Th is article examines the extent to which spaces are structuring influences on, or targets of, action. Two factors and their interactions are presented: the extent to which a space is 1) maintained and 2) used. As these factors increase in strength, the structural influences of a space increase while agential opportunities are diminished. Conversely, as spaces become dilapidated and abandoned, structural forces are weakened and the potential for creative action heightens. These spaces can be conceptualized as elements of the (...) ‘residual landscape’: spaces left behind by socio-historical processes and practices. Special cases are considered where the factors are inversely related and issues of structure and agency are complicated. A brief case study serves to illustrate each type of spaceand the factors which operate therein. (shrink)

Richard Jeffrey’s “Conditioning, Kinematics, and Exchangeability” is one of the foundational documents of probability kinematics. However, the section entitled “Successive Updating” contains a subtle error regarding the applicability of updating by so-called relevance quotients in order to ensure the commutativity of successive probability kinematical revisions. Upon becoming aware of this error, Jeffrey formulated the appropriate remedy, but he never discussed the issue in print. To head off any confusion, it seems worthwhile to alert readers of Jeffrey’s “Conditioning, (...) Kinematics, and Exchangeability” to the aforementioned error and to document his remedy, placing it in the context of both earlier and subsequent work on commuting probability kinematical revisions.1. (shrink)

Seitzer seeks to provide a more effective criticism of Schmitt than commentaries that focus on Schmitt's treatment of key works and concepts in legal and ...

ExcerptThis essay considers those aspects that, for lack of a better term, I call ongoing founding events in the work of Carl Schmitt and its interpretation by Giorgio Agamben. This term is meant to refer to decisive “events” in Schmitt that, although they may be exceptional (or perhaps because they are), play a continual role in generating and maintaining the political order. It is important that these events are not merely mythic or imaginary devices to describe politics, as are (...) the social contract and the veil of ignorance. These events are crucial also, in Schmitt's terms, in understanding “concrete reality.”. (shrink)

Given someone’s fully specified posterior probability distribution q and information about the revision method that they employed to produce q, what can you infer about their prior probabilistic commitments? This question provides an entrée into a thoroughgoing discussion of a class of parameterizations of Jeffrey conditioning in which the parameters furnish information above and beyond that incorporated in \. Our analysis highlights the ubiquity of Bayes factors in the study of probability revision.

Le fait que Hegel ne se soit pas joint au groupe de lecture qui s’est formé au Stift de Tübingen en 1790, dans le but de discuter de la philosophie kantienne, est généralement évoqué comme preuve de son manque d’intérêt pour la première Critique. Or les premières références à Kant, dès 1787, dans les extraits que Hegel a recopiés à partir de sources premières et secondaires, nous montrent qu’il s’était déjà approprié des éléments essentiels au développement de sa propre pensée. (...) Ces éléments s’accordaient mal avec les tendances théoriques du groupe, animé par le « Kantianer enragé » Carl Diez, qui rendaient impossible le langage spéculatif tel que Hegel le trouvait en germe dans les antinomies de la raison pure. (shrink)

Written during the period of his emigration to the United States, during and just after World War II, the originality of Karl Löwith's book Meaning in History lies in its resolute critique of all forms of philosophy of history. This critique is based on the now famous idea that modern philosophies of history have only extended and deepened an illusion fabricated by a long tradition of Christian historical reflection: the illusion that history itself has an intrinsic goal. This modern extension (...) and deepening of the chimera propagated by Christian historical reflection is what Löwith terms "secularization." Drawing on the arguments in Meaning in History as well as those proposed in other contemporaneous and earlier writings, including Löwith's heretofore unpublished correspondence with Leo Strauss, this article attempts to set in relief the frequently neglected, yet eminently political implications of Löwith's idea of secularization. Among the problems implicitly considered in relation to the theory of secularization in Meaning in History is a theme frequently addressed in earlier writings: the motives that led German intellectuals like Friedrich Gogarten, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt to adhere to the Nazi movement. (shrink)

