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ASSA 2018: a conference and city guide

The annual Allied Social Science Association meeting takes place this year on 5 January – 7 January 2018 at the Philadelphia Marriott in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This three-day meeting hosts over 13,300 of the leading minds in economics to gather and share new ideas and achievements in the field. With such wide range of sessions, panels, and events to attend, we’ve selected a few that we’re excited to attend to help narrow down your list.

Friday, 5 January

8:00am – 10:00am,  Pennsylvania Convention Center 104-A

Paper Session: International Trade and Health 1. Chaired by John Cawley of Cornell University.

10:15am – 12:15pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 202-A  

Paper Session: $15 Minimum Wage Policies: Early Evidence. Chaired by Alan Krueger of Princeton University.

2:30pm – 4:30pm, Loews Philadelphia, Anthony  

Paper Session: Democratic Crisis and the Responsibility of Economics. Chaired by Charles J. Whalen of State University of New York – Buffalo.

Saturday, 6 January

8:00am – 10:00am, Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Independence Ballroom I  

Paper Session: Economics of National Security. Chaired by Martin Feldstein of Harvard University.

10:15am – 12:15pm, Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Meeting Room 404  

Paper Session: Issues on African Development II. Chaired by Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe of Women’s Institute for Science, Equity, and Race.

2:30pm – 4:30pm,  Pennsylvania Convention Center, 202-B

Paper Session: Foreign STEM Students and Immigration Policy. Chaired by Shulamit Kahn of Boston University

Sunday, 7 January

8:00am – 10:00am,  Loews Philadelphia, Howe

Paper Session: Physics and Financial Economics: New Transfers and New Relations. Chaired by  Christophe Schinckus of RMIT University, Vietnam.

8:00am – 10:00am,  Loews Philadelphia, Anthony 

Paper Session: The 2008 Economic-Financial Crisis: 10 Years After. Chaired by Christine Ngo of the University of Denver.

10:15am – 12:15pm,  Loews Philadelphia, Anthony 

Paper Session: Realizing the Social Economy: Obstacles and Opportunities. Chaired by Richard McIntyre of the University of Rhode Island.

10:15am – 12:15pm, Loews Philadelphia, PSFS

Paper Session: Contract Governance. Chaired by Robert Gibbons of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1:00pm – 3:00pm,  Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Independence Ballroom I  

Panel Session: Are Trump Administration Policies Improving Domestic Security?. Chaired by Stephanie Kelton of State University of New York – Stony Brook

In addition to all the offerings of the ASSA meeting, the City of Brotherly Love has numerous restaurants, museums, and attractions to explore. If you’re looking for a culture fix, visits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Rodin Museum are a must, as they are home to many famous permanent collections. If this is your first time visiting Philadelphia, the famous Liberty Bell at Independence Hall is worthy of a visit, as is Christ Church which included Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Betsy Ross in its congregation.

Venture over to the Reading Terminal Market, an indoor public dating back to 1893 that offers a variety of local produce, meats, cheeses, baked goods, as well as several restaurants. Finally, join the hotly contested debate of where the best Philly Cheesesteak is, by trying out some of the top contenders at Jim’s, Dalessandro’s, or Sonny’s.

Join OUP in the exhibition hall which will be located in the Franklin Hall of the Philadelphia Marriott, open Thursday, 4 January from 2pm – 7pm, Friday, 5 January from 9am– 5 pm, and Saturday, 6 January from 9am – 2pm. Check out our booth for exclusive ASSA discounts and follow us on Twitter at @OUPEconomics for conference updates and information. We look forward to seeing you in Philadelphia!

Featured image credit: Philadelphia Pennsylvania City by 12019. Public domain via Pixabay .

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“Yes I can!”: the psychology behind lasting personal growth

Approximately 80% of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by the second week of February. But what makes these goals so difficult to achieve? One theory is that our resolutions are often too big to manage. Sticking to major changes like dieting and exercise can become overwhelming—causing us to give up after any initial set-backs.

“Performance accomplishments” can help mitigate these challenges: by breaking down resolutions into smaller goals, we can build the self-confidence needed to take on bigger and bigger challenges.

In the following excerpt from Boost!, sports psychologist Michael Bar-Eli discusses the psychology behind personal growth, and how he uses performance accomplishments in his own life.

How can we change our efficacy expectations from “no, I cannot” to “yes, I can”?

One important source is called “vicarious experiences.” Here, people obtain efficacy information by observing or imagining others engaging in a task that the observers themselves do not perform. Vicarious sources of efficacy information (that is, witnessing others successfully completing a task) are weaker than performance accomplishments of the observers themselves, but they are still of substantial importance in enhancing one’s self- efficacy.

A great example for this source comes from Major General Avihu Ben- Nun (born 1939), who was the eleventh commander of the Israeli Air Force from 1987 to 1992. In 1995 he too was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Unlike other celebrities with Parkinson’s who often try to hide their disease, Ben- Nun announced it publicly, thereby serving as an inspiration for many others fighting the decease. I often use Ben- Nun’s struggle against Parkinson’s as a model; I tell myself that if he can handle it, evidently for so many years, I can, too!

