A Matter of Substance, April 2013

A publication of the IDPH Division of Behavioral Health to find out what's happening with Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment

Giving Around the Globe: 2014 Edition

The Giving Around the Globe report is primarily based on data from 54 of the world's largest companies located outside of the United States from 17 countries, which represent US $3.6 billion in cash and non-cash in 2013. This report is not designed to identify a region as having the "best" method of corporate community engagement. Rather, it is designed to present, explore, and help you and your philanthropy team navigate the regional differences that define our increasingly interconnected world. Companies continually seek what's new or what's next, and learning from businesses far from home is a great way to do just that

Going private

Richard Murphy and colleagues examine what's driving the increasing flow of teachers from state schools to the independent sector.

PROMETHEUS Payment: What's the Score?

Explains the scorecard used in "Provider payment Reform for Outcomes, Margins, Evidence, Transparency, Hassle-reduction, Excellence, Understandability, and Sustainability" (PROMETHEUS) to determine provider payments based on evidence-informed case rates

What's the Point of Understanding?

What is human understanding and why should we care about it? I propose a method of philosophical investigation called ‘function-first epistemology’ and use this method to investigate the nature and value of understanding-why. I argue that the concept of understanding-why serves the practical function of identifying good explainers, which is an important role in the general economy of our concepts. This hypothesis sheds light on a variety of issues in the epistemology of understanding including the role of explanation, the relationship between understanding-why and knowledge, and the value of understanding-why. I conclude that understanding-why is valuable and yet knowledge plays more important roles in our epistemic life

What's the matter with realism?

International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’