replaced with mechanisms that replicate the governance of non-financial firms.Rather than immediately addressing the minutiae of supervision, Guillaume Plantin and Jean-Charles Rochet first identify a fundamental economic rationale for (...) supervising the solvency of insurance companies: policyholders are the "bankers" of insurance companies. But because policyholders are too dispersed to effectively monitor insurers, it might be efficient to delegate monitoring to an institution--a prudential authority. Applying recent developments in corporate finance theory and the economic theory of organizations, the authors describe in practical terms how such authorities could be created and given the incentives to behave exactly like bankers behave toward borrowers, as "tough" claimholders. (shrink)

In the context of solving large distributed constraint optimization problems, belief-propagation and incomplete inference algorithms are candidates of choice. However, in general, when the problem structure is very cyclic, these solution methods suffer from bad performance, due to non-convergence and many exchanged messages. As to improve performances of the MaxSum inference algorithm when solving cyclic constraint optimization problems, we propose here to take inspiration from the belief-propagation-guided decimation used to solve sparse random graphs. We propose the novel DeciMaxSum method, which (...) is parameterized in terms of policies to decide when to trigger decimation, which variables to decimate and which values to assign to decimated variables. Based on an empirical evaluation on a classical constraint optimization benchmarks, some of these combinations of policies, using periodic decimation, cycle detection-based decimation, parallel and non parallel decimation, random or deterministic variable selection and deterministic or random sampling for value selection, outperform state-of-the-art competitors in many settings. (shrink)

This paper examines the collective fraudulent behaviors taking place during the residential real estate bubble in the United States from 2002 to 2006 and the influence of others’ choices on decision making leading to a herd mentality. The antecedents of collective fraud are discussed in terms of the sociological theory behind human herding and the fraudulent behaviors during the real estate bubble are examined. Using archival witness testimony as a primary basis for analysis, this paper argues that without widespread collective (...) fraud, the bubble may not have developed and the herd mentality may have dissipated without the consequences of financial disaster. The aim of an analysis of this nature is to offer a plausible explanation of some of the preconditions to the event under study. (shrink)

I here defend logical atomism. This defense rests on reinterpreting logical atomism as a search for logical forms. This reinterpretation has two parts comprising six chapters. In the first part, I do some historically-driven recovery. In the introduction, I review the literature on Russell's logical atomism. In Chapter 1, I argue that the dominant interpretation of logical atomism is wrong on historical grounds: it accounts for neither the history of logical atomism nor for crucial elements of the logical atomist texts. (...) In Chapter 2, I then use Russell's writings to recover what I argue is the core of logical atomism. I explicate the critical notions and essential ingredients of logical atomism using "Principia Mathematica" as the archetype of logical atomism. I argue that logical atomsts are term busters. The essential ingredient of a logical atomist's term busting practice is a higher-order logic with the power of impredicative comprehension. In Chapter 3, I discuss the widespread view that Wittgenstein held a version of logical atomism. Focusing on his pre-"Tractatus" writings and changes in his earlier views, I argue that Wittgenstein embraced a philosophy of logic incompatible with emulating impredicative comprehension in April 1914. As such, Wittgenstein was a logical atomist, if ever, in October 1913, possibly through April 1914. In the second part, having clarified what logical atomism is, I present a modern logical atomism. In Chapter 4, I develop a philosophy of logic for logical atomism based on the notion of a pure logic. I critically discuss normativity in logic, the epistemology of pure logic, and logical pluralism. In Chapter 5, I propose a formal logic for logical atomism. I argue for the logic of logical atomism being an infinitely-descending and infinitely-ascending simple type theory with impredicative comprehension compatible with a domain empty of particulars. In Chapter 6, I critically discuss what the ontology of logical atomism should be, that is, what the ontology of the logical atomist's logic must be. This includes an ontology of logical concepts and of logical forms as completely-general, necessarily-existing logical facts with no constituents. I conclude by indicating avenues for new work on logical atomism. (shrink)

Conceptual engineers have made hay over the differences of their metaphilosophy from those of conceptual analysts. In this article, I argue that the differences are not as great as conceptual engineers have, perhaps rhetorically, made them seem. That is, conceptual analysts asking ‘What is X?’ questions can do much the same work that conceptual engineers can do with ‘What is X for?’ questions, at least if conceptual analysts self-understand their activity as a revisionary enterprise. I show this with a study (...) of Russell's metaphilosophy, which was just such a revisionary conception of conceptual analysis. (shrink)

