Efforts to bridge emotion theory with neurobiology can be facilitated by dynamic systems (DS) modeling. DS principles stipulate higher-order wholes emerging from lower-order constituents through bidirectional causal processes cognition relations. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion, as well as DS mechanisms of integration by which they interact. These mechanisms (...) include nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion–appraisal states with reference to neural processes. (shrink)

How should we define ‘health’ and ‘disease’? There are three main positions in the literature. Naturalists desire value-free definitions based on scientific theories. Normativists believe that our uses of ‘health’ and ‘disease’ reflect value judgments. Hybrid theorists offer definitions containing both normativist and naturalist elements. This paper discusses the problems with these views and offers an alternative approach to the debate over ‘health’ and ‘disease’. Instead of trying to find the correct definitions of ‘health’ and ‘disease’ we should explicitly talk (...) about the considerations that are central in medical discussions, namely state descriptions and normative claims . This distinction avoids the problems facing the major approaches to defining ‘health’ and ‘disease’, and it more clearly captures what matters in medical discussions. (shrink)

What is a fair distribution of resources and other goods when individuals are partly responsible for their achievements? This book develops a theory of fairness incorporating a concern for personal responsibility, opportunities and freedom. With a critical perspective, it makes accessible the recent developments in economics and philosophy that define social justice in terms of equal opportunities. It also proposes new perspectives and original ideas. The book separates mathematical sections from the rest of the text, so that the main concepts (...) and ideas are easily accessible to non-technical readers. -/- It is often thought that responsibility is a complex notion, but this monograph proposes a simple analytical framework that makes it possible to disentangle the different concepts of fairness that deal with neutralizing inequalities for which the individuals are not held responsible, rewarding their effort, respecting their choices, or staying neutral with respect to their responsibility sphere. It dwells on paradoxes and impossibilities only as a way to highlight important ethical options and always proposes solutions and reasonable compromises among the conflicting values surrounding equality and responsibility. -/- The theory is able to incorporate disincentive problems and is illustrated in the examination of applied policy issues such as: income redistribution when individuals may be held responsible for their choices of labor supply or education; social and private insurance when individuals may be held responsible for their risky lifestyle; second chance policies; the measurement of inequality of opportunities and social mobility. (shrink)

Building on earlier work on the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and a firm’s financial performance, this integrative empirical study supports the theoretical argument that the higher a firm’s CSP the lower its financial risk. Specifically, the relationship between CSP and risk appears to be one of reciprocal causality, because prior CSP is negatively related to subsequent financial risk, and prior financial risk is negatively related to subsequent CSP. Additionally, CSP is more strongly correlated with measures of market risk (...) than measures of accounting risk. Of all CSP measures, reputation for social responsibility appears to be the most important one in terms of its risk implications. (shrink)

Hempel and Giere contend that the existence of provisos poses grave difficulties for any regularity account of physical law. However, Hempel and Giere rely upon a mistaken conception of the way in which statements acquire their content. By correcting this mistake, I remove the problem Hempel and Giere identify but reveal a different problem that provisos pose for a regularity account — indeed, for any account of physical law according to which the state of affairs described by a law-statement presupposes (...) a Humean regularity. These considerations suggest a normative analysis of law-statements. On this view, law-statements are not distinguished from accidental generalizations by the kind of Humean regularities they describe because a law-statement need not describe any Humean regularity. Rather, a law-statement says that in certain contexts, one ought to regard the assertion of a given type of claim, if made with justification, as a proper way to justify a claim of a certain other kind. (shrink)