Carl Gustav Hempel was one of the preeminent figures in the philosophical movement of logical empiricism. He was a member of both the Berlin and Vienna circles, fled Germany in 1934 and finally settled in the US where he taught for many years in New York, Princeton, and Pittsburgh. The essays in this collection come from the early and late periods of Hempel's career and chart his intellectual odyssey from a rigorous commitment to logical positivism in the 1930s to (...) a more sociological approach close in spirit to the work of Neurath and Kuhn. The collection brings together essays which have up till now been difficult to find, four of which are appearing in English for the first time. Cumulatively they offer a fresh perspective on Hempel's intellectual development and on the rise and demise of logical empiricism. (shrink)

Jeffrey has devised a probability revision method that increases the probability of hypothesis H when it is discovered that H implies previously known evidence E. A natural extension of Jeffrey's method likewise increases the probability of H when E has been established with sufficiently high probability and it is then discovered, quite apart from this, that H confers sufficiently higher probability on E than does its logical negation H̄.

Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote that "the people reign over the American political world like God over the universe," unwittingly casting democracy as the political instantiation of the death of God. According to Jeffrey W. Robbins, Tocqueville's assessment remains an apt observation of modern democratic power, which does not rest with a sovereign authority but operates as a diffuse social force. By linking radical democratic theory to a contemporary fascination with political theology, Robbins envisions the modern experience of democracy (...) as a social, cultural, and political force transforming the nature of sovereign power and political authority. Robbins joins his work with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's radical conception of "network power," as well as Sheldon Wolin's notion of "fugitive democracy," to fashion a political theology that captures modern democracy's social and cultural torment. This approach has profound implications not only for the nature of contemporary religious belief and practice but also for the reconceptualization of the proper relationship between religion and politics. Challenging the modern, liberal, and secular assumption of a neutral public space, Robbins conceives of a postsecular politics for contemporary society that inextricably links religion to the political. While effectively recasting the tradition of radical theology as a political theology, this book also develops a comprehensive critique of the political theology bequeathed by Carl Schmitt. It marks an original and visionary achievement by the scholar the _Journal of the American Academy of Religion_ hailed "one of the best commentators on religion and postmodernism.". (shrink)

ExcerptModern mass democracy, in Carl Schmitt’s telling, is a “confused combination” of democracy and liberalism.1 Democracy is based on substantive equality, which is incompatible with the universal equality of liberalism. Even with such contrary principled foundations, “democracy and liberalism could be allied to each other for a time.” Yet “as soon as it achieves power, liberal democracy must decide between its elements.”2 For there can be “‘heterogeneity of purposes’” but “no heterogeneity of principles.”3.

Garber (1983) and Jeffrey (1991, 1995) have both proposed solutions to the old evidence problem. Jeffrey's solution, based on a new probability revision method called reparation, has been generalized to the case of uncertain old evidence and probabilistic new explanation in Wagner 1997, 1999. The present paper reformulates some of the latter work, highlighting the central role of Bayes factors and their associated uniformity principle, and extending the analysis to the case in which an hypothesis bears on a (...) countable family of evidentiary propositions. This extension shows that no Garber-type approach is capable of reproducing the results of generalized reparation. (shrink)

Additional results are reported on the author's earlier generalization of Richard Jeffrey's solution to the problem of old evidence and new explanation.

