This book examines the central questions of ethics through a study of theories of right and wrong that are found in the great ethical works of Western philosophy. It focuses on theories that continue to have a significant presence in the field. The core chapters cover egoism, the eudaimonism of Plato and Aristotle, act and rule utilitarianism, modern natural law theory, Kant's moral theory, and existentialist ethics. Readers will be introduced not only to the main ideas of each theory but to contemporary developments and defenses of those ideas. A final chapter takes up topics in meta-ethics and moral psychology. The discussions throughout draw the reader into philosophical inquiry through argument and criticism that illuminate the profundity of the questions under examination. Students will find this book to be a very helpful guide to how philosophical inquiry is undertaken as well as to what the major theories in ethics hold.

Set theory is a rich and beautiful subject whose fundamental concepts permeate virtually every branch of mathematics. One could say that set theory is a unifying theory for mathematics, since nearly all mathematical concepts and results can be formalized within set theory. This textbook is meant for an upper undergraduate course in set theory. In this text, the fundamentals of abstract sets, including relations, functions, the natural numbers, order, cardinality, transfinite recursion, the axiom of choice, ordinal numbers, and cardinal numbers, are developed within the framework of axiomatic set theory. The reader will need to be comfortable reading and writing mathematical proofs. The proofs in this textbook are rigorous, clear, and complete, while remaining accessible to undergraduates who are new to upper-level mathematics. Exercises are included at the end of each section in a chapter, with useful suggestions for the more challenging exercises.

This concise and accessible introduction to European economic history focusses on the interplay between the development of institutions and the generation and diffusion of knowledge-based technologies. The author challenges the view that European economic history before the Industrial Revolution was constrained by population growth outstripping available resources. He argues instead that the limiting factor was the knowledge needed for technological progress but also that Europe was unique in developing a scientific culture and institutions which were the basis for the unprecedented technological progress and economic growth of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Simple explanatory concepts are used to explain growth and stagnation as well as the convergence of income over time whilst text boxes, figures, an extensive glossary and online exercises enable students to develop a comprehensive understanding of the subject. This is the only textbook students will need to understand Europe's unique economic development and its global context.

Numerous laws – including the Green New Deal – have been proposed or passed in cities, states, and countries to transition from fossil fuels to 100% clean, renewable energy in order to address climate change, air pollution, and energy insecurity. This textbook lays out the science, technology, economics, policy, and social aspects of such transitions. It discusses the renewable electricity and heat generating technologies needed; the electricity, heat, cold, and hydrogen storage technologies required; how to keep the electric power grid stable; and how to address non-energy sources of emissions. It discusses the history of the 100% Movement, which evolved from a collaboration among scientists, cultural leaders, business people, and community leaders. Finally, it discusses current progress in transitioning to 100% renewables, and the new policies needed to complete the transition. Online course supplements include lecture slides, answers to the end-of-chapter student exercises, and a list of extra resources.

Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of artificial intelligence as a serious science and engineering discipline. Artificial Intelligence: Foundations of Computational Agents is a textbook aimed at junior to senior undergraduate students and first-year graduate students. It presents artificial intelligence (AI) using a coherent framework to study the design of intelligent computational agents. By showing how basic approaches fit into a multidimensional design space, readers can learn the fundamentals without losing sight of the bigger picture. The book balances theory and experiment, showing how to link them intimately together, and develops the science of AI together with its engineering applications. Although structured as a textbook, the book's straightforward, self-contained style will also appeal to a wide audience of professionals, researchers, and independent learners. AI is a rapidly developing field: this book encapsulates the latest results without being exhaustive and encyclopedic. It teaches the main principles and tools that will allow readers to explore and learn on their own. The text is supported by an online learning environment, artint.info, so that students can experiment with the main AI algorithms plus problems, animations, lecture slides, and a knowledge representation system for experimentation and problem solving.

The book is available via http://artint.info/2e/html/ArtInt2e.html

Book by H#252;ttel, Hans

Quantum mechanics is a very successful theory that has impacted on many areas of physics, from pure theory to applications. However, it is difficult to interpret, and philosophical contradictions and counterintuitive results are apparent at a fundamental level. In this book, Laloë presents our current understanding of the theory. The book explores the basic questions and difficulties that arise with the theory of quantum mechanics. It examines the various interpretations that have been proposed, describing and comparing them and discussing their success and difficulties. The book is ideal for researchers in physics and mathematics who want to know more about the problems faced in quantum mechanics but who do not have specialist knowledge in the subject. It will also interest philosophers of science, as well as all scientists who are curious about quantum physics and its peculiarities.

