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Jon Elster surveys and classifies a wide range of literature that informs the study of justice. He positions Michael Walzer's theory of justice in relation to the three main categories into which he believes studies of justice fall: descriptive, explanatory, and normative. In comparing Walzer's and his own account of the relevance of empirical findings for normative analysis, Elster aims to show that the complexity of the relationship between the two is not accurately captured by Walzer.

This chapter sketches the outlines of what a reasonable form of nativism might look like. The neuroconstructivists' challenge indicates that some misunderstanding continues to exist among certain self-titled nonnativists over what it is that practicing nativists actually claim, together with a mistaken belief that current neurodevelopmental data is not or cannot be compatible with the nativist program. Both these issues are addressed by first providing further explication of the claims of practicing nativists, and then showing how these claims provide the basis for a reasonable nativism that is fully cognizant of and consistent with empirical data from all the developmental sciences, neuroconstructivism included.

Based on data collected from eight courts in five provinces, this chapter shows that China’s use of the death penalty was mainly limited to violent crimes and drug offenses in practice. In addition, the data showed a declining trend for the use of the death sentences with immediate execution but an increasing trend for the death sentences with suspension in the new century.

This chapter maps the terrain of political activity by organizations using systematic empirical data to reveal something about the political voice emerging from organized involvement in various domains of national politics. For various domains of organizational activity, the chapter characterizes categories of organizations with respect to the likelihood that organizations are active and, if active, how much they do. In the process this chapter clarifies the strategic considerations and resource constraints that shape the involvement of different kinds of organizations in different arenas. Here, it becomes apparent that the policy makers in different institutional settings hear quite different mixes of messages.

Since institutions of a political economy cannot be taken into consideration individually, institutional change should be looked at not as an individual subject but as a part of a social formation. Such a view requires social systems to be understood in a way that they avoid being associated with the notion of a static equilibrium being seen as an ideal condition. The book takes on a quasi-inductive approach in reconstructing the evolution of five institutional complexes over a quarter century while also looking into the theoretical implications and questions that have been brought about by empirical observations. A series of conclusions are then offered that are based on empirical material regarding institutional change including how to analyse it and the nature and dynamics of contemporary capitalism.

This chapter presents a response to the commentaries in Chapters 23–25. It discusses the importance of specifying cognitive mechanisms, the importance of advanced neuroimaging techniques, and the importance of integrating theory and empirical data.

Computer simulations have long been used as an effective tool in engineering, economics, psychology, and a number of other social sciences. Engineers typically use simulations to predict performance of a system that has known dynamic characteristics. These characteristics are typically obtained from theory and are then articulated in the simulation as difference or differential equations. The goal of engineering simulation is then to assess the dynamic performance of a system based on a priori knowledge of the dynamic relationships among the various elements of the system. Forrester (1961, 1973) was one of the earliest and most influential advocates of simulation modeling of dynamic social systems. Forrester advocated this approach as a way to model and assess the dynamics of industrial and world phenomena. Sterman (2000) provides a recent review of research on dynamics simulation from this tradition. While this approach has produced a considerable number of studies, it too is based on the assumption that the researcher has a priori knowledge of the dynamic relationships among elements of the system. Indeed, many of the results of these models have been criticized for specifying relationships that were at best untested and at worst flawed. In response to these criticisms, more recent interest has focused on redefining the utility of simulations in the social sciences. Rather than using simulations to test the long-term dynamics of systems with known interrelationships, theorists (Carley & Prietula, 1994; Contractor, 1994; Hanneman, 1988) have suggested that social scientists should use simulations to help construct theory, to identify the heretofore-unknown interrelationships. This section describes the traditional use of computer simulations as well as the adaptation of this approach toward theory construction and testing in the social sciences. Later sections will apply these general approaches to the computational modeling of networks in particular. Carley and Prietula (1994) suggest that the emergence of the new field of computational organizational theory (COT) signals the growing interest in the construction of computational models to augment and assist theory building. Most social science theories are richly evocative but highly abbreviated (Poole, 1997), that is, they offer explanations that suggest complex interrelationships but do not provide precise, falsifiable mathematical formalizations of the theory.

This chapter summarizes and synthesizes known biodiversity patterns, and analyzes them for congruency over space and time. The discussion is limited to macroecological patterns at continental to global scales (thousands of km). The chapter also focuses on the simplest measure of biodiversity—namely, species richness. The discussions cover marine coastal biodiversity, marine pelagic biodiversity, deep-sea biodiversity, terrestrial biodiversity, changes in biodiversity patterns through time, and robustness of documented biodiversity patterns. Among the findings is that averaging across all known species groups on land and in the sea, tropical peaks in species richness were as common as subtropical peaks, whereas species groups cresting in temperate or polar latitudes were more exceptional. Thus, the oft-cited unimodal pattern of biodiversity appears frequently, particularly on land, but there is also evidence that supports a newly emerging paradigm of asymmetric unimodal or bimodal peaks often in the subtropics, and particularly in the marine realm.

