Naturalistic theories of disease appeal to concepts of biological function, and use the notion of dysfunction as the basis of their definitions. Debates in the philosophy of biology demonstrate how attributing functions in organisms and establishing the function-dysfunction distinction is by no means straightforward. This problematization of functional ascription has undermined naturalistic theories and led some authors to abandon the concept of dysfunction, favoring instead definitions based in normative criteria or phenomenological approaches. Although this work has enhanced our understanding (...) of disease and illness, we need not necessarily abandon naturalistic concepts of function and dysfunction in the disease debate. This article attempts to move towards a new naturalistic theory of disease that overcomes the limitations of previous definitions and offers advantages in the clinical setting. Our approach involves a reevaluation of concepts of biological function employed by naturalistic theories. Drawing on recent insights from the philosophy of biology, we develop a contextual and evaluative account of function that is better suited to clinical medicine and remains consistent with contemporary naturalism. We also show how an updated naturalistic view shares important affinities with normativist and phenomenological positions, suggesting a possibility for consilience in the disease debate. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that there are two kinds of normative concepts : evaluative concepts, such as good, and deontic concepts, such as ought. The question that is raised by this distinction is how it is possible to claim that evaluative concepts are normative. Given that deontic concepts appear to be at the heart of normativity, the bigger the gap between evaluative and deontic concepts, the less it appears plausible to say (...) that evaluative concepts are normative. After having presented the main differences between evaluative and deontic concepts, and shown that there is more than a superficial difference between the two kinds, the paper turns to the question of the normativity of evaluative concepts. It will become clear that, even if these concepts have different functions, there are a great many ties between evaluative concepts, on the one hand, and the concepts of ought and of reason, on the other. (shrink)

Those familiar with Ayn Rand's ethical writings may know that she discusses issues in metaethics, and that she defended the objectivity of morality during the heyday of early non-cognitivism. But neither her metaethics, in general, nor her views on moral objectivity, in particular, have received wide study. This article elucidates some aspects of her thought in these areas, focusing on Rand's conception of the way in which moral values serve a biologically based human need, and on her account of moral (...) values as both essentially practical and epistemically objective in a sense fundamentally continuous with the objectivity of science. The bearing of her epistemological writings on her ethical thought is emphasized throughout, and her epistemology is defended against a line of criticism inspired by John McDowell's criticism of the so-called “myth of the given.”. (shrink)

Naturalistic theories of disease appeal to concepts of biological function, and use the notion of dysfunction as the basis of their definitions. Debates in the philosophy of biology demonstrate how attributing functions in organisms and establishing the function-dysfunction distinction is by no means straightforward. This problematization of functional ascription has undermined naturalistic theories and led some authors to abandon the concept of dysfunction, favoring instead definitions based in normative criteria or phenomenological approaches. Although this work has enhanced our understanding (...) of disease and illness, we need not necessarily abandon naturalistic concepts of function and dysfunction in the disease debate. This article attempts to move towards a new naturalistic theory of disease that overcomes the limitations of previous definitions and offers advantages in the clinical setting. Our approach involves a re-evaluation of concepts of biological function employed by naturalistic theories. Drawing on recent insights from the philosophy of biology, we develop a contextual and evaluative account of function that is better suited to clinical medicine and remains consistent with contemporary naturalism. We also show how an updated naturalistic view shares important affinities with normativist and phenomenological positions, suggesting a possibility for consilience in the disease debate. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend, and in so doing clarify, the claim that the affective component of emotional experience plays an essential explanatory role in the acquisition of evaluative knowledge. In particular, it argues that the phenomenally conscious affective component of emotional experience provides the subject with the epistemic access to the semantic value of evaluative concepts. The core argument relies on a comparison with the role played by the phenomenal character of perceptual experience (...) in the acquisition of knowledge of colours. The upshot is that it is a disanalogy with perceptual experience that explains the essential role of affective experience in acquiring evaluative knowledge, namely its motivational component. (shrink)

