The Feminism in the Eye of Jane Austen

In this paper the author first makes an analysis of the feminism hinted in Jane Austen, she implicitly expresses her discontentment of a popular view of her day—women were born less talented than men and women were less rational than men. As is known, nearly every literary works has its own social or political background. Pride and Prejudice is no exception. So the writing about feminism in this novel, namely the status of women, legalities of marriage, women’s education, moral standard upon sex as well as Jane Austen’s own life experience. It was thought that Austen was a romance writer who taught virtue in her prose.

Bad Beliefs

Why do people come to reject climate science or the safety and efficacy of vaccines, in defiance of the scientific consensus? A popular view explains bad beliefs like these as resulting from a range of biases that together ensure that human beings fall short of being genuinely rational animals. This book presents an alternative account. It argues that bad beliefs arise from genuinely rational processes. We’ve missed the rationality of bad beliefs because we’ve failed to recognize the ubiquity of the higher-order evidence that shapes beliefs, and the rationality of being guided by this evidence. The book argues that attention to higher-order evidence should lead us to rethink both how minds are best changed and the ethics of changing them: we should come to see that nudging—at least usually—changes belief (and behavior) by presenting rational agents with genuine evidence, and is therefore fully respectful of intellectual agency. We needn’t rethink Enlightenment ideals of intellectual autonomy and rationality, but we should reshape them to take account of our deeply social epistemic agency.

The Origins of Statutory Producer Control Legislation in New Zealand Agriculture 1914-1925

<p>This thesis investigates the origins of statutory producer control that emerged out of the Board of Trade (Wool Industry) Regulations 1921, The Meat Export Control Act, 1921-22 and The Dairy Produce Export Control Act, 1923. Most histories have traced the formation of statutory producer organisations to the economic conditions that prevailed during the British Government's 1915-1921 bulk purchase agreement with New Zealand known as the 'Imperial Commandeer' and the commodity price slump that marked the Commandeer's conclusion. Analysis of agricultural income series and output data suggest that the popular view of a 'boom' and 'slump' cycle is overplayed. This thesis argues that net real farm incomes remained relatively static during the Commandeer while output contracted. The slump cycle beginning in 1920/21 was particularly severe given the interaction of key demand and supply variables. The contemporary argument for statutory intervention may have been based on misconceptions in some cases, yet when the economic arguments are evaluated a strong case emerges. The central role played by W.F. Massey and his Reform Party Government is also important to an understanding of how this legislation came about.</p>

The Origins of Statutory Producer Control Legislation in New Zealand Agriculture 1914-1925

<p>This thesis investigates the origins of statutory producer control that emerged out of the Board of Trade (Wool Industry) Regulations 1921, The Meat Export Control Act, 1921-22 and The Dairy Produce Export Control Act, 1923. Most histories have traced the formation of statutory producer organisations to the economic conditions that prevailed during the British Government's 1915-1921 bulk purchase agreement with New Zealand known as the 'Imperial Commandeer' and the commodity price slump that marked the Commandeer's conclusion. Analysis of agricultural income series and output data suggest that the popular view of a 'boom' and 'slump' cycle is overplayed. This thesis argues that net real farm incomes remained relatively static during the Commandeer while output contracted. The slump cycle beginning in 1920/21 was particularly severe given the interaction of key demand and supply variables. The contemporary argument for statutory intervention may have been based on misconceptions in some cases, yet when the economic arguments are evaluated a strong case emerges. The central role played by W.F. Massey and his Reform Party Government is also important to an understanding of how this legislation came about.</p>

Disciplining Role of Auditor Tenure and Mandatory Auditor Rotation

This study addresses the international debate over whether the rotation of audit firms should be mandatory. Mandatory rotation rules have been adopted by the European Union, but these rules have not been established in the United States. Proponents of the policy believe that a long-tenure auditor-client relationship leads to the auditor building an excessive economic bond with the client which may then erode auditor independence. Motivated by this claim, I build a theoretical model that compares auditor incentives to issue independent reports under regimes with and without mandatory rotation. The model demonstrates conditions under which mandatory rotation could actually impair auditor independence, contrary to the popular view.