The prevalent views of animal liberty among animal advocates suggest that liberty is merely instrumentally valuable and invasive paternalism is justified. In contrast to this popular view, I argue that liberty is intrinsically good for animals. I suggest that animal well-being is best accommodated by an Objective List Theory and that liberty is an irreducible component of animal well-being. As such, I argue that it is good for animals to possess liberty even if possessing liberty does not contribute towards their (...) subjective well-being, and even in some cases where it has a negative effect upon their subjective well-being. To establish this view I argue that if animals are agents, as I assume they are, then like humans they must be able to determine the course of their own lives (to some extent). Further, having the opportunity to self-determine one’s life just is the very same thing as liberty, and having the opportunity to determine the course of one’s life is intrinsically good. Thus liberty has intrinsic value for humans and animals. So, in addition to the instrumental harms of having one’s liberty restricted, I claim that restricting animals’ liberty in principle harms them because it undermines their capacity for self-determination and fails to acknowledge their authority as agents to make their own choices. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This study examines whether the empirical evidence on the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) differs depending on the publication outlet in which that evidence appears. This moderator meta-analysis, based on a total sample size of 33,878 observations, suggests that published CSP-CFP findings have been shaped by differences in institutional logics in different subdisciplines of organization studies. In economics, finance, and accounting journals, the average correlations were only about half the magnitude of the findings published (...) in Social Issues in Management, Business Ethics, or Business and Society journals (mean corrected correlation coefficientof.22 vs..49, respectively). Specifically, economists did not find null or negative CSP-CFP correlations, and average findings published in general management outlets (=.41) were closer to Social Issues in Management, Business Ethics, and Business and Society results than to findings reported in economics, finance, and accounting journals. (shrink)

There has been some theoretical and empirical debate that the positive relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and firm financial performance (FFP) is spurious and in fact caused by a third factor, namely large firm size. This study examines this question by integrating three meta-analyses of more than two decades of research on (1) CSP and FFP, (2) firm size and CSP, and (3) firm size and FFP into one path-analytic model. The present study does not confirm size as a (...) third factor which would confound the relationship between CSP and FFP. That is, even if firm size is controlled for across studies (comprising, on average, over 15 000 observations), CSP and FFP remain positively correlated, showing a "true-score" corrected path coefficient p of 0.37. (shrink)

Joseph Heath defends competitive markets and conceptualizes business ethics with reference to Pareto efficiency, which he takes to be the “implicit morality of the market.” His justification for markets is that they generate Pareto efficient outcomes, meaning that markets optimally satisfy consumer preferences. And, for Heath, business ethics is the set of normative constraints—regulation and beyond-compliance norms—needed to preserve that outcome. The present paper accepts Heath’s claim that the economic justification for markets is ethical, in that satisfying consumer preferences is (...) a good. But, contra Heath, the ethical consideration at work is a consequentialist one; and acknowledging this consequentialism exposes limitations of Heath’s “market failures” approach to business ethics. We suggest two limitations, and we expect many will accept our argument that Heath’s conception of business ethics is too narrow. The present paper outlines two broader implications. First, acknowledging that the justification for markets is ethical eliminates the apparent—and false—conflict between purportedly amoral economic activity on one hand and ethical considerations on the other; instead, business ethics is a matter of weighing the consequentialist ethical benefit of economic activity and markets against other moral arguments/other ethical considerations. Second, Heath restricts business ethics to the constraints needed to protect the market’s ability to efficiently satisfy consumer preferences, constraints he calls “efficiency imperatives”; this restriction supports the widespread tendency to think that all social problems are economic; and, a business ethics so-conceived diminishes the perceived importance of noneconomic values—this attitude is dangerous. (shrink)

We shall focus on moral theories that are solely concerned with promoting the benefits (e.g., wellbeing) of individuals and explore the possibility of such theories ascribing some priority to benefits to those who are worse off—without this priority being absolute. Utilitarianism (which evaluates alternatives on the basis of total or average benefits) ascribes no priority to the worse off, and leximin (which evaluates alternatives by giving lexical priority to the worst off, and then the second worst off, and so on) (...) ascribes absolute priority to the worse off (i.e., favors even a very small benefit to a worse off person over very large benefits to large numbers of better off people). Neither extreme view, we assume, is plausible. (shrink)

This article explores the role of financial markets for sustainable development. More specifically, the authors ask to what extent financial markets foster and facilitate more sustainable business practices. The authors highlight that their current role is rather modest and conclude that, on the old paths, a paradoxical situation exists. On one hand, financial market participants increasingly integrate environmental, social, and governance criteria into their investment decisions, whereas on the other hand, in terms of organizational reality, there seems to be no (...) real shift toward more sustainable business practices. The authors identify two main challenges within the field of sustainable investments that are relevant for entering new avenues that may help overcome this situation. First, a reorientation toward a long-term paradigm for sustainable investments is important. Second, ESG data must become more trustworthy. From a theoretical point of view, the authors finally highlight the potential market consequences when ESG investment criteria are used. (shrink)

Biology and Philosophy, forthcoming 2007.

