A concept of diversity is an understanding of what makes a group diverse that may be applicable in a variety of contexts. We distinguish three diversity concepts, show that each can be found in discussions of diversity in science, and explain how they tend to be associated with distinct epistemic and ethical rationales. Yet philosophical literature on diversity among scientists has given little attention to distinct concepts of diversity. This is significant because the unappreciated existence of multiple diversity concepts can (...) generate unclarity about the meaning of “diversity,” lead to problematic inferences from empirical research, and obscure complex ethical-epistemic questions about how to define diversity in specific cases. We illustrate some ethical-epistemic implications of our proposal by reference to an example of deliberative mini-publics on human tissue biobanking. (shrink)

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The fourth author’s name is Bianca Crewe, not Bianca Crew. The original article has been corrected.

In this Article, we explore a subset of the urban-rural divide and propose a mechanism for reducing its economic and political effects within that limited realm. Specifically, we focus on the subset of rural areas that lie within what the Office of Management and Budget defines as micropolitan areas. Micropolitan areas are characterized by an urban area with a population between 10,000 and 50,000, and adjacent rural counties. Data suggest that rural areas within micropolitan regions do better economically than rural (...) areas unconnected to urban areas, though not as well as the principal city within the micropolitan area. If the objective is to reduce the economic, and perhaps also the political, divide between urban and rural areas, then micropolitan areas may represent low-hanging fruit for redress. This Article argues that micropolitan areas are an important window into understanding the relationship between urban and rural economies, explores the characteristics of those areas that are likely to generate economic success, and recommends policies that would capture those benefits. Additionally, we speculate that increased opportunities for economic interaction between the urban and rural parts of micropolitan areas could also address the political aspects of the urban-rural divide. Recognizing the complexity of the relationship between urban and rural economies, we identify various obstacles to realizing the kinds of interlocal cooperation that we believe are necessary to reduce the economic and political divide within micropolitan areas. We conclude with suggestions for a research agenda to remedy the underdeveloped study of micropolitan areas. (shrink)

The period 800–200 B.C.E. has been called an axial period or age because it was a period of major technological and cultural change that led to the development of new worldviews, which in turn called for and led to the emergence of the current major world religious traditions. The world is now in the midst of another period of major global scientific, technological, and cultural change that is leading to the development of a new global worldview. In this worldview, the (...) cosmos is taken to be more like an activity than a thing—more like an emergent complex of interrelated and interactive doing in space–time than a created complex of beings in space and time–and its complexity and space—time scale are understood to be enormously greater than heretofore supposed.These changes in worldview call for changes in theology, religion, and ethics. Most workers in the field of science and religion are heeding this call by attempting to reconcile traditional religious concepts with the new scientific concepts. Others, however, have become convinced that the new worldview differs so radically from the previous ones as to mark a new axial age, which calls for a new, post‐traditional theology, religion, and ethics, with a theos that is more like an activator of doing than a ground of being, and with meaning and purpose achieved more by a quality of doing than a quantity or quality of being. (shrink)

The theoretical availability of an infinite number of contract types suggests that there may be an optimal quantity from which contractual parties could make a selection. In this Article, we emphasize the difficulty of identifying that optimal number, given information costs and other transaction costs related to the production of a contract type. We argue that standard market failures might cause markets to produce a suboptimal number of contract types. We then consider whether government should intervene to remedy any market (...) failure. We conclude that government would generally lack the access to information necessary to identify the optimal number of contract types. Moreover, we argue that issues of political economy would impede the ability of government to achieve the optimal number of contract types, even if it were able to identify that number. Government, that is, may tend to either oversupply or undersupply contract types. Perhaps the best that government can do is to provide “soft” interventions that reflect appropriate defaults or safe harbors. (shrink)

This book brings to the modern age wisdom on the topic of anger by four ancient authors: Seneca, Evagrius Ponticus, Cassian, and Augustine. These authors broadly represent the classic views on anger and focus on how anger inhibits spiritual growth of the soul and its relationship with God.

