Neutral Arguments Research Articles

Liberal Neutrality and Moderate Perfectionism

This article defends a moderate version of state perfectionism by using Gerald Gaus’s argument for liberal neutrality as a starting point of discussion. Many liberal neutralists reject perfectionism on the grounds of respect for persons, but Gaus has explained more clearly than most neutralists how respect for persons justifies neutrality. Against neutralists, I first argue that the state may promote the good life by appealing to what can be called “the qualified judgments about the good life,” which have not been considered by liberal perfectionists including Joseph Chan and Steven Wall. Then I clear up several possible misunderstandings of these judgments, and argue that: (a) moderate perfectionism does not rely on controversial rankings of values and is committed to promoting different valuable ways of life by pluralistic promotion; and (b) moderate perfectionism requires only an indirect form of coercion in using tax money to support certain moderate perfectionist measures, which is justifiable on the grounds of citizens’ welfare. Thus, I maintain that moderate perfectionism does not disrespect citizens, and is not necessarily unfair to any particular group of people. It is, in fact, plausible and morally important. The defence of moderate perfectionism has practical implications for the state’s policies regarding art development, drug abuse, public education, and so on.

Citizenship In Name Only: The Coloring of Democracy While Redefining Rights, Liberties And Self Determination For The 21st Century

In recent times there has been an explosion of interest in the concept of citizenship. This renewed theoretical focus was sparked by voter ID statutes and jury obstruction. Defining the term “full citizenship” as it relates to African Americans has been a focus of controversy since the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Do African Americans enjoy the status of full citizenship or is it in name only? This Essay examines two fundamental areas of citizenship: voting rights and jury participation. This Essay, through comparative analysis, will show deep rooted voting suppression tactics and present jury obstruction methods that impact African Americans and their full citizenship rights. The jury system is one of the most important institutions of government. The right and duty to sit on a jury is granted to all adult citizens. Racial bias denies the defendant the right to a fair and impartial jury, and it denies citizens the fundamental right to participate fully in the judicial system. African Americans have been disproportionally excluded through pretextual peremptory challenges. Moreover, lawmakers have embarked on a new voter suppression tactic: voter identification requirements. The tactic involves imposing new laws and rules requiring voters to show identification in order to vote, despite virtually no evidence of voter misidentification fraud. Identification requirements pose a special burden to the poor, racial minorities, and senior citizens who often do not have specific forms of identification. The pretextual color-blind race neutrality argument made by state legislators rings hollow when this nation’s history of voting obstruction is considered.

Investment System Specific Option Pricing Intervals and Vector Majorization

Consider an investment system with a nonnegative expected return in a one period economy. We show that, for an option with a given strike price, there exists a pricing interval $[p^C, p^W]$ such that replacing the original investment with the option will benefit judging by the Kelly criterion only when the price of the option lies outside of the interval. More specifically, buying call options with a price less than $p^C$ or writing covered call options with a price greater than $p^W$ will improve the investment system. Bounds for these thresholds are established using tools related to vector majorization. This investment system specific option pricing interval is compatible with option valuation methods of using a replicating portfolio or a risk neutrality argument.

Interactive Effects of Appeals, Arguments, and Competition across North American and Chinese Cultures

Using data from actual consumers in North America and China, this research analyzes the interactive effects of appeals and arguments in a competitive environment. The theoretical basis for this study is that contrast effects are most likely to occur when consumers experience advertisements with distinct culture-laden advertising appeals and comparable arguments. The findings indicate that a culturally congruent appeal and a strong argument embedded in an advertisement may create more favorable responses when competing advertisements contain culturally incongruent appeals and neutral arguments than when competing advertisements contain culturally congruent appeals and neutral arguments.

Delay dependent estimates for waveform relaxation methods for neutral differential-functional systems

In this paper, the problem of delay dependent error estimates for waveform relaxation methods applied to Volterra type systems of functional-differential equations of neutral type including systems of differential-algebraic equations is discussed. Under a Lipschitz condition (with delay dependent right-hand side) imposed on the so-called splitting function it is shown how the error estimates depend on the character of delays and that for this reason they are better than the known error estimates for relaxation methods. It is proved that under some assumptions the exact solution can be obtained after a finite number of steps of the iterative process, i.e., we prove that the waveform relaxation methods have the same property as the classical method of steps for solving delay-differential equations with nonvanishing delays. We also show the convergence of the waveform relaxation method without assuming that the spectral radius of the corresponding matrix related to the Lipschitz coefficients for the neutral argument is less than one.