According to a promising proposal, cognitive abilities and processes in the context of social institutions should be characterized as socially extended cognition. However, this idea invokes resistance because it seems to invoke metaphysical problems such as a serious variant of the problem of cognitive bloat. In this paper, I argue that defenders of socially extended cognition are not overly worried by such problems because their position is akin to a position known as ‘distributed cognition,’ which avoids these problems. Nevertheless, I (...) will argue that the explanatory aims of socially extended cognition do not correspond to the distributed cognition perspective. The ensuing predicament can be avoided, however, by recognizing that the idea of socially extended cognition hinges on the conflation of two dimensions of the interconnection of the elements in a cognitive system, which I will label ‘functional integration’ and ‘task-dependency.’ Separating these dimensions allows us to identify an overlooked alternative for extended and distributed cognition – symbiotic cognition – that fits cognition in social institutions better than both and avoids the predicament. (shrink)

In the transdisciplinary field of ‘mindfulness,’ originally a Buddhist concept (Pāli sati; Sanskrit smṛti; Chinese nian 念; Tibetan dran pa), the two tendencies represented by Buddhist traditional a...

The thesis we develop in this essay is that all humans are endowed with a moral faculty. The moral faculty enables us to produce moral judgments on the basis of the causes and consequences of actions. As an empirical research program, we follow the framework of modern linguistics.1 The spirit of the argument dates back at least to the economist Adam Smith (1759/1976) who argued for something akin to a moral grammar, and more recently, to the political philosopher John Rawls (...) (1971). The logic of the argument, however, comes from Noam Chomsky’s thinking on language specifically and the nature of knowledge more generally (Chomsky, 1986, 1988, 2000; Saporta, 1978). If the nature of moral knowledge is comparable in some way to the nature of linguistic knowledge, as defended recently by Harman (1977), Dwyer (1999, 2004), and Mikhail (2000; in press), then what should we expect to find when we look at the anatomy of our moral faculty? Is there a grammar, and if so, how can the moral grammarian uncover its structure? Are we aware of our moral grammar, its method of operation, and its moment-to-moment functioning in our judgments? Is there a universal moral grammar that allows each child to build a particular moral grammar? Once acquired, are different moral grammars mutually incomprehensible in the same way that a native Chinese speaker finds a native Italian speaker incomprehensible? How does the child acquire a particular moral grammar, especially if her experiences are impoverished relative to the moral judgments she makes? Are there certain forms of brain damage that disrupt moral competence but leave other forms of reasoning intact? And how did this machinery evolve, and for what particular adaptive function? We will have more to say about many of these questions later on, and Hauser (2006) develops others. However, in order to flesh out the key ideas and particular empirical research paths, let us turn to some of the central questions in the study of our language faculty.. (shrink)

has offered a lovely example to motivate the intuition that a successful prediction has a kind of confirmatory significance that an accommodation lacks. This paper scrutinizes Maher's example. It argues that once the example is tweaked, the intuitive difference there between prediction and accommodation disappears. This suggests that the apparent superiority of prediction to accommodation is actually a side effect of an important difference between the hypotheses that tend to arise in each case.

The most recent restatements of stakeholder theory formulate that approach in terms of the distribution of value: “A stakeholder approach to business is about creating as much value as possible for stakeholders, without resorting to tradeoffs” (Freeman et al. 2010: 28). This formulation marks a shift from earlier work, which included a procedural dimension—a requirement that stakeholders participate in organization decision making. The present paper pushes back against this shift: it argues that orienting the stakeholder approach around the participation requirement (...) provides for a different moral logic, one not available to (now) conventional stakeholder theorizing (without that requirement), and one that may be more compelling to many. This argument requires critical re-examination of the moral arguments offered in the most recent restatements of the stakeholder approach. (shrink)

