Thinking Twice about Virtue and Vice: Philosophical Situationism and the Vicious Minds Hypothesis

This paper provides an empirical defense of credit theories of knowing against Mark Alfano’s challenges to them based on his theses of inferential cognitive situationism and of epistemic situationism. In order to support the claim that credit theories can treat many cases of cognitive success through heuristic cognitive strategies as credit-conferring, the paper develops the compatibility between virtue epistemologies qua credit theories, and dual-process theories in cognitive psychology. It also a response to Lauren Olin and John Doris’ “vicious minds” thesis, and their “tradeoff problem” for virtue theories. A genuine convergence between virtue epistemology and dual-process theory is called for, while acknowledging that this effort may demand new and more empirically well-informed projects on both sides of the division between Conservative virtue epistemology (including the credit theory of knowing) and Autonomous virtue epistemology (including projects for providing guidance to epistemic agents)

Problems of Religious Luck: Assessing the Limits of Reasonable Religious Disagreement

To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There is a strong tendency among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize. Lexington Books Pages: 290 978-1-4985-5017-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00) 978-1-4985-5018-5 • eBook • December 2018 •$90.00 • (£60.00) ISBN 978-1-4985-5018-5 (pbk: alk. paper) (coming 2020) [Download the 30% personal use Discount Order Form I uploaded for hardcover or e-book, and please ask your library to purchase a copy for their collection.

Vertex Operator Algebras Associated to Type G Affine Lie Algebras II

We continue the study of the vertex operator algebra $L(k,0)$ associated to a type $G_2^{(1)}$ affine Lie algebra at admissible one-third integer levels, $k = -2 + m + \tfrac{i}{3}\ (m\in \mathbb{Z}_{\ge 0}, i = 1,2)$, initiated in \cite{AL}. Our main result is that there is a finite number of irreducible $L(k,0)$-modules from the category $\mathcal{O}$. The proof relies on the knowledge of an explicit formula for the singular vectors. After obtaining this formula, we are able to show that there are only finitely many irreducible $A(L(k,0))$-modules form the category $\mathcal{O}$. The main result then follows from the bijective correspondence in $A(V)$-theory.Comment: 28 pages, 1 tabl

Holbrookia propinqua

Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Ctenosaura palearis

Number of Pages: 3Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Vertex Operator Algebras Associated to Type G Affine Lie Algebras

In this paper, we study representations of the vertex operator algebra $L(k,0)$ at one-third admissible levels $k= -5/3, -4/3, -2/3$ for the affine algebra of type $G_2^{(1)}$. We first determine singular vectors and then obtain a description of the associative algebra $A(L(k,0))$ using the singular vectors. We then prove that there are only finitely many irreducible $A(L(k,0))$-modules from the category $\mathcal O$. Applying the $A(V)$-theory, we prove that there are only finitely many irreducible weak $L(k,0)$-modules from the category $\mathcal O$ and that such an $L(k,0)$-module is completely reducible. Our result supports the conjecture made by Adamovi{\'c} and Milas in \cite{AM}.Comment: 30 page

The Network Picture of Labor Flow

We construct a data-driven model of flows in graphs that captures the essential elements of the movement of workers between jobs in the companies (firms) of entire economic systems such as countries. The model is based on the observation that certain job transitions between firms are often repeated over time, showing persistent behavior, and suggesting the construction of static graphs to act as the scaffolding for job mobility. Individuals in the job market (the workforce) are modelled by a discrete-time random walk on graphs, where each individual at a node can possess two states: employed or unemployed, and the rates of becoming unemployed and of finding a new job are node dependent parameters. We calculate the steady state solution of the model and compare it to extensive micro-datasets for Mexico and Finland, comprised of hundreds of thousands of firms and individuals. We find that our model possesses the correct behavior for the numbers of employed and unemployed individuals in these countries down to the level of individual firms. Our framework opens the door to a new approach to the analysis of labor mobility at high resolution, with the tantalizing potential for the development of full forecasting methods in the future.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure

Frictional Unemployment on Labor Flow Networks

We develop an alternative theory to the aggregate matching function in which workers search for jobs through a network of firms: the labor flow network. The lack of an edge between two companies indicates the impossibility of labor flows between them due to high frictions. In equilibrium, firms' hiring behavior correlates through the network, generating highly disaggregated local unemployment. Hence, aggregation depends on the topology of the network in non-trivial ways. This theory provides new micro-foundations for the Beveridge curve, wage dispersion, and the employer-size premium. We apply our model to employer-employee matched records and find that network topologies with Pareto-distributed connections cause disproportionately large changes on aggregate unemployment under high labor supply elasticity