Sacred values are different from secular values in that they are often associated with violations of the cost-benefit logic of rational choice models. Previous work on sacred values has been largely limited to religious or territorial conflicts deeply embedded in historical contexts. In this work we find that the Iranian nuclear program, a relatively recent development, is treated as sacred by ...

Despite the atheism of renowned abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, artist was commissioned by Christians to create a sacred space that originally intended be used religious believers: Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. The project started out as collaboration between and another atheist: famed architect Phillip Johnson, who designed several prominent spaces throughout his distinguished c...

Qualitative probabilistic networks are designed for probabilistic inference in a qualitative way. They capture qualitative influences between variables, but do not provide for indicating the strengths of these influences. As a result, trade-offs between conflicting influences remain unresolved upon inference. In this paper, we investigate the use of order-of-magnitude kappa values to capture st...

Contemporary conflicts about secularity in ‘the West’ tend to focus on public space. Although collective Christian heritage means that space is rarely exclusively neutral, continue arise over the relationship between and religious symbolism, especially those symbols which derive from minorities. This contribution critically considers designation of as either sacred or secular political imaginar...

We analyze recent proposals from social scientists suggesting that when sacred values are involved in conflicts, progress towards negotiation can be made if the contending parties make symbolic gestures acknowledging the sacred values of their rivals. We incorporate this possibility in a model in which the allocation of a sacred good can be resolved either by direct conflict or by negotiations ...

We analyze the potential for socioeconomically sustainable peatland use by investigating conflicting interests, revealing trade-offs that people are willing to accept, and studying whether opinions are dependent on socioeconomic and demographic factors. Opinions toward five forms of peatland use and seven peatland ecosystem services were surveyed in Northern Ostrobothnia in northern Finland in ...