What are the brain and cognitive systems that allow humans to play baseball, compute square roots, cook soufflés, or navigate the Tokyo subways? It may seem that studies of human infants and of non-human animals will tell us little about these abilities, because only educated, enculturated human adults engage in organized games, formal mathematics, gourmet cooking, or map-reading. In this chapter, we argue against this seemingly sensible conclusion. When human adults exhibit complex, uniquely human, culture-specific skills, they draw on a (...) set of psychological and neural mechanisms with two distinctive properties: they evolved before humanity and thus are shared with other animals, and they emerge early in human development and thus are common to infants, children, and adults. These core knowledge systems form the building blocks for uniquely human skills. Without them we wouldn’t be able to learn about different kinds of games, mathematics, cooking, or maps. To understand what is special about human intelligence, therefore, we must study both the core knowledge systems on which it rests and the mechanisms by which these systems are orchestrated to permit new kinds of concepts and cognitive processes. What is core knowledge? A wealth of research on non-human primates and on human infants suggests that a system of core knowledge is characterized by four properties (Hauser, 2000; Spelke, 2000). First, it is domain-specific: each system functions to represent particular kinds of entities such as conspecific agents, manipulable objects, places in the environmental layout, and numerosities. Second, it is task-specific: each system uses its representations to address specific questions about the world, such as “who is this?” [face recognition], “what does this do?” [categorization of artifacts], “where am I?” [spatial orientation], and “how many are here?” [enumeration]. Third, it is relatively encapsulated: each uses only a subset of the information delivered by an animal’s input systems and sends information only to a subset of the animal’s output systems. (shrink)

A prominent version of mathematical structuralism holds that mathematical objects are at bottom nothing but "positions in structures," purely relational entities without any sort of nature independent of the structure to which they belong. Such an ontology is often presented as a response to Benacerraf's "multiple reductions" problem, or motivated on hermeneutic grounds, as a faithful representation of the discourse and practice of mathematics. In this paper I argue that there are serious difficulties with this kind of view: its proponents (...) rely on a distinction between "essential" and "nonessential" features of mathematical objects, and there's no good way to articulate this distinction which is compatible with basic structuralist commitments. But all is not lost. For I further argue that the insights motivating structuralism (or at least those worth preserving) can be preserved without formulating the view in ontologically committal terms. (shrink)

New approaches in the design of information technologies for work practices are drawing upon theories from sociology, anthropology, and social philosophy. Under the labels of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Participatory Design, work is done to "neturn" to design insights gained in the social study of the use of technological artifacts. Aftera brief introduction of these developments, the article zooms in on those authors for whom "better" technologies refer to hopes for more democratic and more worker-oriented workplaces. How do these approaches (...) conceptualize "humans, " "machines, " and their interrelation in work practices? The conceptual engine which generates the analytical and political power of this approach, I argue, thrives upon the assertion of an ontological difference between the realms of "technology" and "human work. " What are the consequences of such conceptualizations for design? How do different ways of depicting "technology" and "work practice" yield different politics of technology? (shrink)

After reviewing several failed arguments that laws cannot change, I use the laws' special relation to counterfactuals to show how temporary laws would have to differ from eternal but time-dependent laws. Then I argue that temporary laws are impossible and that neither Lewis's nor Armstrong's analyses of law nicely accounts for the laws' immutability. *Received September 2006; revised September 2007. ‡Many thanks to John Roberts and John Carroll for valuable comments on earlier drafts, as well as to several anonymous referees (...) for their good suggestions. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina, CB #3125, Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3125;. (shrink)

Roche and Sober have offered a new argument for the view that a hypothesis H is not confirmed by its capacity to explain some observation O. Their argument purports to work by showing that O screens H off from the fact that H would explain O. This paper offers several objections to this argument. Firstly, the screening-off test cannot identify whatever evidential contribution Hs explanatoriness may make. Secondly, that H would explain O may be logically necessary, eluding the screening-off test. (...) Thirdly, the test cannot detect an important difference that Hs explanatoriness often makes to Hs confirmation. (shrink)

