Marginal structural models can be used to estimate the causal effect of a potentially time-varying treatment in the presence of time-dependent confounding via weighted regression. The standard approach of using inverse probability of treatment weighting can be sensitive to model misspecification and lead to high-variance estimates due to extreme weights. Various methods have been proposed to partially address this, including covariate balancing propensity score to mitigate treatment model misspecification, and truncation and stabilized-IPTW to temper extreme weights. In (...) this article, we present kernel optimal weighting, a convex-optimization-based approach that finds weights for fitting the MSMs that flexibly balance time-dependent confounders while simultaneously penalizing extreme weights, directly addressing the above limitations. We further extend KOW to control for informative censoring. We evaluate the performance of KOW in a simulation study, comparing it with IPTW, sIPTW, and CBPS. We demonstrate the use of KOW in studying the effect of treatment initiation on time-to-death among people living with human immunodeficiency virus and the effect of negative advertising on elections in the United States. (shrink)

​I use network models to simulate social learning situations in which the dominant group ignores or devalues testimony from the marginalized group. I find that the marginalized group ends up with several epistemic advantages due to testimonial ignoration and devaluation. The results provide one possible explanation for a key claim of standpoint epistemology, the inversion thesis, by casting it as a consequence of another key claim of the theory, the unidirectional failure of testimonial reciprocity. Moreover, the results complicate the understanding (...) and application of previously discovered network epistemology effects, notably the Zollman effect (Zollman 2007, 2010). (shrink)

Doubly robust (DR) estimators are an important class of statistics derived from a theory of semiparametric efficiency. They have become a popular tool in causal inference, including applications to dynamic treatment regimes. The doubly robust estimators for the mean response to a dynamic treatment regime may be conceived through the augmented inverse probability weighted (AIPW) estimating function, defined as the sum of the inverse probability weighted (IPW) estimating function and an augmentation term. The IPW estimating function of the causal estimand (...) via marginal structural model is defined as the complete-case score function for those subjects whose treatment sequence is consistent with the dynamic regime in question divided by the probability of observing the treatment sequence given the subject's treatment and covariate histories. The augmentation term is derived by projecting the IPW estimating function onto the nuisance tangent space and has mean-zero under the truth. The IPW estimator of the causal estimand is consistent if (i) the treatment assignment mechanism is correctly modeled and the AIPW estimator is consistent if either (i) is true or (ii) nested functions of intermediate and final outcomes are correctly modeled.Hence, the AIPW estimator is doubly robust and, moreover, the AIPW is semiparametric efficient if both (i) and (ii) are true simultaneously. Unfortunately, DR estimators can be inferior when either (i) or (ii) is true and the other false. In this case, the misspecified parts of the model can have a detrimental effect on the variance of the DR estimator. We propose an improved DR estimator of causal estimand in dynamic treatment regimes through a technique originally developed by [4] which aims to mitigate the ill-effects of model misspecification through a constrained optimization.In addition to solving a doubly robust system of equations, the improved DR estimator simultaneously minimizes the asymptotic variance of the estimator under a correctly specified treatment assignment mechanism but misspecification of intermediate and final outcome models. We illustrate the desirable operating characteristics of the estimator through Monte Carlo studies and apply the methods to data from a randomized study of integrilin therapy for patients undergoing coronary stent implantation. The methods proposed here are new and may be used to further improve personalized medicine, in general. (shrink)

Within stakeholder literature, much attention has been given to which stakeholders "really count." This article strives to explain why organizational theorists should abandon the pursuit of "Who and What Really Counts" to challenge the assumption of a managerial perspective that defines stakeholder legitimacy. Reflecting on the paucity of employee rights and protections in marginalized work environments, I argue that as organizational researchers, we must recognize and take responsibility for the impact of our research models and visions. By confronting and rethinking (...) the foundational assumptions of stakeholder theory, business and society scholars can identify and pursue research questions that more effectively address contemporary social challenges. (shrink)

A joint modelling of objective worlds and subjective perceptions within two-dimensional semantics eliminates the margin for error principle and solves the epistemic sorites paradox. Two objective knowledge modalities can be defined in two-dimensional frames accounting for subjective perceptions: “necessary knowledge” (NK) and “possible knowledge” (PK), the latter being better suited to the interpretation of knowledge utterances. Two-dimensional semantics can in some cases be reduced to one-dimensional ones, by defining accessibility relations between objective worlds that reflect subjective perceptions: NK and PK (...) are respectively equivalent to ${\square \square }$ and ${\lozenge \square }$ in some one-dimensional frame, and to ${\square }$ and another modality in some other. (shrink)

