The demanding frontier life of My Ántonia or Little House on the Prairie may be long gone, but the idyllic small town still exists as a cherished icon of American community life. Yet sprawl and urban density, rather than small towns and farms, are the predominant features of our modern society, agribusiness and other commercial forces have rapidly taken over family farms and ranches, and even the open spaces we think of as natural retreats only retain the barest façade of (...) their former frontier austerity. The fading communities, social upheaval, and enduring heritage of the Northern Plains are the subject of Jim Dow’s Marking the Land, a stirring photographic tribute to the complex and unyielding landscape of North Dakota. Jim Dow began making pilgrimages to this remote territory in 1981 and, with a commission from the North Dakota Museum of Art, he took photographs of the passing human presence on the land. The simple, stolid pieces of architecture carved out against the Dakota skies—whether the local schoolhouse, car wash, prison, homes, hunting lodge, or churches—evoke in their spare lines and weather-battered frames the stoic and toughened spirit of the people within their walls. Folk art is also an integral part of the landscape in Dow’s visual study, and he examines the subtle evolution of local craftsmanship from homemade sculptures, murals, and carvings to carefully crafted pieces aimed at tourists. Anchoring all of these explorations is the raw and striking landscape of the North Dakota plains. Marking the Land is a moving reflection by a leading American photographer on the state of the Northern Plains today, forcing us all to rethink our conceptions of America’s forgotten frontier. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been fascinated by the connection between cause and effect: are 'causes' things we can experience, or are they concepts provided by our minds? The study of causation goes back to Aristotle, but resurged with David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and is now one of the most important topics in metaphysics. Most of the recent work done in this area has attempted to place causation in a deterministic, scientific, worldview. But what about the unpredictable and chancey world we (...) actually live in: can one theory of causation cover all instances of cause and effect? _Cause and Chance: Causation in an Indeterministic World _is a collection of specially written papers by world-class metaphysicians. Its focus is the problem facing the 'reductionist' approach to causation: the attempt to cover all types of causation, deterministic and indeterministic, with one basic theory. Contributors: Stephen Barker, Helen Beebee, Phil Dowe, Dorothy Edgington, Doug Ehring, Chris Hitchcock, Igal Kwart, Paul Noordhof, Murali Ramachandran and Michael Tooley. (shrink)

It is claimed that unacceptable constraints on initial data are imposed by certain responses to paradoxes that threaten time travel, closed timelike curves (CTCs) and other backwards causation hypotheses. In this paper I argue against the following claims: to say “contradictions are impossible so something must prevent the paradox” commits in general to constraints on initial data, that for fixed point dynamics so-called grey state solutions explain why contradictions do not arise, and the latter have been proved to avoid constraints (...) on initial data. †To contact the author, please write to: Philosophy, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birthmark offers a sharp lens through which to examine power, purity, and personal identity. Scientist and spiritual idealist, Aylmer, is obsessed with “correcting” the only flaw he perceives in his wife Georgina, the imprint of a small red hand on her pale cheek. For Alymer, this one “imperfection” reaches deep into Georgina’s heart, a sign of sin, decay, and mortality. It is the natural that must be overcome with science. Drawing on Hawthorne’s tragic fiction, this paper questions (...) the influence of stigma, power dynamics, and mind-body dualism in constructing disability identity within the framework of medical and spiritual practices of care. Whether in the role of a spiritual leader, chaplain, or medical professional, people providing care must first address ableism and perceptions of normalcy in relation to their own identity and calling before offering professional advice to disabled people seeking guidance or support. It is only as professional fields adopt a posture marked by courageous humility that healing practices will promote the flourishing of all people, including those with disabilities. (shrink)

The economic crisis has exposed shortcomings in standard economic theory and provided an impetus for new economic thinking. But the theoretical debate in the wake of the crisis has been unduly constrained by the terms of the mainstream approach to economic theory. Like any approach, it is characterised by a way of framing reality, giving meaning to terms and setting criteria for good argument. It also determines how any economic theory is understood, whether from the history of economic thought or (...) from the contemporary literature. But there are other approaches to economics which would open up the field to a much wider range of possibilities for new economic thinking. Addressing the challenge that any reader bases her understanding on her own approach, the purpose of this paper is to attempt to explain what it means to consider different approaches and why it matters for policy. This is done by discussing two features of the financial crisis which pose particular problems for economic theory. These are the role of changing market sentiment in driving asset prices on the one hand and the breakdown of trust relationships in banking on the other (the moral hazard issue). We will see how these are addressed by mainstream theory and by alternative approaches. First, market sentiment is discussed within the mainstream rational-optimising framework, where risk is quantifiable, and compared with the Keynesian approach based on the general uncertainty of knowledge, where reason, evidence and sentiment are integrated. The moral hazard issue is then discussed in its mainstream form in terms of rational opportunism and in its institutionalist form in terms of the foundation of social relations (including relations between institutions) in trust. It is shown that different ways of approaching theorising in each case imply different policy measures. It is argued further that an exclusively deductive mathematical approach to analysis of market sentiment and trust is unduly limiting and that a more pluralist approach would more fully address the issues. (shrink)