We suggest that philosophical accounts of epistemic effects of diversity have given insufficient attention to the relationship between demographic diversity and information elaboration, the process whereby knowledge dispersed in a group is elicited and examined. We propose an analysis of IE that clarifies hypotheses proposed in the empirical literature and their relationship to philosophical accounts of diversity effects. Philosophical accounts have largely overlooked the possibility that demographic diversity may improve group performance by enhancing IE, and sometimes fail to explore the (...) relationship between diversity and IE altogether. We claim these omissions are significant from both a practical and theoretical perspective. Moreover, we explain how the overlooked explanations suggest that epistemic benefits of diversity can depend on epistemically unjust social dynamics. (shrink)

The polar regions have long been expected to warm strongly as a result of anthropogenic climate change, because of the positive feedbacks associated with melting ice and snow. Several studies have noted a rise in Arctic temperatures over recent decades, but have not formally attributed the changes to human influence, owing to sparse observations and large natural variability. Both warming and cooling trends have been observed in Antarctica, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report concludes is the (...) only continent where anthropogenic temperature changes have not been detected so far, possibly as a result of insufficient observational coverage. Here we use an up-to-date gridded data set of land surface temperatures and simulations from four coupled climate models to assess the causes of the observed polar temperature changes. We find that the observed changes in Arctic and Antarctic temperatures are not consistent with internal climate variability or natural climate drivers alone, and are directly attributable to human influence. Our results demonstrate that human activities have already caused significant warming in both polar regions, with likely impacts on polar biology, indigenous communities, ice-sheet mass balance and global sea level. © 2008 Macmillan Publishers Limited. (shrink)

A number of persistent questions surround akrasia. Is akrasia possible? If it is, how best to explain akrasia in a way consistent with acceptable theories of normative motivation? I argue that akrasia is possible--in fact, akrasia is actual. Research in psychology and information science, suitably interpreted, contains an empirically informed account of akrasia that is consistent with the traditional philosophical concept of akrasia as notably explored by Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Hume, Hare, and Davidson. My account of akrasia appeals to our (...) best current research in order to develop an account of how someone could have knowledge of the good without attending to that knowledge, or could make normative judgments that motivate, but that do not include all of the factors at play in a more complete normative judgment that would motivate the agent differently. Adopting this empirically informed account of akrasia requires abandoning positions that are incompatible with its existence. One such view is the view that normative judgments are necessarily connected to motivation. Drawing on works by Sarah Stroud and Ralph Wedgwood, I demonstrate that NJI can be amended to allow akrasia, long thought to be a straightforward counterexample to NJI, while preserving what is plausible about NJI. My account of akrasia is termed `cognitive akrasia' because I appeal to cognitive states as playing a central role in identifying and understanding akrasia. Preserving an amended NJI by means of a strongly cognitive understanding of akrasia means arguing against an opponent of NJI, which is normative judgment externalism. The most common form of NJE is Humean in character, and explains akrasia in terms of desiderative or other affective states. That is, one is akratic when one judges that A is better than B but has less desire to do A than B. My response to NJE as a view that explains akrasia is also empirically informed. I make use of clinical research into addiction and addiction treatment, because addiction has long been a fruitful source of examples of akrasia. Many addicts judge it better not to be addicts and yet occasionally or repeatedly fail to reform their addictive behavior. In this analysis, I provide a plausible family of everyday accounts of persons changing their behavior without changing their desires. I also point out that recent research indicates that specifically cognitive bias modification provides better clinical outcomes among addicts than approaches that attempt to change the addicts' desires. One important consequence of cognitive akrasia, then, is that it represents support for theories that hold that motivation can be a product of cognitive and not only affective states. (shrink)

This dissertation project is divided into two distinct sections. The first section deals with the theoretical aspects of justified paternalistic intervention. In this first section I present and discuss important concepts which must be understood in order to derive a solid framework from which beneficent decisions which interfere with the wishes of others can be made. The most important aspect of the first phase of this project is to establish acceptable definitions of central terms such as autonomy, liberty, rationality, and (...) competence. ;The second section of the dissertation utilizes the theoretical understanding which has been reached in the first part as an aid in addressing a specific medical-ethics problem. The problem which is addressed is that of psychotic patients who refuse to take anti-psychotic medication. ;The greater portion of the dissertation is spent on the theoretical issues which are involved in justifying paternalistic intervention. In that first section, an alternate definition of rationality which stresses the internal coherence of a person's belief structure, rather than a content specific understanding of rationality, is developed. I argue that this new formulation of rationality is best able to guide paternalistic interventions. (shrink)

