The Variety of Values


Book Description

For over thirty years Susan Wolf has been writing about moral and nonmoral values and the relation between them. This volume collects Wolf's most important essays on the topics of morality, love, and meaning, ranging from her classic essay "Moral Saints" to her most recent "The Importance of Love." Wolf's essays warn us against the common tendency to classify values in terms of a dichotomy that contrasts the personal, self-interested, or egoistic with the impersonal, altruistic or moral. On Wolf's view, this tendency ignores or distorts the significance of such values as love, beauty, and truth, and neglects the importance of meaningfulness as a dimension of the good life. These essays show us how a self-conscious recognition of the variety of values leads to new understandings of the point, the content, and the limits of morality and to new ways of thinking about happiness and well-being.




Meaning in Life and Why It Matters


Book Description

A fresh reflection on what makes life meaningful Most people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral. According to Susan Wolf, however, much of what motivates us does not comfortably fit into this scheme. Often we act neither for our own sake nor out of duty or an impersonal concern for the world. Rather, we act out of love for objects that we rightly perceive as worthy of love—and it is these actions that give meaning to our lives. Wolf makes a compelling case that, along with happiness and morality, this kind of meaningfulness constitutes a distinctive dimension of a good life. Written in a lively and engaging style, and full of provocative examples, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters is a profound and original reflection on a subject of permanent human concern.




What We Owe to Each Other


Book Description

“This magnificent book...opens up a novel, arresting position on matters that have been debated for thousands of years.” —Times Literary Supplement How do we judge whether an action is morally right or wrong? If an action is wrong, what reason does that give us not to do it? Why should we give such reasons priority over our other concerns and values? In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other. According to his contractualist view, thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others and that they could not reasonably reject. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and he shows how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism. Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong.




Science and Moral Imagination


Book Description

The idea that science is or should be value-free, and that values are or should be formed independently of science, has been under fire by philosophers of science for decades. Science and Moral Imagination directly challenges the idea that science and values cannot and should not influence each other. Matthew J. Brown argues that science and values mutually influence and implicate one another, that the influence of values on science is pervasive and must be responsibly managed, and that science can and should have an influence on our values. This interplay, he explains, must be guided by accounts of scientific inquiry and value judgment that are sensitive to the complexities of their interactions. Brown presents scientific inquiry and value judgment as types of problem-solving practices and provides a new framework for thinking about how we might ethically evaluate episodes and decisions in science, while offering guidance for scientific practitioners and institutions about how they can incorporate value judgments into their work. His framework, dubbed “the ideal of moral imagination,” emphasizes the role of imagination in value judgment and the positive role that value judgment plays in science.




Essential Values-Based Practice


Book Description

The most likely reason for unsatisfactory clinical consultations is a failure of values-based practice - not ascertaining the relevant values perspectives and acting on them in an appropriate manner. This book will help clinicians acquire and develop the processes and skills of values-based practice, improving outcomes for patients, carers and clinicians.




The Geography of Morals


Book Description

Variations -- On being imprisoned by one's upbringing -- Moral psychologies and moral ecologies -- Bibliographical essay -- First nature -- Classical Chinese sprouts -- Modern moral psychology -- Beyond moral modularity -- Destructive emotions -- Bibliographic essay -- Collisions -- When values collide -- Moral geographies of anger -- Weird anger -- For love's and justice's sake -- Bibliographical essay -- Anthropologies -- Self-variations: philosophical archaeologies -- The content of character.




A Tapestry of Values


Book Description

The role of values in scientific research has become an important topic of discussion in both scholarly and popular debates. Pundits across the political spectrum worry that research on topics like climate change, evolutionary theory, vaccine safety, and genetically modified foods has become overly politicized. At the same time, it is clear that values play an important role in science by limiting unethical forms of research and by deciding what areas of research have the greatest relevance for society. Deciding how to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate influences of values in scientific research is a matter of vital importance. Recently, philosophers of science have written a great deal on this topic, but most of their work has been directed toward a scholarly audience. This book makes the contemporary philosophical literature on science and values accessible to a wide readership. It examines case studies from a variety of research areas, including climate science, anthropology, chemical risk assessment, ecology, neurobiology, biomedical research, and agriculture. These cases show that values have necessary roles to play in identifying research topics, choosing research questions, determining the aims of inquiry, responding to uncertainty, and deciding how to communicate information. Kevin Elliott focuses not just on describing roles for values but also on determining when their influences are actually appropriate. He emphasizes several conditions for incorporating values in a legitimate fashion, and highlights multiple strategies for fostering engagement between stakeholders so that value influences can be subjected to careful and critical scrutiny.




USDA Forest Service Research Paper RM.


Book Description




Applications of Mathematical Modeling, Machine Learning, and Intelligent Computing for Industrial Development


Book Description

The text focuses on mathematical modeling and applications of advanced techniques of machine learning, and artificial intelligence, including artificial neural networks, evolutionary computing, data mining, and fuzzy systems to solve performance and design issues more precisely. Intelligent computing encompasses technologies, algorithms, and models in providing effective and efficient solutions to a wide range of problems, including the airport’s intelligent safety system. It will serve as an ideal reference text for senior undergraduate, graduate students, and academic researchers in fields that include industrial engineering, manufacturing engineering, computer engineering, and mathematics. The book: Discusses mathematical modeling for traffic, sustainable supply chain, vehicular Ad-Hoc networks, and internet of things networks with intelligent gateways Covers advanced machine learning, artificial intelligence, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computing, and data mining techniques for real- world problems Presents applications of mathematical models in chronic diseases such as kidney and coronary artery diseases Highlights advances in mathematical modeling, strength, and benefits of machine learning and artificial intelligence, including driving goals, applicability, algorithms, and processes involved Showcases emerging real-life topics on mathematical models, machine learning, and intelligent computing using an interdisciplinary approach The text presents emerging real-life topics on mathematical models, machine learning, and intelligent computing in a single volume. It will serve as an ideal text for senior undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers in diverse fields, including industrial and manufacturing engineering, computer engineering, and mathematics.




XQuery


Book Description

The W3C XQuery 3.1 standard provides a tool to search, extract, and manipulate content, whether it's in XML, JSON or plain text. With this fully updated, in-depth tutorial, you’ll learn to program with this highly practical query language. Designed for query writers who have some knowledge of XML basics, but not necessarily advanced knowledge of XML-related technologies, this book is ideal as both a tutorial and a reference. You’ll find background information for namespaces, schemas, built-in types, and regular expressions that are relevant to writing XML queries. This second edition provides: A high-level overview and quick tour of XQuery New chapters on higher-order functions, maps, arrays, and JSON A carefully paced tutorial that teaches XQuery without being bogged down by the details Advanced concepts for taking advantage of modularity, namespaces, typing, and schemas Guidelines for working with specific types of data, such as numbers, strings, dates, URIs, maps and arrays XQuery’s implementation-specific features and its relationship to other standards including SQL and XSLT A complete alphabetical reference to the built-in functions, types, and error messages