We conduct an experiment to investigate the degree to which deviations from exponential discounting can be accounted for by the hypothesis of hyperbolic discounting. Subjects are asked to choose between an earlier or later payoff in a series of 40 choice questions. Each question consists of a pair of monetary amounts determined by compounding a given base amount at a constant rate per period. Two bases (8 and 20 dollars), three compounding rates (low, medium and high) and three delays (2, (...) 4, and 6 weeks) are each used. There are also 2 initial periods (Today and 2 weeks) and there are two separate questionnaires, one with lower “realistic” compounding rates and the other with higher compounding rates, typical of those used in previous studies. We analyze the detailed patterns of choice in 6 groups of 6 related questions each (in which the base and rate is fixed but the initial period and delay varies), documenting the frequency of patterns consistent with exponential discounting and with hyperbolic discounting. We find that exponential discounting is the clear modal choice pattern in virtually all cases. Hyperbolic discounting is never the modal pattern (except in the sense that constant discounting is a special case of hyperbolic discounting). We also estimate a linear probability model that takes account of individual heterogeneity. The estimates show substantial increases in the probability of choosing the later option when the compounding rate increases, as one would expect. There are small, sometimes significant, increases in this probability when the delay is increased or the initial period is in the future. Such behavior is consistent with hyperbolic discounting, but can account for only a small proportion of choices. Overall, deviations from exponential discounting appear to be due to error, or to other effects not accounted for by hyperbolic discounting. Principal among these is an increase in later choices when the base is larger. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a series of experiments examining intertemporal choice. The paper makes three contributions: First, it presents a new analytic device, the intertemporal choice triangle, which is analogous to the Marschak--Machina choice triangle used in the analysis of choice under risk. Second, we have developed a new experimental design based on the intertemporal choice triangle which allows subjects greater flexibility in making choices, and which allows the researcher to make more subtle inferences, than are possible with (...) designs previously employed. Subjects are able to create their most-preferred outcome in each choice situation by choosing a constrained linear combination of two extreme options. Third, our results show that while subjects do not typically maximize present value, they are significantly influenced break by present value considerations. We refer to this finding as it present value-seeking behavior. We find only weak evidence of several previously documented intertemporal choice anomalies in our framework. (shrink)

We report results of an experiment testing for present-value maximization in intertemporal income choice. Two-thirds of subjects did not maximize present value. Through a series of experimental manipulations that impose costs on non-present value maximizers, we are able to reduce the level of violations substantially. We find, however, that a sizeable proportion of subjects continue to systematically violate present-value principles. Our interpretation is that these subjects either cannot or choose not to distinguish between t income and t expenditure in making (...) their choices. Self-management, bounded rationality, and sequence preference are suggested as possible explanations for such behavior. (shrink)

Analogies between biological and cultural evolution may be illuminating and suggest methods to pursue in the quest for a unified science of cultural evolution. Significant progress, however, is unlikely to be made by trying to fit cultural evolution neatly into a biological evolution schema. A key element defining and differentiating cultural evolution may be the role of conscious human choices. (Published Online November 9 2006).

This essay introduces a running symposium on the work of Richard Rorty and its legacy fifteen years after his passing. The arc of Rorty's thought defines a trajectory through American pragmatism, tracing a variation unimagined until he expressed it. His work raised Anglophone philosophers’ interest in American pragmatism as never before and also focused the interest of the whole world on American pragmatism as never before, even though the result was to define a pragmatism saturated with nominalism and suppressing the (...) most original qualities of the sources that he celebrated. (shrink)

Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with DonaldDavidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates inorder to account for several of the more puzzling features of ...

