We live in a human-rights world. The language of human-rights claims and numerous human-rights institutions shape almost all aspects of our political lives, yet we struggle to know how to judge this development. Scholars give us good reason to be both supportive and sceptical of the universal claims that human rights enable, alternatively suggesting that they are pillars of cross-cultural understanding of justice or the ideological justification of a violent and exclusionary global order. All too often, however, our evaluations of (...) our human-rights world are not based on sustained consideration of their complex, ambiguous and often contradictory consequences. Reconstructing Human Rights argues that human rights are only as good as the ends they help us realise. We must attend to what ethical principles actually do in the world to know their value. So, for human rights we need to consider how the identity of humanity and the concept of rights shape our thinking, structure our political activity and contribute to social change. Reconstructing Human Rights defends human rights as a tool that should enable us to challenge political authority and established constellations of political membership by making new claims possible. Human rights mobilise the identity of humanity to make demands upon the terms of legitimate authority and challenges established political memberships. In this work, it is argued that this tool should be guided by a democratising ethos in pursuit of that enables claims for more democratic forms of politics and more inclusive political communities. While this work directly engages with debates about human rights in philosophy and political theory, in connecting our evaluations of the value of human rights to their worldly consequences, it will also be of interest to scholars considering human rights across disciplines, including Law, Sociology, and Anthropology. (shrink)

This commentary places Jussim in dialogue with sociological perspectives on social reality and the political-academic nature of scientific paradigms. Specifically, we highlight how institutions, observers, and what is being observed intersect, and discuss the implications of this intersection on measurement within the social world. We then identify similarities between Jussim's specific narrative regarding social perception research, with noted patterns of scientific change.

Annotation Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was one of the most original and influential philosophers of our time. Born in Cologne, Germany, he studied at the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of political science in the Faculty of Law. In 1938, he and his wife, fleeing Hitler, immigrated to the United States. They became American citizens in 1944. Voegelin spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford (...) University. During his lifetime he published many books and more than one hundred articles. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin will make available in a uniform edition all of Voegelin's major writings. (shrink)

The world is at an inflection point. Advancing technologies are creating new opportunities and challenges. Great demographic changes are occurring rapidly, with significant consequences. Governance everywhere is in disarray. A new world is emerging. These are some of the key insights to emerge from a series of interdisciplinary roundtables and global expert contributions hosted by the Hoover Institution. In these pages, George P. Shultz and James Timbie examine a range of issues shaping our present and future, region by (...) region. Concrete proposals address migration, reversing the decline of K-12 education, updating the social safety net, maintaining economic productivity, protecting our democratic processes, improving national security, and more. Meeting these transformational challenges will require international cooperation, constructive engagement, and strong governance. The United States is well positioned to ride this wave of change--and lead other nations in doing the same. (shrink)

This paper finds its origin in a debate between Georges Bataille (1897-1962) and Octavio Paz (1914-1998) on what is central to the idea of eroticism. Bataille posits that violence and transgression are fundamental to eroticism, and without prohibition, eroticism would cease to exist. Paz, however, views violence and transgression as merely intersecting with, rather than being intrinsic to, eroticism. Paz places focus on imagination, and transforms eroticism from a transgressive, to a ritualistic act. Eroticism thus functions as an intermediary, turning (...) animal sexuality into ceremony and rite. In this paper, I argue that Paz and Bataille are not fundamentally at odds in their conceptualisation of eroticism. Instead, Paz redefines the locus of eroticism by subverting its unsettling aspects. His conception of eroticism gives precedence to the imagination, which in itself is an act of violation. Imagination transgresses normal life, but this transgression – the violation of the habitual world – also introduces a glimpse of the numinous that Paz associates with belongingness. The paper further explores eroticism, as this is perceived today, and argues that it ultimately eliminates the threshold marked by transgression. The rise of the contemporary pornographic society is marked by a loss of imagination and transcendence, which ultimately reduces the subject into a mere automaton that demands instant gratification. (shrink)