The strongest source, and the most dependable foundation of self-efficacy judgments, however, is “performance accomplishments,” also known as “enactive mastery experiences.” Performance accomplishments refer to clear successes and failures, which provide the most influential source of efficacy information and the most authentic evidence on which we can build robust beliefs about personal efficacy. If such experiences are generally successful, they will raise the level of self- efficacy; repeated failure will result in lower- efficacy expectations.

“Throughout your working life, you will be faced with increasingly difficult challenges. The concept of backward generalizations, however, can help you handle these obstacles as you think about them in an incremental way.”

For example, Parkinson’s disturbs my daily activities and functions for a number of hours every day. I set a goal, however, to increase the number of Parkinson’s- free hours per day (or at least keep this number stable) by regulating my body and mind through medication, rest, physical activ­ity, and joyful intellectual activities, such as writing this book. Success in achieving this goal increases my confidence, not only in my ability to gain more Parkinson’s- free hours, but also in my ability to successfully reduce the Parkinson’s influence on my life in general.

The performance accomplishments source demonstrates not only that reality (i.e., one’s performance) can foster one’s expectations, but also that expectations (i.e., self- efficacy) can foster reality. This situation results in a “performance- efficacy cycle” that may account for our ability to cope with increasingly difficult problems: you wipe out a small problem, successfully coping with it; then you wipe out a somewhat bigger one, and so on. Over time people undergoing such a process increase their confidence in their ability to cope with difficult situations or obstacles, precisely because they continuously prove themselves successful in managing smaller problems. But what if something really big— and negative— suddenly falls on you? What do you do? Where do you draw the confidence in your ability to cope with it? For example, how could I cope with Parkinson’s, a huge prob­lem indeed, without handling smaller problems previously? The answer lies within what I call “backward generalizations.”

In the biblical story of Exodus, Pharaoh (seemingly Ramses II) is described as a demonic opponent of the Jewish people. In 1990, the late Meir Ariel— an Israeli Bob Dylan— released a song in which he lists a series of troubles he undergoes, which increase in their order of difficulty. At the end of each stanza, he repeats: “We survived Pharaoh, we will get through this too!” Over the years, that line became a widespread expres­sion in Israel to describe such “backward generalizations.”

In my case, when coping with Parkinson’s or any other major issues in my life, I generalize backward, considering all of the other serious obstacles I have already overcome in the past. Who or what fills that role which enables me to say to myself: “Miki, you survived Pharaoh, you’ll survive this, too”?

Throughout your working life, you will be faced with increasingly dif­ficult challenges. The concept of backward generalizations, however, can help you handle these obstacles as you think about them in an incremental way. For example, when you find yourself rushing around the office like a madman trying to meet a last- minute deadline, it might be helpful to take a step back. Think about other deadlines you’ve met in the past, those that may have also seemed impossible at the time. Or consider larger issues you’ve faced and overcome— maybe you’ve had the unfortunate experi­ence of being laid off and forced into a new position or even new career. These types of major issues that you’ve successfully tackled will make a deadline seem like child’s play in comparison, a simple task that you know you can complete. If you’ve survived one hurdle, you can survive the next. Keeping the Pharaoh’s principle in mind will keep you on task and confi­dent in your performance.

Featured image credit: “rear-view-of-man-on-mountain-road-against-sky” by Pixabay. CC0 via Pexels .

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When the kids outsmarted the dictators

Social media has become an important way for marginalized people to organize and speak out, despite their exclusion from mainstream media. Indeed, one might wonder how protest movements could form without this tool. Yet decades before the internet was invented, young Argentines documented police brutality without iPhones, met and discussed their movement without social media, and even protested repression without marches. How? Through another of the most powerful and subversive media ever devised: rock music.

Living with fear

Rock musician Charly García stepped warily out of his apartment—in disguise, as usual. Some of his friends called him paranoid, but the twenty-four year old wasn’t taking any chances; he had received death threats from officers and been followed by plain-clothed policemen in dark sedans. Long hair and bell-bottomed trousers marked him and other young people as targets for harassment and arrest—or worse. Disguised this time as an old woman, García quickly bought his newspaper and hurried home.

It was early 1976, and the repression that would soon be unleashed upon the Argentine people by their government was far more horrific than anything García could have imagined. As in North America and Europe, a new spirit of anti-establishment idealism swept over the youth of Latin America in the 1960s and ’70s. But unlike countries in the north, many South American governments did not indulge the youth movements or tolerate their protests. With help from a US government panicked by the prospect of communist expansion, country after country turned to totalitarianism. Following the example of its neighbors, Argentina clamped down on civil society starting in March 1976.

