Policymaking under scientific uncertainty

Policymakers who seek to make scientifically informed decisions are constantly confronted by scientific uncertainty and expert disagreement. This thesis asks: how can policymakers rationally respond to expert disagreement and scientific uncertainty? This is a work of nonideal theory, which applies formal philosophical tools developed by ideal theorists to more realistic cases of policymaking under scientific uncertainty. I start with Bayesian approaches to expert testimony and the problem of expert disagreement, arguing that two popular approaches— supra-Bayesianism and the standard model of expert deference—are insufficient. I develop a novel model of expert deference and show how it can deal with many of these problems raised for them. I then turn to opinion pooling, a popular method for dealing with disagreement. I show that various theoretical motivations for pooling functions are irrelevant to realistic policymaking cases. This leads to a cautious recommendation of linear pooling. However, I then show that any pooling method relies on value judgements, that are hidden in the selection of the scoring rule. My focus then narrows to a more specific case of scientific uncertainty: multiple models of the same system. I introduce a particular case study involving hurricane models developed to support insurance decision-making. I recapitulate my analysis of opinion pooling in the context of model ensembles, confirming that my hesitations apply. This motivates a shift of perspective, to viewing the problem as a decision theoretic one. I rework a recently developed ambiguity theory, called the confidence approach, to take input from model ensembles. I show how it facilitates the resolution of the policymaker’s problem in a way that avoids the issues encountered in previous chapters. This concludes my main study of the problem of expert disagreement. In the final chapter, I turn to methodological reflection. I argue that philosophers who employ the mathematical methods of the prior chapters are modelling. Employing results from the philosophy of scientific models, I develop the theory of normative modelling. I argue that it has important methodological conclusions for the practice of formal epistemology, ruling out popular moves such as searching for counterexamples

Corporate governance systems in Europe : differences and tendencies of convergence ; Crafoord lecture

The corporate governance systems in Europe differ markedly. Economists tend to use stylized models and distinguish between the Anglo-American, the German and the Latinist model.1 In this view, for instance, the Austrian, Dutch, German, and Swiss systems are said to be variations of one model. For lawyers the picture is of course, much more detailed as particular rules may vary even where common principles prevail. Many comparative studies on these differences have been undertaken meanwhile.2 I do not want to add another study but to treat a different question. Are there as a consequence of growing internationalization, globalization of markets and technological change, also tendencies of convergence of our corporate governance systems? My answer will be in two parts. As corporate governance systems are traditionally mainly shaped by legislation, the first part will analyze the influence of the economic and technological change on the rule-setting process itself. How does this process react to the fundamental environmental change? That includes a short analysis of the solution of centralized harmonizing of company law within the EU as well as the question of whether EU-wide competition between national corporate law legislators can be observed or be expected in the future. The second part will then turn to the national level. It deals with actual tendencies of convergence or, more correctly, of approach by the German corporate governance system to the Anglo-American one

Conference on Proposed Amendments: Experts, the Rules of Completeness, and Sequestration of Witnesses

This conference was held on October 19, 2018, at University of Denver Sturm College of Law under the sponsorship of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules. The transcript has been lightly edited. It represents the panelists’ individual views only and in no way reflects those of their affiliated firms, organizations, law schools, or the judiciary

Mediated and collaborative learning for students with learning disabilities : This is about life, it\u27s the rules of life.

Many approaches have been developed to help students with learning disabilities become independent learners. One such program, developed by the National Institute for Learning Disabilities (NILD), is a one-on-one model of educational therapy that is designed to stimulate students\u27 neurological weaknesses and improve deficits in perception and/or cognition. As an educational therapist, I am always looking for ways to enhance my ability to mediate my students\u27 learning and to help them transfer what is learned in educational therapy to other settings. In my search I became acquainted with the Cognitive Enrichment Advantage (CEA) approach to learning. As an adaptation of Feuerstein\u27s theory of mediated learning, the CEA approach gives students an explicit way to learn how to learn that I saw could be incorporated within the NILD Educational Therapy™ Model. I chose a case study approach and used action research as a way to examine my \u27new\u27 practice systematically and carefully. The purpose of this study was to look at my practice to see what my students, their parents and I would experience if I focused on mediated learning as we collaboratively developed meta-strategic knowledge through the learning of CEA\u27s Building Blocks of Thinking and Tools of Learning. I collected data through a reflective journal, audio recordings of student research team meetings, parents\u27 focus group meetings, and individual exit interviews of students and their parents. I analyzed data in multiple ways to ensure validity. My students and I used the CEA approach during educational therapy and research team meetings. The findings showed that the students could use meta-strategic knowledge to develop learning strategies that were meaningful to them and transferable to other settings. The findings from parent meetings and interviews also showed that learning the CEA approach was helpful to them as they mediated their children\u27s learning. Implications for future research focused on the possible need for more collaboration within the one-on-one educational therapy model, the need for parent training workshops, and the call for further research to validate the findings of this study. Suggestions for NILD\u27s corporate use of these findings also were given

On being a mental health service user and becoming a service user representative: an autoethnography.

