As scientists begin to study increasingly complex questions, many have turned to computer simulation to assist in their inquiry. This methodology has been challenged by both analytic modelers and experimentalists. A primary objection of analytic modelers is that simulations are simply too complicated to perform model verification. From the experimentalist perspective it is that there is no means to demonstrate the reality of simulation. The aim of this paper is to consider objections from both of these perspectives, and to argue (...) that a proper understanding and application of robustness analysis is able to resolve them. ‡The author would like to thank Cristina Bicchieri, Michelle Foa, Paul Humphreys and Michael Weisberg for their helpful comments and suggestions. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 433 Logan Hall, 249 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104-6304; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of the escalation in institutional inves power and heterogeneity for two dominant theories of corporate governanceagency theory and stakeholder theory. From this analysis, a new view of the agency relationship between institutional investors and their portfolio firms emerges, which recognizes the institutions’ market power, complex role as financial intermediaries, and possible involvement in simultaneous and opposing agency contracts. We also conclude that stakeholder theorists should reconsider these newly empowered shareholders’moral standing in relation to their portfolio (...) firms, and they should reexamine the identities and goals of these modern investors. To that end, we demonstrate that a novel, intragroup application of Mitchell, Agle, and Wood’s stakeholder framework to heterogeneous institutional investors illuminates their varying levels of stakeholder salience. (shrink)

This quantitative study of 3557 high school teachers from 44 states assesses the implications of the social studies teacher-coach. The study compares social studies teacher-coaches and non-coaches in terms of teacher demographics and school contexts, disciplines taught, and instructional preferences. Substantial differences between coaches and non-coaches were found across gender, community type, and teaching experiences. Teacher-coaches disproportionately taught general classes such as government, Economics, and Geography, while non-coaches are more likely to teach Advanced Placement courses. Finally, self-report data measuring teacher's (...) instructional preferences indicates that teacher-coaches were more likely to indicate implementation of lectures, textbooks, worksheets, and videos, while non-coaches were more likely to indicate preference for examining photographs, artifacts, or primary materials. (shrink)

Some interpreters have ascribed to Wittgenstein the view that mathematical statements must have an application to extra-mathematical reality in order to have use and so any statements lacking extra-mathematical applicability are not meaningful (and hence not bona fide mathematical statements). Pure mathematics is then a mere signgame of questionable objectivity, undeserving of the name mathematics. These readings bring to light that, on Wittgenstein’s offered picture of mathematical statements as rules of description, it can be difficult to see the role of (...) mathematical statements which relate to concepts that are not employed in empirical propositions e.g. set-theoretic concepts. I will argue that Wittgenstein’s picture is more flexible than might at first be thought and that Wittgenstein sees such statements as serving purposes not directly related to empirical description. Whilst this might make such systems fringe cases of mathematics, it does not bring their legitimacy as mathematical systems into question. (shrink)

Far from feeling a need to leave their brains at the door of the church, as contemporary Christians may feel is asked of them, the suggestion is that the development of our intellect is central to human growth into the image and likeness of God."--P. [4], cover.

A decade before Foucault began to work with the related concepts of biopolitics and biopower, Gellner posed a series of questions which are suggestive of a similar line of inquiry. Gellner did not pursue this strand of his thought as an historical sociologist however. Instead he packaged it into a functionalist account of how industrial society reproduces itself. In Gellner’s writings, biopolitics is both present and absent, like a redacted text. This is the focus of this article, which locates Gellner’s (...) method of inquiry within a corpus of genealogical studies that includes the work of Polanyi, Weber and Foucault. What distinguishes Gellner is that the history he reconstructs is a story of achievement in the face of terrible historical odds, but this culminates in a normative genealogy that limits the scope for critical analysis. The article concludes by adopting an alternative – yet still Gellnerian – approach to the question of social reproduction, thereby using Gellner to critique Gellner. (shrink)