Images of Science: A Reality Check

It will be argued that the dominant form of current academic science is based on ideas and concepts about science and research that date back to philosophy and sociology that was developed since the 1930s. It will be discussed how this philosophy and sociology of science has informed the ideas, myths and ideology about science held by the scientific community and still determines the popular view of science. It is even more amazing when we realize that these ideas are philosophically and sociologically untenable and since the 1970s were declared obsolete by major scholars in these same disciplines. To demonstrate this, I delve deep to discuss the distinct stages that scholars in philosophy, sociology and history of science since 1945 to 2000 have gone through to leave the analytical-positivistic philosophy behind. I will be focusing on developments of their thinking about major topics such as: how scientific knowledge is produced, the scientific method; the status of scientific knowledge and the development of our ideas about ‘truth’ and the relation of our claims to reality. It will appear that the positivistic ideas about science producing absolute truth, about ‘the unique scientific method’, its formal logical approach and its timeless foundation as a guarantee for our value-free, objective knowledge were not untenable. This is to show how thoroughly the myth has been demystified in philosophy and sociology of science. You think after these fifty pages I am kicking a dead horse? Not at all! This scientific demystification has unfortunately still not reached active scientists. In fact, the popular image of science and research is still largely based on a that Legend. This is not without consequence as will be shown in Chap. 10.1007/978-94-024-2115-6_3. These images of science have shaped and in fact distorted the organisational structures of academia and the interaction between its institutes and disciplines. It also affects the relationship of science with its stakeholders in society, its funders, the many publics private and public, and policy makers in government. In short, it determines to a large degree the growth of knowledge with major effects on society.

Externalists Should Be Sense-Datum Theorists

One increasingly popular view in the philosophy of perception is externalism about sensible qualities, according to which sensible qualities such as colors, smells, tastes, and textures are features, not of our minds, but of mind-independent, external objects in the world. The primary motivation for this view is that perceptual experience seems to be transparent—that is, when we attend to sensible qualities, it seems like what we are attending to are features of external objects, not our own minds. Most (if not all) externalists are either naïve realists or externalist representationalists. However, in this article, I argue that those who are moved by the primary motivation for externalism should instead be sense-datum theorists, for externalists’ primary motivation supports the sense-datum theory, not their actually favored views. I argue that externalists should focus on different motivations, get new ones, or become sense-datum theorists.

Reason fundamentalism and what is wrong with it

Is there a fundamental feature of normativity, to which other features can be reduced? One defensible view is ‘reason fundamentalism’: that the fundamental feature is the relation that holds between a person and F-ing when the person has reason to F. (‘F’ stands for any verb phrase, such as ‘run for the bus’ or ‘hope for relief’ or ‘believe Kampala is in Ghana’.) Another defensible view is ‘ought fundamentalism’: that the fundamental feature is the relation that holds between a person and F-ing when the person ought to F. The popular view that the fundamental feature of normativity is the property of being a reason is not defensible, since that property can be reduced to either of the two relations I have just described. I argue that ought fundamentalism is more credible that reason fundamentalism because it is more faithful to our ordinary normative concepts.

Limitations of the transmitted photonic spin Hall effect through layered structure

In this paper, we show theoretically that the spin-dependent transverse shift of the transmitted photonic spin Hall effect (SHE) through layered structure cannot exceed half of the incident beam waist. Three conditions for obtaining the upper limit of the transmitted SHE are clarified in detail. In addition, different from the popular view in many investigations, we find that there is no positive correlation between the spin-dependent transverse displacement and the ratio between the Fresnel transmission coefficients (tp, ts). In contrast, the optimal transmission ratio is determined by the incident angle and the beam waist. Moreover, two conventional transmission structures are selected and studied in detail. The characteristics of the transverse displacements obtained are in very good agreement with our theoretical conclusions. These findings provide a deeper insight into the photonic spin Hall phenomena and offer a guide for future related research.

Can Autonomous Agents Without Phenomenal Consciousness Be Morally Responsible?

It is an increasingly popular view among philosophers that moral responsibility can, in principle, be attributed to unconscious autonomous agents. This trend is already remarkable in itself, but it is even more interesting that most proponents of this view provide more or less the same argument to support their position. I argue that as it stands, the Extension Argument, as I call it, is not sufficient to establish the thesis that unconscious autonomous agents can be morally responsible. I attempt to show that the Extension Argument should overcome especially strong ethical considerations; moreover, its epistemological grounds are not too solid, partly because the justifications of its premises are in conflict.