Television, radio, newspapers and every form of media were affected by censorship. Rock musicians sometimes had to submit their lyrics before albums could be pressed. Every form of public assembly was banned and many clubs and social groups were disbanded—even the Boy Scouts. But having learned a lesson from the negative press that Chile’s dictatorship received, the dictators of Argentina did not publicly gun down dissenters for all the world’s media to see. Instead, they took the more subtle approach of quietly disappearing anyone suspected of “subversion” into secret concentration camps, where they were disposed of. This tactic was actually much more terrifying: Argentines lived looking over their shoulders, never knowing what word or action might cause them to be whisked away in an unofficial late night raid.

Image: “La cancion de la dictadura” by Franco Brambilla. Used with permission.

Before there was social media, there was rock

Argentine teenagers desperately needed to hear a message of hope, and to tell their own stories and share them with friends. But their need to commiserate with their peers was exacerbated by the fact that nearly every traditional forum or medium for doing so was off-limits to them. But they soon found a way, through communities built upon a new Argentine rock genre sung in Spanish. Singers like Charly García seemed to channel what young people themselves needed to say: they sang about reaching out to others, about resistance, and about run-ins with the police.  Fans roared with approval and self-identification when the young García sang in “Confesiones de invierno“: “La fianza la pagó un amigo; las heridas son del oficial” (“I got the bail money from a friend; the bruises I got from the cop”).

It soon became too dangerous to sing overtly critical songs, but musicians like Charly García and León Gieco cut their songwriting teeth on the censors’ redaction, and learned to hone their lyric-writing skills to avoid government detection. Rather than referring directly to police or the military as he did in earlier songs, García began to use metaphor to criticize them. In one famous example, “Alicia en el país,” he used Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland to parody Argentine reality. García describes a land where everything is backwards, where the innocent are proclaimed to be guilty by his majesty—not the Queen of Hearts, but a bellicose figure from a Spanish deck of cards—the “King of Swords.”

Young Argentines hungry for discussion skirted the ban on political groups by meeting in informal “listening groups” in the homes of friends, where they dissected and looked for political meaning in such enigmatic songs. Likewise they bypassed the prohibition on public assembly by gathering and finding peer companionship in rock concerts. Military officials did not at first appreciate the potential of a mass concert—with thousands of music fans who have been made politically conscious—to turn into another sort of mass meeting.

Protest without marches, sharing without Facebook

With crowds much too big to control, and musicians far too famous to make disappear, after 1980 concerts of up to 60,000 attendees became de facto political rallies. Teens went with the hope of sharing a common experience, and of hearing a political message. They often did, sometimes from the musician, and sometimes from the audience itself.  Fans would erupt in a soccer-type chant such as “Se va a acabar, se va a acabar, la dictadura military” (“It’s going to end, it’s going to end, the dictatorship is going to end”).

This reached its most dramatic point towards the end of the regime. A contemporary commentator reported that at a mass concert in Obras stadium in Buenos Aires, fans began to chant “Los desaparecidos, ¡que digan dónde están!” (“The disappeared—tell us where they are!”) Charly García danced to the rhythm of the chant for a while, then responded in Spanish, “Sing, sing… you want to sing that? Great, sing it. But no one’s going to answer you. So we’re going go on with the music. But those who are disappearing now soon won’t disappear anymore. And let me tell you: what we’ve got now will soon have to disappear.” As the crowd gave him a standing ovation, he continued: “You can have faith in that.”

Unlike most concerts we have experienced, these did not consist of thousands of individual attendees with thousands of different histories, goals, and political attitudes. These meetings were unique in the relative singularity of purpose of those attending. The fans’ anger, fear, sadness, and outrage at the regime were focused through the medium of Argentine rock music and shared back and forth from the artist to the crowd and back again. Long before the advent of social media made it possible to post political messages instantly to thousands of like-minded followers, Argentines were able to share with others through these impromptu networks of fans in listening groups and in concerts.

Featured image credit: Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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The rise of female whistleblowers

Until recently, I firmly believed whistleblowers would increasingly turn to secure, anonymizing tools and websites, like WikiLeaks, to share their data rather than take the risk of relying on a journalist to protect their identity. Now, however, WikiLeaks is implicated in aiding the election of Donald Trump, and “The Silence Breakers,” outspoken victims of sexual assault, are Time’s 2017 Person of the Year.

Not only is this moment remarkable because of the willingness of whistleblowers to come forward and show their faces, but also because women are the ones blowing the whistle. With the notable exception of Chelsea Manning who herself did not choose to be identified, the most well-known whistleblowers in modern history, arguably Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, and Jeffrey Wigand, are all men.

Research suggests key individual and organizational attributes that lend themselves to whistleblowing. On the individual level, people motivated by strong moral values or self-identity might be more likely to act. At the organizational level, individuals are more likely to report wrongdoing if they believe they will be listened to.