Since the 1970s Barry Stroud has been one of the most original contributors to the philosophical study of human knowledge. This volume presents the best of Stroud's essays in this area. Throughout, he seeks to clearly identify the question that philosophical theories of knowledge are meant to answer, and the role scepticism plays in making sense of that question. In these seminal essays, he suggests that people pursuing epistemology need to concern themselves with whether philosophical scepticism is true or (...) false. Stroud's discussion of these fundamental questions is essential reading for anyone whose work touches on the subject of human knowledge. (shrink)

Suppose you perform two actions. The first imposes a risk of harm that, on its own, would be excessive; but the second reduces the risk of harm by a corresponding amount. By pairing the two actions together to form a set of actions that is risk-neutral, can you thereby make your overall course of conduct permissible? This question is theoretically interesting, because the answer is apparently: sometimes Yes, sometimes No. It is also practically important, because it bears on the moral (...) status of practices such as offsetting personal greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this article we propose a criterion for distinguishing between cases where pairing risk-increasing and risk-reducing actions makes each action permissible, and those where it does not: the Principle of Aggregate Risk-Imposition. We work towards this by considering a range of examples that illustrate various illegitimate ways of pairing risk-increasing actions with risk-reducing ones, and asking what goes wrong in each case. We then use this criterion to evaluate GHG offsetting. Is offsetting a legitimate way of removing the risk-imposition associated with GHG emissions, or not? Controversially, we argue that this turns out to depend on the form that the offsetting takes. (shrink)

Samuel Butler is usually remembered for Erewhon, widely considered among the best English satires. He also contributed to philosophical biology in works that collectively compose the nineteenth century's finest statement of the evolutionary argument associated with the name of Lamarck. In writing on evolution, Butler was not presenting science for a popular audience but deliberately intervening in the scientific argument about Darwinism. Surprised by the success of his first venture in philosophical biology, Life and Habit, Butler committed himself to the (...) project of developing an alternative to Darwinism, which he did in three additional volumes, and these are the works canvassed in this “delayed book review.”. (shrink)

Meaning, Understanding, and Practice is a selection of the most notable essays of leading contemporary philosopher Barry Stroud on a set of topics central to analytic philosophy. In this collection, Stroud offers penetrating studies of meaning, understanding, necessity, and the intentionality of thought. Throughout he asks how much can be expected from a philosophical account of one's understanding of the meaning of something, and questions whether such an account can succeed without implying that the person understands many other things (...) as well. Most of the essays work with ideas derived from Wittgenstein, and five of the essays focus specifically on Wittgenstein's philosophy. Stroud's helpful introduction draws out the recurring themes he pursues and explains how his ideas and aims have developed over the years. (shrink)

This review focuses on the Ogdoas scholastica by Jacob Lorhard, published in 1606. The importance of this document turns on the fact that it contains what is almost certainly the first published occurrence of the term “ontology.” The body of the work consists in a series of diagrams called “diagraphs.” Relevant features of this compendium of diagraphs are: 1. that it does not in fact contain the word “ontology,” and 2. that Lorhard himself was not responsible for its content.

Without doubt Michel Foucault was one of the 20th century's towering intellectuals. His work on organization of knowledge, sexuality, power, discipline, medicine, madness, identity, and politics has left an idelible mark on contemporary thinking in these fields. Edited by one of the world's most distinguished Foucault scholars, Barry Smart, this collection sets Foucault's work in the the appropriate historical and intellectual context by orgaizing the material thematically with introductions that quide the reader through the complexities of the essays. These (...) volumes will be essential reading wherever the work of Foucault is debated and applied. (shrink)

This paper examines three approaches to the relationship between our moral reasons to bear costs for others’ sake before and beyond the call of duty. Symmetry holds that you are required to optimise your beneficial sacrifices even when they are genuinely supererogatory. If you are required to bear a cost C for the sake of a benefit B, when they are the only costs and benefits at stake, you are also conditionally required to bear an additional cost C, for the (...) sake of an additional benefit B, when enough other costs and benefits are at stake that both of your alternatives are presumptively supererogatory. Disconnection rejects the requirement to optimise when your options are presumptively supererogatory and maintains that you have an entirely free hand to choose as you will among them. Asymmetry holds that when acting beyond the call of duty you are entitled to a measure of additional freedom compared to when you are not taking on supererogatory costs—you can prioritise your own well-being and reasons to a greater degree—but places constraints on the options that you may permissibly choose. We defend a version of Asymmetry and explore its implications for recent debates on charitable giving. (shrink)