A simple rule of probability revision ensures that the final result ofa sequence of probability revisions is undisturbed by an alterationin the temporal order of the learning prompting those revisions.This Uniformity Rule dictates that identical learning be reflectedin identical ratios of certain new-to-old odds, and is grounded in the oldBayesian idea that such ratios represent what is learned from new experiencealone, with prior probabilities factored out. The main theorem of this paperincludes as special cases (i) Field's theorem on commuting probability-kinematical (...) revisions and (ii) the equivalence of two strategiesfor generalizing Jeffrey's solution to the old evidence problem tothe case of uncertain old evidence and probabilistic new explanation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Report from the Front Lines: Conversations on Public Theology. A Festschrift in Honor of Robert Benne, and: Explorations in Christian Theology and Ethics: Essays in Conversation with Paul L. LehmannJeffrey P. GreenmanA Report from the Front Lines: Conversations on Public Theology. A Festschrift in Honor of Robert Benne Edited by Michael Shahan Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009. 184 pp. $30.00.Explorations in Christian Theology and Ethics: Essays in (...) Conversation with Paul L. Lehmann Edited by Philip G. Ziegler and Michelle J. Bartel Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2009. 206 pp. $99.95.The volumes reviewed here each recognize an important thinker in Christian social ethics in America: Robert Benne, emeritus professor of religion at Roanoke College, a Lutheran social ethicist; and Paul L. Lehmann (1906–94), a Presbyterian who was an influential teacher associated with Princeton Theological Seminary, Harvard University Divinity School, and Union Theological Seminary in New York.The first volume honors Benne’s seventieth birthday. His major writings include The Ethic of Democratic Capitalism: A Moral Reassessment (1981), Ordinary Saints: An Introduction to the Christian Life (1988), The Paradoxical Vision: A Public Theology for the Twenty-First Century (1995), Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions (2001), and most recently, Good and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics (2010). Since Benne is known for his traditionalist moral views, some unmistakably conservative voices, including a number of prominent Lutherans and neoconservative political thinkers, are represented in this book. The broad theme is public theology, working from Benne’s definition of public theology as “the engagement of a living religious tradition with its public environment—the economic, political, and cultural spheres of our common life.”The book has three parts. The first section, “The Imperative of a Public Theology,” includes essays by editor Michael Shahan, Carl Braaten, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Richard John Neuhaus. Shahan’s essay provides a helpful exposition of Benne’s intellectual trajectory. Braaten offers a defense of the historic, bodily resurrection of Jesus as the “crux of Christianity’s case.” Elshtain takes [End Page 206] up C. S. Lewis’s concerns in his Abolition of Man (1944) as she diagnoses the “cultural disorder” reflected in current debates about euthanasia and abortion. Neuhaus’s wistful essay looks back over his efforts in the public square, stating that he and Benne have shared a common concern: “A renewal of Christian confidence in providing a morally informed philosophy for a more just and virtuous society in the tradition of liberal democracy” (47). Taken together, these four chapters sketch the assumed intellectual and cultural landscape that sets the context for the volume as a whole.The second section, “The Lutheran Necessity in Public Theology,” begins with a largely autobiographical essay by James Nuechterlein about his journey in Lutheranism and the value of its theological distinctives, especially the famous simul. Next is Gilbert Meilaender’s account (exploring an insight from Kierkegaard) of the place for a Lutheran “corrective” within the wider normative tradition, then Mark Noll’s chapter that underscores the value of robust Lutheran social thinking against the backdrop of the more revivalist and pietist tendencies of Protestant evangelicalism.The final section, “Contested Issues in Public Theology,” includes chapters by Paul Hinlicky, Ronald Thiemann, Gerald McDermott, Donald Schmeltekopf and Michael Beaty, and Joseph Swanson. The chapters by Hinlicky on Luther’s relation to liberal political theory, and by Thiemann on the idea of the public theologian’s prophetic role as “connected critic,” are the most densely argued material in the book. These two essays will probably be of the most interest for scholars in theological ethics. The chapter by McDermott deals with Lutheran church-related colleges. A coauthored essay by Schmeltekopf and Beaty champions the vocation of Christian university education. Swanson situates Benne’s economic writings within neo-conservative thought.The book takes up some of Benne’s favorite themes and interest areas, but only rarely do the authors engage Benne’s own thought. Virtually nowhere do they prod Benne to become clearer, to strengthen his arguments, or to modify his conclusions. I would have preferred a deeper engagement with Benne’s ideas; in several... (shrink)