People who have faith in the organizations they work for are more likely to report wrongdoing internally. Those who don’t have faith look to the government, reporters, and/or hire lawyers to expose the wrongdoings.

Historically, women wouldn’t have been likely candidates to report internally becausethey haven’t been listened to or empowered in the workplace  At work they are  undervalued,underrepresented in leadership roles, and underpaid compared to male colleagues. This signals to women that their concerns will not be taken seriously or instigate change. Therefore, many choose to remain silent.

Whistleblowing comes with enormous risks, and those risks are greater for women.

The Harvey Weinstein scandal is particularly egregious. He was disgraced and condemned only after a few brave, powerful women were willing to publicly go on the record, which then prompted many other accusers to come forward. Consider also The Washington Post’s exceptional reporting on women who accused Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexually pursuing underage girls. One individual, even named, might be easy to dismiss. But there wasn’t just one. There were four.

Actress Ashley Judd at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., 20 January 2017 by S Pakhrin from DC, USA. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In today’s whistleblowing moment women are creating de facto public support organizations by coming out in groups. This signals to others with similar stories that it is okay to speak out and their stories can be believed.

The desire for these women to tell the truth aligns perfectly with journalists’ commitment to “truth.” It has long been the backbone of good journalism, but in today’s political climate in the US, truth is relative and a matter of opinion and revision. The President of the United States, for example, regularly misstates facts and recently has claimed a video of him denigrating women fake – even though he already apologized for it.

In line with discussing the transgressions of popular, influential individuals, today’s whistleblowers also appeal to journalists who pride themselves on holding people in power accountable. Some women have lawyers to shoulder their cases and choose to remain anonymous. Even still, by pursuing allegations against prominent, powerful individuals, they draw media attention because it is hard to keep investigations quiet when the accused is high-profile and forced to take a leave of absence or is fired.

At this moment in time when it comes to politics, nothing is believed and everything is debated, but women are able to seize the moment and lead conversations about sexual assault. But are women supported and respected enough to become whistleblowers on issues other than sexual assault?

I sincerely hope that women are not being recognized as whistleblowers now because they are seen as ‘experts’ in the area of sexual assault and harassment. It is an unfortunate, common experience for many women, as recently validated by the #MeToo phenomenon.

But where do we go from here? Will we believe women about corporate fraud? About government corruption? Who will we believe and why? More importantly, perhaps, will female whistleblowers believe long term in the media and the public to support them?

According to Transparency International, an independent international whistleblowing advocacy and support organization, trust in the US government is decreasing. 7 in 10 people do not believe the government is fighting corruption.  This suggests it is unlikely that women – or men, for that matter – will trust whistleblowing laws or the government’s handling of whistleblower complaints.

Therefore, those with conviction to become a whistleblower will be more likely to go to the media. A new report by The Poynter Institute suggests public trust in media is increasing, but trust is highly correlated with partisanship. Republicans and supporters of President Trump are more likely to believe the media is dishonest.

In this sense, I’m hopeful that the media’s coverage and careful reporting on sexual assault whistleblowers can transcend politics and help further restore media trust so that more women will feel comfortable confiding in journalists, and believe that their stories can effect change.

Featured image credit: Hashtag #MeToo (digital text pattern on RGB screen version 25), 8 December 2017 by Wolfmann. CC-BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons .

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Ten reasons to love thinking

Thinking is one of the great human abilities. Anyone can do it, anytime, anywhere. One of the best places in the world to be is inside one’s head, thinking.

If you love to dwell in thought, perhaps you are made for the academic life. Perhaps you are meant to be a ‘creative’: producing art, music, novels, or some other product of original thought. Perhaps you have the DNA of an engineer, designer, or systems analyst – you enjoy problem solving, the ultimate hard think.

Needless to say, most scientists live to think.

Thoughts can change the world. For some, this is a threat. Change challenges power structures and one of the dire proclivities of humans is to suppress conflicting thoughts by force.

Some of the world’s greatest thinkers have been denied the right to think. Censored, jailed, exiled, killed. It’s hard to believe the Catholic Church condemned Galileo in 1633 for believing the earth revolves around the sun.

“Thoughts can change the world. For some, this is a threat.”

One of the burning questions hanging over society is ‘why are some people free-thinkers and others suppressers of free-thought?’ Why are humans still battling ‘Truth’ with ‘truth’?

