Indeterminacy and Society

Indeterminacy and Society PDF Author: Russell Hardin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400848962
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
In simple action theory, when people choose between courses of action, they know what the outcome will be. When an individual is making a choice "against nature," such as switching on a light, that assumption may hold true. But in strategic interaction outcomes, indeterminacy is pervasive and often intractable. Whether one is choosing for oneself or making a choice about a policy matter, it is usually possible only to make a guess about the outcome, one based on anticipating what other actors will do. In this book Russell Hardin asserts, in his characteristically clear and uncompromising prose, "Indeterminacy in contexts of strategic interaction . . . Is an issue that is constantly swept under the rug because it is often disruptive to pristine social theory. But the theory is fake: the indeterminacy is real." In the course of the book, Hardin thus outlines the various ways in which theorists from Hobbes to Rawls have gone wrong in denying or ignoring indeterminacy, and suggests how social theories would be enhanced--and how certain problems could be resolved effectively or successfully--if they assumed from the beginning that indeterminacy was the normal state of affairs, not the exception. Representing a bold challenge to widely held theoretical assumptions and habits of thought, Indeterminacy and Society will be debated across a range of fields including politics, law, philosophy, economics, and business management.

The Significance of Indeterminacy

The Significance of Indeterminacy PDF Author: Robert H. Scott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351383302
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
While indeterminacy is a recurrent theme in philosophy, less progress has been made in clarifying its significance for various philosophical and interdisciplinary contexts. This collection brings together early-career and well-known philosophers—including Graham Priest, Trish Glazebrook, Steven Crowell, Robert Neville, Todd May, and William Desmond—to explore indeterminacy in greater detail. The volume is unique in that its essays demonstrate the positive significance of indeterminacy, insofar as indeterminacy opens up new fields of discourse and illuminates neglected aspects of various concepts and phenomena. The essays are organized thematically around indeterminacy’s impact on various areas of philosophy, including post-Kantian idealism, phenomenology, ethics, hermeneutics, aesthetics, and East Asian philosophy. They also take an interdisciplinary approach by elaborating the conceptual connections between indeterminacy and literature, music, religion, and science.

The Timespace of Human Activity

The Timespace of Human Activity PDF Author: Theodore R. Schatzki
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739142704
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book shows that a concept of activity timespace drawn from the work of Martin Heidegger provides new insights into the nature of activity, society, and history. Although the book is a work of theory, it has significant implications for the determination and course, not just of activity, but of sociohistorical change as well. Drawing on empirical examples, the book argues (1) that timespace is a key component of the overall space and time of social life, (2) that interwoven timespaces form an essential infrastructure of important social phenomena such as power, coordinated actions, social organizations, and social systems, and (3) that history encompasses constellations of indeterminate temporalspatial events. The latter conception of history in turn yields a propitious account of how the past exists in the present. In addition, because the concept of activity timespace highlights the teleological character of human action, the book contains an extensive defense of the teleological character of such allegedly ateleological forms of activity as emotional and ceremonial actions. Since, finally, the book's ideas about timespace and activity as an indeterminate event derive from an interpretation of Heidegger, the work furthers understanding of the relevance of his thought for social and historical theory.

The Method of Hope

The Method of Hope PDF Author: Hirokazu Miyazaki
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804757171
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
The Method of Hope examines the relationship between hope and knowledge by investigating how hope is produced in various forms of knowledge - Fijian, philosophical, anthropologtical. The book participates in on-going debates in social theory about how to reclaim the category of hope in progressive thought.

Embedding New Technologies into Society

Embedding New Technologies into Society PDF Author: Diana M. Bowman
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1315340739
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The embedding of any new technologies in society is challenging. The evolving state of the scientific art, often-unquantifiable risks and ill-defined developmental trajectories have the potential to hinder innovation and/or the commercial success of a technology. The are, however, a number of tools that can now be utilized by stakeholders to bridge the chasm that exists between the science and innovation dimensions on the one hand, and the societal dimensions on the other. This edited volume will draw together leading researchers from the domains of law, philosophy, political science, public administration and the natural sciences in order to demonstrate how tools such as, for example, constructive technology assessment, regulatory governance and societal scenarios, may be employed by stakeholders to assist in successfully embedding new technologies into society. This volume will focus primarily on the embedding of two emergent and emerging technologies: nanotechnologies and synthetic biology. Government, industry and the epistemic community continue to struggle with how best to balance the promised benefits of an emerging technology with concerns about its potential impacts. There is a growing body of literature that has examined these challenges from various cultural, scientific and jurisdictional dimensions. There is, however, much work that still needs to be done; this includes articulating the successes and failures of attempts to the societal embedding of technologies and their associated products. This edited volume is significant and timely, as unlike other books currently on the market, it shall draw from real work experiences and experiments designed anticipate the societal embedding of emerging technologies. This empirical work shall be supported by robust theoretical underpinnings.

