In this paper, we are concerned with the preorderings (SS) and (BC) induced in the set of players of a simple game by the Shapley–Shubik and the Banzhaf–Coleman's indices, respectively. Our main result is a generalization of Tomiyama's 1987 result on ordinal power equivalence in simple games; more precisely, we obtain a characterization of the simple games for which the (SS) and the (BC) preorderings coincide with the desirability preordering (T), a concept introduced by Isbell (1958), and recently reconsidered by (...) Taylor (1995): this happens if and only if the game is swap robust, a concept introduced by Taylor and Zwicker (1993). Since any weighted majority game is swap robust, our result is therefore a generalization of Tomiyama's. Other results obtained in this paper say that the desirability relation keeps itself in all the veto-holder extensions of any simple game, and so does the (SS) preordering in all the veto-holder extensions of any swap robust simple game. (shrink)

We study political influence in institutions where each member chooses a level of support for a collective goal. These individual choices determine the degree to which the goal is reached. Influence is assessed by newly defined binary relations, each of which ranks members on the basis of their relative performance at a corresponding level of participation. For institutions with three options (e.g., voting games in which each voter may vote “yes”, “abstain”, or vote “no”), we obtain three influence relations, and (...) show that their strict components may be cyclic. This latter property describes a “paradox of power” which contrasts with the transitivity of the unique influence relation of binary voting games. Weak conditions of anonymity suffice for each of these relations to be transitive. We also obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for each of these relations to be complete. Further, we characterize institutions in which the rankings induced by these relations, and the Banzhaf–Coleman and Shapley–Shubik power indices coincide. We argue that extending the influence relations to firms would be useful in efficiently assigning workers to different units of production. Finally, we provide applications to various forms of political and economic organizations. (shrink)

Previous work by Diffo Lambo and Moulen [Theory and Decision 53, 313–325 (2002)] and Felsenthal and Machover [The Measurement of Voting Power, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited (1998)], shows that all swap preserving measures of voting power are ordinally equivalent on any swap robust simple voting game. Swap preserving measures include the Banzhaf, the Shapley–Shubik and other commonly used measures of a priori voting power. In this paper, we completely characterize the achievable hierarchies for any such measure on a (...) swap robust simple voting game. Each possible hierarchy can be induced by a weighted voting game and we provide a constructive proof of this result. In particular, the strict hierarchy is always achievable as long as there are at least five players. (shrink)

The dispute about the role of class in understanding the life situations of people of color has tended to be overpolarized, between a class reductionism and an “it's only race” position. Class processes shape racial groups’ life situations. Race and class are also distinct axes of injustice; but class injustice informs racial injustice. Some aspects of racial injustice can be expressed only in concepts associated with class (e.g., material deprivation, inferior education). But other aspects of racial injustice or other harms, (...) such as racial discrimination or stigma, are not reducible to class concepts and cannot be fully addressed through class-focused policies. Overall, any attempt to fully secure racial justice for a racial group will require a combination of race-focused and class-focused policies. Anti-racist outlooks often neglect or downplay either the normative or the explanatory significance of class, or both—for example, by overlooking or downplaying the dignitary harms of class and the material harms of race; missing the historical dimension of class injustice; masking class by a narrowing of the complex normative structure of racial disparities; or not recognizing that a class-focused initiative (like raising the minimum wage) can address substantial racial justice concerns, even though not all of them. “Systemic racism” terminology recognizes class explanatorily but suppresses it normatively. Charles Mills's influential notion of “white supremacy,” while a powerful tool for conceptualizing and illuminating racial injustice, can also contribute to minimizing or masking the justice-related impact of class, as do some of Mills's specific discussions of class in various writings. (shrink)

The relationship between knowledge, belief, and ethics is an inaugural theme in philosophy; more recently, under the title “ethics of belief” philosophers have worked to develop the appropriate methodology for studying the nexus of epistemology, ethics, and psychology. The title “ethics of belief” comes from a 19th-century paper written by British philosopher and mathematician W.K. Clifford. Clifford argues that we are morally responsible for our beliefs because each belief that we form creates the cognitive circumstances for related beliefs to follow, (...) and we inevitably influence each other through those beliefs. This study argues that recent cognitive research supports Cliffordian insights regarding patterns of belief formation and social influence. From the confirmation offered by such research, it follows that informational accuracy holds serious ethical significance in public discourse. Although scientific and epistemological matters are not always thought to be linked to normative morality, this study builds on Clifford's initial insights to show their linkage is fundamental to inquiry itself. In turn, Clifford's ethical and epistemic outline can inform a framework grounded in “public reason” under which seemingly opposed science communication strategies are philosophically united. With public discourse on climate change as the key example, empirically informed and grounded strategies for science communication in the public sphere are considered. (shrink)

This book is a succinct introduction to the orienting of attention.