Thick terms and concepts, such as honesty and cruelty, are at the heart of a variety of debates in philosophy of language and metaethics. Central to these debates is the question of how the descriptive and evaluative components of thick concepts are related and whether they can be separated from each other. So far, no empirical data on how thick terms are used in ordinary language has been collected to inform these debates. In this paper, we present (...) the first empirical study, designed to investigate whether the evaluative component of thick concepts is communicated as part of the semantic meaning or by means of conversational implicatures. While neither the semantic nor the pragmatic view can fully account for the use of thick terms in ordinary language, our results do favour the semanticist interpretation: the evaluation of a thick concept is only slightly easier to cancel than semantically entailed content. We further discovered a polarity effect, demonstrating that how easily an evaluation can be cancelled depends on whether the thick term is of positive or negative polarity. (shrink)

Psychiatric diagnosis serves many functions in the struggle for recognition, such as access to public mental health systems and legal compensation, but it is not necessarily well-equipped for the task of self-understanding and reconfiguration of personal values in the recovery process – and the likelihood of optimal outcome that is geared to the individual person's quality of life. Call this the transformative dimension of recognition in the complex journey from diagnosis to therapeutic empathy in the doctor–patient relationship.Patients who are diagnosed (...) with a serious and enduring mental health condition often find it difficult to make sense of themselves in relation to their... (shrink)

The proliferation of public–private partnerships for development as an answer to many public challenges calls for careful evaluation. To this end, tailored frameworks are fundamental for helping understand the PPPs’ impact and for guiding corrective adjustment. Scholars have developed frameworks focusing on the partners’ relationships, the order of effects, and the distinction between outputs and outcomes. To capture a PPP’s complexity and multiple linkages with its environment, we argue that a thorough evaluation should adopt a stakeholder-oriented approach and consider the (...) costs and benefits that a PPP implies for them—especially as taxpayers’ money is involved. For this purpose, we build on a stakeholder-oriented evaluation framework from the nonprofit business partnership literature. In line with our broad evaluation conception, we extend it with the manifold ripple effects that PPPs for development have and include the time dimension for the links between different PPP stages and related outcomes to become clearer. Applying this framework to an illustrative case, we highlight important direct and especially indirect stakeholder outcomes, which a narrow evaluation would omit, point to the challenges involved in the evaluation endeavor, and identify interesting future research areas. (shrink)

The literature of bioethics suffers from two serious problems. (1) Most authors are unable to take seriously both the rights of the great apes and of severely disabled human infants. Rationalism—moral status rests on rational capacities—wrongly assigns a higher moral status to the great apes than to all severely disabled human infants with less rational capacities than the great apes. Anthropocentrism—moral status depends on membership in the human species—falsely grants all humans a higher moral status than the great apes. Animalism—moral (...) status is dependent on the ability to suffer—mistakenly equates the moral status of humans and most animals. (2) The concept person is widely used for justificatory purposes, but it seems that it cannot play such a role. It seems that it is either redundant or unable to play any justificatory role. I argue that we can solve the second problem by understanding person as a thick evaluative concept. This then enables us to justify assigning a higher moral status to the great apes than to simple animals: the great apes are persons. To solve the first problem, I argue that certain severely disabled infants have a higher moral status than the great apes because they are dependent upon human relationships for their well-being. Only very limited abilities are required for such relationships, and the question who is capable of them must be based on thick evaluative concepts. Thus, it turns out that to make progress in bioethics we must assign thick evaluative concepts a central role. (shrink)

Ethical thought is articulated around normative concepts. Standard examples of normative concepts are good, reason, right, ought, and obligatory. Theorists often treat the normative as an undifferentiated domain. Even so, it is common to distinguish between two kinds of normative concepts: evaluative or axiological concepts, such as good, and deontic concepts, such as ought. This encyclopedia entry discusses the many differences between the two kinds of concepts.

How evaluative are legal texts? Do legal scholars and jurists speak a more descriptive or perhaps a more evaluative language? In this paper, we present the results of a corpus study in which we examined the use of evaluative language in both the legal domain as well as public discourse. For this purpose, we created two corpora. Our legal professional corpus is based on court opinions from the U.S. Courts of Appeals. We compared this professional corpus to (...) a public corpus, which is based on blog discussions on the internet forum Reddit. While many linguistic phenomena can give insights into evaluativity, we investigated the use of a wide selection of evaluative adjectives (more specifically, thick adjectives) to gain a more comprehensive picture of the degree of evaluativity in the legal domain. Our analysis shows that legal professionals use thick terms less evaluatively than laypeople, which suggests that legal texts are less evaluative than ordinary discussions. This result, more generally, supports the philosophical idea that thick concepts may vary in their evaluative intensity. (shrink)

