Reconsidering the Necessary Beings of Aquinas’s Third Way

Surprisingly few articles have focused on Aquinas’s particular conception of necessary beings in the Third Way, and many scholars have espoused inaccurate or incomplete views of that conception. My aim in this paper is both to offer a corrective to some of those views and, more importantly, to provide compelling answers to the following two questions about the necessary beings of the Third Way. First, how exactly does Aquinas conceive of these necessary beings? Second, what does Aquinas seek to accomplish in the third stage of the Third Way? In answering these questions, I challenge prominent contemporary understandings of the necessary beings of the Third Way

The evolution of decision and experienced utility

Psychologists report that people make choices on the basis of "decision utilities'' that routinely overestimate the "experienced utility'' consequences of these choices. This paper argues that this dichotomy between decision and experienced utilities may be the solution to an evolutionary design problem. We examine a setting in which evolution designs agents with utility functions that must mediate intertemporal choices, and in which there is an incentive to condition current utilities on the agent's previous experience. Anticipating future utility adjustments can distort intertemporal incentives, a conflict that is attenuated by separating decision and experienced utilities.Evolution, decision utility, experienced utility, focusing illusion

The Welfare Cost Of Capital Immobility And Capital Controls

This paper examines the macroeconomic welfare effects of interest risk premia and controls that limit international capital mobility. Using extended loanable funds analysis, it first demonstrates how perfect capital mobility maximises national income, contrary to a prevalent view that it is inimical to economic welfare. As a corollary, the analysis then shows that capital controls, irrespective of their form, generally reduce national income and economic welfare by widening real cross-border interest differentials. Capital controls in the form of quantitative controls, such as the Chilean unremunerated reserve requirement system, and explicit taxes on foreign investment flows impose similar welfare losses. However, quantitative controls are relatively more costly than options to tax capital flows, due to revenue effects.

The veiled lodger - a reflection on the status of R v D

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. An open access version can be found by following the URI linkAt the time of writing this article (January 2016) some 28 months have elapsed since His Honour Judge Peter Murphy gave judgment in the case of R v D. His judgment, requiring a female defendant of the Muslim faith to remove her niqaab if she wished to give evidence in her own defence, was lauded as a paradigm of common sense by some and, an unwarranted interference with protected rights by others. The conservative press celebrated the fact that the institutional supremacy of the court had been preserved2 whilst the liberal press noted the judge had respected an individual’s right to wear the veil for the remainder of the proceedings. Despite HHJ Murphy having reservations about circuit judges being seen to set a precedent and his request that the issue be clarified at a higher level, R v D appears to have become settled as a statement of principle. This article will suggest that the implications and unanswered questions of R v D are such that the failure of the senior judiciary or legislature to intervene is unsatisfactory and that guidance, based on a robust evidence base is necessary