Potential Images

Potential Images PDF Author: Dario Gamboni
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 9781861891495
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In Potential Images Dario Gamboni explores ambiguity in modern art, considering images that rely to a great degree on a projected or imaginative response from viewers to achieve their effect. Ambiguity became increasingly important in late 19th- and early 20th-century aesthetics, as is evidenced in works by such artists as Redon, Cezanne, Gauguin, Ensor and the Nabis. Similarly, the Cubists subverted traditional representational conventions, requiring their viewers to decipher images to extract their full meanings. The same device was taken up in the various experiments leading to abstraction. For example, it was Kandinsky's intention that his work could be interpreted in both figurative and non-figurative ways, and Duchamp's Readymades suggested the radical conclusion that 'it is the beholder who makes the picture'. These invitations to viewers to participate in the process of artistic communication had social and political implications, as they accorded artist and beholder symmetrical, almost interchangeable, roles.

Tail Risk Killers: How Math, Indeterminacy, and Hubris Distort Markets

Tail Risk Killers: How Math, Indeterminacy, and Hubris Distort Markets PDF Author: Jeffrey McGinn
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071784918
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Reshape your investing strategy for an increasingly uncertain world “An engrossing, fast-paced, terrific read for anyone interested in the financial imbalances due to too much reliance on math and too little respect for indeterminacy.” —Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge.com The world does not unfold according to a fixed set of rules. It is a dynamical system whose evolution looks like a bell curve with fat “tails.” The same is true of financial markets. However, every day we rely on the certainty and precision of mathematical strategies that assume the contrary to control and grow wealth in markets. Tail Risk Killers shows you how the rigidity of model-based thinking has led to the fragility of today’s global financial marketplace, and it explains how to use adaptive trading strategies to mitigate risk in impending market conditions. Risk management veteran Jeff McGinn pokes holes in prevalent assumptions about how financial markets act that tend to underestimate the likelihood of occurrence of extreme events. Through clear, conversational writing, real-world anecdotes, and easy-tofollow formulas, he provides a glimpse into the way tomorrow’s successful traders are viewing financial markets—with an eye for probability distributions. While illustrating how to protect your assets from tail risk, he shows you how to: Implement the six axioms for risk management Prepare for the unintended consequences of central banks suppressing tail risk Identify and avoid the dark risks hidden in today’s derivative-laden financial system Anticipate the fate of credit default swaps that may not face extinction McGinn argues that the intervention of central banks has robbed global markets of their opportunities to adapt, but this highly relevant book shows you that it is not too late to adapt your portfolio to survive the extreme events that happen more often than popular financial models suggest. Tail Risk Killers helps you discover useful information and processes beyond the focus of industry standards, helps you connect the dots of evolving trading strategies and time your next trade for maximum profitability.

Science, Faith, Society: New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Polanyi

Science, Faith, Society: New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Polanyi PDF Author: Péter Hartl
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031512286
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description


Risky Lessons

Risky Lessons PDF Author: Jessica Fields
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813544998
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Curricula in U.S. public schools are often the focus of heated debate, and few subjects spark more controversy than sex education. While conservatives argue that sexual abstinence should be the only message, liberals counter that an approach that provides comprehensive instruction and helps young people avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy is necessary. Caught in the middle are the students and teachers whose everyday experiences of sex education are seldom as clear-cut as either side of the debate suggests. Risky Lessons brings readers inside three North Carolina middle schools to show how students and teachers support and subvert the official curriculum through their questions, choices, viewpoints, and reactions. Most important, the book highlights how sex education's formal and informal lessons reflect and reinforce gender, race, and class inequalities. Ultimately critical of both conservative and liberal approaches, Fields argues for curricula that promote social and sexual justice. Sex education's aim need not be limited to reducing the risk of adolescent pregnancies, disease, and sexual activity. Rather, its lessons should help young people to recognize and contend with sexual desires, power, and inequalities.

Coping in Politics with Indeterminate Norms

Coping in Politics with Indeterminate Norms PDF Author: Benjamin Gregg
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 9780791486597
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Are social equity, political fairness, and legal justice possible within a liberal political order, even if norms are indeterminate? The modern world is distinguished by both its complexity and the absence of a single theory, principle, or tradition with the authority to constrain us. Coping in Politics with Indeterminate Norms demonstrates that while moral validity is relative rather than absolute, and cultural meanings local rather than universal, social integration and democratic politics are still attainable goals. Benjamin Gregg fashions a theory that combines proceduralism with pragmatism—an "enlightened localism"—that adjudicates among competing normative commitments and interpretations using local criteria in the absence of universal standards. The theory is applied to three empirical domains: social criticism, public policy, and law and morality.