I argue that hunting is not a sport, but a neo-traditional cultural trophic practice consistent with ecological ethics, including a meliorist concern for animal rights or welfare. Death by hunter is on average less painful than death in wild nature. Hunting achieves goods, including trophic responsibility, ecological expertise and a unique experience of animal inter-dependence. Hunting must then be not only permissible but morally good wherever: a) preservation of ecosystems or species requires hunting as a wildlife management tool; and/or b) (...) its animal deaths per unit of nutrition is lower than that caused by farming practices. Both conditions obtain at least some of the time. (shrink)

Developing a Center for Teaching Excellence: A Case Study Using the Integrated Readiness Matrix builds on the 2015 text, Integrating Pedagogy and Technology: Improving Teaching and Learning in Higher Education with a focus on teaching in higher education. Developing a Center for Teaching Excellence is premised on our contention in the first book that, while individual faculty members can independently begin to use the IRM to improve their pedagogical and technological skills in their content areas, an organizational structure is needed (...) to sustain ongoing improvement. In addition, while the first book provided a primer on learning theory as it relates to pedagogy, Developing a Center for Teaching Excellence plumbs this topic more deeply from the perspective of the college instructor. Further, the second book is dedicated to demonstrating how the IRM can be institutionalized as the foundation for providing the structure and support to faculty and how they can help shape centers for teaching excellence by becoming more familiar with relevant learning theories and related pedagogical and technological approaches. (shrink)

We live in an age defined in large part by various facets of neoliberalism. In particular, the market world has impinged on virtually every aspect of food and agriculture. Moreover, most nation-states and many international governance bodies incorporate aspects of neoliberal perspectives. Multi-stakeholder initiatives, with their own standards, certifications, and accreditations are evidence of both the continuing hegemony of neoliberalism as well as various responses to it. Importantly, to date even attempts to limit neoliberal hegemony through MSIs have been largely (...) within the parameters established by those same neoliberal agendas. However, neoliberalism is itself in crisis as a result of climate change, the continuing financial crisis, and rising food prices. The founding myths of neoliberalism are still widely held, having the effect of closing off alternative paths to the future. Yet, this need not be the case. Alternatives to the current MSIs that promote justice, democracy, and equality can still be constructed. (shrink)

I critically explore various forms of the language of thought (LOT) hypothesis. Many considerations, including the complexity of representational content and the systematicity of language understanding, support the view that some, but not all, of our mental representations occur in a language. I examine several arguments concerning sententialism and the propositional attitudes, Fodor's arguments concerning infant and animal thought, and Fodor's argument for radical concept nativism and show that none of these considerations require us to postulate a LOT that is (...) innate or otherwise distinct from spoken languages. Instead, I suggest that we maintain the more conservative hypothesis, supported by introspection, that some of our thoughts occur in the languages that we speak. (shrink)

Selection pressure from health risk is hypothesized to have shaped adaptations motivating individuals to attempt to become valued by other individuals by generously and recurrently providing beneficial goods and/or services to them because this strategy encouraged beneficiaries to provide costly health care to their benefactors when the latter were sick or injured. Additionally, adaptations are hypothesized to have co-evolved that motivate individuals to attend to and value those who recurrently provide them with important benefits so they are willing in turn (...) to provide costly care when a valued person is disabled or in dire need. Individuals in egalitarian foraging bands can provide a number of valuable benefits, such as defense, diplomacy, food, healing, information, technical skill, or trading savvy. We therefore expect that humans have evolved psychological mechanisms motivating the pursuit and cultivation of a difficult-to-replace social role based on the provisioning of a benefit that confers a fitness advantage on its recipients. We call this phenomenon social niche specialization. One such niche that has been well-documented is meat-sharing. Here we present cross-cultural evidence that individuals cultivate two other niches, information and tool production, that serve (among other things) to buffer health risk. (shrink)

In the last decade the systems approach to agricultural research has begun to subsume the older reductionist approaches. However, proponents of the systems approach often accept without critical examination a number of features that were inherited from previously accepted approaches. In particular, supporters of the systems approach frequently ignore the ironies and tragedies that are a part of all human endeavors. They may also fail to consider that all actual systems are temporally and spatially bounded. By incorporating such features into (...) a systems perspective, it becomes possible to consider them as involving the manipulation of things, the reconstruction of institutions, and the reformulation of policies in accordance with democratic goals and objectives as part of a single web of interrelationships. (shrink)

Now available in an updated addition: ""Integrating concepts of time derived from the physical sciences and world religions, "The Becoming of Time" examines ...

