Paradoxes are poems of science and philosophy that collectively allow us to address broad multidisciplinary issues within a microcosm. A true paradox is a source of creativity and a concise expression that delivers a profound idea and provokes a wild and endless imagination. The study of paradoxes leads to ultimate clarity and, at the same time, indisputably challenges your mind. Paradoxes in Scientific Inference analyzes paradoxes from many different perspectives: statistics, mathematics, philosophy, science, artificial intelligence, and more. The book elaborates (...) on findings and reaches new and exciting conclusions. It challenges your knowledge, intuition, and conventional wisdom, compelling you to adjust your way of thinking. Ultimately, you will learn effective scientific inference through studying the paradoxes. (shrink)

This book focuses on the fundamental principles behind scientific methods. The author uses concrete examples and illustrations to introduce and explain principles. He also uses analogies to connect different methods or problems to arrive at a general principle or common notion. The book explains how the principles of scientific methods are not only applicable to scientific research but also in our daily lives. It shows how the scientific method is used to understand how and why things happen, to make predictions, (...) to present mistakes, and to solve problems. (shrink)

In analyzing the development of the concept of civil rights since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, two historical accounts seem available. According to the first account, the concept initially encompassed a relatively limited set of rights, associated with the ability of all citizens to engage in the productive activities of the economy and avail themselves of the protection of the legal system. Then the concept gradually expanded to include what had initially been thought of as political rights, such as (...) the right to vote, and then to identify the entire set of rights to equal treatment in all domains of life outside a relatively narrowly-defined private sphere. According to the second account, the concept of civil rights was fuzzy from the outset; although political actors spoke as if they had a clear understanding of distinctions among civil, political, and social rights, close examination of their language shows that the distinctions tended to collapse under slight pressure. (shrink)

This book investigates what change is, according to Aristotle, and how it affects his conception of being. Mark Sentesy argues that change leads Aristotle to develop first-order metaphysical concepts such as matter, potency, actuality, sources of being, and the teleology of emerging things. He shows that Aristotle’s distinctive ontological claim—that being is inescapably diverse in kind—is anchored in his argument for the existence of change. -/- Aristotle may be the only thinker to have given a noncircular definition of change. (...) When he gave this definition, arguing that change is real was a losing proposition. To show that it exists, he had to rework the way philosophers understood reality. His groundbreaking analysis of change has long been interpreted through a Platonist lens, however, in which being is conceived as unchanging. Offering a comprehensive reexamination of the relationship between change and being in Aristotle, Sentesy makes an important contribution to scholarship on Aristotle, ancient philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Corporate philanthropy is considered to be an integral part of corporate social performance; however, this was not always the case. At one time, the use of corporate funds for philanthropy was illegal. This article uses institutional theory to examine the evolution of corporate philanthropy from its illegal status to the time when it became both legal and expected behavior on the part of business firms. Because institutional rules rarely change as dramatically as did those governing corporate philanthropy, an examination of (...) these changes provides a unique opportunity to begin development of more generalized theory concerning change in the institutional structure of business. (shrink)

Uncovers the methodological principles that govern interpretive change.

In this paper, I consider how each of the four main kinds of corrupt person described in Plato's Republic, Books 8-9, first comes to be. Certain passages in these books can give the impression that each person is able to determine, by a kind of rational choice, the overall government of his/her soul. However, I argue, this impression is mistaken. Upon careful examination, the text of books 8 and 9 overwhelmingly supports an alternative interpretation. According to this view, the eventual (...) government of each person’s soul is decided by a struggle for power occurring within the person, among the soul’s parts, the outcome of which is determined by the relative strength and alignment of the competing parties. If this interpretation is correct, Plato adheres more closely to the city-soul analogy in these passages than has sometimes been thought. The ultimate origins of vice in the soul are also seen to lie squarely in upbringing and education, not in a mistaken choice of life. (shrink)

