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Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty: Three Centuries of Economic Decision-Making
by George G. SzpiroAt its core, economics is about making decisions. In the history of economic thought, great intellectual prowess has been exerted toward devising exquisite theories of optimal decision making in situations of constraint, risk, and scarcity. Yet not all of our choices are purely logical, and so there is a longstanding tension between those emphasizing the rational and irrational sides of human behavior. One strand develops formal models of rational utility maximizing while the other draws on what behavioral science has shown about our tendency to act irrationally.In Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty, George G. Szpiro offers a new narrative of the three-century history of the study of decision making, tracing how crucial ideas have evolved and telling the stories of the thinkers who shaped the field. Szpiro examines economics from the early days of theories spun from anecdotal evidence to the rise of a discipline built around elegant mathematics through the past half century’s interest in describing how people actually behave. Considering the work of Locke, Bentham, Jevons, Walras, Friedman, Tversky and Kahneman, Thaler, and a range of other thinkers, he sheds light on the vast scope of discovery since Bernoulli first proposed a solution to the St. Petersburg Paradox. Presenting fundamental mathematical theories in easy-to-understand language, Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty is a revelatory history for readers seeking to grasp the grand sweep of economic thought.
Risk, Technology, and Moral Emotions (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory)
by Sabine RoeserRisks arising from technologies raise important ethical issues. Although technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, ICT, and nuclear energy can improve human well-being, they may also convey risks for our well-being due to, for example, abuse, unintended side-effects, accidents, and pollution. As a consequence, technologies can trigger emotions, including fear and indignation, which often leads to conflicts between stakeholders. How should we deal with such emotions in decision making about risky technologies? This book offers a new philosophical theory of risk emotions, arguing why and how moral emotions should play an important role in decisions surrounding risky technologies. Emotions are usually met with suspicion in debates about risky technologies because they are seen as contrary to rational decision making. However, Roeser argues that moral emotions can play an important role in judging ethical aspects of technological risks, such as justice, fairness, and autonomy. This book provides a novel theoretical approach while at the same time offering concrete recommendations for decision making about risky technologies. It will be of interest to those working in different areas of philosophy—such as ethics, decision theory, philosophy of science, and philosophy of technology—as well as scholars in the fields of psychology, public policy, science and technology studies, environmental ethics, and bioethics.
Risk: Philosophical Perspectives
by Tim LewensHow can we determine an acceptable level of risk? Should these decisions be made by experts, or by the people they affect? How should safety and security be balanced against other goods, such as liberty? This is the first collection to examine the philosophical dimensions of these pressing practical problems. Leading scholars exploring the full range of philosophical implications of risk, including: risk and ethics risk and rationality risk and scientific expertise risk and lay knowledge the objectivity of risk assessment risk and the precautionary principle risk and terror. With contributions from Carl F. Cranor, Sven Ove Hansson, Martin Kusch, Tim Lewens, D.H. Mellor, Adam Morton, Stephen Perry, Martin Peterson, Alan Ryan, Per Sandin, Cass R. Sunstein and Jonathan Wolff; this collection is essential reading, not only for philosophers and researchers in legal, economic and environmental studies, but for those seeking to gain a better understanding of the decisions we must make as concerned citizens.
Risks and Regulation of New Technologies (Kobe University Monograph Series in Social Science Research)
by Jonathan Wolff Takashi Yanagawa Tsuyoshi MatsudaHow should we proceed with advanced research of humanities and social sciences in collaboration? What are the pressing issues of this new trend in a cataclysmic time for civilization? This book, originated with a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Topic-Setting Program, addresses these challenging questions in four parts for innovating twenty-first-century humanities and social sciences. It broadens the horizon for reviewing multi-disciplinary landscapes of risks and regulation of new technologies by focusing on paradigmatic cases from the fields of life and environment. Here, genome editing for reproductive treatment and renewable energy under the constraint of climate change in Japanese and global contexts are involved. The volume comprises a combination of topics and aspects such as public policy and philosophy of science, medicine and law, climate ethics, and the economics of electricity. This edited collection will thus motivate forward-thinking readers across the diverse spectrum of social sciences and humanities to survey themes of their own interests in multi-disciplinary studies. In so doing, they can explore the evolving frontiers of those disciplines and the depths of individual contributions by experts in philosophy, ethics, law, economics, and science, technology, and society (STS), including bioscience.