In Bayes or Bust?, John Earman attempts to express in Bayesian terms a sense of "projectibility" in which it is logically impossible for "All emeralds are green" and "All emeralds are grue" simultaneously to be projectible. I argue that Earman overlooks an important sense in which these two hypotheses cannot both be projectible. This sense is important because it allows projectibility to be connected to lawlikeness, as Goodman intended. Whether this connection suggests a way to resolve Goodman's famous riddle remains (...) unsettled, awaiting an account of lawlikeness. I explore one line of thought that might prove illuminating. (shrink)

Socially responsible investing (SRI) has emerged in recent years as a dynamic and quickly growing segment of the U.S. financial services industry involving over $2 trillion in professionally managed assets. Its conceptual origins can be found in the early history of civilization, with it's modern roots in the 1960s. This paper provides an overview of the breadth and depth of the concept and practice of socially and environmentally responsible investing, describes the investment strategies that together define SRI as currently practiced (...) in the U.S., offers several observations about some of the factors fueling its dramatic growth, and presents data showing that investors who choose to invest in a socially and environmentally responsible manner can do so without giving up investment returns. SRI has matured to a point where virtually any investment need can be met through portfolio design that integrates an investor's personal values, institutional mission, and/or social priorities. The socially responsible investment industry in the United States is a young phenomenon. Even referring to it as an "industry" ten years ago may have been a bit of a stretch. While it has grown dramatically in recent years, it is an area of work, of study and of practical application that continues to evolve in many significant ways. One intriguing example of the ongoing development of the field can be found in the analysis of the language used to describe it. The terms social investing, socially responsible investing, ethical investing, socially aware investing, socially conscious investing, green investing, values-based investing, and mission-based or mission-related investing all refer to the same general process and are often used interchangeably. (shrink)