Future population growth is uncertain and matters for climate policy: higher growth entails more emissions and means more people will be vulnerable to climate-related impacts. We show that how future population is valued importantly determines mitigation decisions. Using the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy model, we explore two approaches to valuing population: a discounted version of total utilitarianism (TU), which considers total wellbeing and is standard in social cost of carbon dioxide (SCC) models, and of average utilitarianism (AU), which ignores population size (...) and sums only each time period’s discounted average wellbeing. Under both approaches, as population increases the SCC increases, but optimal peak temperature decreases. The effect is larger under TU, because it responds to the fact that a larger population means climate change hurts more people: for example, in 2025, assuming the United Nations (UN)-high rather than UN-low population scenario entails an increase in the SCC of 85% under TU vs. 5% under AU. The difference in the SCC between the two population scenarios under TU is comparable to commonly debated decisions regarding time discounting. Additionally, we estimate the avoided mitigation costs implied by plausible reductions in population growth, finding that large near-term savings ($billions annually) occur under TU; savings under AU emerge in the more distant future. These savings are larger than spending shortfalls for human development policies that may lower fertility. Finally, we show that whether lowering population growth entails overall improvements in wellbeing—rather than merely cost savings—again depends on the ethical approach to valuing population. (shrink)

The last half-century has seen enormous changes in society’s attitude toward sexuality. In the 1950s, homosexuals in the United States were routinely arrested; today, homosexual activity between consenting adults is legal in every state, with same-sex marriage legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In the 1950s, ambitious women were often seen as psychopathological and were told by psychoanalysts that they had penis envy that needed treatment; today, a woman has campaigned for President of the United States. Mark Blechner has lived (...) and worked through these startling changes in society, and _Sex Changes _collects papers he has written over the last 45 years on sex, gender, and sexuality. Interspersed with these papers are reflections on the changes that have occurred during that time period, both within the scope of society at large as well as in his personal experiences inside and outside of the therapeutic setting. He shows how changes in society, changes in his life, and changes in his writing on sexuality - as well as changes within psychoanalysis itself - have affected one another. One hundred years ago, psychoanalysis was at the cutting edge of new ideas about sex and gender, but in the latter half of the 20 th Century, psychoanalysts were often seen as reactionary upholders of society’s prejudices. _Sex Changes _seeks to restore the place of psychoanalysis as the "once and future queer science," and aims for a radical shift in psychoanalytic thinking about sexuality, gender, normalcy, prejudice, and the relationship of therapeutic aims and values. (shrink)

This provocative book attempts to resolve traditional problems of identity over time. It seeks to answer such questions as 'How is it that an object can survive change?' and 'How much change can an object undergo without being destroyed'? To answer these questions Professor Heller presents a theory about the nature of physical objects and about the relationship between our language and the physical world. According to his theory, the only actually existing physical entities are what the author calls 'hunks', (...) four-dimensional objects extending across time and space. This is a major contribution to ontological debate and will be essential reading for all philosophers concerned with metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper considers questions of continuity and change in education from the perspective of complexity theory, introducing the field to educationists who might not be familiar with it. Given a significant degree of complexity in a particular environment , new properties and behaviours, which are not necessarily contained in the essence of the constituent elements or able to be predicted from a knowledge of initial conditions, will emerge. These concepts of emergent phenomena from a critical mass, associated with notions of (...) lock‐in, path dependence, and inertial momentum, suggest that it is in the dynamic interactions and adaptive orientation of a system that new phenomena, new properties and behaviours, emerge. The focus thus shifts from a concern with decontextualised and universalised essence to contextualised and contingent complex wholes. This is where complexity theory seeks the levers of history. The paper posits the notion of inertial momentum as the conceptual link between the principle of emergent phenomena as developed principally in the natural sciences and the notion of socio‐historical change in human society. It is argued that educational and institutional change is less a consequence of effecting change in one particular factor or variable, and more a case of generating momentum in a new direction by attention to as many factors as possible. Complexity theory suggests, in other words, that what it might take to change a school's inertial momentum from an ethos of failure is massive and sustained intervention at every possible level until the phenomenon of learning excellence emerges from this new set of interactions among these new factors, and sustains itself autocatalytically. The paper concludes with a summary consideration of the conditions that contribute to the emergence of new properties and behaviours in a system. (shrink)

