2,523 research outputs found
Marine life in the North Pacific: the known, unknown, and unknowable
Special Publication 2 On-line version
On-line version includes links to the following files (these files are not included into publication):
Bacterioplankton [pdf]
Phytoplankton [pdf]
Zooplankton [pdf]
Non-exploited fish and invertebrates [pdf]
Commercially-important fish and invertebrates [pdf]
Marine birds [pdf]
Mammals [pdf]
Supplemental table of Unknowns [html
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Rigour (-mortis) in evaluation
Evaluation-in-practice can be regarded as a confluence of interactions between three broad idealised sets of stakeholders – the evaluand, evaluators, and commissioners of evaluations. Elsewhere I have suggested two contrasting manifestations in which these interactions might be expressed; one as an ‘evaluation-industrial complex’ (similar in form to the ‘military-industrial complex’ originally used by Dwight Eisenhower in 1961), and another as a more benign ‘evaluation-adaptive complex’ (Reynolds, 2015).
Building on the idea of an iron triangle that empowers the military-industrial complex, I represented the relationships of evaluation-in-practice as a triadic interplay involving six activities that influence the evaluation process. Here I focus on only one of the six activities – commissioning – and I summarise what it might look like for an evaluation-adaptive complex
Just do it? When to do what you judge you ought to do
While it is generally believed that justification is a fallible guide to the truth, there might be interesting exceptions to this general rule. In recent work on bridge-principles, an increasing number of authors have argued that truths about what a subject ought to do are truths we stand in some privileged epistemic relation to and that our justified normative beliefs are beliefs that will not lead us astray. If these bridge-principles hold, it suggests that justification might play an interesting role in our normative theories. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, a value that's notoriously difficult to understand if we think of justification as but a fallible means to a desired end. We will argue that these bridge-principles will be incredibly difficult to defend. While we do not think that normative facts necessarily stand in any interesting relationship to our justified beliefs about them, there might well be a way of defending the idea that our justified beliefs about what to do won't lead us astray. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, but this way of thinking about justification and its value comes with costs few would be willing to pay
Just do it? When to do what you judge you ought to do
While it is generally believed that justification is a fallible guide to the truth, there might be interesting exceptions to this general rule. In recent work on bridge-principles, an increasing number of authors have argued that truths about what a subject ought to do are truths we stand in some privileged epistemic relation to and that our justified normative beliefs are beliefs that will not lead us astray. If these bridge-principles hold, it suggests that justification might play an interesting role in our normative theories. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, a value that's notoriously difficult to understand if we think of justification as but a fallible means to a desired end. We will argue that these bridge-principles will be incredibly difficult to defend. While we do not think that normative facts necessarily stand in any interesting relationship to our justified beliefs about them, there might well be a way of defending the idea that our justified beliefs about what to do won't lead us astray. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, but this way of thinking about justification and its value comes with costs few would be willing to pay
From Bad to Worse: Senior Economic Insecurity on the Rise
Based on the Senior Financial Stability Index, examines the increase in the number of economically insecure seniors by race/ethnicity, gender, and marital status between 2004 and 2008; contributing factors; and options for reversing the trend
Into the Unknown: Navigating Spaces, Terra Incognita and the Art Archive
This paper is a navigation across time and space – travelling from 16th century colonial world maps which marked unknown territories as Terra Incognita, via 18th century cabinets of curiosities; to the unknown spaces of the Anthropocene Age, in which for the first time we humans are making a permanent geological record on the earth’s ecosystems. This includes climate change.
The recurring theme is loss and becoming lost. I investigate what happens when someone who is lost attempts to navigate and find parallels between Terra Incognita and the art archive, and explore the points where mapping, archiving and collecting intersect. Once something is perceived to be at risk, the fear of loss and the impulse to preserve emerges. I investigate why in the Anthropocene Age we have a stronger impulse to the archive and look to the past, rather than face the unknowable effects of climate change. This is counterpointed by artists, whose hybrids practices engage with re-imaging and re-imagining today’s world, thereby moving us forward into the unknown. ‘Becoming’ is therefore another central theme.
The art archive is explored from multiple perspectives – as an artist, an art archive user and an archivist – noting that the subject, the consumer and the archivist all have very differing agendas. I question who uses physical archives today and how we can retain our sense of curiosity. I conclude with a link to an interactive artwork, which visualises, synthesises and expands this research
Precautionary Culture and the Rise of Possibilistic Risk Assessment
The shift from probabilistic to possibilistic risk management characterises contemporary cultural attitudes towards uncertainty. This shift in attitude is paralleled by the growing influence of the belief that future risks are not only unknown but are also unknowable. Scepticism about the capacity of knowledge to help manage risks has encouraged the dramatisation of uncertainty. One consequence of this development has been the advocacy of a precautionary response to threats. This article examines the way in which precautionary attitudes have shaped the response to the threat of terrorism and to the millennium bug. The main accomplishment of this response has been to intensify the sense of existential insecurity
The (Ir)rationality of (Un)informed Consent
This essay considers the problem of over-utilization of medical care at the end of life and the lack of truly informed consent and briefly considers the multiple causes of these phenomena. It then explores the inherent challenges to making informed medical decisions using concepts of Knightian uncertainty, bounded rationality, optimism bias, and other heuristics. The essay concludes that uncertainty inherent in these decisions means that challenges to making truly informed decisions about medical care are even more substantial than physicians acknowledge or patients ever realize. Acknowledging these challenges is the first step to better medical decision making. informed consent has its limits, but avoiding the effort to achieve truly informed consent is an irrational choice because it risks serious negative outcomes for patients. Physicians themselves, by the very nature of their work, live with clinical uncertainty and life’s precarity every day and sharing this reality with their patients is more likely to bring patients and physicians together in a collaborative decision-making team than to destroy hope or leave patients feeling abandoned
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