Papers presented at a conference held at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, in Apr. 2006.

A healthy work-life balance has become increasingly important to people trying to cope with the pressures of contemporary society. This trend highlights the fallacy of assessing well-being in terms of finance alone; how much time we have matters just as much as how much money. The authors of this book have developed a novel way to measure 'discretionary time': time which is free to spend as one pleases. Exploring data from the US, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden and Finland, they show (...) that temporal autonomy varies substantially across different countries and under different living conditions. By calibrating how much control people have over their time, and how much they could have under alternative welfare, gender or household arrangements, this book offers a new perspective for comparative cross-national enquiries into the temporal aspects of human welfare. (shrink)

Excessive alcohol use has adverse effects on the central nervous system (CNS) and can lead to alcohol use disorders (AUDs). Recent studies have suggested that myelin reductions may directly contribute to CNS dysfunctions associated with AUDs. Myelin consists of compact lipid membranes wrapped around axons to provide electrical insulation and trophic support. Regulation of myelin is considered as a new form of neural plasticity due to its profound impacts on the computation of neural networks. In this review, the authors first (...) discuss experimental evidence showing how alcohol exposure causes demyelination in different brain regions, often accompanied by deficits in cognition and emotion. Next, they discuss postulated molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying alcohol's impact on myelin. It is clear that more extensive investigations are needed in this important but underexplored research field in order to gain a better understanding of the myelin‐behavior relationship and to develop new treatment strategies for AUDs. (shrink)

Hong Kong’s adherence to the rule of law has been widely understood as one of its “core values.” As such, it has been understood as an institution necessary for good governance and a check against the abuse of governmental power as well as a feature that differentiates Hong Kong’s system of governance from other parts of China. At the same time, intervening issues of immigration and of constitutional interpretation have begun to challenge this perception. This paper argues that a recent (...) landmark decision involving the right to permanent residence has served to weaken the rule of law in Hong Kong. It has further highlighted a lack of commitment by the judiciary to either human rights claims or equal treatment under the law. (shrink)

Research into strategic alliances has traditionally focused on motivation and performance. More recently, network dynamics and alliances as complex and evolving arrangements are emerging areas for investigation. Thus far, little research has been undertaken that integrates these emerging themes in the context of the impact of deteriorating exogenous environments on network alliances. -/- The ICT industry provides such a context, with the rapid deterioration of fortunes in the industry as a result of equity market moves since early 2000. This research (...) looks at the Bluetooth consortium, a loosely framed network of firms involved in the development and commercialization of wireless technical applications for information technology based products. It finds that matters related to intellectual property ownership and inter-firm coordination in complex product development have been problematic, with the deterioration of environmental munificence driving a slowing of network investment and product development success. (shrink)

In an article entitled, “Imagining Human Rights” Professor Ian Ward considers the fate of human rights at the beginning of the twenty-first century. While, as he argues, human rights have been seen as an epitome of liberalism’s triumph, this perception has come to be regarded as a delusion amid the acts of genocide and inhumanity that have characterized the past decade. Ward argues for a re-evaluation of the idea of human rights through an accommodation of “sense and sensibility” that allows (...) for a vision of a pluralistic conception of human rights. This paper seeks to refute this view. In this respect, it examines Kant’s views on human freedom as well as the relevance of Dworkin’s notion of “integrity” in terms of achieving a workable framework for the achievement of human rights despite diverse and competing notions of justice. (shrink)

Rice, Robert James William Gleeson was born in Balaklava, a town in the mid-north of South Australia, on 24 December 1920. The son of John Joseph Gleeson and Margaret Mary O'Connell, he was the third born of six children - the elder brother of Thomas, John and Raphael (Ray), and the younger brother of Mary. The first-born child, also Mary, born in Balaklava on 6 May 1918, died one hour after birth. She was baptised during her short life.

Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory) vs. empirical (ethnography). In Theory Can Be More than It Used to Be, Dominic Boyer, James D. Faubion, and George E. Marcus argue that we need to take a step back from the assumption that we know what theory is to investigate how theory—a matter of concepts, of analytic practice, of medium of value, of professional ideology—operates in (...) anthropology and related fields today. They have assembled a distinguished group of scholars to diagnose the state of the theory-ethnography divide in anthropology today and to explore alternative modes of analytical and pedagogical practice. Continuing the methodological insights provided in Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be, the contributors to this volume find that now is an optimal time to reflect on the status of theory in relation to ethnographic research in anthropology and kindred disciplines. Together they engage with questions such as, What passes for theory in anthropology and the human sciences today and why? What is theory's relation to ethnography? How are students trained to identify and respect anthropological theorization and how do they practice theoretical work in their later career stages? What theoretical experiments, languages, and institutions are available to the human sciences? Throughout, the editors and authors consider theory in practical terms, rather than as an amorphous set of ideas, an esoteric discourse of power, a norm of intellectual life, or an infinitely contestable canon of texts. A short editorial afterword explores alternative ethics and institutions of pedagogy and training in theory. Contributors: Andrea Ballestero, Rice University; Dominic Boyer, Rice University; Lisa Breglia, George Mason University; Jessica Marie Falcone, Kansas State University; James D. Faubion, Rice University; Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Andreas Glaeser, University of Chicago; Cymene Howe, Rice University; Jamer Hunt, Parsons The New School for Design and the Institute of Design in Umea, Sweden; George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine; Townsend Middleton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Deepa S. Reddy, University of Houston–Clear Lake; Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago. (shrink)

Our study in China of two Integrated Pest Management (IPM) training programs for farmers shows that one is more effective than the other in reducing pesticide applications as well as in imparting to farmers an understanding of the rice ecosystem. The two training programs are based upon two different paradigms of IPM. This article uses a triangulated method of measuring concept attainment among farmer trainees in China as one measure of the effectiveness of training. Concepts of insect ecology brought (...) about by training, as well as persistence of concepts one year after training, are measured. This information is compared to farmer data on pesticide applications and yields in order to determine the comparative effectiveness of two models of IPM farmer training in Sichuan Province. Results indicate that the Farmer Field School (FFS) model of training, based upon a new Ecology-Based IPM paradigm, is more effective than the 3 Pests 3 Diseases (3P3D) model based upon an older Economic Threshold IPM paradigm. Crop yield results and pesticide applications by farmers after training are also used to indicate which of these paradigms of insect pest control is more effective, hence scientifically accurate. (shrink)

In this work, McGilvray explains Noam Chomsky's rationalist view of human nature.

After reconstructing three arguments for Nietzsche’s descriptive analysis of the self as complex, this article clarifies some of greatness’s psychological conditions. It then offers three arguments for why we should not focus on these internal conditions when seeking to verify or to achieve greatness. First, Nietzsche’s descriptive analysis of the self renders introspection too coarse-grained and error-prone to verify the subtle type of unity required for greatness. Second, Nietzsche associates introspective appraisal of one’s psyche with a moral project that weakens (...) and represses the drives, such that inquiry into whether greatness’s internal conditions are satisfied typically speaks against their realization. Finally, the actions characteristic of Nietzsche’s great individuals prohibit introspective preoccupation with oneself. These arguments suggest that we should attend to outwardly directed accomplishments, rather than psychology, when appraising the greatness of others and seeking to become great ourselves. (shrink)

First published over thirty years ago, "Classic Philosophical Questions" has presented decades of students with the most compelling classic and contemporary readings on the most enduring and abiding questions in philosophy. The anthology, topically arranged, uses debate and argument as vehicles to teach students the fundamentals of philosophy while also demonstrating that philosophy is a discourse spanning centuries. "James A. Gould" and "Robert J. Mulvaney" continue to provide students with interesting, intriguing essays from major philosophers in a distinctive presentation, (...) often involving a pro/con format, to ensure that both the apparent and subtle points of argument are both meaningful and clear. Features of this new edition: Sections on epistemology and metaphysics introduced earlier in this edition New readings from Martha Nussbaum and Martin Luther King, Jr. Concise, student-friendly introductions to each philosopher and reading Helpful study and reflection questions focus students' reading and improve comprehension. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical reconstruction of J. B. Erhard's account of recognition that locates it within the context of his revolutionary natural law theory. The first three sections lay out the foundations of Erhard's position. The fourth section outlines Erhard's response to the opponents of revolution and raises a problem for it. The fifth section argues that we can resolve this problem by drawing upon Erhard's account of failures of legal recognition. The sixth and final section considers the relevance (...) of that account for contemporary legal and political theory. (shrink)