Various authors insist that some body of natural phenomena are legitimately describable or explainable only on one level of description, and would disqualify any description not confined to that level. None offers an acceptable definition explicitly. I extract such a definition I find implicit in the work of two such authors, J.J. Gibson and Hubert Dreyfus, and modify the result to render it more defensible philosophically. I also criticize the definition Shaw and Turvey offer, demonstrate some applications of my definition, (...) and try to forestall certain misunderstandings of those presuppositions and that definition. (shrink)

Wikipedia has challenged traditional notions about the roles of experts in the Internet Age. Section 1 sets up a paradox. Wikipedia is a striking popular success, and yet its success can be attributed to the fact that it is wide open and bottom-up. How can such a successful knowledge project disdain expertise? Section 2 discusses the thesis that if Wikipedia could be shown by an excellent survey of experts to be fantastically reliable, then experts would not need to be granted (...) positions of special authority. But, among other problems, this thesis is self-stultifying. Section 3 explores a couple ways in which egalitarian online communities might challenge the occupational roles or the epistemic leadership roles of experts. There is little support for the notion that the distinctive occupations that require expertise are being undermined. It is also implausible that Wikipedia and its like might take over the epistemic leadership roles of experts. Section 4 argues that a main reason that Wikipedia’s articles are as good as they are is that they are edited by knowledgeable people to whom deference is paid, although voluntarily. But some Wikipedia articles suffer because so many aggressive people drive off people more knowledgeable than they are; so there is no reason to think that Wikipedia’s articles will continually improve. Moreover, Wikipedia’s commitment to anonymity further drives off good contributors. Generally, some decisionmaking role for experts is not just consistent with online knowledge communities being open and bottom-up, it is recommended as well. (shrink)

Using U.S. Department of Justice data on state-level political corruption, we find that, consistent with the Harmful Corruption Environment Hypothesis (HCEH), firms situated in states with higher levels of corruption incur higher costs of equity (CoEs). These results are robust for additional controls, propensity score matching, use of instrumental variables, exogenous shocks, and alternate measures for main dependent and primary independent research variables. Our study extends the stream of literature that investigates the influence of local ethical or trust factors on (...) CoE and complements works by El Ghoul and colleagues and Gupta and colleagues. (shrink)

The Clash of Economic Ideas interweaves the economic history of the last hundred years with the history of economic doctrines to understand how contrasting economic ideas have originated and developed over time to take their present forms. It traces the connections running from historical events to debates among economists, and from the ideas of academic writers to major experiments in economic policy. The treatment offers fresh perspectives on laissez faire, socialism and fascism; the Roaring Twenties, business cycle theories and the (...) Great Depression; Institutionalism and the New Deal; the Keynesian Revolution; and war, nationalization and central planning. After 1945, the work explores the postwar revival of invisible-hand ideas; economic development and growth, with special attention to contrasting policies and thought in Germany and India; the gold standard, the interwar gold-exchange standard, the postwar Bretton Woods system and the Great Inflation; public goods and public choice; free trade versus protectionism; and finally fiscal policy and public debt. (shrink)

A research professor of nuclear physics explores the mysterious essence of time in its two aspects---one of accurate measurement, the other of human sensation-- ...

The work of justus buchler is used to critique and to suggest a reformulation of certain ideas in jurgen habermas's "theory of communicative action", Most especially his analysis of modernity in terms of the conflict between "lifeworld" and "system." the difficulties of this dualistic analysis are examined. A buchlerian "pluralistic" alternative is suggested, For which the pathologies of modernity are attributed, Not to the dominance of the system, But to the condition of dominance "per se", That is, The reduction of (...) effective plurality. (shrink)

This is a critique of Peirce, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Buchler, Derrida, and Rorty as anti-realists, showing that each of these philosophers affirms some form of self-undermining relativism that cannot account for itself.

The course of Western philosophy has been profoundly altered by the philosophy of Hegel. The first of those who set about the transforming and revisioning of the world according to Hegel's dialectical theory were called "The Young Hegelians." Today, the most recognized names among them are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but in their own age each of the Young Hegelians shared an equal notoriety. Each in turn, from Strauss with his reduction of the historical jesus into a Messianic myth, (...) to Stirner with his uncompromising egoism, shocked every cultural convention of their age. The aftershocks of their unrestrained criticism have forever altered the topography of our own. The Young Hegelians retrieves some of the central writings of that troubling generation. (shrink)

Paisley Livingston here addresses contemporary controversies over the role of "theory" within the humanistic disciplines. In the process, he suggests ways in which significant modern texts in the philosophy of science relate to the study of literature. Livingston first surveys prevalent views of theory, and then proposes an alternative: theory, an indispensable element in the study of literature, should be understood as a Cogently argued and informed in its judgments, this book points the way to a fuller understanding of the (...) special contribution that literary knowledge may make within the human sciences. (shrink)

In order to understand the animal rights movement as it exists today in American society, it is necessary to explore the ways in which the beliefs of those who support the movement differ from the beliefs of their adversaries. Societal views generally determine the perceived differences and similarities between people and animals, and the issues surrounding these differences are fundamental to the animal rights controversy.