Clarifying Conversations: Understanding Cultural Difference in Philosophical Education

The goal of this essay is to explain how Wittgenstein's philosophy may be helpful for understanding and addressing challenges to cross-cultural communication in educational contexts. In particular, the notions of “hinge,” “intellectual distance,” and “grounds” from On Certainty will be helpful for identifying cultural differences. Wittgenstein's dialogical conception of philosophy in Philosophical Investigations will be helpful for addressing that cultural difference in conversation. While here can be no panacea to address all potential sources of confusion, Wittgenstein's philosophy has strong resources that are helpful for curbing some of our human tendencies to misunderstand other people

The method of endogenous gridpoints for solving dynamic stochastic optimization problems

This paper introduces a method for solving numerical dynamic stochastic optimization problems that avoids rootfinding operations. The idea is applicable to many microeconomic and macroeconomic problems, including life cycle, buffer-stock, and stochastic growth problems. Software is provided. Klassifikation: C6, D9, E2 . July 28, 2005

The Debate over "Wittgensteinian Fideism" and Phillips’ Contemplative Philosophy of Religion

When surveying the scholarly literature over Wittgensteinian fideism, it is easy to get the sense that the principal interlocutors, Kai Nielsen and D.Z. Phillips, talk past one another, but finding the right words for appraising the distance between the two voices is difficult. In this paper, I seek to appreciate this intellectual distance through an exploration of the varying philosophical aims of Nielsen and Phillips, of the different intellectual imperatives that guide their respective conceptions of philosophical practice. In so doing, I seek to show how a contemplative mode in philosophy may be used to appraise a philosophical dispute and the terms of disagreement. In this case, a contemplative approach to understanding the dispute would frame Nielsen’s and Phillips’ contributions against the backdrop of the ends they conceive philosophy to have

Metaphor and Apophatic Discourse: Putting Sells in Dialogue with Lakoff and Johnson

In the book, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, Michael A. Sells presents a performative theory of apophatic discourse. His idea is that apophatic discourse functions as a semantic analogue to mystical experience through \"meaning events.\" Although he acknowledges that an appreciation of the subtleties of metaphor is crucial to an understanding of mystical language, Sells does not discuss the extensive literature on metaphor theory from the last few decades. In this essay, the author explores how George Lakoff and Mark Johnson\'s theory of metaphor may enrich Sells\' theory. Further, he addresses what Lakoff and Johnson may learn from Sells\' treatment. While there are no conflicts, strictly speaking, between the metaphysical pictures suggested by the two theories. Sells\' picture of the world allows for fissures of meaning at which Lakoff and Johnson\'s theory at best hints. Ultimately, Lakoff and Johnson\'s conception of metaphor requires that Sells\' theory of apophatic discourse be reexamined

Death to the Log-Linearized Consumption euler Equation! (And Very Poor Health to the Second-Order Approximation)

This paper shows that standard empirical methods for estimating log-linearized consumption Euler equations cannot successfully uncover structural parameters like the coefficient of relative risk aversion from a dataset of simulated consumers behaving exactly according to the standard model Furthermore consumption growth for simulated consumers is very highly statistically related to predictable income growth -- and thus standard 'excess sensitivity' tests would reject the hypothesis that consumers are behaving according to the standard model Results are not much better for the second-order approximation to the Euler equation The paper concludes that empirical estimation of consumption Euler equations should be abandoned and discusses some alternative empirical strategies that are not subject to the problems of Euler equation estimation

'Risky Habits' and the Marginal Propensity to Consume Out of Permanent Income, or, How Much Would a Permanent Tax Cut Boost Japanese Consumption?

Papers in variety of disparate literatures have recently suggested that habit formation in consumption may explain several empirical puzzles, ranging from the level and cyclical variability of the equity premium (Abel (1990,1999); Constantinides (1990); Jermann (1998); Campbell and Cochrane (1999)) to the excess smoothness' of aggregate consumption (Fuhrer (2000)) to the apparent fact that increases in economic growth cause subsequent increases in aggregate saving rates (Carroll and Weil (1994); Bosworth (1993); Attanasio, Picci, and Scorcu (2000); Rodrik (1999); Loayza, Schmidt-Hebbel, and Serv‚n (2000)). This paper examines an implication of these models that has mostly been overlooked: Habits strong enough to solve these puzzles imply an immediate marginal propensity to consume out of permanent shocks of much less than one. When the model is calibrated to roughly match the rise in the Japanese saving rate over the postwar period, it implies that the immediate MPC out of permanent tax cuts may be as low as 30 percent, suggesting that calls for permanent income tax cut as a quick means of stimulating aggregate demand in Japan may be misguided.

Solving Dynamic Stochastic Optimization Problems Using the Method of Endogenous Gridpoints

Numerical Optimization; Dynamic Programming; Precautionary Saving

The Cube Recurrence

We construct a combinatorial model that is described by the cube recurrence, a nonlinear recurrence relation introduced by Propp, which generates families of Laurent polynomials indexed by points in $\mathbb{Z}^3$. In the process, we prove several conjectures of Propp and of Fomin and Zelevinsky, and we obtain a combinatorial interpretation for the terms of Gale-Robinson sequences. We also indicate how the model might be used to obtain some interesting results about perfect matchings of certain bipartite planar graphs