In _Marx at the Margins_, Kevin Anderson uncovers a variety of extensive but neglected texts by the well-known political economist which cast what we thought we knew about his work in a startlingly different light. Analyzing a variety of Marx’s writings, including journalistic work written for the _New York Tribune_, Anderson presents us with a Marx quite at odds with our conventional interpretations. Rather than providing us with an account of Marx as an exclusively class-based thinker, Anderson here offers a (...) portrait of Marx for the twenty-first century: a global theorist whose social critique was sensitive to the varieties of human social and historical development, including not just class, but nationalism, race, and ethnicity, as well. _Marx at the Margins _ultimately argues that alongside his overarching critique of capital, Marx created a theory of history that was multi-layered and not easily reduced to a single model of development or revolution. Through highly-informed readings on work ranging from Marx’s unpublished 1879–82 notebooks to his passionate writings about the antislavery cause in the United States, this volume delivers a groundbreaking and canon-changing vision of Karl Marx that is sure to provoke lively debate in Marxist scholarship and beyond. (shrink)

Despite decades of research, we still lack a clear explanation for the emergence and persistence of inequality. Here we propose and evaluate a marginal utility of inequality hypothesis that nominates circumscription and environmental heterogeneity as independent, necessary conditions for the emergence of intragroup material inequality. After coupling the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample with newly generated data from remote sensing, we test predictions derived from this hypothesis using a multivariate generalized additive model that accounts for spatial and historical dependence as (...) well as subsistence mode. Our analyses show that the probability a society will be stratified increases significantly as a function of proxies of environmental heterogeneity and environmental circumscription. This supports the hypothesis that increasing environmental heterogeneity and circumscription drives the emergence and persistence of inequality among documented societies across the globe. We demonstrate how environmental heterogeneity and circumscription produce situations that limit individuals’ options so that some may find it in their best interest to give up some autonomy for material gain, while others may find it in their best interest to give up some material resources for another individual’s time or deference. These results support the marginal utility of inequality framework and enable future explorations of the ecological conditions that facilitate the emergence of intragroup inequality through time and across the globe. (shrink)

This study proposes a conceptual model to explain persistent, accepted-as-normal corporate wrongdoing (hereafter banality of wrongdoing), particularly for high performance organizations. The model describes five explanatory variables: the culture of competition, ends-biased leadership, missionary zeal, legitimizing myth, and the corporate cocoon. Our thesis is that the nature of competition drives both legitimate and illegitimate goal-seeking to adopt an iconoclastic (rule-breaking) orientation. High performance organizations are favorable hosts for wrongdoing because high performance requires aggressive behavior at the ethical margins (...) of what is acceptable. The way leadership reacts to competition sets the stage for ethical or unethical cultures to develop. Ends-biased leadership will project strong vision, using ideology and legitimizing myth as tools to inspire and motivate. The resulting missionary zeal justifies using questionable means because of the perceived value of the end. One critical method for building strong culture is creating a sense of being separate and apart from the ordinary. This cocoon effect may create a self-referential value system that is significantly at odds with mainstream culture and in which wrongdoing is banal. We intend an empirical study of the variables described in this model. (shrink)

Is celebration of culturally marginalized people by the dominant culture actually benefitting those who are oppressed? Whose stakes are served in such a celebration and how are existing power relations altered? These are some of the questions John Champagne asks in this original and timely critique, which moves gay studies beyond identity politics and the "rights" discourse within which much of contemporary gay studies is positioned. Champagne argues that in the modern West, culturally marginalized people such as gays are not (...) allowed to define and legitimate their own existence outside the framework established for them by the dominant group. To illustrate his premise, Champagne analyzes a number of recent films, including "Paris is Burning", "Looking for Langston" and Marlon Riggs' 1989 video "Tongues Untied" along with gay pornography, using the work of such critics of difference as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gayatri Spivak. He calls for the marginalized individual to elaborate a practice of critical self-conduct, working to understand his or her own group as having been produced as an entity along a variety of different registers, only some of which might be said to be marginalized. "The Ethics of Marginality" situates itself at the intersection of English, cultural studies, film studies and gay and lesbian studies. It offers a powerful critique of contemporary approaches to studies of the "other" while promising to establish a ground-breaking and controversial new theoretical model for such studies. (shrink)

This article studies the treatment effect models in which individuals are classified into unobserved groups based on heterogeneous treatment rules. By using a finite mixture approach, we propose a marginal treatment effect framework in which the treatment choice and outcome equations can be heterogeneous across groups. Under the availability of instrumental variables specific to each group, we show that the MTE for each group can be separately identified. On the basis of our identification result, we propose a two-step semiparametric (...) procedure for estimating the group-wise MTE. We illustrate the usefulness of the proposed method with an application to economic returns to college education. (shrink)