How can actuaries best equip themselves for the products and risk structures of the future? Using the powerful framework of multiple state models, three leaders in actuarial science give a modern perspective on life contingencies, and develop and demonstrate a theory that can be adapted to changing products and technologies. The book begins traditionally, covering actuarial models and theory, and emphasizing practical applications using computational techniques. The authors then develop a more contemporary outlook, introducing multiple state models, emerging cash flows and embedded options. Using spreadsheet-style software, the book presents large-scale, realistic examples. Over 150 exercises and solutions teach skills in simulation and projection through computational practice. Balancing rigour with intuition, and emphasising applications, this text is ideal for university courses, but also for individuals preparing for professional actuarial exams and qualified actuaries wishing to freshen up their skills.

This text gives budding actuaries and financial analysts a foundation in multiple regression and time series. They will learn about these statistical techniques using data on the demand for insurance, lottery sales, foreign exchange rates, and other applications. Although no specific knowledge of risk management or finance is presumed, the approach introduces applications in which statistical techniques can be used to analyze real data of interest. In addition to the fundamentals, this book describes several advanced statistical topics that are particularly relevant to actuarial and financial practice, including the analysis of longitudinal, two-part (frequency/severity), and fat-tailed data. Datasets with detailed descriptions, sample statistical software scripts in 'R' and 'SAS', and tips on writing a statistical report, including sample projects, can be found on the book's Web site: http://research.bus.wisc.edu/RegActuaries.

Eleven leading contemporary French philosophers give here more or less direct presentations and exemplifications of their work. All the essays, with one exception, were specifically written for this volume and for an English-speaking readership - the exception is the first publication anywhere of Jacques Derrida's defence of his these d'etat in 1980, based on his published works. As a collection the essays convey the style, tone and preoccupations, as well as the range and diversity, of French philosophical thinking as it is being practised today. They will stimulate and inform the rapidly growing interest in this area outside France.

Departing from conventional studies of border hostility in inter-Asian relations, Yin Qingfei explores how two revolutionary states - China and Vietnam - each pursued policies that echoed the other and collaborated in extending their authority to the borderlands from 1949 to 1975. Making use of central and local archival sources in both Chinese and Vietnamese, she reveals how the people living on the border responded to such unprecedentedly aggressive state building and especially how they appropriated the language of socialist brotherhood to negotiate with authorities. During the continuous Indochina wars, state expansion thus did not unfold on these postcolonial borderlands in a coherent or linear manner. Weaving together international, national, and transnational-local histories, this deeply researched and original study presents a new approach to the highly volatile Sino-Vietnamese relations during the Cold War, centering on the two modernising revolutionary powers' competitive and collaborative state building on the borderlands and local responses to it.

Historians and economists will find here what their fields have in common--the movement since the 1950s known variously as "cliometrics," "economic history," or "historical economics." A leading figure in the movement, Donald McCloskey, has compiled, with the help of George Hersh and a panel of distinguished advisors, the only bibliography of historical economics. The many thousands of items cover all countries for all periods in which historical economics has been written. It will be useful to all economic historians, as well as quantitative historians, applied economists, historical demographers, business historians, national income accountants, and social historians.
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This book provides a complete overview of the American Founders' political theory, covering natural rights, natural law, state of nature, social compact, consent, and the policy implications of these ideas. The book is intended as a response to the current scholarly consensus, which holds that the Founders' political thought is best understood as an amalgam of liberalism, republicanism, and perhaps other traditions. West argues that, on the contrary, the foundational documents overwhelmingly point to natural rights as the lens through which all politics is understood. The book explores in depth how the Founders' supposedly republican policies on citizen character formation do not contradict but instead complement their liberal policies on property and economics. Additionally, the book shows how the Founders' embraced other traditions in their politics, such as common law and Protestantism.

