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Measurement Across the Sciences: Developing a Shared Concept System for Measurement (Springer Series in Measurement Science and Technology)
by Luca Mari Mark Wilson Andrew MaulThis open access book proposes a conceptual framework for understanding measurement across a broad range of scientific fields and areas of application, such as physics, engineering, education, and psychology. It addresses contemporary issues and controversies within measurement in light of the framework, including operationalism, definitional uncertainty, and the relations between measurement and computation, and describes how the framework, operating as a shared concept system, supports understanding measurement’s work in different domains, using examples in the physical and human sciences.This revised and expanded second edition features a new analysis of the analogies and the differences between the error/uncertainty-related approach adopted in physical measurement and the validity-related approach adopted in psychosocial measurement. In addition, it provides a better analysis and presentation of measurement scales, in particular about their relations with quantity units, and introduces the measurand identification/definition as a part of the "Hexagon Framework" along with new examples from the physical and psychosocial sciences. Researchers and academics across a wide range of disciplines including biological, physical, social, and behavioral scientists, as well as specialists in measurement and philosophy appreciate the work’s fresh and provocative approach to the field at a time when sound measurements of complex scientific systems are increasingly essential to solving critical global problems.
Measurement across the Sciences: Developing a Shared Concept System for Measurement (Springer Series in Measurement Science and Technology)
by Mark Wilson Luca Mari Andrew MaulThis book proposes a conceptual framework for understanding measurement across a broad range of scientific fields and areas of application, such as physics, engineering, education, and psychology. The authors, who themselves span these disciplines, argue that the justification of the public trust attributed to measurement results can in principle apply identically to both physical and psychosocial properties. They further argue that the lack of a common conceptualization of measurement hampers interdisciplinary communication and limits the ability to share knowledge. They advance their views by first surveying the conceptual history of the philosophy of measurement and arguing that classical, operationalist and representational perspectives on measurement each make important contributions but also each have important shortcomings. A synthesis is then offered as the foundation for a new conceptual framework. The authors describe how the framework, which operates as a shared concept system, supports understanding measurement’s work in different domains, using examples in the physical and human sciences. They consider connections and consequences with respect to causality, objectivity, and intersubjectivity, among other topics, and how measurement science concepts and issues are construed across these disciplines and settings. They also address contemporary issues and controversies within measurement in the light of the framework, including operationalism, definitional uncertainty, and the relations between measurement and computation. The book concludes with a justification for the basic claim that measurement is an empirical and informational process that produces explicitly justifiable information. Researchers and academics across a wide range of disciplines including biological, physical, social and behavioral scientists, as well as specialists in measurement and philosophy will appreciate the work’s fresh and provocative approach to the field at a time when sound measurements of complex scientific systems are increasingly essential to solving critical global problems.
Measurement and Understanding in Science and Humanities: Interdisciplinary Approaches
by Marcel Schweiker Joachim Hass Anna Novokhatko Roxana HalbleibThis anthology is a unique compilation of scientific contributions on the topic of measurement and understanding, showing how terms such as number, measurement, understanding, model, pattern are used in a wide variety of disciplines. Based on the results and experiences from their own projects, 23 researchers comment on the potentials and limitations of individual methodological approaches and success factors of interdisciplinary collaboration. In doing so, they sound out the different significance of quantification and empirical evidence for their own disciplines and examine the influence of methodological approaches on existing models and images. The common goal is to want to understand the world; the methods, however, are highly diverse.
The Measurement of Sensation: A Critique of Perceptual Psychophysics
by C. Wade SavageThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.
The Measurement of Subjective Probability (Elements in Decision Theory and Philosophy)
by Edward J. ElliottBeliefs come in degrees, and we often represent those degrees with numbers. We might say, for example, that we are 90% confident in the truth of some scientific hypothesis, or only 30% confident in the success of some risky endeavour. But what do these numbers mean? What, in other words, is the underlying psychological reality to which the numbers correspond? And what constitutes a meaningful difference between numerically distinct representations of belief? In this Element, we discuss the main approaches to the measurement of belief. These fall into two broad categories-epistemic and decision-theoretic-with divergent foundations in the theory of measurement. Epistemic approaches explain the measurement of belief by appeal to relations between belief states themselves, whereas decision-theoretic approaches appeal to relations between beliefs and desires in the production of choice and preferences.