Here are ten reasons to think — ideally as broadly, deeply, and often as possible. Think to:

Fix. The most practical reason to think is to solve a problem.
Learn. Often, we need to think about a subject to understand it. Thinking helps find the connections between things we observe. A whole emerges from the parts once we build connections. Living life triggers questions. Thinking about them helps us find solutions or convinces us we need help. Questioning is key to understanding.
See the future. Even just looking ahead at the calendar can be enough to get value out of thinking about what the future might hold. For example, we know that spring will come. With it, certain phenomena will unfold. Spending time thinking about things we expect to occur, lining them up and seeing the connections between them can often bring more insight than we realize. We do have a kind of crystal ball of sorts. Add to the trajectory what one hopes to see happen and plans form and gestate. We think to ‘make our futures’.
Synthesize. We need quiet time to synthesize experiences into impressions and opinions about the world around us and our place in it. We synthesize these into larger narratives and thus build frameworks by which we can live. A key part of synthesis is the ability to detect and understand patterns. Deducing patterns allows extrapolation, letting us work out the implications and potential consequences.
Evolve a stance. Thinking ahead allows one to take a considered stance. How do you feel about a, b, c? What is your position on x, y, z? Whether it’s what to say around the water cooler, or being prepared to defend your core beliefs, thinking builds our internal references as a key part of defining ‘self’.
Enjoy. Intellectuals are intellectual because they enjoy and expend huge amounts of time on thinking. We can all think; it’s one of the great joys of life.
Explore. The human imagination is infinite. The mind is like a simulation factory. This is what dreams and day dreams explore: the unknown. Thinking is a conscious version of mapping out what ‘might happen’. Thinking thus provides a special form of ‘awareness’ we can use to our advantage. Great innovators see ‘what could be’. Visionary thinking has vastly benefitted society.
Hatch new ways to think more efficiently. Okay, if you like thinking, you’ll be doing this: thinking about how to think more and better. How to get more time and fodder for thinking? Maybe a course is in order. Or some research into a particular topic. Maybe an introduction to a thought-leader. Thinking can be accelerated and made more efficient with contributed expertise and knowledge. If someone else has put in the hard thinking, benefit from it. Make your own launch pad as strong as possible.
Be more fun around others. When we fail to have ‘self-time’ to think, we get edgy and easy to knock off balance. Thinking might seem a selfish pursuit, but it often helps one be a better person in company.
Contribute. Thinking helps make all of us better citizens of the world. Like the adage ‘think before you speak’, if you have considered opinions based on facts, ideally even a vision of how things ‘could be’ and the calmness and knowledge to express it, you’ll be a far more positive member of society.

Hopefully this list makes you think. What are your reasons to think?

Featured image credit: Teenage girl window railing by 胡 卓亨. CC0 public domain via Unsplash. 

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The impossible behavior of light

At the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas Young proved that light was a wave phenomenon. He did so by illuminating a screen (in an otherwise darkened room) with a beam of sunlight that had passed through a card with two slits in it. The proof was the interference pattern on the screen, whose alternating light and dark portions could only have occurred if light consisted of waves, not particles.

The wave paradigm was firmly grounded some 60 years later by James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetic radiation, of which light is one component.

Maxwell’s theory formed an unchallenged scientific consensus until 1900, when Max Planck invoked particles he called “quanta” to explain blackbody radiation. Five years later, Albert Einstein extended Planck’s quantum concept to explain the photoelectric effect, wherein electromagnetic radiation incident on a metal ejects electrons from it. The wave theory utterly failed to explain the results of this phenomenon, whereas Einstein did so by hypothesizing that electromagnetic radiation consisted of quanta (now called photons).

 

‘Double-slit experiment results Tanamura 2’ by Belsazar (Provided with kind permission of Dr. Tonomura). CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

This was impossible behavior: light as waves explained the appearance of the interference pattern but not the photoelectric effect, whereas light as quanta explained the photoelectric effect but not the interference pattern.

Given the consensus concerning the wave paradigm, efforts were made to disprove Einstein’s hypothesis. None succeeded, whereas in 1923 Arthur Compton verified it! This only made the situation worse, since particles and waves are totally different entities, so how could electromagnetic radiation be both?

To understand how this can be, note first that concepts such as particles and waves arise from our visual environment, and are not intrinsic to the quantum world, even though they are used in describing aspects of it. Assigning such concepts from the results of experiments is unavoidable, since the language we use is derived from our visual environment. This means that in the quantum world, walking and quacking like a duck needn’t mean that it’s a duck! A quantum object—a “quanject”—is something distinct from either a particle or a wave: quanjects are entities that can behave like a particle or a wave but are neither.

In addition, to describe radiation phenomena involving photons, one must use quantum theory, in particular its probabilistic character. That character is embodied in quantities known as amplitudes, denoted here by A. How amplitudes are obtained is not important for this discussion. What is important is that A2 (the square of A) is the probability for something in the quantum world to occur, for example, that an electron in the hydrogen atom will be at a particular location or that a photon will pass through a slit and strike a screen.

If sunlight passes through a single slit and strikes a screen, no interference pattern is seen, which makes the light seem to consist of particles. It’s the presence of the second slit that produces the interference pattern, which makes light seem to consist of waves. Quantum theory distinguishes between these two circumstances via its amplitudes.