What is the relationship between conceptual engineering and metasemantic externalism? Sally Haslanger has argued that metasemantic externalism justifies the seemingly counterintuitive consequences of her proposed conceptual revisions. But according to Herman Cappelen, metasemantic externalism makes conceptual engineering effectively impossible in practice. After raising objections to Haslanger’s and Cappelen’s views, I argue for a very different picture, on which metasemantic externalism bears very little on conceptual engineering. I argue that, while metasemantic externalism principally operates at the level of semantic-meaning, we should (...) understand conceptual engineering to operate largely at the level of speaker-meaning. This ‘Speaker-Meaning Picture’ has two key benefits. Firstly, it makes conceptual engineering often easy in practice. Secondly, it suggests a new, normative response to the well known objection that conceptual engineering serves only to change the subject. (shrink)

Roderick Chisholm changed his mind about ordinary objects. Circa 1973-1976, his analysis of them required the positing of two kinds of entities—part-changing ens successiva and non-part-changing, non-scatterable primary objects. This view has been well noted and frequently discussed (e.g., recently in Gallois 1998 and Sider 2001). Less often treated is his later view of ordinary objects (1986-1989), where the two kinds of posited entities change, from ens successiva to modes, and, while retaining primary objects, he now allows them to survive (...) spatial scatter. Also (to my knowledge) not discussed is why he changed his mind. This paper is mostly intended to fill in these gaps, but I also give some additional reasons to prefer Chisholm's later view. Also, I discuss how mereological essentialism can be further defended by how it informs a theory of property-inherence which steers between the excesses of the bare particularists and bundle theorists. (shrink)

Theories of consciousness have a long and controversial history. One well-known proposal — integrated information theory — has recently been labeled as ‘pseudoscience’, which has caused a heated open debate. Here we discuss the case and argue that the theory is indeed unscientific because its core claims are untestable even in principle.

In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as false (...) and spiritually debilitating. A central claim of the book is that supernaturalism is idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences. Princeton University Press is publishing Saving God in conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book Surviving Death, which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death. (shrink)

We explore the lexical choices made by authors published in Administrative Science Quarterly, a major academic journal in business and management studies. We do so via a corpus constructed from all the articles published in ASQ from its first publication in 1956 up until the end of 2018. Specifically, our focus is on lexical items that represent social actors. Our findings suggest that, compared with earlier work, recent articles typically ascribe greater status and prestige to organizational elites. Relatively contemporary papers (...) are also more likely to use language that obfuscates or ignores unpalatable aspects of organizational life, such as power asymmetries, hierarchy and control through identity regulation. We suggest that these changes in word choices can be understood to reflect a wider trend towards neo-liberal rhetoric – a rhetoric increasingly pervading contemporary social life more generally. (shrink)

This pioneering book delivers a systematic account of agonistic democracy, and a much-needed analysis of the core components of agonism: pluralism, tragedy, and the value of conflict. It also traces the history of these ideas, identifying the connections with republicanism and with Greek antiquity. Mark Wenman presents a critical appraisal of the leading contemporary proponents of agonism and, in a series of well-crafted and comprehensive discussions, brings these thinkers into debate with one another, as well as with the post-structuralist (...) and continental theorists who influence them. Wenman draws extensively on Hannah Arendt, and stresses the creative power of human action as augmentation and revolution. He also reworks Arendt's discussion of reflective judgement to present an alternative style of agonism, one where the democratic contest is linked to the emergence of a militant form of cosmopolitanism, and to prospects for historical change in the context of neoliberal globalisation. (shrink)

Economic analysis presents climate change as a collective action problem, a market failure, or a problem about the allocation or distribution of property rights. Mark Sagoff argues that it is none of these. Economic theory cannot provide a useful way—either a model, method, or metaphor—to think about climate change. The reasons to reduce greenhouse gases are not economic, but ethical.