This chapter presents an alternative to the standard view that at least some of the evaluations that the so-called “thick” terms and concepts in ethics may be used to convey belong to their sense or semantic meaning. After introducing the topic and making some methodological remarks, the chapter presents a wide variety of linguistic data that are well explained by the alternative view that at least a very wide range of thick terms and concepts are such that even (...) the evaluations that are most closely connected to them are only a certain kind of defeasible implications of their utterances which can be given a conversational explanation. The chapter then describes some reasons to think that this explanation of the data presented is superior to the standard view, although a fuller assessment must await further work. The chapter closes by explaining the largely deflationary consequences of this account for claims that thick terms and concepts have deep and distinctive significance to evaluative thought and judgment. (shrink)

This paper returns to a perennial controversy I examined in a previous paper in the Journal of Business Ethics (Vol. 2, 1983). Is economic theory an ethically neutral discipline or do its statements presuppose a commitment to moral values? Once again this issue is addressed via a case study of the neo-classical theory of rational choice. In the present paper I focus on behaviourist forms of operationalist attempts to short-circuit any argument that would seek to infer moral presuppositions from the (...) use of evaluative discourse. In particular, I examine strategies that have sought to excise from economic theory the mentalistic vocabulary required to describe valuations per se. And I argue that such tactics are deficient since they i) impoverish the explanatory power of economic theory, (ii) fail to recover the normative usefulness of the theory of choice, and (iii) camouflage the continued presupposition of moral commitments within neo-classical theory. (shrink)

This article examines the evaluative nature of the folk concepts of weakness and strength of will and hypothesizes that their evaluative nature is strongly connected to the folk concepts of blame and credit. We probed how people apply the concepts of weakness and strength of will to prototypical and non-prototypical scenarios. While regarding prototypical scenarios the great majority applied these concepts according to the predictions following from traditional philosophical analyses. When presented with non-prototypical scenarios, (...) people were divided. Some, against traditional analyses, did not apply these concepts, which we explain in terms of a clash of evaluations involving different sorts of blame and credit. Others applied them according to traditional analyses, which we explain in terms of a disposition to be reflective and clearly set apart the different sorts of blame and credit involved. Still others applied them in an inverse way, seemingly bypassing the traditional components resolution and be.. (shrink)

The stated purpose of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is to classify mental disorders. However, no tenable operational definition of mental disorder is offered in the manual. This leaves the possibility open that the behaviors labeled as disordered in the DSM are not members of a valid category. Attempts to define mental illness fall into the category of essentialist or relativist based, respectively, on the acceptance or denial of the existence of a defining biological attribute that all (...) mental disorders possess. However, the disorders in the DSM cannot be accounted for by either of these approaches making it unlikely that they represent a single valid concept. Simultaneous inclusion of brain illnesses and normal behaviors in the DSM are a likely explanation for the disparate nature of DSM disorders. (shrink)

According to the philosophical tradition, translation is successful when one has substituted words and sentences from one language with those from another by cross-linguistic synonymy. Moreover, according to the orthodox view, the meaning of expressions and sentences of languages are determined by their basic or systematic role in a language. This makes translating normative and evaluative discourse puzzling for two reasons. First, as languages are syntactically and semantically different because of their peculiar cultural and historical influences, and as values (...) and norms differ across cultures, it is unlikely that languages will have synonymous evaluative and normative expressions. If translation is only successful by cross-linguistic synonymy, it would seem that we will not be able to translate the value theoretic claims of persons from radically different cultures. But it is with such persons that dialogue on evaluative matters is imperative, to resolve ethical and axiological differences that could be the root of conflict. Second, as the orthodox account of meaning renders it linguistically relative, it is unlikely that expressions across languages will be cross-linguistically synonymous. Thus, on the Orthodox account of translation, translation is indeterminate (as W.V.O. Quine has argued) or impossible (as Jacques Derrida has argued). In this dissertation I argue for a novel theory of meaning and translation based on innovations in the translation studies literature and my prior work in cross cultural research, which I call Text-Type Semantics or TTS. TTS explains how translation is successful while affirming radical cultural and linguistic diversity. It treats disciplinary concerns as the neutral criteria to calibrate translation. On the basis of TTS I argue that we need what I call the “Quasi-Indexical” account of thick and thin concepts (or QI) to translate normative and evaluative discourse. I argue that QI and TTS succeed where competing accounts in the moral semantics literature (such as Non-Analytic Naturalism and Expressivism) fail. The argument also shows that the relativization of truth (in philosophy and beyond) to languages and cultures is mistaken. (shrink)