The article presents a verbal and mathematical model of medium-term business cycles (with a characteristic period of 7–11 years) known as Juglar cycles. The model takes into account a number of approaches to the analysis of such cycles; in the meantime it also takes into account some of the authors' own generalizations and additions that are important for understanding the internal logic of the cycle, its variability and its peculiarities in the present-time conditions. The authors argue that the most (...) important cause of cyclical crises stems from strong structural disproportions that develop during economic booms. These are not only disproportions between different economic sectors, but also disproportions between different societal subsystems; at present these are also disproportions within the World System as a whole. The proposed model of business cycle is based on its subdivision into four phases: – recovery phase (which could be subdivided into the start sub-phase and the acceleration sub-phase); – upswing/prosperity/expansion phase (which could be subdivided into the growth sub-phase and the boom/overheating sub-phase); – recession phase (within which one may single out the crash/bust/acute crisis subphase and the downswing sub-phase); – depression/stagnation phase (which we could subdivide into the stabilization subphase and the breakthrough sub-phase). The article provides a detailed qualitative description of macroeconomic dynamics at all the phases; it specifies driving forces of cyclical dynamics and the causes of transition from one phase to another (including psychological causes); a special attention is paid to the turning point from the peak of overheating to the acute crisis, as well as to the turning point from the downswing to recovery. The proposed mathematical model of Juglar cycle takes into account the following effects that are typical for the market economy: • positive feedbacks between various economic processes; • presence of a certain inertia, time lags in reactions of the economic subsystem to the change in conditions; • amplification by the financial subsystem of positive feedbacks and time lags in the economic subsystem; • excessive reaction to changing conditions during the acute crisis sub-phase. The authors suggest that the current crisis turns out to be rather similar to classical Juglar crises; however, there is also a significant difference, as the current crisis occurs at a truly global scale. Yet, due to this truly global scale of the current crisis, the possibilities of regulation with the national state's measures have turned out to be ineffective,whereas the suprastate regulation of financial processes hardly exists. It is shown that all these have led to the reproduction of the current crisis according to a classical Juglar scenario. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The financial crisis was in large part caused, prolonged, and worsened by a series of government actions and interventions. The housing boom and bust that precipitated the crisis were enabled by extraordinarily loose monetary policy. After the housing boom came to an end, the Federal Reserve misdiagnosed financial markets' uncertainty about the location and value of risky subprime mortgage‐backed securities as being, instead, a liquidity problem, and it took inappropriate compensatory actions that had side effects that included raising the (...) price of oil. Finally, in mid‐September 2008, the government's ad‐hoc bailouts, and the unpredictable terms of the proposed tarp legislation, appear to have caused a sharp spike in uncertainty in the financial markets. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 (2011): 22-25. The Author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior), Brazil. From the multifarious subdivisions of semiotics, be they naturalistic or culturalistic, the realm of semiotics of value is a ?eld that is getting more and more attention these days. Our entire political and economic systems are based upon structures of symbolic representation that many times seem not only to embody monetary value but also to determine it. The connection between monetary (...) and linguistic exchanges is self-evident: the former requires the latter and develops in direct relation to it. Creative experimentation and design of digital systems of value exchange are blossoming on the web. Dr. Gilson Schwartz, an economist turned media theorist and professor at the University of São Paulo, adopted the concept of Iconomics, originally created by Michael Kaplan, an author concerned with the linguistics of economic value. Empowering local communities and unlocking new levels of value creation and representation via digital technologies are the main goals of Dr. Schwartz’s projects, aiming at the re-designing of our relationship to the economic value of imagination and the social control of property. Schwartz is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, a former Chief Economist at BankBoston, Brazil and Advisor to the President of the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). FURTHER READING: Kaplan, Michael. “Iconomics: The Rhetoric of Speculation.” Public Culture . 15.3 (2003): 477-493. Renata Lemos-Morais: You have recently produced and directed a short documentary about Creative Currencies in Latin America. Could you tell us a bit about its process and its findings? Gilson Schwartz: The “Creative Currencies” project is a work-in-progress platform which unfolds as an action research agenda connected both to the production of audiovisual content and the development of social currency software. The initiative dates back to 2003 when I led an experimental project supported by the Presidency of Brazil. At that time, we issued paper currency in a small, touristic village in the Northeast Region which stimulated local cultural projects. But it was only in 2009 that the Central Bank of Brazil acknowledged “social currencies” as a legitimate economic agenda, calling for more debate at the I Financial Inclusion Forum. This year, the monetary authorities organized a second forum that also opened the room to discussions on mobile payment systems and new perspectives on poverty alleviation via State subsidies. The Ministry of Culture funded the “Creative Currencies” project in 2009-2010 and our next stage in this discovery process is to be supported by the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). In short, there is genuine interest among public officials in different areas and public funding for social currencies is on the rise in Brazil. However, after all these years we are still at a very early stage of research and practice. Some of the most successful initiatives (such as Banco Palmas) actually evolved out of local monetary creation to become correspondent banking operations for commercial banks and other financial groups. After eight years of price stability and social inclusion, Brazil stands out as a major opportunity for social experimentation, even the Grameen Bank is now entering the Brazilian market and many NGOs are geared towards different forms of entrepreneurialism in the base of the pyramid, riding solidarity economic models, microfinance and microcredit for local development. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these developments are just one more stage of “bankarization”, that is to say, an extension of regular banking services or actually a new form of social and symbolic self-determination at the local level. So far, the Central Bank of Brazil is open to new forms of credit and local finance as long as they are strictly territorial and very close to barter among the poor. In other words, whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues, such as the limits of central banking, the prospects for local financial development and the possibility of creating and managing financial icons as cultural assets. The purpose of this project is to produce short documentaries that will bear testimony to this evolving regulatory framework while inducing more discussion about the fundamental iconomic issues concealed in the process of money and wealth creation. RLM: What new potential is there in applying digital technologies to currency creation? GS: Globalization is a result of the virtualization of money, that is, the overcoming of illusions such as the “gold standard”. Money is an icon created by institutions, not on supposedly natural or material foundations but out of political and financial interests. The “dollar standard” is an outstanding evidence of this phenomenon and Kaplan´s paper, the first to use the expression “iconomics”, insists on the rhetoric and semiotic effects associated to a supposedly scientific model of money creation and management. This is a fundamental change that was perceived and discussed much before the digitalization of the world by unorthodox economists such as John Maynard Keynes since the early 20th century. The digitalization of global financial flows accelerated this immateriality and the creation of the Euro was yet another evidence of the political foundations of currencies. The banking establishment, however, is keen on the idea that scientific formulae hold the key to sound money creation. Keynesianism has been repeatedly associated to “inflationism” while the supposedly sound monetary policies of the Orthodoxy serve well the political and financial interests of a technocratic elite. Corporate media also serve this fictitious depiction of the monetary process despite the cyclical bust of monetary rules and financial regulations. The internet, however, has