Measurements, Numerals and Scales: Essays in Honour of Stephanie Solt (Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition)
by Nicole Gotzner Uli SauerlandThis book brings together chapters on the semantics and pragmatics of measurement, scales, and numerical expressions. The chapters highlight recent developments in measurement theory, the meaning of numerical expressions and the relation between measurement scales and entailment scales. The authors provide explorations in formal and experimental semantics and pragmatics, as well as at the interfaces of this field with others including philosophy of language and sociolinguistics. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in these areas, as well as psychology, psycholinguistics and artificial intelligence.
Measuring E-government Efficiency
by Manuel Pedro Rodríguez-BolívarE-government has the potential to improve public services, information transparency, and the engagement of civic participation of the public sector management. This book analyzes the achievement of expectations created by public managers, policy-makers, and stakeholders with regard to the implementation of e-government policies and applications. It also tries to determine whether e-government applications have been introduced as a fad or according to real demands from citizenry and if efforts within e-government have been effective. This book investigates how public managers and policy-makers imagine e-government policies and the impact of those policies on their management and decision-making process through the engagement of citizenry. It is also discusses whether e-government policies are merely procedural improvements that strictly introduce new ways of delivering public services or disclosing public sector information. The book's analysis of the overall expectations on e-government applications makes it of interest to scholars in public administration as well as to policy-makers and stakeholders.
Measuring Human Rights
by Todd Landman Edzia CarvalhoThe measurement of human rights has long been debated within the various academic disciplines that focus on human rights, as well as within the larger international community of practitioners working in the field of human rights. Written by leading experts in the field, this is the most up-to-date and comprehensive book on how to measure human rights. Measuring Human Rights: draws explicitly on the international law of human rights to derive the content of human rights that ought to be measured contains a comprehensive methodological framework for operationalizing this human rights content into human rights measures includes separate chapters on the methods, strengths and biases of different human rights measures, including events-based, standards-based, survey-based, and socio-economic and administrative statistics covers measures of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights includes a complete bibliography, as well as sources and locations for data sets useful for the measurement of human rights. This volume offers a significant and timely addition to this important area of work in the field of human rights, and will be of interest to academics and NGOs, INGOs, international governmental organizations, international financial institutions, and national governments themselves.
Measuring Professional Knowledge: What Knowledge is the Foundation of Professional Skills?
by Felix Rauner Martin AhrensIn this book, we show the replacement of academic and vocational education, which is structured according to subject systems and oriented towards scientific knowledge, by vocational action knowledge. This work process knowledge is the basis for the acquisition of the design competence of vocational specialists, which is becoming increasingly important in the world of work.A modern knowledge concept based on vocational education is developed and documented. In the first part of the book the concept of vocational knowledge is developed, in the second part empirical results from COMET projects are documented, from which the vocational knowledge imparted in different occupations can be read.There has been a confusing discussion about vocational knowledge for decades. In 1991, the KMK agreed on a new concept for vocational education and training with the guiding idea of vocational design competence. It remained open on which vocational knowledge this new guiding idea should be based. Up to now there has been no original vocational pedagogical justification for the vocational knowledge on which vocational design competence is based.
Measuring the Mosaic
by Rick Helmes-HayesMeasuring the Mosaic is a comprehensive intellectual biography of John Porter (1921-1979), author of The Vertical Mosaic (1965), preeminent Canadian sociologist of his time, and one of Canada's most celebrated scholars. In the first biography of this important figure, Rick Helmes-Hayes provides a detailed account of Porter's life and an in-depth assessment of his extensive writings on class, power, educational opportunity, social mobility, and democracy.While assessing Porter's place in the historical development of Canadian social science, Helmes-Hayes also examines the economic, social, political and scholarly circumstances - including the Depression, World War II, post-war reconstruction, the baby boom, and the growth of universities - that contoured Porter's political and academic views. Using extensive archival research, correspondence, and over fifty original interviews with family, colleagues, and friends, Measuring the Mosaic stresses Porter's remarkable contributions as a scholar, academic statesman, senior administrator at Carleton University, and engaged, practical public intellectual.