The idea that truth is eternal is an old one in philosophy, and I do not propose to survey its history here. Yet a sketch of the historical context is useful for my main purpose, which is to discuss the theme of truth and temporality in Martin Heidegger and Richard Rorty. Although both philosophers repudiate eternal truth, their reasons for doing so are different, and this difference reveals a probably irreconcilable opposition between Heidegger and the Pragmatist.

ABSTRACT We have previously argued that there are forms of greenhouse gas offsetting for which, when one emits and offsets, one imposes no risk. Orri Stefansson objects that our argument fails to distinguish properly between the people who stand to be harmed by one’s emissions and the people who stand to be benefited by one’s offsetting. We reply by emphasizing the difference between acting with a probability of making a difference to the distribution of harm and acting in a way (...) that worsen’s someone’s prospect. (shrink)

This essay is a response to Luis M. Augusto’s intriguing paper on the rift between mainstream and formal ontology. I will show that there are in fact two questions at issue here: 1. concerning the links between mainstream and formal approaches within philosophy, and 2. concerning the application of philosophy (and especially philosophical ontology) in support of information-driven research for example in the life sciences.

Carnap apparently never mentions August Comte’s name in his writings. Not that that is unusual. He seldom discusses individuals, or historical references of any sort. But you cannot evade context, and nothing comes from nothing. Merely allowing the name of “logical positivist” makes Comte a context for Carnap, which is hardly inappropriate, since Comte practically invented the idea of a “philosophy of science.” We can learn about the positivist mentality (for instance, how it is still with us) by searching out (...) the commonalities of positivism from Comte to Carnap. -/- Nietzsche and Heidegger are more explicit contexts for Carnap, as he refers to them and passes judgment on their work, especially in his 1931 paper, “Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache.” Appearing in the logical-positivist organ Erkenntnis, it announces the “elimination” or “overcoming” of metaphysics by logical analysis, and became a foundational metaphilosophical text for what has come to be called “analytic” philosophy. -/- By setting Carnap in these three contexts—his positivism, his polemic with Heidegger, his reading of Nietzsche—I shall expose the presuppositions and intellectual limitations of Carnap’s approach to philosophy. Misreadings abound whenever he mentions Nietzsche or Heidegger, misreadings used to support the metaphilosophical myth of a woolly “continental” tradition in philosophy, distinct from the austere precision of “analysis.” The latter (the ur-form of “analytic” philosophy) is not just different from the “continental” metaphysics Carnap excoriates. It is better, more serious, intellectually clearer and cleaner. (shrink)

Introducing the sixth and final installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Apology for Quietism,” Allen looks at the symposium retrospectively and concludes that it has mainly concerned “sage knowledge,” defined as foresight into the development of situations. The sagacious knower sees the disposition of things in an early, incipient form and knows how to intervene with nearly effortless and undetectable (quiet) effectiveness. Whatever the circumstance, the sage handles it with finesse, never doing too much but also never leaving anything undone (...) that must be accomplished. Quiet, when it is knowingly and effectively quiet (not pusillanimous or poor in spirit), is about what not to do, how not to approach a problem, what not to decide, what is not known, what will not work. Allen explains these principles in terms of traditional Chinese thought, Daoist and Confucian: wei we wei, or “doing-not-doing,” means effective inaction. What makes such wisdom possible is not mystical insight, he argues, but discipline in a certain kind of art. The sage has no need of reasons (let alone doctrines), only effectiveness; and he does not need truth or justice, only subtlety. The detachment of a quietist has little, if anything, to do with transcending perspectives. Detachment is good as a means to flexibility, and instead of transcending perspectives, a sage is skilled in the quiet art of never getting stuck in one. To be effectively quiet is not so much to be silent as to be inaudible, invisible; the sage “vanishes into things.”. (shrink)