This intriguing and ground-breaking book is the first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the United States during the Cold War. It documents the political vitality of logical empiricism and Otto Neurath's Unity of Science Movement when these projects emigrated to the US in the 1930s and follows their de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. Students of logical empiricism and the Vienna Circle treat these as strictly intellectual non-political projects. (...) In fact, the refugee philosophers of science were highly active politically and debated questions about values inside and outside science, as a result of which their philosophy of science was scrutinized politically both from within and without the profession, by such institutions as J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. It will prove absorbing reading to philosophers and historians of science, intellectual historians, and scholars of Cold War studies. (shrink)

The Methodology of Empirical Macroeconomics stakes out a pragmatic middle-ground between traditional, prescriptive economic methodology and recent descriptive methodology. The former is sometimes seen as arrogantly telling economists how to do their work and the latter as irrelevant to their practice. The lectures are built around a case study of a concrete example of macroeconomic analysis. They demonstrate that economic methodology and the philosophy of science offer insights that help to resolve the genuine concerns of macroeconomists. Some examples of questions (...) addressed include: What is the relationship between theoretical models and empirical observations? What is the relevance of macroeconomics to policy? Should macroeconomics be viewed as a special case of microeconomics? What is the place of long-standing philosophical issues in macroeconomics, such as the scope and nature of economic laws, the role of idealizations, methodological individualism, and the problem of causality? (shrink)

Causality in Macroeconomics examines causality while taking macroeconomics seriously. A pragmatic and realistic philosophy is joined to a macroeconomic foundation that refines Herbert Simon's well-known work on causal order to make a case for a structural approach to causality. The structural approach is used to understand modern rational expectations models, regime switching models, Granger causality, vector autoregressions, the Lucas critique, and concept exogeneity. Techniques of causal inference based on patterns of stability and instability in the face of identified regime changes (...) are developed and illustrated in two empirical case studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Louise Pascale, “Dispelling the Myth of the Non-Singer: Embracing Two Aesthetics for Singing”Maya HooverLouise Pascale encourages a redefinition of the word "singer" and suggests ways to make it apply to a broader spectrum of people. The problem with the current definition, she believes, is that it is outdated and needs to be changed in order to better embrace the ideals of current society. In order to (...) fully understand the problem and incorporate her suggestions, it is helpful to look at the issue as a symptom of a larger philosophical problem and to examine her proposed aesthetics from a non-philosophical perspective. [End Page 202]A Philosophical Approach to an Ethnographic StudyPascale specifies the current definition of singer as one understood in terms of values set by a white, middle class, American society. She argues that this definition is a direct result of the actions of the church in the 1600s, which has influenced and effected how North Americans (specifically people from the United States) perceive and experience singing. She refers to the manner in which this definition is significantly rooted in history and has only strengthened with time as a "taproot" in music education.Pascale's main argument revolves around the fact that we in the United States have adopted and ascribe to the Western European value system of singing. She notes that in the quest to extract the highest form of singing, we tend to sort out the very best and tell everyone else not to bother. This elitist attitude is a serious problem and she is quite right to point it out. Although there is nothing wrong with classical studies revolving around a canon, we are often taught that anything else is not worthy of study or practice. As a result, we have a very narrow perception of singing due to the guidelines set by the "taproot philosophy," which greatly limits musical expression on many levels.The issue of Western European elitism in the United States is a big one that many scholars and educators like to avoid for fear of offending tradition. In Onika's case, she becomes completely redefined as a non-singer by these elitist constraints. Pascale hints at this concept at other points in her essay, but Onika's story stands out as a blatant example of subjugation.Pascale's story about her own trials in trying to learn about African dance and drumming reinforces the idea of Western elitism. She refers to Christopher Small's idea about the Western value of timing and rhythm, which is linked to "a more logical relationship between pitch and harmony."2 It is important to note that while Pascale was frustrated with her Western background, she was still encouraged by her Ghanaian instructor. She may have felt incompetent, but she was by no means subjugated, as Onika had become.Pascale relates both experiences to the link between culture, society, and the construction of belief systems. However, there is a deeper connection here that deals specifically with American society and its attitude toward those with a different belief system. Looking at other cultures shows how societies can encourage the exploration of their music by giving participants permission to be imperfect and accepting the interest in their culture with grace. This poses a question that is much larger than Pascale's original one, but one that is intricately linked to it: Why do we, as members of American society, continue to perpetuate the subjugation of anyone from outside of our established network of beliefs? [End Page 203] The problem of singers versus non-singers seems only to be a symptom of a much larger illness that is well deserving of a much deeper exploration.The Second Aesthetic from a Scientific Vantage PointPascale explores how the phenomenon of the "non-singer" translates into the music classroom. She argues that there must be a way to maintain the classical tradition while simultaneously allowing everyone to participate, trained or not. There must also be a way to allow every classroom teacher to feel comfortable singing with her/his students, and likewise to allow every student to feel comfortable enough to participate.She suggests incorporating... (shrink)