This is an English translation of Plato’s dialogue of Socrates seeking the true definition of rhetoric, with an attempt to show the flaws of the sophistic orators. Includes speeches from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars that reflect Plato’s themes. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato’s immediate (...) audience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics by Paul SagarJames A. HarrisPaul Sagar. Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022. Pp. xii + 229. Hardback, $37.00.Paul Sagar's invigorating book is a reconsideration of Adam Smith in the sense that it challenges much that is received wisdom in current scholarship. First and foremost, it rejects (...) the idea that Smith was preeminently a moral philosopher concerned with the threat to civic virtue posed by commercial society, and yet intent on giving commercial society a moral vindication nevertheless. Sagar—rightly, in my view—wants us to recognize Smith as having been a political thinker. Too much work on Smith still assumes that there is not much to say [End Page 323] about his political thought because he regarded all but the most minimal government as an obstacle to the proper functioning of markets. Smith is supposed to be a "classical liberal" bent on preserving as much natural liberty as possible in the face of government's relentless overextension of its powers of regulation. In Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), Donald Winch rejected that approach to Smith in favor of a portrait of the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations as an eighteenth-century thinker with an eighteenth-century thinker's concerns. Sagar's project is quite different. This is a book on Smith's political thought that does not once deploy the term 'Whig.' Sagar's Smith does not wholly float free of his historical situation—the questions he addresses are those posed by the end of feudalism and the advent of modernity—but situating him in the particular circumstances of Britain in the age of revolutions is not Sagar's concern. As Sagar sees it, the fundamental issues addressed by Smith's political thought concern the distinctive form taken by commercial society in the modern era. Smith, according to Sagar, held that all advanced societies are commercial societies. Commercial society as such needed no vindication. The question, rather, was what kind of commercial society a modern state wanted to be. That was a political question insofar as it was a question about the kind of freedom that mattered and about the kind of institutions needed to make that freedom a reality.Defined in maximally general terms, freedom for Smith was the absence of domination, where domination is understood as a lack of security in respect of one's physical safety and possessions. The condition of the poor and powerless had always been one of subjection to the will of the rich and powerful. What changed that, according to Smith, was implementation of the rule of law. This is in itself not a new reading of Smith, but what distinguishes Sagar's version of it is the care with which he examines both the place of the rule of law in Smith's historical account of the emergence of liberty in modern Europe and the precise nature of the connection between the rule of law and freedom. First, on Sagar's view, there needed to be a comprehensive picture of domination and slavery, which had been the normal condition of almost everyone for almost all of human history. Then there needed to be an explanation of how it was that, at one particular historical moment, domination was slowly but surely challenged by the emergence of law and law courts considered as independent of political power. In England, this was the story of the common law and of judges who held office for life, rather than at the pleasure of traditional possessors of power. It was the story of security in property, of the backing of property by law, and it was a largely urban story, of burghers who managed to enlist monarchs on their side in the battle against the barons. It was, in other words, in large part a medieval story, and one consequence is that there was more to say about the rise of liberty in the modern age than that it was caused inadvertently by... (shrink)

Applications of artificial intelligence/machine learning in health care are dynamic and rapidly growing. One strategy for anticipating and addressing ethical challenges related to AI/ml for health care is patient and public involvement in the design of those technologies – often referred to as ‘co-design’. Co-design has a diverse intellectual and practical history, however, and has been conceptualized in many different ways. Moreover, AI/ml introduces challenges to co-design that are often underappreciated. Informed by perspectives from critical data studies and critical digital (...) health studies, we review the research literature on involvement in health care, and involvement in design, and examine the extent to which co-design as commonly conceptualized is capable of addressing the range of normative issues raised by AI/ml for health care. We suggest that AI/ml technologies have amplified and modified existing challenges related to patient and public involvement, and created entirely new challenges. We outline three pitfalls associated with co-design for ethical AI/ml for health care and conclude with suggestions for addressing these practical and conceptual challenges. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