Our model integrates the nativist assumption of prespecified neural structures underpinning basic emotions with the constructionist view that emotions are assembled from psychological constituents. From a dynamic systems perspective, the nervous system self-organizes in different ways at different time scales, in relation to functions served by emotions. At the evolutionary scale, brain parts and their connections are specified by selective pressures. At the scale of development, connectivity is revised through synaptic shaping. At the scale of real time, temporary networks of (...) synchronized activity mediate responses to situations. To the degree that humans share common emotional functions, neural structuration is similar across scales, giving rise to “basic” emotions. However, unique developmental and situational factors select for neural configurations mediating emotional variants. (shrink)

Philosophy of Science: An Anthology assembles some of the finest papers in the philosophy of science since 1945, showcasing enduring classics alongside important and innovative recent work. Introductions by the editor highlight connections between selections, and contextualize the articles Nine sections address topics at the heart of philosophy of science, including realism and the character of scientific theories, scientific explanations and laws of nature, singular casusation, and the metaphysical implications of modern physics Provides an authoritative and accessible overview of the (...) field. (shrink)

The practice around informed consent in clinical medicine is both inconsistent and inadequate. Indeed, in busy, contemporary health care settings, getting informed consent looks little like the formal process developed over the past sixty years and presented in medical textbooks, journal articles, and academic lectures. In this article, members of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Collaborative on Ethics and Humanities review the conventional process of informed consent and its limitations, explore complementary and alternative approaches to doctor‐patient interactions, (...) and propose a new model of consent that integrates these approaches with each other and with clinical practice. The model assigns medical interventions to a consent continuum defined by the discrete categories of traditional informed consent, assent, and nondissent. Narrative descriptions and clinical exemplars are offered for each category. The authors invite colleagues from other disciplines and from the academic ethics community to provide feedback and commentary. (shrink)

Here I briefly discuss some comparative data on social play behaviour in hope of broadening the array of species in which researchers attempt to study animal morality. I am specifically concerned with the notion of ‘behaving fairly'. In the term ‘behaving fairly’ I use as a working guide the notion that animals often have social expectations when they engage in various sorts of social encounters the violation of which constitutes being treated unfairly because of a lapse in social etiquette. I (...) will cash this out below in my discussion of social play behaviour. (shrink)

I have two concerns about Pugh et al ’s case that vaccine requirements without a natural immunity exception are unjustified.1 First, the scientific question they suggest must be answered to justify the policy is in my view the wrong one, or at least not the only relevant one. Second, the authors set up a standard for public health regulation that will be often unattainable, risking paralysis of public health authorities. Pugh et al suggest two legitimate bases for vaccine mandates: ‘the (...) prevention of severe outcomes from COVID-19 and the reduction of viral transmission.’ Governments and employers have a legitimate interest in protecting the health of their citizens and workers, respectively. To maximally accomplish these goals, the relevant scientific question for whether people with prior infection should be subject to a vaccine mandate is: in persons who have been previously infected, does vaccination enhances protection against severe disease and/or infection and transmission? The relevant comparison, if one is trying to maximise protection in the population, is not vaccination vs prior infection, but vs prior infection alone. I am unaware of a systematic review of this question, but the answer in two recent studies appears to be that the combination is more protective.2,3 The comparison the authors propose, in contrast, seems to be one based on an unstated conception of fairness and adequacy: if vaccination alone provides some level of protection, and prior infection can’t be shown to provide an inferior level, then prior infection should be an acceptable alternative to vaccination to satisfy mandates. No argument is given to support the greater relevance of the comparison the authors emphasise. A second and independent concern is that the authors’ proposal …. (shrink)

Standardly, epistemic peers regarding a given matter are said to be people of equal competence who share all relevant evidence. Alternatively, one can define epistemic peers regarding a given matter as people who are equally likely to be right about that matter. I argue that a definition in terms of likelihood captures the essence of epistemic peerhood better than the standard definition or any variant of it. What is more, a likelihood definition implies the truth of the central thesis in (...) the debate on peer disagreement, the so-called Equal Weight View, according to which we should give the opinions of our peers the same weight we give our own. Adopting a likelihood definition, however, does not end the debate on peer disagreement, because the alleged theoretical alternatives to the Equal Weight View, reinterpreted in the light of a likelihood definition, can in fact be shown to be compatible with this view—though the reinterpreted versions may appear less plausible than the original ones. (shrink)

Conspiracy Theories The term “conspiracy theory” refers to a theory or explanation that features a conspiracy among a group of agents as a central ingredient. Popular examples are the theory that the first moon landing was a hoax staged by NASA, or the theory that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were not … Continue reading Conspiracy Theories →.

