The Problem of Ethical Vagueness for Expressivism

Ethical vagueness has garnered little attention. This is rather surprising since many philosophers have remarked that the science of ethics lacks the precision that other fields of inquiry have. Of the few philosophers who have discussed ethical vagueness the majority have focused on the implications of vagueness for moral realism. Because the relevance of ethical vagueness for other metaethical positions has been underexplored, my aim in this paper is to investigate the ramifications of ethical vagueness for expressivism. Ultimately, I shall argue that expressivism does not have the resources to adequately account for ethical vagueness, while cognitivism does. This demonstrates an advantage that cognitivism holds over expressivis

UNIFYING PRACTICAL UNCERTAINTY REPRESENTATIONS: I. GENERALIZED P-BOXES

Pre-print of final version.International audienceThere exist several simple representations of uncertainty that are easier to handle than more general ones. Among them are random sets, possibility distributions, probability intervals, and more recently Ferson's p-boxes and Neumaier's clouds. Both for theoretical and practical considerations, it is very useful to know whether one representation is equivalent to or can be approximated by other ones. In this paper, we define a generalized form of usual p-boxes. These generalized p-boxes have interesting connections with other previously known representations. In particular, we show that they are equivalent to pairs of possibility distributions, and that they are special kinds of random sets. They are also the missing link between p-boxes and clouds, which are the topic of the second part of this study

A consonant approximation of the product of independent consonant random sets

aeres : ACLInternational audienceThe belief structure resulting from the combination of consonant and independent marginal random sets is not, in general, consonant. Also, the complexity of such a structure grows exponentially with the number of combined random sets, making it quickly intractable for computations. In this paper, we propose a simple guaranteed consonant outer approximation of this structure. The complexity of this outer approximation does not increase with the number of marginal random sets (i.e., of dimensions), making it easier to handle in uncertainty propagation. Features and advantages of this outer approximation are then discussed, with the help of some illustrative examples

Environmental Preference

This article examines four domains of variables to assess their relative merit in explaining environmental preference. Within each of the domains, between three and seven specific attributes were measured, for a total of 20 predictor variables. The study site includes small forested areas, agricultural land, and fields, with little topographic variation. Preference ratings of 59 scenes representing the area serve as the dependent variable. Taken together, the 20 attributes accounted for 83 percent of the preference variance. Taken separately, the Physical Attributes lacked predictive power. Of the Informational variables, Mystery was the only significant contributor. The Land Cover types proved effective, with Weedy Fields, Scrubland, and Agriculture all significant negative predictors. Finally, the Perception-based variables were most powerful, with Openness and Smoothness particularly useful predictors. The results point to the importance of using different predictor domains, rather than relying exclusively on any one, since their role in different environmental contexts is likely to vary.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67176/2/10.1177_0013916589215001.pd

Deciding on open innovation:an exploration of how firms create and capture value with open source software.

Open innovation is a paradigm that proposes that firms can and should use external as well as internal innovations/ideas. A popular example of open innovation has been open source software (OSS). The key issues facing organizational decision makers considering OSS strategies is, how does the firm create value for the customer while simultaneously extracting value for itself? However, the adoption of OSS as part of an open innovation strategy is a recent phenomenon and many unanswered questions remain. Taking the viewpoint of seven IS/IT decision makers in European firms, this paper reveals how decision makers considered aspects of value creation, capture, and networking in making decisions on adopting open source software. The findings reveal that while decision makers look to open innovation for value creation and capture, there is still a desire to remain self reliant, resulting in collaborative design (of external innovations) rather than collaborative decision making with value network partners in relation to how such innovations would help create and capture value within firms