Current critical pedagogical scholarship has theorized the epistemological and social intersection between globalization and educational technology according to two distinct positions. For some, this intersection offers new liberatory knowledges and opportunities that can subvert social homogenization and economic disparity. For others, this relationship is just another phase of neoimperialism that should be politically and ideologically resisted. In contrast, we argue that the intersection between globalization and educational technologies is rather a manifestation of larger economic and logical forces, and that resistance (...) to such circumstances can neither be purely ideological or social. Instead, we contend that such a theoretical and pedagogical foreclosure dialectically actualizes conditions for real change—particularly when it complicates educational research technologies and their impact on epistemological multiplicity. (shrink)

For years, _Multicultural Education_ has served as an essential resource for education professionals, featuring scholarly articles written by industry leaders and topics, following current trends in education instruction today. The text helps educators understand the concepts, paradigms, and explanations necessary for becoming effective practitioners in the ever-evolving classroom environment, highlighting cultural, raocial and language-focused topics. Each chapter now incorporates new theoretical, conceptual, and research developments within the field, providing an adaptable approach to classroom techniques. With growing classroom diversity, the text (...) also features a chapter that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. Statistical tables, figures and charts have been updated to present the most current information. (shrink)

The practice of paying research subjects for participating inclinical trials has yet to receive an adequate moral analysis.Dickert and Grady argue for a wage payment model in whichresearch subjects are paid an hourly wage based on that ofunskilled laborers. If we accept this approach, what follows?Norms for just working conditions emerge from workplacelegislation and political theory. All workers, includingpaid research subjects under Dickert and Grady''s analysis,have a right to at least minimum wage, a standard work week,extra pay for overtime hours, (...) a safe workplace, no faultcompensation for work-related injury, and union organization.If we accept that paid research subjects are wage earners likeany other, then the implications for changes to current practiceare substantial. (shrink)

This summary account of Hume’s life and works challenges the usual way of telling the story of Hume’s career. It is generally believed that what Hume most wanted to be was a philosopher and that Hume turned to politics and history because that desire was frustrated, principally by the reputation for atheism he had acquired as a result of his writings on religion. The author argues that, from the beginning, Hume was as interested in politics as he was in philosophy; (...) that a career as an independent man of letters, and not as a professional philosopher, was what he most wanted; and that that career was a success, with the History of England its triumphant culmination. Hume’s religious skepticism was no obstacle to his living the life that he most wanted to live, the life of a sophisticated and widely respected citizen of the European republic of letters. (shrink)

What is the cognitive significance of talking to ourselves? I criticize two interpretations of this function , and offer a third: I argue that inner speech is a genuine dialogue, not a monologue; that the partners in this dialogue represent the independent interests of experienced meaning and logical articulation; that the former is either silent or capable only of abbreviated speech; that articulation is a logical, not a social demand; and that neither partner is a full-time subordinate of the other. (...) I examine the views of Plato, Arendt, Gadamer, Ryle, Piaget and Vygotsky on the nature of inner speech, and the views of Gazzaniga and Dennett on the role of inner speech in the constitution of human consciousness. (shrink)

We study the Johansen–Ledoit–Sornette model of financial market crashes :219–255, 2000). On our view, the JLS model is a curious case from the perspective of the recent philosophy of science literature, as it is naturally construed as a “minimal model” in the sense of Batterman and Rice :349–376, 2014) that nonetheless provides a causal explanation of market crashes, in the sense of Woodward’s interventionist account of causation.

A detailed account of certain traits of intellectual character—the epistemic virtues—and of their relation to the responsibility for one's beliefs.

What is the cognitive significance of talking to ourselves? I criticize two interpretations of this function , and offer a third: I argue that inner speech is a genuine dialogue, not a monologue; that the partners in this dialogue represent the independent interests of experienced meaning and logical articulation; that the former is either silent or capable only of abbreviated speech; that articulation is a logical, not a social demand; and that neither partner is a full-time subordinate of the other. (...) I examine the views of Plato, Arendt, Gadamer, Ryle, Piaget and Vygotsky on the nature of inner speech, and the views of Gazzaniga and Dennett on the role of inner speech in the constitution of human consciousness. (shrink)