In this monograph-length article, which inaugurates a multipart symposium titled “Fuzzy Studies,” the significance and virtues of blur are investigated through the whole history of Chinese intellectual tradition. In the Western tradition, the blur of becoming seems to disqualify an object for knowledge; nothing can be an object of knowledge until the blur is resolved and clarity attained. Chinese tradition offers suggestive examples of the thought that blur, so far from being incompatible with knowledge, might be its condition of possibility (...) and the explanation of its value. This article traces the development of this thought (the compatibility of knowledge and original becoming) in the work of the classical Confucian and Daoist thinkers, the art-of-war literature, Chan Buddhism, and medieval Neoconfucianism, with an eye to its usefulness for Western philosophy of knowledge. (shrink)

In order to make sense of the relationship between evil and enmity, I make an excursion into moral theory, and discuss ideas on the origin of evil in two very different moral philosophers: Kant and Darwin. Thinking about evil the way Kant does leads to a theoretical impasse Darwin’s evolutionary natural history of morality readily overcomes. Today enmity is more consequential, and potentially more dangerous, than at any time in our 100,000 years on the earth. An enemy may force us (...) to fight, as we have forced our enemies to fight. Reconciliation is not always to be desired at any price. But we will have a clearer view of precisely what the price of enmity is if we refrain from imagining a confrontation between evil and avenging righteousness. (shrink)

`In the grand tradition of classical social theory, Barry Smart challenges us to face up to the ambivalences of the contemporary moment and to take responsibility for our individual and social existence' - Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles ` a brilliant excursus through modern social theory, Smart’s book should be read and re-read for its careful analysis of the dilemmas of morality in postmodernism' - Bryan S. Turner, Deakin University Through a critical discussion of the 'ambivalent fruits' (...) of social analysis, exemplified in particular by the work of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo, Beck, Bourdieu, Goffman, Giddens, Levinas and Bauman, this book submits that an important responsibility of social enquiry today is to engage critically with the moral difficulties and ethical dilemmas which have arisen in relation to modernity. Facing Modernity offers a wide-ranging analysis of the ways in which issues of reflexivity, ethics and moral responsibility inform social and political thought. This is illustrated with the examples of risk society, modern forms of subjectivity and the problematic relationship between care of the self and a concern for others, the fashioning of the body, the idea and the practice of justice, and the communitarian call to regulate the pursuit of self interest and rediscover 'community'. A comprehensive overview of the ambiguities and moral dilemmas of modernity, this book will be essential reading for students of sociology, social theory and cultural studies. (shrink)

This paper advances two arguments about environmental problems. First, it interrogates the strength and limitations of empiricist accounts of problems and issues offered by actor-network theory. Drawing on the work of C.S. Peirce, it considers how emerging environmental problems often lead to abductive inferences about the existence of hidden causes that may or may not have caused the problem to emerge. The analysis of environmental problems should be empiricist in so far as it is sceptical of the claims of those (...) who know in advance what the problem is, but it should also be alert to processes and things that are not readily traceable or perceived. Secondly, the paper’s contention is that environmental problems almost invariably involve an encounter between unlike or disparate materials or processes. In such circumstances, the challenge is to develop a form of inquiry that is alert to both the specificity of such encounters and to the specificity of the political situations in which they come to matter. (shrink)