This study will explore the Enlightenment conception of the individual of reason, its attempted formulations in actor biographies, and its ultimate denial by the reality of human identity as multiple, fluid, and dialogical. Such fluidity sought to overcome the marginal status of the stage player through the embodiment of rational models of personality. Some stage celebrities, most notably David Garrick, were offering themselves as public models of identity for the new age of reasoned discourse. This involved the presentation before (...) the public of stage performers as fully realized individuals. However, the unavoidable problem was that presenting an individual, even a renowned stage star, as a living paradigm of the enlightened person of reason would prove elusive. Aside from the inherent contradiction of locating any perfected stereotype in an actual person, the qualities making an individual in full conformity to his or her “reason” did not match the particular cultural qualities demanded for a successful eighteenth-century middle-class Englishman or Englishwoman. Nonetheless, by the last quarter of the eighteenth century, significant advances were made both within the particular profession of acting and before the onstage and offstage public. The acting profession was moving quickly and for the first time in England away from its marginalized status to offer respected agents for cultural change. The new genre of actor biographies as well contributed to this more fully realized formulation of the modern individual. (shrink)

In the closed wards of mental health institutions, moral decisions are made concerning the use of forced seclusion. In this article we focus on how these moral decisions are made and can be improved. We present a case study concerning moral deliberations on the use of seclusion and its prevention among nurses of a closed mental health ward. Moral psychology provides an explanation of how moral judgments are developed through processes of interaction. We will make use of the Social Intuitionist (...) Model of Jonathan Haidt that emphasizes the role of emotions, intuitions and the social context in moral judgments and reasoning. We argue that this model can help to explain social dynamics in the context of enforced seclusion. In the discussion we explore how moral psychology can be complemented with the normative perspective of dialogical ethics to develop strategies for improving psychiatric practices. We conclude that social processes play an important role in moral deliberations and that moral development can be fostered by bringing in new perspectives in the dialogue. Moral case deliberation provides a practical tool to systematically organize moral reflections among nurses on the work floor. (shrink)

Among the research that nowadays deals with the impact of digital technologies on attention, little is concerned with problematizing the theoretical premises about the nature of this cognitive faculty. Hence, even highly credited studies on digital distraction draw their conclusions from underexamined models of attention, despite them not being the only ones available. In our article we intend to focus on this problem, starting by discussing two case studies in the field of cognitive psychology and trying to show their theoretical (...) shortcomings when compared with an alternative model of attention. We will thus explore the account that a contemporary phenomenologist, Paul Sven Arvidson, has provided of attention and distraction. Finally, we will try to question the conclusions of the empirical studies by reframing them within Arvidson’s model, suggesting the importance of sharpening the definition of attention and distraction as preliminary work for investigating how the digital relates to them. (shrink)

Out of the Margin is the first book to consider feminist concerns across the whole domain of economics. In recent years there has been a tremendous increase in interest on the relation between gender and economics. Feminists have found much of concern in the way the economics has written women out of its history, built its theories around masculinist values, failed to take proper account of women and their work when measuring the economy and ignored most of the policy issues (...) that press most heavily upon women. This book is a firm rejection of this marginalized position. Including contributions from leading feminist economists from the US and Europe, the book offers a richness of new insights in addressing the absence of women, both as subject and object, in the history of economic thought. Out of the Margin also explores the philosophical roots of rational economic man, power relations and conflicts within the family, the limitations of relying on secondary data, the need for new data and research, the policy implications of neo-classical economic models and the need for fundamental research in policy making. With its range and depth of coverage, this is not only an excellent introduction to the field but also indispensible for anyone looking for an in-depth analysis of gender and economics. (shrink)

Bayesian paradigm has been widely acknowledged as a coherent approach to learning putative probability model structures from a finite class of candidate models. Bayesian learning is based on measuring the predictive ability of a model in terms of the corresponding marginal data distribution, which equals the expectation of the likelihood with respect to a prior distribution for model parameters. The main controversy related to this learning method stems from the necessity of specifying proper prior distributions for (...) all unknown parameters of a model, which ensures a complete determination of the marginal data distribution. Even for commonly used models, subjective priors may be difficult to specify precisely, and therefore, several automated learning procedures have been suggested in the literature. Here we introduce a novel Bayesian learning method based on the predictive entropy of a probability model, that can combine both subjective and objective probabilistic assessment of uncertain quantities in putative models. It is shown that our approach can avoid some of the limitations of the earlier suggested objective Bayesian methods. (shrink)

Philology is a term of wide application, designating at its most narrow the study of specific linguistic and textual features, at its most extensive what Gustav Gröber, in the Grundriβ der romanischen Philologie , called “the human spirit in language.” The distance between these definitions measures the literary medievalist's task: on the one hand to engage in the disinterested and often highly technical practices of medieval studies, on the other to produce results of general interest. These imperatives converge with a (...) slightly different but analogous dilemma, the relation of medieval studies to the human sciences as a whole. On the one hand, as the custodian of the formative history of the cultures of the European nation states, and as the agency by which the study of the national literatures first entered the academy in the nineteenth century, medieval studies has provided a model for cultural study. Yet in the current academic milieu, at least in the Anglo-American world, medieval studies is a marginalized institution. Most literary scholars and critics consider medieval texts to be utterly extraneous to their own interests, as at best irrelevant, at worst inconsequential; and they perceive the field itself as a site of pedantry and antiquarianism, a place to escape from the demands of modern intellectual life. (shrink)