created numerous opportunities for the disintermediation in industries such as film, music and commodities. There is no reason to doubt that the financial industry can also be transformed by Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructures. Money is media as well. Credit is but confidence. Once people realize that the distributed computing power of networks can also be the platform to weave new monetary and credit operations, there is room for grassroots emancipation out of the established owners of monetary institutions. So far, however, there has been a privatization of monetary management and there is not a clear path or model for the emergent (P2P) property democratization that is inherent to the internet. Digital assets, however, clearly have an inherent potential to escape central control and proprietary regulatory frameworks. RLM: How are social networks transforming the ways in which we exchange value? Do you believe that online influence and reputation might be translated into a new kind of currency? GS: The foundation for social currencies as envisaged by solidarity economics is the territory. Authorities are willing to concede local monetary creation as long as it is restricted to poor neighborhoods, as a proxy to barter. In this relevant but limited context, reputation, personal knowledge and informal ties form the matrix of local or “proximity” finance which are expected to keep credit and leverage to a sustainable level. Anything beyond that should and would lead to an integration of local finance into the established banking system. However, inasmuch as the internet promotes virtual territories and reputation is now subject to all sorts of digital manipulation and stardom becomes an everyday cultural process among teenagers and elders alike, the territorial “foundation” is substituted for more complex patterns of solidarity, cooperation and exchange that reach beyond the physical territory and even the “human.” Digital assets embody knowledge, technology, cultural and educational values that are exchanged at a global scale beyond the control of democratic States (Chinese-like intervention is the exception, not the rule). Hacktivism is unstoppable and so is monetary hacktivism. Especially in the Third World, mobile communications fast became conveyors of money transfers and other appropriation strategies. Banking and telecom sectors already battle for the control of these emerging markets and, as a matter of fact, have so far contributed to the containment of these processes. Governments serve these moguls and have usually adopted a wait-and-see attitude. If open source hardware and grassroots social movements combine to challenge these proprietary battles, then social networks may evolve into new forms of social capital and thus form the ground on which to design and implement social currencies. The global financial crisis, as well as the dollar demise, are an event of such a proportion that social networks may open the path for emancipator subjects to seize the opportunity. RLM: What are some of the social experiments that you think are revolutionizing the way in which value is exchanged? GS: There is a broad evolution of economic systems towards the valuation of intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation and sustainability. There are many examples of local as well as global events that call the traditional systems of exchange into question, from carbon credits to educational bonuses, digital barter frameworks and locally based solidarity and fair trade networks. These emerging examples, no matter how different in nature or scale, represent a challenge to the traditional value creation schemes and theories which are based on use and exchange value, supply and demand. This is not to say that utility and labour or scarcity are to be totally dismissed, but there is now an emerging perception that value is also a function of behavioral codes, symbolic patterns and the energy of institutional frameworks. The plasticity of digital platforms is relevant insofar as intellectual property becomes the central source of value creation. But when you discuss the property rights of public goods such as the environment or basic social rights (of minorities or localities), then a new paradigm seems to emerge. RLM: Are gaming and online storytelling digital practices that might have an impact on the way new currencies are created and developed? GS: “Play money” has been one of the early and most intriguing phenomena associated to the diffusion of virtual worlds. These virtual currencies have also been prone to “boom and bust” dynamics, speculation and pure theft (Second Life scams were common and led to “intervention” by the owners of the game). Storytelling is a major source of value, that is, the value of attention and the markets for audience. There are plenty of private monies created and managed by corporate entertainment groups, telecom operators (via mobile virtual network operators) and marketing frameworks. The casino economy, as already depicted by Keynes and other unorthodox economists, is always storytelling about future states of the world, confidence building and leverage of animal spirits. The novelty of current events is not the fictitious nature of any form of capital, but the potential for digital democratization of controls over the imaginary nature of value creation. But this is just a potential, a possibility, a figment that more often than not is appropriated by centralized and opaque private powers. The game industry is a testbed for new connections between storytelling and money creation. RLM: Monetary value was originally connected to the scarcity of precious metals, such as gold. Our entire monetary system seems therefore to function according to a logic of scarcity. Do you believe it is possible to reverse this logic into a logic of abundance? GS: The gold standard was a fiction itself, the “scarcity” is always produced by institutions that regulate confidence and access to credit. The key issue is not to fabricate abundance, but to question the institutions which produce scarcity out of any standard, gold or whatever. Central banks are at the service of private banks in the creation and management of scarcity. RLM: The promise that nanotechnology holds for our future is one of radical abundance (or so say transhumanists). The possibility of creating any kind of material substance through nanoengineering seems each day more feasible. What would this possibility entail in terms of systems of value exchange? GS: Nanotechnology, environmental concerns and grassroots appropriation of distributed knowledge are the frontiers of a new horizon of energy creation and management. Social groups in charge of managing scarcity for the sake of wealth and power concentration must be held accountable for the destruction of our future. Once this key political conundrum is accounted for, new systems of value exchange and even a non-mercantile society will come into existence. Revolutionary theorists such as Marx envisaged transformation via the extreme clash of contradictions between capital and labour. This approach has never led to a change in the systemic logic of scarcity for the sake of social control. We are once again facing the threshold of large scale societal change, but the outcome of the current crisis should come from our imagination, not from yet another paradox of abundance and scarcity. As long as we remain attached to the materiality of value, the illusion of freedom will but reinforce the massive manipulation of necessity. RLM: What do you think is the role of crowdfunding in this context? GS: Crowdsourcing as well as crowdfunding are examples of the peer to peer opportunities that come along with distributed computer power. However, the power structure behind wealth and scarcity creation may or may not be changed by crowd management. But it should not be taken at face value, so to speak. The stock market of course is an early form of crowdfunding without calling into question the proprietary framework of the companies offering their investment projects to the market. Any market is a form of crowdsourcing, that is to say, of distributed forms of supply and demand matchmaking. The wealth of networks, however, depends on the contractual ecosystem, the institutional framework, the channeling of social imagination, not on the purely quantitative distribution of bids and offers. I see economics as supply, demand and code. Once you have access to the code, once openness becomes part of the game, then there is a chance of crowd behavior becoming collective intelligence and sustainable imagination. RLM: Is the development of digital currencies headed towards a pluralistic ecology in which many micro currency systems co-exist, or is it penetrating the mainstream monetary system? If it is affecting the mainstream financial system, what would be its effect in the long-term? GS: The same issue is at stake both at local and global levels. The global system is, as a matter of fact, an unstable ecosystem of “micro currencies” whereas the dollar has so far exerted an overwhelming influence. Local currencies and private monies coexist with national currencies only to the extent that the Central Bank admits, for instance, that grassroots monetary emissions remain territorial and strictly connected to poverty. However, the question of how new developments in digital technologies and nanotechnologies might alter not only our current monetary systems but also our understanding of value in itself, is still an open question. (shrink)