Risky Play: An Ethical Challenge (Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood)
by Øyvind Kvalnes Ellen Beate Hansen SandseterThis open access book brings together current childhood research and contemporary ethical theory to draw attention to how children depend upon a scope of action for risky play for their mental and physical development. In many countries, the opportunities for children to play away from adults' close attention have decreased. At both school and home, protection and avoidance of harm take increasing priority. This book draws a distinction between do-good ethics and avoid-harm ethics to highlight ethical tensions and dilemmas encountered by professionals who work with children, and suggests better ways to balance these ethical dimensions in approaching risky play.
Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
by Modris EksteinsThis award-winning cultural history reveals how the Great War changed humanity. This sweeping volume probes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of World War I—from the premiere of Igor Stravinsky&’s ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. &“The Great War,&” as Modris Eksteins writes, &“was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places.&” In this &“bold and fertile book&” (The Atlantic Monthly), Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts in human consciousness brought about by this great cataclysm, through the lives and words of ordinary people, works of literature, and such events as Lindbergh&’s transatlantic flight and the publication of the first modern bestseller, All Quiet on the Western Front. Rites of Spring is a rare and remarkable work, a cultural history that redefines the way we look at our past—and toward our future.
Ritual and Rhythm in Electoral Systems: A Comparative Legal Account (Election Law, Politics, and Theory)
by Graeme Orr’Why do we vote in schools?’ ’What is the social meaning of secret balloting?’ ’What is lost if we vote by mail or computers rather than on election day?’ ’What is the history and role of drinking and wagering in elections?’ ’How does the electoral cycle generate the theatre of election night and inaugurations?’ Elections are key public events - in a secular society the only real coming together of the social whole. Their rituals and rhythms run deep. Yet their conduct is invariably examined in instrumental ways, as if they were merely competitive games or liberal apparatus. Focusing on the political cultures and laws of the UK, the US and Australia, this book offers an historicised and generalised account of the intersection of electoral systems and the concepts of ritual, rhythm and the everyday, which form the basis of how we experience elections. As a novel contribution to the theory of the law of elections, this book will be of interest to researchers, students, administrators and policy makers in both politics and law.
Ritual and the Moral Life
by David Solomon Ruiping Fan Ping-Cheung LoIn the twentieth century, in both China and the West, ritual became marginalized in the face of the growth of secularism and individualism. In China, Confucianism and its essentially ritualistic comportment to the world were vigorously suppressed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) under Mao Zedong. But de-ritualization already took place as a result of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 under Sun Yat-Sen. In the West, while the process of de-ritualization has been generally more gradual, it has been nonetheless drastic. In contrast to this situation, this volume investigates the crucial role ritual plays in constituting the human understanding of their place in the cosmos, the purpose of their lives, and imbues human existence with a more complete sense of meaningfulness. This volume presents the work of philosophers from both China and the West as they reflect upon the constitutive role that ritual plays in human life. They reflect not only on ritual in general but also on specific Confucian and Christian appreciations of ritual. This provocative volume is a beacon of warning to Western philosophers, who think they have graduated from the trappings of ritual, and a beacon of hope for Eastern thinkers, who wish to avoid cultural fragmentation. The Editors, both Eastern and Western, have together created a seamless work that not only introduces ritual, but advances an argument for the contribution that ritual makes to cultural renewal. This volume is a work of philosophical thinking about ritual doing, but challenges those who think to realize that the salvation of philosophical thinking rests in the particularity and contingency of ritual doing. Let us hope this volume is widely read, for it points to that which might renew the West. - Jeffrey P. Bishop, Saint Louis University
Rituals
by Cees NooteboomIn Rituals, Amsterdam of the fifties, sixties and seventies is viewed from the perspective of the capricious Inni Wintrop. An unintentional suicide survivor, the unexpected gift of life returned lends him the curiousity, and impartiality, to survey others' lives and rountines. Inni's opposite, the one-eyed downhill skier Arnold Taads measures his life by the clock, while his disowned son Philip follows Japanese rituals which themselves seem to render his existence meaningless. A novel for those who seek to unravel our mysterious, apparently directionless lives...