Since its inception, experimental social psychology has arguably been of two minds about the nature and role of theory. Contemporary social psychology's experimental approach has been strongly informed by the “nomological-deductive” approach of Carl Hempel in tandem with the “hypothetico-deducive” approach of Karl Popper. Social psychology's commitment to this hybrid model of science has produced at least two serious obstacles to more fruitful theorizing about human experience: the problem of situational specificity, and the manifest impossibility of formulating meaningful general (...) laws of human social behavior. It is argued that a social psychology based on the search for this kind of lawfulness, under the auspices of either a strict or loose interpretation of the largely Hempelian model, is ultimately unworkable. An alternative approach to social psychology that is attentive both to the need for understanding individual situations and behaviors and to the need for generalized understanding of actual human behaviors is offered. This approach is grounded in the hermeneutic tradition. (shrink)

Gyenis and Rédei (G&R) have shown that any prior _p_ on a finite algebra _A_, however chosen, significantly restricts the set of posteriors derivable from _p_ by Jeffrey conditioning (JC) on a nontrivial measurable partition (i.e., a partition consisting of members of _A_, at least one of which is not an atom of _A_). They support this claim by proving that the set of potential posteriors _not derivable_ from _p_ in this way, which they call the _Bayes blind spot (...) of p_, is large, having cardinality _c_ and normalized Lebesgue measure 1, as well as being of second Baire category for a natural metrizable topology. In the present paper, we establish results analogous to those of G&R for probability measures on any infinite sigma algebra of subsets of a countably infinite set (which requires distinctly different treatments of the topological and measure-theoretic cases). We also show, in both the finite and infinite cases, that all of the limitative results for a single prior _p_ continue to hold for the intersection of the Bayes blind spots of countably many priors. This leads us to reject the claim of G&R that the large size of blind spots in the single prior case is attributable to the limitations imposed by priors. We argue instead that it is the so-called _rigidity property_ of JC that accounts for the large size of Bayes blind spots. G&R also prove that _any_ potential posterior _q_ can be derived from a prior _p_ by at most two applications of JC on nontrivial partitions. But they remark that their particular two-stage derivation of an \(r \in BS(p)\) from _p_ is barely distinguishable from a single, complete reassessment on a trivial partition. We show, however, that there are two-stage derivations of _r_ from _p_ that require no direct assessment of the probability of any atom at either stage. Finally, in order to situate the aforementioned limitative results in the proper context, we demonstrate that a probability revision that would amount to complete reassessment within a Jeffrey evidentiary framework may arise, in a different evidentiary framework, in a way that involves no direct assessment of the probability of any atom, as, for example, in a generalization of Jeffrey’s solution to the problem of old evidence and new explanation. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory focuses on how more value is created if stakeholder relationships are governed by ethical principles such as integrity, respect, fairness, generosity and inclusiveness. However, it has not adequately addressed strategies that stakeholders perceive as harmful to their interests and how this perception can even lead some stakeholders to view the firm’s strategies as unethical. To fill the void, this paper directly addresses strategies that stakeholders perceive as harmful to their interests, or what we refer to as harmful stakeholder (...) strategies. Specifically, it identifies factors associated with stakeholder perceptions of harm that are likely to cause them to consider a strategy unethical, examines the negative implications for firms that pursue such strategies in terms of likely stakeholder responses and damage to stakeholder relationships, and provides theory to help explain how firms are likely to respond to stakeholder claims that a strategy is unethical, based on factors such as the strategic importance of the claim to the firm, how long the strategy has been in use, the costs of remediation, the risk of stakeholder mobilization or new regulation, and whether firms can reasonably rationalize their actions. Assessing harm allows a firm to make a more accurate estimate of the costs of a strategy and can assist managers in allocating resources intended to reduce or remediate harm. (shrink)

This new selection of Thoreau’s essays traces his trajectory as a writer for the outlets of his day—the periodical press, newspapers, and compendiums—and as a frequent presenter on the local lecture circuit. By arranging the writings chronologically, the volume re-creates the experience of Thoreau’s readers as they followed his developing ideas over time. Jeffrey S. Cramer, award-winning editor of six previous volumes of works by Thoreau, offers the most accurate text available for each essay and provides convenient on-page annotations. (...) He establishes context and guides the reader through unfamiliar allusions and references, plumbing the depths of Thoreau’s writings with unprecedented insight. Among the essays in this book: · The Last Days of John Brown · Resistance to Civil Government [Civil Disobedience] · Thomas Carlyle and His Works · Natural History of Massachusetts · and many more. (shrink)