The ethical neutrality of technology has been widely questioned, for example, in the case of the creation and continued existence of weapons. At stake is whether technology changes the ethical character of our experience: compare the experience of seeing a beating to videotaping it. Interpreting and elaborating on the work of George Grant and Marshall McLuhan, this paper consists of three arguments: 1) the existence of technologies determines the structures of civilization that are imposed on the world, 2) technologies shape (...) what we do and determine how we do it, and 3) technology, unlike any other kind of thing, seems not to make moral demands of us: it is morally neutral. This means that they offer us the freedom of imposing on something that does not impose back. The introduction of this experience of freedom changes the way we experience the world in general by introducing a new way of relating to the good, namely by introducing the act of subjective valuation. Each of these points implies that technology structurally changes or interferes with our ethical relationship with things, with the result that through subjective valuation the experience of the obligation to act can be suspended. (shrink)

A theory is value-neutral when no constitutive values are part of its content. Nonneutral theories seem to lack objectivity because it is not clear how the constitutive values could be empirically confirmed. This article analyzes Franz Boas’s famous arguments against nineteenth-century evolutionary anthropology and racial theory. While he recognized that talk of "higher civilizations" encoded a constitutive, political value with consequences for slavery and colonialism, he argued against it on empirical and methodological grounds. Boas’s arguments thus provide a model of (...) how, under the right conditions, scientific inquiry can provide empirically objective grounds for political critique. Key Words: value-freedom • Franz Boas • race • objectivity • neutrality. (shrink)

The food-energy-climate change trilemma refers to the stark alternatives presented by the need to feed a world population growing to nine billion, the attendant risks of land conversion and use for global climate change, and the way these are interconnected with the energy crisis arising from the depletion of oil. Theorizing the interactions between political economies and their related natural environments, in terms of both finitudes of resources and generation of greenhouse gases, presents a major challenge to social sciences. Approaches (...) from classical political economy, transition theory, economic geography, and political ecology, are reviewed before elaborating the neo-Polanyian approach adopted here. The case of Brazil, analysed with an `instituted economic process’ framework, demonstrates how the trilemma is a spatial and historical socio-economic phenomenon, varying significantly in its dynamics in different environmental and resource contexts. The paper concludes by highlighting challenges to developing a social scientific theory in this field. (shrink)

We sometimes seek to change and improve our conceptual repertoire in some way. This is called ‘conceptual engineering’. In recent work, I have defended the ‘Speaker-Meaning Picture’ of conceptual engineering. Independently, while critiquing the conceptual engineering literature, Max Deutsch has argued against understanding conceptual engineering in terms of speaker-meaning. Deutsch’s critique targets what he calls the ‘standard account’ of conceptual engineering and its role in philosophy. In my contribution to this symposium, I also object to the ‘standard account’. I then (...) sketch a more moderate view, centred on the Speaker-Meaning Picture, arguing that it avoids Deutsch’s criticisms. I close by discussing a new objection to the Speaker-Meaning Picture, raised by Deutsch in this symposium: that it trivialises conceptual engineering methodology. (shrink)

The author uses two publications, Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe (Alesina and Glaeser) and Poetry magazine, to underscore the important role that educational institutions play in developing a person’s political philosophy and imagination. European nations, for instance, have better funded social welfare programs than the US because their system of public education incorporates more liberal or left-leaning teachings into their standard curricula. The author sees implications for a more intentional approach to education in the US for those who (...) are interested in changing the food system. If American educational institutions viewed their role as producing food competent citizens, he argues, then we would be more successful in addressing obesity, promoting a more sustainable food system, and even reducing poverty. Food system activists, dieticians and nutritionists, parents, and elected officials should take a more aggressive position with educational institutions to develop programs, services, and curricula capable of achieving these ends. (shrink)

