Beyond Individual Choice
Beyond Individual Choice

Author: Michael Bacharach

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0691186316

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Game theory is central to modern understandings of how people deal with problems of coordination and cooperation. Yet, ironically, it cannot give a straightforward explanation of some of the simplest forms of human coordination and cooperation--most famously, that people can use the apparently arbitrary features of "focal points" to solve coordination problems, and that people sometimes cooperate in "prisoner's dilemmas." Addressing a wide readership of economists, sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers, Michael Bacharach here proposes a revision of game theory that resolves these long-standing problems. In the classical tradition of game theory, Bacharach models human beings as rational actors, but he revises the standard definition of rationality to incorporate two major new ideas. He enlarges the model of a game so that it includes the ways agents describe to themselves (or "frame") their decision problems. And he allows the possibility that people reason as members of groups (or "teams"), each taking herself to have reason to perform her component of the combination of actions that best achieves the group's common goal. Bacharach shows that certain tendencies for individuals to engage in team reasoning are consistent with recent findings in social psychology and evolutionary biology. As the culmination of Bacharach's long-standing program of pathbreaking work on the foundations of game theory, this book has been eagerly awaited. Following Bacharach's premature death, Natalie Gold and Robert Sugden edited the unfinished work and added two substantial chapters that allow the book to be read as a coherent whole.

Beyond Individual and Group Differences
Beyond Individual and Group Differences

Author: James T. Lamiell

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Published: 2003-07-02

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1452262683

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"James Lamiell is a creative, sophisticated, and careful thinker, one whose ideas are deserving of broad attention....The book should be of interest to scholars and practitioners, along with advanced graduate students." --Kenneth J. Gergen, Swarthmore College Beyond Individual and Group Differences: Human Individuality, Scientific Psychology, and William Stern′s Critical Personalism examines the history of psychology′s effort to come to terms with human individuality, from the time of Wundt to present day. With a primary emphasis on the contributions of German psychologist William Stern, this book generates a wider appreciation for Stern′s perspective on human individuality and for the proper place of personalitic thinking within scientific psychology. The author presents an alternative approach to the logical positivism that permeates traditional psychological thought and methodology making this an innovative, ground-breaking work. Feature and Benefits: Provides book-length treatment of the concept of human individuality in twentieth century scientific psychology, highlighting the historical contributions made by the German psychologist and philosopher William Stern (1871-1938). Critically appraises contemporary thinking about personality in light of historical and methodological considerations. Challenges readers to rethink the problem of human individuality with research that mounts a direct empirical challenge to the long-standing belief that it is meaningless to characterize individuals without comparing them with one another. Concludes with a general discussion of the potential of personalistic thinking both as a foundation for personality theory and as a framework for social thought. Beyond Individual and Group Differences is a dynamic book for academics and scholars in the areas of personality psychology, individual differences, and the history of psychology.

Beyond Economic Man
Beyond Economic Man

Author: Marianne A. Ferber

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-04-01

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 0226242080

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This is the first book to examine the central tenets of economics from a feminist point of view. In these original essays, the authors suggest that the discipline of economics could be improved by freeing itself from masculine biases. Beyond Economic Man raises questions about the discipline not because economics is too objective but because it is not objective enough. The contributors—nine economists, a sociologist, and a philosopher—discuss the extent to which gender has influenced both the range of subjects economists have studied and the way in which scholars have conducted their studies. They investigate, for example, how masculine concerns underlie economists' concentration on market as opposed to household activities and their emphasis on individual choice to the exclusion of social constraints on choice. This focus on masculine interests, the contributors contend, has biased the definition and boundaries of the discipline, its central assumptions, and its preferred rhetoric and methods. However, the aim of this book is not to reject current economic practices, but to broaden them, permitting a fuller understanding of economic phenomena. These essays examine current economic practices in the light of a feminist understanding of gender differences as socially constructed rather than based on essential male and female characteristics. The authors use this concept of gender, along with feminist readings of rhetoric and the history of science, as well as postmodernist theory and personal experience as economists, to analyze the boundaries, assumptions, and methods of neoclassical, socialist, and institutionalist economics. The contributors are Rebecca M. Blank, Paula England, Marianne A. Ferber, Nancy Folbre, Ann L. Jennings, Helen E. Longino, Donald N. McCloskey, Julie A. Nelson, Robert M. Solow, Diana Strassmann, and Rhonda M. Williams.

Beyond Health, Beyond Choice
Beyond Health, Beyond Choice

Author: Paige Hall Smith

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2012-08-15

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 0813553164

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Current public health promotion of breastfeeding relies heavily on health messaging and individual behavior change. Women are told that “breast is best” but too little serious attention is given to addressing the many social, economic, and political factors that combine to limit women’s real choice to breastfeed beyond a few days or weeks. The result: women’s, infants’, and public health interests are undermined. Beyond Health, Beyond Choice examines how feminist perspectives can inform public health support for breastfeeding. Written by authors from diverse disciplines, perspectives, and countries, this collection of essays is arranged thematically and considers breastfeeding in relation to public health and health care; work and family; embodiment (specifically breastfeeding in public); economic and ethnic factors; guilt; violence; and commercialization. By examining women’s experiences and bringing feminist insights to bear on a public issue, the editors attempt to reframe the discussion to better inform public health approaches and political action. Doing so can help us recognize the value of breastfeeding for the public’s health and the important productive and reproductive contributions women make to the world.