Biological brains are increasingly cast as ‘prediction machines’: evolved organs whose core operating principle is to learn about the world by trying to predict their own patterns of sensory stimulation. This, some argue, should lead us to embrace a brain-bound ‘neurocentric’ vision of the mind. The mind, such views suggest, consists entirely in the skull-bound activity of the predictive brain. In this paper I reject the inference from predictive brains to skull-bound minds. Predictive brains, I hope to show, can be (...) apt participants in larger cognitive circuits. The path is thus cleared for a new synthesis in which predictive brains act as entry-points for ‘extended minds’, and embodiment and action contribute constitutively to knowing contact with the world. (shrink)

There is currently no viable alternative to the Bayesian analysis of scientific inference, yet the available versions of Bayesianism fail to do justice to several aspects of the testing and confirmation of scientific hypotheses. Bayes or Bust? provides the first balanced treatment of the complex set of issues involved in this nagging conundrum in the philosophy of science. Both Bayesians and anti-Bayesians will find a wealth of new insights on topics ranging from Bayes's original paper to contemporary formal learning theory. (...) In a paper published posthumously in 1763, the Reverend Thomas Bayes made a seminal contribution to the understanding of "analogical or inductive reasoning." Building on his insights, modem Bayesians have developed an account of scientific inference that has attracted numerous champions as well as numerous detractors. Earman argues that Bayesianism provides the best hope for a comprehensive and unified account of scientific inference, yet the presently available versions of Bayesianisin fail to do justice to several aspects of the testing and confirming of scientific theories and hypotheses. By focusing on the need for a resolution to this impasse, Earman sharpens the issues on which a resolution turns. John Earman is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. (shrink)

There is currently no viable alternative to the Bayesian analysis of scientific inference, yet the available versions of Bayesianism fail to do justice to several aspects of the testing and confirmation of scientific hypotheses. Bayes or Bust? provides the first balanced treatment of the complex set of issues involved in this nagging conundrum in the philosophy of science. Both Bayesians and anti-Bayesians will find a wealth of new insights on topics ranging from Bayes’s original paper to contemporary formal learning theory.In (...) a paper published posthumously in 1763, the Reverend Thomas Bayes made a seminal contribution to the understanding of "analogical or inductive reasoning." Building on his insights, modem Bayesians have developed an account of scientific inference that has attracted numerous champions as well as numerous detractors. Earman argues that Bayesianism provides the best hope for a comprehensive and unified account of scientific inference, yet the presently available versions of Bayesianisin fail to do justice to several aspects of the testing and confirming of scientific theories and hypotheses. By focusing on the need for a resolution to this impasse, Earman sharpens the issues on which a resolution turns. John Earman is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. (shrink)

Busting the Hermenuetical Ghosts: Steering clear of pre-modern, Romantic, Freudian, and post-modern readings, DeCarlo asserts how Shakespeare's Hamlet text foreshadows the modern philosophical thought of Descartes, Kant, and Heidegger, particularly in regard to the intellectual issues of thought and doubt, time and action, and being and death.

