Welfarism

Welfarism is a theory of value (or the good) simpliciter. Theories of value are fundamentally concerned with explaining what makes some possible worlds better than others. Welfarism is the view according to which the relative value of possible worlds is fully determined by how individuals are faring—or, in other words, by the facts about well-being that obtain—in these worlds. This entry begins by distinguishing between various forms of welfarism (pure vs. impure welfarism, and then narrow vs. wide welfarism). It then outlines some of the key attractions of welfarism. Finally, it surveys some of the most serious objections to welfarism (including malicious pleasure, the well-being of the wicked, great works of art, the non-identity problem, human extinction, transitivity of betterness, and distribution)

Food ethics

Current food practices affect humans, animals, and the environment in ways that some regard as morally troubling. In this entry, I will explain the most important of these worries and what has been said in response to them. I will conclude with a brief discussion of one of the most interesting recent topics in food ethics, lab-grown meat, which has been proposed as a silver bullet solution to these worries

Strengthening the impact of case studies through the use of a digital medium

This workshop provides an opportunity for delegates to explore their understanding of an aspect of Validated Prior Learning in higher education through the medium of film. The use of case studies is identified as valuable exemplification to support our understanding of complex structures and environments (Bassey 1999). By adopting a framework for exploring key issues in Validated Prior Learning we can draw comparisons across themes in single case studies and between multiple case studies. This may highlight particular structures and environmental features that can contribute to successful quality assurance, lifelong learning and societal integration. It may also identify inhibiting factors. Thus critical success factors for implementing VPL are revealed through case studies. By adopting an innovative digital medium such findings can be revealed more clearly to a wider audience then using traditional dissemination. In this workshop delegates will have opportunities to explore the power of Validated Prior Learning by story planning ahead of disseminating case studies through such tools as Videoscribe

Evaluative Beliefs First

Many philosophers think that it is only because we happen to want or care about things that we think some things of value. We start off caring about things, and then project these desires onto the external world. In this chapter, I make a preliminary case for the opposite view, that it is our evaluative thinking that is prior or comes first. On this view, it is only because we think some things of value that we care about or want anything at all. This view is highly explanatory. In particular, it explains (i) the special role that pleasure and pain play in our motivational systems, (ii) why phenomenal consciousness evolved, and (iii) how the two main competing theories of normative reasons for action—i.e., objectivism and subjectivism—can be reconciled. After explaining why this is so, I respond to the most serious objections to this view, including that it cannot account for temptation and willpower, or for the existence and appropriateness of the reactive attitudes

Introduction

From the 1930s until the 1950s, the Waterside Workers Union was at the centre of industrial life in New Zealand. The union was repeatedly in battle with Government and employers over wages and conditions, and had made solidarity its byword, both at home and overseas. The wharfies were at the forefront in the battle against the Cold War, anti-communist drive set in train by the Fraser Government and taken up with gusto by the National Government under Sid Holland. The final battle in 1951 ranks as one of the defining moments of New Zealand's history in the twentieth century, as the forces of labour and capital were pitched against each other in a fight to the finish. In this book, Harold "Jock" Barnes tells the story of these events as they happened, from the day of his arrival on the waterfront in 1935 to the 1951 lockout and the destruction of the old union

Managers of Discontent: Problems of Labour Leadership

The establishment of mass trade unions in the 19th Century made the working class a force to be reckoned with. The subsequent rise of the Labor Party transformed Australian politics. Yet the fruits of both developments have been ambiguous. Unions are institutions firmly located on the terrain of capitalism, devoted to improving the terms on which labour power is sold within the existing class system rather than striving to transform it, while the ALP is devoted at best to modest reforms within the established social and political framework. Given that both operate on this basis, it is not surprising that the full-time representatives of labour's interests come to constitute a conservatising layer which accepts the existing social order and tends to restrain workers from militant struggles which might challenge it. This chapter considers the roots and contours of the trade union officialdom, related phenomena in the ALP, recent trends and the political implications

Conforming finite element methods for the clamped plate problem

Finite element methods for solving biharmonic boundary value problems are considered. The particular problem discussed is that of a clamped thin plate. This problem is reformulated in a weak, form in the Sobolev space Techniques for setting up conforming trial Functions are utilized in a Galerkin technique to produce finite element solutions. The shortcomings of various trial function formulations are discussed, and a macro—element approach to local mesh refinement using rectangular elements is given

Leadership Representativeness in the Australian Union Movement

This paper explores the dimensions of political and personal representativeness in the context of Australian unionism in the period since World War Two. The first part of the article is dedicated to an operationalisation of these two concepts within trade unions, paying particular attention to the social origin of union leaders and their democratic accountability. The two dimensions of representativeness generate a two-by-two matrix which allows us to identify four types of union. The bulk of the article is taken up by an assessment of representativeness in Australian unions in relation to this matrix. The article concludes with some consideration of the relationship between the two different dimensions of representativeness, and the implications of this relationship for prospects for union revival

Making capitalism acceptable? The economic policy of Australian social democracy since the 1970s

Labor governments since the early 20th Century have consistently attempted to boost business profits. The way they have done so has changed but their policies have been consistently shaped by both the shifting requirements of Australian capitalism and the ALP’s nature as a capitalist workers party. From the 1940s until the early 1970s, Labor advocated a program of Keynesian and protectionist economics. As the economics profession turned against protectionism, the Whitlam Government sought to integrate Australian capitalism more closely with the global economy. The Hawke and Keating Governments went much further in opening the economy, deregulating, privatizing and corporatizing than their conservative predecessor. In most areas, with the notable exception of industrial relations, they generally acted in line with the new, neo-liberal orthodoxy in economics. The logic of the Rudd and Gillard Governments’ responses to the global economic crisis, invoking a mixture of neo-liberal and Keynesian precepts, like the economic policies of its Labor predecessors, can only be grasped in terms of the ALP’s distinctive material constitution

Absolute value preconditioning for symmetric indefinite linear systems

We introduce a novel strategy for constructing symmetric positive definite (SPD) preconditioners for linear systems with symmetric indefinite matrices. The strategy, called absolute value preconditioning, is motivated by the observation that the preconditioned minimal residual method with the inverse of the absolute value of the matrix as a preconditioner converges to the exact solution of the system in at most two steps. Neither the exact absolute value of the matrix nor its exact inverse are computationally feasible to construct in general. However, we provide a practical example of an SPD preconditioner that is based on the suggested approach. In this example we consider a model problem with a shifted discrete negative Laplacian, and suggest a geometric multigrid (MG) preconditioner, where the inverse of the matrix absolute value appears only on the coarse grid, while operations on finer grids are based on the Laplacian. Our numerical tests demonstrate practical effectiveness of the new MG preconditioner, which leads to a robust iterative scheme with minimalist memory requirements