Aesthetic values in science

Scientists often use aesthetic values in the evaluation and choice of theories. Aesthetic values are not only regarded as leading to practically more useful theories but are often taken to stand in a special epistemic relation to the truth of a theory such that the aesthetic merit of a theory is evidence of its truth. This paper explores what aesthetic considerations influence scientists' reasoning, how such aesthetic values relate to the utility of a scientific theory, and how one can justify the epistemic role for such values. The paper examines ways in which the link between beauty and truth can be defended, the challenges facing such accounts, and explores alternative epistemic roles for aesthetic values in scientific practice

Competitive markets with externalities

This paper presents a general model of a competitive market with consumption externalities, and establishes the existence of equilibrium in the model, under assumptions comparable to those in classical models. The model allows production and indivisible goods. Examples illustrate the generality and applicability of the results.Competitive equilibrium, externalities, distributional economies

To Be Muslim or “Muslim-Looking” in America: A Comparative Exploration of Racial and Religious Prejudice in the 21st Century

This Essay begins with a confession. In taking implicit association tests ( IATs ) designed to measure my unconscious attitude toward two particular demographic groups, I discovered that I, an African-American, harbored a slight automatic preference for Europeans over blacks and for other people over Arab-Muslims. Both of these results were contrary to my professed or conscious assertions of neutrality. Why would a pro-integration scholar who seeks to promote cross-racial understanding and inclusion exhibit such implicit biases? And why is it that a majority of others who take these tests register similar implicit biases? The point of my confession is to underscore the fact of widespread unconscious bias. Unfortunately, a large body of evidence from experimental psychology demonstrates such bias on the part of whites and minorities against racial minorities, especially African-Americans. This is in contrast to a dramatic reduction in explicit or reported bias against blacks. Indeed, there is much evidence to support the conclusion that a nondiscriminatory or colorblind identity is... important to most white Americans

What have we learnt about Loss Aversion and Endowment Effects? Still an anomaly?

This paper presents an insight into the theoretical and empirical literature of Loss Aversion and Endowment Effect. The definition and conceptualisation of both ideas is introduced in order to define a framework for further analysis. Their presence implies a radical change in some of the basic standard postulates of microeconomic foundation. These concepts robustly predict a divergence between Willingness to Accept and Willingness to Pay, even in a perfect-market framework and invalidate the standard assumptions of transitivity and reversibility of preferences under the neoclassical theory of consumer choice. Twenty years of successive positive evidence on Loss Aversion and Endowment Effect support the theoretical implications showed in this paper. I conclude that Loss Aversion and Endowment Effects truly matter and their existence must not be taken into account just as an anomaly or puzzle, but as part of a new theory in itself, leading to new questions and challenges for future economic research.Loss Aversion, Endowment Effects, WTA, WTP, Anomalies

Why do people with mental distress have poor social outcomes? Four lessons from the capabilities approach

Macro level data indicate that people experiencing mental distress experience poor health, social and economic outcomes. The sociology of mental health has a series of dominant competing explanations of the mechanisms at personal, social and structural levels that generate these poor outcomes. This article explains the limitations of these approaches and takes up the challenge of Hopper (2007) who in this journal proposed the capabilities approach as a means of normatively reconceptualising the experiences of people with mental distress, with a renewed focus on agency, equality and genuine opportunity. Using an innovative methodology to operationalise the capabilities approach, findings from an in-depth qualitative study exploring the lived experiences of twenty-two people with recent inpatient experience of psychiatric units in Scotland are presented. The paper demonstrates that the capabilities approach can be applied to reconceptualise how unjust social outcomes happen for this social group. It distinguishes how the results of using a capabilities approach to analysis are distinct from established dominant analytical frameworks through four added features: a focus on actual lived outcomes; the role of capabilities as well as functionings; being normative; and incorporating agency. The capabilities approach is found to be an operationalisable framework; the findings have implications for professionals and systems in the specific context of mental health; and the capabilities approach offers a fertile basis for normative studies in wider aspects of health and wellbeing

Feminist Legal Scholarship: A History Through the Lens of the California Law Review

This Essay describes the evolution of feminist legal scholarship, using six articles published by the California Law Review as exemplars. This short history provides a window on the most important contributions of feminist scholarship to understandings about gender and law. It explores alternative formulations of equality, and the competing assumptions, ideals, and implications of these formulations. It describes frameworks of thought intended to compensate for the limitations of equality doctrine, including critical legal feminism, different voice theory, and nonsubordination theory, and the relationships between these frameworks. Finally, it identifies feminist legal scholarship that has crossed the disciplinary bound-aries of law. Among its conclusions, the Essay points out that as feminist scholarship has become more mainstream, its assumptions and methods are less distinct. It observes that even as feminist legal scholarship has generated important, insightful critiques of equality doctrine, it remains committed to the concept of equality, as continually revised and refined. The Essay also highlights the importance of feminist activism and practice in sharpening and refining feminist legal scholarship

Shall We Overcome? Post-Racialism and Inclusion in the 21st Century

The subject of post-racialism has been rather topical since Barack Obama was elected President. I greatly appreciate this opportunity to reflect on the extent to which Americans have, or have not, transcended race. The topic interests me tremendously because for many years I have been an advocate for race and class integration, which I addressed at length in my book The Failures of Integration. In The Failures, my main argument for pursuing meaningful integration is that a nation premised on race and class separation renders the American Dream of residential choice leading to upward mobility impossibly expensive and out of reach for many people. Everyone is harmed in a nation of separate, racialized mobility tracks. Unfortunately, several current federal policies encourage rather than discourage racial segregation

Can intergenerational equity be operationalized?

A long Utilitarian tradition has the ideal of equal regard for all individuals, both those now living and those yet to be born. The literature formalizes this ideal as asking for a preference relation on the space of infinite utility streams that is complete, transitive, invariant to finite permutations, and respects the Pareto ordering; an ethical preference relation, for short. This paper argues that operationalizing this ideal is problematic. Most simply, every ethical preference relation has the property that almost all (in the sense of outer measure) pairs of utility streams are indifferent. Even if we abandon completeness and respect for the Pareto ordering, every irreflexive preference relation that is invariant to finite permutations has the property that almost all pairs of utility streams are incomparable (not strictly ranked). Moreover, no ethical preference relation can be measurable. As a consequence, the existence of an ethical preference relation is independent of the axioms used in almost all of formal economics and all of classical analysis. Finally, even if an ethical preference relation exists, it cannot be "explicitly described." These results have implications for game theory, for macroeconomics, and for economic development.Intergenerational equity, infinite utility streams, long run averages, overtaking criterion, Utilitarianism

Harmful Freedom of Choice: Lessons from the Cellphone Market

This article focuses on the relationship between provider and customer, specifically on the complexity of available contracts in the cellphone market and the ways this complexity might be harmful to consumers. This article aims to elucidate the issues, fleshing them out both as a general phenomenon and as a specific implementation in the cellphone context. The aim is not to provide ultimate solutions, but to show the directions these solutions might take and the difficulties involved