Perhaps the most problematic dimension of the ‘triple bottom line’ understanding of sustainable development has been the ‘economic’ dimension. Much of the thinking about the appropriate ‘political economy’ to underpin or frame sustainable development has been either utopian (as in some ‘green’ political views) or an attempt to make peace with ‘business as usual’ approaches. This article suggests that ‘ecological modernisation’ is the dominant conceptualisation of ‘sustainable development’ within the UK, and illustrates this by looking at some key ‘sustainable development’ (...) policy documents from the UK Government. We take the view that the discourse of ‘ecological modernisation’ has provided discursive terrain for both pragmatic policy makers and a range of views on sustainable development, from weak to strong. In particular, the article suggests that the discourse of ‘economic security’ and ‘sufficiency’ can be used as a way of articulating a radical, robust and principled understanding of sustainable development, which offers a normatively compelling and policy-relevant path to outlining a ‘green political economy’ to underpin sustainable development. (shrink)

The Prisoner's Dilemma and Kenneth Arrow's General Possibility Theorem, are two of the most simple, yet far-reaching concepts in social science. The first captures in an easily understood paradox how individually rational acts that benefit individual people can combine to produce a result that is of less benefit to everyone. The Arrow Theorem shows that there is no formula for ranking the preferences of many people into a rational aggregate. This book is a collection of the best work done on (...) these two ideas. It is an ideal introduction for students or sourcebook for professionals. `...it presents the traditional works addressing the problems of rationality in social and political theory...the anthology represents a much nee. (shrink)

This paper discusses arguments from my recent book, Empiricisms: Experience and Experiment from Antiquity to the Anthropocene (2021). I discuss the origin of empiricism in ancient Greek medicine, and its merger with experimental research in the modern period. I also discuss the arguments of recent critics of empiricism, including W. V. Quine, Donald Davidson, and Richard Rorty. I introduce a distinction between theorematic and problematic empiricism and show how this difference divides the various empiricisms of history. My conclusions are: 1. (...) Knowledge requires experience; results have to be tested, which takes experience. 2. The “experience” of empirical philosophy is the experience from which we learn. 3. Experimental values are many, but truth is not one of them. 4. Empiricism began as an antidote to rationalism, and that remains its vocation today. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of the analysis of technological zones. A technological zone can be understood as a space within which differences between technical practices, procedures and forms have been reduced, or common standards have been established. Such technological zones take broadly one of three forms: (1) metrological zones associated with the development of common forms of measurement; (2) infrastructural zones associated with the creation of common connection standards; and (3) zones of qualification which come into being when objects (...) and practices are assessed according to common standards and criteria. The article argues that technological zones can have more or less clear borders, but such borders increasingly do not correspond to the borders of nation-states. Through a discussion of the global oil industry, some of the ways in which the formation of technological zones has become critical to contemporary economic and political life are examined. (shrink)

Despite their common core in statistics, insurance and epidemiology propel two different forms of solidarity. In insurance, the collective is a source of protection, thanks to the pooling of risks; in epidemics by contrast, the group remains the source of danger for the individual. The aim of this paper is to highlight the conceptions of community and solidarity at play in epidemics in contradistinction to insurance, with a focus on the shift introduced by big data and algorithms. Paradoxically, while the (...) new technologies and epidemiology share a common view on the relation between the individual and the collective, tracing apps were not widely adopted in the Covid-19 crisis. This reluctance to use current technologies for the sake of epidemic containments highlights, beyond legitimate interrogations, a confusion between two imaginaries of the social: insurance solidarity where the interdependence is a source of rights, and epidemic solidarity that imposes duties. (shrink)

Indigenous cultures of North America confronted a problem of knowledge different from that of canonical European philosophy. The European problem is to identify and overcome obstacles to the perfection of knowledge as science, while the Indigenous problem is to conserve a legacy of practice fused with a territory. Complicating the difference is that one of these traditions violently colonized the other, and with colonization the Indigenous problem changes. The old problem of inter-generational stability cannot be separated from the post-colonial problem (...) of sovereignty in the land where the knowledge makes sense. I differentiate the question of the value of knowledge (Part One), and its content (Part Two). The qualities these epistemologies favor define what I call ceremonial knowledge, that is, knowledge that sustains a ceremonial community. The question of content considers the interdisciplinary research of Indigenous and Traditional Ecological Knowledge, as well as the issue of epistemic decolonization. (shrink)