Max Black has included approximately one half of the essays that he has published since Models and Metaphors in this collection entitled Margins of Precision. All but two of the essays have appeared in various professional journals, the two exceptions being Chapter V on "Induction" and Chapter VI on "Probability," which are articles in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards. The final chapter, "Wittgenstein’s Views About Language," is an address delivered at the Israel Academy, Jerusalem in 1966 and (...) published in Iyyun. Margins of Precision is an apt title for this anthology. The problems of induction that are a perennial concern of Black lie at the basis for margins of precision. Among these problems are criteria for correct induction, reasoning with loose concepts, and the gap between "Is" and "Should." Professor Black states that "Only in recent times have serious efforts been made to escape from the spell of the deductive model, used by Hume and his innumerable followers, by inquiring whether there may not be other proper and relevant senses of ‘reasonable'." According to Black, there is a sense of "reasonable" according to which we can reason with loose concepts, and there is need to advance further in our search for criteria for induction. His discussion of the gap between "Is" and "Should" suggests that this problem in metaethics is basically one of induction. For those interested in the problems of induction, Professor Black’s book is stimulating. He admits that he has "chosen topics where there is still work to be done." Each chapter opens the door to further thought.—L. A. (shrink)

Early animal embryos are patterned by localized egg cytoplasmic factors and cell interactions. In invertebrate chordate ascidians, larval tail muscle originates from the posterior marginal zone of the early embryo. It has recently been demonstrated that maternal macho‐1 mRNA encoding transcription factor acts as a localized muscle determinant. Other mesodermal tissues such as notochord and mesenchyme are also derived from the vegetal marginal zone. In contrast, formation of these tissues requires induction from endoderm precursors at the 32‐cell stage. (...) FGF–Ras–MAPK signaling is involved in the induction of both tissues. The responsiveness for induction to notochord or mesenchyme depends on the inheritance of localized egg cytoplasmic factors. Previous studies also point to critical roles of directed signaling in polarization of induced cells and in subsequent asymmetric divisions resulting in the formation of two daughter cells with distinct fates. One cell adopts an induced fate, while the other assumes a default fate. A simple model of mesoderm patterning in ascidian embryos is proposed in comparison with that of vertebrates. BioEssays 24:613–624, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article argues that supported decision making is ideal for people with dynamic cognitive and functional impairments that place them at the margins of autonomy. First, we argue that guardianship and similar surrogate decision-making frameworks may be inappropriate for people with dynamic impairments. Second, we provide a conceptual foundation for supported decision making for individuals with dynamic impairments, which integrates the social model of disability with relational accounts of autonomy. Third, we propose a three-step model that specifies the (...) necessary conditions of supported decision making: identifying domains for support; identifying kinds of supports; and reaching a mutually acceptable and formal agreement. Finally, we identify a series of challenges for supported decision making, provide preliminary responses, and highlight avenues for future bioethics research. (shrink)

Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line is an anti-war film which can be read as an Orphic narrative meditating on the relationship between humans and “nature.” Many scholarly readings of the film have been attracted by analyzes that explore the influences of Cavell and Heidegger on Malick. Kaja Silverman’s recent opus, Flesh of My Flesh, contains a chapter titled “All Things Shining.” She elegantly examines how Malick’s film explores the theme of “finitude.” She argues that, ontologically speaking, human existence gains (...) a more intense “glow” when humans are made aware of their mortality. The present becomes paramount. But like Orpheus, the present seeks to make amends with the past. Taking Silverman’s analysis one step further involves exploring finitude through the film’s many animal, arboreal and geological images. Nature can be read as a “margin” that more fully enhances the film’s exploration of connection and finitude. To this end, the opening chapter of Jacques Derrida’s Margins of Philosophy is invaluable. Entitled “Tympan,” Derrida’s introductory essay introduces a wealth of ecological metaphors. These stimulate an interaction between Silverman’s model of finitude, Derrida’s surprising ecologies at the margin and Malick’s quest for what shines in all beings. (shrink)

Perceived discrimination has consistently been shown to be associated with diminished mental health, but the psychological processes underlying this link are less well understood. The present series of four studies assessed the role of a history traumatic events in generating a proliferation of discrimination stressors and threat appraisals, which in turn predict psychological distress (depressive and posttraumatic stress symptoms) (mediation model), or whether prior traumatic events sensitize group members, such that when they encounter discrimination, the link to stress-related symptoms (...) is heightened (moderation model). Each of the studies assessed a different marginalized group in Canada, including Indigenous peoples, Blacks, Jews, and a diverse sample of women. Participants completed measures assessing history of traumatic events, perceived explicit and ambiguous discrimination, discrimination threat appraisals, and symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress. The four populations varied in their experiences, with Indigenous peoples encountering the highest levels of trauma, discrimination, and psychological distress symptoms. A mediated model was evident among Indigenous peoples and women, possibly reflecting the role of systemic processes that engender discrimination when traumatic events are experienced. There was evidence for a moderating role of a history of traumatic events on the relations between discrimination and depressive symptoms among Jewish and Black participants. Although the hypothesized synergistic effects of traumatic experiences were noted when assessing the relation between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms among Jews, the presence of trauma blunted these relations among Blacks. The results suggest that trauma-informed approaches to addressing stress-related processes and psychological outcomes need to consider the unique social context of members of various socially marginalized groups. (shrink)

