Value management and model pluralism in climate science

Non-epistemic values pervade climate modelling, as is now well documented and widely discussed in the philosophy of climate science. Recently, Parker and Winsberg have drawn attention to what can be termed “epistemic inequality”: this is the risk that climate models might more accurately represent the future climates of the geographical regions prioritised by the values of the modellers. In this paper, we promote value management as a way of overcoming epistemic inequality. We argue that value management can be seriously considered as soon as the value-free ideal and inductive risk arguments commonly used to frame the discussions of value influence in climate science are replaced by alternative social accounts of objectivity. We consider objectivity in Longino's sense as well as strong objectivity in Harding's sense to be relevant options here, because they offer concrete proposals that can guide scientific practice in evaluating and designing so-called multi-model ensembles and, in fine, improve their capacity to quantify and express uncertainty in climate projections.     

Introduction: Reappraising Paul Feyerabend

This volume is devoted to a reappraisal of the philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. It has four aims. The first is to reassess his already well-known work from the 1960s and 1970s in light of contemporary developments in the history and philosophy of science. The second is to explore themes in his neglected later work, including recently published and previously unavailable writings. The third is to assess the contributions that Feyerabend can make to contemporary debate, on topics such as perspectivism, realism, and political philosophy of science. The fourth and final aim is to reconsider Feyerabend's place within the history of philosophy of science in the light of new scholarship.     

Overlapping ontologies and Indigenous knowledge. From integration to ontological self-determination

Current controversies about knowledge integration reflect conflicting ideas of what it means to “take Indigenous knowledge seriously”. While there is increased interest in integrating Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge in various disciplines such as anthropology and ethnobiology, integration projects are often accused of recognizing Indigenous knowledge only insofar as it is useful for Western scientists. The aim of this article is to use tools from philosophy of science to develop a model of both successful integration and integration failures. On the one hand, I argue that cross-cultural recognition of property clusters leads to an ontological overlap that makes knowledge integration often epistemically productive and socially useful. On the other hand, I argue that knowledge integration is limited by ontological divergence. Adequate models of Indigenous knowledge will therefore have to take integration failures seriously and I argue that integration efforts need to be complemented by a political notion of ontological self-determination.     

A pragmatic account of mechanistic artifact explanation

A mechanistic artifact explanation is an explanation that accounts for an artifact behavior by describing the underlying mechanism. The article shows that there are different kinds of mechanistic artifact explanation: top-down and bottom-up explanation, and I also distinguish between less and more inclusive top-down explanations. To illustrate these different kinds of explanation, the behavior of a simple, fictional artifact is explained in different ways. I defend that which explanation is ideal, depends on pragmatic factors (e.g., the background knowledge of the explainee and the specific goal for which the explanation will be used). For each kind of explanation, the situations, goals and interests for which it is most appropriate are specified, resulting in a pragmatic theory of mechanistic artifact explanation. This theory is compared to Jeroen de Ridder’s account of the pragmatics of mechanistic artifact explanation.     

复杂社会经济系统研究的一个新模型——市场交易与政府关系的三角结构模型

分析了市场交易的基础地位和单个交易的过程模型,建立了交易与政府的三角结构模型,描述了市场交易中政府的基本作用,从方法论角度区分了市场经济体制中方法论个人主义、博弈论与三角结构模型的适用范围,探讨了市场交易与政府共同推动社会经济协同发展的关系问题.     

公共信息资源管理的多元化策略研究

公共性的本质特征决定了公共信息资源管理必须在广泛共享的基础上走多元化的发展道路。为改进公共信息资源的管理现状,促进公共信息资源深层次开发利用,必须建立一个以政府为主导的多元化公共信息资源管理模式和共享体系。     

Toward a Buddhist Systems Methodology 3: An Application in a Taiwanese Non-Governmental Organization

This paper describes the application of a Buddhist systems methodology (BSM) to tackle a significant conflict (and underlying issues) threatening the future of a large non-governmental Buddhist membership organization in Taiwan. An evaluation of the BSM, undertaken six months after the intervention, demonstrated positive impacts, including a major reduction in conflict; improved communications across the organization (especially from the bottom-up); a successful restructuring to address some of the underlying issues; a significant upturn in the recruitment and retention of members; and a consequential turn-around of the organization's financial position. In addition, several senior managers took on the BSM for their personal use, trained others, and cascaded the methodology down the organization. This resulted in the official adoption of the BSM as the ‘main decision-making system’ for part of the organization, and the start of wider dissemination. Based on these results, the authors argue that the BSM may have more general utility for problem solving and problem prevention in Taiwanese (and possibly other) Buddhist organizations.

论伊丽莎白的多元化性格

伊丽莎白是简@奥期丁的<傲慢与偏见>中最生气勃勃、最能吸引人的女主角,她身上表现出多元化性格,使之成为"出现在文学作品中最可爱的人物."她不仅是位出色的演员,也是位对周围世界敏锐的观察者.她异常活泼,情绪饱满,富有勇气、活力和才智,具有良好的判断力和感受力.她具有充满理智的杰出的反思能力,阅历丰富,能随机应变,善于分辨真伪,忠于理想的爱情观,等等这些都是人们值得珍惜和仿效的方面.     

Epistemology and Logistics: A Critical Overview

Epistemology is about acquiring knowledge and understanding. Building on the concept of epistemology, described and elaborated on, the focus of this paper is on philosophical reflection on the methodological underpinnings of logistics. A conceptual framework is outlined to analyze methodological assumptions underlying a scientific inquiry. Use of the framework is demonstrated by presenting and analyzing earlier works from within the area of logistics. Based on these analyses, it is concluded that logistics from an epistemological point of view is under change and in motion. Formerly, logistics was building heavily on objectivist methodological suppositions and positivist theory of knowledge was dominating. Although the positivist tradition still has a strong position in the area, it cannot be neglected that new logistics epistemologies are emerging and evolving, bringing new scientific approaches to logistics. It is argued that the new perspectives are closer to a more interpretive conception of social theory and subjectivist methodological suppositions. However, it is also argued that there are still theoretical perspectives on organizations, notably streams of complexity theories, not yet being adopted within the area of logistics. Such theories could, if adopted, change logistics organizations in the future. Neglecting to challenge the epistemology, of a discipline may result in an obsolete paradigm. The idea behind the paper is, therefore, that by challenging the underpinning meta theoretical assumptions, and by reflecting upon them, a more holistic and multidisciplinary approach to logistics improvement will be achieved.     

农村家庭养殖中风险管理方式的经济学分析

农村家庭养殖中多元化经营其实就是一种风险管理方式。农户运用这种风险管理方式的决策过程，其实质就是一个资产组合降低风险的过程，所以资产风险组合模型可以揭示决策全过程。同时，农户的风险偏好又造成了各个农户运用这种风险管理时的差别。通过分析可以发现，新的风险管理方式的引入，可以使农户放弃该种低效风险管理方法，走高效发展之路。