Cambridge University Press strana 11 z 64

In today's data-driven world, this book offers clear, accessible guidance on the logical foundations of optimal decision making. It introduces essential tools for decision analysis and explores psychological theories that explain how people make decisions in both professional and personal contexts. Using real-world examples, the book covers topics such as decision making under uncertainty, decision trees, strategies of risk management, decisions that are gambles, heuristics, trade-offs, decision making under stress, game theory, decision making in a dispute or conflict, and multi-attribute decision analysis. Readers will identify common decision traps and learn how to avoid them, understand the causes of indecisiveness and find out how to deal with it, gain insights into their own decision-making processes, and build confidence in their ability to make and defend informed decisions across a range of scenarios.

Korea has an unusually diverse religious culture. In the north, Juche, which has taken on religious overtones, monopolizes articulations of beliefs and values as well as ritual practice. In the south, no single religion dominates, with over half saying that they have no specific religious affiliation. The remainder report being Protestant, Buddhist, and Catholic. Smaller in number but nonetheless noticeable are members of Korea's many home-grown new religious movements. Reflecting South Korea's religious diversity, some of those new religions have Buddhist roots, some have Christian origins, some draw on Confucian beliefs and practices, and some have emerged from Indigenous religious traditions such as shamanism. This Element examines the most noticeable of Korea's new religions to discover what they can tell us about distinctive traits of religion in Korea, and how Koreans have responded to the challenge posed by modernity to their traditional beliefs and values.

Is a religious naturalism possible? 'Scientific' naturalism accommodates only 'thin' religiousness. A more robust religious naturalism posits an ultimate reality that supports the ideals of eco-morality and the hope that human fulfilment may be achieved by following those ideals. Such an account may yet be 'expansively' naturalist in taking the natural world to be the only (concrete) reality, and in not going against, only beyond, well-confirmed science. For the core content of an expansive religious naturalism, this Element proposes the idea of an inherent integrative cosmic purpose. The authors reflect both on Indigenous worldviews and on theist traditions in pursuing this proposal.

The rapid economic development experienced by Southeast Asia has come at the cost of considerable environmental degradation, including deforestation and land degradation, biodiversity loss, water and ocean pollution, rising greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing vulnerability to climate change. While sustainable development as a concept recognizes the fundamental importance of nature to future human well-being, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a set of policies falls far short of this ideal. The SDGs, particularly the environmental goals relating to life on land, life under water, and climate action, are essentially impossible to meet in Southeast Asia, as no country is on a sustainability trajectory, but these goals are superficial and modest at best anyway. Alternative approaches that recognize trade-offs and seek to integrate across solutions, that create spaces for inclusion, and which center equity and justice could help meet SDG goals, but face considerable challenges in implementation across Southeast Asia.

The Chinese state has never granted businesses full autonomy, even amid efforts to establish market-supporting institutions. Instead, the state and its officials view business as primarily political actors, demanding political services from firms to advance political objectives. Politicizing Business demonstrates that the politicization of firms is rooted in authoritarianism, often harming business interests and undermining China's efforts to attract and retain investment. Explaining the seemingly arbitrary state takeover of sectors and firms, this book uncovers previously overlooked forms of politicization and demonstrates how politicizing business often creates conflicts between the state and firms, particularly private firms, leading to a state-dominated market in many sectors. Combining academic rigor with exceptionally rich data and analysis, including hundreds of in-depth interviews with government officials and business leaders, original datasets and case studies, Politicizing Business offers fresh insights into China's political economy model and explores what the Party-state demands from companies, how compliance is enforced, when and where firms are politicized, and its impact on China's development.

This comprehensive guide navigates the intersection of psychology, peacebuilding, and violence engagement among youth. Beginning with an exploration of psychology''s role in social justice, it establishes the groundwork in restorative justice and peace education, areas ripe for psychological exploration. The book introduces the conceptualized peace framework, illuminating how young people interpret societal discourses to shape their identities within the context of peace and harmony. Through empirical examples, the framework''s efficacy is demonstrated, followed by practical methods and future directions for educators, practitioners, and policymakers. Core to its mission is unravelling the psychological mechanisms underlying participation in peace education and restorative justice, probing how past experiences influence engagement and shape social identities. By addressing these questions, the book offers a roadmap grounded in theoretical development, bolstered by empirical case studies and methodological approaches, to guide scholars and students in fostering peaceful, harmonious societies.

Why did Jesus come? The traditional argument is that he came to redeem us from sin and destroy death, and thus reverse the fall. Many have long found this unsatisfactory, because it centres human deficit, rather than divine abundance. In this study, Samuel Wells traces his notion of 'being with' right into the Trinity itself, and in dialogue with Maximus the Confessor, Duns Scotus and Karl Barth, among others, articulates a truly Christocentric theology in which God's means and God's ends are identical. In the process, Wells not only greatly expands the compass of 'being with,' showing its scriptural and doctrinal significance, but also offers a constructive account of the incarnation, cross and resurrection of Jesus that out-narrates conventional atonement theories. Wells correspondingly proposes an account of sin, evil, suffering and death that accords with this revised understanding. The result is a compelling and transformational proposal in incarnational theology.

Why did some doctors in Classical Greece feel compelled to study the universe as a whole? How could cosmological principles be employed in clinical practice? This book explores the works of the cosmological doctors, such as On Breaths, On Flesh, and On Regimen, and argues that they form part of a much broader reorganization of medical knowledge in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. These healers used cosmological principles as a supplement to, rather than a replacement of, more traditional approaches to health and disease, creating theories about the cosmos whose obscurities can best be understood as the products of medical thinking. Through fresh readings of many ancient sources, the book revises customary views of the intersections between medicine and cosmology in Classical Greece and advances our understanding of one of the most remarkable periods in the history of ancient thought.