We propose a new theory based on the notions of marginal and large difference which has natural models in the context of nonstandard mathematics. We introduce the notion of finite marginality and show a representation result which ensures, for finitely marginal countable models, the existence of a homomorphism of the structure of marginal and large difference into a nonstandard model of the natural numbers, and show the extent to which any such homomorphism is unique. Finally, we (...) show that our theory constitutes part of the underlying abstract structure of three distinct philosophical theories of vagueness: Dean’s neofeasibilism, Itzhaki’s theory of nonstandard heuristics, and our own initial sketch of a nonstandard primitivism about vagueness. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the marginalization of Russian immigrant patients within the American medical system. I argue that their already vulnerable position as immigrants with serious illnesses or conditions is exacerbated by unfamiliar social, cultural, and psychological terrain. This complex situation calls for a revision of the clinician–patient model in favor of a more comprehensive approach that takes seriously their double marginalization and its effects. I claim that one such approach, narrative medicine, can begin to address their marginalized (...) status by attending to not only the symptoms of the body, but to the story of the illness experience. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in investigating science communication. Some studies that address this issue attempt to develop a model to determine the level of confidence that an author or a scientific community has at a given time towards a theory or a group of theories. A well-established approach suggests that, in order to determine the level of certainty authors have with regard to the statements they make, one can identify specific lexical and morphosyntactical markers which (...) indicate their epistemic attitudes. This method is considered particularly appealing because it permits the development of an algorithmic model based on the quantitative analysis of the occurrence of these markers to assess automatically and objectively the opinion of an author or the predominant opinion of a scientific community on a topic at a given time. In this contribution we show that this line of research presents many kinds of problems especially when it is applied to research articles. To this aim, we propose two main lines of reasoning. The first one relies generally on the argumentative structure of scientific articles and shows that certainty/uncertainty markers are used differently in different argument forms and that therefore their number/frequency of use does not offer reliable indications for determining whether the topic at issue is considered by the authors to be more or less factual/speculative. The second one is based on the analysis of a sample of psychiatric research articles on homosexuality written over a long time span and taken from The British Journal of Psychiatry. Since the psychiatric perspective on homosexuality changed radically during the decades in which these articles were published, they offer an inventory of various kinds of argumentative strategies directed both at defending and confuting dominant as well as marginal positions. We focus especially on uncertainty markers and show that frequently the positions stated using expressions indicating uncertainty are actually not considered as conjectural or speculative by their authors, but that the use of uncertainty markers is motivated by a number of different and often incongruent rhetorical strategies. (shrink)

This paper introduces a class of graphical independence models that is closed under marginalization and conditioning but that contains all DAG independence models. This class of graphs, called maximal ancestral graphs, has two attractive features: there is at most one edge between each pair of vertices; every missing edge corresponds to an independence relation. These features lead to a simple parameterization of the corresponding set of distributions in the Gaussian case.

The use of marginal land (ML) for lignocellulosic biofuel production is examined for system stability, resilience, and eco-social sustainability. A North American prairie grass system and its industrialization for maximum biomass production using biotechnology and agro-technical inputs is the focus of the analysis. Demographic models of ML biomass production and ethanol farmer/producers are used to examine the stability properties of the ML system. A bio-economic model that maximizes the utility of consumption having the dynamics of MLs and the (...) farmer/producers as dynamic constraints is used to examine the effects of increased conversion efficiency, input costs, risk, and levels of base resources and inputs on the competitive and societal solutions for biomass production. We posit ML abandonment after biofuel production ceases could lead to permanent land degradation below initial levels that prohibit the establishment of the original flora and fauna. (shrink)

This article presents a model of the production of human behaviour, grounded in a pragmatist perspective. The model has two components: a small set of considered behaviours, and a set of motivators which I group into four subsets: material, reproductive, and two sets of attributional motivators. The model is based on a minimum principle. A person performs that considered behaviour which comes closest to ideal in light of the person's motivators. I show that both declining marginal (...) utility and satisfying follow as deductions from the model. In addition, especially with the inclusion of attributional motivators, the model accounts for a variety of findings in social science. I also show how it can generate theory and testable empirical predictions. (shrink)

We argue that the epistemic theory of vagueness cannot adequately justify its key tenet-that vague predicates have precisely bounded extensions, of which we are necessarily ignorant. Nor can the theory adequately account for our ignorance of the truth values of borderline cases. Furthermore, we argue that Williamson’s promising attempt to explicate our understanding of vague language on the model of a certain sort of “inexact knowledge” is at best incomplete, since certain forms of vagueness do not fit Williamson’s (...) class='Hi'>model, and in fact fit an alternative model. Finally, we point out that a certain kind of irremediable inexactitude postulated by physics need not be-and is not commonly-interpreted as epistemic. Thus, there are aspects of contemporary science that do not accord well with the epistemicist outlook. (shrink)

