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In this chapter, an analysis of “statements of fact” in two domains of natural knowledge-making — medicine and law — shows how they enact sedimented assumptions about women, blacks, and other so-called social minorities. Hence, judgments and diagnoses alike reproduce structures of asymmetrical social power and privilege. The analysis recommends a negotiated empiricism: an empirically based and evidence-respecting position that takes observational evidence seriously, yet contends that evidence does not speak for itself in its claims to count as evidence or in its meanings and implications. The argument shows how experiential, testimonial reports claim an enhanced, if not uncontested, credibility and authority in this approach to knowledge. The chapter concludes with a critical reading of Donna Haraway’s “situated knowledges” as a principal contributor to the conceptual apparatus that frames ecological thinking.

Taking its point of departure from the suppression of research findings by a Canadian drug company with a vested interest in keeping them from the public eye, this chapter reads the ambiguous gendered implications of the positioning of Dr. Nancy Olivieri, a scientist and physician, as the principal player in the story. Issues of credibility, answerability, academic freedom, and the role of trust in knowledge figure centrally in the analysis. It shows how ecological thinking allows for the development of a productive reading of responsibility, rooted neither in individualism nor in an implausible voluntarism; and attentive to the climatic conditions in which much scientific research in the 21st century takes place. It extends the discussion of collective responsibility that begins in chapter six to raise questions about ecologically sound research practices, justice, and citizenship.

Provides an account of the transformation of policy‐making. From the top‐down state‐centric approach and from the bottom‐up grassroots popularism of the 60s and 70s, policy‐making now reflects an increasing emphasis on the importance of ideas and institutions. How can we understand this shift in emphasis? Offers an account of the contracting approach, on the basis of the growing need for efficiency in public policy, credibility and reputation maintenance, and the rediscovery of the importance of institutions. Theoretical implications of the contracting approach are outlined.

Broad delegation of powers to supranational institutions is a distinctive feature of the Community method. Broad delegation presupposes a fiduciary relation, hence, the progressive erosion of the Community method indicates a loss of confidence in the capacity for self-restraint of the supranational institutions. Since the Single European Act, member states have been willing to follow the politically riskier procedure of formal treaty amendment, rather than delegating to the Commission and Court of Justice the task of deciding which Community action in a given area is needed, and in which form. The frequency of formal treaty amendment in recent years is a measure of the loss of confidence in the supranational institutions.

This is the second of four chapters offering a postempiricist methodology for policy inquiry based on the logic of practical discourse, and explores the role of interpretation in policy analysis. While empiricists have sought to restrict the focus on meaning to the observable dimensions of social reality, the interpretive orientation requires the social scientist also to pursue the unobservable. Because language is able to carry and transmit meanings among people, access to the realm of meaning often can be gained through the study of communication (both spoken and written), but such meanings are generally only indirectly made available through such communications, so it is necessary for the analyst to move beyond empirical methods (such as content analysis) to an interpretive reconstruction of the situational logic of social action. This involves inferring other people’s meanings by identifying patterns that emerge through an examination of the verbal and non-verbal messages they give about their beliefs and experiences. Narratives, for example, are a way of making the subjective dimensions of verbal actions more accessible, and the social world is in significant part organized and interpreted through narrative exchanges in their various forms. The different sections of this chapter look at interpretative policy analysis, interpretative frames, methodological strategies, policy analysis as ‘thick description’ (an approach for exploring and discovering the meanings embedded in the language and actions of policy actors), the objectivity of interpretation, validity as credibility, and social meaning and the question of causality.

This chapter considers areas where reforms could make the international human rights legal system more effective and influential. In particular, it examines just what kinds of reforms are achievable in the real world along with their likely impact. Four types of reform are discussed. First are notions about how the broader public might become more aware that the system exists, and also more fully engaged with human rights legal procedures at home and internationally. Second are reforms aimed at streamlining the human rights legal system. Third is the professionalization of the system, especially the United Nations treaty bodies and Secretariat. Fourth is investing in credibility and legitimacy. The chapter concludes by outlining strategies that could increase the success of reform efforts and highlighting the limits of reform.

The proliferation of truth commissions and the establishment of a “right to truth” concerning human rights violations embody a politics of transparency that makes moral claims for truth telling about violence and injustice. This chapter argues that having told, being told, and telling truths in these cases has more than the instrumental value of identifying wrongs. Truth telling, through acknowledgment and voice, serves to establish or restore the dignity of victims and to reconfigure a moral community. Dignity is the moral standing of a full participant in practices of mutual accountability. Acknowledgment, as successful apology shows, validates a victims'experience and shifts the reflective equilibrium of common belief to secure stable recognition. Having voice demonstrates one's competence and credibility as a giver of accounts, a constitutive feature of full participation in practices of accountability.

