Climbing Down the Ladder: Inwardness and Abstraction in Wittgenstein\u27s Philosophy with Reference to Kierkegaard

Both Soren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that there are some truths, located beyond the boundaries of rational understanding, which cannot be communicated directly to others. Wittgenstein was influenced by his reading of Kierkegaard\u27s texts on these matters, and accordingly he, like Kierkegaard, has a place in his philosophy for the importance of inwardness in knowing paradoxical truths. A move of \u27inwardness,\u27 for Kierkegaard, is an action that requires a personal and absolute belief that can\u27t be explained directly to others, while \u27paradoxical truths\u27, as Kierkegaard uses the phrase, refers to propositions that we regard as incomprehensible but true (one of his examples is the claim that Christ is both fully God and fully human). For Kierkegaard, we express inwardness when we actively and fully invest ourselves in believing a paradox. It is clear that Wittgenstein also believed that we can understand some things in a non-standard, non-objective way. The passages in which he discusses this kind of nonobjective understanding, however, are notoriously obscure

Bankruptcy and Transaction Costs in General Financial Models

General financial models have become workhorse models in the fields of macroeconomics and finance. These models have been developed and extensively studied by general equilibrium theorists. What makes them so applicable for macroeconomics and finance is the well accepted fact that models with a representative agent and without financial frictions yield equilibrium outcomes that are inconsistent with the empirical realities of financial markets. The general financial models are characterized by two main features: heterogeneous agents and financial frictions. The ability of these models to be applied in the fields of macroeconomics and finance in the future depends upon the frontier research in general equilibrium today. Over the past 20 years, research in general equilibrium has predominantly focused on a single friction: incomplete financial markets. The papers contained in this dissertation will analyze the equilibrium effects, both positive and normative, of two seldom researched frictions: bankruptcy and transaction costs. It is the hope that by studying financial frictions in isolation, we may learn which frictions have the greatest effect on welfare, which frictions are most able to be controlled by the government, and how to satisfactorily analyze the equilibrium of a process that is concurrently being restrained by several frictions

Re-Evaluating Tribal Customs of Land Use Rights

Indigenous peoples developed sustainable land tenure systems over countless generations, but these customary systems of rights are barely used by American Indian tribes today. Would increasing formal recognition of these traditional customs be desirable for tribes in a modern context? This Comment examines one traditional form of indigenous land tenure-the use right-and argues that those tribes that historically recognized use rights in land might benefit from increased reliance on these traditional customs. The Comment argues that in the tribal context, use rights can potentially be just as economically efficient, if not more so, than the Anglo- American system of unqualified, absolute ownership in land. The Comment also argues that tribal customs of land use rights may help preserve Indian cultural identity by cultivating core, non-economic values of tribal peoples. The Comment concludes by addressing some of the challenges tribes will likely face in attempting to more broadly rely on their customs of land use rights in the new millennium, while also remarking on some current and important opportunities for the re-integration of tribal customs in tribal land law

Frameworks for a General-Purpose Smart Home Operating System

Smart home technologies are rapidly growing in prevalence. For my senior project, I designed and implemented the beginnings of a general-purpose framework for a unified Smart Home Operating System, capable of controlling all of the diverse aspects of automated homes. This paper outlines the design challenges involved in building generic smart home systems, as well as the project architecture I designed and implemented to attempt to solve this problem

There is no place like blina at home

Background: At Advocate Children’s Hospital, patients receiving 28-day blinatumomab infusions needed to remain inpatient for the entire treatment. Local problem: Local home health agencies were contacted, and only one was able to care for blinatumomab patients. Unfortunately, due to this being an investigational drug, there was no nursing agencies to provide this care. Method: First, a rental home infusion pump vendor was identified. Next, a process was developed in partnership with our bi-campus outpatient hematology oncology clinics, inpatient hematology oncology units, pharmacies, and infusion pump vendor. Champion nurses were identified and trained on the equipment and supplies. Then, hands-on training was provided to the rest of the nurses. Resource packets were developed to support the inpatient/outpatient nursing teams. Upon initial discharge from the hospital, families received a call from the infusion pump care manager to answer pump questions. A 24-hour help line was provided to the family to support pump troubleshooting. Patients went to clinic to change the infusion bags every 72 or 96 hours. The patients were first seen by a provider to evaluate blinatumomab tolerance and side effects. There was coordination between interdisciplinary teams to ensure that the patient had bag changes at the same time each visit. Results/Conclusions: There were three patients on COG protocol AALL1731, randomized to the blinatumomab arm from May 2021-February 2022. A total of 150 (out of 168) days of blinatumomab infusions were completed outpatient utilizing the home infusion pumps. Implications for practice: This was a huge satisfier to these patients and their families, as well as a cost-effective initiative, freeing inpatient beds for acutely ill patients and optimizing throughput. This quality improvement initiative was largely successful in allowing us to complete blinatumomab infusions at home

Indeterminacy in Stochastic Overlapping Generations Models: Real Effects in the Long Run

Indeterminate equilibria are known to exist for overlapping generations models, though recent research has been limited to deterministic settings in which all equilibria converge to a steady state in the long run. This paper analyzes stochastic overlapping generations models with 3-period lived representative consumers and adopts a novel computational algorithm to numerically approximate the entire set of competitive equilibria. In a stochastic setting with incomplete markets, indeterminacy has real effects in the long run. Our numerical simulations reveal that indeterminacy is an order of magnitude more important than endowment shocks in explaining long-run consumption and asset price volatility