IN THIS ESSAY I USE W. E. B. DU BOIS AND HIS CATEGORY OF TRAGIC SOUL-life in an attempt to expand John Rawls's notion of public reason. As it stands, the divide between religion and politics within Rawlsian political liberalism inadequately attends to the role of moral beliefs, especially those used to justify and reinforce antiblack racism, in forming and fashioning political commitments. By introducing tragic soul-life and Du Bois's category of second sight, I plan to show how a reflective (...) model of deliberation based on Du Boisian themes will allow social actors to interrogate the overlap between political and comprehensive beliefs without necessarily compromising democratic traditions on which rest political conceptions of justice. (shrink)

Consider the hypothesis H that a defendant is guilty, and the evidence E that a majority of h out of n independent jurors have voted for H and a minority of k:=n-h against H. How likely is the majority verdict to be correct? By a formula of Condorcet, the probability that H is true given E depends only on each juror's competence and on the absolute margin between the majority and the minority h-k, but neither on the number n, nor (...) on the proportion h/n. This paper reassesses that result and explores its implications. First, using the classical Condorcet jury model, I derive a more general version of Condorcet's formula, confirming the significance of the absolute margin, but showing that the probability that H is true given E depends also on an additional parameter: the prior probability that H is true. Second, I show that a related result holds when we consider not the degree of belief we attach to H given E, but the degree of support E gives to H. Third, I address the implications for the definition of special majority voting, a procedure used to capture the asymmetry between false positive and false negative decisions. I argue that the standard definition of special majority voting in terms of a required proportion of the jury is epistemically questionable, and that the classical Condorcet jury model leads to an alternative definition in terms of a required absolute margin between the majority and the minority. Finally, I show that the results on the significance of the absolute margin can be resisted if the so-called assumption of symmetrical juror competence is relaxed. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis review of Martin Jay's recent published collection of essays examines his ongoing rethinking, supplementation, and revision of central themes—the negative and positive dialectics of historical totalization, the varieties and uses of conceptions of experience, the nature of visual cultures and scopic regimes, and the ambiguities of truth‐construction in the public realm—that have been the focus of his major works since the 1970s. It argues that his more recent work indicates a gradual shift toward an affirmation of the kinds of (...) paratactic and deconstructive thinking of Adorno and Derrida as models for producing appropriate forms of historical consciousness and historical critique in the present, and it raises the question of how the issues of historical truth‐telling, consensual collective identity, ethical action, and the cultural role of the critical intellectual are reformulated in this process. (shrink)

Although the importance of including vulnerable populations in medical research is widely accepted, identifying how to achieve such inclusion remains a challenge. Ensuring that the language of informed consent is comprehensible to this group is no less of a challenge. Although a variety of interventions show promise for increasing the comprehensibility of informed consent and increasing a climate of exchange, consensus is lacking on which interventions should be used in which situations and current regulations provide little guidance. We argue that (...) the notion of individual autonomy — a foundational principle of informed consent — may be too narrow for some vulnerable populations by virtue of its failure to acknowledge their unique histories and current circumstances. It has a different meaning for members of structured groups like American Indians than for unstructured groups, such as African Americans, whose complicated histories foster group identity. Ensuring broad participation in research and selecting appropriate methods for obtaining informed consent — namely, methods aligned with the source of vulnerability and level of risk — require new ways of thinking that might produce guidelines for matching informed consent models and processes with subpopulations. (shrink)

The relationship between a doctor and a patient is taken to be one of the most ethically significant dimensions of good medical care. After all, it is within the interactions that constitute this relationship that information is shared, that choices get determined, that reassurances are provided, that decisions are made and, ultimately, that care is given. Medical ethicists have devoted considerable effort to identifying different types of relationships, and in specifying their ideal components, most usually in general or abstract terms. (...) Indeed, I would suggest that medical ethicists are most comfortable when we are comparing different models of this relationship, or perhaps when advancing one account of this relationship that can provide the foundations for the most optimal approach to shared decision-making, for example by Sandman and Munthe.2 But, in truth, the doctor–patient relationship is most ethically interesting—and intellectually challenging—when scrutinised in its non-ideal forms. Ethicists who turn their attention to the front line of practice have demonstrated a tendency to see this relationship as one that is creaking at the seams, subject to manipulation or side-tracked entirely. So, is it the case that the doctor–patient relationship is under threat in contemporary medical practice? The answer to this question ought, I think, to be answered in the affirmative, though tentatively so. The role of medical ethicists is to identify precisely how such threats are materialising and to capture these in rich, detailed accounts of everyday medical encounters. Medical ethicists then also have a vital role to play in identifying and responding to these changes in a carefully reasoned way. Sometimes this is likely to involve pushing back and protecting those elements of the doctor–patient relationship that have fundamental value, regardless of context, changing social values, …. (shrink)