In a work that casts philosophical and theological reflections against a backdrop of personal experience, Leon Wiener Dow offers a learned discourse that elucidates the telos of Jewish law and the philosophical-theological commitments that animate it. To the reader gazing upon the halakha from the outside, this book offers a glimpse of its central, orienting concepts. To the reader who lives amidst the rigor of halakha, this book bestows an insightful glance at the law's orienting ethos and higher aspirations that (...) often remain opaque. (shrink)

How can we distinguish the permissible use of aesthetic features in persuasive communication from their manipulative misuse? The paper reconstructs the basic argument (proposed by Stoics and others in antiquity) that persuasive speech should be aesthetically austere. The argument, it is suggested, is fundamentally sound. But the view it sustains is subject to challenge, on the grounds that it is implausible and impractical in the real world. By making clear the grounds on which the “austere” view is justified, and by (...) making precise the arguments that underlie those challenges, the paper identifies and evaluates three different possible responses to those challenges. The most promising of these accepts the argument for “austerity” but proposes a more moderate interpretation of its conclusion. In doing so, it takes up the challenge of providing a defensible rationale for distinguishing the permissible from the impermissible use of aesthetic features in persuasive communication. (shrink)

This book, published in 2000, is a clear account of causation based firmly in contemporary science. Dowe discusses in a systematic way, a positive account of causation: the conserved quantities account of causal processes which he has been developing over the last ten years. The book describes causal processes and interactions in terms of conserved quantities: a causal process is the worldline of an object which possesses a conserved quantity, and a causal interaction involves the exchange of conserved quantities. Further, (...) things that are properly called cause and effect are appropriately connected by a set of causal processes and interactions. The distinction between cause and effect is explained in terms of a version of the fork theory: the direction of a certain kind of ordered pattern of events in the world. This particular version has the virtue that it allows for the possibility of backwards causation, and therefore time travel. (shrink)

It is consistent that there is a compact space of character less than the splitting number in which there are no converging sequences. Such a space is an Efimov space.

For most of the contributions to this volume, the project is this: Fill out “Event X is a cause of event Y if and only if……” where the dots on the right are to be filled in by a claims formulated in terms using any of (1) descriptions of possible worlds and their relations; (2) a special predicate, “is a law;” (3) “chances;” and (4) anything else one thinks one needs. The form of analysis is roughly the same as that (...) sought in the Meno, and the methodology is likewise Socratic—proposals, examples, counterexamples, more proposals. The norms of the enterprise seem to be as follows (i) a proposal is defeated if someone can imagine a circumstance in which it would be false, or perhaps if one can imagine such a circumstance that is not obviously inconsistent with physical laws; (ii) approximately correct solutions, those which cover most but not all cases, are of no value unless they can be modified to cover all cases; (iii) no account is required of how the relations in the right hand side of a proposed analysis could be known or reliably.. (shrink)

Hegel and the Symbolic Mediation of Spirit examines the role of the symbol and the sign in Hegel's philosophy. Of the relatively few commentators who have concerned themselves at all with the role of the symbol or the sign in Hegel's philosophy, most have restricted themselves to either his discussion of theoretical spirit, in which he presents symbol-making as an act of the imagination that must be surpassed by abstract thought, or to his consideration of the symbolic form of art, (...) which he describes as the mere precursor to art's ideal form. As a result, these commentators have tended to assume that Hegel's philosophy asserts a simple preference for the sign over the symbol. Hegel and the Symbolic Mediation of Spirit contests this assumption by considering these passages in light of Hegel's entire philosophy of spirit and logical method. Through close analyses of the various ways in which the symbol and the sign serve the development of theoretical and absolute spirit, this dissertation demonstrates how the symbol is of "absolute" importance to Hegel's notion of spirit as wholly self-determining. Although spirit's necessary recourse to the symbolic--to that which is ambiguous and displacing--appears to compromise its act of self-determination, this work shows how spirit's symbolic experience actually conditions and completes its self-determining activity. At the same time, besides leading to a new understanding of spirit, this comprehensive consideration of Hegel's discussions of the symbol and the symbolic leads to a unique position on some of the most widely-debated issues of Hegelian scholarship. It serves, for example, to delineate the relationship between language and thought, to illuminate the paradox of art's simultaneous absolute and derivative status, and to display philosophy's ultimate dependence upon artistic and religious conceptions of reality. (shrink)