Beyond Self-Interest
Beyond Self-Interest

Author: Jane J. Mansbridge

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1990-04-15

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0226503607

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A dramatic transformation has begun in the way scholars think about human nature. Political scientists, psychologists, economists, and evolutionary biologists are beginning to reject the view that human affairs are shaped almost exclusively by self-interest—a view that came to dominate social science in the last three decades. In Beyond Self-Interest, leading social scientists argue for a view of individuals behavior and social organization that takes into account the powerful motivations of duty, love, and malevolence. Economists who go beyond "economic man," psychologists who go beyond stimulus-response, evolutionary biologists who go beyond the "selfish gene," and political scientists who go beyond the quest for power come together in this provocative and important manifesto. The essays trace, from the ancient Greeks to the present, the use of self-interest to explain political life. They investigate the differences between self-interest and the motivations of duty and love, showing how these motivations affect behavior in "prisoners' dilemma" interactions. They generate evolutionary models that explain how altruistic motivations escape extinction. They suggest ways to model within one individual the separate motivations of public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit in citizen and legislative behavior, and demonstrate that the view of democracy in existing Constitutional interpretations is not based on self-interest. They advance both human evil and mothering as alternatives to self-interest, this last in a penetrating feminist critique of the "contract" model of human interaction.

Beyond Individual and Collective Trauma
Beyond Individual and Collective Trauma

Author: Clara Mucci

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 0429911416

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This book represents a major effort to integrate contemporary theories and findings regarding the psychological effects of severe trauma. It explores the psychodynamic implications of aggression, sexuality and dependency, and the consequences of primitive defensive operations dealing with them.

Freedom Beyond Sovereignty
Freedom Beyond Sovereignty

Author: Sharon R. Krause

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-03-13

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 022623472X

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What does it mean to be free? We invoke the word frequently, yet the freedom of countless Americans is compromised by social inequalities that systematically undercut what they are able to do and to become. If we are to remedy these failures of freedom, we must move beyond the common assumption, prevalent in political theory and American public life, that individual agency is best conceived as a kind of personal sovereignty, or as self-determination or control over one’s actions. In Freedom Beyond Sovereignty, Sharon R. Krause shows that individual agency is best conceived as a non-sovereign experience because our ability to act and affect the world depends on how other people interpret and respond to what we do. The intersubjective character of agency makes it vulnerable to the effects of social inequality, but it is never in a strict sense socially determined. The agency of the oppressed sometimes surprises us with its vitality. Only by understanding the deep dynamics of agency as simultaneously non-sovereign and robust can we remediate the failed freedom of those on the losing end of persistent inequalities and grasp the scope of our own responsibility for social change. Freedom Beyond Sovereignty brings the experiences of the oppressed to the center of political theory and the study of freedom. It fundamentally reconstructs liberal individualism and enables us to see human action, personal responsibility, and the meaning of liberty in a totally new light.

Policing the Womb
Policing the Womb

Author: Michele Goodwin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-03-12

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 110703017X

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In Policing the Womb, Michele Goodwin explores how states abuse laws and infringe on rights to police women and their pregnancies. This book looks at the impact of these often arbitrary laws which can result in the punishment, incarceration, and humiliation of women, particularly poor women and women of color. Frequently based on unscientific claims of endangering a fetus, these laws allow extraordinary powers to state authorities over reproductive freedom and pregnancies. In this book, Michele Goodwin discusses real examples of women whose pregnancies have been controlled by the law and what has led to the United States being the deadliest country in the developed world for a woman to be pregnant.

Beyond Versus
Beyond Versus

Author: James Tabery

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0262549603

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Why the “nature versus nurture” debate persists despite widespread recognition that human traits arise from the interaction of nature and nurture. If everyone now agrees that human traits arise not from nature or nurture but from the interaction of nature and nurture, why does the “nature versus nurture” debate persist? In Beyond Versus, James Tabery argues that the persistence stems from a century-long struggle to understand the interaction of nature and nurture—a struggle to define what the interaction of nature and nurture is, how it should be investigated, and what counts as evidence for it. Tabery examines past episodes in the nature versus nurture debates, offers a contemporary philosophical perspective on them, and considers the future of research on the interaction of nature and nurture. From the eugenics controversy of the 1930s and the race and IQ controversy of the 1970s to the twenty-first-century debate over the causes of depression, Tabery argues, the polarization in these discussions can be attributed to what he calls an “explanatory divide”—a disagreement over how explanation works in science, which in turn has created two very different concepts of interaction. Drawing on recent developments in the philosophy of science, Tabery offers a way to bridge this explanatory divide and these different concepts integratively. Looking to the future, Tabery evaluates the ethical issues that surround genetic testing for genes implicated in interactions of nature and nurture, pointing to what the future does (and does not) hold for a science that continues to make headlines and raise controversy.

Social Choice and Individual Values
Social Choice and Individual Values

Author: Kenneth Joseph Arrow

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1963-01-01

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9780300013641

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The literature on the theory of social choice has grown considerably beyond the few items in existence at the time the first edition of this book appeared in 1951. Some of the new literature has dealt with the technical, mathematical aspects, more with the interpretive. My own thinking has also evolved somewhat, although I remain far from satisfied with present formulations. The exhaustion of the first edition provides a convenient time for a selective and personal stocktaking in the form of an appended commentary entitled, 'Notes on the Theory of Social Choice, 1963, ' containing reflections on the text and its omissions and on some of the more recent literature. This form has seemed more appropriate than a revision of the original text, which has to some extent acquired a life of its own.