The Epistemology of “Epistemology Naturalized”

Quine's “Epistemology Naturalized” has become part of the canon in epistemology and excited a widespread revival of interest in naturalism. Yet the status accorded the essay is ironic, since both friends and foes of philosophical naturalism deny that Quine makes a plausible case that the methods of naturalism can accommodate the problems of epistemology

Binding Social and Cultural Networks: A Model

Until now, most studies carried onto social or semantic networks have considered each of these networks independently. Our goal here is to bring a formal frame for studying both networks empirically as well as to point out stylized facts that would explain their reciprocal influence and the emergence of clusters of agents, which may also be regarded as ''cultural cliques''. We show how to apply the Galois lattice theory to the modeling of the coevolution of social and conceptual networks, and the characterization of cultural communities. Basing our approach on Barabasi-Albert's models, we however extend the usual preferential attachment probability in order to take into account the reciprocal influence of both networks, therefore introducing the notion of dual distance. In addition to providing a theoretic frame we draw here a program of empirical tests which should give root to a more analytical model and the consequent simulation and validation. In a broader view, adopting and actually implementing the paradigm of cultural epidemiology, we could proceed further with the study of knowledge diffusion and explain how the social network structure affects concept propagation and in return how concept propagation affects the social network.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures (v2: typos, minor corrections in section 3.2) (v3: examples, figures added

The Place of the Employment Court in the New Zealand Judicial Hierarchy

This article considers the status of the Employment Court and its position in the overall court structure in New Zealand. It examines the issue from both an historical and comparative New Zealand legal perspective

The Impact of Privacy Legislation on the Workplace: The New Zealand Experience

This paper describes how New Zealand's Privacy Act applies in practice to the workplace, and what its effect has been in relation to the protection of workers’ privacy interests. While there are a few areas where the legislation is effective, it has been largely a disappointment for workers, who are increasingly subject to privacy-intrusive practices in the workplace. Individuals’ interests have always tended to be overridden in institutional and contractual settings where individuals lack bargaining power. The main argument of this paper is that New Zealand's Privacy Act, now in force for over eleven years, has hardly affected the balance of power in relation to workplace privacy matters. The irony is that those who are best placed to take advantage of the legislation in the employment setting are unsuccessful job applicants and dismissed employees; i.e. those who are not actually in a subsisting employment relationship. Despite the existence of privacy legislation, it is employment law that remains of paramount importance for the protection of workers’ privacy interests. The New Zealand experience suggests that effective workplace privacy protection can only be attained through specific sectorial regulation that overrides managerial prerogative and the ability of workers to contract out or their rights

The Implications of the Privacy Act on Employment

In relation to employment law, the Privacy Act, which came into force on I July 1993, can be usefully characterised as both a human rights statute and a freedom of information statute. Before proceeding to discuss the Privacy Act under these two broad headings, it will be necessary to grasp the basic conceptual jargon of the Act. The currency of the Pnvacy Act is "personal information," which is defined in s.2 as "information about an identifiable individual." The term "information" itself is not defined, which appears to be deliberate, as to define a word is to limit it