Barth's Concept of Nothingness : A Critical Evaluation is an examination of Barth's discussion of the problem of evil in the Church Dogmatics. It provides a thorough exegesis of Barth's thinking on the origin of evil and the nature of the "shadow side" of creation in dialogue with John Hick and David Bentley Hart. The book's primary focus is in demonstrating the logical difficulties in Barth's thinking on the problem of evil. Further, it proposes a way forward that is beneficial (...) to the pastor and provides hope and comfort to those in the midst of suffering and evil. (shrink)

Programmatic concepts have elements that point in a valued direction or name a desired goal. We provide a detailed analysis of the nature of programmatic concepts and cite examples of the programmatic elements found in conceptions of scientific literacy. Next we describe what values underlie these elements and what theories of value might be brought to bear in assessing them. We present an analysis of approximately 70 conceptions of scientific literacy found in the literature since the year 2000. (...) We identify the goals that each of these conceptions of scientific literacy implies and uncover the programmatic elements that are used to justify these goals. Our purpose is to present a sufficiently wide range of views to have a good representation of goals and programmatic elements. Third, we point to a number of pitfalls in any attempt to make preferential selections among the programmatic elements of conceptions of scientific literacy. (shrink)

The recent conception of biodiversity proposed by James Maclaurin and Sterelny was developed mostly with macrobiological life in mind. They suggest that we measure biodiversity by dividing life into natural units (typically species) and quantifying the differences among units using phenetic rather than phylogenetic measures of distance. They identify problems in implementing quantitative phylogenetic notions of difference for non-prokaryotic species. I suggest that if we focus on microbiological life forms that engage in frequent, promiscuous lateral gene transfer (LGT), and their (...) associated reticulated phylogenies, we need to rethink the notion of species as the natural unit, and we discover additional problems with phylogenetic notions of distance. These problems suggest that a phenetic approach based on morphospaces has just as much appeal, if not more, for microbes as they do for multi-cellular life. Facts about LGT, however, offer no new insight into the additional challenge of reconciling units and differences into a single measure of biodiversity. (shrink)

Jeong Jae-gyu (鄭載圭, 1843-1911) was a scholar in the late Joseon Dynasty who contributed to the solidification and formation of the Nosa school (蘆沙學派) through the publication of Nosajib (蘆沙集) and active lecture activities based on the independent acceptance of his teacher, Ki Jeong-jin (奇正鎭). He explained the concept of intelligence based on the definitions of Shen Gui-bao (沈貴珤), an early scholar of the Yuan Dynasty, and even though the volume was not large, he presented a deep analysis and a (...) unique interpretation. Few Joseon Neo-Confucian scholars had explained the concept of intelligence based on Shen Gui-bao, so his attempts are unique. Shen Gui-bao explained, “the Intelligence includes the axis of change in the real world where the heavenly principles are inherent and has a mirror to judge the conflicts of human affairs”. Hu Bing-wen (胡炳文) used the explanation to justify his concept of intelligence. However, since intelligence is a principle, and the “axis of change in the real world” is also a principle, an unreasonable proposition of ‘principle includes principle’ can be established according to Shen Gui-bao’s definitions. Therefore, Kim Chang-hyeop (金昌協) and others criticized Shen Gui-bao, saying that such a proposition cannot be accepted. However, in the 19th century, Lee Hang-ro (李恒老) and Lee Jin-sang (李震相) showed a positive attitude toward Shen Gui-bao’s definitions. Jeong Jae-gyu, who partially accepted the influence of Lee Jin-sang, reaffirmed the fundamental position of intelligence through the phrase “Intelligence includes the axis of change in the real world”, and emphasized that intelligence is the basis for both moral judgment and the principle of perception. Furthermore, in the Neo-Confucian system, intelligence corresponds to a quiet virtue, so Jung Jae-gyu’s emphasis on it might lead to a theory of cultivation centered on solitude (靜), which can be confirmed in questions and answers shared with Ki Jung-jin, his writings, and poems. (shrink)