Rivalries that Destroyed the Roman Republic
by Jeremiah McCallThis is the story of how some Roman aristocrats grew so competitive in their political rivalries that they destroyed their Republic, in the late second to mid-first century BCE. Politics had always been a fractious game at Rome as aristocratic competitors strove to outshine one another in elected offices and honors, all ostensibly in the name of serving the Republic. And for centuries it had worked - or at least worked for these elite and elitist competitors. Enemies were defeated, glory was spread round the ruling class, and the empire of the Republic steadily grew. When rivalries grew too bitter, when aristocrats seemed headed toward excessive power, the oligarchy of the Roman Senate would curb its more competitive members, fostering consensus that allowed the system—the competitive arena for offices and honors, and the domination of the Senate—to continue. But as Rome came to rule much of the Mediterranean, aristocratic competitions grew too fierce; the prizes for winning were too great. And so, a series of bitter rivalries combined with the social and political pressures of the day to disintegrate the Republic. This is the story of those bitter rivalries from the senatorial debates of Fabius and Scipio, to the censorial purges of Cato; from the murders of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, to the ultimate rivalry of Caesar and Pompey. A work of historical investigation, Rivalries that Destroyed the Roman Republic introduces readers not only to the story of the Republic's collapse but the often-scarce and problematic evidence from which the story of these actors and their struggles is woven.
Rivelazione
by Baron Alexander Deschauer Debora MazzucaQuesto libro svela il segreto per essere felici e soddisfatti, il suo fine è quello di mostrare il vero significato della vita, le infinite possibilità esistenti a nostra disposizione. La sua scrittura è semplice e può essere facilmente compreso da chiunque: senza riferimenti a persone vive o morte e senza aver bisogno di anni di studi teologici o filosofici. Presenta delle idee che trascendono le barriere sociali, economiche e accademiche. Come uno specchio che riflette l'immagine dell'osservatore, questo libro riflette i pensieri e le esperienze del lettore. L'obiettivo è quello di ampliare la comprensione del lettore di sé stesso e della connessione esistente tra tutte le forme di vita presenti. Per un effetto migliore si consiglia di leggerlo ad alta voce.
River City Empire: Tom Dennison's Omaha
by Orville D. Menard Laurie Smith CampMore than any other political boss of the early twentieth century, Thomas Dennison, “the Rogue who ruled Omaha,” was a master of the devious. Unlike his contemporaries outside the Midwest, he took no political office and was never convicted of a crime during his thirty-year reign. He was a man who managed saloons but never cared for alcohol; who may have incited the Omaha Race Riot of 1919 but claimed he never harmed a soul; who stood aside while powerful men did his bidding. His power came not from coercion or nobility but from delegation and subterfuge. Orville D. Menard chronicles Dennison’s life in River City Empire, beginning with Dennison’s experiences in Colorado mining towns. In 1892 Dennison came to Omaha, Nebraska, where he married and started a family while solidifying his position as an influential political boss. Menard explores machine politics in Omaha as well as the man behind this machine, describing how Dennison steered elections, served the legitimate and illegitimate business communities, and administered justice boss-style to control crime and corruption. The microcosm of Omaha provides an opportunity for readers to explore bossism in a smaller environment and sheds light on the early twentieth-century American political climate as a whole.