French thinkers have revolutionized European thought about
knowledge, religion, politics and society. Delivering a compre-
hensive history of thought in France from the Middle Ages to the
present this book follows themes and developments of thought
across the centuries. It provides readers with studies of both
systematic thinkers and those who operate less systematically,
through essays or fragments, and places them all in their many
contexts. Informed by up-to-date research, these accessible
chapters are written by prominent experts in their fields who
investigate key concepts in non-technical language. Chapters
feature treatments of specific thinkers as individuals, including
Voltaire, Rousseau, Descartes and Derrida, but also more general
movements and schools of thought from Humanism to
Liberalism, via the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Marxism and
Feminism. Furthermore, the influence of gender, race, empire
and slavery are investigated to offer a broad and fulfilling account
of French thought throughout the ages.

Whether a student, an instructor, a researcher, or just someone interested in understanding the roots of sociology and our social world, The Cambridge Handbook of Sociology, Volume 1 is for you. This first volume of the Handbook focuses on core areas of sociology, such as theory, methods, culture, socialization, social structure, inequality, diversity, social institutions, social problems, deviant behavior, locality, geography, the environment, and social change. It also explains how sociology developed in different parts of the world, providing readers with a perspective on how sociology became the global discipline it is today. Each essay includes a discussion of how the respective subfield contributes to the overall discipline and to society. Written by some of the most respected scholars, teachers, and public sociologists in the world, the essays are highly readable and authoritative. Volume 1 provides an overview of the core areas of sociology and the development of the discipline that is both comprehensive and up to date.

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they believed that under socialism the family would "wither-away." They envisioned a society in which communal dining halls, daycare centers, and public laundries would replace the unpaid labor of women in the home. Yet by 1936 legislation designed to liberate women from their legal and economic dependence had given way to increasingly conservative solutions aimed at strengthening traditional family ties and women's reproductive role. This book explains the reversal, focusing on how women, peasants, and orphans responded to Bolshevik attempts to remake the family, and how their opinions and experiences in turn were used by the state to meet its own needs.

Robert Layton provides an authoritative introduction to the richness and diversity of art forms in non-Western societies. He addresses the problems of aesthetic appreciation across cultures, the varied uses of art, and the fundamental problem of what constitutes 'art' in societies varying from the traditional kingdoms of West Africa, with their specialist craftsmen using precious metals, to Australian hunter-gatherers, with their sand paintings and body decoration. Art forms discussed include bark, sand and rock painting, ivory bone and wood carving, brass casting, masks, and house and body decoration. To understand the meaning of these diverse productions demands an understanding of cultural contexts, Layton relates particular art productions to rituals, myths and power relations. He also discusses and illustrates perspectives on art within anthropological and sociological theory. This is a revised version of a book first published in 1981 and is widely used in courses for archaeologists, anthropologists and art historians.

Essential Grammar in Use Fourth edition is a self-study reference and practice book for elementary-level learners (A1-B1), used by millions of people around the world. With clear examples and easy-to-follow exercises, it is perfect for independent study, covering all the areas of grammar you will need at this level. This edition includes an eBook, for use on tablet devices and desktop and laptop computers. The eBook has the same grammar explanations and exercises found in the printed book, plus other great features such as integrated audio for all of the example sentences and an easy-to-use answer key.

This volume explores some of the more important of Hans-Georg Gadamer's extensive writings on art and literature. The principal text included is 'The Relevance of the Beautiful', Gadamer's most sustained treatment of philosophical aesthetics. The eleven other essays focus particularly on the challenge issued by modern painting and literature to our customary ideas of art, and in turn revitalize our understanding of it. Gadamer demonstrates the continuing importance of such concepts as imitation, truth, symbol, and play for our appreciation of contemporary art, and thereby establishes its continuity with the Western tradition. The essays here are not technical and are readily accessible to the beginning student and the general reader. The collection as a whole serves to illustrate the practice of hermeneutics and to introduce Gadamer's thought. Robert Bernasconi provides an introduction clarifying the central aims of the essays and their relations to Gadamer's major work, Truth and Method, and to the philosophy of art since Kant. A bibliography of Gadamer's writings available in English is also included.

In this book Nigel Wentworth tackles some of the central questions of the philosophy of art. To what extent can a painting and its meaning be understood to result from the artist's intentions? In what way can the painting be understood as an expressive object? What does it mean for a painting to be a representation of something? And what is the nature of aesthetic quality in painting? In offering responses to these questions, Wentworth offers a new theory on aesthetic quality.