Wright’s Argument from Neutrality

In the first chapter of his book Truth and Objectivity (1992), Crispin Wright puts forward what he regards as ‘a fundamental and decisive objection’ to deflationism about truth (p. 21). His objection proceeds by an argument to the conclusion that truth and warranted assertibility coincide in normative force and potentially diverge in extension ( I call this the ‘argument from neutrality’). This argument has already received some attention. However, I do not believe that it has been fully understood yet. In this short paper, I shall assess the cogency of Wright’s objection in some detail. My agenda is as follows. First, I give what I believe to be an adequate rendering of the objection. Secondly, I reveal the real force of the neutrality argument and say thirdly why it does not, as Wright thinks, refute deflationism. Finally, I argue that Wright’s insistence that truth is a ‘substantial property’ is uncongenial to the overall project of his book.

No Arbitrage Between Economies and Correlation Risk Management

The first goal of this paper is to clarify the implications of the no arbitrage assumption in the context of several countries and extend to a general setting of continuous-time finance and stochastic interest rates results which were more or less present in classical finance models such as the international APT (see Solnik (1983)). In particular, the remarkable relationship between the risk premia in two different countries and the sole volatility of the exchange rate is easily derived. Secondly, we examine the pricing and hedging of cross-currencies options when interest rates are stochastic in all countries. The dependence of risk neutrality arguments on the reference numeraire as developed in Geman (1989) becomes particularly clear in the case of several currencies.

Interracial Violence and Racialized Narratives: Discovering the Road Less Traveled

Anthony Alfieri's recent essay, Defending Racial Violence, analyzes various models of legal argumentation and strategy. The essay focuses on the trial of two men charged with attacking a white trucker during the Los Angeles uprising sparked by the acquittal of four white police officers who brutalized Rodney King. After examining what he calls the rhetorical structure of defense arguments in the case, Alfieri reaches some interesting conclusions, which he would apparently generalize to all cases of black-on-white Alfieri asserts that race-based narratives of - stories of ghettoized deprivation, neglect, and resulting pathologies - are used by criminal defense attorneys to hone arguments that mar their clients' legal identities and distort the integrity of the entire community. According to his analysis, when defense attorneys present narratives of black deviance they depict the collective community as virtually incapable of exercising morally choices. Alfieri, though, seems far less concerned with libel than with what he characterizes as depersonalization of individual responsibility for violent behavior. The essay, which does not offer any version of a tentative Model Rule of Professional Responsibility, proposes as a matter of ethical responsibility that lawyers be constrained in one of two ways. Alfieri argues that lawyers should either be precluded from utilizing narratives of black deviance, or be held responsible for the absence of lawyer-client consultations concerning defense strategies and perceptions related to moral character and community integrity. Besides the inherent difficulty of reaching a consensus on all the dynamics that affect high-profile cases, which - in the United States - include interracial crimes of violence, Alfieri's proposal to ban black deviance narratives is unworkable for many different reasons. First and foremost, the proposal remains disconnected from any concrete goal or objective that a rule making body could effectively monitor or control, assuming possessed the requisite authority. Second, the case study method is ineffective for advancing Alfieri's claim. If his argument is that men who commit violent crimes against innocent whites are getting away with it or that defense lawyers in such cases routinely argue that these defendants are mostly blameless (under a black deviance theory), he has failed to make his case. If, instead, he simply believes that is morally wrong for attorneys to intentionally and recklessly depict America as lacking in the properties of mind and character necessary for moral agency under any circumstances, then he should seriously examine the conduct of a representative sample of criminal defense attorneys to determine if such a problem actually exists. Instead, Alfieri merely points to a series of neutral arguments orchestrated by defense attorneys in a single case - arguments which he urges his readers to construe as suggesting race-based deviance. Relying heavily upon his knowledge of the defendants' and victim's races, Alfieri never substantiates his claim that the lawyers' presentation of the group contagion diminished capacity defense uniquely implicates only community character and behavior, in Los Angeles or elsewhere. Yet, Alfieri justifies his proposal by arguing that use of the mob-violence incited defense in this trial suggests that young males as a group, and the community as a whole, share a pathological tendency to commit acts of violence. The principal flaw of Alfieri's essay is that in all but one of the passages that he presents as a form of race-talk, defense lawyers easily could have been describing a white community, and two white defendants who grew up in a predominantly white environment. Prior to issuing a blanket prohibition, Alfieri should have determined whether legal narratives of black deviance are a significant source of harm to the social identities or integrity of African Americans.