Three experiments explored the effects of word problem cueing on debiasing versions of the bat-and-ball problem. In the experimental condition order, participants solved a simpler isomorphic version of the problem prior to solving a standard version that, critically, had the same item-and-dollar amounts. Conversely, in the control condition order, participants solved the standard version prior to solving the isomorph. Across the first 2 experiments, participants cued with the isomorph were more likely to correctly solve the standard version of the problem. (...) In the third experiment, this cueing effect was not replicated, but importantly cued participants were more likely to correctly solve the standard version of the problem with other item-and-dollar amounts, indicating near transfer. Far transfer was evident in faster response times to other problems in the Cognitive Reflection Test following practice. Along with providing converging evidence for the cueing account, these results are consistent with recent attentional debiasing findings. (shrink)

Discussion of gentrification is ubiquitous in cities around the world. And while criticism of it is common, there is still considerable contestation over whether gentrification is unjust. Political theorists have recently turned their attention to the normative evaluation of gentrification, especially the displacement of long-term residents from neighbourhoods experiencing redevelopment and reinvestment. Two important limitations in this recent work are, first, a narrow focus on the link between gentrification and displacement, and second, the injustice of gentrification has been evaluated in (...) light of abstract ideals of justice divorced from the lived experience of its harms. Although the emerging literature usefully identifies some of the harms of gentrification, it fails to recognise the full extent of the injustice of gentrification. To address these limitations, I argue the normative evaluation of gentrification should start with a conceptualisation of the problem grounded in the experience of its negative effects. Further, employing a more comprehensive conceptualisation of gentrification’s negative effects reveals it to be a distinctive and encompassing urban injustice better understood by examining how gentrification is defined by harmful inequalities of political power, leading to exploitation, dispossession, displacement, marginalisation, and violence. (shrink)

Discontented people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the Commons and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been the highest, the Commons had been the busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon his heart, and say this to the whole world, – ‘Touch the Commons, and down comes the country!’.

Elliot Sober ([2001]) forcefully restates his well-known counterexample to Reichenbach's principle of the common cause: bread prices in Britain and sea levels in Venice both rise over time and are, therefore, correlated; yet they are ex hypothesi not causally connected, which violates the principle of the common cause. The counterexample employs nonstationary data—i.e., data with time-dependent population moments. Common measures of statistical association do not generally reflect probabilistic dependence among nonstationary data. I demonstrate the inadequacy of the counterexample and of (...) some previous responses to it, as well as illustrating more appropriate measures of probabilistic dependence in the nonstationary case. A challenge to the principle of the common causeSober's argument and the attempts to rescue the principleProbabilistic dependenceNonstationary time seriesProbabilistic dependence in nonstationary time seriesDo Venetian sea levels and British bread prices violate the principle of the common cause? (shrink)

In this article, I contest Brian Epstein’s argument (2014) against the applicability of global supervenience to relate micro and macroeconomic properties. Epstein rejects supervenience via a causal-chain relation inside the macroeconomic set in his criticism. Accordingly, the rise of the macro set is fixed by a weather event without any mediation from the realm of microeconomics. As it stands, this idea would demonstrate the autonomy of macroeconomics from microeconomics. However, as I intend to argue, in Epstein’s weather-cases scenarios, the corresponding (...) macroeconomic sets are fixed by their micro bases that codify weather events and thereby fix the macro. This is so because the microeconomic base must include institutional facts; they are as much necessary as the facts about people’s conditions. In so doing, we re-establish bottom–top determination from the micro to the macro, rescuing the applicability of global supervenience. (shrink)