Serial homology is widespread in organismal design, but the origin and individuation of these repeated structures appears to differ with the different types of serial homologues, and remains an intriguing and exciting topic of research. Here I focus on the evolution of the serially repeated eyespots that decorate the margin of the wings of nymphalid butterflies. In this system, unresolved questions relate to the evolutionary steps that lead to the appearance of these serial homologues and how their separate identities evolved. (...) I present and discuss two alternative hypotheses. The first proposes that eyespots first appeared as a row of undifferentiated repeated modules, one per wing compartment, that later become individuated. This individuation allowed eyespots to appear and disappear from specific wing compartments and also allowed eyespots to acquire different morphologies. The second hypothesis proposes that eyespots first appeared as individuated single units, or groups of units, that over evolutionary time were co‐opted into new compartments on the wing. I discuss the merits of each of these alternate hypotheses by finding analogies to other systems and propose research avenues for addressing these issues in the future. BioEssays 30:358–366, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 39, Issue 3, pp 205 - 234 For many people across the world, experiences of depression include features that extend beyond the biopsychiatric model, which predominates in research on the relationship between religious and spiritual coping and depressive symptoms. How does attending to these diverse experiences of depression challenge our understanding of the dynamic between religiosity and depression? This paper presents thirteen qualitative interviews among economically marginalized mothers in the metro-Boston area. Analyzing these narratives presents a (...) complex picture of the way chronic situational stress lies beneath their experiences of depression. From this expanded view of depressive experiences, we analyze the religious coping strategies of social support and meaning making to reveal the holistic, yet often ambiguous, ways these mothers engaged religious and spiritual resources to forge hope amidst chronic stress. (shrink)

Finite model theory is currently not one of the hot topics in the philosophy and history of mathematics, not even in the philosophy and history of mathematical logic. The philosophy of mathematics and mathematical logic has concentrated on infinite structures, closely related to foundational issues. In that context, finite models deserved only marginal attention because it was taken for granted that the study of finite structures is trivial compared to the study of infinite structures. In retrospect, research on (...) finite structures turned out to be neither trivial nor irrelevant but had an important impact on theoretical computer science. A closer look at the early history of the spectrum problem shows that the birth of finite model theory has roots in formal logic, at a time when computer science did not yet exist. (shrink)

The critique of mission history often involves perpetuating the overestimated impact of the missionaries from opposite sides. It was not so much the missionaries who mattered, but what mattered more was whether the people were responding to the message or not. Today we see the translating function of the missionaries in a clearer way and the people’s reception as the crucial factor in the process of modern Christianization. The World Council of Churches in its declaration “Together Towards Life” separates mission (...) from its entanglement with colonialism as a mission from the margins by grounding it in the triune God, but it seems to overlook the contributing factor of the people as the human subject of the Christianization process. Instead of following a simple input-impact model, we have to acknowledge more those who were adapting themselves to the Christian faith from within their own context. (shrink)

Chapter 5 is an essay on the methodology of equilibrium theory. In the course of examining recent controversies concerning lawlike claims and "assumptions" in economic theory, I reach a position similar to J. S. Mill's. Neo-classical economics is what Mill would call "a separate science." It follows a deductive method, since its basic laws supported by everyday experience. In its general equilibrium formulation, equilibrium theory possesses, however, no explanatory worth and very little explanatory importance, since its idealizations are not legitimate. (...) General equilibrium theory ought fundamentally to be regarded as an explanation of how economic equilibrium is possible. ;In conclusion I argue that Sraffa's contribution is a legitimate form of economic theorizing. Those methodological views, like Lionel Robbins', which would proscribe the sort of piecemeal theorizing Sraffa exemplifies, are, as methodological strictures, unjustified. In fact they involve an ideological distortion. Given the weaknesses in general equilibrium theory identified in Chapters 3 and 5, one has good reason to be eclectic. The Austrian theory, despite the Cambridge criticisms, may be useful in some investigations. A much more segmented economics built around Sraffa's work may have a great deal to teach us. Theories of capital, interest and exchange value currently are underdeveloped, unsupported, and subject to ideological influence. ;In Chapter 3 one special formulation of intertemporal general equilibrium theory is examined. I argue that general equilibrium theory may be taken as a theory of the rate of interest to which the Cambridge criticisms do not apply. Puzzles remain, however, concerning both the apparently lawlike claims and the unrealistic stipulations concerning background conditions that general equilibrium theory makes. ;In Chapter 4 Sraffa's system in The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities is presented and tentatively assessed. I argue that it is consistent with equilibrium theory, but may be combined with other claims that are not consistent with equilibrium theory. What is puzzling but, I argue, methodologically legitimate in Sraffa's work is that he takes as givens factors like the composition of output, that are themselves subject to further economic analysis. Sraffa's work, when properly understood, can prove valuable to Marxian economists. ;Chapter 1 establishes a contrast between physical cost and marginal utility theories of exchange value and examines why issues concerning capital and interest are theoretically central to both theories. I point out that physical cost theories of value are not tenable. ;Chapter 2 is concerned with simplified aggregate capital theories, especially Wicksell's Austrian theory of capital, and with the Cambridge criticisms of such theories. The Cambridge criticisms show, I conclude, that aggregative capital theories make unwarranted economic claims. ;This dissertation examines from both an economic and a philosophical perspective controversies concerning the theory of capital and interest and the relationship of capital and interest to exchange value. The fundamentals of the neo-classical and neo-Ricardian approaches to economic theory are made explicit and compared. The neo-Ricardian approach is partially defended. (shrink)

