American States of Nature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Somos
Keyword(s):  
Individual Rights ◽  
Continental Congress ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
American States ◽  
States Of Nature ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Stamp Act ◽  
American State

The exact phrase, “state of nature,” was used thousands of times in the British colonies between 1630 and 1810, in juridical, theological, medical, political, economic, and other senses. From the plurality of meanings, a distinctive American state of nature discourse started to emerge by the 1760s. It combined existing European and American semantic ranges and sidelined others in moments of intense contestation, for instance during the 1765–66 Stamp Act crisis, and the 1774 First Continental Congress. In numerous laws and resolutions, forensic arguments, petitions, sermons, broadsides, books, pamphlets, letters, diaries, and college essays, the increasingly distinct and coherent American state of nature came to justify independence at least as much as colonial formulations of liberty, property, and individual rights did.

The Power of Mahjong

2018 ◽  
pp. 181-205
Author(s):  
Di Wang
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Current Century ◽  
Socialist Morality ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter brings out conflicts among neighbors, examines the role of the Residential Committee in the neighborhood, observes the responses of the municipal government and official media concerning the city’s image. Mahjong brings us face to face with changes in daily life and popular culture at the turn of the current century, as daily life moves away from communist control and “socialist morality.” It also serves my argument that these changes reflect a much broader political, economic, social, and cultural transformation in which conflicts between individual rights and the collective interests have become prominent.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 330-338
Author(s):  
Mark Somos
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Design ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
American State

The conclusion reviews the book’s claims, methods and sources, and summarizes the book’s conclusions concerning the stages and mechanisms in the evolution of the distinct American state of nature discourse. Placing the American state of nature discourse in its broader intellectual and chronological context, and comparing the state of nature to property and liberty as a fundamental and orientational concept for the colonists, the chapter asserts that without due attention to the state of nature discourse, no history of the American Revolution and early constitutional design can be written.

scholarly journals Strategyproof Choice of Social Acts

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (2) ◽  
pp. 596-627
Author(s):  
Eric Bahel ◽  
Yves Sprumont
Keyword(s):  
Expected Utility ◽  
Choice Function ◽  
Social Choice Function ◽  
Subjective Expected Utility ◽  
Control Rights ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Social Acts ◽  
States Of Nature ◽  
Utility Preferences

We model uncertain social prospects as acts mapping states of nature to (social ) outcomes. A social choice function (or SCF ) assigns an act to each profile of subjective expected utility preferences over acts. An SCF is strategyproof if no agent ever has an incentive to misrepresent her beliefs about the states of nature or her valuation of the outcomes. It is unanimous if it picks the feasible act that all agents find best whenever such an act exists. We offer a characterization of the class of strategyproof and unanimous SCFs in two settings. In the setting where all acts are feasible, the chosen act must yield the favorite outcome of some ( possibly different) agent in every state of nature. The set of states in which an agent’s favorite outcome is selected may vary with the reported belief profile; it is the union of all states assigned to her by a collection of constant, bilaterally dictatorial, or bilaterally consensual assignment rules. In a setting where each state of nature defines a possibly different subset of available outcomes, bilaterally dictatorial or consensual rules can only be used to assign control rights over states characterized by identical sets of available outcomes. (JEL D71, D81, R53)

The State of Nature

2021 ◽  
pp. 270-289
Author(s):  
Michael Smith
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
The State ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Social Rules ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
States Of Nature

The chapter assumes that the state of nature is the state of the world prior to the existence of social rules, and then goes on to argue for the following claims. (1) We have reasons for action in the state of nature. (2) In those state of nature worlds in which we all know what reasons for action we have and are motivated to act on them—for short, those worlds in which we are ideal—these reasons for action would support our exiting the state of nature, that is, our creating and maintaining certain social rules. (3) The social rules we have reasons to create would include social rules telling us what to do in both worlds in which we are ideal and nearby worlds in which we are non-ideal. (4) These need not be rules that we have any reason to abide by in the actual world in which we are non-ideal. (5) Thinking about the role of social rules in fixing what we have reason to do in those states of nature in which we are ideal and non-ideal suggests a complicated and novel story about what we have knowledge of, insofar as we have knowledge of what we have reason to do in the actual world in which social rules exist willy-nilly.