In Beyond Disruption: Technology's Challenge to Governance, experts from academia, media, government, and the military wrestle with understanding the nature of these technologies' threats to our societies and their great potential for our economies. In a series of vivid analyses and colorful commentary from a conference as Stanford University's Hoover Institution, the authors expand upon their first-hand interpretations of what's at stake for the global operating system in the midst of turbulent change. In the dynamic game of world (...) order, it's a primer for decision makers on where the puck is headed. (shrink)

This empirical study explores aspects of how companies that are positively recognized by their workforce as “Best Companies to Work For” convey the underlying principles of their “trustworthy” culture. The study examines the normative ethical frameworks and affective language utilized in the ethics statements. Although multiple studies have considered normative ethical frameworks in individual ethical decision making, few have considered normative ethical frameworks in organization ethics statements. In addition, this study expands the analysis to include the ethic of care. Of (...) the “Best Companies to Work for” in this study, 93 had accessible online ethics statements. Findings indicated 70 % of the ethics statements utilized combinations of three types of normative ethics studied, while 30 % used a single framework. In statements with combined frameworks, the deontological framework had the highest frequency, while the ethic of care was present in 33 % of statements and the teleological framework had the lowest frequency. In ethics statements with a singular framework, the framework rankings were consistent with findings for combined frameworks. Using the Dictionary of Affect in Language, there were statistically significant differences on pleasantness between statements that mentioned ethic of care and those that did not. This study sheds light on how these trustworthy companies communicate by publishing their ethics statements and by using a multidimensional approach in their ethics statements that has greater pleasantness when an ethic of care is utilized. (shrink)

The antagonism between G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher during their thirteen years of association as colleagues at the University in Berlin has been well documented in recent Hegel scholarship. What is left unexplained by this scholarship is the sudden onset of Schleiermacher’s animosity toward Hegel upon the latter’s arrival in Berlin. Although there had been differences of opinion between these two figures from their earliest publications—Hegel had already criticized Schleiermacher’s Speeches on Religion in 1802 in Faith and Knowledge (...) —there was no evidence of rancor until Hegel joined the faculty at Berlin. In fact, it was Schleiermacher, as Rector of the University, who was principally responsible for securing the position for Hegel in the first place. (shrink)

Although the relevance and importance of his work has been recognized only belatedly, Charles Sanders Peirce was, throughout his life, a careful student and significant contributor to the development of logic, scientific theory, and philosophy generally. Occasionally, complete appreciation of Peirce's efforts has been hampered because his work is often unique and, at times, highly idiosyncratic. Yet, we hope to show in this paper that for one aspect of his work in logic Peirce did not abandon the ordinary without purpose. (...) Only relatively recently have philosophers of science become interested in the logic of discovery - that is, in the logic of the selection of hypotheses to be tested rather than simply in the ways of testing hypotheses which have already been selected. (shrink)

Although the relevance and importance of his work has been recognized only belatedly, Charles Sanders Peirce was, throughout his life, a careful student and significant contributor to the development of logic, scientific theory, and philosophy generally. Occasionally, complete appreciation of Peirce's efforts has been hampered because his work is often unique and, at times, highly idiosyncratic. Yet, we hope to show in this paper that for one aspect of his work in logic Peirce did not abandon the ordinary without purpose. (...) Only relatively recently have philosophers of science become interested in the logic of discovery - that is, in the logic of the selection of hypotheses to be tested rather than simply in the ways of testing hypotheses which have already been selected. (shrink)

Economics prefers complete explanations: general over partial equilibrium, microfoundational over aggregate. Similarly, probabilistic accounts of causation frequently prefer greater detail to less as in typical resolutions of Simpson’s paradox. Strategies of causal refinement equally aim to distinguish direct from indirect causes. Yet, there are countervailing practices in economics. Representative-agent models aim to capture economic motivation but not to reduce the level of aggregation. Small structural vector-autoregression and dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium models are practically preferred to larger ones. The distinction between exogenous (...) and endogenous variables suggests partitioning the world into distinct subsystems. The tension in these practices is addressed within a structural account of causation inspired by the work of Herbert Simon’s, which defines cause with reference to complete systems adapted to deal with incomplete systems and piecemeal evidence. The focus is on understanding the constraints that a structural account of causation places on the freedom to model complex or lower-order systems as simpler or higher-order systems and on to what degree piecemeal evidence can be incorporated into a structural account. (shrink)

Argues that ontological reduction of macroeconomics to microeconomics is untenable. Existence of macroeconomic aggregates; Microfoundations of macroeconomics; Examinations of the general price level; Limits of the scientific development of microeconomics.