With a single slit there is only one straight-line path that can be followed to reach any point on the screen, for which there is a single amplitude. With two slits, labeled 1 and 2, not only is there an amplitude for each, say A1 and A2, quantum theory states that the total amplitude A is equal to the sum of the two: A = A1 + A2. The probability for reaching a point on the screen is the square of A, i.e., A2 = (A1 + A2)2 = A12 + A22 + 2A1A2, as long as the amplitudes can be treated as ordinary numbers, and even when they can’t, an expression much like the preceding one occurs, so there is no loss of generality in using it.

It’s the presence of the term 2A1A2 that gives rise to the interference pattern, in perfect analogy to what occurs in the electromagnetic-wave description. However, if one of the two slits is either covered or has a detector placed on its far side, then the path would be known, the two-term amplitude would reduce to a single term (either A1 or A2), and no interference pattern would occur. In other words, when the path through one of the two slits is determined, the photons behave like particles, when it is undetermined, the photons behave like waves.

Suppose a two-slit experiment is performed with single photons or electrons. Because probability is involved, the position on the screen where the single quanject would hit is random. It might therefore be thought that performing the single-quanject experiment a huge number of times would not produce an interference pattern. In fact, it does!

Such experiments have been done with various projectiles, e.g., electrons. How the interference pattern gets built up is seen in the accompanying image. Of the five frames shown, (a) resulted from just 100 electrons incident, while (e) shows an interference pattern emerging after “only” 70,000 electrons were incident. This is a truly amazing result. Why? Because 70,000 photons are so many fewer than those emitted per second from the sun or a 100 watt bulb: e.g., if all the bulb’s photons were in the blue portion of the visible spectrum, approximately 2×1020 would be emitted per second!

With both slits open, the amplitude for a single photon is A = A1 + A2. This does more than allow for the photon to follow either path: it suggests that the photon can pass through both slits at the same time, in effect interfering with itself! If that seems like science fiction, it is not: experiments have been done showing that a single photon—also a cesium atom—can be in two different places at the same time.

Equally striking, experiments done with a Mach-Zehnder interferometer have shown how individual photons, sent sequentially through it, can be forced to behave as waves, or as particles, or as both!

The quantum world is exceedingly strange and wonderful to contemplate.

Featured image credit: “San Diego Sunset Sun Seascape California Ocean” by dennisflarsen. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Are there true philosophical theories that we cannot believe?

Few philosophical theories are so hard to believe that no philosopher has ever defended them. But at least one theory is.

Suppose that you think lying is wrong. According to a view that is known as the error theory, you then take lying to have a certain feature: you ascribe the property of being wrong to lying. But the error theory also says that this property does not exist. This entails that lying is not wrong. You may therefore conclude that lying is permissible. But according to the error theory, you then ascribe the property of being permissible to lying. And the theory says that this property does not exist either. The error theory therefore entails that lying is neither wrong nor permissible. And it entails similar claims about anything else you could do.

Some philosophers have defended an error theory about moral judgements. But no one has so far defended an error theory about all normative judgements: all thoughts about rightness, wrongness, goodness, badness, reasons for action, reasons for belief, and so on. You may think that this is because such a theory is clearly false. But the arguments for this error theory are actually surprisingly strong. These arguments are not direct arguments for the theory, but are instead arguments against the alternatives to the theory: arguments against views according to which normative judgements are attitudes that do not ascribe properties, or views according to which the properties that these judgements ascribe do exist. When I consider each of these arguments on its own, I am convinced that it is sound. But when I consider all of them together, I am unable to form a belief in the theory they support: an error theory about all normative judgements.

 Just as a theory can be true if we do not believe it, a theory can also be true if we cannot believe it.

What prevents me from doing this? When we have a belief, we cannot at the same time explicitly think that there is no reason whatsoever for this belief. For example, if we believe that Socrates was a philosopher, we cannot at the same time explicitly think that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that Socrates was a philosopher. If we did think this, our belief that Socrates was a philosopher would disappear. Since thoughts about reasons for belief are normative judgements, an error theory about all normative judgements entails that there is no reason to believe anything. It therefore entails that there is no reason to believe this error theory. And anyone who understands the theory well enough to believe it knows that it entails this. I think that this prevents us from believing this error theory.

You may take this to be a problem for the theory. But I do not think it is. Just as a theory can be true if we do not believe it, a theory can also be true if we cannot believe it. Of course, if we cannot believe a theory, we cannot sincerely say that it is true. But we can defend the theory without saying that it is true: we can put forward arguments against the alternatives to the theory and say that these arguments together seem to show that the theory is true. As long as we do not say that these arguments actually show this, we are not insincere. Moreover, if we did need to be insincere in order to defend this error theory, that would not be a problem for the theory. It would merely be problem for us.

So is this error theory true? Since I cannot believe the theory, I do not think it is. But I do think that the arguments against the alternatives to the theory together seem to show that the theory is true. And I think that our inability to believe an error theory about all normative judgements may explain why the philosophical debate about the nature of these judgements has been going on for so long without reaching a consensus: because we have been circling around a truth that we cannot believe.