The facts concerning the occurrence of superconductivity in R 2- z Ce z CuO 4 and in R 2- z Th z CuO 4 are studied using a combination of simple tools: a hard-sphere model, the self-consistent bond-valence-sum method and Madelung potential calculations. Doping by isolated substitutional Ce should produce Ce 3+ , and not Ce 4+ , causing us to conclude that the dopants are not isolated, but pairs, which make the material p type and not n type. The (...) L = 0 magnetic rare-earth ions Gd and Cm are unsplit pair breakers, unlike the other magnetic rare-earth ions which lead to superconductivity. As the rare-earth ions become smaller, the c -axis length shortens; then the O ions rotate after they come into contact with one another. Eu 1.85 Th 0.15 CuO 4 does not superconduct because quadrivalent Th is too large to fit at the dopant site, but Eu 1.85 Ce 0.15 CuO 4 does superconduct because Ce fits. (shrink)

In this paper I show how the conserved quantity theory, or more generally the process theory of Wesley Salmon and myself, provides a sufficient condition in an analysis of causation. To do so I will show how it handles the problem of alleged 'misconnections'. I show what the conserved quantity theory says about such cases, and why intuitions are not to be taken as sacrosanct.

Aristotle follows the Socrates of Plato's Gorgias in contrasting rhetoric with teaching. For him, premises of arguments must in rhetoric be reputable ( endoxa), but in teaching be archai of the relevant science. And teaching requires recognition of the speaker's authority, rhetoric does not. Like Socrates, he thinks teaching but not rhetoric requires knowledge of your subject. Unlike Socrates, Aristotle does not for this reason reject rhetoric as dangerous, but accepts it as useful for public and interpersonal deliberation.

Economics has developed into one of the most specialised social sciences. Yet at the same time, it shares its subject matter with other social sciences and humanities and its method of analysis has developed in close correspondence with the natural and life sciences. This book offers an up to date assessment of economics in relation to other disciplines. -/- This edited collection explores fields as diverse as mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, sociology, architecture, and literature, drawing from selected contributions to the (...) 2005 Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET). There is currently much discussion at the leading edges of modern economics about openness to other disciplines, such as psychology and sociology. But what we see here is that economics has drawn on (as well as contributed to) other disciplines throughout its history. In this sense, in spite of the increasing specialisation within all disciplines, economics has always been an open discipline and the chapters in this volume provide a vivid illustration for this. -/- Open Economics is a testament to the intellectual vibrancy of historical research in economics. It presents the reader with a historical introduction to the disciplinary context of economics that is the first of its kind, and will appeal to practising economists and students of the discipline alike, as well as to anybody interested in economics and its position in the scientific and social scientific landscape. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: Economics in relation to other disciplines Richard Arena, Sheila Dow and Matthias Klaes Part I. Economics in relation to the humanities and social sciences 1. The social science of economics Brian J. Loasby 2. Economics and literature Bruna Ingrao 3. Happiness: what Kahneman could have learnt from Pietro Verri Pier Luigi Porta Part II. Economics in relation to the life and natural sciences 4. Newtonian physics, experimental moral philosophy and the shaping of political economy Sergio Cremaschi 5. Evolutionary biology and economic behaviour: re-visiting Veblen's instinct of workmanship Mark Harrison 6. Medicine and economics in pre-classical economics Alain Clément and Ludovic Desmedt Part III. Economics and mathematics 7. Mathematics as the role model for neoclassical economics Nicola Giocoli 8. The role of econometric method in economic analysis: A reassessment of the Keynes-Tinbergen debate, 1938-43 Giovanna Garrone and Roberto Marchionatti IV. Economics and architecture 9. Economics and architecture Maurice Lagueux 10. Economic policies and urban development in Latin America Michele Alacevich and Andrea Costa V. Economics and geography 11. ‘Space’ in economic thought Giovanna Vertova 12. Economics, geography and colonialism in the writings of William Petty Hugh Goodacre Part VI. Economics and sociology 13. Economics and sociology: Gustav Schmoller and Werner Sombart on social differentiation Joachim Zweynert 14. Is Homo Oeconomicus a 'bad guy'? Isabelle This Saint-Jean -/- . (shrink)

I argue that so-called ‘absence causation’must be treated in terms of counterfactuals about causation such as ‘had a occurred, a would have caused b’. First, I argue that some theories of causation that accept absence causation are unattractive because they undermine the idea of possible causation. And second, I argue that accepting absence causation violates a principle commonly associated with relativity.

