Collaborative model development increases trust in and use of scientific information in environmental decision-making

While science matters for environmental management, creating science that is credible, salient to decision-makers, and deemed legitimate by stakeholders is challenging. Collaborative modeling is an increasingly-used approach to enable effective science-based decision-making. This work evaluates the modeling process conducted for two hydropower dam licensing negotiations, to explore how differences in the collaborative development of hydrological models affected differences in their use in subsequent decision-making. In one case, the model was developed iteratively through deliberation with stakeholders. Consequently, stakeholders understood the model and its limitations and trusted the model and modelers; the model itself was also better designed to evaluate resource managers’ questions. The collaboratively-developed model became the focal point for subsequent negotiations and enabled creative group problem-solving. Conversely, in the case with less engagement during model development, the model was not used subsequently by decision-makers. These differences are argued to result from trust built during the modeling process, applicability of the model to test real management scenarios, and the broader social context in which the models were used

The Ethical Basis for Veganism

This chapter examines the ethical case that can be mounted for veganism. Because there has been comparatively little discussion in ethics focused directly on veganism, the central aim of this chapter is threefold: to orient readers to (some of) the most important philosophical literature relevant to the topic, to provide a clear explanation of the current state of the ethical case for veganism, and to focus attention on the most important outstanding or underexplored questions in this domain. The chapter examines the range of positions that deserve to be called ethical veganism, and some of the types of reasons that philosophers can potentially appeal to in arguing for veganism. It then spells out the core of the most promising case for veganism, which argues directly for the wrongness of making animals suffer and die. The chapter then considers three ways of arguing from this conclusion to an ethical defense of the vegan lifestyle, which appeal respectively to the ethical significance of the effects of individual use of animal products, of group efficacy, and of complicity with wrongdoing. The chapter concludes by examining several neglected complications facing the ethical case for veganism

Emotional Distress and the Psychotherapist-Patient Privilege: Establishing a Certain and Principled Implied-Waiver Rule for Civil Rights Litigants

Making the promise of confidentiality contingent upon a trial judge’s later evaluation of the relative importance of the patient’s interest in privacy and the evidentiary need for disclosure would eviscerate the effectiveness of the privilege. As we explained in Upjohn, if the purpose of the privilege is to be served, the participants in the confidential conversation “must be able to predict with some degree of certainty whether particular discussions will be protected. An uncertain privilege, or one which purports to be certain but results in widely varying applications by the courts, is little better than no privilege at all.” [W]e reject respondents’ contentions that anybody who requests damages for pain and suffering has waived the psychiatric privilege because the psychiatric records might conceivably disprove the experiencing of the pain and suffering, that any claim of even . . . “garden variety” injury waives the psychotherapist-patient privilege, and that a plaintiff’s mental health is placed in issue whenever the plaintiff’s claim for unspecified damages may include[] some sort of mental injury

Questions And Inquiry: Some Epistemological Applications

Abstract: A recent and innovative research program in epistemology aims to connect the related phenomena of questions and inquiry with epistemological concerns. This dissertation project contributes to that program, taking as its inspiration the contrastive theory of knowledge developed by Jonathan Schaffer in a series of recent papers. The dissertation is comprised of three main parts. I begin by articulating a positive account of the evaluation of knowledge attributions, an account that aims to respect the basic insights of Schaffer\u27s contrastivism while situating them in a modal framework that makes manifest the utility of questions for epistemological theorizing. Then I offer and discuss a counterexample that shows that any theory that fits the general structure that our respective accounts share cannot adequately account for certain contexts of knowledge attribution. I close by applying certain basic claims about the nature of inquiry to the problem of skepticism. I attempt to show that inquiry so understood is incompatible with a very strong version of skepticism, namely global skepticism about justification, with the result that non-skeptics can permissibly disregard it even if it is true

A principled approach to the measurement of situation awareness in commercial aviation

The issue of how to support situation awareness among crews of modern commercial aircraft is becoming especially important with the introduction of automation in the form of sophisticated flight management computers and expert systems designed to assist the crew. In this paper, cognitive theories are discussed that have relevance for the definition and measurement of situation awareness. These theories suggest that comprehension of the flow of events is an active process that is limited by the modularity of attention and memory constraints, but can be enhanced by expert knowledge and strategies. Three implications of this perspective for assessing and improving situation awareness are considered: (1) Scenario variations are proposed that tax awareness by placing demands on attention; (2) Experimental tasks and probes are described for assessing the cognitive processes that underlie situation awareness; and (3) The use of computer-based human performance models to augment the measures of situation awareness derived from performance data is explored. Finally, two potential example applications of the proposed assessment techniques are described, one concerning spatial awareness using wide field of view displays and the other emphasizing fault management in aircraft systems