Road to Redemption: The Liberal Party of Canada 2006-2019
by Brooke JeffreyDespite being described as the most successful political party in any western democracy, the Liberal Party of Canada experienced its worst electoral defeat in 2011. Reduced to third-party status, the Liberal Party of Canada was seen by some experts as a spent force doomed to disappear from the Canadian political scene. And yet, just four years later, the party surged ahead once more, winning one of the most decisive elections in Canadian history. Road to Redemption offers a detailed exploration of this stunning reversal. It begins by outlining weaknesses in the party’s organization and culture, weaknesses that existed long before the 2011 rout but were ignored while the party continued to win elections. Finally brought to light by the disastrous 2011 electoral campaign, these weaknesses were then systematically tackled by party elites and activists in a concerted effort to rebuild and restructure the party. Their efforts culminated in the state-of-the-art campaigns run by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in 2015 and 2019. Brooke Jeffrey argues that the remarkable turnaround of 2015 confirms the Liberal Party’s exceptional ability to redefine itself and adapt to changing circumstances, a singular strength and the principal reason for the party’s enduring appeal. Despite being reduced to a minority government in 2019, Jeffrey concludes that the Liberal Party and leader Justin Trudeau can take advantage of this second chance to further strengthen and consolidate the party’s position for years to come.
Roadmap for Humanities and Social Sciences in STEM Higher Education
by Sayantan MandalThis edited book focuses on the interconnections of STEM and Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) in higher education and offers novel approaches to reintegrating them. It paradoxically informs readers of how HSS got relegated to the periphery in the capitalist-driven higher education market and the pressing need to re-organise higher education to meet the demands of competencies in the same education industry. The contributors, including eminent scholars from academia and industry, decision-makers, and researchers, bring nuanced perspectives on integrating HSS into STEM through the global north and south lens. The book is divided into seven parts providing a comprehensive understanding of the critical position of STEM, its interaction with HSS, some exemplars to elucidate holistic education, the importance of HSS in industry, and the roadmap facilitating the organic integration across disciplines. It provides an in-depth analysis of the difficulties HSS faces in science and technical higher education and offers creative solutions to these difficulties, a plausible roadmap for teachers and educational planners wishing to incorporate HSS into STEM higher education. The book stresses the importance of integrating the social sciences and humanities to foster innovation and success in STEM education. It is a must-read for those dedicated to integrating and advancing HSS in STEM higher education, such as educational policymakers, institutional leaders, higher education managers, and educational policy and management researchers.
Roads Not Taken: Progressive Populism in Historical Perspective
by Michael KimmelUsing a range of in-depth historical case studies, this timely work excavates the oft-forgotten tradition of progressive populism and highlights the relevance of such movements to our own tumultuous times.Populism in its 21st-century guise is often centered around exclusionary notions of nationality and the exultation of an authoritarian leader. Yet, as this book demonstrates, this has not always been the case. As demonstrated by the Levellers in the English Civil War and the Sans-Culottes in the French Revolution, the ideas of progressive populism have often surfaced in the midst of revolution where they have sought to ensure that revolutions do not deviate from their lofty ideals. Progressive populism has also emerged during periods of crisis and social dislocation, reasserting conceptions of the “moral economy” and a romanticized view of the past in support of their goals. By looking at the trajectories of past iterations of these ideas, Michael Kimmel retrieves a different populism, based not upon the illusory entity of “the people,” but something more concrete: the capacity of real people, living their lives with a sense of both autonomy and community.This book will be of interest to students and scholars in disciplines including sociology, history, and political science.
Roads to Confederation: The Making of Canada, 1867, Volume 1
by David Cameron Marcel Martel Robert Vipond Jacqueline Krikorian Andrew McDougallIn recognition of Canada’s sesquicentennial, this two-volume set brings together previously published scholarship on Confederation into one collection. The editors sought to reproduce not only the "classic" studies about the people, ideas, and events associated with the passage of the British North America Act, 1867, but also scholarly works that capture the complexities of the Confederation project. This ambitious anthology challenges the notion that there exists one dominant narrative underpinning 1867, and includes research that focuses on Indigenous peoples. Seven articles written in French are translated for the first time for publication in this collection. In the first volume of this anthology, Roads to Confederation introduces readers to the competing approaches to the study of Confederation and provides material that considers the nature of the 1867 project from the perspective of peoples and communities who have been traditionally excluded from the literature. It also includes the definitive scholarship on the ideational underpinnings of the making of Canada as well as several leading articles that set out different ways to understand the nature and purpose of the 1867 agreement.