The concept of health is not only a specific criterion for evaluation of water quality delivered by a distribution system but also a suitable paradigm for overall functioning of the hydraulic and structural components of the system. This article views health, despite its complexities, as the only criterion with suitable depth and breadth to allow a holistic assessment of system performance. Although many decisions relating to the planning and design of water distribution systems do implicitly consider human health, engineers and (...) planners seldom explicitly adopt a “health mindset” overall and, thus, miss the richness and possibilities of a health framework for a wider range of system evaluations, considerations, and trade-offs. This article argues why a breakdown in a healthy system will so frequently result in stresses experienced by humans and briefly reviews the concepts of human health and system health and provides specific examples of a significant interaction between the two. (shrink)

Palliation is a relatively new concept that is used in connection with the integral care provided to those who are unable to recover from their illness. The specific meaning of the concept has not been clearly defined. This article explores the possibilities offered by a responsive approach to evaluation that can facilitate a reflexive dialogue on this ambiguous concept. In doing so it draws on a case study of a palliative care project in a Dutch health care authority. The article (...) begins with an overview of the characteristics of a responsive approach to evaluation and addresses interpretative, representational and practical dilemmas. It goes on to present a series of dialogues between health professionals, informal caregivers, patients and evaluators. These dialogues take the form of juxtaposed stories, transcribed conversations and interpretations. Finally, the learning experiences are summarised and the appropriateness of the responsive approach to evaluate palliative care is discussed. (shrink)

Freedom is a key concept in universal affairs. It is so important in human affairs that individuals, countries and even continents cannot do without it. The term freedom is highly subjective as its meaning may differ from one individual to another. It equally applies to countries and continents. This factor however does not in any way reduce the philosophical importance of the concept of freedom and its critical role in human affairs. This work evaluates the concept of African freedom based (...) on Maduabuchi Dukor’s incisive work on African freedom titled “African freedom: The freedom of philosophy”. The paper takes the strong but painful position that Africa in not really free and gives reasons for this unfortunate scenario. It further discusses the way out of the continent’s quagmire. (shrink)

Abstract Ab? Yazid al?Bist?mi (d. 874 AD) was a renowned early s?fi who exerted a tremendous influence upon the doctrinal formulation of the sufism of medieval times. A highly controversial figure, he is venerated by some as a top?ranking saint and s?fi, condemned by others as a notorious heretic, and there are still others who suspend judgement on him. More than 200 years after him al?Ghaz?li (1058?1111 AD) flourished as the greatest s?fi of all times; he examined and evaluated the (...) teachings of his s?fi predecessors including Ab? Yazid. To determine his evaluation of Ab? Yazid and his opinion on the related, well?known concept of man's union with God at the highest peak of spirituality is the main aim of this paper. To achieve this aim al?Ghaz?li's citations from Ab? Yazid's teachings on many basic doctrines of sufism, together with his explicit comments on them, are analysed in the second section of the paper, and he is found to have evaluated these teachings as of a very high grade and to have extolled Ab? Yazid as a s?fi of the highest rank. The third section studies al?Ghaz?li's opinion on the most important aspect of Ab? Yazid's teachings, i.e. his shatah?t or ecstatic utterances apparently expressive of union, fusion and divine indwelling. This began with a consideration of al?Ghaz?li's definition of two kinds of shath and his condemnation of them on the grounds of their harmful consequences. In connection with a study of his condemnation of the shatah?t of Ab? Yazid and al?Hall?j an investigation is made into his opinion on union and fusion. It is found that throughout his s?fi life he condemned them as false concepts. However Ab? Yazid's shatah?t, which apparently mean union, fusion, etc. are interpreted in an orthodox manner, and he is adjudged an elect of the elect, a gnostic who reached the level of reality of realities, a perfect s?fi who attained to God. All the above findings are based on al?Ghaz?li's explicit comments on Ab? Yazid. The fourth section of the paper deals with his implicit, indirect comments which also prove his appreciation of, and indebtedness to, Ab? Yazid in respect of several central concepts of sufism. (shrink)

An appropriate characterization of property types is an important topic for measurement science. This paper proposes to derive them from evaluation types, and analyzes the consequences of this position for the VIM3.