In the first section of this paper I argue that the main reason why Daniel Dennett’s Intentional Systems Theory (IST) has been perceived as behaviourist or antirealist is its inability to account for the causal efficacy of the mental. The rest of the paper is devoted to the claim that by emending the theory with a phenomenon called ‘empathic resonance’ (ER), it can account for the various explananda in the mental causation debate. Thus, IST + ER is a much more (...) viable option than IST, even though IST + ER assigns a crucial role to the phenomenology of agency, a role that is incompatible with Dennett’s writings on consciousness. (shrink)

I argue that cultural conventions such as social etiquette facilitate a specific (non‐Lewisian) kind of action coordination—role–interaction coordination—that is required for division of labour. Playing one's roles and coordinating them with those of others is a form of multitasking. Such multitasking is made possible on a large scale because we can offload cognition aimed at coordination onto a stable infrastructure of cultural conventions. Our natural tendency to prefer multitasking in instances where one task requires low cognitive control can thus explain (...) our preference for and expectation of familiar cultural conventions—that is, their perceived normativity. (shrink)

Formal tools are attributed central roles in organizing work within many modern workplaces. How should one comprehend the power of these tools? Taking the medical record as an example, this article builds on recent calls to overcome the dichotomy between the formal and the informal and proposes an understanding of the generative power of such tools that does not attribute mythical capacities to either tool or human work. To do so, it is important to look both at the history offormal (...) tools and to their real-time use in concrete work practices. These steps toward a sociology of the formal are crucial for a more comprehensive understanding and evaluation offormal systems in practice. (shrink)

The issue of power has become increasingly important within psychiatry, psychotherapy and mental health nursing generally. This paper will suggest that the work of Michel Foucault, the French philosopher and historian, has much to contribute to the discussion about the nature, existence and exercise of power within contemporary mental health care. As well as examining his original and challenging account of power, Foucault's emphasis on the intimate relationship between power and knowledge will be explored within the context of psychiatry and (...) mental health nursing. This is to say that the paper will investigate Foucault's account of how power and knowledge are central to the process by which human beings are ‘made subjects’ and therefore how ‘psychiatric identities’ are produced. In doing so, it will be suggested that Foucault's work can not only make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions about power and knowledge, but can also provide a significant critique and reconceptualization of the theoretical foundations and associated diagnostic and therapeutic practices of psychiatry and mental health nursing. (shrink)

This study presents the theoretical apparatus of Foucault's early historical analyses as a version of Kantian criticism. In an initial textual exposition, the author attempts to distill a unified discursive practice from Kant's theoretical writings, arguing for Foucault's proximity to Kant on the basis of this reconstruction, by showing that his studies are modeled on this way of thinking. By recasting it in this framework, an unorthodox version of Foucault's work is generated, one that is at odds with the tendency (...) to emphasize a certain skepticism about the possibility of universal and necessary knowledge in his writings, and to mistake it for irrationalism and a hostility to the practice of theory. By drawing attention to the structural parallel between Foucault's practice and Kantian criticism, this study belies this picture. (shrink)

Scientific realism is the view that one can be justified in believing, of some theory about unobservable entities, that the entities it posits are real and accurately described by the theory, in the same sense as one can be justified in believing that the theory’s empirical predictions are accurate, and that so to believe is what it means for a scientist to “accept” that theory, because the goal of science is to describe reality, even its unobservable features. The first part (...) is an epistemic claim, whereas the second concerns the rational reconstruction of scientific practice. Together they suggest that evidence justifying scientific acceptance of a theory justifies belief that the unobservable entities it posits are real and as the theory purports them to be. Anti-realism denies ; it holds that claims about unobservables are either unjustified or justified in a different sense from predictions of observations. It also denies ; it maintains that in her scientific work, as rationally reconstructed, a scientist who accepts a claim about unobservables believes that it yields accurate predictions of observables, not that it describes unobservables. (shrink)