"_The Moment of Complexity_ is a profoundly original work. In remarkable and insightful ways, Mark Taylor traces an entirely new way to view the evolution of our culture, detailing how information theory and the scientific concept of complexity can be used to understand recent developments in the arts and humanities. This book will ultimately be seen as a classic."-John L. Casti, Santa Fe Institute, author of _Gödel: A Life of Logic, the Mind, and Mathematics_ The science of complexity accounts (...) for that inscrutable mix of chaos and order that governs our natural world. Complexity explains how networks emerge and function, how species organize into ecosystems, how stars form into galaxies, and how just a few sequences of DNA can account for so many different life forms. Recently, the idea of complexity has taken the worlds of business and politics by storm. The concept is used to account for phenomena as varied as the behavior of the stock market, the response of voting populations, and the effects of risk management. Even Disney has used complexity theory to manage crowd control at its theme parks. Given the startling development of new information technologies, we now live in a moment of unprecedented complexity, an era in which change occurs faster than our ability to comprehend it. With _The Moment of Complexity_, Mark C. Taylor offers a timely map for this unfamiliar terrain opening in our midst, unfolding an original philosophy through a remarkable synthesis of science and culture. According to Taylor, complexity is not just a breakthrough scientific concept, but the defining quality of the post-Cold War era. The flux of digital currents swirling around us, he argues, has created a new network culture with its own distinctive logic and dynamic. Drawing on resources from information theory and evolutionary biology, Taylor explains the operation of complex adaptive systems in social and cultural processes and captures a whole new zeitgeist in the making. To appreciate the significance of our emerging network culture, he claims, we need not only to understand contemporary scientific and technological transformations, but also to explore the subtle influences of art, architecture, philosophy, religion, and higher education. _The Moment of Complexity_, then, is a remarkable work of cultural analysis on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how we arrived at this critical moment in our culture, and to know where we might head in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Discourse on food ethics often advocates the anti-capitalist idea that we need less capitalism, less growth, and less globalization if we want to make the world a better and more equitable place. This idea is also familiar from much discourse in global ethics, environment, and political theory, more generally. However, many experts argue that this anti-capitalist idea is not supported by reason and argument, and is actually wrong. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food (...) System,” the main contribution of this essay is to explain the structure of the leading arguments against this anti-capitalist idea, and in favor of well-regulated capitalism. I initially focus on general arguments for and against globalized capitalism. I then turn to implications for the food, environment, climate change, and beyond. Finally, I clarify the important kernel of truth in the critique of neoliberalism familiar from food ethics, political theory, and beyond—as well as the limitations of that critique. (shrink)

Heterogenous flows across system boundaries continue to pose significant problems for efficient resource allocation especially with respect to long term strategic planning and immediate problems about allocation to address particular resource shortages. The approach taken here to modelling such flows is an engineering change prediction one. This enables margin modelling by producing system models in dependency matrices with different linkage types. Change prediction approaches from engineering design can analyse where these bottlenecks in integrated systems would be so that resources can (...) be deployed flexibility to avoid them and address them when they occur. Current state of the art of margin research can be furthered by identifying margins on multiple levels of system composition. It can usefully be complemented by a category theory based approach which allows representation of variable and constant properties of models under changing conditions, and the identification of flows within models. Category theory is useful for formalising such explanatory frameworks as it can both structure systems and permit analysis of their applications in a complementary way. (shrink)

We are obsessed with self-improvement; it’s a billion-dollar industry. But apps, workshops, speakers, retreats, and life hacks have not made us happier. Obsessed with the endless task of perfecting ourselves, we have become restless, anxious, and desperate. We are improving ourselves to death. The culture of self-improvement stems from philosophical classics, perfectionist religions, and a ruthless strain of capitalism—but today, new technologies shape what it means to improve the self. The old humanist culture has given way to artificial intelligence, social (...) media, and big data: powerful tools that do not only inform us but also measure, compare, and perhaps change us forever. This book shows how self-improvement culture became so toxic—and why we need both a new concept of the self and a mission of social change in order to escape it. Mark Coeckelbergh delves into the history of the ideas that shaped this culture, critically analyzes the role of technology, and explores surprising paths out of the self-improvement trap. Digital detox is no longer a viable option and advice based on ancient wisdom sounds like yet more self-help memes: The only way out is to transform our social and technological environment. Coeckelbergh advocates new “narrative technologies” that help us tell different and better stories about ourselves. However, he cautions, there is no shortcut that avoids the ancient philosophical quest to know yourself, or the obligation to cultivate the good life and the good society. (shrink)