Prisoners of Foreign Policy: An Argument for Ideological Neutrality in Asylum

Prisoners of Foreign Policy: An Argument for Ideological Neutrality in Asylum

Does Monetization of Federal Debt Matter?: Evidence from the Financial Markets

THE PROPOSITION THAT IN A PERFECT CAPITAL MARKET a firm s total market value is consistent with alternative configurations of its capital structure was established by Modigliani and Miller (1958). More recently, Barro (1974) and Miller and Upton ( 1974) discussed a similar invariance proposition which holds with respect to the financing of government expenditures as well. Specifically, the proposition states that whether a given level of government purchases is tax financed or bond financed is irrelevant. This neutrality argument is based on the presence of intergenerational transfers so that the public equates the current value of the bonds with the present value of future tax liabilities generated by the bonds. Consequently, no net wealth is involved when government bonds are issued, and the public or the immortal consumer is indifferent as to whether tax or debt financing is used. The purpose of this paper is to test some hypotheses that emerge from a generalization of this independence proposition in public finance. In particular, the extension of the notion to the irrelevancy of base money in the financing of federal debt is subjected to empirical scrutiny. Fiscal policy is concerned with the financing of government expenditures by either levying taxes or issuing bonds. Determining the proportion of government

A PEDAGOGIC NOTE ON THE DERIVATION OF THE BLACK‐SCHOLES OPTION PRICING FORMULA

ABSTRACTThis paper demonstrates an alternative derivation of the Black‐Scholes option pricing formula based on the risk neutrality arguments of previous researchers. The underlying economic and mathematical structure of the formula is discussed.

Small-angle scattering from liquid metals and alloys and electronic correlation functions

The partial structure factors Sii, Sie and See in pure liquid metals are considered at small wave vectorq. Charge neutrality arguments relate the three functions through the valencyZ atq = 0. It is shown that the partial Ornstein-Zernike functions are proportional toq = 0. It is in the long-wavelength limit, and that they are related, not only throughZ, but through a common characteristic energyE. By setting up a model for the dynamic structure factors, and by assuming well-defined plasmon and phonon modes at smallq, the characteristic energy is shown to be dominated by the zero-point energy of the electronic plasma oscillations. In turn, this same energy is shown to dominate the curvature of See atq = 0, the curvature being pronounced and See therefore rising rapidly away fromq = 0. In contrast, because ion masses enter, the coefficients of q2 in Sie and Sii are shown to be orders of magnitude smaller and these structure factors are therefore quite flat nearq = 0. However, the magnitudes of the coefficients of q2 in Sie and Sii are shown to be influenced by the phonon dispersion, though insensitive to phonon damping. For weak electron-ion interaction, Sie(q) and S(q) can be related through an electronic response function, and the resulting expression satisfies the exact limiting relation between Sie andS atq = 0. Finally, the q2-term in See in an alloy is discussed and is shown to be directly related to the average electronic plasma frequency, involving therefore the valencies of the components and the mean atomic volume. The partial structure factors SAe and SBe can also be related to the (measurable) partial ionic structure factors for weak electron-ion interaction.

Periodic solutions of a countable system of differential equations with deviating neutral argument

Periodic solutions of a countable system of differential equations with deviating neutral argument

Evaluation of religious and neutral arguments in religious and atheist student groups

30 Ss from 3 student religious groups (Student Christian Movement, Evangelical Union, Newman Society) and 10 atheist students judged the logical validity of 24 religious syllogisms and 16 neutral syllogisms. Results indicate that Ss' evaluation of the religious syllogisms is influenced by their religious attitude, critical ability, and intolerance of ambiguity; that the fundamentalist EU group is highest in dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity and the atheist group lowest; and that Ss high in intolerance of ambiguity tend to be relatively low in critical ability.

The Political Standing of Delos

In this paper I am considering two things; the position of Delos as a ‘holy place,’ and the rules of the practice among Greek cities with regard to the grant of a τόπος or site for a stele. From these it follows automatically that the somewhat fashionable dogma of the ‘neutrality’ of Delos is not only (on our present materials) untrue, but is impossible,—it has no chance whatever of being true. It is strange that it should have gained the acceptance it has without any examination of its foundations ever having been made; however, this is so, and it presents rather a striking instance of the effect of mere repetition. Its importance, of course, consists in this, that, if it were true, then the festivals, etc., at Delos can never have any political meaning and we lose our only sure basis for the chronology of the middle of the third century. If this were necessary, one would naturally accept the consequences; the necessity, however, is in fact the other way. I am not going through what others have written; but I have borne in mind Professor Kolbe's argument for Delian neutrality in his drastic reconstruction of this period, a reconstruction which is ingenious, but is unfortunately based on other unsound hypotheses beside the Delian; and I shall notice in their place the four inscriptions with regard to the grant of a site on which he relied as exceptional, but which are really simple illustrations of well-established practice. I am dealing with that practice at some length, as I hope it may possess some interest of its own apart from the theme of this paper, seeing that the rules have never been formulated; but I was glad to find that Professor Wilhelm, who has done so much to elucidate the machinery of setting up decrees, in the two pages which he has incidentally given to the subject, at once noticed what I take to be the important matter, viz. that a question of interstate courtesy is involved.