The aim of this commentary is to identify and assess two central myths promulgated by America’s Christian right. For the purposes of this piece, the “Christian right” is defined as a group of socially conservative, politically active organizations within fundamentalist Christianity who share the objective of implementing conservative changes to American culture and law. The movement generally rejects any modern method of Biblical interpretation and many of its adherents place far less emphasis on the Gospels than on Pauline doctrine. Its (...) adherents are generally anti-intellectual, and hostile to science, pluralism, tolerance, and the separation of church and state. Amongst its central aims are downsizing the government, and "restoring" America as a Christian nation by imposing religion through the mechanisms of the state.1 Much of the movement's ideological strength has come from its expertise in circulating and reaffirming two powerful myths central to its image. These are: That the Christian right have a monopoly on moral realism, That they have a monopoly on respect for the “sanctity of life,” and The Christian right’s pundits present this set of abstract concepts – moral “values” and “sanctity of life” – as core values. Over and over again they have successfully framed complex issues as oppositions between these core values and their opponent’s position. This has worked partly because, instead of engaging in an analysis of these concepts, they equate them with a set of public policies that are assumed to meet the conditions that define them. Thus it would appear that if you do not support their policies, you cannot support moral values at all, nor can you respect the sanctity of life. A closer examination of the fallacious reasoning underpinning these two core values is long overdue. (shrink)

A theory of definitions which places the eliminability and conservativeness requirements on definitions is usually called the standard theory. We examine a persistent myth which credits this theory to Leśniewski, a Polish logician. After a brief survey of its origins, we show that the myth is highly dubious. First, no place in Leśniewski's published or unpublished work is known where the standard conditions are discussed. Second, Leśniewski's own logical theories allow for creative definitions. Third, Leśniewski's celebrated ‘rules of definition’ lay (...) merely syntactical restrictions on the form of definitions: they do not provide definitions with such meta-theoretical requirements as eliminability or conservativeness. On the positive side, we point out that among the Polish logicians, in the 1920s and 1930s, a study of these meta-theoretical conditions is more readily found in the works of Łukasiewicz and Ajdukiewicz. (shrink)

Western Australia has recently assumed an unaccustomed centrality in the minds of Australian policymakers. The recent resource boom briefly propelled WA to the forefront of national economic affairs. While this proved a relatively short-lived prominence, the emergence of WA at the centre of a putative ‘Indo-Pacific’ region promises to give it a more enduring strategic significance. This paper details how geopolitical and geoeconomic forces have shaped WA’s developmental history, and why they are likely to do so in the future as (...) well. (shrink)

This paper uses agent-based modelling to study the frequent booms and busts in Chinese agricultural markets. First, an artificial agricultural commodity market consisting of heterogeneous agents, such as producers, consumers, and speculators, is built. A numerical simulation suggests that speculation can cause large price fluctuations via nonlinear price dynamics. Then, parameters are estimated by the simulated method of moments using garlic and ginger price data in China from 2006Q2 to 2018Q3. The estimation yields a statistically significant speculative behavior parameter, supporting (...) speculators’ existence. Based on the well-estimated model, a low-cost policy experiment aiming at market stabilization is carried out. The essence of this policy is to release the theoretical steady state of the estimated model as the government-guided price to producers. The guided price, even partially followed by producers, can reduce simulated price variances and weaken speculators’ negative impact on market stability. Robustness tests show that the effect of policy experiment is robust under a 20% change in any parameter value or a 5% change in the guided price. (shrink)

The predictive processing account of action, cognition, and perception is one of the most influential approaches to unifying research in cognitive science. However, its promises of grand unification will remain unfulfilled unless the account becomes theoretically robust. In this paper, we focus on empirical commitments of PP, since they are necessary both for its theoretical status to be established and for explanations of individual phenomena to be falsifiable. First, we argue that PP is a varied research tradition, which may employ (...) various kinds of scientific representations, differing in the scope of empirical commitments they entail. Two major perspectives on PP qua cognitive theory may then be distinguished: generalized vs. hierarchical. The first one fails to provide empirical detail, and the latter constrains possible physical implementations. However, we show that even hierarchical PP is insufficiently restrictive to disallow incorrect models and may be adjusted to explain any neurocognitive phenomenon–including non-existent or impossible ones–through flexible adjustments. This renders PP a universal modeling tool with an unrestricted number of degrees of freedom. Therefore, in contrast with declarations of its proponents, it should not be understood as a unifying theoretical perspective, but as a computational framework, possibly informing further theory development in cognitive science. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Proponents of mechanistic explanation have recently suggested that all explanation in the cognitive sciences is mechanistic, even functional explanation. This last claim is surprising, for functional explanation has traditionally been conceived as autonomous from the structural details that mechanistic explanations emphasize. I argue that functional explanation remains autonomous from mechanistic explanation, but not for reasons commonly associated with the phenomenon of multiple realizability. 1Introduction 2Mechanistic Explanation: A Quick Primer 3Functional Explanation: An Example 4Autonomy as Lack of Constraint 5The Price (...) of Autonomy 6Another Argument against Autonomy 7Conclusion: Autonomy and Multiple Realization. (shrink)