School liking is an important factor in student engagement, well-being, and academic achievement, but it is also potentially influenced by factors external to the individual, such as school culture, teacher support, and approaches to discipline. The present study employed a survey methodology to investigate the associations between school liking and disliking, teacher and school connectedness, and experiences of exclusionary discipline from the perspective of students themselves. Participants included 1,002 students from three secondary schools serving disadvantaged communities. Results indicated clear differences (...) between students who like and dislike school in terms of their preferred school activities and school disciplinary history, with students who disliked school experiencing overall lower school connectedness. Moreover, students who disliked school experienced less positive relationships with their teachers, and this was even more pronounced for students who had been previously suspended. The findings reveal key differences between students who do and do not like school, differences that may be masked by typical research approaches. This research indicates the need for more nuanced, student-informed approaches to inclusive school reform. (shrink)

We perform a multimodel detection and attribution study with climate model simulation output and satellite-based measurements of tropospheric and stratospheric temperature change. We use simulation output from 20 climate models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. This multimodel archive provides estimates of the signal pattern in response to combined anthropogenic and natural external forcing and the noise of internally generated variability. Using these estimates, we calculate signal-to-noise ratios to quantify the strength of the fingerprint in the (...) observations relative to fingerprint strength in natural climate noise. For changes in lower stratospheric temperature between 1979 and 2011, S/N ratios vary from 26 to 36, depending on the choice of observational dataset. In the lower troposphere, the fingerprint strength in observations is smaller, but S/N ratios are still significant at the 1% level or better, and range from three to eight. We find no evidence that these ratios are spuriously inflated by model variability errors. After removing all global mean signals, model fingerprints remain identifiable in 70% of the tests involving tropospheric temperature changes. Despite such agreement in the large-scale features of model and observed geographical patterns of atmospheric temperature change, most models do not replicate the size of the observed changes. On average, the models analyzed underestimate the observed cooling of the lower stratosphere and overestimate the warming of the troposphere. Although the precise causes of such differences are unclear, model biases in lower stratospheric temperature trends are likely to be reduced by more realistic treatment of stratospheric ozone depletion and volcanic aerosol forcing. (shrink)

In a recent multimodel detection and attribution study using the pooled results from 22 different climate models, the simulated "fingerprint" pattern of anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor was identifiable with high statistical confidence in satellite data. Each model received equal weight in the D&A analysis, despite large differences in the skill with which they simulate key aspects of observed climate. Here, we examine whether water vapor D&A results are sensitive to model quality. The "top 10" and "bottom 10" models (...) are selected with three different sets of skill measures and two different ranking approaches. The entire D&A analysis is then repeated with each of these different sets of more or less skillful models. Our performance metrics include the ability to simulate the mean state, the annual cycle, and the variability associated with El Niño. We find that estimates of an anthropogenic water vapor fingerprint are insensitive to current model uncertainties, and are governed by basic physical processes that are well-represented in climate models. Because the fingerprint is both robust to current model uncertainties and dissimilar to the dominant noise patterns, our ability to identify an anthropogenic influence on observed multidecadal changes in water vapor is not affected by "screening" based on model quality. (shrink)

Data from the satellite-based Special Sensor Microwave Imager show that the total atmospheric moisture content over oceans has increased by 0.41 kg/m2 per decade since 1988. Results from current climate models indicate that water vapor increases of this magnitude cannot be explained by climate noise alone. In a formal detection and attribution analysis using the pooled results from 22 different climate models, the simulated "fingerprint" pattern of anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor is identifiable with high statistical confidence in the (...) SSM/I data. Experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually suggest that this fingerprint "match" is primarily due to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases and not to solar forcing or recovery from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Our findings provide preliminary evidence of an emerging anthropogenic signal in the moisture content of earth's atmosphere. © 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA. (shrink)