Roads to Confederation: The Making of Canada, 1867, Volume 2
by David Cameron Marcel Martel Robert Vipond Jacqueline Krikorian Andrew McDougallRoads to Confederation surveys the way in which scholars from different disciplines, writing in different periods, viewed the Confederation process and the making of Canada. Recognizing that Confederation has been traditionally defined as a process affecting only British North America’s Anglophone and Francophone communities, Roads to Confederation offers a broader approach to the making of Canada, and includes scholarship written over 145 years. Volume 2 of this collection focuses on three major themes. It presents research from the perspective of Canada’s regions, with one chapter focusing exclusively on the competing understandings of 1867 from the perspective of Quebec. Next, it includes material pertaining to the geopolitical underpinnings of 1867 that addresses the relationship between Confederation, the U.S. Civil War and American expansionism, Great Britain and war in the European theatre. Also included is leading scholarship by Stanley B. Ryerson, Adele Perry, Fernand Dumond, Ian McKay and James W. Daschuk that questions whether Confederation itself was a formative event. Together with its companion volume, this is an invaluable resource for those who wish to deepen their understanding of the historical foundations on which Canada rests.
Roads to Decolonisation: An Introduction to Thought from the Global South
by Amy DuvenageRoads to Decolonisation: An Introduction to Thought from the Global South is an accessible new textbook that provides undergraduate students with a vital introduction to theory from the Global South and key issues of social justice, arming them with the tools to theorise and explain the social world away from dominant Global North perspectives. Arranged in four parts, it examines key thinkers, activists and theory-work from the Global South; theoretical concepts and socio-historical conditions associated with 'race' and racism, gender and sexuality, identity and (un)belonging in a globalised world and decolonisation and education; challenges to dominant Euro-American perspectives on key social justice issues, linking decolonial discourses to contemporary case studies. Each chapter offers an overview of key thinkers and activists whose work engages with social justice issues, many of whom are under-represented or left out of undergraduate humanities and social sciences textbooks in the North. This is essential reading for students of the humanities and social sciences worldwide, as well as scholars keen to embed Southern thought in their curricula and pedagogical practice.
Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, And Syndicalism
by Bertrand RussellFirst published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Roads to Maturity/Vers La Maturité: Proceedings of the Second Canadian Conference on Children/Déliberations de la second Conférence Canadienne de l'Enfance Montréal, October 31-November 4, 1965
by Margery KingThis volume contains the proceedings of the second Canadian Conference on Children which was held in Montreal in the autumn of 1965. It includes four papers given by Dr. Alva Myrdal, Dr. Alan Ross, Dr. M.S. Rabinovitch and Dr. C.E. Hendry, all well known for their attention to the problems of children growing up in the present world and concerned here to draw attention to those they see in Canada and elsewhere. A running commentary is supplied by Dr. Alan Thomas on the less formal side of the conference—the discussions that took place in groups after the speeches. The four papers and the commentary are printed in both English and French. Reverend Roger Guindon O.M.I. of the University of Ottawa provides the closing address, presented in a style which can be seen as an interesting new approach to the Canadian problem of bilingualism.
Roaming Free Like a Deer: Buddhism and the Natural World
by Daniel CapperBy exploring lived ecological experiences across seven Buddhist worlds from ancient India to the contemporary West, Roaming Free Like a Deer provides a comprehensive, critical, and innovative examination of the theories, practices, and real-world results of Buddhist environmental ethics. Daniel Capper clarifies crucial contours of Buddhist vegetarianism or meat eating, nature mysticism, and cultural speculations about spirituality in nonhuman animals. Buddhist environmental ethics often are touted as useful weapons in the fight against climate change. However, two formidable but often overlooked problems with this perspective exist. First, much of the literature on Buddhist environmental ethics uncritically embraces Buddhist ideals without examining the real-world impacts of those ideals, thereby sometimes ignoring difficulties in terms of practical applications. Moreover, for some understandable but still troublesome reasons, Buddhists from different schools follow their own environmental ideals without conversing with other Buddhists, thereby minimizing the abilities of Buddhists to act in concert on issues such as climate change that demand coordinated large-scale human responses. With its accessible style and personhood ethics orientation, Roaming Free Like a Deer should appeal to anyone who is concerned with how human beings interact with the nonhuman environment.