This chapter analyzes the most important source of international law – the international agreement. It first explains why it is appropriate to think of states as being risk neutral rather than risk averse in the context of international law. It then explores the choice states make between various design features in their international agreements, including the choice between hard and soft law, the presence or absence of dispute resolution, the use of reservations, escape clauses, and exit clauses. The trade‐off between form and substance in agreements is also explained, as is the manner in which membership rules are developed.

Chapter 1 presents an overview of the two central activities of the scientific process: discovery (learning new things about the world) and credibility (convincing other researchers that the new findings are correct). According to the linear model of research found in science textbooks, these activities are carried out by dispassionate investigators who are guided at every step by objectivity and logic in accordance with the scientific method. By contrast, everyday practice is far more ambiguous. Researchers are influenced by personality and biography; success requires intuition and passion as well as objectivity and logic. Objectivity ultimately depends on individual researchers transcending their subjectivity by turning to the scientific community with the goal of achieving knowledge that is correct for anyone, anywhere, anytime. Diversity in how scientists think and work enhances scientific exploration. When science education focuses solely on the linear model of research, the excitement and adventure of everyday practice are left out.

Chapter 3 describes how, through the credibility process, the individual's mine, here, now transforms into the community's anyone, anywhere, anytime. The possibility of credible knowledge represents a fundamental belief of science that originates in the repeatability, continuity, and intersubjectivity of everyday life experience. The credibility process involves insiders and outsiders with respect to every discovery claim. Interaction and confrontation of their respective thought styles becomes the dialectic of this process. Discovery claims made credible will be incorporated into and refashion the community's prevailing thought style — the more novel a discovery claim, the greater its potential impact. Novelty also challenges intersubjectivity, and highly novel discovery claims sometimes are received with skepticism by the research community. What appears credible one day may be viewed as error the next, and vice versa, hence the self-correcting feature of science.

This chapter formulates a working definition of social power, and identifies and defines a sub-type — identity power. The first kind of epistemic injustice is explored: testimonial injustice, wherein a speaker receives an unfair deficit of credibility from a hearer owing to prejudice on the hearer's part. A distinction between systematic and incidental testimonial injustice is explained.

This chapter defends an account of stereotypes, according to which stereotypes are (reliable or unreliable) widely-held associations of an attribute(s) and a social group. A conception of prejudice is advanced and put together with the foregoing to produce a definition of prejudicial stereotype. It is argued that (reliable) stereotypes are an essential heuristic in the making of credibility judgements in testimonial exchanges. There is, however, an ever-present risk that the stereotypes on which we rely are prejudicial, producing testimonial injustice. The wrong of testimonial injustice is analysed: someone is undermined in their capacity as a giver of knowledge.

This chapter develops an initial account of a virtue to counteract the ever-present risk of doing testimonial injustices: the virtue of testimonial justice. The hearer who possesses this virtue reliably neutralizes the impact of prejudice in her credibility judgements. Naïve and corrective forms of the virtue are distinguished. Issues of culpability are explored and the historical conditions under which one might be non-culpable in perpetrating a testimonial injustice. A distinction between routine and exceptional judgements is made and related to the question of moral relativism.

This chapter consolidates the ideas necessary to understand the strategic form of a game. Payoff functions are introduced, and strategic forms of versions of Duel and Russian Roulette illustrate the idea. Matrices and vectors are reviewed because of their use with payoff matrices. Strong and weak domination are defined. The iterated deletion of dominated strategies is illustrated using the game of Duel. The iterated deletion of dominated strategies is related to backward induction. Problems of credibility and commitment are discussed in the context of subgame-perfect equilibria in simple Cournot and Stackelberg games. The application of subgame-perfect equilibria is discussed when players may only be boundedly rational.

This chapter demonstrates that the numerical methods of earlier chapters are not constrained by statistical philosophy. The theory of Bayesian estimating functions is developed. It is shown that this theory has Bayesian analogues for many of the concepts introduced in earlier chapters. While point estimation is often considered of secondary importance to Bayesians, the Bayesian estimating function methodology does have important applications in areas such as actuarial science.

This chapter discusses the activities of Parliament in relation to Catholics during the first few months following the plot revelations. One section looks at the representations of Catholics and Catholicism in pamphlet discourse. Many tropes of anti-Catholicism during the late seventeenth century that impacted upon the credibility of Oates' Popish Plot are taken into account. The importance of the representation of Catholics and Catholicism and how this representation could work to stimulate and sustain belief in the Popish Plot are discussed.

Rumor and legend are a culture's way of dealing with rapid changes in its worldview, such as has occurred in an America increasingly impacted by contact with the international world. Terrorism, immigration, tourism, and foreign trade are topics that have inspired cycles of rumors in the United States, while organ trafficking has done the same in developing nations. Both types of rumor are fundamentally political, as they allow common people to express issues that otherwise would be too disturbing to face and press for social change. The chapter introduces the importance of plausibility (stories that fit existing beliefs about foreigners) and credibility (stories that are based on some concrete truth and affirmed by respected authorities). It is necessary to confront these rumors directly, rather than dismissing them as trivial or ignorant, for they reveal how people actually see the changing world around them.