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If disadvantage is plural, how could we know who are the least advantaged? One possible way of treating this ‘indexing problem’ is to claim that pluralism is not the problem but the solution: that is, the state should isolate each functioning and challenge each area of disadvantage separately (sectoral justice). It is argued this approach is unable to show how to set priorities between different budget heads. A method is suggested for indexing disadvantages relying on the idea of ‘weighting sensitivity’, which looks for convergence in ordering between different weighting schemes. However, this method is complex and a simpler, pragmatic method is proposed, which looks directly for clustering of disadvantage between six ‘high-weight’ functionings which appeared as the most important ones in the interviews: life, bodily health, bodily integrity, affiliation, control over environment, and sense of imagination and thought. Those who do poorly on several of these categories will be among the least advantaged in society.

With the worries about Goodman on the table, this chapter introduces an alternative set of conditions: a modified form of Goodman’s relative repleteness, syntactic sensitivity, and semantic richness. These three are necessary for a representational system to be pictorial and they make no reference to the perception of pictures, but they are not sufficient for a representational system to be pictorial. They accommodate digital pictures comfortably, but are much too broad to capture what makes pictures pictures.

The introductory chapter 2 takes up the concept of sensitivity and vulnerability in international interdependence to analyse the complex relationship between EU and national governance and to look at the normative implications in terms of efficient and democratic governance in the European system. The achieved high level of interconnectedness between political and societal actors at the European, the national and sub-national levels results in a loss of political control by individual member states, provokes a substantive derogation of national parliamentary democracy, and causes severe irritations as regards the established balance between the economic and political spheres. However, the plurality of state and society actors are sensitive and vulnerable to different degrees and in various ways depending on structural compatibilities, power differentials, and policy styles, which shape conflict management and problem-solving strategies. Their responses to demands for adaptation produce differentiated outcomes and, therefore, contribute to the fragmented and heterogeneous structure of the EU. At the same time, a penetrated system of governance evolves that is extraordinary flexible and generates a multiplicity of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ mechanisms for linking EU and national governance, which smooth the management of multi-level interdependence and assist to overcome democratic derogation.

This chapter argues that the attempt to derive the context-sensitivity of an expression from the context-sensitivity of expressions used in a putative conceptual analysis of the property or properties expressed by that expression fails.

Every clock's pendulum needs a fine trim to adjust its rate to the desired value. This is frequently done by adding small weights to a weight pan, which is usually located about one-third of the way down the pendulum rod. The clock literature says that the effect of adding a small weight to a pendulum will vary, depending on the weight's location along the pendulum rod. The literature also says that the weight will have maximum effect on the pendulum's rate if placed halfway between the bob and the suspension spring, and will have zero effect if placed at the center of the bob or at the suspension spring. This chapter describes an experiment that was carried out to measure the position sensitivity of a pendulum rod by clamping a 24-gram weight on the pendulum rod at a given location and calculating the change in clock rate.

This chapter examines moral sensitivity in American society. It argues that American public life is pervaded by a profusion of moral reference points and by a drive to justify attitudes and actions through recourse to moral criteria. It is this level of moral consciousness in political exchange and argumentation that distinguishes the United States from other western democracies and which gives the conduct of American politics its distinctive character. God as a ubiquitous reference point in American culture, religion and politics, religion and the moral foundations of democracy are discussed.

The effective management of natural resources use requires a mechanistic understanding of the system, not just correlations between variables of the kind discussed in Chapter 4. Understanding may simply be in the form of a conceptual model, but is much more powerful when formalized as a mathematical model. This chapter introduces methods for building a model of the system that can be used to predict future sustainability with or without management interventions. The emphasis is on the simulation of biological and bioeconomic dynamics, for which step-by-step worked examples are given. These examples start with conceptual models, then show how to formalize these as mathematical equations, build these into computer code; test model sensitivity, validity, and alternative structures; and finally, explore future scenarios. Methods for modelling stochasticity and human behaviour are also introduced, as well as the use of Bayesian methods for understanding dynamic systems and exploring management interventions.

This chapter discusses incomplete sensitivity. Incomplete sensitivity means that during sensitivity evaluation, only the deformation of the geometry is accounted for and the change of the state variable due to the change of geometry is ignored. The chapter gives the class of functionals for which this assumption can be made. Incomplete sensitivity calculations are illustrated on several model problems, giving the opportunity of introducing low-complexity models for sensitivity analysis. The chapter shows by experience that the accuracy is sufficient for quasi-Newton algorithms, and also that the complexity of the method is drastically reduced making possible real time sensitivity analysis latter used for unsteady applications.