Among the general features of modern Western discourse is a marked emphasis on the individual self. The nearly total displacement of the linguistic practice of referring to individuals as 'souls' when speaking philosophically, by the use of the terms 'selves' or 'subjects', is one sign of the modern proclivity for acknowledging the self-conscious and reflexive aspects of human experience. However, the conceptions of self and subject that have been inherited in the past few hundred years of Western philosophical thought have (...) been increasingly called into question. One source of this recent reevaluation of our modern conceptions of the self is associated with post-structuralist critiques, now several decades old, of .. (shrink)

This paper addresses the role of specification tests in the selection of a statistically admissible model used to evaluate economic hypotheses. The issue is formulated in the context of recent philosophical accounts on the nature of models and related to some results in the literature on specification search. In contrast to enumerative induction and a priori theory, powerful search methodologies are often adequate substitutes for experimental methods. They underwrite and support, rather than distort, statistical hypothesis tests. Their success is grounded (...) in a systematic effort to mold appropriate models to, and test them against, constraints of the data. (shrink)

In the eyes of its practitioners, economics is both a deductive science and an empirical science. The starting point of its deductions might be thought of as first principles. But what is the status of such principles? The tension between foundationalism, the idea that there are necessary and secure first principles for economic inquiry, and fallibilism, the idea that no belief can be certified as true beyond the possibility of doubt, is explored. Empirical disciplines require some sort of falsifiability. Yet, (...) empirical inquiries also require a starting place—if not a necessarily true one, at least an indubitable one, that is, one that is not actually doubted. Indubitability appears to have necessary consequences, undercutting fallibilism, while fallibilism threatens confidence in the de facto first principles that begin inquiry. This tension is examined in three well-known attempts to define economics and its method: John Stuart Mill’s economics as the science of wealth, Lionel Robbins’s economics as constrained optimization; and George Stigler and Becker’s attempt to reformulate neoclassical economics to square empiricism with Robbins’ deductivism. (shrink)

Modern empirical macroeconomic models, known as structural autoregressions (SVARs) are dynamic models that typically claim to represent a causal order among contemporaneously valued variables and to merely represent non-structural (reduced-form) co-occurence between lagged variables and contemporaneous variables. The strategy is held to meet the minimal requirements for identifying the residual errors in particular equations in the model with independent, though otherwise not directly observable, exogenous causes (“shocks”) that ultimately account for change in the model. In nonstationary models, such shocks accumulate (...) so that variables have discernible trends. Econometricians have conceived of variables that trend in sympathy with each other (so-called “cointegrated variables”) as sharing one or more of these unobserved trends as a common cause. It is possible for estimates of the values of both the otherwise unobservable individual shocks and the otherwise unobservable common trends to be backed-out of cointegrated systems of equations. The issue addressed in this paper is whether and in what circumstances these values can be regarded as observations of real entities rather than merely artifacts of the representation of variables in the model. The issue is related, on the one hand, to practical methodological problems in the use of SVARs for policy analysis—e.g., does it make sense to estimate of shocks or trends in one model and then use them as measures of variables in a conceptually distinct model? The issue is also related to debates in the philosophical analysis of causation—particularly, whether we are entitled, as assumed by the developers of Bayes-net approaches, to rely on the causal Markov condition (a generalization of Reichenbach’s common-cause condition) or whether cointegration generates a practical example of Nancy Cartwright’s “byproducts” objection to the causal Markov condition. (shrink)

Macroeconomists overwhelmingly believe that macroeconomics requires microfoundations, typically understood as a strong eliminativist reductionism. Microfoundations aims to recover intentionality. In the face of technical and data constraints macroeconomists typically employ a representative-agent model, in which a single agent solves the microeconomic optimization problem for the whole economy, and take it to be microfoundationally adequate. The characteristic argument for the representative-agent model holds that the possibility of the sequential elaboration of the model to cover any number of individual agents justifies treating (...) the policy conclusions of the single-agent model as practically relevant. This eschatological justification is examined and rejected. (shrink)

While Friedrich Schleiermacher‘s thought has been of overwhelming importance for theology during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his influence as a philosopher is much more circumscribed and as a social and political thinker it is almost nil.