Environmental variability has been proposed as an important mechanism in behavioral psychology, in ecology and evolution, and in cultural anthropology. Here we demonstrate its importance in simulational studies as well. In earlier work we have shown the emergence of communication in a spatialized environment of wandering food sources and predators, using a variety of mechanisms for strategy change: imitation (Grim, Kokalis, Tafti & Kilb 2000), localized genetic algorithm (Grim, Kokalis, Tafti & Kilb 2001), and partial training of neural nets on (...) the behavior of successful neighbors (Grim, St. Denis & Kokalis 2002). Here we focus on environmental variability, comparing results for all of these mechanisms in a range of different environments: (a) environments with constant resources, (b) environments with random resources around the same mean, and (c) sine-wave variable environments with cycles of ‘boom and bust’. Communication, it turns out, is strongly favored by environmental variability on the pattern of ‘boom and bust.'. (shrink)

Buoyed by research in philosophy and moral psychology, virtue ethics has become increasingly influential in the literature. This renewed attention has also led to the development of the situationist challenge: empirical studies undermine the idea that we possess character traits that allow us to act virtuously across contexts. A promising reply to the situationist challenge is that we should not conceive of virtues as traits. Instead, we should conceive of them as expert skills. Here, I raise a new challenge for (...) those who go in for the (s)kill against situationism. Expert skills are brittle, rather than flexible or robust. They typically develop in narrow ways and can falter in novel situations. Experts also sometimes perform worse than novices in novel situations. Such findings present a problem for the virtue-as-skill thesis. Someone who will help others only in narrow contexts or who causes more harm than good does not exemplify virtue. The brittleness of expert skills means that virtue theorists must either (a) abandon the idea that virtues explain behaviour across contexts or (b) abandon the idea that virtues are expert skills. It’s brittle virtue or bust – you can’t teach an old dogma new skills. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore ethically problematic situations in the long-term nursing care of elderly people. It was assumed that greater awareness of ethical problems in caring for elderly people helps to ensure ethically high standards of nursing care. To obtain a broad perspective on the current situation, the data for this study were collected among elderly patients, their relatives and nurses in one long-term care institution in Finland. The patients (n=10) were interviewed, while the (...) relatives (n=17) and nurses (n=9) wrote an essay. Interpretation of the data was based on qualitative content analysis. Problematic experiences were divided into three categories concerning patients’ psychological, physical and social integrity. In the case of psychological integrity, the problems were seen as being related to treatment, self-determination and obtaining information; for physical integrity, they were related to physical abuse and lack of individualized care; and for social integrity, to loneliness and social isolation. This study provided no information on the prevalence of ethical problems. However, it is clear from the results that patient integrity warrants more attention in the nursing care of elderly patients. (shrink)

Two experiments were run to demonstrate the presence of a partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) and a partial punishment effect (PPE) 4 weeks after training in a 1-trial/day procedure. In the PREE paradigm, two groups of animals were trained to run a straight alley for food reward; one group was rewarded on every trial (CRF), whereas the other was rewarded on only 50% of the trials (PRF). In the test phase, extinction, no reward was present on any trial. Four weeks (...) after the end of acquisition, and subsequent to 7 days of CRF retraining, PRF animals showed greater resistance to extinction than did their CRF controls. The PPE paradigm resembled the PREE paradigm in all aspects, except that mild electric foot shock, together with the food reward, was used instead of nonreward on 50% of the acquisition trials. In the test phase, all animals were shocked and given a food reward on every trial. Four weeks after the end of acquisition and retraining, the animals with previous experience of shock in acquisition showed greater resistance to punishment than did their controls. (shrink)

The sharp changes in oil prices since 2004 featured a nonlinear data-generating mechanism which displayed bubble-like behavior. A popular view is that such a salient pattern cannot be explained by shifts in economic fundamentals, but was driven by speculative bubbles as a consequence of the increased financialization of oil future markets. Testing this hypothesis, however, is challenging since the fundamental component of the oil price is unobservable. This paper attempts to isolate the contribution of speculative bubbles and fundamentals to the (...) evolution of oil prices by providing a stylized model of commodity pricing. Motivated by our theoretical model, we adopt a continuous-time model with a random and time-varying persistence parameter to empirically investigate the presence of speculative bubbles in daily oil future prices over the period April 1983 to June 2020. We do not find any evidence in favor of speculative bubbles, although we indeed find that oil prices exhibit episodes of unstable behavior after 2004. (shrink)

