9,087 research outputs found
Recollections from a 50-year random walk midst matrices, statistics and computing
A brief and personal overview is given of developments in matrix algebra,
statistics and computing during the years of my participating in these activities,
1945 2005
Social Ontology : some Basic Principles
The aim of this article is to explore the problem of social ontology, by developing the argument presented in The Construction of Social Reality (1995). After some preliminary distinctions (section 1), the article describes the logical structure of society using three concepts: collective intentionality, the assignment of function, and constitutive rules and procedures (section 2). Some further developments of this approach are presented: the analysis of status indicators, and the case of institutions where there is a status function but no physical object on which it is imposed (section 3). Some remarks are also made about the taxonomy of institutional facts (section 4), about the relationship between conceptual analysis and empirical data (section 5), and, finally, about the concept of institutional facts (section 6).El objetivo de este artículo es explorar el problema de la ontología social, desarrollando el argumento presentado en La construcción de la realidad social (1995). Después de hacer algunas distinciones preliminares (sección 1), el artículo describe la estructura lógica de la sociedad usando tres conceptos: intencionalidad colectiva, asignación de función, y reglas y procedimientos constitutivos (sección 2). Se presentan algunos desarrollos posteriores de este enfoque: el análisis de indicadores de status, y el caso de las instituciones donde existe una función de status pero no un objeto físico sobre el que la misma se impone (sección 3). Se hacen también algunas observaciones sobre la taxonomía de los hechos institucionales (sección 4), sobre la relación entre el análisis conceptual y los datos empíricos (sección 5), y, finalmente, sobre el concepto de hechos institucionales (sección 6)
What is Language? Some Preliminary Remarks
There are three essential I want to get across in this article in addition to the analysis of
relations of nonlinguistic to linguistic intentionality. First I want to emphasize how the
structure of prelinguistic intentionality enables us to solve the problems of the relation of
reference and predication and the problem of the unity of the proposition. The second point
is about deontology. The basic intellectual motivation that drives this second part of his
argument is the following: there is something left out of the standard textbook accounts of
language as consisting of syntax, semantics and phonology with an extra-linguistic
pragmatics thrown in. Basically what is left out is the essential element of commitment
involved in having a set of conventional devices that encode the imposition of conditions of
satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction. The third part of the article is about the creation
of a social and institutional ontology by linguistically representing certain facts as existing,
thus creating the facts. When we understand this third point we will get a deeper insight
into the constitutive role of language in the construction of society and social institutions
Using sports infrastructure to deliver economic and social change: Lessons for London beyond 2012
Over the last two decades, there has been a
new trend emerging within sport, which has
seen a shift, from investment for the sake of
sport, to investment in sport for good (Sport
England, 2008). In the context of the latter
approach, there has been an emergence of
the use of sport to address regeneration objectives,
largely stemming from the belief of government
and other sporting and non-sporting
organizations, that it can confer a wide range
of economic and social benefits to individuals
and communities beyond those of a purely
physical sporting nature, and can contribute
positively to the revitalization of declining
urban areas (BURA, 2003). This commentary
will examine regeneration legacy in the context
of the London Olympic Games. In particular,
it will focus on the use of sports stadia
as a tool for delivering economic and social
change, and by drawing upon previous examples,
suggest lessons London can learn to
enhance regeneration legacies beyond 2012
'Don't you know that it's different for girls': a dynamic exploration of trust, breach and violation for women en route to the top
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Edward Elgar Publishing via the link in this recordKPM
The Ontology of Intentional Agency in Light of Neurobiological Determinism: Philosophy Meets Folk Psychology
The moot point of the Western philosophical rhetoric about free will
consists in examining whether the claim of authorship to intentional, deliberative
actions fits into or is undermined by a one-way causal framework of determinism.
Philosophers who think that reconciliation between the two is possible are known as
metaphysical compatibilists. However, there are philosophers populating the other
end of the spectrum, known as the metaphysical libertarians, who maintain that claim
to intentional agency cannot be sustained unless it is assumed that indeterministic
causal processes pervade the action-implementation apparatus employed by the agent.
The metaphysical libertarians differ among themselves on the question of whether the
indeterministic causal relation exists between the series of intentional states and
processes, both conscious and unconscious, and the action, making claim for what has
come to be known as the event-causal view, or between the agent and the action,
arguing that a sort of agent causation is at work. In this paper, I have tried to propose
that certain features of both event-causal and agent-causal libertarian views need to be
combined in order to provide a more defendable compatibilist account accommodating
deliberative actions with deterministic causation. The ‘‘agent-executed-eventcausal
libertarianism’’, the account of agency I have tried to develop here, integrates
certain plausible features of the two competing accounts of libertarianism turning
them into a consistent whole. I hope to show in the process that the integration of these
two variants of libertarianism does not challenge what some accounts of metaphysical
compatibilism propose—that there exists a broader deterministic relation between the
web of mental and extra-mental components constituting the agent’s dispositional
system—the agent’s beliefs, desires, short-term and long-term goals based on them,
the acquired social, cultural and religious beliefs, the general and immediate and
situational environment in which the agent is placed, etc. on the one hand and the
decisions she makes over her lifetime on the basis of these factors. While in the
‘‘Introduction’’ the philosophically assumed anomaly between deterministic causation
and the intentional act of deciding has been briefly surveyed, the second section is
devoted to the task of bridging the gap between compatibilism and libertarianism. The
next section of the paper turns to an analysis of folk-psychological concepts and
intuitions about the effects of neurochemical processes and prior mental events on the
freedom of making choices. How philosophical insights can be beneficially informed
by taking into consideration folk-psychological intuitions has also been discussed,
thus setting up the background for such analysis. It has been suggested in the end that
support for the proposed theory of intentional agency can be found in the folk-psychological intuitions, when they are taken in the right perspective
Making an impact in healthcare contexts::insights from a mixed-methods study of professional misconduct
The scarcity of public sector healthcare resources and the vulnerability of service users make the conduct of health professionals critically important. Health regulators, in delivering their core objective of patient protection, use empirical evidence to identify professionals’ misconduct, improve their understanding of why misconduct occurs, and to maximize the effectiveness of regulatory actions that safeguard public trust in the healthcare system. This paper outlines the contribution of comparative academic analysis of three professions in the UK (doctors, nurses & midwives, and allied health professions) based on 6714 individual cases of professional misconduct. Three dynamic strands of ongoing impact are identified: “dialogue”, that creates an international multi-stakeholder community of interest; “knowledge generation”, which advances conceptual and empirical understanding of counterproductive work behaviour through sequential quantitative and qualitative study; and “dissemination”, where practical learning is utilized by regulators, employers and other academics
Targeted search for continuous gravitational waves: Bayesian versus maximum-likelihood statistics
We investigate the Bayesian framework for detection of continuous
gravitational waves (GWs) in the context of targeted searches, where the phase
evolution of the GW signal is assumed to be known, while the four amplitude
parameters are unknown. We show that the orthodox maximum-likelihood statistic
(known as F-statistic) can be rediscovered as a Bayes factor with an unphysical
prior in amplitude parameter space. We introduce an alternative detection
statistic ("B-statistic") using the Bayes factor with a more natural amplitude
prior, namely an isotropic probability distribution for the orientation of GW
sources. Monte-Carlo simulations of targeted searches show that the resulting
Bayesian B-statistic is more powerful in the Neyman-Pearson sense (i.e. has a
higher expected detection probability at equal false-alarm probability) than
the frequentist F-statistic.Comment: 12 pages, presented at GWDAW13, to appear in CQ
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