Nowadays “philosophy of biology” is taken to be the special study of a set of issues concerning selection, adaptation, and the characterization of a species. Though the reduction of biology to chemistry and physics remained a topic in the general philosophy of science syllabus through the 1970s, the concept of life subsequently lost even this marginal foothold in the curriculum. Hans.

Jamie Morgan's commentary (Morgan, 2016) on my paper 'The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory' (Ellerman, 2016) and Ted Burczak's later comments (Burczak, 2016) raise a number of issues that surely will occur to other readers and that need to be addressed. I take the occasion to expand upon the arguments and to explore some related issues. In the narrative that unfolds, Frank H. Knight plays the role of the sophisticated defender of the system of renting, hiring (...) and employing human beings. He was quite clear that the social role of economics is to develop an idealised model, the competitive free enterprise model, and then to frame the normative discussion in terms of that model. Knight would agree with the whole thread of heterodox 'criticism' that the actual economy falls far short of the ideal – which is why I largely eschewed the descriptive shortcomings of ideal model as a purported model of the actual economy. Instead my paper focused on developing a critique of the key part of the idealised model, the marginal productivity theory of distribution under competitive conditions. That critique is based on the usual juridical principle of imputing legal responsibility in accordance with factual responsibility – the principle whose property-theoretic application is the modern treatment of the labour theory of property. Historically, heterodox economics faced a fork in the road in the 19th century: whether to criticise 'the system' by developing the inchoate 'labour theory' as a theory of value or a theory of property. Marx and much of left-wing economics took the labour-theory-of-value road, whereas my paper is part of a modern attempt – Thomas Hodgskin (1832) being an earlier attempt – to take the labour-theory-of-property road. As we will see, much of the debate still revolves around these two roads. Read David Ellerman's original paper "The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory" › Read Jamie Morgan's commentary on David Ellerman's paper ›. (shrink)

This paper examines how the prevailing knowledge systems of the West reduce and divide us within and between ourselves. It also highlights how these are paralleled by the Wisdom tradition in theology which allows for a more inclusive model of relationality and becoming. The author sets out before us how western systems create and dictate the underlying binary oppositions by which we, almost unconsciously, live out our lives. New ways are suggested and new horizons plotted.

The idea of the university is habitually discussed in relation to German or English language classics. Instead, I will focus on the Spanish language periphery arguing that the discussions there merit attention for distinguishing between three central Old World models of the university, namely, apart from the English and the German, also a French one. Moreover, the marginal perspective stresses the social and political importance of the university. In this perspective, José Ortega y Gasset deserves attention for arguing for (...) a university in the service of a modern republican state. Ortega stresses the importance of a cultural formation that includes the sciences to make enlightened decisions, the distinction between teaching a discipline and doing research within it, and that between a scientist doing research and a highly educated professional practitioner. Unfortunately, the role of knowledge and truth is neglected. The argument from the periphery is therefore necessary albeit not sufficient. (shrink)

As organizations take on grand challenges in gender equality, anti-racism, LGBTQ+ protections and workplace inclusion, many well-intentioned individuals from dominant groups (e.g., cisgender men, Caucasian, heterosexual) are stepping forward as allies toward underrepresented or marginalized group members (e.g., cisgender women, People of Color, LGBTQ+ identified employees). Past research and guidance assume an inevitable need for external motivation, reflected in the ‘business case’ for diversity and in top-down policies to drive equity and inclusion efforts. This qualitative study explored _internal_ motivations in (...) the form of morally motivated virtues of 25 peer-nominated exemplary allies serving in leadership positions. In-depth life/career story interviews were used to identify the virtues that supported their allyship journeys. Findings demonstrated that they tapped into several virtues that served distinct functions in a 4-stage allyship development process: Stage 1—Energizing psychological investment (compassion, fairness); Stage 2—Thinking through allyship-relevant complexities (intellectual humility, perspective-taking, wisdom); Stage 3—Initiating action (prudence, moral courage, honesty); Stage 4—Committing to allyship (perseverance, patience). We call this the ‘EThIC model of virtue-based allyship development.’ This study has implications for theory and research on a virtue-based approach to diversity, equity and inclusion. (shrink)