Humanity's impact on the planet is undeniable. Fairly and effectively addressing environmental problems begins with understanding their causes and impacts. Is overpopulation the main driver of environmental degradation? Poverty? Capitalism? Poor governance? Imperialism? Patriarchy? Clearly these are not technical questions, but political ones. Updated to cover new debates, data, and policy, and expanded to include chapters on colonialism, race and gender, and the impacts of energy and resource extraction, this book introduces students to diverse perspectives and helps them develop an informed understanding of why environmental problems occur. How the international community should act is deeply contested. Guiding students through the potential responses, including multilateral diplomacy, transnational voluntary action, innovative financial mechanisms, problem displacement, consumer-focused campaigns, and resistance, this book explains the different forms of political action, their limitations and injustices. Online resources include lecture slides, a test bank for instructors and updated weblinks to videos and suggested readings for students.

The Making of Revolutionary Feminism in El Salvador tells the stories of rural and working-class women who fought to overthrow capitalism, patriarchy, and US imperialism. Covering five decades of struggle from 1965 to 2015, Diana Carolina Sierra Becerra weaves oral histories with understudied archival sources to illustrate how women developed a revolutionary theory and practice to win liberation. A multigenerational movement of women broke with patriarchal tradition. In the 1960s and 1970s, teachers and peasant women led militant class struggle against the landed oligarchy and military dictatorships. Women took up arms in the 1980s to survive US-backed state terror and built a revolution that bridged socialism and women's liberation. In the guerrilla territories, combatants and civilians politicized reproductive labor and created democratic institutions to meet the needs of the poor. Highlighting women's agency, Sierra Becerra challenges dominant narratives of revolutionary movements as monolithic, static, and dominated by urban men.

Plato's moral realism rests on the Idea of the Good, the unhypothetical first principle of all. It is this, as Plato says, that makes just things useful and beneficial. That Plato makes the first principle of all the Idea of the Good sets his approach apart from that of virtually every other philosopher. This fact has been occluded by later Christian Platonists who tried to identify the Good with the God of scripture. But for Plato, theology, though important, is subordinate to metaphysics. For this reason, ethics is independent of theology and attached to metaphysics. This book challenges many contemporary accounts of Plato's ethics that start with the so-called Socratic paradoxes and attempt to construct a psychology of action or moral psychology that makes these paradoxes defensible. Rather, Lloyd Gerson argues that Plato at least never thought that moral realism was defensible outside of a metaphysical framework.

Plato's Charmides is a rich mix of drama and argument. Raphael Woolf offers a comprehensive interpretation of its disparate elements that pays close attention to its complex and layered structure, and to the methodology of reading Plato. He thus aims to present a compelling and unified interpretation of the dialogue as a whole. The book mounts a strong case for the formal separation of Plato the author from his character Socrates, and for the Charmides as a Platonic defence of the written text as a medium for philosophical reflection. It lays greater emphasis than other readings on the centrality of eros to an understanding of Socratic procedure in the Charmides, and on how the dialogue's erotic and medical motifs work together. The book's critical engagement with the dialogue allows a worked-out account to be given of how temperance, the central object of enquiry in the work, is to be conceived.

In 1405, a family left their home in the Mongolian steppe and moved to China. This daring decision, taken at a time of dramatic change in eastern Eurasia, paved the way for 250 years of unlikely success at the Ming court. Winning recognition for military skill and loyalty, the family later known as the Wu gained a coveted title of nobility and became members of the capital elite until the dynasty's collapse in 1644. By tracing the individual fortunes of a single family, David Robinson offers a fresh and accessible perspective on the inner workings of Ming bureaucracy. He explores how the early-modern world's most developed state sought to balance the often contradictory demands of securing ability and addressing difference, a challenge common to nearly all polities.

Social role theory and evolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory are compared regarding how well they can explain 15 cognitive and behavioral sex differences that appear to be present in all human cultures. In essence, social role theory argues that, except for males being larger and more muscular and only females being able to bear children, cognitive and behavioral differences between the sexes result from sociocultural training and expectations. On the other hand, ENA theory attributes sex differences in cognition and behavior to evolved differential exposure of male and female brains to sex hormones, especially testosterone. The existence of 15 nearly certain universal sex differences in cognitive and behavioral traits was documented in a recently published book based on findings from over 40,000 empirical studies. This Element documents that, while both theories have explanatory power, ENA theory surpasses social role theory in explaining the universality of most of the 15 traits.

Is Kierkegaard a phenomenologist? Much depends on what we take 'phenomenology' to mean, since the word has been stretched in all possible directions since Edmund Husserl wrote his major works. What have phenomenologists made of his writings? This question is easier to answer: he has been a constant reference point for many of them, although there is little agreement about his significance. This short book argues that he is a phenomenologist in the context of discovery, not justification. One finds attention to attunements in Kierkegaard, and one also finds modes of bracketing and reduction. Even so, his styles of thinking phenomenologically differ from those of most writers in this philosophical school. His phenomenology takes a theological path, one that leads from 'world' to 'kingdom,' and one that often turns on what he calls 'the moment.'

South Africa remains the only state that developed a nuclear weapons capability, but ultimately decided to dismantle existing weapons and abandon the programme. Disarming Apartheid reconstructs the South African decision-making and diplomatic negotiations over the country's nuclear weapons programme and its international status, drawing on new and extensive archival material and interviews. This deeply researched study brings to light a unique disarmament experience. It traces the country's previously neglected path towards accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Rather than relying primarily on US government archives, the book joins the burgeoning field of national nuclear histories based on unprecedented access to policymakers and documents in the country studied. Robin E. Möser, in addition to providing access to important new documents, offers original interpretations that enrich the study of nuclear politics for historians and political scientists.