Comfort Decision Modeling

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (Suppl. 1) ◽  
pp. 141-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt J. Engemann ◽  
Ronald R. Yager
Keyword(s):  
Decision Maker ◽  
Decision Model ◽  
New Method ◽  
Decision Problems ◽  
Decision Modeling ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
States Of Nature

We introduce comfort decision modeling for decision problems in which an alternative is to be selected based on a measure of satisfaction we refer to as comfort. We define comfort as the difference between the payoff received by selecting a particular strategy and the worst payoff that could have been received under the manifestation of the same state-of-nature. We define the effective comfort associated with an alternative as the aggregation of an alternative’s comforts across all possible states-of-nature. We study several methods of aggregating an alternative’s individual comforts across the different states-of-nature, incorporating various types of information about the uncertainty associated with the states-of-nature. We provide a Comfort Decision Model to determine the value of alternatives utilizing attitudinal measures of the decision maker. We demonstrate a process of performing sensitivity of the resulting decision to a measure of the attitude of the decision maker. Lastly, we use an illustration to show the practicability and cogency of the new method.

The Justice of intervention

1987 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Graham
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
World War ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
American States ◽  
The Right ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Political Economic

The principle that no sovereign state should intervene in the affairs of another state is enshrined in almost all international agreements made since World War II. For instance, the Charter of the Organization of American States of 1948 contains, in Article 15, the declaration thatNo State or group of states has the right to intervene directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State, or against its political, economic and cultural elements.

Comparing American State Resident Neuroticism and State Tightness-Looseness as Predictors of Annual State Residential Mobility

2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 861-869
Author(s):  
Stewart J. H. McCann
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Regression ◽  
Residential Mobility ◽  
Household Income ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Home Ownership ◽  
White Population ◽  
Hierarchical Multiple Regression ◽  
American States ◽  
State Resident ◽  
American State

State resident neuroticism and the Harrington and Gelfand state tightness-looseness dimension were compared as predictors of state levels of residential mobility from 2004 to 2005 in the 50 American states. Hierarchical multiple regression controlled for state SES, white population percent, urban population percent, home ownership percent, and percent of home owners or renters paying 30 percent or more of household income for housing. Not moving was associated with higher neuroticism but not with tightness-looseness. Same-county moving, different-county moving, and within-state moving was associated with lower neuroticism but tightness-looseness was unrelated to any of these three criteria. However, lower tightness was associated with different-state moving and higher tightness was associated with greater tendency to move within a state rather than to a different state. Neuroticism showed no relation to the ratio of different-state to same-state moving. Results suggest distance moved may determine when neuroticism or tightness-looseness is a residential mobility predictor.

scholarly journals The Passive Body and States of Nature: An Examination of the Methodological Role State of Nature Theory Plays in Williams and Nietzsche

Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Brian Lightbody
Keyword(s):  
Functional Explanation ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
Per Se ◽  
States Of Nature ◽  
New System

In his work Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams offers a very different interpretation of philosophical genealogy than that expounded in the secondary literature. The “Received View” of genealogy holds that it is “documentary grey”: it attempts to provide historically well-supported, coherent, but defeasible explanations for the actual transformation of practices, values, and emotions in history. However, paradoxically, the standard interpretation also holds another principle. Genealogies are nevertheless polemical because they admit that any evidence that would serve to justify a genealogical account is indexical to a perspective. In short, genealogies are not true per se. This view of genealogy leaves it vulnerable to three criticisms. I call these three: (1) the reflexive, (2) the substantive, and (3) the semantic. In contrast, Williams argues that all genealogies provide a functional account for the manifestation of something and further, that a State of Nature story subtends these accounts. The upshot of Williams’ approach is that it makes for strange philosophical bedfellows. For example, Nietzsche’s account for the rise of Christian morality shares methodological features with Hobbes’ functional explanation for the emergence of civilization and yet Nietzsche seems to take issue with genealogists who are hypothesis mongers gazing haphazardly into the blue. In the following article, I flesh out, more fully, how to make sense of Williams’ novel reclassification of genealogy. I show that Nietzsche’s genealogies are State of Nature stories and, just like Hobbes’ State of Nature story in chapter thirteen of Leviathan, are subtended by our collective corporeality. I then demonstrate how Nietzsche’s three stories in the Genealogy, when brought together, serve to undermine what Williams refers to as “… a new system (of reasons)—which very powerfully resists being understood in such terms …” Finally, I explain how my reconstruction of Williams’ interpretation of the genealogy immunizes it against the three criticisms noted above.

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