The stakeholder perspective has provided a rich forum for a variety of debates at the intersection of business and society. Scholars gathered for two consecutive years, first in North America, and then in Europe, to discuss the major issues surrounding what has come to be known as stakeholder theory, to attempt to find common ground, and to uncover areas in need of further inquiry. Those meetings led to a list of “tensions” and a call for papers for this special issue (...) to help address them. In this article, we introduce the resulting articles and provide some brief commentary on their importance. We end with a few of our own observations about the stakeholder perspective and stakeholder research. (shrink)

Data science, and the related field of big data, is an emerging discipline involving the analysis of data to solve problems and develop insights. This rapidly growing domain promises many benefits to both consumers and businesses. However, the use of big data analytics can also introduce many ethical concerns, stemming from, for example, the possible loss of privacy or the harming of a sub-category of the population via a classification algorithm. To help address these potential ethical challenges, this paper maps (...) and describes the main ethical themes that were identified via systematic literature review. It then identifies a possible structure to integrate these themes within a data science project, thus helping to provide some structure in the on-going debate with respect to the possible ethical situations that can arise when using data science analytics. (shrink)

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have had extraordinary successes in classifying photographic images of objects and are often described as the best models of biological vision. This conclusion is largely based on three sets of findings: (1) DNNs are more accurate than any other model in classifying images taken from various datasets, (2) DNNs do the best job in predicting the pattern of human errors in classifying objects taken from various behavioral datasets, and (3) DNNs do the best job in predicting (...) brain signals in response to images taken from various brain datasets (e.g., single cell responses or fMRI data). However, these behavioral and brain datasets do not test hypotheses regarding what features are contributing to good predictions and we show that the predictions may be mediated by DNNs that share little overlap with biological vision. More problematically, we show that DNNs account for almost no results from psychological research. This contradicts the common claim that DNNs are good, let alone the best, models of human object recognition. We argue that theorists interested in developing biologically plausible models of human vision need to direct their attention to explaining psychological findings. More generally, theorists need to build models that explain the results of experiments that manipulate independent variables designed to test hypotheses rather than compete on making the best predictions. We conclude by briefly summarizing various promising modeling approaches that focus on psychological data. (shrink)

How should the Bible be used in Christian ethics? Although this question has been addressed many times, little attention has gone to how the Bible actually has functioned in constructing theological ethics. In this book, Siker describes and analyzes the Bible's various uses in the theology and ethics of eight of the twentieth century's most important and influential Christian theologians: Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Bernhard Haring, Paul Ramsey, Stanley Hauerwas, Gustavo Gutierrez, James Cone, and Rosemary Radford Ruether. In approaching (...) each author, Siker organizes his study around five related questions. First, which biblical texts does each author in fact use, and, second, in what ways do they use these texts? How does each envision the authority of the Bible? What kind of hermeneutic does the author employ? Finally, what has each author's particular approach to the Bible yielded in terms of Christian Ethics, or, in other words, what are the practical results? Siker ends each chapter with a critical evaluation of the various problems and prospects for the author's use of Scripture, and concludes the study with a comparison and contrast of all the authors' respective appropriations of the Sermon on the Mount. (shrink)

Forgiving wrongdoers who neither apologized, nor sought to make amends in any way, is controversial. Even defenders of the practice agree with critics that such “unilateral” forgiveness involves giving up on the meaningful redress that victims otherwise justifiably demand from their wrongdoers: apology, reparations, repentance, and so on. Against that view, I argue here that when a victim of wrongdoing sets out to grant forgiveness to her offender, and he in turn accepts her forgiveness, he thereby serves some important ends (...) of apology and reparation, no matter what else he did—or did not do—by way of repair. Although much overlooked, the simple act of accepting forgiveness joins victim and offender in affirming and acting upon some important shared background assumptions, including many of those expressed in standard apologies. Perhaps more surprisingly, I argue that accepting forgiveness also fulfills the duty to counteract any concrete harm wrongfully inflicted. The argument helps explain some otherwise puzzling features of forgiveness, including that a victim can change her offender’s normative status, making him a less fitting target of the resentment, indignation and shunning of others, and even his own guilt pangs, simply by forgiving him. (shrink)