In Recovering Hegel from the Critique of Leo Strauss, Sara MacDonald and Barry Craig provide a study unique in its focus on Leo Strauss’s reading of Hegel. While MacDonald and Craig find value in Strauss’s thought, they argue that his pessimism concerning modernity lies in a misunderstanding of both modernity’s greatest philosophical advocate, G.W.F. Hegel, and modernity’s virtues.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 551 Human Embryo Research: Yes or No?. By CIBA FOUNDATION. London: Tavistock: 1987. Pp. xv + 232. $39.95 (cloth). In 1984 a governmental commission formed under the directorship of Dame Mary Warnock studied proposed legislation for experimentation on human embryos for research purposes. It concluded that such experimentation should not be permitted ·after the fourteenth day of gestation. This book records a symposium conducted under the sponsorship (...) of the CIBA foundation, an international scientific and educational organization which promotes research into biomedical and chemical research. The purpose of the symposium was to determine whether the guidelines set forth by the Warnock commission were legitimate and whether new criteria for allowing embryo r.esearch should be established. The book consists of eleven papers presented at a symposium on the ethics of embryo research along with panel discussions about the papers. Technically, embryo research only concerns experimentation with human products of conception after the fourteenth gestational day. The first seven papers describe contemporary embryo research dealing with the diagnosis and mechanisms of infertility, its ti;eatment by in vitro fertilization, the diagnosis of genetic disease, the causes and avoidance of congenital malformations, and the improvement of contraception. The final four papers deal with the issues of the status of the human embryo in d:ffierent world religions, the moral arguments against human embryo research, and public attitudes on human embryo research. The scientific papers are quite detailed, and they provided a good deal of information about the contemporary state of embryo research. But the papers on the ethics of human embryo research are rather partisan, and they do not adequately approach the difficult human and ethical issues involved in embryo research. One gains the impression from this book that the conference was heavily weighted in favor of those who sought virtually unqualified and unrestricted moral and legal permission for human.embryo research. The scientific papers seemed to go out of their way to argue that there was an unbreakable continuum in the process of transmitting life such that it could not be determined when human life began. For example, Professor Teresa Iglesias's suggestion that a new and distinct human life began when the process of fertilization began, and when the newly formed genetic material came to govern the development of the organism, rceeived little acknowledgment. No papers were presented rejecting nontherapeutic research on human embryos, and.the papers presented by J. W. Bowker and by Bernard Williams argued in behalf of the moral licitness of unspecified forms of embryo research. Bowker claimed that there was no consensus to be found 55~ BOOK REVIEWS among the various world religions on the moral status of the human embryo. He surveyed various religions such as Buddhism and concluded that the arguments in favor of the humanity or personhood of the embryo were not strong or persuasive. His point should not be accepted without caution, however, for he did not consider the claims made by western traditions such as Catholicism in behalf of the personhood of the embryo. 'F:or the claims of an oriental religion such as Buddhism are not as persuasive with Western, rationalist, liberal minds as they are with orientals. Bowker argues that religious claims about the personhood of the unborn ';are weak since we do not claim that larvae are full grown fish or that acorns are oak trees. This is true, but on the other hand, we do not say that horse embryos are vegteables or pigs. Implied in Bowker's claim that the embryo is not a human being or a human person is the assumption that at some point in the gestation process the embryo undergoes a "species-transfer" or "class-transfer" from the biological category of non-human or non-personal to human and personal. This is difficult to accept as there is no precedent in other mammals for such a species or class transfer. Equine, bovine, and canine embryos are not considered to be anything than other than of the species of horse, pig, or dog, and there is no reason to believe that they engage in some sort of species transfer. And he does not explain why the human case alone exhibits this... (shrink)