Understanding and Coming to Understand

Many philosophers take understanding to be a distinctive kind of knowledge that involves grasping dependency relations; moreover, they hold it to be particularly valuable. This paper aims to investigate and address two well-known puzzles that arise from this conception: (1) the nature of understanding itself—in particular, the nature of “grasping”; (2) the source of understanding’s distinctive value. In what follows, I’ll argue that we can shed light on both puzzles by recognizing first, the importance of the distinction between the act of coming to understand and the state of understanding; and second, that coming to understand is a creative act

The selective advantage of reaction norms for environmental tolerance

A tolerance curve defines the dependence of a genotype's fitness on the state of an environmental gradient. It can be characterized by a mode (the genotype's optimal environment) and a width (the breadth of adaptation). It seems possible that one or both of these characters can be modified in an adaptive manner, at least partially, during development. Thus, we extend the theory of environmental tolerance to include reaction norms for the mode and the width of the tolerance curve. We demonstrate that the selective value of such reaction norms increases with increasing spatial heterogeneity and between-generation temporal variation in the environment and with decreasing within-generation temporal variation. Assuming that the maintenance of a high breadth of adaptation is costly, reaction, norms are shown to induce correlated selection for a reduction in this character. Nevertheless, regardless of the magnitude of the reaction norm, there is a nearly one to one relationship between the optimal breadth of adaptation and the within-generation temporal variation perceived by the organism. This suggests that empirical estimates of the breadth of adaptation may provide a useful index of this type of environmental variation from the organism's point of view

Handbook Supported Employment

[Excerpt] Supported employment has brought about improvements in the quality of life of women and men with a disability by enabling them to become active participants in society. It has a positive impact on families – and on employers who benefit from the contribution which disabled people can make at work. The strength of supported employment is that it enables people with disabilities to enter the real world of work by focusing on individual abilities and by providing varying levels of individualized support, depending on needs. Support and advice is also provided to the employer

From one to many: recent work on truth

In this paper, we offer a brief, critical survey of contemporary work on truth. We begin by reflecting on the distinction between substantivist and deflationary truth theories. We then turn to three new kinds of truth theory—Kevin Scharp's replacement theory, John MacFarlane's relativism, and the alethic pluralism pioneered by Michael Lynch and Crispin Wright. We argue that despite their considerable differences, these theories exhibit a common "pluralizing tendency" with respect to truth. In the final section, we look at the underinvestigated interface between metaphysical and formal truth theories, pointing to several promising questions that arise here

Environmental tolerance

A theory for the expression of a population's response to density-independent gradients of environmental factors is derived for the case of asexuality. It is shown that the environmental tolerance of a genotype is a function of at least four parameters: g$_1$ and V$_{E1}$, the environmental optimum and its developmental variance between individuals, and g$_2$ and V$_{E2}$, the expected genetic contribution to the breadth of adaptation and its developmental variance. The realized breadth of adaptation of a genotype (V$^{1/2}$) is a complex function of g$_2$, V$_{E1}$, and V$_{E2}$, but we argue that, with an appropriate scale transformation, the tolerance curve of a genotype is approximately normal, with mean g$_1$ and standard deviation V$^{1/2}$. It is shown that temporal heterogeneity in the environment selects for more-broadly-adapted genotypes but that the within-generation component (V_{\phitw}) plays a more prominent role than the between-generation component (V_{\phitb}). Spatial heterogeneity selects for higher V$^{1/2}$ only when it occurs in conjunction with temporal variance within generations and only if V_{\phitb} is small relative to V_{\phitw}. We argue that since g$_2$ is expected to evolve subject to the constraint that V$^{1/2}$ is optimized, species exposed to conditions favoring identical V$^{1/2}$ may evolve different g$_2$ if pronounced interspecific differences exist for V$_{E1}$ and V$_{E2}$. A maximum-likelihood method is shown to be capable of generating accurate estimates of the genotypic parameters g$_1$, g$_2$, V$_{E1}$, and V$_{E2}$ with moderately large samples. We suggest how this procedure may be used to estimate analogous parameters for a population of mixed genotypes and to obtain estimates of the genetic variance for the environmental optimum and breadth of adaptation. The potential utility of this methodology for the analysis of data routinely generated in programs for environmental assessment and plant breeding is pointed out

State and green crimes related to water pollution and ecological disorganization: water pollution from publicly owned treatment works (POTW) facilities across US states

Green criminologists often refer to water pollution as an example of a green crime, but have yet to produce much research on this subject. The current article addresses the need for green criminological analyses of water pollution problems, and draws attention to an overlooked issue: water pollution emissions from state owned public water treatment facilities or POTWs. Legally, POTWs may emit certain quantities and kinds of pollutants to waterways following treatment. This does not mean, however, that those emissions have no adverse ecological or public health impacts, or that those emissions cannot also be employed as examples of green crimes or green-state crimes. Indeed, from the perspective of environmental sociology and ecological Marxism, those emissions generate ecological disorganization. Moreover, POTW emissions contain numerous pollutants that generate different forms of ecological disorganization. The current study uses POTW emissions data drawn from the US EPA’s Discharge Monitoring Report system for 2014 to illustrate the extent of pollution emitted by POTWs in and across US states as one dimension of ecological disorganization. To contextualize the meaning of those data, we review US water pollution regulations, review the health and ecological impacts of chemicals emitted by POTWs, and situate those emissions within green criminological discussions of green crime and green-state crimes

Green criminology and the reconceptualization of school violence: Comparing green school violence and traditional forms of school violence for school children

School crime and violence continue to be important topics of criminological inquiry. Forms of violence that have received much attention from criminologists include school gun violence, assaults, and bullying. What appears missing from criminological studies are analyses of different forms of violent victimization imposed on school children related to environmental injustice, pollution, and exposure to toxins. In this article, we argue for the interpretation of these harms as violent victimizations. To facilitate this, we draw upon definitions of violent victimization developed in green criminology, conceptualizing exposure to environmental toxins as violent assault, and introduce the term green school violence (GSV). Next, we draw upon the medical, environmental, and public health literature to offer a series of examples of GSV in the United States, discuss numerous environmental hazards present in American schools, and describe their scope and severity. A conservative estimate of the frequency of GSV suggests that far more school children are victimized by GSV than forms of interpersonal acts of violence