Measuring the Subjective Well-being of Nations: National Accounts of Time Use and Well-being
by Alan B. KruegerSurely everyone wants to know the source of happiness, and indeed, economists and social scientists are increasingly interested in the study and effects of subjective well-being. Putting forward a rigorous method and new data for measuring, comparing, and analyzing the relationship between well-being and the way people spend their time-across countries, demographic groups, and history-this book will help set the agenda of research and policy for decades to come. It does so by introducing a system of National Time Accounting (NTA), which relies on individuals' own evaluations of their emotional experiences during various uses of time, a distinct departure from subjective measures such as life satisfaction and objective measures such as the Gross Domestic Product. A distinguished group of contributors here summarize the NTA method, provide illustrative findings about well-being based on NTA, and subject the approach to a rigorous conceptual and methodological critique that advances the field. As subjective well-being is topical in economics, psychology, and other social sciences, this book should have cross-disciplinary appeal.
The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy
by Sylvia BerrymanIt has long been thought that the ancient Greeks did not take mechanics seriously as part of the workings of nature, and that therefore their natural philosophy was both primitive and marginal. In this book Sylvia Berryman challenges that assumption, arguing that the idea that the world works 'like a machine' can be found in ancient Greek thought, predating the early modern philosophy with which it is most closely associated. Her discussion ranges over topics including balancing and equilibrium, lifting water, sphere-making and models of the heavens, and ancient Greek pneumatic theory, with detailed analysis of thinkers such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Hero of Alexandria. Her book shows scholars of ancient Greek philosophy why it is necessary to pay attention to mechanics, and shows historians of science why the differences between ancient and modern reactions to mechanics are not as great as was generally thought.
The Mechanical Mind
by Tim CraneThis edition has been fully revised and updated, and includes a new chapter on consciousness and a new section on modularity. There are also guides for further reading, and a new glossary of terms such as mentalese, connectionism, and the homunculus fallacy.
The Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines and Mental Representation
by Tim CraneHow can the human mind represent the external world? What is thought, and can it be studied scientifically? Should we think of the mind as a kind of machine? Is the mind a computer? Can a computer think? Tim Crane sets out to answer these questions and more in a lively and straightforward way, presuming no prior knowledge of philosophy or related disciplines. Since its first publication, The Mechanical Mind has introduced thousands of people to some of the most important ideas in contemporary philosophy of mind. Crane explains the fundamental ideas that cut across philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and cognitive science: what the mind-body problem is; what a computer is and how it works; what thoughts are and how computers and minds might have them. He examines different theories of the mind from dualist to eliminativist, and questions whether there can be thought without language and whether the mind is subject to the same causal laws as natural phenomena. The result is a fascinating exploration of the theories and arguments surrounding the notions of thought and representation. This third edition has been fully revised and updated, and includes a wholly new chapter on externalism about mental content and the extended and embodied mind. There is a stronger emphasis on the environmental and bodily context in which thought occurs. Many chapters have been reorganised to make the reader's passage through the book easier. The book now contains a much more detailed guide to further reading, and the chronology and the glossary of technical terms have also been updated. The Mechanical Mind is accessible to anyone interested in the mechanisms of our minds, and essential reading for those studying philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, or cognitive psychology.
The Mechanical World: The Metaphysical Commitments of the New Mechanistic Approach (Studies in Brain and Mind #13)
by Beate KrickelThis monograph examines the metaphysical commitments of the new mechanistic philosophy, a way of thinking that has returned to center stage. It challenges a variant of reductionism with regard to higher-level phenomena, which has crystallized as a default position among these so-called New Mechanists. Furthermore, it opposes those philosophers who reject the possibility of interlevel causation. Contemporary philosophers believe that the explanation of scientific phenomena requires the discovery of relevant mechanisms. As a result, new mechanists are, in the main, concerned solely with epistemological questions. But, the author argues, their most central claims rely on metaphysical assumptions. Thus, they must also take into account metaphysics, a system of thought concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world around it. This branch of philosophy does indeed matter to the empirical sciences. The chapters investigate the nature of mechanisms, their components, and the ways in which they can bring about different phenomena. In addition, the author develops a novel account of causation in terms of activities. The analysis provides the basis for many further research projects on mechanisms and their relations to, for example, the mind-body problem, realization, multiple realization, natural kinds, causation, laws of nature, counterfactuals, and scientific levels.
Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics
by Szu-Ting Chen Hsiang-Ke Chao Roberta L. MillsteinThis volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written by authorities and experts in the philosophy of biology and economics, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics provides a structured study of the concepts of mechanism and causality in these disciplines and draws careful juxtapositions between philosophical apparatus and scientific practice. By exploring the issues that are most salient to the contemporary philosophies of biology and economics and by presenting comparative analyses, the book serves as a platform not only for gaining mutual understanding between scientists and philosophers of the life sciences and those of the social sciences, but also for sharing interdisciplinary research that combines both philosophical concepts in both fields. The book begins by defining the concepts of mechanism and causality in biology and economics, respectively. The second and third parts investigate philosophical perspectives of various causal and mechanistic issues in scientific practice in the two fields. These two sections include chapters on causal issues in the theory of evolution; experiments and scientific discovery; representation of causal relations and mechanism by models in economics. The concluding section presents interdisciplinary studies of various topics concerning extrapolation of life sciences and social sciences, including chapters on the philosophical investigation of conjoining biological and economic analyses with, respectively, demography, medicine and sociology.
Mechanism, Life and Mind in Modern Natural Philosophy (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées #240)
by Charles T. Wolfe Paolo Pecere Antonio ClericuzioThis volume emphasizes the diversity and fruitfulness of early modern mechanism as a program, as a concept, as a model. Mechanistic study of the living body but also of the mind and mental processes are examined in careful historical focus, dealing with figures ranging from the first-rank (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Cudworth, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Kant) to less well-known individuals (Scaliger, Martini) or prominent natural philosophers who have been neglected in recent years (Willis, Steno, etc.). The volume moves from early modern medicine and physiology to late Enlightenment and even early 19th-century psychology, always maintaining a conceptual focus. It is a contribution to a newly active field in the history and philosophy of early modern life science. It is of interest to scholars studying the history of medicine and the development of mechanistic theories.
Mechanismen der Polarisierung von Parteiensystemen: Ideologische Dynamiken im Kontext von Angebot, Nachfrage und institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen
by Johannes SchmittIn der vergleichenden Politikwissenschaft ist der Indikator der Polarisierung zur Analyse von Parteiensystemen seit dem zentralen Werk von Giovanni Sartori etabliert. Sowohl eine zu niedrige als auch eine zu hohe Polarisierung charakterisieren einen dysfunktionalen Parteienwettbewerb. Allerdings sind die Ursachen, welche die Entstehung von Polarisierung erklären, nicht ausreichend erforscht. Die Arbeit widmet sich deshalb der Frage: Warum polarisieren sich demokratische Parteiensysteme und, unter welchen Bedingungen ist wiederum eine Entpolarisierung zu erwarten? Im Rahmen einer international-vergleichenden, quantitativen Analyse wird eine Antwort auf diese Frage gesucht. Zusammenfassend zeigt sich, dass insbesondere in den westeuropäischen Verhältniswahlsystemen die Polarisierung immer dann hoch ist, wenn sich der politische Wettbewerbsraum auf eine Dimension reduziert, eine Zentrumskoalition mit einer schwachen Opposition konfrontiert ist, das Parteiensystem gleichzeitig fragmentiert ist, das Elektorat in seinen Präferenzen polarisiert ist und die Wähler sowie Wählerinnen mit der Regierung unzufrieden sind.
Mechanisms and Consciousness: Integrating Phenomenology with Cognitive Science (Routledge Research in Phenomenology)
by Marek PokropskiThis book develops a new approach to naturalizing phenomenology. The author proposes to integrate phenomenology with the mechanistic framework that offers new methodological perspectives for studying complex mental phenomena such as consciousness. While mechanistic explanatory models are widely applied in cognitive science, their approach to describing subjective phenomena is limited. The author argues that phenomenology can fill this gap. He proposes two novel ways of integrating phenomenology and mechanism. First, he presents a new reading of phenomenological analyses as functional analyses. Such functional phenomenology delivers a functional sketch of a target system and provides constraints on the space of possible mechanisms. Second, he develops the neurophenomenological approach in the direction of dynamic modeling of experience. He shows that neurophenomenology can deliver dynamical constraints on mechanistic models and thus inform the search for an underlying mechanism. Mechanisms and Consciousness will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and the cognitive sciences.
Mechanisms in Molecular Biology (Elements in the Philosophy of Biology)
by Tudor BaetuThe new mechanistic philosophy is divided into two largely disconnected projects. One deals with a metaphysical inquiry into how mechanisms relate to issues such as causation, capacities and levels of organization, while the other deals with epistemic issues related to the discovery of mechanisms and the intelligibility of mechanistic representations. Tudor Baetu explores and explains these projects, and shows how the gap between them can be bridged. His proposed account is compatible both with the assumptions and practices of experimental design in biological research, and with scientifically accepted interpretations of experimental results.