All insects appear to have a transport lipoprotein in the hemolymph (blood) that is responsible for moving hydrophobic materials through aqueous compartments. This has been called lipophorin because it is believed to be a reversible transport shuttle. Since most insects undergo some degree of metamorphosis from larval stages to the adult, the need to transport hydrophobic materials or the nature of these materials may change in the course of the life span. This is especially marked in the case of the (...) holometabolous insects – those which undergo drastic change of form, e.g. caterpillar‐pupa‐adult moth. We have found that lipophorin undergoes a molecular metamorphosis paralleling that of the insect. (shrink)

Although Justice Scalia purported to be driven by originalism and precedent, his opinions in three education cases—Grutter v. Bollinger, Parents Involved v. Seattle School District, and United States v. Virginia —tell a different tale. In these cases, his arguments are difficult to defend on originalist grounds and, surprisingly, Justice Scalia himself makes no attempt to do so. Similarly, his views are difficult to square with precedent. It is hard to escape the conclusion that, in some of his most noteworthy cases (...) related to education, Justice Scalia was as results-oriented as the justices and judges he loved to criticize. (shrink)

CUA Press proudly announces the reissue of 32 titles from this internationally acclaimed series. These long-unavailable titles, which cover all aspects of philosophy, will be published in paperback and ebook formats. Authors include renowned philosophers such as Ralph McInerny, Robert Sokolowski, and John Wippel.

If spacetime does not exist, it does so in a very unusual way. It curves in response to massive objects. It warps in response to high velocities. The Substance of Spacetime treats spacetime, not merely as a geometric abstraction, but as a real physical substance, opening a window onto reality that would otherwise be impossible to even contemplate.

Arts-Based Thought Experiments is a highly visual offering that engages visual arts, photography, poetry, creative non-fiction, memoir and speculative fiction. In this novel book, the authors lean deeply into concepts of the imaginary, and through artful experiments with thought, trouble the tensions between the human, the posthuman and the more than human. In the Anthropocene, with its intractable challenges and cataclysms, engaging posthuman positions when thinking of learning in socioecological terms is paramount to human survival. In this sense, the arts (...) offer creative and critical thought for the possibilities of a post-Anthropocene earth. Contributors are: Raoul Adam, Marilyn Ahearn, William Boyd, Euan Boyd, Adrienne Brown, Shae L. Brown, Teresa Carapeto, Philemon Chigeza, Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, David Ellis, Katie Hotko, Marianne Logan, Ferdousi Khatun, Alexandra Lasczik, Yaw Ofosu-Asare, Maia Osborn, Marie-Laurence Paquette, Jemma Peisker, Ziah Peisker, Adrienne Piscopo, David Rousell, Benjamin Ryan, Billy Ryan, Lisa Siegal, Helen Widdop Quinton, Thilinika Wijesinghe and Tracy Young. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to link aspects of Kierkegaard’s experimental writings with new contemporary ecological perspectives which—in the act of interpenetration—are fusing philosophy, science, literature, anthropology, political thought, new economic perspectives, and visual and sound media, in order to open up new ways to live and flourish on a damaged planet—in our “age of disintegration.” I present Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of his time as “the age of disintegration” (from 1848) as something that can be connected to the contemporary socio-political conditions (...) in late modernity, and to the new epoch on the horizon which we are now experiencing. I interpret Kierkegaard’s expression “out into the middle of life” as the kernel of Kierkegaard’s authorship of interruption and unsettling. I argue it can be implicitly included in aspects of ecological perspectives offered by innovative writers today. (shrink)