Entropy and information are both emerging as currencies of interdisciplinary dialogue, most recently in evolutionary theory. If this dialogue is to be fruitful, there must be general agreement about the meaning of these terms. That this is not presently the case owes principally to the supposition of many information theorists that information theory has succeeded in generalizing the entropy concept. The present paper will consider the merits of the generalization thesis, and make some suggestions for restricting both entropy and information (...) to specific arenas of discourse. (shrink)

The Securities and Exchange Commission requires publicly held US corporations to disclose all information, whether it is positive or negative, that might be relevant to an investor's decision to buy, sell, or hold a company's securities. The decisions made by corporate managers to disclose such information can significantly affect the judgments and decisions of investors. This paper examines academic accounting research on corporate managers' voluntary disclosures of earnings forecasts and non-GAAP earnings measures. Much of the evidence from this research indicates (...) that some managers engage in opportunistic disclosure behavior that often benefits one group (managers and shareholders) at the expense of other groups (often other investors). The paper concludes by discussing the ethical implications of this behavior. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the usefulness of the Machamer, Darden, and Craver (2000) mechanism approach to gaining an understanding of explanation in cognitive neuroscience. We argue that although the mechanism approach can capture many aspects of explanation in cognitive neuroscience, it cannot capture everything. In particular, it cannot completely capture all aspects of the content and significance of mental representations or the evaluative features constitutive of psychopathology.

Part of the accepted scholarly lore about Kierkegaard is that he holds that “existence”—human existence—and “the System” are mutually incompatible. For Kierkegaard, human being cannot be understood in terms of a nice, neat, complete systematic package; he shows, on this view, that the Hegelian attempt to grasp all of reality in terms of a philosophical system will always fail to grasp the reality of at least one thing: the concrete, living, existing individual human being.

A fundamental claim associated with parallel distributed processing theories of cognition is that knowledge is coded in a distributed manner in mind and brain. This approach rejects the claim that knowledge is coded in a localist fashion, with words, objects, and simple concepts, that is, coded with their own dedicated representations. One of the putative advantages of this approach is that the theories are biologically plausible. Indeed, advocates of the PDP approach often highlight the close parallels between distributed representations learned (...) in connectionist models and neural coding in brain and often dismiss localist theories as biologically implausible. The author reviews a range a data that strongly challenge this claim and shows that localist models provide a better account of single-cell recording studies. The author also contrast local and alternative distributed coding schemes and argues that common rejection of grandmother cell theories in neuroscience is due to a misunderstanding about how localist models behave. The author concludes that the localist representations embedded in theories of perception and cognition are consistent with neuroscience; biology only calls into question the distributed representations often learned in PDP models. (shrink)

Recent perspectives on community investments suggest that they are opportunities for firms to create value for shareholders and other stakeholders. However, many corporate managers are still influenced by a widely held belief that such investments erode profits and are therefore unjustifiable from an agency perspective. In this paper, we refine and test theory regarding countervailing forces that influence community-based firm performance. We hypothesize that high levels of available slack will be associated with higher community-based performance, but that this relationship will (...) be moderated by three important governance variables: board independence, investment fund ownership, and CEO ownership. We find support for our hypotheses in longitudinal study of a large sample of U.S. corporations. (shrink)

CRS(fc) denotes the variety of commutative residuated semilattice-ordered monoids that satisfy (x ⋀ e)k ≤ (x ⋀ e)k+1. A structural characterization of the subdi-rectly irreducible members of CRS(k) is proved, and is then used to provide a constructive approach to the axiomatization of varieties generated by positive universal subclasses of CRS(k).