This chapter discusses probabilistic methods for conducting uncertainty analysis, methods that can be use to evaluate both local and global sensitivity of models to parameters, and issues related to the validation of models that express uncertainty in their results. Analytical and Monte Carlo methods for propagating uncertainty through models are described, along with potential limitations of these methods and the problems that can be encountered. The chapter introduces methods for assigning distributions to model parameters. Statistical methods that can be used to help interpret and express the results of probabilistic uncertainty analyses, such as confidence and tolerance intervals, are introduced and their pertinent assumptions are described. Various statistical analyses that can be used for sensitivity analysis and their associated sampling designs are reviewed.

This chapter discusses how to move from a general concern with the justification of coercion to particular substantive principles of justice. It argues that a social system is just only so long as it respects the right to freedom of those subject to it, namely their right to the social conditions necessary to lead autonomous lives. For this to be the case, the distribution of freedom engendered by the system has to be justifiable in the eyes of all those who are subject to it. Focusing on domestic societies in particular, the chapter concludes that a multiplicity of principles of economic justice might instantiate mutually justifiable distributions of freedom, not all of which are egalitarian in form. In other words, contrary to most contemporary liberal theorists’ arguments on the view defended in this chapter, economic equality is not a fundamental, non-negotiable demand of justice.

This chapter describes the theory and practical applications of coulometric respirometry. Coulometric respirometry is probably the most accurate method for measuring oxygen consumption rates. It is ideal for small animals and has the dual advantages of high sensitivity and the fact that the oxygen in the organism's environment is not depleted, allowing measurements to continue for long periods in many cases. The technique works by maintaining a constant pressure in a sealed system by electrolytically producing oxygen at the same rate at which an enclosed organism consumes it.

The chapter rebuts arguments against the view that partial definition for predicates is impossible, in the sense of partial definition in which it leads to sentences that cannot correctly be characterized as true, or as not true. Next, it gives a positive account of how partially-defined predicates might arise. After context sensitivity is added to the model, the resulting predicates are compared to, and contrasted with, vague predicates in natural language. A strategy is suggested for treating apparent penumbral truths of concern to theories of vagueness, and for explaining why instances of some logical laws seem transparently to be true (when according to these theories, they are, in fact, undefined); whereas instances of other logical laws lack the appearance of undeniable truth.

This is the last of five chapters on the Old Testament and the reader, and is devoted to a discussion of Old Testament ethics. Begins by outlining possible reasons for people being interested in Old Testament ethics, and then discusses the strategies employed in each of these approaches. Four reasons for ethical study are advanced: first, from a confessional (religious/theological/devotional) standpoint, it could be maintained that the Old Testament in some sense contains the revealed will of God and that its ethical teaching therefore makes a claim upon Jews and Christians if not upon all humanity; a second reason springs from the conviction that the confessional position is mistaken and that it is the duty of scholarship to expose the crudities of Old Testament morality in order to prevent humankind from being subjected to its claims; a third answer might be that the study of Old Testament ethics is a valid subject in its own right, as is the study of the ethics of the Greeks or of the historical background to the Old Testament; a fourth response might go further than this and say that because the Old Testament is a classic text, what it has to say on ethical matters is of interest to ethicists. The next section starts by discussing the fact that differing agendas have shaped approaches to Old Testament ethics in earlier periods of history, and goes on to review three recent large‐scale confessional attempts to deal with Old Testament ethics: those of Walter Kaiser, Christopher Wright, and Bruce Birch. The following section attempts to illustrate how different results can follow if different approaches are made to the Old Testament, and discusses the evidence of moral and ethical sensitivity within the biblical text, discourse ethics, and the need for a plurality of methods and approaches.

This chapter presents a more developed defence of the account of knowledge than that offered in Chapter 2, which exploits the animal/reflective distinction towards solving traditional sceptical problems.

Contextualism about vagueness is the view that vagueness consists in a particular species of context-sensitivity, and that accommodating this fact will yield a plausible solution to the Sorites paradox. As many commentators have noted, this view faces the following objection: if the context is held fixed, vagueness still remains, therefore vagueness is not a species of context-sensitivity. This chapter sketches two replies to this objection, which result in two very different kinds of contextualism.