Review of Joel Faflak. Romantic Psychoanalysis: The Burden of the Mystery. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. 333 pages; paper $29.95. ISBN 978-0-7914-7269-0.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sharing God’s Company: A Theology of the Communion of Saints by David Matzko McCarthyMark RyanSharing God’s Company: A Theology of the Communion of Saints By David Matzko McCarthy GRAND RAPIDS: WILLIAM B. EERDMANS, 2012. 182 PP. $28.00What is the meaning of “communion” as it occurs in Christian references to the “Communion of Saints”? It clearly implies a particular social bond, but of what sort? David Matzko McCarthy observes (...) that recent attempts to account [End Page 192] for the saints and Christians’ relations with them tend to thin out the meaning of communion. Modern approaches turn saints into exemplars intended to inspire us as we live within egalitarian, leveled societies, whereas postmodern approaches turn the lives of the saints into texts, subject to interpretive play. In both approaches the possibility of real relationship is left behind as the saints become subservient to our modern sensibilities. What McCarthy seeks to revive is substantial, real relationships with saints that can draw us out of ourselves.In chapters 1 and 2 McCarthy uses the family to indicate the strong bonds signified by the Communion of Saints (COS)—bonds that respond to our “social desire.” The COS extends such kinship across time and space, without banishing ordinary time and particular places. Yet the kind of social tie embodied in the COS has been rendered a problem by our modern biases with regard to knowledge, representation, and social life—in short, our sense of reality. If we are to enrich our participation in the COS, McCarthy implies, we must work the metaphysical ground to make it a little more hospitable to the lives of the saints. The remaining chapters consider how the reality embodied in the COS challenges modern sensibilities with regard to what is real. They do so by allowing literary and visual representations of the saints—in hagiography, scripture, statues, and painting—to interrogate modern forms of representation and the assumptions about reality and time that underlie these forms.McCarthy uses Beverly Donofrio’s Looking for Mary to exemplify the trajectory of his book. Donofrio weaves together her own life and her pilgrimage to Medjugorge with the story of Mary from the Annunciation to the present day. Of particular importance, she narrates a transformation whereby her personal stories are engrafted into the life of Mary, rather than the other way around. In this, her story illustrates how Mary becomes the key agent in de-centering the author’s life as an autonomous agent, and resituating it in the COS with Mary as her patron and route. It shows the difference between an approach to the saints that domesticates them for use in our world and one where we surrender and become part of theirs.McCarthy’s previous work is notable for its concern with family and neighborhood as the practical context, or “home,” for the Christian life. In this book, “the question of home goes deeper. Does our life together here and now have any connection to the course of things and to life as a whole?” (8) In his introduction to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Moral Theology, which he edits, he mapped out the terrain of moral theology between “hyper-enchantment,” which seeks a magic bullet for modern ills, and impersonal mechanism, which posits a “nature” abstracted from human meanings. In this book, he begins to present a fuller vision of this terrain in the form of a kinship that stretches across time and place. As he writes, “The saints and their lives embody an [End Page 193] incarnational reality; they populate the borderlands between the future and now, there and here, and heaven and earth. … They bring ordinary life and people into a real experience of communitas” (53).The book is relevant to Christian ethics, then, because of its account of what we want most, and the moral ecology in which such desire could be at home. It is tempting to treat the COS as an optional “extra” to be added to the “factory model” of moral goodness in the Christian life. McCarthy’s exceptional gift is displayed in showing us how ordinary and basic is our desire to be part... (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have shown renewed interest about the ways in which Paul’s letters utilize divine conflict traditions. In Romans 5–8 and 16:20a Paul frames the human predicament in terms of cosmic conflict and adapts divine conflict traditions, but other passages also reflect the apostle’s adaptations of these motifs. This essay will first consider the broad contours of portrayals of God as warrior in Israel’s Scriptures. Discussion will then focus on vocabulary and themes in Rom 1:18–32 and 11:25–32 to (...) demonstrate that in these texts Paul also works with images related to divine conflict. Considering these passages from Romans alongside the divine conflict traditions of earlier voices–especially the Israelite prophets–assists in understanding Paul’s comments on wrath and judgment and assists in understanding Paul’s comments on wrath, judgment, and deliverance. (shrink)

Objections that the New Reproductive Technologies pose temptations to "play God" are common. This essay examines three versions of the objection: 1) these technologies "usurp God's dominion in reproduction"; 2) they permit us to "make" our offspring; and 3) they involve us in a denial of human finitude. None proves to generate a decisive case against the New Reproductive Technologies; each requires some further argument to be persuasive. Nonetheless, warnings not to "play God" are shown to have an important parenetic (...) function in the debate over medically-assisted reproduction, occasioning needed reflection on the meaning of creatureliness, finitude and responsible co-creation in the context of new forms of reproduction. Keywords: medically-assisted reproduction, New Reproductive Technologies, divine authority, "playing God." CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)