Recent debates over the nature of causation, casual inference, and the uses of causal models in counterfactual analysis, involving inter alia Nancy Cartwright (Hunting Causes and Using Them), James Woodward (Making Things Happen), and Judea Pearl (Causation), hinge on how causality is represented in models. Economists’ indigenous approach to causal representation goes back to the work of Herbert Simon with the Cowles Commission in the early 1950s. The paper explicates a scheme for the representation of causal structure, inspired by Simon, (...) and shows how this representation sheds light on some important debates in the philosophy of causation. This structural account is compared to Woodward’s manipulability account. It is used to evaluate the recent debates – particularly, with respect to the nature of causal structure, the identity of causes, causal independence, and modularity. Special attention is given to modeling issues that arise in empirical economics. (shrink)

We give a completeness theorem for a logic with probability quantifiers which is equivalent to the logics described in a recent survey paper of Keisler [K]. This result improves on the completeness theorems in [K] in that it works for languages with function symbols and produces a model whose universe is an analytic subset of the real line, and whose relations and functions are Borel relative to this universe.

Certain basic concepts of geometrical stability theory are generalized to a class of closure operators containing algebraic closure. A specific case of a generalized closure operator is developed which is relevant to Vaught's conjecture. As an application of the methods, we prove THEOREM A. Let G be a superstable group of U-rank ω such that the generics of G are locally modular and Th(G) has few countable models. Let G - be the group of nongeneric elements of G, G + (...) = G o + G - . Let Π= {q ∈ S( $\emptyset$ ): U(q) $A \subset M$ such that M is almost atomic over A ∪ (G + ∩ M) $\cup \bigcup_{p\in \Pi}$ p(M). (shrink)

The dominant view among macroeconomists is that macroeconomics reduces to microeconomics, both in the sense that all macroeconomic phenomena arise out of microeconomic phenomena and in the sense that macroeconomic theory—to the extent that it is correct—can be derived from microeconomic theory. More than that, the dominant view believes that macroeconomics should in practice use the reduced microeconomic theory: this is the program of microfoundations for macroeconomics to which the vast majority of macroeconomists adhere. The "microfoundational" models that they actually (...) employ are, however, characterized by another feature: they are highly idealized, even when they are applied as direct characterizations of actual data, which itself consists of macroeconomic aggregates. This paper explores the interrelationship between reductionism and idealization in the microfoundational program and the role of idealization in empirical modeling. (shrink)

We show that every formula of L ω 1p is equivalent to one which is a propositional combination of formulas with only one quantifier. It follows that the complete theory of a probability model is determined by the distribution of a family of random variables induced by the model. We characterize the class of distribution which can arise in such a way. We use these results together with a form of de Finetti's theorem to prove an almost sure interpolation theorem (...) for L ω 1p. (shrink)

Critics argued that the 2007–09 financial crisis was failure of macroeconomics, locating its source in the dynamic, stochastic general-equilibrium model and calling for fundamental re-orientation of the field. Critics exaggerated the role of DSGE models in actual policymaking, and DSGE modelers addressed some criticisms within the DSGE framework. But DSGE modelers oversold their success and even claimed that their approach is the sine qua non of competent macroeconomics. The DSGE modelers and their critics renew an old debate over the relative (...) priority of a priori theory and empirical data, classically exemplified in the Measurement without Theory Debate of the 1940s between the Cowles Commission and the National Bureau of Economic Research. The earlier debate is reviewed for its implications for the recent controversy. In adopting the Cowles-Commission position, some DSGE modelers would essentially straight-jacket macroeconomics and undermine economic science and the pursuit of knowledge in an open-minded, yet critical framework. (shrink)