This chapter presents arguments — supported by empirical data — which underpin a number of claims in this chapter. These revolve around the design and interpretation of survey questions, the frequency with which basic human emotions (such as fear) are encountered, and the nature of the fear of crime when it comes visiting. This chapter suggests that fear is an infrequent emotion in response to crime, and there is, unsurprisingly, an enormous complexity and diversity of human emotion in general and about crime in particular. This chapter further elaborates that while it may be difficult to produce precise evidence about the frequency or intensity of fear of crime, there is considerable room for methodological improvement in order to capture important detail and describe the significant characteristics of these responses. The chapter concludes that more work needs to be done if one has to tease out the reality of this social phenomenon and such empirical study promises to produce more valid and reliable research tools that will facilitate more theoretically sophisticated modes of explanation of this important social and political issue of the day.

This chapter analyses the consequences of happiness research for taxation. It focuses on the finding that happiness depends on status as well as income, examining how adding status concerns to standard optimal tax models changes the results. It then compares the empirical findings of the happiness literature to see whether they provide the type of data needed to parameterize the models, arguing that the models need different types of data than most happiness studies emphasize. The chapter also looks at Robert Frank's arguments for a progressive consumption tax based on the findings of the happiness research. It finds that these claims are not supported by the current models or empirical data. Finally, the chapter considers a number of other potential implications of happiness research for taxation, including marriage penalties or bonuses, special tax rates for the disabled, and age-dependent taxation.

This chapter describes each of the seven “ages” or instantiations of working memory, which include the views of working memory as contemplation, as process, and as constraint of language comprehension. It evaluates which view fits best with the voluminous corpus of empirical data that has accumulated on the topic and argues that working memory is best thought of as a number of separate components. The chapter also discusses the idea that working memory acts as a gateway to long-term memory.

With regard to the environment, and more generally with respect to developing environmental policy, there is uncertainty about all the empirical data that can be invoked to change and frame policy. Against this background of controversy and contention, this chapter focuses primarily on what Orthodox Christianity can bring to the articulation of an environmental ethic. To do this, a general theological background is presented, then some salient empirical and moral ambiguities are highlighted, and then finally some general theological constraints and norms bearing on environmental ethics are elaborated. Throughout, the emphasis is on recalling the prime focus of Orthodox theology, which falls on rightly loving, worshipping, and believing in God and, in the light of that rightly ordered love of God, loving one's neighbor. Within these constraints, Orthodox Christianity leaves a considerable space within which one is left to determine prudent choices. The chapter concludes with the recognition that we must first pursue the kingdom of heaven, not the realization of the environmentalist kingdom.

This chapter presents empirical data to address the range of allegations against undocumented immigrants; for example, they drain the national economy. The data come from various sources, including the federal government, conservative think tanks, and leading immigrant rights advocacy groups. These studies document the effects of recent immigration and refute the claims of the xenophobes like “Mexican immigration is an invasion of the United States” or that undocumented immigration is causing a crime wave across the country. Based on the evidence, it argues that the rhetoric against illegal immigrants is not only unsupported by the facts, but also contrary to logic.

How are scientific hypotheses and theories assessed against empirical data? Philosophers of science have tried to find out whether there are general principles underlying this activity. This chapter goes through the major types of philosophical theories of confirmation. It starts with two proposals that elaborate criteria of qualitative confirmation on the basis of (deductive) logic: instantialism and hypothetico-deductivism. The main part of the chapter is devoted to Bayesian confirmation theory (BCT), which relies on a probabilistic framework and is able to provide both qualitative and quantitative criteria of confirmation. We discuss in details the strengths and limits of BCT. In the closing section, we address the issue of how BCT (and Bayesianism in general) relate to the problem of induction.

This chapter takes an empirical and pragmatic view of legal identity, birth registration, and inclusive development questions. Intensive research and experiences in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Cambodia provide the basis for the empirical information. A connection between legal identity documentation and access to benefits and opportunities, and between birth registration and human rights protection, is described, with Nepal as the empirical source. Barriers including financial, legal, and political, among others, in obtaining birth registration documentation in Nepal’s context are also discussed. A case study on the risks related to the demand-based approach to birth registration based on Bangladesh’s empirical data is presented.

This chapter introduces the empirical data which form the basis for the discussion throughout the book. The examples provided mainly illustrate elliptical structures occurring in the lower part of the clause such as Pseudogapping, and VP Ellipsis, but also include Sluicing, Fragment answers, Gapping, Stripping (Bare Argument Ellipsis), and NP Ellipsis. The majority of data are taken from English, with previously unpublished Pseudogapping examples. The main appeal of this chapter, however, is the section on cross-linguistic data, which contains previously unpublished Pseudogapping examples from the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic, in particular), as well as examples of constructions similar to Pseudogapping in French and Portuguese. For each Ellipsis phenomenon described, a short summary of its distinctive properties is given.