Realising that we cannot believe this error theory may help us to make progress in this debate. And there may also be other philosophical theories that we cannot believe, such as scepticism about responsibility, eliminativism about belief, or nihilism about truth. If so, realising that we cannot believe these theories may help us to make progress in other philosophical debates as well.

Featured image credit: road sign attention shield by geralt. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Philosophy in 2017: a year in review [timeline]

This year a lot has happened in the field of philosophy. As we come to the end of 2017, the OUP Philosophy team have had a look back at the past year and its highs and lows. We’ve compiled a selection of the key events, awards, anniversaries, and passings which went on to shape philosophy in 2017. From Alvin Plantinga receiving the Templeton Prize, to the death of Derek Parfit, take a look through our interactive timeline.

Which key events would you add to our timeline of philosophy in 2017? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image credit: Socrates statue by RaiPR. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Glioblastoma’s spectre in the Senate

With his right arm extended – pausing for just a moment – Senator John McCain flashed a thumbs-down and jarred the Senate floor. Audible gasps and commotion followed. At 1:29 am on 28 July, Senator McCain had just supplied the decisive “Nay” vote to derail the fourth and final bill voted on that night. With that, a seven-year pursuit to undo the Affordable Care Act had collapsed.

The weight of that moment was magnified by the circumstances under which Senator McCain had arrived in D.C. days earlier. After undergoing a supraorbital keyhole craniotomy to remove a five centimeter blood clot from above his left eye, McCain was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme – the most aggressive primary cancer of the brain. Just two weeks later, McCain returned to Washington and made waves throughout the Senate chamber and the national health policy debate. Curiously, he may have been subtly drawing strength from the eerie history of American senators before him who — in the face of glioblastoma — lit up the Capitol in gripping, historical moments.

Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, made his courageous return in 2008, enduring the physical effects of glioblastoma to cast a deciding vote to advance a critical Medicare bill. McCain was there cheering on his old friend Kennedy when the entire Senate chamber engaged in a thunderous standing ovation upon his return. Kennedy, in turn, was on that same Senate floor in 1964, to witness the very first account of an active US Senator’s mettle when confronted with glioblastoma. For that remarkable story, we turn to Senator Clair Engle (1911-1964), whose poignant moment came during the most crucial moment in the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act, described by historian Dennis W. Johnson:

Promptly at 11:00 a.m., the clerk began calling the roll. “Mr. Aiken.” “Aye.” “Mr. Allot” “Aye.” When the clerk got down to “E”, the Senate reached a moment of high drama, rarely seen in its history. Senator Clair Engle, fifty-two, once a handsome and rugged liberal who had earned the sobriquet “Congressman Fireball,” was now a mere shadow of his once robust self. His fragile, wracked body slumped in a wheelchair, gently guided onto the Senate floor by an aide. Ten months earlier, Engle had undergone an operation to remove a malignant brain tumor; since then his condition had deteriorated to the point where he could not walk, could barely move his arms, and was unable to utter a word. Gallery spectators watched in respectful silence as several times Engle weakly lifted his crippled arm, pointed to his eye, and tried to mouth the word “Aye.” There were tears in the eyes of many of his distinguished colleagues. Senate procedure did not require that a vote be uttered out loud, and Engle’s vote was recorded in the “Aye” column.

GBM in the frontal right lobe as seen on CT scan by James Heilman, MD. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

With Engle’s vote, cloture was invoked, and a fierce 60-day filibuster by Southern segregationists was cut off – producing one of the 20th century’s towering legislative achievements, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Glioblastoma multiforme, or glioblastoma for short, is the most common malignant brain tumor in adults. Originally named in part by Harvey Cushing, the “father of neurosurgery,” the tumor originates from primitive precursors of glial cells (glioblasts), and frequently takes on a highly variable appearance from the presence of necrosis, hemorrhage, and cysts (multiform). Glia (derived from the Greek word for “glue”) refers to cells that support neurons through various functions. These tumors have drawn significant attention due to their poor prognosis, yet patient outcomes have changed little as these aggressive tumors have evaded increasingly clever and sophisticated attempts at therapy over the last half-century. Researchers continue to work to gain new insights that may improve survival.

Glioblastoma is a devastating neurological disease. Most patients die within one year. Thus, a diagnosis of glioblastoma confers to the patient an ineffable load. In these moments, it is the duty of dedicated, compassionate clinicians to embrace a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated, and work until they can get back up and make sense of their existence. The decision and determination to find meaning in the precious time that remains requires great strength and the support of loved ones.

Engle, Kennedy, and McCain, whether through a moving gesture or an expression of vitality, offer powerful examples of that strength. Though tragic, there is a poetic thread to how these men are connected over time and through service – each producing moments of inspiration, demonstrating what is possible even when facing terminal neurological illness.

Featured image credit: United States Capitol by denishiza. CC0 public domain via Pixabay.