Robert Audi: Critical Engagements (Münster Lectures in Philosophy #5)
by Johannes Müller-SaloThis volume documents the 20th Münster Lectures in Philosophy with Robert Audi. In the last decades, Audi's work has deeply influenced different important philosophical discussions, ranging from epistemology, theory of action, and philosophy of rationality to ethics, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. The critical examinations collected in this book reflect the breadth of Audi's contributions in discussing topics as diverse as epistemological foundationalism and the theory of testimony, ethical intuitionism, the problem of evil and religion's public place within a liberal democracy. Besides his replies to each critical engagement, the volume contains an extensive essay on the problems of perception and cognition written by Audi himself. This volume will be of enormous use to all scholars interested in the younger history of American philosophy and one of its leading figures. It will also appeal to philosophers and curious readers with an interest in the endeavor of designing a comprehensive theory of rationality and human reasoning.
Robert Boyle: With a Fragment of William Wotton's 'Lost Life of Boyle' (The\pickering Masters Ser.)
by Michael HunterThe image of Robert Boyle owes much to a series of evaluations of him written shortly after his death by men who had known him well, such as John Evelyn, Gilbert Burnet and Sir Peter Pett. This book includes a selection of these previously unpublished texts.
Robert Brandom (Philosophy Now Ser. #12)
by Jeremy Wanderer"Robert Brandom" is one of the most significant philosophers writing today, yet paradoxically philosophers have found it difficult to get to grips with the details and implications of his work. This book aims to facilitate critical engagement with Brandom's ideas by providing an accessible overview of Brandom's project and the context for an initial assessment. Jeremy Wanderer's examination focuses on Brandom's inferentialist conception of rationality, and the core part of this conception that aims to specify the structure that a set of performances within a social practice must have for the participants to count as sapient beings by virtue of their participation in the practice, and for the performances within the practice to have objective semantic content by virtue of their featuring within the practice. Wanderer's exploration of these two goals forms the structure to the book. It Includes: Part I that provides a structural model of linguistic practice and considers various groups of potential participants in terms of their relationships to this practice; and, Part II that examines the meaning of the performances that are caught up in this gameplaying practice. Brandom's approach to semantics is outlined and the challenge such an approach has in allowing for a representational dimension of language and thought is explored. Wanderer offers readers a valuable framework for understanding the Brandomian system and helps situate Brandom's systematic theorizing within contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. This book will be a sought after aid to reading Brandom for advanced students and philosophers engaging with his challenging body of work.
Robert Burton and the Transformative Powers of Melancholy (Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity)
by Stephanie ShirilanFew English books are as widely known, underread, and underappreciated as Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. Stephanie Shirilan laments that modern scholars often treat the Anatomy as an unmediated repository of early modern views on melancholy, overlooking the fact that Burton is writing a cento - an ancient form of satire that quotes and misquotes authoritative texts in often subversive ways - and that his express intent in so doing is to offer his readers literary therapy for melancholy. This book explores the ways in which the Anatomy dispenses both direct physic and more systemic medicine by encouraging readers to think of melancholy as a privileged mental and spiritual acuity that requires cultivation and management rather than cure. Refuting the prevailing historiography of anxious early modern embodiment that cites Burton as a key witness, Shirilan submits that the Anatomy rejects contemporary Neostoic and Puritan approaches to melancholy. She reads Burton’s erraticism, opacity, and theatricality as modes of resistance against demands for constancy, transparency, and plainness in the popular literature of spiritual and moral hygiene of his day. She shows how Burton draws on rhetorical, theological, and philosophical traditions that privilege the transformative powers of the imagination in order to celebrate melancholic impressionability for its capacity to inspire and engender empathy, charity, and faith.