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. 1. Introduction2. The Curve Fitting Problem2.1 Curves and families of curves2.2 Noise2.3 The method of Maximum Likelihood2.4 ML and over-fitting3. Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC)4. The Predictive Accuracy Framework5. The Minimum Message Length (MML) Principle5.1 The Strict MML estimator5.2 An example: The binomial distribution5.3 Properties of the SMML estimator5.3.1 Bayesianism5.3.2 Language invariance5.3.3Generality5.3.4 Consistency and efficiency5.4 Similarity to false oracles5.5 Approximations to SMML6. Criticisms of AIC6.1 Problems with ML6.1.1 Small sample bias in a Gaussian distribution6.1.2 The von Mises circular and von Mises—Fisher spherical distributions6.1.3 The Neyman–Scott problem6.1.4 Neyman–Scott, predictive accuracy and minimum expected KL distance6.2 Other problems with AIC6.2.1 Univariate polynomial regression6.2.2 Autoregressive econometric time series6.2.3 Multivariate second-order polynomial model selection6.2.4 Gap or no gap: a clustering-like problem for AIC6.3 Conclusions from the comparison of MML and AIC7. Meeting Forster's objections to Bayesianism7.1 The sub-family problem7.2 The problem of approximation, or, which framework for statistics?8. ConclusionA. Details of the derivation of the Strict MML estimatorB. MML, AIC and the Gap vs. No Gap ProblemB.1 Expected size of the largest gapB.2 Performance of AIC on the gap vs. no gap problemB.3 Performance of MML in the gap vs. no gap problem. (shrink)

The Facts of Causation claims to be a “complete account of causation and its implications.” Mellor's concern is with singular causation; that is, where causes and effects are singular ). Singular causes and effects come in two sorts. Firstly, there are facts. Facts are actual states of affairs, and states of affairs correlate with whatever can be expressed in a sentence. For example, that Don falls and that Don dies are facts, if actual. In general terms, the causation of one (...) fact, E, by another, C, fits under the designation ‘E, because C’. (shrink)

I defend the conserved quantity theory of causation against two objections: firstly, that to tie the notion of “cause” to conservation laws is impossible, circular or metaphysically counterintuitive; and secondly, that the conserved quantity theory entails an undesired notion of identity through time. My defence makes use of an important meta-philosophical distinction between empirical analysis and conceptual analysis. My claim is that the conserved quantity theory of causation must be understood primarily as an empirical, not a conceptual, analysis of causation.

Within the discussion of ethics and economics some have considered designing a code of ethics for economists. But the idea of such a code is potentially problematic from a pluralist standpoint. Some possibilities are discussed here to show that any code concerning the behaviour of economists presumes a particular view of human nature and thus of professionalism. Further, issues of socio-economic power in the profession pose problems for the interpretation and implementation of some possible principles, notably those referring to standards (...) of competence and truth-seeking. It is therefore concluded that any code of ethics should take the form of general guidelines, with primacy given to the ethics of pluralism: tolerance, even-handedness and open-mindedness, on which the interpretation of all other ethical considerations rests. Read the Open Peer Discussion on this paper » Read the discussion of this paper on the WEA's Ethics conference ». (shrink)

Kevin Hoover explores retroduction as a means of theorizing in macro-economics, rather than exclusive reliance on deductivism or inductivism. Retroduction is discussed as involving conceptualization with respect to empirical evidence as a means of identifying causal mechanisms as the basis for theory in the form of mathematical models. It is put forward as a preferred alternative to more fundamental reform of macro-economics, whose justification Hoover dismisses as being ‘ideological’. Yet ideology refers to a position on metaphysics such as Hoover himself (...) sets out in terms of open systems, which would significantly extend the scope for retroduction. (shrink)

This article explores the ethics of Samuel Beckett's humour. It takes issue with the dominant reading of Beckettian humour as the redemption of a negativity occasioned by humanity's finitude. The paradigmatic case in point is here taken to be Simon Critchley's account, wherein ethics is cast as a process of coming to terms with disappointment ensuing from the inaccessibility of the Kantian Thing-in-Itself. This article takes up a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective to recast Beckett's humour as, far from offering solace for (...) finitude, highlighting instead the excess or remainder that insists, and resists philosophy's attempts to sublate it into a version of the Good. As such, the ethical demand evoked by Beckettian humour is not the attenuation of the disappointing lack implied by finitude, but rather a coping with the egregious excess of inhuman infinitude. (shrink)