This thesis is my autoethnographic account as I pursue a career as a Service User Representative with the Dorset Mental Health Forum over several years leading up to 2010. This is a period of change in both the social care and health worlds as they impact on to people suffering from mental distress. In this period are introduced Personal Budgets and a three-year pilot scheme to look at the viability of rolling out Personal Health Budgets, in which Dorset is selected as one of 20 sites nationally. There is also a change of government from a Labour administration to a coalition of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, but this does not seem to have changed the planned modernisation of both social care provision and healthcare provision started by the outgoing Labour government. Also in this period we see the wide-ranging revision of the Mental Health Act 1983. My original contribution to knowledge is in describing the development of a service user representative model that works well in Dorset, UK. This thesis is not about the history and development of the mental health service user involvement but I do offer a précis of the history of service user representation for those unfamiliar with it. This thesis is laid out in roughly chronological order. I try to show how I changed my views with the help of other people over the period. I also try to explain what it is that ails me. The reason I do this is to paint a picture of a person who is in general "normal" but suffers from mental disorders that sometimes alter the way he sees the world. It is with this backdrop that I ply my trade of being representative of and to other mental health service users. I lead the reader from a consideration of method and methodology and ethics, through the precursors of my mental illness, to how that illness has been treated by the National Health Service, and how it impacts on my role. The main way that I do this is by offering a vignette of my life and then immediately afterwards analysing that vignette in the light of emergent themes. In this way, I ensure that the emergent themes are themselves based in a reality that can be accessed to some degree by the reader. There were challenges along the way including personal ones, such as having to take time out from my studies to attend courses of psychological treatment and having several heart attacks leading to hospitalisation, as well as the usual ones of finding people to contribute to my research. I end this thesis by offering a model that service users may find illuminating when setting up their own service user representation services

Learning to Accompany Through a Self-Study of Critical Global-Citizenship Engagement

Immersed in making sense of a global-citizenship experience while studying community-university engaged research, I happened upon the field of global-citizenship education. In 2010-2011, I lived in East Jerusalem for three months, accompanying Palestinians and Israelis who sought and continue to seek a just and peaceful end to the Israeli government's occupation of Palestine. As a researcher/educator with a long-time interest in the concept of meaning-making, I struggle to make sense of my experiences, both cognitively and emotionally. Through a phenomenological self-study, I uncovered knowledge about myself as a learner in a global-citizenship experience. I identified five voices within my ecumenical-accompanier (EA) identity and now I am integrating them into my facilitation of lifelong learning. These voices are lyrical, ironic, relational, activist, and reflective. The voices run through four assertions about my learning: first-hand experience is essential; I use various meaning-making tools; accompanying learners is inherently relational; and I continue to ‘unpack' meaning in the post-return home. My voices and assertions now inform my facilitation of learning about community-university engaged research. With this newly explicit knowledge, I feel better able to accompany learners. I realize the potential for describing more explicitly in workshops, courses, and experiential learning that I have had a transformative experience. I see the potential to model my own critical global-citizenship engagement as a way to create compassionate spaces for lifelong learners as they get involved in the global and local issues of the 21st century

Parent Study/Discussion Group Facilitator's Manual

PDF pages: 5

From a slave to a critical-thinker-artistic-writer: Emancipating a professional\u27s anthill using action research professional practice with information systems professionals as the crux: Gnothe se auton non, j regrette rien die lichtung and all the world\u27s a stage

The diagram shown in figure 1 gives an impression of this thesis around the key words slavery, enslavement, emancipation, freedom, power, critical thinker, and artistic writer. The text at the centre reads my rich model evolution during this thesis. On rereading the text, I wonder if it is referring to my own evolution during the research, which could be described as rich model, or the evolution of the rich model that encapsulates, and in one sense is, the chief contribution of the thesis. That I use this sentence and this impressionistic diagram to begin this abstract should signal to you, dear reader, that this thesis tells my truth, with a little\u27t\u27, in my own way, about my reflective practitioner investigation of my experience of being part of the information systems profession and then part of a Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A) programme. As such, it is what some may term post-modem, although I hesitate to describe it as such. Through my lived experience as an enslaved information systems professional, I can relate to the current situation of asymmetric warfare (note the picture of a fighter plane dropping a bomb with the word hacker under), asymmetric industrial relations, and some other forms of the master-relationship relationship. In my career as an information systems\u27 professional I have experienced that here is a constant that permeates the world: that parties desire to achieve greater power over any other competitor while sacrificing as little as possible of their own resources. Whether this is an actual war or just a simple jousting for advantage, the process remains similar: Two structuralist sides in conflict. Perhaps this simple description is the apparent reason why most fights are simply a zero-sum game, that is, one side wins ( + 1) and the other loses (-1). There are however variations to this theme. Hegel\u27s Master-slave dialogue is one. In this case the vanquished who is now a slave, eventually gains power over their master, the original victor, not through force of arms, but by becoming indispensable to the Master. The major and subtle weapon the slave possesses is time with obsequiousness that leads to dependency of the master to the actions of the slave. Again through my lived experience of near imagined slavery, I can also relate to another form of conflict that is now upon us, that of a structuralist formal army supported by post-structuralist critical-thinkers and the artist-writers of a post-modernist society against a structuralist guerrilla grouping, with a post-modem idealism giving vital quasi or actual intellectual support. This leaves the structuralist formal army seeking effective and favourable counters to this asymmetric situation through the weakness of the guerrilla forces, that is, a lack of critical-thinkers; else, it will see a form of defeat that is reliance upon the guerrilla force not to attack. It is a modem and curious situation where an overwhelming force seems to be impotent against a quick, opportunistic, attack by a much smaller, under-resourced opponent. Yet, if the guerrilla forces do in fact win, what is the result within the territory the guerrillas now control? It seems that it is not an egalitarian-based modem democracy, or even a functioning theocracy. The key is the critical-thinker, without these people who ask questions, embarrassing ones most times, the necessary balance to support a string of freedoms is lacking. The major problem is where do the guerrilla forces find these people, and support them by not exterminating them as counter-revolutionaries, thereby creating the basic weaknesses to the system they wish to impose. However, the above guerrilla case need not prevail. In my experience of organisational relationships, which are by their very nature asymmetric, a structuralist organisation can defeat even its deadliest asymmetric foe - an enslaved, passed over, disgruntled, and sabotage-prone information systems employee. I was one such employee, one such enslaved person