The Zaydī-Muʿtazilī interaction, which dates back to the early periods, increased when The Būyid vizier al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād invited Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār to Rayy and many Caspian Zaydī scholars studied with Qāḍī. Ibn Sharwīn, who is mentioned among the students of Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār and accepted as one of the Zaydī- Muʿtazilī scholars, is one of these names. The works of Ibn Sharwīn, who had writings in the field of kalām and fiqh, did not remain within the borders of the (...) Caspian and reached the Zaydīs of Yemen; one of these works is Ḥaqāʾiq al-ashyāʾ. Considering that, unlike other theological schools, there are not many works on the definitions of theological concepts in Muʿtazilī literature and -as far as is known- did not reach today, this treatise helps to understand better especially the terms in Zaydī- Muʿtazilī theology and the effects of Bahshamiyya on Zaydī thought. This work, edited and translated based on the only extant manuscript only manuscript found in Yemen and a previous publication, on the one hand, is important in understanding the point of view of Zaydī- Muʿtazilī thought on the disciplines of theology, jurisprudence, debate, history of Islamic sects, on the other hand, it is a helpful resource for understanding the terms used in the theory of aḥwāl, which is still an intricate issue. Ibn Sharwīn in his Ḥaqāʾiq al-ashyāʾ; explains over 150 terms in relation to cosmology such as substance, accident, line, surface, space; to ontology such as existing, non-existence, originated (muḥdath); to epistemology such as knowledge, creed, ignorance, doubt, skepticism, obligatory and acquired knowledge; to methodology such as evidence, madlūl, debate, and disputation; to fiqh such as sunnah, farḍ, mandūb, cause, command-prohibition, general-particular (ʿumūm-ḫuṣūṣ); to the history of sects such as ʿadliyya, compulsionists (mujbira) and qadarī; to divinity such as the oneness of God (tawhīd); to justice such as promise and threat (al-waʿd wa-l-waʿīd), good and evil, necessary and acquired, grace, compensation, repentance, major and minor sins; to the theory of al-aḥwāl such as attribute of the essence, determinant (muḳtaḍī), entail (muḳtaḍā), muṣaḥḥiḥ, cause. Describing ḥadd that corresponds to “definition” and ḥaḳīḳat that he used together with it as collectively exhaustive, mutually exclusive, Ibn Sharwīn defines knowledge, power, living (ḥayy), speech (kalām), speaker (mutakallim), permanent (bāqī) etc. in a way that is true for both God and human beings. While making these definitions, he draws on poems, linguistic usages and verses and divides the nouns into three parts at the end of his work, namely linguistic, religious and conventional (sharʿī and waḍʿī); in particular, he gives detailed information about metaphors and parts of truth. Another striking aspect of the work is the explanation of the meanings of the imperative mood which is included in the subjects of the Methodology of Fiqh. (shrink)

1. Introduction. The papers by Hellman and Mayo offer up a rich menu of problems and proposed solutions, so there is much here for a friendly critic to fasten on. In order to bring a modicum of focus to my commentary, I shall limit my remarks to the Duhem problem and its radiations in epistemology and methodology. Both Mayo and Hellman claim to have solutions to that hoary old problem and they tout these solutions as key indicators of the explanatory (...) power of their respective technical epistemologies, whether Bayesian or Neyman/Pearsonian. Like Mayo, I shall be arguing that the Bayesian treatment of Duhem's problem is no solution at all; that, indeed, it fails to grapple with the core challenges posed by the purported ambiguities of falsification. My response to Mayo's more detailed, and I think more right-headed, treatment of the Duhem problem will be more complex. While I believe that she is moving in the right direction in many respects, I think that she fails to see one key dimension of the Duhemian conundrum. Indeed, she risks solving not Duhem's problem but quite a different one. I shall gently try to encourage her to steer her way back towards the central task. (shrink)

The central problem with Bayesian philosophy of science is that it cannot take account of the relevance of simplicity and unification to confirmation, induction, and scientific inference. The standard Bayesian folklore about factoring simplicity into the priors, and convergence theorems as a way of grounding their objectivity are some of the myths that Earman's book does not address adequately. 1Review of John Earman: Bayes or Bust?, Cambridge, MA. MIT Press, 1992, £33.75cloth.