One of the central concepts in Charles Taylor’s philosophy is that of strong evaluation. What is strong evaluation? The crucial idea is that human relations to the world, to self and to others are value-laden. In the first subsection the central features of the concept of strong evaluation are discussed, namely qualitative distinctions concerning worth and the role of strong evaluation for identity. The nature of strong evaluations both as background understandings and explicit judgements is clarified. It is also (...) claimed that strong evaluation is not precisely a matter of second-order desires, but of evaluative beliefs. In subsection 1.2, some additional and less central characterizations are scrutinized: contingent conflicts, articulacy, discriminacy, reflectivity, depth. The claim is that most of these are not criterial for the distinction between strong and weak evaluations. In the third subsection various criticisms are taken up (from Ernst Tugendhat, Jurgen Habermas, Owen Flanagan, Joel Anderson), which are relevant for defining strong evaluations and assessing the role strong evaluation has in ethics. The terminological solutions are here connected to substantive issues in moral theory. I will defend Taylor against three aspects of a Kantian critique that the notion of strong evaluation is too broad, and overlooks crucial distinctions. Should one distinguish between moral and other values more clearly? Should one distinguish between categorical and optional goods more sharply? Should one distinguish between the whole “moral map” and one’s own orientation more clearly? I think these are indeed essential questions, but they are to be answered within the realm of qualitative distinctions concerning worth. The Kantian attempts to segregate one type of issue as involving strong evaluation and another type of issue as not involving it are misguided. In the fourth subsection I put forward three critical claims in an attempt to show that the notion of strong evaluation as Taylor defines it is too narrow (or at least ambivalent about how narrow it is). These critiques are inspired by more comprehensives approaches to ethics (e. g. by Joseph Raz or Paul Ricoeur). First, is strong evaluation restricted strictly to second-order self-evaluation (as some formulations by Taylor seem to suggest), or does it cover value-judgement in general (as some other formulations by Taylor seem to suggest)? In the broad sense, strong evaluations also include first-order judgements made in various different situations, and background commitments to goods. I suggest that the broad sense be adopted. Second, how does the distinction between strong and weak evaluations relate to “small” values? Third, can self-evaluation succeed without the deontic layer of reasons and norms and if not, does the concept of strong evaluation cover that as well? I defend a different line from Taylor on the issues of small values and the deontic realm. This will lead to a suggestion of “strong evaluation in an extended sense”. (shrink)

Evasion of value added tax (VAT) is a pressing criminal justice problem; however, there still are no theoretical studies on the specific nature of this offense and the basis of its legal evaluation. This article is an attempt to explain the preconditions of the origin of this type of fraud and its connection with the Value Added Tax Law, to formulate the conceptual understanding of the offense, to reveal the important aspects of its legal evaluation and to discuss relevant examples (...) from the case-law. The preconditions of VAT fraud lie in the legal nature of tax administration and the particularity of VAT regulation creating opportunities to abuse the right of deducting the overpayment from the budget or reducing the tax payable. The system of tax crimes stipulated in the Criminal Code is not sufficient to properly assess the impact and danger of VAT fraud. The judicial practice considering VAT deception as property fraud is theoretically justified and welcome. (shrink)

This monograph poses a series of key problems of evidential reasoning and argumentation. It then offers solutions achieved by applying recently developed computational models of argumentation made available in artificial intelligence. Each problem is posed in such a way that the solution is easily understood. The book progresses from confronting these problems and offering solutions to them, building a useful general method for evaluating arguments along the way. It provides a hands-on survey explaining to the reader how to use current (...) argumentation methods and concepts that are increasingly being implemented in more precise ways for the application of software tools in computational argumentation systems. It shows how the use of these tools and methods requires a new approach to the concepts of knowledge and explanation suitable for diverse settings, such as issues of public safety and health, debate, legal argumentation, forensic evidence, science education, and the use of expert opinion evidence in personal and public deliberations. (shrink)