Sampson’s hypothesis that the entry of Western society into a post-modern era of “globalization” will necessitate a change in the conceptualization of the person is discussed in light of relevant group process research and current world events. While it does not seem likely that any fundamental change in the theory of the person will occur, it is plausible that the present form of individualism will adapt to the conditions of this new era. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

This paper examines youth practitioner professionality responses to neo-liberal policy changes in youth work and the youth support sector in the UK, from New Labour to Conservative-led administrations. Using a narrative inquiry approach, six early career practitioners explore and recount their experiences of moving into the field during changing political times. The narratives reveal differentiated responses to a climate of increasing managerialism and performativity but point to the value of narrative capital as a personalised resource.

The basic problem of perceptual change is how to account for both variation and constancy in perceiving the world. Is order learned? How deep does plasticity go in that respect? I argue that different kinds of perceptual plasticity have been confused in recent debates, notably between J. Fodor and P. M. Churchland. By focusing on changes in the use of concepts, the issues in the Fodor-Churchland debate can be resolved. Beyond that debate, I propose a generalized encoding approach to perception (...) as a way of accounting for a significant form of perceptual change. (shrink)

This paper provides a short summary of Mark Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Logic stands here as a subset of Wittgenstein’s notion of philosophy as a matter of the grammar of our concepts. It studies the forms of reasoning appropriate to a discipline, rather than the material of that discipline. Hence, the logic of the history of ideas considers the nature of meaning, the way we should justify our knowledge of past (...) meanings, and how we should explain things such as the existence of meanings, the beliefs people held, and conceptual change. (shrink)

A shift from a metaphysical framework of substance to one of process enables an integrated account of the emergence of normative phenomena. I show how substance assumptions block genuine ontological emergence, especially the emergence of normativity, and how a process framework permits a thermodynamic-based account of normative emergence. The focus is on two foundational forms of normativity, that of normative function and of representation as emergent in a particular kind of function. This process model of representation, called interactivism, compels changes (...) in many related domains. The discussion ends with brief attention to three domains in which changes are induced by the representational model: perception, learning, and language. (shrink)

In the course of theorising, it can be appropriate to replace one concept—a folk concept, or one drawn from an earlier stage of theorising—with a more precise counterpart. The best-known account of concept replacement is Rudolf Carnap’s ‘explication’. P.F. Strawson famously critiqued explication as a method in philosophy. As the critique is standardly construed, it amounts to the objection that explication is ‘irrelevant’, fails to be ‘illuminating’, or simply ‘changes the subject’. In this paper, I argue that this is an (...) unfair characterisation of Strawson’s critique, spelling out the critique in more detail and showing that, fully understood, it is not undermined by extant responses. In light of both the critique and extant responses, I close by making some substantive comments about what explication can, and cannot, be used to do in philosophy. (shrink)

In this chapter, Mark Budolfson and Dean Spears analyse the marginal effect of philanthropic donations. The core of their analysis is the observation that marginal good done per dollar donated is a product (in the mathematical sense) of several factors: change in good done per change in activity level of the charity in question, change in activity per change in the charity’s budget size, and change in budget size per change in the individual’s donation to the charity in question. (...) They then discuss the “hidden zero problem” that some of the terms in the equation (in particular, the last term) might be “hidden zeros” that prevent donations from doing any good—or worse, imply that they do harm—even if the charity is at the top of effective altruism rankings based on the other factors. (shrink)

Animal Century records some of the most important events and influences behind this often overlooked element of our social history, paying tribute to the courage and endurance that has helped to create a groundswell of public sympathy for our fellow creatures in many countries of the world. Mark Gold's moving and thought-provoking account includes in-depth previously unpublished interviews with many key players - including Maneka Gandhi, Jane Goodall, Celia Hammond, Virginia McKenna and Peter Singer - and celebrates the compassion (...) of countless others who have worked bravely and tirelessly to protect animals. (shrink)