Mechanisms in Science: Method or Metaphysics?
by Stavros Ioannidis Stathis PsillosIn recent years what has come to be called the 'New Mechanism' has emerged as a framework for thinking about the philosophical assumptions underlying many areas of science, especially in sciences such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology. This book offers a fresh look at the role of mechanisms, by situating novel analyses of central philosophical issues related to mechanisms within a rich historical perspective of the concept of mechanism as well as detailed case studies of biological mechanisms (such as apoptosis). It develops a new position, Methodological Mechanism, according to which mechanisms are to be viewed as causal pathways that are theoretically described and are underpinned by networks of difference-making relations. In contrast to metaphysically inflated accounts, this study characterises mechanism as a concept-in-use in science that is deflationary and metaphysically neutral, but still methodologically useful and central to scientific practice.
Mechanistic Explanations in Physics and Beyond (European Studies in Philosophy of Science #11)
by Brigitte Falkenburg Gregor SchiemannThis volume offers a broad, philosophical discussion on mechanical explanations. Coverage ranges from historical approaches and general questions to physics and higher-level sciences . The contributors also consider the topics of complexity, emergence, and reduction. Mechanistic explanations detail how certain properties of a whole stem from the causal activities of its parts. This kind of explanation is in particular employed in explanatory models of the behavior of complex systems. Often used in biology and neuroscience, mechanistic explanation models have been often overlooked in the philosophy of physics. The authors correct this surprising neglect. They trace these models back to their origins in physics. The papers present a comprehensive historical, methodological, and problem-oriented investigation. The contributors also investigate the conditions for using models of mechanistic explanations in physics. The last papers make the bridge from physics to economics, the theory of complex systems and computer science . This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers with an interest in the philosophy of science, scientific explanation, complex systems, models of explanation in physics higher level sciences, and causal mechanisms in science.
The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy
by Dan Garber Sophie RouxThe Mechanisation of Natural Philosophy is devoted to various aspects of the transformation of natural philosophy during the 16th and 17th centuries that is usually described as mechanical philosophy .Drawing the border between the old Aristotelianism and the « new » mechanical philosophy faces historians with a delicate task, if not an impossible mission. There were many natural philosophers who actually crossed the border between the two worlds, and, inside each of these worlds, there was a vast spectrum of doctrines, arguments and intellectual practices. The expression mechanical philosophy is burdened with ambiguities. It may refer to at least three different enterprises: a description of nature in mathematical terms; the comparison of natural phenomena to existing or imaginary machines; the use in natural philosophy of mechanical analogies, i.e. analogies conceived in terms of matter and motion alone.However mechanical philosophy is defined, its ambition was greater than its real successes. There were few mathematisations of phenomena. The machines of mechanical philosophers were not only imaginary, but had little to do with the machines of mecanicians. In most of the natural sciences, analogies in terms of matter and motion alone failed to provide satisfactory accounts of phenomena.By the same authors: Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 254).
The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance
by Jamie MartinA pioneering history traces the origins of global economic governance—and the political conflicts it generates—to the aftermath of World War I. International economic institutions like the IMF and World Bank exert incredible influence over the domestic policies of many states. These institutions date from the end of World War II and amassed power during the neoliberal era of the late twentieth century. But as Jamie Martin shows, if we want to understand their deeper origins and the ideas and dynamics that shaped their controversial powers, we must turn back to the explosive political struggles that attended the birth of global economic governance in the early twentieth century. The Meddlers tells the story of the first international institutions to govern the world economy, including the League of Nations and Bank for International Settlements, created after World War I. These institutions endowed civil servants, bankers, and colonial authorities from Europe and the United States with extraordinary powers: to enforce austerity, coordinate the policies of independent central banks, oversee development programs, and regulate commodity prices. In a highly unequal world, they faced a new political challenge: was it possible to reach into sovereign states and empires to intervene in domestic economic policies without generating a backlash? Martin follows the intense political conflicts provoked by the earliest international efforts to govern capitalism—from Weimar Germany to the Balkans, Nationalist China to colonial Malaya, and the Chilean desert to Wall Street. The Meddlers shows how the fraught problems of sovereignty and democracy posed by institutions like the IMF are not unique to late twentieth-century globalization, but instead first emerged during an earlier period of imperial competition, world war, and economic crisis.
Media and Global Civil Society
by Lina DencikA timely and critical investigation into the way media operates in a so-called global age, presenting new empirical data on key sites of news production and crucially tying these findings to ongoing debates on globalization and democracy.