In this essay I identify a type of linguistic phenomenon new to feminist philosophy of language: biased evaluative descriptions. Biased evaluative descriptions are descriptions whose well-intended positive surface meanings are inflected with implicitly biased content. Biased evaluative descriptions are characterized by three main features: (1) they have roots in implicit bias or benevolent sexism, (2) their application is counterfactually unstable across dominant and subordinate social groups, and (3) they encode stereotypes. After giving several different kinds of examples (...) of biased evaluative descriptions, I distinguish them from similar linguistic concepts, including backhanded compliments, slurs, insults, epithets, pejoratives, and dog whistles. I suggest that the traditional framework of Gricean implicature cannot account for biased evaluative descriptions. I discuss some challenges to the distinctiveness and evaluability of biased evaluative descriptions, including intersectional social identities. I conclude by discussing their social significance and moral status. Identifying biased evaluative descriptions is important for a variety of social contexts, from the very general and broad (political speeches) to the very particular and small (bias in academic hiring). (shrink)

In order to fully implement the new development concept, bring into full play the potential of sports development, and maintain the resilience of China’s sports development. This paper studies the resilience evaluation and spatial correlation of Chinese sports development under the new development concept. First, we constructed Resilience Evaluation Indexes System for Sports Development in China based on the analysis of the resilience features of sports development and the DPSIR model, which is from the five aspects of “driving force – (...) pressure – state – influence – response.” Second, used Coefficient of Variation and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution Method to measure the resilience level of sports development in 31 provinces in China from 2013 to 2017. Then, we introduced the obstacle degree model to identify the obstacle factors that hinder the resilience of Chinese sports development in different periods. Finally, we used the global and local Moran indexes to analyze the spatial correlation of China sports regional development. The results showed that: overall, the development level of sports resilience in 31 provinces in China showed an upward trend from 2013 to 2017, while some provinces showed obvious fluctuations. The obstacles to the development of sports resilience in China mainly include sports scientific research equipment, the number of national fitness monitoring stations, the number of national fitness centers, the full-time equivalent of personnel, and the number of sports scientific research projects. The response subsystem is the main obstacle factor that affects the improvement of the resilience level of sports development in China. There is a positive spatial autocorrelation between the resilience level of sports development and regional spatial distribution, and the correlation shows a weakening trend, and the internal difference is significant. Finally, we concluded that we must take the new development philosophy as the guiding principle. First, we should stick to innovation-driven development to fully upgrade the resilience of China’s sports development. Second, we should adhere to the principle of coordinated development to promote the overall and balanced development of sports. Lastly, we should promote shared development so as to deliver benefits for all in an equal way. (shrink)

In the discussion about consequences of the release of genetically modified (GM) crops, the meaning of the term “environmental damage” is difficult to pin down. We discuss some established concepts and criteria for understanding and evaluating such damages. Focusing on the concepts of familiarity, biological integrity, and ecosystem health, we argue that, for the most part, these concepts are highly ambiguous. While environmental damage is mostly understood as significant adverse effects on conservation resources, these concepts may (...) not relate directly to effects on tangible natural resources but rather to parameters of land use or ecological processes (e.g., the concept of biological integrity). We stress the importance of disclosing the normative assumptions underlying damage concepts and procedures for the evaluation of damages by GM crops. A conceptualization of environmental damage should precede its operationalization. We recommend an unambiguous definition for damage developed earlier and recommend that evaluation criteria be based on this. However, a general damage definition cannot replace case-specific operationalization of damage, which remains an important future challenge. (shrink)

Against those who identify genealogy with reductive genealogical debunking or deny it any evaluative and action-guiding significance, I argue for the following three claims: that although genealogies, true to their Enlightenment origins, tend to trace the higher to the lower, they need not reduce the higher to the lower, but can elucidate the relation between them and put us in a position to think more realistically about both relata; that if we think of genealogy’s normative significance in terms of (...) a triadic model that includes the genealogy’s addressee, we can see that in tracing the higher to the lower, a genealogy can facilitate an evaluation of the higher element, and where the lower element is some important practical need rather than some sinister motive, the genealogy can even be vindicatory; and finally, that vindicatory genealogies can offer positive guidance on how to engineer better concepts. (shrink)