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Carols for Choirs: a history

As Christmas draws to a close, so too does the busiest time of year for OUP’s Hire Library. For three months thoughts of Christmas and caroling have occupied our minds, as we have been busy preparing bookings for many hundreds of carol orchestrations for both concerts and services.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of our most-hired materials this year have come from one of the most authoritative carol collections available to choirs today: the Carols for Choirs series and, in particular, David Willcocks and John Rutter’s 100 Carols for Choirs. Whilst many singers are likely to have sung from this book, it is unlikely that many know the story of its conception.

The story of Carols for Choirs begins in 1958; the year in which Sir David Willcocks directed his first carol service with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. Unimpressed by the ‘dull’ requirement for unison singing throughout popular Christmas Hymns such as ‘O come, all ye faithful’ and ‘Hark! the herald-angels sing’, Willcocks elected to write some descants to supplement these hymns, which were to be included as part of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols broadcast that same year. Following a fantastic public reception and much to the surprise of Willcocks, who had never had any of his music published before, the young director of music was approached by music editors to publish these new arrangements.

The success of Willcocks’ published descants later piqued the interest of editor Christopher Morris, who then asked him to arrange a further 50 carols to be published as a new anthology. It appears that Willcocks was rather startled by this figure, as his immediate response was that 50 would not be possible in conjunction with the heavy demands that came with being the director of music at King’s. He instead asked to arrange 25 of the carols himself and for a second person to be selected to take the other 25.

The individual selected was Reginald Jacques, the then director of the Bach Choir. Together the two aimed to create the world’s first choral collection containing an excellent selection of popular and enduring carols, which could be used in a concert setting as an alternative to mass photocopies of sheet music. It was for this reason that the anthology was initially to be called Carols for Concerts – a title that was, eventually, revised and replaced by the one that we know and love today.

Sir David Willcocks. Used with permission.

Willcocks and Jacques had very clear ideas about the repertoire that was to be included in their anthology. For example, although Holst’s ‘Lullay my liking’ and a new carol from Britten were originally intended to be included, both pieces were later reconsidered and subsequently axed. Perhaps most importantly, Willcocks and Jacques decided not to segregate Christmas hymns from Christmas carols, and instead included both. An interesting consequence of this decision was that Holst’s In the bleak mid-winter, a piece which was traditionally labelled a hymn, began to be considered a de-facto Christmas carol.

Carols for Choirs 1 was wildly successful. Willcocks believed this to be because ‘people liked having one volume of carols, which was basically not too difficult, and didn’t involve a lot of divisi work.’ A few years later, drawing on this success a second anthology was published, which was to be titled Carols for Choirs 2. This led to the first editorial collaboration between David Willcocks and John Rutter.

Willcocks had met Rutter whilst the latter was studying for his degree at Cambridge. When it was suggested that a second anthology be published following Reginald Jacques’s death in 1969, Willcocks proposed that Rutter took Jacques’s place as general editor. Rutter’s involvement introduced, among many other settings, his version of the ‘Twelve days of Christmas’ to the now definitive anthology. Rutter and Willcocks went on to collaborate on the editing of Carols for Choirs from books 2-4, greatly expanding the carol repertory, and also introducing a collection of carols in book 4 for women’s or men’s only choirs.

The final collection on which the duo were to work on was 100 Carols for Choirs. This book not only contained over 70 of the most popular carols from the first three books, but also carols that had been planned to form a part of the earlier anthologies but were not able to be included due to copyright clearance issues (Elizabeth Poston’s ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’ was one such piece).

For the Hire Library, one of the most important features of David Willcocks, Reginald Jacques, and John Rutter’s additions to the Carols for Choirs repertory is the fact that they decided to orchestrate many of their carol settings. In 100 Carols for Choirs, these orchestrations were expanded to include some brass accompaniments, which allowed for more varied and interesting carol concerts and services.

So, keeping with the end-of-year theme, which carol came out on top of our list in 2017? It will come as little surprise to many, I’m sure, to find out that the most hired title this year was Willcocks’s arrangement of ‘O come, all ye faithful’. Although Christmas may be over for another year, our memories of hearing carols such as this one live in performance will remain long into the New Year. Indeed, as Rutter states: ‘It lights up the sky, just like the best descants should do… I thought this was just an extraordinary piece of writing that transformed a classic hymn into something more splendid and more inspiring than I could have imagined.’ See what made the top 10 list below.

Our top 10 carols for 2017  

‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ – David Willcocks
 ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ – Felix Mendelssohn
‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ – John Rutter
‘Once in Royal David’s City’ – David Willcocks
‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ – Ralph Vaughan Williams
‘Angels’ Carol’ – John Rutter
‘Good King Wenceslas’ – Reginald Jacques
‘I saw three ships’ – John Rutter
‘Jesus Child’ – John Rutter
‘Shepherd’s Pipe’ – John Rutter

Featured image credit:  © Oxford University Press. Not to be used without permission.

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